So one of my favorite arists; Hostage, has put up a new track on his MySpace player and I thought It’d be a good idea to get it out in the blog world.

Hostage - Hoot
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And to accompany it, a good old remix of his too (got to be in my top 10 favorite remixes)

OH SNAP!! - Bill Cosby Sweater (Hostage Remix)
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Hostage MySpace - Click here.

Bit of a random selection of tracks today, we’ve got Alex from Boys Noize’s remix of Beat It, simply named; Eat It, and 2 Beastie Intergalactic Remix’s (of which both are EXCELLENT).

Boys Noize - Eat It
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Beastie Boys - Intergalactic (Pink is Punk Remix)
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Beastie Boys - Intergalactic (Daz The Dominant Remix) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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Enjoy, as always

Well it’s finally come about, the long awaited SebastiAn edit of classic Baba O’Riley by legends The Who.

The Who - Baba O’Riley [SebastiAn Edit]
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Today I’m going to write a little bit about the Mystery Jets new album Twenty One. Been a fan of the Mystery Jets for a while now and have to say since Erol Alkan has gotten on board they have jumped up a league.

This album has a much more ‘electroish’ feel to it as can be expected as Erol brings the band to all of his sets these days. This has also meant that there has been many remixes.

The biggest is probably the Switch remix which has already been posted, but a few more have emerged since then. The first track I have for you is Riton’s remix of Hand Me Down, my favourite of the bunch, and very big in the clubs at the moment with it being second on Erol’s current chart. Pilooski and Plimsouls have both made decent remixes of their current single ‘Two Doors Down’ as well as Duke Dumont’s unusual reconstruction - reminds me quite a bit of Muse - New Born. I also have their other single and one of my favourite tracks from the album, Young Love, featuring the very talented Laura Marling. Hope you enjoy these tracks and strongly recommend you check the rest of the album as well.

Mystery Jets - Hand Me Down (Riton Remix)
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Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down (Pilooski remix)
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Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down (Duke Dumont Reconstruction)
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Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down (Plimsouls remix)
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Mystery Jets - Young Love ft. Laura Marling
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These tracks are going to be released over the summer hopefully on Jesse Rose’s Made To Play lable. If you don’t know much about made to play then i suggest you check it out as they release some seriously good ‘tech/housey’ tracks from the likes of Sinden, Trevor Loveys, The Young Lovers (aka. Herve) and more. But here, Jesse Rose teams up with the infamous Herve, going by another new alias - Action man, making an amazing record.

Jesse Rose & Action Man aka. Herve - Take It To The Club
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Jesse Rose & Action Man aka. Herve - Wind It Up (96 kbps)
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Why not have one more? Another Made To Play off their Album, remix by Claude Von Stroke

Magik Johnson - Scanning For Viruses (Claude Vonstrokes Coffee On Your Motherboard Mix)
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So I have discovered this blog, called Waves At Night, never heard of it before today, which is disapointing but it looks like a lovely little blog, and I’m definitely going to check back there as much as possible, a new favorite for me I think. Anywho, seems they have an amazing post that they have just put up, new Justice, who-da-thought? Well, I didn’t quite understand the posters description on what the track actually is, but his theory is that the singers that are featured on D.A.N.C.E. did Justice a favor by singing for their track, and now Justice are re-paying the favor with a nice rework of their track; Stand On The World.

Keedz - Stand On The World (Justice Remix?)
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Waves At Night, the blog that introduced this to me.

UPDATE: What we think this is, is that the Celestial Choir (Keedz) covered Joubert Singers, and Justice has remixed the Celestial Choir version… i think.

To start with I’ll say a little about myself as it is my first post - I’m Tom Cottrell big electro/house fan as well as an aspiring dj where I’m starting to get some slots in Leeds now. Now this is a big new song. It should hopefully be released soon on Surkin’s 6th release now, Next of Kin (Mark II) which I can only hope will be nearly as good as the original Next of Kin - this tracks see’s Chromeo recording the vocals to go over the top of Surkin’s White Knight. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have and let us know what you think.

