The Rotation Soundsystem is currently readying its 11th annual summer garden party. Topping the bill again this year are Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell, aka The Idjut Boys. This time the dub-disco duo are playing a marathon 10-hour set.

(The Idjuts at last year’s party)

By way of promo for last year’s event I took a personal journey through The Idjuts considerable back catalogue. Picking out favourites chronologically. However, the list kinda stopped short  n 2009 with their Meanderthals project. While the Boys closed their myriad labels in 2010, they certainly haven’t been idle since then, so I thought I’d do a Part 2, and try and bring us up to date…

The Idjut Boys have a devoted following here in Japan. In fact, the only time I’ve actually met / propped up a bar with them was at a gig in the final days of Tokyo’s legendary Space Lab Yellow. As a consequence, they’ve remixed a fair few Japanese artists, and in the past I made myself a bit of extra pocket money selling copies of these 12s to folks in Europe, the UK and US.

Port Of Notes / Talk To Me, Baby (Idjuts Yellow Morning Mix) / Crue-L / 2005

Port Of Notes were one of the flagship acts on Kenji Takimi’s hugely collectable, cult label, Crue-L. Totally focused on Tokyo-based artists, the imprint was once incredibly prolific, scoring big hits with Cornelius’ protege Kahimi Karie. Remixes also initially came from local talent like Kaoru Inoue and Calm. However, from the late 1990s Harvey was onboard, and then came Harvey’s spars, The Idjuts. Closely followed by the likes of Lindstrom and Theo Parrish. Previously celebrating the sound of classic disco, by the mid-2000s the imprint’s output got slower, darker, more “cosmic”. Becoming sort of twinned with emerging US labels such as Golf Channel and ESP Institute. The Idjut’s take on Talk To Me Baby begins with a big, echoed acapella intro, for the first five minutes is a slow sunset tune, focused around Miyuki Hatakeyama’s folky vocal. However, it then transforms into a foot stomping, beat-driven blue grass hoedown. Its sharp strumming sort of riffing The Doobie Brothers’ Long Train Running.

DJ Mochizuki / Star… Libre / Loop Sounds / 2007

DJ Mochizuki’s Star… Libre was released on Loop Sounds. This was a label run out of a legendary basement club, located in the upmarket shopping area of Aoyama. Small and intimate, the soundsystem was incredible, and walls were covered with the tags of the famous folks who played there – FK, Harvey, spring immediately to mind. It was home to long-running residencies hosted by homegrown heroes, such as DJ Nori and Dazzle Drums. Rising rents criminally forced Loop to close, probably around a decade ago. It then reopened as Zero, with a lot of the same crew involved. However, I’ve recently heard that Zero will also shut its doors, as the price of city’s real estate continues to rocket. Dan and Conrad open Star… Libre with a huge piano intro of cascades, jazzy rolls, and big echoed chords, after which percussion is shaken in a fashion similar, say, to Willie Colon’s Set Fire To Me. The party stopping and starting for showers of trance-y synths.

Cro-Magnon / Riding The Storm / Jazzy Sport / 2012

Jazz-funk trio Cro-Magnon are incredible live. I vividly remember standing next to a cheering Mark Seven as they launched into a breakneck take of Azymuth’s Jazz Carnival at the Tokyo club Vent (keyboard player Takumi Kaneko is also half of the more chilled Coastlines). Cro-Magnon were signed to Jazzy Sport, a shop and a label synonymous with deep, rooted, real and authentic dance music. The Idjuts double the lenght of Riding The Storm, producing an extended drama of drums and delayed congas, and dropping a gurgling bass breakdown, before releasing the song’s crunchy `70s rock-referencing riff and Rolling Stones-esque “ooh ooh”ing.

In the late 1990s one of the folks putting out music on Dan and Conrad’s imprint, Discfuntion, was Paul “Mudd” Murphy, then a member of “nu disco” outfit Akwaaba. Paul launched his own label, Claremont 56, in 2007, and the repaid the favour by commissioning a number of Idjut Boys remixes.

Icasol / Ongou (Brown Thumb) / Claremont 56 / 2008

Berlin-based Sebastian Gaiser is Icasol. Dan and Conrad stretched his track, Ongou, out into a 10-minute pop kosmische pastoral. The pretty 6-string picking playing on Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s Cafe del Mar classic, Air A Danser, while riding on Cluster-esque chilled pulses and rippling programmed sequences.

The Popes / Bastards / Claremont 56 / 2010

The Popes started out as Shane Macgowan’s post-Pogues backing band. Bastards is a track from their album Outlaw Heaven. Starting with a swoon of  orchestral strings, cello, violin, and acoustic campfire strum, The Idjuts version is a proper 90 BPM Balearic shuffler, a Jah Wobble-esque bass-led Monkey Drum mooch.* If Shane had actually been singing it would have been an anthem.

*Monkey Drum was a fabled Monday night shindig, run by the South London Deja Vu crew, that has become legend in the early London Balearic Beat scene of the late 80s. 

Paqua / Late Train / Claremont 56 / 2014

Claremont 56’s supergroup Paqua released Late Train in 2013. The following year saw Dan and Conrad’s Late Brain Version divert the already epic funky rock down a dark, throbbing track. Sending the guitar shredding backwards and forwards. Building tension and stirring up trouble with washes of wah-wah and fragments of freakout. Five minutes in hitting a great cosmic groove, complete with hypnotic Manuel Göttsching-esque 6-string gymnastics.

