I just put together a smattering of my favorite vocal house tracks for Loudcrowd. It’s a flash-based free web game that’s currently in beta, and is kinda like a combination between Guitar Hero and an internet radio station. They gave me a special beta invite link dealie, so feel free to head over and check it out!

You can check my guest playlist from  Jan 28th -Feb 5th @ 3, 6, 9, and 12 AM & PM.

Especially given the amount of stuff that’s been going on lately! Philly’s treating me well and I’m back in the swing of things, definitely feeling like this is my home and where I should be right now.

Some updates in brief from months prior:

NOVEMBER:

-I don’t remember much, besides that I didn’t go anywhere for Thanksgiving and was kinda bored. I think I got my contact lenses in November, that was pretty nice.

DECEMBER:

-Both my new monthly parties started! Subdivision and Smooth Sailing. They both went really well. The next Subdivision is on 2/12:

and the next Smooth Sailing is on 2/3, a week from tomorrow:

Both parties are FREE if you RSVP, so get on that!

-The KRUDMART website launched!

I’d been working on the thing on and off since Spring, so it’s great to see the thing take flight.

-I got a shiny new Macbook to replace my weary old Macbook. It’s currently in shambles on my second desk, and may or may not be revived again to serve as a secondary workstation/file server.

JANUARY:

-Opted for a mustache:

From left to right: Fluff, Mustache, Sweaterkitty, Lexie.

-Made a remix of Rad Summer cohort Figure’s track Volume Pals. It’s up on the Flufftronix myspace, and should be for sale at all self-respecting digital outlets shortly.

-Went to Cleveland to DJ with Howlermonkey, had good times. Had a ridiculously long layover:

..and that about brings things up to date. I think. I’ll try and post more but damnit, I’m not making any promises til I get this new visual overhaul I’m itching for finished (er, started).

Nothing much to speak of thus far; I’ve been to a few shows and caught a birthday romp- which actually was really fun and kinda scandalous, but I’m not in reporter mode yet.. in-depth coverage coming as soon as my partner in “journalistic” “crime” Ryan Powers arrives. CMJ coverage coming here, here, and of course on flufftronix.com

Also I’m guesting at a party Lucas from Sweatshop Labor does every Thursday at Home Sweet Home called Common Folk. Perhaps also another surprise appearance that night.. should be fun!

A few weeks ago I found out about a new music hosting site called Bandcamp; as these are a dime a dozen these days I didn’t really pay it any heed. At some point I decided to look into things a little further, and the service they offer is pretty great. You upload a lossless file, and they put it into all different sorts of formats for you (mp3, ogg, flac, apple lossless). And you can sell tracks with them as well! From now on I’ll be using their service as my music page. (Just gotta figure out what I’m gonna do for posting up mixtapes as they’re not really set up for such things..)

My favorite part about that is how you can sell tracks on a donation basis, á la Radiohead and probably at least 40% of all the DIY punk house shows I’ve ever attended. I’ll be posting up a lot on there for free but also using it for all of my digital EP/LP releasing (new stuff on the way!).

Semi-related, I just finished up on my Love Lockdown remix. After Kanye posted up the studio stems (industry jive talk for tracked out sections of a song; ie vocals, drums, keys etc. all in their own audio files) I had to go back and expand upon my original ideas.

Oh and, there’s a crazy bonus track over in my music section I won’t mention here (yet). Well I guess aside from that—go check it out!

First of all; yeah I know this has little/nothing to do with music and there are updates on the way.. I’m finally getting my music section put together and it’s gonna be real real nice! Revised Kanye remix on the way, as well as a handful more stuff including original tracks. Ya! Anyway, onto the rant.

OK so here’s my theory: Gossip Girl predicted Twitter. And grassroots protesters set the precedent for Twitter, thus.. paving the way for Gossip Girl.. I guess? Allow me to explain.

One of my favorite novelties in Hollywood is their approximation of technology. I can’t even remember how many times in 80s film and television you’ll find someone booting up a computer instantly; entirely unheard of at the time. It’s an understandable stretch, because who wants to devote 4 minutes of screen time to an Apple II-c making funny mechanical noises? It didn’t stop there though; writers seemed to either not care about relating their tech to reality or know the difference. As an audience member being asked to suspend one’s disbelief for something like John Connor’s ATM hacking—what was it, inserting a card attached to a cable ribbon attached to a word processor or something?—in Terminator 2 was pretty standard fare. This soon evolved into entirely fabricated operating systems (it’s my guess that it’s just easier to have the CGI guys throw something together than to try and film a computer screen without things looking all wonky) and platforms that are often pretty removed from what’s feasible or possible. Movies set in the future were great at this too: so often techonology that was purposefully ridiculous or impossible has been surpassed by real, actual development (still no hoverboards though, damnit!).

