From our viewpoint, London was extra special, since it was our first show in “the Big Smoke” for about two years. The reaction we got was great, the place was jumping and the atmosphere was spot on throughout. It was great to meet so many new people and bump into some familiar old faces. Mic man Coherent (pictured, right of picture) jumped on and got involved for a brief Bedmo Disco Soundsystem PA that featured a corking rendition of ‘Straight Outta Bedmo’ and some other North St Sound faves. Good work all round!

This week we return to the studio to work on some tracks, but before then a quick heads up about a new mix by yours truly that’s up on the Bristol-based Soul Fiesta blog. It’s technically a Bedmo Disco mix (though it was actually done solo) and features a host of unreleased dubs and re-edits, some specially crafted for the mix. It’s 78 minutes long (CD length), less than 100MB and ready for your iPod/stereo. Think boogie, electrofunk and soulful vibes, and you’re close.

Go and download it from Soul Fiesta now >>

x x Sell By Dave x x

It’s been a bit of a labour of love, as you can imagine. It features two very special guests on the mic – regular Bedmo Disco Soundsystem mic man Coherent (The Journeymen, Crate Apes etc) and our recently recruited sometime compere Spencer Mizen. Spence is a newcomer to this kind of thing, but lent his uniquely Bristolian tones to the mix to add some local flavour. His refrain of “there aint no party like a Bedmo party” is sure to become a tradmark as we head out on the road in the summer.

Musically, it’s what you’ve come to expect from The Bedmo Disco Soundsystem – a real goodtime mix of party-starting tunes, from forgotten classics and dusty disco gems to wonky beats, dubstep-influenced jazz-hop, hip-house and kawito funk. And, of course, a string of bespoke re-edits and sneaky remixes.

We hope you enjoy it. We’d love to hear your feedback, so feel free to chuck it our way. You can find a tracklist on the ‘Bedmo Disco Mixes’ page.

You can listen to, and download the mix, from this very site >>
You can also listen and stream on Mixloud >>

We’ll be celebrating the launch of the mix – which, incidentally, will soon be available as a plush CD with full artwork and the like – with two parties this weekend; one in Bristol, one in London. Both are free to get in, so come down and have a beer or two with us! Details as follows…

Friday 5th March 2010
BEDMO DISCO @ THE BIG CHILL BRISTOL

With very special guest disc jockey: COSMIC BOOGIE [Disco Deviance/Archive, Liverpool]
Plus THUMBS ALOFT (DJ set)
9pm-3am. Cosmic Boogie on 11pm-1am.

Saturday 5th March 2010
BEDMO DISCO @ THE BIG CHILL BAR (DRAY WALK, off BRICK LANE, LONDON)

With special ‘North St Sound’ album launch P.A from THE BEDMO DISCO SOUNDSYSTEM
8pm-1am. Bedmo Disco Soundsystem on 11.30pn.

It’s another Bedmo Disco Dub, this time of the long forgotten, rather expensive but thoroughly ace ‘You Can’t Have It’ by Stargaze – a boogie/electrofunk gem that features the most delicious rubbery bassline. In the best traditions of original boogie/disco dubs. we’ve kept it largely instrumental, teasing in elements of the vocal before crashing into the breathless latter stages of the original. The times we’ve dropped it in our sets it’s got a great reaction, and the heat from the download from DJs has generally been pretty good. You can check it out for yourself by heading over to Soul Fiesta.

In other Bedmo Disco news, we’ve been finely honing the fabled ‘North St Sound‘ CD, a kind of digital mixtape that sits somewhere between a classic Solid Steel mix and the kind of party-friendly dancefloor madness we peddle in many of our DJ sets. It marks the first recorded output of The Bedmo Disco Soundsystem, features our regular mic man Coherent on hosting duties, some memorable shout outs and stings from our all-new Bristolian compere, Spencer (a Bedmo native who will hopefully be appearing at some of our shows later this year) and a brand new track called ‘Straight Outta Bedmo’.

You’ll be glad to know that the whole thing’s almost finished, and will be uploaded/pressed up in time for our debut at The Big Chill Bar in Brick Lane, London, on March 6.