Surkin - Chrome Knight ft. Chromeo (institubes)
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After weeks and weeks of awaiting reply, I finally received confirmation of a press accreditation of ZOO8 Festival in Kent at 9pm, the day before the festival began, a great unorganised start to a great unorganised weekend.

After travelling 2 hours 30 to get to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, Kent, I had to wait in a que for 3 hours, surrounded by already drunk people, who were rowdy and going to the toilet in the nearby field. Once the 3 hour que was over, there was apparently another queue for ticket exchange and camping wristbands, luckily I avoided that que by jumping straight to the press box office. I found my friend, dumped my bag and went to explore the festival itself.

Nothing seemed bad, a large main stage, some carnival rides, a large tent (the Tap N Tin stage), another large tent which would host Drum N Bass and Dance music throughout the weekend, 3 smaller tents holding unsigned bands and DJ’s and a silent disco tent. All in all, a good layout and a fair amount of people around were enjoying themselves, this weekend was set to be a good one, the weather was good and the atmosphere was booming.

Day One at around 9pm, and the problems started to arise, the security into the VIP camping area was not on form, a large group of my friends were camping there, and I did not have a VIP pass, neither did alot of my friends, yet on an hourly basis, we came and went as we pleased, and no-one took notice. A bit of a let down considering it would have cost an extra £36 for a VIP camping pass, the toilets were constantly blocked and smelt worse than anything you have ever smelt in your life, the showers had overflowed for the entire weekend and nearly every tent in the VIP campng area was robbed at some point.

Not only that, but the main stage was meant to be hosting a live performance from Dizzee Rascal at around 9pm, at which time, an event promoter/ organiser came onto the stage, to announce Dizzee Rascal would not be appearing. This came as a shock to many a fan, especially as he was on Radio 1 two days before speaking about how he was excited to be playign such an unusual event. Luckily, Lethal Bizzle took to the stage and destroyed the arena, playing clasic hits of his own and then freestyling over other loved tunes. After his set, Mark Ronson took the stage, I’ll be honest, I did not watch Mark Ronson’s set, but apparently he was amazing.

Looking back, I am glad Mark Ronson was an artist I missed. The next day, I was speaking to a well informed friend, and he explained to me the reason Dizzee Rascal did not play is because the organisers of the event had run out of money ALREADY! Mark Ronson (costing a total of £85,000!) had demanded his £9,000 deposit to be paid in cash, this causing a huge dilemma. The organisers and promoters of the event, went around and collected all money possible, and paid Ronson in change, i.e pound coins in bank money bags. It is also rumoured that producer/ DJ Ronson also took 4 hours to soundcheck, which is the reason the entire day was out of time and why there were ques to enter the event for up to 5 hours. And one more thing, Mr Ronson sent a runner off to buy him 80 towels, if anyone knows why you would need 80 towels, I’d be very interested in hearing it, because I am baffled!?

Day Two, off to a bad start as the gates to the main arena were scheduled to open at 10am, and were then closed until 12noon. Once entered into the arena, the Tap N Tin tent was closed for the most-part of the day, due to a dislodged post inside, meaning all acts meant to be playing in there during that day were moved to other stages, acts were cancelled, resceduled and mainly the entire day was complete havock.

I only made time to watch 2 acts on the saturday, one of which was Hadouken!. Not my favourite band, but I will say they played an amazing set; the main bit that caught me was when the vocalist stood on stage and said “This song goes out to the promoters of this event”, went into a track and in the middle said “pay your f**king artists, you c**ts!”, which for me basically summed up the entire weekend.

The main artist I was disappointed to see drop out on this day was Cut Copy, scheduled to do a 2-hour DJ set from 12am- 2am, I was looking forward to it. However, 2 “hot-on-the-scene” DJ’s from my hometown of Maidstone were quick to step in for the slot. Myself and friends arriving at the tent to see them play at around 12am, were some of around 30 people in the tent dancing, not a bad turnout considering not many people have heard of the boys. But to my utter surprise, by around 12:30am there must have been a good 200 people in the tent, having a good time, dancing to the tunes we all know and love. The boys have fantastic stage prescence and know how to work the crowd. Their names are Liam K and Guppy, watch this space, I predict big things for these boys.

