Currently sitting in Heathrow airport having a snack and waiting for my flight to Moscow, the perfect time to add a couple of quick posts to my blog, which I seem to have neglected for the last month...

My gigs at the end of January in Ulan-Ude and Chita were a lot of fun, but repeat after me: "I must not try to outdrink Eastern Siberians". I lost the contest big-time, my headache the next day was spectacular, and my greenish tinge none too fetching.

This weekend I'm back in Russia, over to Chelyabinsk, this time to play at a brand new club called Studio 74. Should be good, but maybe I should just keep away from the vodka. Chelyabinsk is becoming a bit of a favourite - it's my fourth gig there in less than a year. Great city and great people. It's also Dima Butrimenko's birthday - happy birthday bro!

Then the following week I'm off to Estonia and Lithuania - more news soon :-)

I'm playing in London this Saturday! It's a relatively rare occurence, since I'm usually flying off somewhere strange and wonderful, so I'm very much looking forward to it, not least because I'll be able to get a cab home :-)

I'll be playing for Get Diverted at Babalou, which is in the crypt of St Matthews in Brixton (formerly Bug Bar, underneath the old Mass Club, which funnily enough is where Chris Joseph and I used to run our Sleaze nights many moons ago)

Get Diverted do great monthly parties in the smoke, and I'll be joined by London face Lofty and Norwich's very own golden boy Jack Barham for some post-festive January beats - check out the event page on Dontstayin for more details.

Firstly a belated happy new year! No posts for a while but then I've taken some time off for the holidays, and also had a great few week-ends travelling around the place for some rather tasty gigs at the tail end of December.

First up I was in Russia, in Moscow and Volgograd. The Moscow gig was cool but not at all what I'm used to. The place I played, Pyramid, is more of a restaurant than a club, so while it was nice to be there I'm not sure the clientele really needed to hear my tunes while tucking into their sushi. All very relaxing, but thankfully my lovely friends from Chelyabinsk came and kidnapped me, and after a rather drunken interview for MTV, we wound up in a club somewhere till the early hours jumping around to my old mate DJ Koreetz. Nice one Pasha.

So after what should have been an early night, but wasn't, I was slightly, erm, tired, when I wound up in Volgograd the next day, and the hotel room was definitely the best place to be for the first few hours (complete with somewhat disconcerting real live Piranha bobbing about in a fishtank in the lobby - her name is Masha apparently, but I didn't ask her). I managed to get in gear in time for the party - I played after the lovely Masha from Moscow (this one's a DJ, not a piranha) The club (also called Piranha btw, there's a theme running here) didn't disappoint and the crowd were up for it, and it looks like I will be playing there again, so all good :-)

The next weekend I made it over to the Ukraine. On the friday night, I played Patipa in Kiev - a wicked club with a great crowd, rammed to the rafters, I thoroughly enjoyed my set. Following on from me was the excellent DJ Sender, who is such a star in Ukraine that he even has "Senderettes", a group of girls who turn up at his gigs in home made "Sender is the best" t-shirts. He played an absolutely wicked closing set and I didn't leave until the lights came up in the club.

Saturday saw a drive up the motorway to Vinnitsa for a party at Amagama. I played in the same club two years ago and had a great night, but it wasnt too busy. This time was the complete opposite, completely packed and full on crowd. Again, the night went off, and I had a great time.

The day after was my birthday and I had planned on hooking up with friends when I got back to London, but sadly my flight wound up being delayed by six hours and I spent most of the day and evening in Kiev Borispol airport due to the pea soup fog at Heathrow - so birthday drinks had to be postponed :-)

After the Christmas break, it was time to get revved up for my new years eve in Maribor in Slovenia. It's a few years since I've played there, so it was great to go back. I played alongside my old friend Wayne Fountain (who I always seem to see on New Years eve in Slovenia, even though he lives in East Anglia!) and bumped into Liz Cirelli and Kid Dub, who happened to be playing in another club in town. The Selected party was great, small but perfectly formed, with a properly debauched and enthusiastic crowd. Wayne and I played three hours each, ably preceded by local bod Grex, and had a grand old time, before heading off in search of an ever more elusive after hours party, and finally being poured out of the cab into the hotel.

Thanks to everyone involved for the great parties, and hi to Misha, Serge, Dima, Anya, Max, Masha, Zhenya, Andryi, Limonoffa, Darko, Robi and everyone else I hung out with and chatted complete nonsense to. As soon as I get pictures from any of the events, I will post them on my Flickr site.

This weekend I am playing in (drumroll....) London. It deserves its own separate blog post, which is coming up next!

It's Mix Session time again - I seem to get round to these every six months or so. It's pretty representative of the kind of thing I'm playing out right now - 50% dirty and twisted, 50% uplifting and blissed out, 100% party music.

