April 28th, 2011

BARATUNDE

i just had to share this video blog (thanks to paul anthony for sending this to me). this guy articulates so eloquently every single tiny thought flutter in the brains tapestry on a subject that most people can only express through sheer disgust or rage.

April 5th, 2011

zooey dog

i moved to British Columbia to start university in the fall of 1995. a week hadn’t passed before I decided to get a dog to help ordain my final departure from adolescence into the first type of adult independence one experiences when leaving home. i had just turned 19 and this beautiful 8 week old labrador was to become my right hand girl for almost the next 17 years of my life. her name was Zooey and i just wanted to write a few things in her memory.
to say i had the best dog in the world would seem cliche and it actually wasn’t the case at all in the beginning of our relationship. the truth is, i never should have been getting a dog in my freshman year in the first place, as i did not have the adequate time or space to give to her. needless to say, she was a real undisciplined menace at first and i had a very hard time trying to train her.
labs are very independent, super hyper as puppies and ridiculously food obsessed. the combination did not make for a dog who listened . i remember buying a loaf of bread each day and it taking a few weeks to realize that i hadn’t been eating this bread at all. Zooey had been jumping up on the counter and was just eating the whole thing, plastic bag and all, so as there would be no evidence to bust her with. this type of behavior was commonplace and the battle between who was boss would continue like this for years. it was war during the day, but each night she gave up temporarily to crawl into bed with me and give me glimpses of the peace to come.
now i don’t know if it was some sort of cosmic fate to have such similar personalities, but me and Zo’s complete and utter recklessness seemed to bound us together, and much like me, Zooey seemed to just get away with almost anything. there was a near drowning while trying to follow me out to surf not realizing how dangerous the water was. multiple misses of screeching cars while running away from me, god knows how many more i didn’t actually see. she was the most captured dog in victoria’s SPCA history one year with 14 impounds. i remember realizing one way to find her when she’d bolt off was to drive up and down the streets looking at all the tipped over garbage cans that she had pillaged, and when i would see a street that was untouched, i would wait till she popped out to tip them over and tackle her. she was dropped off a two story roof deck during the famous snowstorm of 96 and shook off the jump like it was just another day. she was even kidnapped and left tied to a tree for the police to find her 30 plus hours later. she really could just take a beating.
and so on went the years and she continued to be there for me. through heartbreaks and comedowns, tremendous success to complete failure multiple times. my sisters death. having to quit school. losing my mind many times. lost friends. more deaths to more heartache and set backs. but this grounding, regal, majestic, lovely animal was my constant throughout all of it. it didn’t matter what i did, where i went to, when i would be back, or how low i had fallen, i always knew she would be there for me.

Zooey, you were my friend for almost half my life and i don’t know what i would have done without you. i know you would have hung in even longer in serious pain just to stay by my side. thank you for putting up with me for as long as you did. august 25, 1995 – april 04, 2011

April 2nd, 2011

HISTORY OF DANCE.

it’s not very often and it wouldn’t be so special if it was, but every once in a while you find yourself appreciating a real beautiful moment in a cities time. where the right people in the right places have come together to make a small bit of magic happen. i feel there’s a nice change happening in vancouver where quality is starting to replace hipster irony. where promoters and djs are finding themselves having to up their game or be left behind to reign over a chongo ridden, crumbling club circuit. with enough quality programming available for people to go and see, it will naturally make the sour lemon peddlers look like the shady hucksters they are. between last month’s incredible DJ Rahaan’s debut and last night’s earth shattering Farley Jackmaster Funk performance, the night is on course to becoming one of the more exciting events to look forward to each month. Farley was the reason I wanted to learn how to dj when I saw him play in chicago 17 years ago, so having the chance to finally bring him here was a real honor. he still inspires and hasn’t lost a thing since. here is a clip of last nights Farley performance singing “I can’t turn around” and chuck roberts “my house” over top mr. fingers “beyond the clouds”. if i didn’t have proof, no one would believe me!

January 13th, 2011

quincy jones documentary

must see! thanks to Kon for the reminder.

November 14th, 2010

TOM NOBLE – LIGERVISION

I’ve known tom noble for a good 5 years now and on top of being a great friend, a fellow record junkie and one of the funniest guys i know, he is also one amazingly talented producer. this is a guy bursting with serious magic musical bombs. it’s about time he’s unleashing them.

http://clone.nl/item18297.html

November 8th, 2010

PLASTIC TO OIL MACHINE

this is just amazing. not much more to say about it.

October 28th, 2010

“LIMITATION IS THE MOTHER OF CREATIVITY” DJ HARVEY INTERVIEW

I had a chance to open for Harvey about 7 years ago at this tiny warehouse party here in vancouver. it was really just for this guys 20 odd friends who wanted to go crazy for a night. not even sure how he managed to hook the whole thing up, but i ended up playing for a couple hours and Harvey played for 4. needless to say it turned into a pretty magical evening. thinking back on it now, the whole thing seems rather decadent and i’m feeling pretty blessed to have had that experience. anyhow, i did want to share a real important lesson i learned that night, which was that dj’s don’t always have to play hard for things to be felt intensely. sometimes a slower record can be just as powerful if not even more so. Harvey is a master of taking people on a journey and more dj’s could learn from his poetic musical story telling. this is a great new interview with him and covers all the great stuff that you would expect from someone who’s seen some things. http://finn-johannsen.de/2010/10/27/dj-harvey-interview/

October 27th, 2010

EMS (electronic music studios)

i’ve been researching synthesizers lately and came across this wonderful mini doc for the one of the pioneers of music synthesis, EMS. it’s an inspiring tale of big men doing big things, with very little reward. a friend of mine has one of these and as blown away as i was hearing it, the story behind them is even more amazing. check it out.

October 19th, 2010

francois kevorkian

i read this on francois kevorkian’s blog recently and found it to be so bang on. if i hear another track posted on someone’s facebook profile that they or their circle of half wit friends made the night before, i’m going to start smashing faces as well as computers. if it’s not fit for an official release, it shouldn’t be fit for the internet. just because you get thumbs upped from a few of your reject yes men pals or got charted on some stupid internet song sharing chart, does not make you or it a hit.

“One thing that is seriously getting me puzzled has to do with the trivialization of so many things due to computers and software. Distributed intelligence, that sort of stuff?

Don’t get me wrong, I use the stuff all the time, live it, breathe it… But it would appear that there could be a parallel between the tools becoming so incredibly powerful, yet the content of most music not quite ‘resonating’ as much as it used to anymore, and us as a group collectively becoming less sensitive from the overload?
Is it the sheer volume of new things being posted daily, or the fact that music itself has lost some of the deep and subliminal hold it had on our collective consciousness? Less emotional content in new music because of the tools used to create it? Not sure.

Would love to see translated examples of 20-year old kids rushing to the store to get a certain song, or picking someone’s brain all night until morning to discover more about some producers or groups.

Maybe it used to be that there were a lot of local scenes, with long incubation periods which led to specific styles and genres slowly being created, a differentiation which has mostly vanished with today’s globalized, homogeneous music cultures and planetary-scaled sharing engines?

No more mystery, and quests? