recent news

With summer refusing to show itself completely in this part of the world, best to sneak in a blog post while the clouds are still hovering.

First up you'll notice I've uploaded three brand new mixes on the site. While my wife was recently away on a quick trip to New York I proceeded to lock myself in the studio and hammer a few things out including next month's radio show, a 90 minute progressive trance mix for my cycling classes that I teach and the long awaited tenth instalment of my Epic series, which is as the title describes, epic. All mixes are available for download in the Mixes section.

Now to the past couple of months that have swept by quickly as usual...

In April things were left off with the release of my remix of 40 Gun Flagship's "Forever" on Morrison Recordings. With four distinct offerings in the release package - from the original and acoustic rock versions, to Glenn's stadium remix to my offering - the release was very well received by everyone it was sent out to, and managed to climb its way up to #18 on Beatport's Pop/Rock chart. All in all a successful project and Robyn and I are determined to push out more tracks in the near future, and we're actually working together on a new one right now with a vocal session booked for the weekend.

Moving through May and into June saw the first Formula/SocialHouse private joint event take place in the form of London Underground at the amazing Paul Hardy Warehouse, and it was a smashing success to say the least. It was great to join forces with Tomi from SocialHouse and Marie from Belvedere Vodka, along with Nick from Belgo. With a lot of big personalities and perspectives involved an undertaking of this nature can often go sideways, however in this case it was quite the opposite with each team member bringing something unique to the table that complimented the group as a whole - including my tiny role as all powerful ruler of the mailing list.

Overall everything came together seamlessly - from the venue and sound / lights to the bar to all the staff helping out and most importantly the 300 people that showed up… and I only wanted to punch Nathan the usual three times, which can be considered average for a night spent with an opinionated Brit!! (had to get that jab in somewhere, BAH!). What's up next for the collective group? Nothing for the summer, but I'm sure something will be in the works for the fall. The event on June 1st was pretty special so it'll take something seriously crazy to top that one.

I've taken on a somewhat smaller role in the picture when it comes to these events, which has worked out well considering my work schedule and for the first time in being involved in anything dj event related, it's very refreshing to not be in charge of everything and let others dictate where things go. Putting on events is an insane amount of work and time to say the least, so to have guys like Nathan and Tomi take the lead and get things done is awesome. I'm just happy to help out and dj once in a while, even if it's only a handful of events throughout the year.

Beyond all the regular musical endeavours, pushing my music in a different direction, this time as it relates to the spin classes I teach has been a lot of fun. Recently I've had the pleasure of running special event classes which are 90-120 minutes in length, which of course call for special mixes of music along with video to push the experience a whole lot further - and at the core I've been able to dive into the world of trance again because of it, where I originally started. Always had a soft spot for that genre and now I can officially pull my trance-whore hat out of the closet and where it for good reason… 

Thankfully, the response has been incredible with consistently well attended classes every week. I'm probably the only cycling instructor on the planet who from the start has refused to play (and gotten away with it) anything that even resembles top40, rock or eighties. Have to give credit to a certain few people for giving me that leeway, lol…

So what's up for the summer? Besides missing out on Matthew Belleghem's stop in Calgary on his "fly around the world in 30 days" tour, it's going to be a quiet one for once. A 16 day trip to our favourite spot in Mexico, Playa del Carmen is up first on the docket (conveniently bypassing the rigours of Stampede), where we'll be scoping out various pieces to the BPM 2014 puzzle (yes we're going!!) while downing endless amounts of cold ones with Rusty, Ada and their daughter (okay, she's too young). In August, we take a trip up to Darvin's Pure Psyence party, where I'll be playing at least one, if not two sets - and rippers they shall be! Finally, it's one more trip out to the BC Coast for Terry and Katherine's wedding where I have the honour of playing a proper progressive set to celebrate their wedding - very humbled and honoured to be asked to do that!

That should do it for awhile, of course if anything brilliant worth mentioning comes up, you'll find it here.

It's been a long time coming, having spent the majority of last summer and fall working on this track, but my remix of Forty Gun Flagship's "Forever" is finally out on Glenn Morrison's "Morrison Recordings" label.

I'm extremely proud of this remix. The amount of hours that went into it - from endless tweak's on Robyn Raymond's beautiful vocal to the beds of sounds underneath it - were all worthwhile in the end as the final result is probably my best piece of work yet.

I'm grateful to Robyn and the band for letting me create my own story with the original song and am really looking forward to working with Robyn in the near future - her vocal and song-writing talents are truly amazing. I'd also like to thank label boss and star in his own right having toured the world many times over and released many tracks - none other than Glenn Morrison - for signing the track as well as the original rock and acoustic versions. Glenn has been awesome to work with all the way through.

All mixes of the track are available at http://www.beatport.com/release/40-gun-flagship-forever/1077985

Forty Gun Flagship - Forever (Wes Straub's Progressive Remix) from wstraub on Vimeo.

Time for a regular check in on the blog front. A lot has happened in the past few weeks so let's get to it.

Blueprint becomes Formula. After a solid run under the Blueprint banner doing nights at Habitat, Nathan and I decided to rename and rebrand as Formula - thanks to a dandy little cease and desist letter served up from a fine bunch working under the same name out of Vancouver. Apparently you can trademark a word like Blueprint!

We had our first event this past Friday featuring Toolroom's Prok & Fitch from the UK, taking over the upper floor at Belgo. The night was a success on many fronts thanks to the help of friends that made it work, especially considering a change of venue only a few days before. Formula will be doing more events over the coming months, many of which will be invite only, so please join the mailing list at http://www.formulapromotions.com to be the first to find out about what's happening.

Personally, doing Blueprint and now Formula has been a very important learning experience for me. After stepping away from doing regular events for awhile, I was quickly reminded of how much time, energy and resources it takes to properly promote and execute on events - things I simply don't have these days with everything else I'm involved in (burn out anyone?).

So with that realization in mind, I'll be taking less of an active role in doing events and promotion, and more of a behind the scenes position, taking care of the website and design work necessary, and maybe playing the odd one. Nathan of course will continue to head up the front of things, doing a fantastic job as always.

Moving from that to the gig front, I'm extremely excited to be a part of the Millie's "Like Minded People" event coming up on Saturday, May 11. This is a unique event and concept that she's pulling together and a lot of good energy has went into it already. She's put me on the 11:40-1am slot and has requested a proper set of progressive - which of course is right up my alley! Other than my radio show, I haven't thrown down a good progressive ripper in while so I'm really looking forward to this one.

And finally, my long awaited release on Glenn Morrison's label, the remix of Forty Gun Flagship's "Forever" will be out in mid April. Turns out Glenn is doing a remix of it as well, along with my remix and the original rock and acoustic versions. I can't thank Robyn Raymond enough for the beautiful vocals on this track and whenever she decides to put pen to paper again, we'll be doing more work together with her amazing voice. Look for more details on that one soon.

Thanks again for all the support, and we're doing a few tweaks on the Area709 site at the moment to bring things up to date, along with a ton of new content from the many other talents involved. Lots of good stuff up there so if you haven't checked it out in awhile, go to http://www.area709.com