 Dragon Collective Events |
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Hebffinia & Dragon Collective at Hendre Hall, Tal-y-Bont, near Bangor, with DJs Earthdoctor and Tiny in the Dragon Collective Ambient Lounge in the Long Barn - with a John Peel shrine! - and live band BlocoElectro plus Hebffinia DJs Fluffylovebubble, Hippy Ad and James in the Great Hall. 8pm - late, £6 BlocoElectro are a 5-piece percussion group that explores the ground where tradition and technology collide. They use an intoxicating live mix of acoustic and electronic drums to trigger bass lines, riffs and samples. They blew the audience away at this year's WOMAD festival - come and see why! More people turn up at each one we do, so looking forward to another storming night, with an eclectic range of Global Beats, Funky Rhythms, Sleazy Lounge, Minimal Electronics, Dub and a few things that there aren't names for in the civilised world. |
Fringe Encore Llangollen Town Hall, with Hazah live, supported by DJ Earthdoctor. 7.30pm start, £5 Hazah are returning by popular request, after being one of the successes of last Summer's Llangollen Fringe Festival - they are a dozen instruments, 2 men and Apple-Ina, and will be playing a set of their funky song-based music. Ably supported by DJ Earthdoctor, also paying a return visit after the Summer festival - he will again be playing a dancefloor friendly mix of funky global beats. |
Dubrising in the Great Oak Café, with DJs Earthdoctor and Ed. From 1960's ska via classic roots tunes to 21st. century digi-dub - all basses covered! Another good night was had in this regular venue, and a few new dubs were aired!
World Music & Global Beats in the Big Barn, with Boka Nakana live and Hebffinia DJs Fluffylovebubble, Iago, Hippy Ad and James. 
18 Sept in Staylittle Room 1 : abstract electronic dance - Room 2 : eclectic exotica, freestyle global grooves, dub & electronica - Room 3 : ambient chill-out - Room 4 : market area. Live performers included Lump (sud electronic), Leif (trimsound / mindtours), Duckett (mindyourhead records), Caro Snatch (xstatic), Dubrovnik and Subtronix. DJs include Lakuti, Souki de Foucault-Esterhazy, Tom Ellis, Joe Ellis, Steevio, Grimes, Tom Demac, Des Williams, Sam Watson, DJ Morph, James Barbour, Paizan, Conan, Earthdoctor, Dave Dove, Smiler, Den Mc Turk, Sam Newton, Mangotrasher, Ian Dub and Brittski. |
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Ahh, so that grabbed your attention! The Great Oak Café in Llanidloes was WIRED again on 31st. July for an eclectic assortment of minimal beats and dubby sounds, funky electronica and seductive exotica. The beats, bleeps and head-nodding funkiness were lovingly delivered by resident DJ Les 'Earthdoctor' and guest Dave Dove - minimal tunes played to a minimal audience; ah well, we've tried! No more electronica nights for us at this venue unfortunately. |
Glastonbury Festival, has been and gone, and yet again, what a good one! We again organised the weekend's DJ rota in Greenpeace's Café Tango, one of the few 24-hour venues on site, from Wednesday evening to Monday afternoon. Amongst the DJs were residents Rocket Ron (Ambient Soho, Worm Interface Records) and Les Earthdoctor, and guests Dubrovnik (laptop set), Stevie G, Steve B and Rachel, Dubwize, The Pepster, The Bees (DJ set) and many more. It was good to see so many familiar faces there again, both from Wales and further afield. More info and photos coming soon. If you want to read more about the 2003 Festival, check out Earthdoctor's page on this site. |
The following night, 12 June, we were again in dub mode for a night in the Great Oak Café, Llanidloes, with DJs Earthdoctor and Dubwize. This was an opportunity to hear some of the results of recent collaborations between Dubwize and Subtronix in the studio - and a real treat they are! |
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Our gig with Mindtours at Hendre Hall, near Bangor, North Wales was an excellent night, with a lot of new faces in the crowd. A few more in the crowd would have been welcome, but as we clashed with a big party on Denbigh Moors, we did well to get the numbers we did, and it was encouraging enough to do more there. |
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On 21st. February we did the first of our new bi-monthly nights at The Great Oak Café in Llanidloes, featuring a dubble-headed session from two mid-Wales DJ dub fanatics Earthdoctor & Dubwize, playing mostly dub but spiced-up with a few Asian, Arabic & Balkan grooves. The small-but-perfectly-formed venue was full, and the happy crowd bounced away until the final illuminations - a great place to spend the evening hanging out with a friendly like-minded crowd. We're there again on 17th April, with DJs Earthdoctor and Dave Dove playing minimal beats and electronica, and will be hosting another dub night on 12th. June. FUZE Records have now extended their shop in Newtown's Broad Street, with an upstairs floor catering for DJs (including stocking the excellent new Ini Kamoze-sampling 12” by Sonny Wharton / (Pablo) Mangotrasher!). News - 18 February 2004
The Main Hall was hosted by Mindtours, a mid-Wales label releasing some of the best funky-breaky-housy techno (or “genre-free tribal electronica” in their words!) on the planet - label DJs Steevio, Tom Ellis, Leif and Joe, plus a warm-up set from Earthdoctor. The room was decorated with Suzy Bee's distinctive backdrops (see some of her work on the Mindtours website). The Long Barn was kept lively by Hebffinia, a global beats collective from Bangor, with DJs Fluffylovebubble, Iago Iagonovich, Hippyad and James. Giving room for people to relax, dry-out and restore their collective soul, was the Dragon Collective Chill Out, featuring the usual eclectic mix of digi-dub, minimal electronics, slo-mo funkiness and assorted exotica, in an cosy UV-lit atmosphere decorated with Sue Purcell's Dragon backdrops - DJs Earthdoctor, Smiler and Stevie G, the host of the full-on Fright Night gigs at Hendre, though here playing in a (slightly!) more laidback style. Thanks to Phil Potter, a welcome visit by the amazing Gaiascope provided an extra visual treat in our room. Thanks to Alan for the sound in all rooms, to Mike for the lighting, to Malcolm and his staff for having us in their brilliant venue, and to the 230 people who made the night a success - we will be back before too long!
