Shack is a very busy man but he has finally started to compile diary entries from his travels. Since Shack is so bad at them, he started with his July 2004 travels (yes it is November now, he knows that) but it is well worth the read? you be the judge!

[Note: Shack is really bad at diaries but he finally decided to start writing them, since his schedule is not as hectic now, he will probably write more of them. So he started with July 2004, which is posted here and more will come]

elite force : word from the front-line : july ‘04

July 2004 will go down as a full-bodied month - a big, brash 14.5% Chilean Cabernet. What goes before will become plain, but the month ends with a mad dash to get our hay crop bailed & stored under cover before the familiar smell of rain-on-concrete scuppers all the good work and ruins the harvest; all of this is given the added kick of
happening literally hours before we shut up shop & down tools for a badly needed vacation.....the car is packed, the dogs are primed, and we are mired in a stubbly brown field, trying desperately to stack 200 giant bales in our barn with a flaming throat that feels like I’ve been gargling glass. This may have little relevance to the breakbeat-baloney muso-chat you may have been expecting, but the tequila cocktails we
kicked back on when the last bale was hoisted up must surely have a universal resonance. The best holidays are always the ones you feel you deserve the most - and this is no exception.

The month had started on slowburn, with a couple of weekly strongarm sessions at Breaks FM. It always gives me a real injection of enthusiasm, just playing to an ever-increasing bunch of people I now consider friends, even if the 60-mile trip to the studio can be harsh. I’m still holding out for broadband to come to the farm - it will, but
not until the middle of next year - the impact that’ll have on the way I function will be incalculable & I’ll reckon on saving myself at least a day a week, not to mention a small fortune in travel costs. When I lived in London, I had broadband for years, and having had to regress to dial-up has been purgatorial, and would be to anyone who pimps the
net as hard as I do.

Because the summer’s been a poor one weather wise, it’s meant working in the studio’s felt less like a chore (or a furnace) & after a layoff of several months to go off & support the Bedrock Breaks comp, Pember’s back for a two-day Meat Katie Vs Elite Force collaboration. We’re just starting work in earnest on an album together which should form a major body of next year’s output and these two days are all about getting
some rough ideas down to punt out to potential vocalists. We fly through the ideas - him sourcing from his laptop & me cobbling together some sequences and before you can say ‘let’s have a pub lunch’, we have three pretty decent working arrangements.

Playing out feels like fuel for the studio sessions, and vice versa. It’s been an inspirational year for music, really kick-started by a fine WMC in Miami, and July’s dates really put the seal on a lot of what’s gone before. A return visit to Limited Edition in Southampton kicks things off in fine fettle: the night’s run by my old friend Colin
of Surreal Madrid, & they’ve built a really solid, intimate crowd down there who trust the night & trust the DJ. I get home after dawn & grab a few hours sleep before heading up to London to play a couple of sets, firstly at the TCR all-day barbecue, and subsequently at Hum. The barbeque’s mobbed by the time we get there, with sun-kissed casualties strewn over the railings, bizarre leafy cocktails going down like water
and a harsh, bass-free school disco PA. Of course, this being an event loosely conducted by Pippa, everything runs surprisingly smoothly and by the time the bar calls a halt to the revelry, they will have taken over £10,000.

Hum has moved into another league - that much is clear as we walk into the massive ‘Canvas’ down at Kings Cross Goods Yard. Just over two years ago, Rennie & Mark started the night at a tiny bar in the heart of Chinatown. A handful of producers would turn up each fortnight & prop up the bar regaling each other with blokey chat about ‘plug-ins’, & would palm off CDR's to one another. The line-ups were as good as
they are now, but it’s a mark of their determination and the scene’s rude health that tonight’s event pulls in 1400 people. By 1am the doors are shut & I’m midway through my set with a sea of arms raised aloft with Pember & Rennie grinning from ear to ear the side of the booth - the only cause for concern is that I think I put my shoulder out with an overly enthusiastic air-punch!

The following weekend starts early with a much anticipated return to Hungary and two shows with the fabulous Chi crew, Kevin & Naga, whose genius as DJs is sadly overlooked outside their native country. This time I have the pleasure of Chris Carter’s company for the duration of the trip and he’s already looking less than fresh-faced before the flight leaves Heathrow on Thursday morning....fool man! He’ll need all
his wits about him if he’s going to make it to the Glade Festival back in the UK on Saturday. That night we play their own weekly Ablak-a-Dubra event, that’s been running for several years now. In Budapest there’s a fine tradition of free outdoor parties throughout the summer, all at venues who have long since dispensed with such
formalities as ‘entrance fees’ and as a result of this (and the expert, tireless efforts of the Chi crew) tonight’s rammed and the crowd are massively receptive. There’s something special about these hungarian parties - I just love the vibe at 5am, when there are still 100 or so people, just totally sucked into the groove - it’s a prefect chance to take it as deep as u like. We retire to Naga’s around 7am.