This weekend Coherent is heading across to Bristol from East London to record his vocals. It promises to be a pretty hectic weekend, as there’s plenty to do. Az (Coherent) promises we’ll get it all done though, and that he’s written some extra-special rhymes for the occasion.

We’ll let you all know how it goes when we next blog, probably sometime next week.

Much love to the crew!

Sell By Dave & Five-Stylez x

The Bedmo Disco Soundsystem will be dropping a hot live show with full crew at The Soundwave Festival, which takes place in Petrcane in Croatia from July 23-25. It takes place in the gorgeous surroundings of ‘The Garden’, the beach-lined peninsula famous for hosting the brilliant Garden Festival. Aside from us deviants, confirmed acts for this year’s event include Benji B, Toddla T, Shepdog and the Nice Up crew, DJ Cheeba, DJ Format, Bullion, Paul White, Smith and Mighty and John Kennedy.

It’s shaping up to be an essential summer destination for those interested in sun-kissed sounds, quality beats and nice vibes. We’re incredibly excited about being part of it. With tickets just £75 a pop and flights from the UK to Croatia dirt cheap, it’s a great alternative to UK festies.

You can find out more and book tickets at www.soundwavecroatia.com

Incidentally, if you’re in Bristol this weekend, Five-Stylez will be holding down our residency at The Spotted Cow on Saturday February 6th, with Sell By Dave spinning with The Kelly Twins at Box Social at The Bank the night before (Friday February 5th).

UFO - at Dojo's in Bristol, Friday 22nd Jan 2010

This Friday (January 22nd) sees top Bristol night UFO return to Dojo Lounge for a boogie-licious bass assault with an interplanetary flavour. Here at Bedmo Disco we’re huge fans of the monthly party, which always keeps an open mind and boasts some of the freshest and most imaginative line-ups in our fair city. The residents, The Kelly Twins, are amongst the best DJs in our fair city, with a fine record collection that sees dusty old electro, P-funk and electrofunk nestling side by side with Italo, acid house, dubstep, aquacrunk, UKG, funky, techno and more besides.

Our own Sell By Dave is a big part of the UFO family, being a resident of sorts (he plays three of four times a year, usually). For this Friday’s party – headlined by West London producer Funkineven – he’ll be teaming up with good friend and crate digger extraordinaire Andy ‘Payback’ Clarkson for a 90-minute excursion into boogie, electro, P-funk and early garage territory. To celebrate the fact – and UFO’s forthcoming first birthday at Dojo in Feb – the man we call Sell By has crafted some extra-special edits for the occasion.

Since we’re pretty generous chaps, we’ve decided to let you have ‘em, too – as 320 MP3s, no less – so you can play ‘em out loud. We’re rather generous, wouldn’t you say?

So, what’s on offer then? Click on the track titles to listen and download…

Daniel Paul: Outta Space [Sell By Dave's UFO Edit]
This squelchy, soul-flecked piano groover dropped back in 2000/2001 on Mermaid, an offshoot of the then just born Sonar Kollektiv label. The Meitz remix has always been a fave of ours, ever since we heard Joe 90 drop it at Level back in the Seen days.  Sell By says: “Volker Meitz’s version of ‘Outta Space’ is top notch, but it fannies around a lot. I’ve been working on this re-cut on and off for about a month. Feel the pianos!“

David McPherson – You Can’t Stop! [Sell By Dave's UFO Edit]
Originally released by SAM Records in 1982, David McPherson’s ‘You Can’t Stop!’ is a fine example of that style of US boogie that sits somewhere between jazz-funk and dubbed-out synth disco. The original flits between a number of percussive styles, with DJ-friendly breaks aplenty. About his edit, Sell By says: “With this, I tried to keep the vibe of the original, extending some of the dubbier sections, cutting out some of the vocals, and extending other parts to come up with a dub that gets stripped down but never dull. There are also a few Shep Pettibone style edit touches. See if you can spot ‘em!“

