What an ironical situation we're living nowadays ! While quality music has never been so predominant for quite some time, the scene looks like generally more and more withdrawn on itself from a month to another. This leaving us feeling more and more difficult to get the right infos at the right time. A situation that both Nik Weston and MFSB have comments on to various degrees on what is to be our issue #58

London based IDMW.com detective Nik Weston, leaves the Japanese scene for a while to take us on a ride to his hometown. The current problems that the record industry is facing nowadays are about the same as everywhere else in this part of the world as are the responses given by the local scene with lots of quality stuff around.

One concern is that bootlegs and mash ups seem to be outselling official releases which appears to be a little worrying in the current climate of things. Certain 12's sell exceedingly well but often it's a case of familar tunes and remixes doing the units rather than home grown product itself.The recent Danny Krivit remix of ''Strings of Life'' has done 18,500  units so far but in general releases on the nu jazz/broken beat scene are doing from 800- 2000 units....

Freerange Records who've now re located to Essex have new albums from Shurikan (Way Points) & Squareone coming out in late summer. There's also a Jimpster remix album containing a selection of reworks and Jimpster himself has remixed Fred Everything's ''This Is Not A Club Song'' for 20:20 vision. He takes the midtempo track into a soulful & jazzy broken beat mix. There's also a mysterious Marco De Souza track called ''Quartetto'' which sounds like it might be a cheeky brazilian house mix.

Zero DB and Fluid Once main man, Chris Vogadoo has moved to Barcelona but he's still busy with the label. He's remixed Rosalia De Souza for Schema and has releases from Innocent Scorcerers (5 track EP) and Nery Bauer plus a hip hop  project from Boiler Room Collective.

Out of the Goya stable is the long awaited Bembe Segue cover of the Norman Connors classic ''Mother Of The Future'' plus the IG Culture produced Quango Project with ''Rock It Tonite'' with Eska on vocals. Flipside features Lain (ex Nu Colours) with a track called ''Call n' Say ''.

Izzi Dunn has a new single ''Out Of My Hands'' with Kaidi Tatham as Agent K for a boogie mix. Goya also hook up with a joint presentation from Mukatsuku & Especial in Japan to release a series of European Edition 12's previously only released in Japan. 1st 12'' is a 4 tracker from Hajime Yoshizawa with the in demand ''Endless Bow'' track remixed here by Jimpster & Fauna Flash.

Domu continues to have his fingers in as many pies.His Umod project dropped mid June on Sonar Kollektiv, he has ''Worldwide'' on Loungin, a release as Yotoko on Emoticom for a 4 track EP called ''Bullet Time'' in a kinda Carl Craig ish breaky techno piece and another Rima release ''Present Sense''. There's a Neroli EP and a CD with 8 or 9 tracks out in September.

On the drum n bass front, there's no one that quite does it like Hospital Records.They have a new outfit called Q Project in August with an EP entitled '' Living Beaker'' which the label described as ''Todd Edwards meets hardcore !'' There's a single from Nation 2 Nation which is deep n Photek like, a new High Contrast single and album around August time and a new track from Logistics (Nu Tones lil brother). Meanwhile, Cyantific have another  single which is penciled in for October.

That's it for now… Despite the downturn in record sales, there's still killer music being made and sold in vinyl format and although shop sales are also down, the internet business has picked up ten fold. There's great websites from the following which you should definetly check out if your local stores can't find that ellusive 12'' from the UK you are after...

Peace & Positivity

Although Jeff Mills said to me back in the days that "the Stevie Wonder of electro wasn't born to date" (let us get back to this a little bit later on), "music has never looked so good for quite a while", says DJ Oji and this is nothing but some true evidence, judging but the amount of good releases around. And what is this at the end of the day if not the best response which might be given facing today's situation ? In other words, both of them are right on their own and if you have any doubt in mind, please feel free to go out in the streets and ask people here or there if not to sing at least give you the titles of three songs that have appeared from the so called electronic techno/house field since the early days… Ask them then what or who they may remember from say the 80's if not the 70's and you'll see a whole bunch of people from Barry White to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye or Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and many others you'll find references to when asking today's generations of musicians about their influences. This said, don't get us wrong as our current purpose is not to say that nothing happened these last 20 years, but the fact is that what happened has finally never reached any global audience apart from some basic fans. And I guess this has also a lot to do in today's situation. I mean : how could you possibly blame people being not aware of what's currently happening when basically not even aware of what you're doing, not to say of your own existence ???

Once again, as a reputed intermediary, we've already come to people in the circuit asking them for having an interview, reviewing some new tunes of them or simply having the release date of their new material and our requests didn't get any answer… So simply imagine what can be people's situation while litteraly wandering in front of this awful amount of weekly releases which, for them, would seem like anonymous as compared to the pop acts around ! No way for them to get their hands on some of your material if not clearly advised but some friends of their who would know… And I'm not even talking about this whole bunch of test pressings, promo copies, acetates, dubplates, DAT's or CD-R's which, at some recent time, would have solely been made for the reputed prescriptors.

As a matter of fact, some labels have decided to slow down their release schedule in order to secure some time for doing their promotion work like Chillifunk for instance or Slip'N'Slide. "There's absolutely no need for putting out a 12" every week if you don't promote it properly", says Kicking Records CEO, Peter Harris. "It's not good for the artists and if it's not good for them, it's not good for us neither coz' they would feel like we haven't done our job." And that's about the same for us, here at IDMW.com, while providing you with the infos we get from here or there.

We would figure out what may feed the curiosity of our readers while displaying selected infos, from the simple reference to a tune of interest to the biggest interview we may sort out with the one(s) who's/'ve done it while creating a sort of hierarchical pecking. And this is exactly what we're expecting from the record industry on the basis of what we're into.

Of course, we can't and won't deny the fact that numerous people are applying to have their names on the mailing lists and that the shipping costs are awfully expensive - an average amount of $7,80 for a simple 12" from US to Europe, not to mention the cost of the enveloppe + for the one who's gonna post it ! – but, as once again written here during the Winter Music Conference : who is it best given a record ? The one who might play it anonymously on a DJ set or the one who might give details about it while reviewing it ??? In other words, are house music and the likes destined to mostly remain a DJ to DJ thang or try to benefit from some extra support ? Both of them, I would say, if aiming to reach a wider audience and find a way to assure its survival, knowing that the basic fans who happen to be the basic purveyors of incomes show every day signs of their need to be (well) informed. MFSB