Download it here:
Moussa Clarke – Winter 07/08 Mix Session
http://www.mediafire.com/?cdlittnmblq

Tracklist:
01. Nick Supply - "Simpler Things" - CDR
02. Marcella - "Who's Your Nanny" - Terminal 4
03. Macca - "Mad Science" - Invasive
04. Adam Freeland - "Glowsticks" - Marine Parade
05. Splittr - "All Alone" (Alex Metric Mix) - Eye Industries
06. Manuel De La Mare - "Girls That Go" - Omnis
07. Play Paul & Denis Naidanow - "This is my way" - Sureplayer
08. Relanium - "Leel Lost" - CDR
09. Calvin Harris - "Merrymaking" (Deadmau5 Remix) - EMI
10. Chris James - "Voltage" - CDR
11. Interplay - "Interplay" - Add2Basket
12. The Delta Rock Duo - "Beta Receptor" – Electronic Elements
13. Sucker DJs - "Salvation" - Toolroom
14. Diego Noble - "Insider" - Avantgardia
15. Slytek - "Calyx" - Standby
16. Puppa - "Sense Da Groove" (Moussa Clarke Remix) - Helvetica
17. Rocinante - "Everybody Knows" (Moussa Clarke Remix) – Jackalope

Big thanks to the various radio stations, blogs and forums that are featuring the mix, I will post a list on here at some point...

A friend of mine sent me this Youtube link, and I can't stop playing it.



I'd never heard of the Hang Drum until last week - absolutely mesmerizing sound - my inner hippy wants to sign up and go and get one from Berne as soon as possible (there's a long wait apparently!)

Depending on who you listen to, they are either the scourge of the recording industry or a fantastic new way to promote your music direct to fans. I'm talking about music blogs of course.

I'm definitely of the latter opinion - the technology isn't going to disappear, you can't uninvent the web or mp3s or IM or CDRs or Bittorrent or filesharing websites like Yousendit, Mediafire, Zshare et al, so it's utterly pointless moaning about it and longing for the old days - they ain't coming back.

In fact the Hype Machine is probably my main way of discovering new music these days, at least for non-dancefloor stuff. I get sent literally 100s of clubby promos every week from labels and producers, and in my free time I prefer to listen to other types of music, or else my mind would quickly dissolve into a kind of electro/house/rave mush, and we definitely don't want that.

And yes, if I really like it, I'll go and buy it.

Anyway, I'm really pleased that some of these music blogs have featured my tune "Regret", in particular the runners-up from the remix competition. Please go and check them out:

Hot Biscuits
TribalElectroDance
Boule A Facettes
Dhuun

Big ups to Kyle, Cristian, Vincent and Kapil for featuring the tune - keep supporting new music!

My latest remix, for UK indie band Rocinante, is up on my myspace page. I have no idea when it's coming out, but I'm pretty chuffed with how it's turned out. Please check it out and leave a comment if you feel so inclined.

Also, while clearing out my studio I found a couple of CDRs and DVDs with pics and vids from some past gigs in Estonia (2004-2005), so I've thrown photos and clips up on Flickr and Youtube respectively - check the media section of my website, or the vid (10 minutes of it at least) is in the embedded player below.

Jules played my remix of Jody Wisternoff's latest release "Starstrings" on Radio 1 last Friday. Huge thanks to the Judge (who won't budge) - always a thrill to hear my stuff on the wireless!

Dumb Dan and I ran a remix competition during September 2007 for my track "Regret", and as promised we are making the runners up remixes available for download for free, in glorious maximum quality mp3 format.

And yes, that's free as in beer...however we do ask a couple of favours from you in return (feel free to choose):

Favour no. 1. Show your love: Leave us a comment on this blog post. Tell us what you think of the mixes.

Favour no. 2. Spread the love: Give any DJs you know and all your clubby mates the link to this post - if you're the geeky type, please bookmark it on del.icio.us et al, or link to us in your own blog...

Favour no. 3. Share the love: Feel free to fileshare on AIM/MSN/Gnutella etc... We'd prefer it if you shared the whole zip file since it includes all our info, but if you're going to share individual mp3s, please leave the id tags intact.

Favour no. 4. Spend some love: If you like the track, please go and buy one of the other mixes from Beatport, so that we can afford some of the above-mentioned beer.

Ok, that's quite enough blah blah, here is the link - enjoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?3jbmuu0kmmm

Two debuts coming up! Next weekend I'll be playing in Seoul in South Korea - I'll be at Underlounge with DJ19 on 3rd November. Then a couple of weeks later on 16th November, I'll be at Thrust in Cairo in Egypt. Looking forward to both of these big time :-)