Make sure to pick up a copy of the next Plan B magazine for its attached cover CD “Plan Mu” including tracks from Vex’d & Warrior Queen, Parson, and more. Well worth a few of your pennies no doubt.

So if you have been checking Net-Lab over the past year or so, you will have probably realised quite a clear progression in the nights we run. It hasn’t been just about breaking a more popular market for us, moreso just being part of a natural progression in sound from the strong Breakcore scene in ‘06 through to today’s Dubstep / Electro / 2-Step foray. For those who’ve been to pretty much all of our nights since back in the day (and there’s been a lot!) you’ll know that we’ve been ahead of the game with that progression throughout.

(Above: TV Youth)

TV Youth’s launch party for his new “Sisters” EP, coming any day now on Net-Lab, was another step. Merging elements of dirty electro, hip-hop and electronica, his new material is forward thinking, thoughtful and also excellently produced. Master of the thumping side-chained kick-drum, his set stood out as best of the night by far.

The interesting thing is the popularisation of this sound, because his tunes appeal to a really wide audience - the kids who love Electro (Justice, Daft Punk…) and also anyone with a slightly more leftfield leaning toward complex or melodic electronica. Capturing this sound has opened our work up to a much bigger audience, running events at major, central venues here in Brighton.

(Above: TV Youth)

“Heist” club, on Brighton’s busiest Friday night street, is an odd one too. Noone can deny that the venue is absolutely gorgeous: Dark black on its 3 story exterior, silver gargoyles, and new Rarekind tatoo style artwork, leading up to the promoters dream inside of an excellent Funktion 1 system on either side of a beautiful back-lit stained glass window (right behind the DJ booth), and an absolutely massive stone eagle at the bar. The flipside is that the venue’s location brings its own problems - a difficult crowd to flyer to outside, and a pretty serious fight at the door to the club. Still, probably the nicest and most intelligent bouncers I’ve ever worked with, massive respect to those guys.

TV Youth’s set was sandwiched between Maths Class spinning some awesome and energising numbers (normally well away from the decks and truly in the depths of Math-Rock), and then followed up by Casper Clark (part of BloggersDelight and Fluokids), who tore up the dancefloor with electro-indie-fidget-whatever until we closed slightly earlier than expected, sadly missing Synthamesk (who is in the UK for some rare live performances) and Mumdance (Vice Mag) off the bill… sad times.

(Top: Maths Class, Middle: STDJs, Bottom: TV Youth and Synthamesk)

Catch TV Youth performing tracks from his new EP at more dates coming up, including Friday 23rd May at The Volks Club, Brighton, run by our good friends at Square Roots, who have been running the Dubstep and Electro scene since day.

Pictures to come!

Yesterday saw the closure of Planet Mu Records’ forum, which over the past few years has hosted some pretty interesting discussion including fairly regular comments from Mu favorites like Venetian Snares, The Teknoist, Ital Tek, Chevron, Syntheme and of course Planet Mu owner Mike Paradinas (uZiq) himself. Sadly the forum suffered from some pretty serious moderation problems and some pretty thoughtless comments from a number of users, and seemed to be getting a lot worse. Hopefully this means Mike P and Mully will get a bit more time to put into the label itself now.