Posts tagged with "chicago"

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)

I can’t ever remember posting about the really fast shit I love to play; pretty much whenever I get the chance to speed things up from 130-140 to 150-160 I’ll do it. Some Ghettotech and rock will probably get played, and of course some Juke. Juke’s some really fast music that’s been coming out of Chicago the past 8 years or so, characterized by rapid fire toms and hats, along with some strong sub bass. Some of it sounds pretty similar to ghettotech; some of it’s a lot more abstract and minimal.

Some tracks to check out from DJ Gant-Man and Shady TVO after the jump. (more…)

A project I worked on earlier this year has been in the tubes for awhile, and has just been spat out onto the internets: PORTISHEAD REIMAGINED. It’s an album consisting of remixes entirely sourced from Portishead’s album Third; released for free by my Chicago peeps Noise/Floor Crew.

The track I did is called Threads; it’s a dreary downtempo slow burner I attempted to rework into a dreary uptempo banger. Came out a little more strobe lighty than I was going for—and I did have another version in the works but I it went way too far out there into pitch slide arpeggio-land.

Anyway. Here’s my track:

Portishead - Threads (Flufftronix remix)

Check out Trash Menagerie for links to the rest of the tracks individually or just grab the .zip and call it a day.

*(yes I know it’s actually called Portishead Reimagined, but when I downloaded it I coulda sworn it said “reimaged” so imma go with that)

(more…)

Unedited, slight portions of 4am embarrassment ahead:

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Last Friday I went to the free DJ tent on 6th St. at Lotus Festival, not really knowing what to expect. As I’m sure many of you know, world music and world beat—deservedly—don’t really have the best reputation. It’s always seemed like a Disneyland diversity to me; sampling traditional music from all over the globe, united in that it’s all quirky and loveable when brought to your stereo, ipod, small town, etc.
I don’t mean to knock on it too much; there are certainly parallels in the electronic music scene, what with the baile funk and such. I play that stuff out whenever it seems appropriate, and practically salivated over Beat Diaspora’s account of a Brazilian baile with dueling soundsystems the length of gymnasiums. Granted I’d love to go see it first hand, it’s not something I’ve ever done or am likely to do in the next year or so (give me two). I’d like to think that the party music crowd is made up equally of people all over the place, and not really a primarily white middle-american audience consuming more vibrant cultures like the impression I get from world music. Then again, for the sake of music in America we certainly need more MIAs and Konono No. 1’s.. I dunno.

Anyway, so I’m at this DJ tent and dudes from Balkan Beatbox come on stage, set to DJ off their ipods and cd booklets. I wasn’t that impressed at this point, having been waiting an hour and a half at this point and sticking around mostly to flyer for that weekend’s Electrocute party. And the first set was exactly what I feared: tame, conservative, unblended. At some point a song got cued up that was sampled on the new Basement Jaxx song “Hey You,” and I climbed up onto the pretty large stage where a small group of folks were dancing and joined in. Somewhere in the next fifteen minutes, the mood shifted a lot; it felt a lot like the earlier stuff dudes were playing was just covering bases. A series of klezmer tunes somehow catalyzed the young crowd and pretty soon the whole stage was full of people, just in time for a Gogol Bordello song. And shit, the stage literally almost collapsed (the DJ table did actually collapse at one point, though it was caught before hitting the floor!).

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From there on out there was a baile funk block, and some dancehall, and plenty other stuff I don’t quite remember. There was a Mt. Eerie show at Hospital going on at the same time, but I just couldn’t pull myself away. Loud party music with a raucous crowd in the middle of the street on a Friday night: does it get any better? Sorry Mr. Elverum, I was not willing to find out.

In putting together Electrocute stuff and trying to book events in town here, I think a lot about all the untapped potential in small to medium-sized towns like this. And how people here will be much more open and excited about music they’ve never heard before, given the little culture that goes on here compared to places like NYC, LA, Chicago, or even Louisville or Cincinnati. I really think DJ Shot’nez got away with playing all kinds of great, locally unpopular kinds of music not because he’s Dude From Balkan Beatbox, but because he had a loud soundsystem in a high foot traffic area on a Friday night. Alter the setting and the goals a little bit, and these kinds of situations can get even more amazing..