There’s also many instances of contemporary technology being more imagined than documented; where a writer will try to pass something as standard fare for whatever reason. Up until recently I felt that way about Gossip Girl; specifically the eponymous blog often heard as narration throughout the program. Writing about the Upper West Side elites who make up most of the show’s cast, the anonymous author sends out brief and catty updates dishing out rumors and secrets everyone’s cell phones, and receives tips in the same way.

This was one of those ridiculous, infeasible occurrences to me for a few reasons. While sending and receiving multimedia mail is a simple and obviously believable activity for rich kids to be engaged in, a year and a half ago when the show began there was no easy way to broadcast messages over SMS besides mass texting. Big corporate sites have been doing it for awhile, but for something a kid would put together to correspond with his or her Blogspot site? Pretty unthinkable. But whatever, I thought, it was an interesting premise nonetheless and still seemed pretty feasible, at least in the near future.

Fast forward to this Summer, in between GG seasons a hybrid SMS/web service called Twitter began booming in popularity. While not the first platform to mix text messaging and the social web, it quickly became the first to crossover into non-nerd (or at least very specialized interest) territory. Users texting Twiiter about their scandalous, late night escapades is on its way to becoming as common as the drunk dial. Others can then become “followers” of someone’s Twitter feed, and get updates sent directly to their phones. Were Gossip Girl to exist in real life, it would definitely involve Twitter. I’m not saying I think the people who started Twitter saw Gossip Girl and decided to start a web 2.0 venture, but the concept of a platform like it being used en masse is definitely one of the show’s selling points.

But where did the whole concept of the SMS/web hybrid come from? Back as far as 2004 I was aware of homespun services for mass text messaging. TXTMOB is the example I’m thinking of here; a grassroots, decentralized messaging system implemented over SMS as a means of quickly passing on information. Specifically this was used to a certain degree of success in coordinating the protests of both the DNC and RNC conventions that Summer: someone would say, spot a mass arrest going down at a certain intersection and send out a text about it. alerted instantly would be legal observers, street medics, independent media, and whoever else had subscribed.

I was expecting a more commercial, apolitical implementation of TXTMOB to come about much sooner than 4 years after it was first experimented with at the DNC and RNC protests. But in the meantime using such a platform had to become acceptable and practical; I remember using TXTMOB was some of the first text messaging I ever did and I’m generally pretty up on such things. So all the elements for a SMS/Web platform to become mainstream just weren’t there yet. These days people not involved in Twitter generally are a little bewildered as to what it’s for, but can grasp the concept and be sold on it in a couple minutes. And while it’d be a huge stretch to say Gossip Girl’s responisble for that, it’s not a huge stretch to say GG participated in shifting the paradigm to the point that it’s at now.

Where am I going with all this? Haven’t a clue. I mostly just wanted to get this stuff out so I’m not thinking about writing it any more, and I can say, “Toldja so!” when Wired writes a retrospective on the subject in a few years..

So like everyone else I checked out the new Kanye track earlier this week. And like most, I was a little let down. Great concept, less than stellar execution. Being someone who’s inevitably going to be asked to play this song on the regular for probably months to come, I whipped up a version I’d be psyched to spin. And hey YOU CAN HAVE IT FOR FREE!

KANYE WEST - LOVE LOCKDOWN (FLUFFTRONIX EDIT) (320kbps) (ysi)

Come out and see me spin if you’re in the area(s):

9/14 - Philadelphia, PA - Bar Noir w/Ian St. Laurent

9/19 - Pittsburgh, PA - The Final Murdercola party! w/Djunkt, JHN RDN, Sweatshop Labor DJs

9/26 - Bloomington, IN - Rad Summer Dance Party w/Action Jackson and Everything Continues

10/2 - Montreal, QC - Pop Montreal @ Coda

10/31 - Bloomington, IN - Rad Summer Hallowe’en Jamboree

(More dates in the works as always)

First came a post about ice cream, now just regular type..

