Beats & Pieces: Sounds like a bright idea

Renowned Belgian duo The Glimmers (pictured) have taken a revolutionary approach to the release of their impressive debut album, which is named Gee Gee Fazzi after a track by ex-Yello member Carlos Peron.

Mo Becha and David Fourqaert have pressed up 25,000 CD copies of their opus which will be given away FREE to anyone who attends the gigs on their upcoming world tour, which incidentally reaches Irish clubs Trinity Rooms and Cuba in mid-April.
Fourqaert confessed to Beats & Pieces that the pair – who have collaborated with CJ Bolland, Princess Superstar and Freeform Five’s Anu Pillai on the album – are making a statement about how most dance music producers make little or no money from product sales anyway.
“There is a small amount to be made from copyright licensing to compilations and publishing,” Fourqaert claimed, “but there’s no money in pressing up 500 or 600 vinyl 12-inches. So giving away the CD free is not devaluing music. Producing dance music is a labour of love.”
The Eskimo Records owners don’t make any of their releases available online, and this the album will become an instant collectors' item. “Fans who don’t make the shows can buy it on eBay,” Fourqaert suggested.
The cost of producing the CDs (€2 each) is paid for by the clubs who book The Glimmers, and a second album is already in the can to go into production later in the year. “I don’t know what we will do at festivals,” former Nu-beat pioneer Fourqaert confessed. “We’ll probably press 500 and distribute them by hand in the crowd after our set.”
Closer to home, more conventional methods of distributing new music are as popular as ever.
Darren Nugent’s Galway-based house stamp Elevation has scored a huge underground hit with its fourteenth vinyl release, Sebastian Davidson’s ‘Sky Ride’. The track’s Scope remix has proven popular with Ben Watt, Laurent Garnier, Nick Warren (Way Out West) and Hernan Cattaneo.
Elevation boss Nugent has been busy wearing his Aruba hat on a stunning remix of ‘Black Heart’ from prolific Belfast producer Timmy Stewart. Due next month Julian Sanza’s Heartbeat Revolutions stamp, the Stiff Kitten resident DJ’s original is a powerful techy groove with an intense cinematic break that recalls another Northern legend, David Holmes. The glitchy Aruba remix, meanwhile, takes the awesome strings down an even darker alley.
Another Belfast producer grabbing our attention is Gary Dickenson. He signed his chunky, bass-propelled tech-house anthem ‘Iron Man’ to Christian Boshell’s Dublin-based Omnis label and it has received much support from key DJs such as Hybrid, Mashtronic and Q-Burns.
It’s followed on Omnis by another success story. New York tech-electro-house duo Bit Crushers’ ‘Movin’ Too Fast’ has been licensed ahead of its March release to the new Toolroom Knights compilation mixed by Tom Novy and Wally Lopez along with a Sullivan Rooms CD compilation in the US. DJ supporters include Sander Kleinberg, Gabriel & Dresden and Anthony Pappa.
Boshell is suitably chuffed and it’s good to see all of his hard work starting to pay off. He celebrates by hosting a Toolroom Knights party at D-Underground (a new club he’s promoting in conjunction with PoD pioneer Paddy Sheridan) on March 28 at Sin.
Desy Balmer’s Dublin-based Nice & Nasty Records stamp has a hectic couple of months of activity lined up. Swedish hi-tech soul star Kenny Black (of Finest Blend Recordings) gets the ball rolling at the start of March with ‘A Diff Kinda Brotha’ (on vinyl and download) which will be remixed by Irish aces Sunil Sharpe and Mike McCoy.
Next up is a double 12-inch release from Italian techno innovator Marco Benrardi. The ‘EF,NG EP’ includes remixes from Indo Phunge and Katsuhiko and is being caned by Dave Clarke.
Dave Clarke is also supporting Sunil Sharpe’s recently launched Mantrap imprint. He has hammered the label’s first release from Magnetize on his White Noise radio show (now broadcast once a month by 2FM) and he included a live session from them earlier
Irish Dance Music Award winner Edwin James follows last month’s Best Album triumph by releasing a new single ‘Beautifully Lost’ on German producer Oliver Huntemann’s label Dance Electric. It features Get Physical artist and nightlife icon Chelonis R. Jones and has been remixed by Cork ex-pat and Mark O’Sullivan of DK7 fame. (Incidentally, having just heard the second DK7 album in its entirety, hotpress is very excited ahead about its April release.)
Hard house don Karl Davis releases two 12-inch singles on his Pure NRG label this fortnight. Its seventh outing couples Karl and Defective Audio’s ‘Acid Pork Scratching’ with Ben Stevens and Frank Farrell’s ‘Big Dog’, while on Pure NRG 8 Karl teams up with Frank Farrell for ‘Brown Teeser’ and ‘Brain Jam’.
Meanwhile, the Dubliner’s other label Hard Sounds (co-owned by acclaimed DJ John Kerrigan) is unleashing its ninth single, ‘Stompilicious’, the debut from aspiring newcomer Glenn Harford.
Trance producer Bryan Kearney has remixed Joint Operations Centre’s ‘Rotterdam’ for Sander van Doorn’s label, Doorn and he has signed his own tech-house effort ‘The Walrus’ to Full Tilt Recordings. Bryan will be recording his debut live album for part of the Discover Live As… series in Ireland later this spring. THE BEAT GOES ON!