Six weeks! No vehicle yet! But it’s cool this will be awesomes! I’m not planning any stops because I know stuff will fall through, and those will be the breaks. Man I’m so excited about this:

4/1 - Madison, IN *
4/2 - Cincinnati, OH *p
4/3 - Bloomington, IN *p
4/4 - Indianapolis, IN *p
4/5 - Columbus, OH *p
4/6 - Dayton or Bowling Green, OH*
4/7 - Slutfest, Madison, WI
4/8 - Slutfest, Madison, WI
4/9 - Milwaukee, WI *p
4/10 - Minneapolis, MN *p
4/11 - Chicago, IL *
4/12 - Detroit/Ann Arbor, MI
4/13 - Cleveland, OH *
4/14 - Pittsburgh, PA *
4/15 - Buffalo, NY
4/16 - Toronto, ON
4/17 - Ottawa, ON
4/18 - Montréal, QC
4/19 - VT
4/20 - Boston, MA
4/21 - Providence, RI *
4/22 - CT *
4/23 - CT *
4/24 - Poughkeepsie, NY *
4/25 - Long Island, NY
4/26 - Brooklyn, NY *
4/27 - ?
4/28 - Bronxville, NY *
4/29 - ABC No Rio hopefully? and somewhere else mayhap?
4/30 - Bethlehem/Allantown PA *
5/1 - Philly, PA *
5/2 - Baltimore, MA
5/3 - DC *
5/4 - Richmond, VA
5/5 - Raliegh/Durham, NC
5/6 - R/D/Chapel Hill, NC
5/7 - Greensboro, NC *
5/8 - Asheville, NC
5/9 - Athens, GA
5/10 - Chatanooga, TN
5/11 - Nashville, TN
5/12 - Bowling Green, OH *
5/13 - Louisville, KY *
5/14 - Bloomington, IN *

I definitely need help getting a show in the cities with no asterisks. If you live in a city with an asterisk, I will probably be asking you about a show some time soon. Yup!

OK. So. New Year’s Resolutions:

-Try to address people by their name when saying hello to them.
-Cut the bullshit out of my life.
-Tell people how I feel about them, worry less about saying the right thing.
-Keep good on promises and exchanges; especially those involving the postal service (as in parcels, not emo beats)

2005 was a test of my limits, and then getting ready for awesome. 2006 will be following through on the awesome, setting realistically sweet goals and attaining them. I will also set the record straight socially in 2006; and have the friends that I want to have and get over my social anxieties through a combination of thinking things through in new and more insightful ways, and actually controlling my physical self better to attain my goals.

I will also take care of myself very well this year, financially, physically, spatially and emotionally. I will continue to support myself through design and programming. I will keep myself well-nourished and exercised and push my limits (ie: bike trip to Chicago).

I might get a girlfriend, I might just learn how to have short-term crap more effectively. It should be easier to take care of with self-confidence and the different modes of overcoming social anxiety I plan to undertake.

I’ll respect my own boundaries of time and energy. I won’t over-commit myself.

I will get my passport. I will go to Europe. I will play music there. I will make more private entries, because shit is actually like having a journal. Fuck everyone else! Mwahaha. I am writing this for ME and it feels great.

Matt and Kim! Well, just Matt in this picture.
But there are others.

Some time around 6pm, with still little of a plan for the evening, I chanced upon a posting on a message board about Japanther playing at a bar in Chicago. Which is wonderful, because I totally missed seeing them and Matt and Kim just weeks earlier in Brooklyn, leaving town because of the impending transit strike of doom. It was a wonderful night and I took some pictures.

I also ran into one ex-girlfriend from four years ago (just minutes after asking someone else if she was said lady), one high school acquaintance I last saw probably seven years ago, and some former/current Kalamazoo folks. And then the party I was going to in Wicker Park got shut down. I ran into people from the show all night long, it was like being in Bloomington and seeing everyone after a show at Rockit’s or some such, after saying goodnight to them.

My favorite thing about holidays, by far, is how they transform the normative moods people have. Most everyone both at the show and just walking around Wicker Park was so friendly, so outgoing and convivial. I wish every day random people would play drums on the corner until the cops came, and talk to me about typefaces in taco joints (him: man, impact is the best. i use it on banner ads all the time. me: dude, you need to check out helvetica neue. it will change your life), and rock out so hard that you’ll spend the next year wondering if every show you’re at was as good as this one.

Which really brought me back to spite towards alcohol. Not to the people who drink it really. But moreso the culture that encourages people sector off portions of their lives for acting crazy, that cripples peoples’ natural abilities to be spontaneous and free, and declares that such things are really only possible if you destroy your innards and pocketbook in the process. But really, that’s just a sidenote. What a great night.