2011 Recap: Prison Garde + 2 FREE MIXES

Not much of an intro needed here. We’ve long been indebted to Prison Garde for guidance & inspiration – in 2011, it was gratifying to see him get some appropriate shine. His gallery in the heart of Gastown – Catalog – was jam packed with tight exhibitions all year, playing host to some heavy openings & the odd social shindig. And as always, PG was all over the design tip, flexing with his new night Yours Truly & fully unfurling the Prison Garde brand.

But MUSICALLY… fuuuuuuck. The one Robert Squire really took it there in 2011. After a solid few months of ripping parties & remixes, the Prison Garde full length finally rolled out earlier this year (via this very website) to much internet hi-fiving. The dude subsequently went on to be like “BLAOW” and fuck up the game with his new live set, which debuted at Rifflandia. Armed with an Elektron Machinedrum & a shit ton of original riddims, Prison Garde live is now an undeniable beast that needs to be felt to be believed. And if that wasn’t enough, Garde Mayne & our dood Kevin Eames went and dropped BRICKS earlier this month. If you don’t know already, it’s a loose, throbbing, sexed-up set of drum machine beats & synth lines for dark dancefloors & late nights. We are so proud.

Constantly going over & above, PG delivers 2 mixes here, one for the Kitchen house party & another for the d-flo.

We love this man dearly.

DOWNLOAD PG’s HOUSE PARTY MIX   |  DOWNLOAD PG’s LATE NITE CLUB MIX

Prison Garde: 2011. Well, that was quite a year.

Pubstep happened, and the bros got all snowboardy in the club. White girls dropped a lot of N bombs (Fuck Kreashawn). People did a lot of K, some of them got trapped in the hole. People ripped off a lot of each others music/styles, especially in fashion (dear AF1 set, you look stupid in Redwings, but I will take that over shooting people over J’s) and the DSLR filmmaking circles (that shallow depth-of-field thing is getting real tired, real fast). Some dudes even got territorial and pissy about tunes. Those were the negatives… there weren’t that many, really, at least not for me.

I spent my time running a gallery… did the RBMA tour, chilled at the beach, wrote some music, fucked around, got drunk, got a tattoo machine, rode bikes… and had fun. Seemed to make me a lot more happy than worrying about what other folks are on to.

I was really jacked to see the return of gully R&B this year, and spent most of my time locked in on some drummachines and synths with the dudes Kevin Eames and Ryan Lindow. There are two free LPs of material that I released this year (PRISON GARDE Système Hermès & GARDE & EAMES Bricks), feel free to go cop those if you are feeling them. So much good times. Nouveau Palais (Ango, Lunice and Myself) up next. Can’t wait for people to hear these songs.

Prince owned my show of the year… but was closely followed by nights with Prosumer, Greene, Kingdom, Todd Edwards, Monolithium, Lunice. Thank you for the tunes dudes.

My general motto for 2011 was “Build it and they might come” (and sometimes they even did! if you made it out to any of the Yours Truly or sub|div parties, thank you so much for the support, we have some bigger things in store for 2012!).

Let me say that a lot of people that should be on my top tunes of 2011 mixes aren’t, mostly because I didn’t want to seem like the dude that just rides out for his team and doesn’t know other music outside of it. Songs by Ango, Xi, Lunice, Kevin Eames, Nautiluss, Salva, Sinjin Hawke, Monolithium, Max Ulis, Frank Grimes, Self Evident, Calamalka, Cure, HXDB and a lot of the other homies could have easily fit into my favourite tunes this year. Some other tunes that I wanted to throw in the mix just weren’t flexing right (stuff like Kevin McPhee, Sepalcure, SBTRKT, Distal, Kuedo, Actress, XXXY, That Hudmo P.P. 12″, Rustie’s LP, Zomby, Object, the new Weeknd mixtape, Action Bronson, Kendrick Lamar, The Dream, Lorn and Dolor) but man! really there was so much good in every genre of music this year, almost too much to keep up on…! Then there was bunch of stuff I just had horrible quality versions of… the quarterly ‘below 256k clean-sweep’ that I did a few weeks ago knocked out a bunch of things that should have ended up on here. I really should have also done a modern-boogie producers mix for 2011, as there was a ton of heat in that department as well, most notably the Ango LP, The BBravo x Broken Haze E.P. and Krystal Klear things.

Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver & Victoria Fam, Much Love. It was nice kicking it with all of you throughout the seasons, come hang out on the west coast anytime.

Dear Germany, consider yourself lucky for all the talent you copped from North America this year, you owe Canada a beer.

Anyways, without any further wait, here are some tunes I was feeling this year in the form of two mixes. I gotta say, in general I was feeling a lot more club tunes than the last couple of years, and I like where all this beat music is crossing into different tempos/feels. I hope you enjoy the mixes.

For 2012 I am looking for a weekly DJ residency somewhere in Vancouver with a good sound and low attitude, and am down to rock any kinda Live P.A. things.. holler at the kid if you wanna build / like good music played right : info@prisongarde.com

DOWNLOAD PRISON GARDE’s 30 Minute House Party…

A$AP ROCKY – Peso
KIRKO BANGS – Drank In My Cup
KANYE/JAY-Z – Niggas in Paris
JUICY J – A Zip & a Double Cup
UNCLE MURDA – Warning [The Town Edit]
LIL WAYNE & DRAKE – She Will
TYLER – Yonkers
CHRIS BROWN – Look At Me Now
YELAWOLF & LIL’ JON – Hard White
PROJECT PAT – Kelly Green
DRAKE & RICK ROSS – Lord Knows
LIL WAYNE & CORY GUNZ – 6ft 7ft
JAI PAUL – BTSTU
WEEKND – Glass Table Girls
JUVENILE & RICK ROSS – Power

One Comment

1. Sub|division’s 2011 recap: Prison Garde | Philippe Sawicki

   December 26, 2011

   [...] Prison Garde‘s recap is one of the most interesting read, maybe because it is one of the most insightful introspection of all, coming from someone well-versed in the ins and outs of the business with a wide array of influences. Like a breadth-first search of inspiration coupled with a depth-first search of thoroughness. [...]