- Freerotation Core Residents
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Steevio & Suzybee, Leif, Grimes Adhesif, Joe & Tom Ellis, Duckett and Sam Watson are all available for individual bookings, or group bookings for Freerotation take-overs, by contacting . Please see individual tabs for more info on each artist. [This email is for booking Freerotation resident artists only, and we kindly ask that agencies or artists do not contact us regarding playing at Freerotation. We choose our artists by our own research.]
Steevio & Suzybee
Booking Enquiries for Steevio & Suzybee -
Steevio
mindtours | r.a | soundcloud | discogs
Steevio has been involved in electronic music since he managed the UK’s first electro club The Sidewalk in 1982 in Newcastle. It was the beginning of a love affair with machines that has only grown stronger with the passing years. His early electro experiments were surpassed throughout the 90’s when he became a live techno artist at clubs and free parties in the UK and managed several techno labels, culminating in the formation of the Mindtours label with Suzybee in 2000.
Always remaining stoutly underground, with the focused intention of producing original live electronic music on hardware, in 2005 he returned to his former interest in organising events and created the first Freerotation Festival with Suzybee in Wales. Freerotation has grown from a small party for friends and like-minded musicians into the highly-regarded and much-loved international event it is today.
Freerotation has furnished Steevio with the perfect platform to showcase his live hardware performances, but everything moved up a gear in 2009 when he built a dedicated modular synthesizer as an improvisational instrument on which to make techno, and from 2010 he began performing live on his new set-up at Freerotation.
Steevio’s modular is 100% analogue, so there are no memories to save sounds or sequencing patterns, and everything happens in real time. Steevio’s performances are pure improvisation, and all the music is totally unique to each gig. All the sequences and sounds are created from scratch on the fly.
Due to the impracticality of taking his extensive equipment by air, and almost universal lack of performance space in most UK clubs, Steevio has recently developed a compact hybrid analogue/digital live performance, which incorporates mixing unique material recorded specifically for each individual performance in his modular studio, with live improvised jamming on compact analogue and modular gear.
Suzybee
Suzybee co-founded the Mindtours label and is co-organiser of the Freerotation Festival with Steevio. She is an accomplished artist, animator and VJ. With a background in life drawing and painting and a love of music and dance, she relished the possibility of making musically-inspired art with digital technology, as a/v software blossomed in the early 2000’s.
Using cutting edge VJ and animation software she has developed her own unique style. Suzybee hand-draws her own animations which she then mixes with abstract layers and effects in Resolume, to produce beautiful moving images, synched to Steevio’s music.
Much of Suzybee’s imagery is based on natural forms. Her deep concern for the planet and its ecology has fuelled many of her animations, often depicting the connection between humans and other animals. Suzybee’s love of dance music and her belief in its power to connect the human family and inspire compassion is at the heart of her soulful style.
Suzybee and Steevio’s live AV performance is totally unlike anything out there at present. It is a perfectly synched amalgamation of positive and soulful music and imagery, performed in a unique way by two artists who are 100% dedicated to dance music and its message of empathy to the human race.
Tom Ellis
Booking Enquiries for Tom Ellis -
soundcloud | r.a | facebook | kmah-radio | discogs
A core member and resident of the Freerotation Festival, Tom Ellis has been releasing funk & jazz inspired house & techno since 2003, when he launched Trimsound, his first label, which was co-run with Leif.
His vast discography includes over 40 EPs and 7 albums that pop up on some of the world's most respected underground labels. His early appearances on Mindtours and Trimsound led to worldwide recognition and further releases and remixes for Archipel, Good Ratio Music, Classic, Philpot, Moon Harbour, Leap, Telegraph, Logistic, Black Key Records, Eye4Eye, Floppy Funk, Morris Audio, Flumo, Supremus Records, Hartchef Discos, Minibar, Highgrade, Klamauk, and Som Bom (the electronic spin-off label run by fellow Welsh men, Super Furry Animals) and many, many more.
His music is regularly picked up and played by the likes of Carl Cox (Intec), Magda (Minus), Zip (Perlon), Lauren Lavern (BBC 6 music), Craig Richards (Fabric), Maya Jane Coles (Hypercolour, K7, 20:20 Vision) and many others.
Tom's DJ & Live sets, which usually consist entirely of his own material (often unreleased and previously un-heard), have taken him across the globe with gigs as far afield as Moscow, Tokyo, Montreal, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as regular appearances across Europe.
Forever steering into the weirder side of things, he tries to anchor himself with his experience as a self-taught musician. Playing drums, bass, keys and guitar from an early age has given him a good foundation from which to understand and explore electronic music with the groove, soul and funk of a real musician.
