As most of you know, things don’t always run too smoothly in life and the last week in BluntWorld™ has been no exception. The search for a new Blunt HQ continues, as does the headache that comes with trying to find a vaguely decent place to live!

On top of all this, our very own Agent M has landed himself in a spot of hospital related drama, currently residing in our local krankenhaus sporting some lovely DVT stockings and some delightful plaster-on-limb action….
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I know I’m labouring the point now, but, we’re in the middle of moving studio here at Blunt Beats, and our very busy chasing our tails, filling in forms, and spending money. Ouch.
Anyway, while we get ourselves sorted out, we didn’t want you good people to miss out on your Blunt Beats Radio fix.

So, what are we gonna do? - Well, we’re also conscious of the fact that it’s coming close to our 2-day festival session at Rhythms Of The World, with our Urban Picnic Sounds project.
You can access some of the other sets from last years Urban Picnic Sounds here
In order to give us some breathing space, and allow you people to enjoy some of the vibe of this belter of a festival, we’ve selected four Dj sets from the weekend, which we’re gonna broadcast tonight in our normal radio timeslot.
This isn’t some cheap get-out excuse. (Well, It is. A bit.) The recordings here are some top-notch tunes from the Blunt Beats archive. So be sure to listen, and get in the mood for Urban Picnic Soudns 2008!
Blunt Beats Radio presents Urban Picnic Sounds - The Preview, Live tonight form 8pm UK time. www.bluntbeats.com/radio

It’s been a while coming, but the British weather is becoming bearable, barbecues seem like a sensible way of dining, and I’ve got one eye on the next pair of fresh Adidias for the sunshine. All this can mean only one thing. The festival season is back with us. From now through ’til the end of August, you’ll find the family Blunt either working or playing at various festivals, gigs and outdoor parties.

The big one this year is our return to the Rhythms Of The World music festival in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Essentially, this is a bloody big world music festival with a wicked vibe, and the Messers Blunt running the only DJ stage at the whole event. 2 days in the glorious sunshine, with loads of great music from all over the world, and the Blunt Beats DJs providing the beat-backdrop to the whole shebang with our Urban Picnic Sounds project.

Lets cut to the chase. Write this date down. Saturday and Sunday the 12th and 13th of July. If you can be there, you’re gonna want to be at this festival. More info and ticket details are at the Rhythms Of The World website.

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Well, that’s it then….The clocks went back last night, it’ll soon be fireworks night, and we’re exchanging our trendy windcheaters for heavyweight hoodies here at Blunt HQ. Autumn is surely upon us. But all is not lost. Oh no. Digging though our audio archives, we pulled out a couple of sets from our very own Marcus Hurley, that he played at Urban Picnic Sounds this summer. These are live recordings from the festival, and are certainly a nice reminder of sunnier days. Donwload and enjoy at your leisure. Continue reading…

We’ve recently uploaded a selection of live Dj sets from our recent outing at Urban Picnic Sounds, a 2 day festival affair that took place about a month ago (see the Urban Picnic Sounds posts for more info)

Anyhow, the Ras Pizzler was bang on it (and the audio! arf arf) over the weekend, ensuring that all the sets were recorded for the Blunt Archive. What I’ve done is post up the sets from our guest Djs over the weekend, to give you a bit of a taste of whats to come. The sets in question, and their descriptions, are below. Continue reading…

Right…now how do I start this shit? It’s probably best to start with an apology for the fact that this review has taken 2 weeks to write! It’s all been a bit fuzzy, and very busy here at Blunt Manor, what with gigs, festivals, birthdays, illness, hangovers and a general lack of sleep, so sorry it’s taken so long to get this review done.

Urban Picnic Sounds - 2 days - all the Blunt Beats Residents and special guests. A Victorian bandstand in a park with a soundsystem and sunshine (allegedly)….that’s the deal.

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Right….I’ll keep this short and to the point. We’ve had a ball over the last two weeks, with both making an appearance at the Til The Cows Come Home festival, and running our “Urban Picnic Sounds” stage at Rhythms Of The World for our 5th year.

Both events were top stuff. However, if has all left us a little bit deaf, sleep deprived, injured to various degrees (usually self-inflicted) and very fuzzy headed (especially the UPS weekender). Once we’ve figured out what day of the week it is again, we’ll be giving you a written report, and picture update of both events…I’m sure there’ll be a few stories! We’ve got a hell of a lot of people to thank, from rain-soaked dancers to on the ball sound engineers, cameramen to bar staff, and a whole host of others. We’ll get to all that in the reports

Also, we managed to record the entire Blunted musical output at Urban Picnic Sounds. The recordings are good quality. I’ve listened (cheers J!)…We’ll be making these available for download along with complete tracklistings very soon.

As I say, this is short and to the point. We’ve had a mad couple of weeks. We’ll be giving you a review of all the shenanigans very soon. You’ll be able to download the music. Bear with us as we are still mentally delicate, and will get back to business very soon!

I’m off for a lie-down.

Well, we certainly did what we set out to do. Yesterday Blunt Beats Radio show was a chilled-out, sun (or should i say star?) gazing event. The idea of this session was to give you good people in webland a little bit of a taster of the kind of tunes we’ll be playing at Urban Picnic Sounds this weekend. Agent M started things off with a mix of downtempo hip hop and electronic beats, just to easy things along. Erbalist followed up as only he could….He decided to play music from the same releases he’s taking with him on the weekend, but mixed it up by playing alternative tracks to his UPS set. Doug stepped up at 10.40, winding the night up with some on-point hip hop and chilled out sounds.

Right. Enough said. You get the idea. A full tracklisting is below. We’ll see you on the weekend for the live session!

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Good Lord. How did we get to this time of year again so damn quickly? As much as I’d like to ponder that question, I don’t have time…That’s right, next weekend sees the Blunt crew taking to the stage for our 5th year at the Rhythms Of The World festival with our Urban Picnic Sounds Project.

For those of you that know the score, it’s gonna be more of the same, which is no bad thing! - For those of you that don’t, well, Rhythms Of The World is the largest free world music festival in Europe, attracting over 30,000 people, hundreds of bands and solo artists from all over the globe, and your favourite Blunters run the 3rd biggest (and the only DJ) stage at the event, with our Urban Picnic Sounds event.

Basically, we set up a whopping big sound system in a Victorian bandstand, in an ornamental park, right in the heart of this 2 day festival in Hitchin, Hertforshire. Then we take it upon ourselves to play a laid-back, quality mix, of reggae, funk, soul, electronica, hip hop, cinema scores, and anything else we see fit to allow the assembled throng to chill and catch some rays. Continue reading…

OK party people, the server glitch that put us out the game last week is now sorted. You’ll be happy to see that we’re back stronger and stranger than ever.

To pick up the slack on the audio side of things I’m proud to present the freshest mixtape from one of our best buddies, the mighty DJ Prolifik. Those of you who caught him at last year’s Urban Picnic Sounds jams at the Rhythms Of The World festival will already be scrambling for the download link. Those that didn’t will be equally impressed.

The man himself recently returned to the fair city of Edinburgh from a spell in Barcelona, and put together this tribute to the late, great, and sorely missed J Dilla. He introduces it like this… Continue reading…