µ-Ziq: Salsa with Mesquite

I bought this EP back in the summer of 1995 in a very decent record shop in Aberystwyth. When I got home and had a listen, I was astonished at the sheer cacophonous violence of this, the first piece on the EP. It was more jagged and unsettling than almost anything so-called IDM artists were making at the time - even (Ventolin excluded) Aphex Twin himself.
Today, it came up on my iPod as I was jogging, and it still has the capacity to grab my attention.
A lot of people haven't heard the first track on the EP, but, all in all, I think it's very close to being the best thing Mike Paradinas ever wrote.
The disappointment for me in the years that followed was that Paradinas never really emerged from the shadow of friend and one-time colleague Aphex Twin to become a major musical force in his own right. All of his albums have very good moments, but for me they always struggle for consistency. Even his brilliant Makesaracket is only really masterly in patches.
Nowadays, he is arguably having more success as head honcho of Planet Mu. Certainly his involvement in the footwork and dubstep scenes has been significant.
I just wonder whether the Bangs and Works producers in the US who have worked with Paradinas actually realise the quiet, bespectacled label boss is capable of making music this ear-splitting.

Mike Paradinas and the hunt for DJ Nate

Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas has spoken to the highly regarded student newspaper at York University about his attempts to track down DJ Nate when he first heard his music. The interview - which you can see here - offers a brief but fascinating glimpse into the work of an independent label head trying to chase after artists he wants on his roster. He says in the interview that he made several fruitless attempts to contact Nate via myspace, before bizarrely hearing from a high school teacher who was running the DJ's website.

Paradinas said: "First of all I tried his, numerous, Myspaces but he never read the messages and we received no replies. So we gave up for a bit, and started the Terror Danjah Gremlinz project to fill that release slot. Then the next year after another potential release fell through, I tried contacting him again, but to no reply. After a while Thomas (at the label) found a “Bakasworld” website and we emailed him there and we received a reply from Mbiganyi Lashani, a high school teacher, who built Nate’s website and was acting as his manager at the time. Eventually we got hold of Nate, and got some tracks off him."

Reading between the lines, was Nate not interested in working with Planet Mu, or is he just a very hard man to track down?

Since then, Paradinas has been bombarded with footworkers interested in having their music put out - much of which he has had to decline. The Planet Mu man says a 2nd volume of Bangs and Works is on the way next year, but it seems 2011 will be spent doing detective work in the search for the next DJ Nate.