In 2014, Conrad also mixed part of the LP, Travellers, by Bison, a collaboration between Paul, long-standing studio partner, Ben Smith, and kosmische legends, Holger Czukay and Ursula Minor. Conrad brought his magic to the title track, New Moon Boy, and Familiar Stranger.

The Bison project seemed to mark a period where The Boys began to work alone. Conrad, for example, over the last couple of years has produced some amazing live dubs… There’s a mind-blowing clip somewhere of him manhandling Andromeda Orchestra’s Bad Girl on a desk called “Dotty”. According to Conrad, “She’s a good sort that loves to be messed around with.”

Cantoma / Alive  / Highwood Recordings / 2022

The Idjuts remixed Cantoma’s North Shore way back when in 2010, but a couple of years ago, Conrad, solo, turned in a trio of terrific takes on Alive. Reduced to rhythmic workouts, with each one getting progressively more wigged out, the results are more post-punk-funk than sunset Balearic anthem. Tape rewinds, and unspools. Rimshots rattle and kick drums dissolve in delay. The bass is replaced by something squelchy and electronic, and there’s some spectacular stereo panning going on.

Gratts / Jour De Fete / Be Strong Be Free / 2023

While still based in Berlin, Gratts put together full band – led by Ange Nawasadio – and recorded the joyful afro-Caribbean tune Jour De Fete, which is characterised by its harmonica hook. Having relocated to Australia, he commissioned Conrad for a couple of much more machined dubs.

In the  meantime Dan has also sometimes flown solo, as NAD, but often together with Nick The Record. Teaming up with Stuart “Chuggy” Leath’s Emotional Rescue, as the London label licensed gear from Noel Williams’ Miami-based Konduko and Tashamba imprints. Reimagining reissued tropical disco dynamite by names such as Der-Mer, Phillip & Lloyd, Reanna Coleman, and King Sporty…

Carl & Carol Jacobs / Robot Jam / Emotional Rescue / 2015

Carl and Carol Jacobs are a Calypso / soca couple from Trinidad. In the mid to late 1980s, while based in Miami, they released a few singles, and an album, on Eddy Grant’s label, ICE. Chuggy picked up on Robot Jam, and Dan and Nick did the honours, producing a dope drum machine workout of afro-electro proto-house. Borrowing the chants from both Ozo’s Anambra and Babatunde Olatunji’s Gin Go Lo Ba, while also referencing Rockmaster Scott, this dynamite dubbed-out extension also sounds like it might, at any moment, launch into Don’t Go Lose It Baby, Hugh Masekela’s Loft favourite.

The Incredible Heathen Band / He Touched Me / Record Mission / 2016

Between 2015 and 2016 Dan and Nick put out a series of 6 E.P.s on a label whose moniker was Record Mission. My favourite is #3, which features the track, He Touched Me. An end-of-the-night gospel groove (check Discogs if you want to ID the OG), this is pieced together to preach self-belief rather devotion to any monotheistic god. Suggesting faith might be better placed in friends and family, it’s a most excellent score of an “everybody join hands” / club group hug moment.

East-West / Can’t Face The Night / Emotional Rescue / 2022

East-West’s Can`t Face The Night was emotionally rescued from a 1984 promo-only release originally on pioneering UK label, Indipop. Dan and Chuggy partnered to produce an incredible rework that breaks everything down – Bollywood strings, tabla, sitar, disco b-line and hand claps – and then slowly builds it back up. At the time I said it was like “a marriage between Mandy Smith and Jhalib.”

Kim Yaffa / Once Bitten / New Islands / 2024

Kim Yaffa’s Once Bitten was another lost `80s gem. This one was rediscovered and polished by L.A. label, New Islands. Nick and Dan dust it down, and whisk it off to The White Isle, cleverly editing 6-string snippets into Spanish guitar solos and making it over as Mediterranean pop. It’s hard to imagine this not being in a top 10 of Belearic beats when we get to the end of 2024.

Despite all the solo work, 2022 saw the reboot of the labels Noid and Droid, and The Idjuts also recently regrouped for a Japanese tour and remixes of De Lux’s What’s Life? and Radio Slave’s Wake Up.

Conrad claims that the initial split was down to Dan’s love of a particular lager: “Dan’s need to be near the source of his beloved Tuborg led him to Oslo, and that’s a tricky swim in winter. He may mention something about family, or some such, but it’s the Tuborg.” They’re back together again now, since realising “You can get it at Tesco. Who knew?”

The pair have been travelling the world again, and Conrad says, “Seeing old mates and meeting new has been a joy, a lot of the party’s so fierce it’s humbling, THANK YOU ALL!” He also promises that new Idjuts originals are on the way: “Our own stuff has to have priority due to very strict artistic ideals, unless there’s cash involved, obviously.”

While the list of tracks that Dan and Conrad have produced or transformed heads into the 100s, if you asked folks for their favourite Idjut Boys tune, my guess is that in most cases the answer would be their emotional heart-felt tribute to close friend Kenny Hawkes.

I’ve compiled 4 hour-long “segues” to accompany this and the previous Idjut Boys piece. These will be broadcast as in the run up to the party during my Friday slot on Music For Dreams Radio. 

Rotation Soundsystem’s 2024 Garden Party takes place at Carney Pools, on Bishton Lane, in Stafford, on the weekend of the 19th to 21st of July. 

As well as the incredible Idjut Boys you’ll be dancing to music from all of the following: Chicken Lips, Ben Cook, Jolyon Green, Quinn Lamont Luke, Mind Fair, Alice Palace, Ruf Dug, Andy Taylor, Tigerbalm, and Wrekin Havoc. 

You can purchase tickets here.