Wuf Ticket – Ya Mama [Sell By Dave's UFO Edit]
Some fondly remember Wuf Ticket’s ‘Ya Mama’, a thoroughly idiotic – but charming – trip into electro/hip-hop territory from 1982. It was released on Prelude Records, most famous for the chunky synth disco of D Train, Sharon Redd and many early Francois Kevorkian rubs. Over to Sell By: “Ya Mama is an ace record – a proper early hip-hop diss record with a slick sheen that shows up its Prelude roots. The original goes on forever though, and to be honest some of the rap is a bit silly – especially the bit where Wuf Ticket are telling all the kids to love their mums. So, I stripped it down to the groove and teased in the call-and response pay-off at the end.“

Here’s the details:

BEDMO DISCO at THE BIG CHILL BAR – FRIDAY JANUARY 8th 2009
Small St, Bristol, BS1
9pm-3am, FREE entry

Expect solo sets from Sell By Dave and Five Stylez, plus some proper back to back Bedmo Disco/Thumbs Aloft action. It should be good fun!

If you can’t make it down to the Big Chill Bar (snowed in, car won’t start, can’t be bothered, live the other side of the world etc) then you can listen live online (to all six hours!) by clicking here >> The show starts at 21.00 GMT.

Well tickle me with an oversized kazoo and call me Brenda! Thumbs Aloft have only gone and done a mixtape! I know, I know – it’s taken us a while, but hold your fire – it’s here at last and you can download it here >>

It’s called ‘The Sound Of Bedmo’ and was recorded in the autumn of 2008, following our well-received Bedmo Disco Soundsystem show at Bloom Festival. We more or less finished it off but planned to add more bits and pieces from our mic man, Coherent, as well as an exclusive new cut-up disco track at the end. Then Sell By Dave lost his job and buggered off to Australia for a month. When he came back we’d already forgotten about the mix, so it sat on Five-Stylez hard drive for nearly 12 months. After bouncing down the backing track for our new Bedmo Disco Soundsystem CD, ‘North St Sound’ (coming your way in the new year), we rediscovered the mix (in two parts, bizarrely) and decided we may as well slap it out. So, we stitched the two bits of the mixtape together, tidied up the sound levels and uploaded it.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy it. We’re actually quite pleased with it, and while it does sound like it was recorded a year ago (i.e not tracks from this year) there’s still plenty to get exited about. There’s funk, soul, disco and old skool hip-hop aplenty, plus a couple of unreleased cuts and exclusive Thumbs Aloft tracks. Oh, and some sneaky re-edits we did especially for the mix. The whole thing is loosely based on our show at Bloom, which rocked hard, so think funtime Saturday afternoon party vibes.

So, what are you waiting for? Download it here >>

If you want to stream it, check out the all-new Bedmo Disco Mixcloud page >>

For a full tracklist, check out our Bedmo Disco Mixes page >>

Soft Rocks play The Big Chill Bar, Bristol, on Sat Nov 28th

We’re pretty excited here at Bedmo Disco HQ. We normally are, to be fair, but we’ve got something extra special to get all hot and sweaty about – this Saturday’s forthcoming Bedmo Disco session at The Big Chill Bar in Bristol with very special guests Soft Rocks!

We first came across the Soft Rockers a few years ago. Being geekish, record-collecting nerds, we’d picked up a few of their high sought after edits and reworks on their own Soft Rocks Recordings imprint. These were very special – both musically and stylistically. We were impressed.

Somehow, thanks to the power of the internet, we were introduced to Soft Rocker Piers Harrison some time in early 2008. We chatted, exchanged banter about disco records and discussed Bristol – the city where Piers was born and raised (and, of course, our hometown). We talked about getting him down to play at one of our parties but we never quite got it together.

Then, in August 2008, we had two brushes with the Soft Rocks crew in a matter of weeks. First, Sell By Dave met Piers at The Big Chill Festival, when our bearded disco bore played after him at the Havana Club Bar on Sunday night. A week or so later, we met the rest of the lads, as they took over from us in the Funk Tent at the Bloom Festival. We’d just finished a Bedmo Disco Soundsystem show with Coherent and had partied it up hard. The Soft Rockers (minus Piers, who was at home having done the Chill the week before) and disco chanteuse Kathy Diamond took our party baton and ran with it, treating the crowd to an excellent selection of disco, deep house and the like.

