london, mid ’90s…..the warm glow of the second summer of love has long since faded and repetitive beats have been banished from the fields once and for all, retreating to dark, moody clubs in the city’s back streets. the sounds of bad boy pirate radio stations ring out from boom boxes across town; the dial is locked to girls fm, with legendary shows from the likes of kenny hawkes, princess julia and the wonderfully named dj fellatio. house dj’s across the city look to the usa for inspiration, but the post-rave house crowd’s feet are tapping to a chemical beat, needing more than the 120bpms of the classic strictlys, emotives and nu grooves…..back in chicago the pitch may have been wild, but in london it’s firmly on +8. a new genre is born - speed garage. it’s not long before bedroom producers armed with affordable new technology start sampling, looping, slicing & dicing us house classics of old, pitching ‘em up and beefing up the beats. we’ve got an acapella and we’re gonna use it. every week at records stores across the city the moody geezers show up with unmarked white labels tucked under their jackets…sell ‘em for 3 quid, retail for 5…the latest mashup of a house classic on speed, pressing plant id meticulously scratched out of the runout groove. the new uk tracks sell like hot cakes; why pay import prices when you can buy domestic? soon labels are springing up across the city, putting out the new home-spun garage sound: nice’n'ripe, deep trouble, ice cream , G.O.D., each week a new label with a new release. dj’s and crowds are lapping them up, ‘avin it in clubs, railway arches and warehouses across the city. soon enough the sound evolves; increasingly influenced by r & b, drum and bass and hardcore, it moves away from its us house roots, mashing up genres to become firmly rooted as the sound of urban london.
this mix is my trip back to that time in london, before armand time stretched tori; before kelly g two-stepped tina; before rosie got closer than close; before “UK garage”….and in keeping with the pirate radio mix tapes of the day, there ain’t no tracklist for this one 
download:
andy grant - once upon a time in london (249 mb / 108 mins / 320kbps)
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July 1st, 2008
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i’ve just added the cool new discogs widget to dchousegrooves. you can see it over in the side bar on the right side of the page. you can use the widget to browse records that i’ve got up for sale on discogs…around a thousand records up for grabs. check ‘em out!
i’ve also recently added the digsby widget, on the side bar further down the page. if you see i’m online, say hello.
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June 28th, 2008
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i know, i promised i’d be updating the site frequently, and i haven’t kept my word. real life has been keeping me occupied. anyway, there’s a mix in the works which i’ll have uploaded soon. just need to get a couple of hours to record it. in the mean time, i’ll get some mixes from the dchousegrooves archives uploaded in the next couple of days.
in other news, here’s a picture of the rainbow that appeared outside my house this evening:
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June 23rd, 2008
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meet dj bo selecta! my two year old daughter bohannon seems to have taken a keen interest in rinsin’ the dub plates. the girl’s got rhythm and loves dancing to them house tunes, but today she decided to take to the decks herself. it won’t be long before i’ve got her fully trained.
teach them well
dj bo selecta!
too much tops, not enough BASS…
make some noiz!
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May 31st, 2008
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as promised last week, the new mix is now available for download. named “back in the saddle”, as i genuinely hope to get my act together and start getting some regular output on to the revised dchousegrooves site. i really enjoyed putting this mix together - the tracks really flowed together, and there really wan’t much effort involved. as any of you who are dj’s will know, you should not have to try to do a mix….if you’re having to work on it, then it ain’t going to work out. the best mixes just flow, as if they were meant to be!
this one was the first mix i’ve done on my zoom h2 handy recorder - where has this thing been all my life? so simple to use - no messing about with pc’s or laptops…just record direct to the device and you’ve got your mix in a wav file on an sd card. when i started in this game i was recording to c90 casettes; things have come a long way since then! the only problem i ran into was that i was using an 4gb sdhc card, and my pc card reader clearly can’t read sdhc cards, so I had to transfer over usb cable from the zoom h2. never mind - we got there in the end!
so on to the mix itself; mostly new tracks picked up on a recent trip to dj hut, starting off on a deep kerri chandler tip with a track off his saucy dick dickler ep on max trax, then seguing into his latest relelease Kong on deeply rooted house. from there into a bit of standard west coast deep house from tango and grayhound, until things start getting interesting with jimpster - a hold on your soul and kimouts’ down to earth on buzzin’ fly. Then things get noisy with the drama society remix of tiefschwarz - original. We then journey into some melodic euro deepness from jay shepeard, kimouts (again) and trentemøller before starting to bang up the drummy shit for a few tracks. the eclectic contribution to the proceedings comes courtesy of ray charles and quentin harris, before we go all aciied for the finishers.
i haven’t give this one a full listen back yet, but I certainly had a good time putting it together, so i’m sure it’s be worthwhile. highlights for me are the tiefschwarz > jay shepheard transition and the trentemøller track. I hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed mixing it, and i hope there are plenty more to come from dc house grooves, back in the saddle again.
andy grant - back in the saddle (320kbps / 80 mins / 196mb)
track list (click the links to view the discogs release page):
kerri chandler – the drive (max trax)
kerri chandler - kong (deeply rooted house)
dj rasoul – candlelight affair (greyhound)
kinky movement – safe house (tango)
jimpster – a hold on your soul (freerange)
kimouts – down to earth (mymy monterrey wash remix 1) (buzzin’ fly)
tiefschwarz – original (drama society remix) (souvenir)
jay shepheard – 4nc (compost blacklabel)
kimouts – down to earth (original) (buzzin’ fly)
trentemøller – miss you (trentemøller remix)
soul clap – the giraffe (original mix) (airdrop)
jerome syndenham, texu, romantic couch - ebian (samual l session remix) (ibadan)
jon cutler & matthias heilbronn – 651 (original mix) (distant music)
ray charles – eleanor rigby (quentin harris remix)
jay shepheard – …the party’s upstairs (compost blacklabel)
kurd maverick – the rub (instrumental mix) (cr2 records)
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May 27th, 2008
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