DjOriented

The island of Malta is undoubtedly one of the gems of the Mediterranean, so it’s only fitting that one of its premiere DJs would take the name Jewel Kid.

Just 24 years old, Jewel Kid (J.J. Mejlak) already has a decade of experience playing records. He started out practicing on his brothers’ decks, and by the age of 15 he had already snagged a residency at Amazonia, a swank superclub hosting A-list DJs like Armand Van Helden and Frankie Knuckles. Fast forward to 2007, when he won the house category for the Carl Cox Worldwide Remix Competition, with his entry shooting to number three on Beatport’s house chart.

Since then, this Maltese falcon has been unstoppable, swooping down to snatch up accolades for his records on Cr2 Records, Coraza Recordings, Nervous Records, and more.

We checked in with Jewel Kid to learn more about his quick rise through the ranks. Hey may be a new-school talent, but his dedication and hard work are as old-school as it gets. Read on for the interview, and his recent Cr2 Top 10.

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Funkagenda’s Funk Farm label is only two releases deep, but it’s already producing a bumper crop. Last month he reaped the bulbous, bouncy ‘Astana’, accompanied by a juicy ThreeSixty remix; this month’s harvest is ThreeSixty’s own ‘Dominion’ EP, featuring four succulent flavors of deep, punchy tech house, techno, and progressive. (Now if only I could stop being reminded of Spinal Tap’s ‘Sex Farm’ every time I heard the name ‘Funk Farm’…)

Read on to listen to the tracks and find out for yourself why Funkagenda called this Manchester duo “one to watch”!

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Wally Lopez is back at Space Ibiza for his third summer in a row, helming a coveted Friday-night residency, and the Madrid mainstay’s productions are making waves from the White Isle all the across the Atlantic.

In the video above, he speaks to Pioneer DJ Sounds about his definition of house music, and he breaks it down in his Weekend Weapons selection for Beatport. Read on for his picks, with audio and commentary.

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You know you’re a superstar when you’ve got Diddy as your hype man. Erick Morillo is generally credited as the dude who introduced Diddy to house music, for which, you know, thank him or curse him, depending upon your perspective. But there’s no denying Morillo’s stature as one of house music’s mega-DJs, even for casual clubbers.

In his Weekend Weapons selection, Morillo breaks down the tunes that are ruling Subliminal Sessions at Pacha this summer. Read on…

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It figures than an artist whose parents named him after Captain Beefheart‘s Don Van Vliet might be kinda cryptic. Don Diablo (real name Don Pepijn Schipper) says of himself on his SoundCloud page, “Some people hate me, I hope more people love me. I make music. 
I play music and I might have killed a man in a past life”.

We don’t know about that last part, but the devilish don is definitely killing it with ‘Make You Pop’, his new collaboration with the promiscuous Diplo. (Diplo must have a thing for the Dutch: first Tiesto, now Don Diablo?) It’s a high-octane electro-house banger with some of the gnarliest bass we’ve heard in a while, with a vocal hook and a breakdown designed to incite maximum mayhem. In addition to the original mix, radio edit, instrumental and acapella, Don Diablo also drops a dubstep remix that’s as nefarious as his alias would suggest.

We asked the hotshot producer to give us a glimpse inside his CD wallets, and were surprised to discover almost everything but electro-house bangers. Jamie Lidell, Debussy, Madonna… There’s even a bit of blues, which is fitting, given Diablo’s namesake. Read on to check it out…

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Adelaide, Australia’s Sonny Fodera has racked up an impressive discography in just two years, turning out dozens of EPs, compilation tracks, and remixes for the likes of Drop Music, Guesthouse Music, and Nervous Records. Juan MacLean tapped Fodera’s ‘Everybody Get on the Decks’ for his ‘DJ Kicks’ mix earlier this year, suggesting how his take on house is breaking out and crossing over, no matter the hemisphere or the scene.

His ‘Got You on My Mind’ came out this week on Miguel Migs’ Salted Music label, featuring four tracks of deep, jacking, jazzy house with a distinct Chicago/San Francisco influence.

For his Weekend Weapons selection, Fodera gives us a glimpse of his CD wallet, running down cuts from Jamie Jones, Giom, Gorge, and other purveyors of classic house with modern touch.

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Here’s one you didn’t see coming: drill ‘n’ bass pioneer Squarepusher has hooked up with Ed Banger to release his new single, ‘Cryptic Motion’.

It’s an odd fit, but then we wouldn’t expect anything less from an artist whose name conjures images of square pegs wedged into round holes.

But that doesn’t mean that the fretless wizard has gone all feckless on Warp. Ed Banger’s Pedro Winter recently confirmed with The Daily Swarm that it’s a one-off project. “Squarepusher will release only this single with us,” said the Ed head and French electro icon.

“He will always be a Warp artist. I am really proud of this collab with Warp…they came to me with this record and I am more than happy to release it on Ed. I’ve been a big fan of Warp and i think Squarepusher fits pretty well on our roster. I like adventures and i hope we’ll surprise people with this one!” The Mr. Oizo remix of ‘Cryptic Motion’ is out today; stay tuned for the release of Squarepusher’s original version on August 30.

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Among fans of classic, minimalist techno, few labels are more sacred than Profan. Launched in 1993, the Cologne label became a laboratory for founder Wolfgang Voigt and his circle of collaborators to explore the most probing experiments in rhythm and reduction.

Profan wound down after 1998, when Voigt, Michael Mayer, and Jürgen Paape co-founded Kompakt. But Voigt recently revived the imprint to release ‘Freiland Klaviermusik’ and the accompanying ‘Freilan Geduld’ single. Now he goes one better and launches a new Profan sublabel, Protest, with a bizarre and bruising two-track EP.

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Formerly known as Pivot, Warp’s PVT are a group of Australian musicians bent upon blurring the line between rock and electronic music. The strategy is vaguely similar to the one taken by their labelmates Battles, though you can also hear traces of classic dance rockers like the Rapture, as well as the euphoric drive of Radiohead.

Once you’ve recovered from the dizzy spell that the video above is sure to give you, check out their new album, ‘Church With No Magic’—we’ve embedded a player after the jump—and see if your head doesn’t start spinning all over again.

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Ibiza attracts all sorts of wanderers, so it’s only natural that Nicole Moudaber—born in Nigeria, raised there and then in Lebanon, and now a resident of London—would take to the White Isle as her second home.

The DJ that Carl Cox named “Most Underrated DJ of 2009″ is surely earning her acclaim this summer. Not only has she held court on a weekly basis at Es Vive’s Church on Sunday; she played a three-hour set with Cox in the main room at Space back in July, and she’s gearing up for two more appearances there on August 31 and September 22. Fans in the UK can catch her at the South West Four open-air festival in London on August 28.

Just this week, Moudaber released her new EP, ‘Cacahuetes’, on Monique Musique, with two original tracks and a Tania Vulcano & Tato remix. Its percussive, almost tribal tech-house feel is even tougher than on her last single, ‘Avocado in My Belly’, nicely expanding on her penchant for diryt, low-slunk.

We asked Moudaber a few questions about where she’s been and where she’s going. Read on for the full interview.

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