When the Big Chill Bar, Bristol, asked us to nominate a guest for our first Bedmo Disco session at the venue, we said ‘Soft Rocks!’ without any hesitation. Luckily the guys were up for it and have agreed to come and play a three-hour set from 12midnight on Saturday night. It should be a belting occasion. Originally we’d asked Piers to do it, but he’s moving to New York with his young family. So, Chris stepped into the breach. Then, rather unexpectedly, Piers asked if he could tag along and play some records as his move had been put back, he was due to be in Bristol visiting his dad and, well, it’s his birthday. We, of course, said yes please!

The action takes place this Saturday at the Big Chill. We’ll be on the decks from 9pm, with Five-Stylez dropping some funk and Sell By Dave digging deep in the boogie/disco/Balearic/nudisco crates before the Soft Rocks crew take to the stage. It’s free all night, so come down and party with us. As it’s Piers’ birthday, it should be a blast!

SOFT ROCKS & BEDMO DISCO

SATURDAY 28th NOVEMBER @ THE BIG CHILL BAR, BRISTOL

9pm-3am, FREE ENTRY

The launch of the Big Chill Bristol has been an open secret for a while now, with Big Chill bods filling significant space in this year’s festival programme to ads promoting the launch. It’s a joint venture between the Big Chill chiefs and our old friends James Savage and Dave Smeaton, owners of the previous venue on the same site, Native, and The Spotted Cow pub in Bedminster – our ‘home from home’ where we spin tunes most Saturdays. We were naturally delighted when Dave asked us to play at the opening party alongside other future BC Bristol stalwarts Western Soul (Dave, his DJ partner Neil and local beatmaking legend Ben Dubbison) and Futureboogie. We’ll be bringing the party to the last two hours from 1am. Expect the usual feel good selection of grooves to make the party go with a bang!

Entry to The Big Chill Bristol will always be free, so you can head down for some recession-proof boogieing whenever you fancy it. There’ll be offering food during the day, and some art trail stuff in true BC tradition. It should be a fantastic addition to the Bristol scene, which is severely lacking decent bars playing quality music.

The Big Chill Bristol – Opening Weekend Party
Friday 9th October 2009
Feat DJs BEDMO DISCO (Thumbs Aloft DJ set), FUTUREBOOGIE and WESTERN SOUL
9pm-3am, Bedmo Disco on from 1am. Big Chill Bristol is at 15 Small St, off Corn St, BS1 (ex Native)

Look out for more Bedmo Disco dates at The Big Chill Bristol in coming months.

We were lucky with the timings, in that we’d be scheduled to start (and, of course, finish) after almost all the other entertainment areas had kicked out. It meant that as soon as Five-Stylez scratched in the first tune – the Freestylers’ old classic ‘Feel The Panic’ – the place packed out. Within 30 seconds or so we were greeted by a scene of arm-waving, pogoing carnage, with the stupidly talented dance troupe Bird Gang jumping on stage and leading the breakdancing. It was, we can safely say, mindblowing. Even one of the Cuban Brothers got up and did some breakin’!

For the next hour we cut and mixed up a huge volume of tracks, from funk breaks, classic underground disco and dancefloor hip-hop to kwaito funk, glitch and random rock. Almost every tune was greeted by a cheer and another raise of the arms. Again, wow!

We were particularly pleased with the reaction to Coherernt, our MC. He spat some sick verses as ever, hyped the crowd and excelled on ‘Straight Outta Bedmo’, which we were debuting. It sounded fat over that soundsystem, so Stylez was especially pleased with that (having produced, engineered and mixed the beat).

Thanks to all those who came down and joined in the fun. It was great to see so many smiling faces – some familiar, and some not-so-familiar. It made our weekend, to be honest!

We’ll be sticking up a mix in the next couple of weeks inspired by the show, featuring Coherent and some of the specially-prepared versions of tracks we’d done especially for the set. Hopefully we should have some pics soon, but if anyone has some and wants to send up to us to stick in the gallery, get in touch. Oh, and look out for a free track – the killer, end-of-night edit of a very silly rock record that almost tore the roof off!

Thanks again to all those who made it special, and see you on the dancefloor soon

Thumbs Aloft x