Zion Train Once again, Queens Hall was sold out in advance for Zion Train - maybe need two nights next time! The evening was started with Extremadura gradually picking up the pace with a mixture of his own and other people's tunes. Earthdoctor picked up where Extremadura left off, playing a dub set to build up the pace until Zion Train came onstage, their usual line-up of Molara, Cod and Perch augmented by the brass of Nik Turner and Ricky - always a welcome addition! The band did their usual trick of whipping-up the crowd into a seething mass of hot'n'sweaty bodies (niice!?!). Earthdoctor finished the night off with some harder beats, to drain any dregs of energy left in the crowd.
Kamel Nitrate Another excellent night, with a packed venue. DJ Randy Sandwich kicked off the night with funky beats, followed by Shanna, with her usual excellent set of global and dubby sounds. The five members of Kamel Nitrate then took to the stage and slowly built up a mesmeric, and surprisingly psychedelic, groove with a strong Arabic influence. DJ Earthdoctor finished off the night with a Latin-flavoured set of beats, breaks and d & b. Good time had by all, and we have been asked back in the Autumn - next January is too long for them to wait for another one of our parties! Pictures of this gig in our 'submissions' section to follow soon.
Transglobal Underground Sound System Thanks to all those who ventured out in atrocious weather for this gig - the feedback suggests that it was worth it! The Great Hall was kicked off by Dubious, warming things up with a fine selection of roots'n'culture tunes, followed by the global beats of our resident DJs Fluffylovebubbleand Earthdoctor. TGU played a storming set, featuring a line-up of DJ (their own music), sitar player and dhol drummer - full-on dancefloor beats with their own unique flavour. The decor was provided by Shanna's Tribal Decor and PA by Aber Sound Productions. In the upstairs Lounge Bar, chilled global sounds were provided by Shanna, Gini and DJs from the Hebffinia night in Bangor; special guest Extremadura, a Universal Egg recording artist ended the night with a DJ set of mostly his own music. PA by Snafu, lights by Pete Brown and video projection by Charlie 'Soundhouse'. Special thanks to Aberystwyth Arts Centre for having us, and particularly to Auriel who looked after us all so well on the night. We are grateful to the Arts Council of Wales for a grant towards this event - without which we would had to have hurriedly left the country under cover of darkness.
'Future Arts Sound' We organised this project for the Brecon Beacons National Park. Throughout August we ran a series of 9 DJ workshops and 9 arts workshops - Willow Lanterns (Beryl Smith), Dance Backdrops (Sue Purcell) and Performance Puppets (Russell Dean) - for children and teenagers in various towns around the Brecon Beacons, which were very successful and well-received. These workshops led up to the Sustainable Futures Festival in Hay On Wye on 31st. Aug - 1st. Sept., where we ran further workshops in mask-making (Terri Bolding & Kate Morrison), using recycled materials, and drumming (Peta & Bym Yapp), and provided chilled-out tunes (thanks Dubious, Eldon and J) and Ella's Juice Bar in the Old Market Hall. We also did an evening gig in Hay Community Centre, which was unfortunately not well publicised nor attended. The Festival's two information domes on all aspects of sustainable living were very good, but the rest of the event had plenty of scope for further improvement in future years, in which we hope to be involved again. |
27 November @ Hendre Hall, near Bangor
20 November @ Llangollen Town Hall
2 October in Llanidloes
17 Sept @ Hendre Hall, near Bangor
AURAL SEX!!
Our night in
17 April 2004
3 April 2004
News - 10 March 2004
We had our first night of 2004 at Hendre Hall, near Bangor on Saturday 7th. February 2004, with 3 rooms in a joint effort with two other Welsh soundsystems.
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