The north's awake

Northern Irish record store Bass Division (also behind the hugely successful Central Productions recording studio in Belfast) has just launched its own Division Music imprint.

The first release, out this fortnight, sees the shop’s founder Gary Dillon team up with Graeme Laverty.</b The pair have enlisted the vocal services of local singer Robert Brown, and there are remixes from Space Hustlers and Freddie Filter.
Fellow Northerners The Japanese Popstars are picking up plaudits for their second Beyonce remix. ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’ is available now.
Christian Boshell’s Dublin-based house stamp Omnis keeps the pressure up with two superb new singles from emerging dance nations.
Israel’s Astyronivo are behind the deep and progressive Hasamba EP, which has DJs Laurent Garnier and Paul Jackson among its early supporters, while Ukraine duo Alex Topspin and Andy Fink have delivered a slab of minimal techno ‘Sofa Things’ that comes armed with a remix by Irish outfit Clearview.
Not to be outdone in the globalisation stakes, Donegal duo Timmy & Tommy’ s Full Tilt imprint welcomes fast rising Romanian producer Allan O’Marshall into the fold for its twelfth single. ‘Something You’re Not’ boasts an impressive remix from Irish duo John Gibbons and Scimon Tist to complement the big room vibes of the original.
Incidentally, Beats & Pieces expects the unstoppable Gibbons to be given a deserved prime-time Saturday night slot on Spin 103.8FM in Dublin sooner rather than later and this column would go so far as to say the station could and should syndicate such a programme nationally to other independents like Red, Beat and Spin South-West.
Fans of RTÉ’s dance coverage, meanwhile, have a new website to catch up on late night Sessions mixes and tracklistings. Check out www.plus2.info which is not an official RTE website but is a superb resource for clubbers nonetheless.
RTÉ 2FM dance guru Mr Spring is about to re-release a host of Sound Crowd classics and rarities in digital format through his Spring Records outlet on www.junodownload.com in the coming weeks.
Up and coming Letterkenny producer Jason Young has remixed Bailey’s ‘Inspiral’ for Penelope Records. It’s the latest in a string of top-notch work from the north-west hero who has recently signed to the Full Tilt stable.
Far too quiet in the latter half of 2008, melodic techno supremo Chymera kicks back into action with his first release of 2009 on Len Faki’s label Figure, which put out his ‘Ellipsis’ tune last year. The newbie is called ‘Sumatra’ and it is coupled with a remix from Deetron.
Belfast house heads Discount Rhinos have a couple of big labels sniffing around the latest effort on their own Sharpie Style stamp, ‘Keep Control’. The remix package includes a seismic job from Chris Norman (Retrobyte) and Anthony Attalla under their Norman & Attalla moniker.
Desy Balmer’ s Nice & Nasty as a glut of new music in the pipeline. Among the many releases are three tracks from Orlando Voorn, and two EPs and an album from Marco Bernardi.
The first outing from Aciitone Blue (an offshoot of Al Keegan’ s Aciitone Digital stamp) is ready to drop. Agent Toga’ s ‘The Door’ is at once minimal, melodic and deep.
Gudding and Akerberg are a DJ/production team from Stockholm. They have been making and releasing their own brand of jazz-infused progressive house since 2004 and they have just signed ‘Ajaks’ and ‘Advantage’ to Dublin-based house label Monad Music.
The latest two compilation albums from renowned London club Fabric feature two Irish tracks. Fabric 44, mixed by Austrian techno pioneer John Tejada, includes Donnacha Costello’ s ‘Colorseries Olive B’, while FabricLive 44, compiled by drum ‘n’ bass renegades Commix, sneaks in two tracks from Northern outfit Calibre.
There may be plenty of industry rumours about Pod Concerts doing the rounds, but the good folks at Tripod in Harcourt Street are carrying on regardless. Dance events have been lined up as far in advance as May 1, when the legendary DJ Carl Cox will bring his new tour to town.
More imminent guests at the club’s weekly Friday night session, 515, include Swedish house don Sebastian Leger (on February 20), techno renegade Dave Clarke (on February 27) and French godfather Laurent Garnier. And it is heartening to note that most of the company’s rivals in the clubbing and live music industries are rooting for the PoD team.
Redbox Records is nothing to do with Pod Concerts; it is the moniker for Paul Newhouse’ s newly launched label. The first EP comes from Donegal’s Proto-type 3 , aka Paddy McNulty, Sean Gallagher and award-winnning DJ Tony Watters.
And finally, this year’s Irish Dance Music Awards ceremony takes place this fortnight, on Wednesday February 4 at the Tivoli Theatre in Dublin. The prize-giving will run from 9pm until 11pm, after which Corrugated Tunnel and RSAG will perform live, and DJs such as Rockwell will keep the party going until 3am… THE BEAT GOES ON!