Being an early bird, I barely sleep. Fatal, stupid. Always sleep when you’re given the opportunity. Should know that by now. Rats. After a shambolic day (of which there’s little more than a faint residue) it’s already 9pm & we’re haring along, wildstyle, towards the town of Tokaj in North Eastern Hungary. Carter’s on excellent form, having gone to
bed, got up, chucked his load, and returned happily to bed - the tequilas & palenka from last night hit him hard....but tonight there’s a palpable excitement in the air once more, as the four of us are taking over the dance tent at this huge annual festival. Arriving onsite from the interminable darkness of the motorways, we plunge into
festival chaos with plumes of smoke rising all around and the vagrant shadows dancing in this makeshift shanty town. The tent’s a real surprise - it’s huge, state of the art, wooden floored, with a booooming sound system. Naga kicks things off and the evening blurs into high point after high point - the house/techno mashup I’ve done of
Driving Me Crazy seems to work a treat, and there are numerous other moments of rock’n’roll carnival. As we close out the show, the four of us go back to back, and when the system’s switched off at 5.30am, there’s still no space on the floor.

And then comes the killer move. In order to get to the Glade Festival back in the UK in time for Carter’s set at 4pm, we have to leave for Budapest airport. Immediately. It’s a three-hour drive. We do it in a little over two, culminating in some French connection type shit as we career over cobblestones at close to 70. It’s madcap, but it gets us
there. The flight’s full, cramped & airless. I’ve felt better. Thankfully it doesn’t take much more than an hour & a half to get to the Glade, but I decide to stop en route to chill in the summer sun before entering the festival fray. The site’s impressively rural, and compared to the militaristic order of Glastonbury (from which the Glade
originated), this is a blissfully renegade affair, and there’s no means of getting to the stage I’m playing on except to slog my way up a dusty, rutted farm track. Jeeesus, it feels like miles in the heat, and the dodgy castors on my box were never designed as all-terrain.

By all accounts, last night had been a wild one, and it’s obvious that things won’t really get going again until the sun eases up, with the notable exception of the turbo-dayglo-nutters who’re whipping up a dust storm underfoot, to the constant barrage of psy-trance. There’s a real range of music on offer, all falling under the broad remit of
‘electronic’ - in one tent you can feel the icy blast of drill’n’bass from Mike Paradinas, whilst across the field there’s a warmer glow, with deep house nestling alongside the rare groove of the glade cafe, whilst out on the perimeters lie the bombed-out fringes that make festivals like this about something more than music. Carter hits the
stage at 4pm and things are ticking over nicely. The backstage area’s already turning into a who’s who of breaks, and it’s a rare opportunity to hook up with everyone in one place. I’m on at 8.30pm after Terry Hooligan & Jay Cunning - they’re smashing the place with a proper high-energy mix & scratch set which is so far removed from my style it makes for a hard act to follow. I’ve no real choice but to pull it right back from the brink & build it up again over the hour & a quarter, which works well & by the time JDS take over, the place is swinging. Getting off site for the crushing drive home is a riot, but I head home & finally crash some time after midnight, back on the sanity
of the farm.

The last weekend of the month is my first visit to Prague (as a DJ) to play at the legendary Roxy for the Breaksome crew. It’s obvious that breaks is in its’ infancy in the Czech Republic and this is a bold move - the Roxy’s a large venue and the institution as far as live & club nights go in Prague. The residents are kicking things off, but oh my
god they’re going at it too hard & too fast for a space that’s slowly filling up. As they pull bigger & bolder bassline destroyaz out of the box, you can watch people wandering into the room, visibly shaken by the assault on offer, when what they’re looking for is the warm embrace of an early evening sound to draw them in. This is something that
happens far too often - more often than not you’ve got to look at the night as a whole and sacrifice the dream of seeing people bouncing off the walls for the greater good....it’s what makes a good DJ. With no choice but to axe the last track, I lose 10 bpms from the counter and start from scratch & within a couple of tracks the floor’s filled up & the evening’s off on a flyer. During the set, I’m being played by vodka
shots. Normally I’d refuse, but it’s the beginning of a degeneration that’s truly complete when I wake up with a baseball team striking out inside my skull. Four hours sleep, pissed and hungover, it’s a genuinely horrendous trip back to the UK.....but with the imminent promise of two weeks’ holiday with the wife & dogs up in the remotest
wilds of Scotland, all I can do is smile through the pain.