You’ve probably by now heard a track called Cream by Frederico Franchi. It was one of the biggest jimjams of the Spring/Summer of ‘07 (I remember first hearing it on a video of a Busy P set; dude was wearing a necklace made of giant melon-sized shiny balls), and has been on heavy rotation ever since. In fact Pitbull just used the beat for a track featuring Lil Jon called Crazy. It’s pretty good.

Pitbull ft. Lil Jon - Crazy

BUT the main point of this post is that I just came across a remix of Joachim Garraud (perhaps most well known for remixing Love is Gone) which Franchi’s done. He put out a track called Pears a little while ago which I think was supposed to be Cream II, but I didn’t really hear much more than a hook to it. This one though, it’s got Franchi’s signature synth sound and BAAAAAAANGZ. I’m so hyped to hear this on a club system and I think you’ll like it a lot too.

Joachim Garraud - Back From Space (Frederico Franchi remix) (ysi)

While I’m perusing my RSS reader there’s one thing that makes me cringe and move to the next post faster than anything else—bloggers sounding like A&R pplz. Unless you’re a good writer it’s really easy to tell when someone’s feigning interest in something and that usually ends up giving me a worse impression of whatever subject is at hand than if I hadn’t even heard of it in the first place. I wish people would quit doing that!

Amongst the writers on which I can always count on for good, genuinely excited recommendations is Louisahhh!; a LA-via-NY DJ who’s half of Staccato and holds it down at Turntable Lab during those ungodly daylight hours. She’s way into house music and pretty much just posts stuff she’s crazy about. Which is great because she has impeccable taste (ie: pretty much the same as me) and is pretty funny too.

Over at her current home in blogtown Dream Big Dream Free she’s just posted a brilliant track from Chicago DJ/Producer Andre Harris called Ten Things Not to Say to a DJ. If you’re not a DJ, listen and learn. If you are, catch da lulz and be all “O MAN I HEARD THESE THINGS LIKE 8 TIEMS IN AN HOUR ONCE LOL”

Andre Harris - Ten Things Not to Say to a DJ (ysi)

About a year and a half ago, during some oddly warm days of late Winter/early Spring I was crashing at Jess Jubilee’s apartment in Williamsburg. I found it hilarious that pretty much at the very moment when it became short sleeve weather outside, the ice cream trucks began blaring down the streets as if they’d been impatiently idling in garages ever since late September. That afternoon I made a track called Softee’s Theme; a pretty simple Bmore edit of a popular ice cream truck song. This afternoon in Philly I heard one go by and thought about playing it out again.. which I may or may not do, but you should grab it if you want it!

Extra points if anyone can tell me where the vocals are sampled from..

Flufftronix - Softee’s Theme (ysi)

My favorite clothing label Mishka just put a mix of mine up! Woowoo.

1. Intro
2. Outrageous Cherry - If You Want Me
3. Acid Jacks - Brainss!
4. Jape - Floating (Bobmo remix)
5. DJ Big Red - Jakybodi
6. Caren Monique - Rock Me Tonight
7. DJ Falcon - Unplugged
8. Electronet - Funk Legacy
9. DJ Pumpkin Patch - Dooby Bras <— this track is fucking awesome
10. Boy 8-Bit - The Things That Freeks Are Made Of
11. MIA - World Town
12. SebastiAn - Dog (Choreo edit)
13. 1,000 brokenbeat Deejays - Supernaut
14. Destroy Disco - Fly or Bounce (Jokers of the Scene remix)
15. Flufftronix - Machines Don’t Come (MDC+K7)
16. 2 Pistols - She Got It (Instrumental)
17. Drop the Lime - Hear Me (Monster Mosh 4×4 dub)
18. Drop the Lime - NYC Massacre
19. DJ Godfather - What U Workin’ Wit
20. DJ Deeon - Ride This MF
21. Raziek - Shella Ju
22. DJ Godfather - Scooby Snacks
22. DJ Slugo - G.O.Y.K. & B.D.
23. DJ Venom - Slugz
24. Cadence Weapon - House Music (A1 Bassline remix)
25. Flufftronix - Flash Knights
26. Math Head - Get Hype
27. Brian Eno - Baby’s On Fire
28. Lenny De Ice - We Are I.E. (Drums of Death remix)
29. DJ Will Roc - The Piano Man
30. Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down (Duke Dumont reconstruction)
31. Lali Puna - Contratempo
32. Zegota - Sleepwalkers

available streamin at mishkanyc.com or for download at zshare