Day Three, and I didn’t think anything could go any worse. Does It Offend You, Yeah? and MSTRKRFT were on the bill to play today, so I was more excited than ever, today was the main day for me to be there. Started off the day in the dance tent, which was playing some massive tunes, but I discovered, dancing to electro music in the daylight doesn’t seem to work the same as in a completely dark club, is it just me!?

Anyway, standing in the VIP bar (which I wasn’t meant to be in) drinking cider, awaiting the arrival od Does It Offend You, Yeah? to the stage, (one of my favourite bands by far at the moment, so I was really looking forward to their perfomance) when one of my friends came and announced that the band would not be performing, yet again due to lack of funds of the festival. You cannot imagine the horror on my face and shear annoyance I felt. But it was okay, because MSTRKRFT were going to be doing a set later in the day, right? WRONG! Yet again, the MAIN act I was looking forward to seeing, did not show up, and yes you guessed it, due to a lack of festival funds. Time to go home.

All in all, I had a fantastic weekend, but not due to the festival itself, my weekend was made up by the company of my friends and the small amount of acts I did see, and the best act I saw all weekend, was the boys from Maidstone… now thats saying something.

ZOO9 will be taking place next year apparently, and lets hope to god that they have lived and learned from thwir mistakes, it’s been said that due to the lack of funds, the Port Lympne Animal Foundation had to step in and give money to pay for artists to play to keep the festival up and running, because it was at risk of having to close on the second day due to a “miscalculation”. Read below the “official” reasons for the mishaps throughout the weekend, as written on the Zoo Thousand Music Festival Facebook Group. There are a few things I didn’t mention, but I can imagine you will get the jist, the entire weekend was a mess! Maybe see you next year!

“We hope that we can explain why certain things did not run smoothly at ZOO8.

Queuing: For health and safety reasons we had to open 2 hours late. We encountered problems with the scanners for the E-tickets and found that the clampers for the wristbands slowed the whole process down. We fixed this problem by separating normal ticket and E-ticket holders on Saturday and moving the location of the wristband exchange to the box office location.

Water: We had placed 20 water bowsers with taps around the campsite and the arena which were filled and re-filled with drinking water.

Camping: We tried everything we could to extend the campsite by opening other areas, but were unable to move into another field because the infrastructure to support it was unavailable to us at the time.

Toilets: There were more campers than we had originally planned for, however, facilities were not stretched inside the festival walls and overall we had enough toilets to deal with this amount of people we had based on The Event Safety Guide. Extra contractors were brought in to help clean and maintain the portaloos around the clock.

The line up changes: A 2 hour delay on Friday meant we were shuffling acts from the start. Also, during the Gallows set on Friday night the main king pin pole of the Tap ‘n’ Tin tent moved, making the whole structure unsafe. Because of this we had to move as many acts as we could onto other stages including into the VIP tent, but inevitably we would have to cancel some acts. In the case of Wiley, he was on site and was paid in full, but his tour manager wasn’t prepared to let him play in any of the smaller arenas.

With regards to Dizzee Rascal; we had agreed a payment structure with his agency and made all the correct payments on time. On Friday we had contacted his agency and were told he was coming but no one could get hold of him. We continued chasing this up to no avail and so had to make the decision to move Lethal Bizzle into his slot. Like a lot of you we were all personally very disappointed that Dizzee Rascal didn’t show.

Roni Size/ Reprazent were paid in full and even began setting up their kit on stage. No one from their agency is available to comment at present, however, this does require further investigation.

Regrettably, we had to cancel Athlete.

Also, some of the artist agencies look after more than one act, so, when we were required to cancel an act playing in the Tap n Tin Arena (which was closed for repairs) that in turn meant losing acts playing elsewhere at the festival.