2016 has seen the launch of his new solo label, In Modo Di, with the first record landing high in the bestseller charts, and the launch of his new monthly radio show on KMAH radio, The Taunton Loft Sessions.
Currently based in the Midlands, UK, available for DJ sets of his own (mostly unreleased) productions.
Leif
Booking Enquiries for Leif -
soundcloud | r.a | facebook | discogs | until my heart stops
UK-based DJ and producer Leif Knowles has quietly earned himself a well deserved reputation for his outerworldly production stance and forward thinking approach to DJing.
A resident DJ and integral member of the esteemed Freerotation Festival, he has spent the last decade refining his musical palette, developing a mature understanding of the deeper aspects of house, techno and out-tempo manoeuvres. A contributor to imprints such as Idle Hands, Sudden Drop and Fear of Flying, he also co-runs UntilMyHeartStops with fellow Freerotation resident Joe Ellis.
Joe Ellis
Booking Enquiries for Joe Ellis -
soundcloud | r.a | until my heart stops
[Biography under construction]
Duckett
Booking Enquiries for Duckett -
Duckett is a producer and performer from Wales who has been releasing distinct and curious electronic music since 2001. He’s a core resident of the renowned festival Freerotation and has released on labels including Until My Heart Stops, Freerotation and Greta Cottage Workshop. His music is difficult to pin down but sits somewhere on the edge of house, techno, ambient and experimental.
After a period of relative silence, 2015 proved a definitive year for Duckett with the release of two EPs for London/Bristol label Until My Heart Stops and a wave of radio guest mixes that highlighted the diversity of his output. 2016 brought releases on Greta Cottage Workshop and Freerotation Records, on top of a Boiler Room live session and a Hessle Audio radio appearance, earning Duckett a reputation as a true artist and performer with a unique take on dance music.
Duckett has a number of releases in the pipeline for the near (and far) future and is also working on a new live set. Watch this space.
Grimes Adhesif
Booking Enquiries for Grimes Adhesif - or via www.guaranteedconnection.com
Management | soundcloud | r.a | discogs | tumblr
Grimes has been playing and producing electronic music since the ‘90s, a committed record collector ever since his teenage years.
Having played for a wealth of party crews and club promoters from Manchester, Berlin, Newcastle, London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Paris, Detroit, Belgrade, Skopje throughout the 90s & 00s, as well as putting on events with various common fellow house & techno ‘sound travellers’.
There is one continuing element of this background, which can be heard and experienced via the highly celebrated Freerotation festival, where Grimes being one of the residents from it's first outing in 2007, is continuing to hold the festival's superb line-ups steady from beneath.
In ’94 Grimes began building his studio and started experimenting and crafting his own sound, it wasn’t until 2000 that he quietly began curating his own mindyourhead imprint to release these creations, which has seen a string of varied and distinctive releases.
Grimes has released music on labels Greta Cottage Workshop, Naif, Curle, Serialism and has remixed for Michigans 6one6 label.
Grimes Adhesif’s ‘Wilmslow Road’ on Mind Your Head released in 2005 has been and continues to be played my many DJs.
Grimes is currently making music specifically for his live show.
Grimes is available for Live and DJ bookings.
Flights from Liverpool / Manchester / London airports.
Sam Watson
Booking Enquiries for Sam Watson - www.guaranteedconnection.com
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Sam Watson has had a huge passion for all things Techno since the early nineties, playing at parties and clubs all over the UK including Birmingham's House of God, Manchesters Eastern Bloc and Room 237 Bristol. He has hosted and been resident DJ at a number of nights in Aberystwyth in Wales, which have included guests such as Surgeon, Paul Damage, Andrew Weatherall, Billy Nasty and Si Begg to name a few. For the last ten years Sam has been a resident at Freerotation and at Audiofarm Festival. His recent sets at Freerotation are legendary. Sam Watson’s signature sound is a cerebral rolling and twisting hard techno. More recently, he has been working on the slower, deeper side of Techno alongside his harder sets, with influences from Sandwell District, Architetural,Planetary Assault Systems and Savas Pascilidis. He uses three decks, two vinyl and one cd deck for playing his own material exclusive to his sets.
Aside from two releases in 2001 under the name Dr Watson, one on Complex Records (label formerly run by Regis and Female) and a remix on Steevio's Mindtours label, Sam has more recently released on Trust Recordings and 6ONE6.
With his upbringing in Snowdonia, Wales, where he is still based, with its deeply rooted free party scene, together with his early influences of the raw, industrial sound of Birmingham and Detroit, Sam has developed a unique style and flow to his sets.