Clubs Garage sale MJ Cole talks to David Pollock about garage, Mercury nominations and pianos
www.list.co.uk/clubs
✽✽ HITLIST
THE BEST DANCEFLOOR ACTION
✽✽ Confusion is Sex Electro burlesque club CiS embrace the night with their ‘Fangs’ vampire theme. The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Feb. ✽✽ Glasgow Short Film Festival Launch Party A night of math rock, hip hop and house from American Men (featuring Robbie Laeto), The Blessings, Eclair Fifi, Konx Om Pax and Bamboo Palace. CCA, Glasgow, Fri 18 Feb. ✽✽ Numbers The second Numbers party of the month sees local boy Jackmaster join Joy Orbison for an exclusive back-to-back set. Stereo, Glasgow, Fri 18 Feb. ✽✽ Xplicit RAM Records main man Andy C lays down some drum & bass dancefloor destruction. The Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh, Sat 19 Feb. ✽✽ Departure Lounge Multi- genre mixing as Benji B (pictured) and MC Judah blur the boundaries between hip hop, house, jazz, funk, dubstep and disco. The Caves, Edinburgh, Fri 25 Feb. ✽✽ How’s Your Party? HYP? just gets better, with late addition Ms Dynamite joining Redlight, Tayo, Dread MC and Boom Monk Ben for a night of house, dubstep and grime. Sub Club, Glasgow, Fri 25 Feb. ✽✽ Pinup Nights It’s Pinups’ fourth annual Ladies Night, with live acts Hannah Peel, Any Color Black and Boycotts, and DJs Adele Sons & Daughters and Tracyanne and Carey Camera Obscura. Flying Duck, Glasgow, Fri 25 Feb. ✽✽ Naive A guest-heavy party specialising in French house, with Fred Falke, DJ Falcon and Funktion One Soundsystem. Art School, Glasgow, Sat 26 Feb. ✽✽ Vegas! Retro cool with a modern twist as The Correspondents guest for a live set of ‘dancefloor electro swing’. The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh Sat 26 Feb. 17 Feb–3 Mar 2011 THE LIST 37
Dance music moves on fast and a problem for any artist who comes to define a fashionable genre is how to keep up with the times and not get left behind. For MJ Cole, 37-year-old Londoner Matt Coleman, the first flush of success was swift and overpowering. Gaining acclaim as a pioneering UK garage producer, he released his debut album Sincere on Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud label and watched as it was swiftly nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2000 and held up beside Leftfield’s Rhythm & Stealth, Coldplay’s Parachutes and the eventual winner, Badly Drawn Boy’s The Hour of Bewilderbeast. ‘I’ll always be proud of that,’ says Coleman now.
‘The club of Mercury nominees is a good one to be a part of.’
that inspires me a lot, keeps my finger on the pulse.’ Who are we talking about here? Just mates, or . . . ‘Well, I share a studio with nine other guys here in London, so people like Graeme Sinden [of The Count & Sinden], DJ Zinc, then people in the States like Drop the Lime, Diplo and Toddla T. Music has broadened out so much these days but in a good way, and these guys all reflect the styles I like – bass-led and underground, but with a tempo that moves all over the place. That suits me, because I can occasionally reference back to the garage sound without actually having to play an old-school set. That was something I got bored of doing.’
Later this month Coleman will be releasing Satellite, an EP on Prolific, which he describes as four instrumental tracks of ‘wintery stuff, quite deep and textural’. Also on the cards will be more production for artists such as Tempa T and Example, and a long-planned piano album. That’s piano, not piano house: in a past life, Coleman was taught at the Royal College of Music and appeared on the BBC’s Young
Musician of the Year.
‘Yeah, it’ll be fairly simple, atmospheric stuff,’ he says. ‘Just me on a piano, maybe a bit of reverb or chopping up and reversing. Going back to my roots.’ And might that third album be unveiled some time soon? ‘I’m warming to the idea. I like releasing EPs that capture where I am that month and then let me move onto something else, but maybe at some point a bigger statement will be required.’
MJ Cole plays Mixed Bizness at Glasgow School of Art, Fri 18 Feb alongside Hint (Tru Thoughts) and resident Boom Monk Ben.
‘FUNKY HOUSE, DUBSTEP, HIP
HOP MIXED WITH A LITTLE BIT OF
OLD SPICE’
Yet at the same time, it raised expectations to an almost unmatchable degree. One album followed, 2003’s Cut to the Chase, and then Coleman took a step back. He still produced and remixed others’ work, but without maintaining the same high profile himself. Until now that is, following the release last year of ‘From the Drop’, a track with Wiley on Coleman’s own Prolific Recordings, and the co-written and produced ‘Something in the Water’ on Example’s Won’t Go Quietly. So what does the 2011 MJ Cole set sound like? ‘Pretty much not garage,’ he says. ‘I do play some older garagey tracks, but these days I’m much more up front. Bits of funky house, dubstep, hip hop - new stuff mixed with a little bit of old spice. The music I’ve been making these last couple of years has put me in touch with a network of people who are doing similar things. We swap tracks with each other and