Regarding other acts we’ve heard people query: Pendulum, Ash, Skinnyman, Stanton Warriors, Mitchell Brothers, Dogs and Chas ‘n’ Dave were all present and all performed, however, some in different arenas than were advertised originally.

If you want to get in contact with us then please e-mail us on info@zoothousand.com and we will reply to you as soon as we can.

Just for the record, no one from the Zoo8 camp got arrested or escorted off the site by the police.

The organisers would like to apologise to anyone who did not enjoy the festival as much as they had hoped but rest assured any lessons to be learned from this year will be learned and will make next year a better event.”

Even though I dislike Kanye West, these Diplo edits are actually rather nice. Props to Mr. Cottrell for sending these in, appreciate it. About the Glastonbury and Main Square Festival reviews, they will be coming soon, I have Justice @ Somerset House and a house party to dj at to attend to this week, but after the storm is over, I shall post reviews, with videos. Back to the tracks, some are poor (but worth sharing) and some are good, it’s all up to you! If anyone is interested in meeting, I’ll be outside The Wellington (pub), which is opposite Somerset House (London) at about 7pm tommorow before going into One More Disco, I’m already meeting 2 people and I’ll be in a black/red Ed Rec 2 tshirt.

Diplo - Fired from Work
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Kanye West - Stronger (Diplo’s WORK IS NEVER OVER Remix)
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Kanye West - Gold Digger (Diplo’s Remix)
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Thanks for being patient with the posting, oh and by the one, podcast is actually coming soon!

If you haven’t heard about this event in the last few weeks, you really must’ve had your head buried in the sand. The re-launch of ‘Together’ at it’s new venue Scala in King Cross, has to be one of the most talked about events for a long time, with a line-up including DJ Mehdi, Surkin, Boy 8-Bit, Busy P and a whole load of others, I can sure as hell see why.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I arrived, I got there early, to have a look around, and not many people were inside the venue, infact I spent some time outside aswell, looking for kids dressed as animals, and there were none, for some reason I had a really bad feeling that the night might not be as popular as I thought. I explored the 3 rooms which were being used throughout the night and found the enevitable smoking area, each area had a maximum of 10 people in by around 23:00.

After spending quite a while in the smoking area, generally chatting to anyone, I ventured up towards the Streetlife DJ’s room, where at 00:30, Surkin would hit the decks, which he did, with a bang. Having never seen Surkin live, and only on video, I was pleasantly surprised by his range of tunes, and most importantly, the excitement and pure love for what he was doing, written across his face.

By this point, the entire club was jam packed with people, surprisingly though, not a huge amount of them had made the effort to dress up as an animal, but, like most electro parties, everyone looked colourful and fantastic.

Unfortunately, 00:30-02:00 was the worst time for me, not because any of the music was bad, but because Surkin, DJ Mehdi and Boy 8-Bit were all playing simultaneously but in different rooms, you can imagine my confusion! After walking up and down flights of stairs a numerous amount of times, I managed to cram in a little of everyone set; Boy 8-Bit downstairs whacked out some of the classics and the new-time favourites such as Fake Blood-Mars, always a winner on the dancefloor.

DJ Mehdi was definately on form last night, playing some of the best tunes that we all know and love, the room was packed and he looked like he was having the time of his life. With a raised DJ booth so everyone could look up to him, and lets face it, we all should.

At the end of the night, Busy P hit the decks in the main room and ruined everyone, he was on fire last night as he always is, I have to say, Busy P could never dissappoint. Playing a range of electro. dance, BMore and grime, the party was really at it’s peak, and Sam will be pleased to know, that yet again SebastiAn’s new release, Motor was dropped towards the end, a stunning track.

Check out the link below for all the photos I managed to get last night, unfortunately at around 1am I gave up on my camera and decided to dance, but seriously, who can blame me? At the end of the night, I came home covered in bruises and blisters, but it was definately worth it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diskojade/

Peace.