Oxidised gears have started turning at the industrially revolutionary 20jazzfunkgreats manor. Our haphazard mixtape series welcomes 2012 with ‘a bunch of weird stuff no one listens to’, as our curator today, the excellent Speculator, master of WT Records, puts it. Any seeker out there knows that when uttered by the right person, the stream of words before mean ‘awesomeness’, and you couldn’t find a righter person than Speculator to utter them.

Flying over the phantasmagorical streets of New Los Angeles, I glimpsed her. You can imagine the rest.

 Speculator’s Sophisticated goth mix

Artist list:
david harrow
fatal charm
stephan eicher
nash the slash
john etnier
david linton
rupert hine
crawl away machine
shadows of dreams
pas de deux
du du a
edgar froese
pysche (carl craig)

In the same way in which the heroes of the Cyberpunk underground jack into the platonic data perfection of the Matrix through their custom-made Ono Sendai consoles, we shift from the collage of romance and dystopia above into a simulation of  nature now ravaged by the hounds of history, guided by an AI of liquid mercury which recites Paradise Lost (what else) in beautiful Detroit patois.

http://vimeo.com/33317810

This Shawn O’Sullivan (who we posted yesterday) video was produced by Jordan Levine.

(This went up last week, but our infrastructure was malfunctioned so some couldn’t enjoy it. Here it comes again in all its analogue glory)

Following on from last week’s controversial epic, The Speculator astounds us with another mix. This time vinyl prowess reigns supreme as he takes us through his infinitely scopic record collection, pausing at joyous disco-classic revisitations and boogie re-appraisal along the way – worth it for the Xavier track alone. We can assure you that Will has full permission for all the songs in this mix – but let us see which layer of joke-comment reality we can explore this week*

*this is a joke

Speculator – Old Style Mix

1. Kool & the Gang – “heaven at once”
2. Love Unlimited – “under the influence of love”
3. Brother to Brother – “phattenin’ ”
4. Odyssey  - “inside out”
5. Deborah Washington – “ready or not”
6. Xavier – “do it to the max”
7. Advance  - “take me to the top”
8. IX LIE’VZ  - “life’s not the same” underground mix
9. Anthony Thomas – “you don’t love me”
10. Sterling Void & Paris Brightliedge – “it’s all right”
11. Voices – “give me your body” instrumental
12. Jupiter 6 – “section two”
13. Critical Rhythm – “kemo therapy”
14. Willie Dragg – “tell you in dub”
15. Wild Cherry – “try a piece of my love”
16. The Vaselines – “rory rides me raw/you think you’re a man”

Will Burnett has blown away the wetware from our titanium endoskeletons twice this week already. The forthcoming releases on his own WT Records by Pagan Futures and Model Man, and his works as Grackle, Galaxy Toobin’ and The Speculator, indulge in the kind of syncopated synth endeavours that turns lowly 20JFG scribes into armour-clad battle automaton, uniting them on a celestial voyage to decode an atmospheric relic that will bring peace across the galaxy. Not content with all of this, the Speculator has kindly prepared 2x mixes for us (and you). Firstly, he presents a mix prepared in the digital audio workstation whose name is hallowed amongst vinyl purists. However, amid this digital controversy will you find enough retro-warmth and dusty circuitry to keep the wrath of the Ana-lord from your door for several eons…

Visit this place again this time next week for this mixes’ vinyl-only nemesis. You can also catch The Speculator at his show on Newtown Radio. Bring it on.

Speculator – Friends and Family mix

1. Wolfram “this thing called love” legowelt rmx
2. Entro Senestre “la caccia”
3. Pagan Future “good king’s crusade”
4. Shawn o’Sullivan “unarmed”
5. Model Man “hopeless romantic”
6. Bryan Philips and ausland dub combination “bajos (part 2)”
7. Eliot Lipp “tonight is the night”
8. Slava “world of spirits”
9. Stinkworx “krill”
10. Solid Space “a darkness in  my soul”
11. Model Man “model man”

Imagine friends, Professor Genius’ mighty flights of synthetic fancy colliding against Speculator’s dusty psyche twang. Rejoice friends, the soundtrack for your pilgrimage towards the epsilon vanishing point has been finally delivered. Headbang friends, because if our insectoid overlords raided the pantheon of rock gods with berserk zest, they wouldn’t be able to come up with as mighty a collection of abstract riffs as the ones that will crack open the cage where your soul dwells. Dance the ghost dance friends, because if Black Meteoric Star gave us music to wage cosmic warfare to, Professor Genius and Speculator’s collaboration project out in Echovolt Records is the gamma radiation rain of religious propaganda designed by a secret cult of hooded ancients. It is called Motorik and it soars like blood spraying off the moist heart of an aged analogue cyborg as it is squeezed with loving fingers. It rules.

Professor Genius and Grackle- Jive

A friend of a friend came to visit the other day, and he played this on the stereo. This the sort of synchromystic event that makes your 20JFG pals trust the deigns of the pyramid bonnet wearing maker. King Sunny Ade and his African Beats, a Nigerian music mogul and global star of the Yoruba Juju scene (yeah, I checked Wikipedia) doing his thing, and what does thing sound like? It sounds like a graph made of muscle with Can on the Y axis and Manu Dibango on the X axis, a whole country banging on stuff marches martial from the intersection into the positive quadrant, and beyond, leaving on their wake a trail of seeds that will grow into mighty forests. Very powerful stuff. Get it here.

King Sunny Ade and his African Beats- Synchro System

Illustration by Bob Pepper via Sci-Fi-O-Rama

And just because you were asking for it, here you have a new 20JFG mix dedicated to Steven. The levels are all over the place as usual, but it’s made with lots of good music and much love. Enjoy you crazies.

20JFG 13 is Love Mixtape

1- Magical Power Mako- Open the Morning Window, the Sunshine Come in, the Hope of Today is Small Bird Singing

2-Telepathe- Standing in your Line

3-Detachments- The Flowers that Fell (Thee Four Horsemen Remix)

4-A Mountain of One- Innocent Reprise

5-Public Image Ltd.- The Order of Death

6-Darktown Strutters- Lucifer Rising

7-Pictureplane- Dark Rift

8-Sorcerer- Chemise

9-Ultron- Master Mind

10- Ris- Love ‘n’ Music

11-Azari & III- Hungry for the Power

12- King Sunny Ade and his African Beats- Synchro System

13-Demis Roussos- Love Is (Dimitri From Paris Sunday At The Loft Remix)

And if you are in London on Friday, do go to the Huntley and Palmer’s Launch Party. It’s going to rule.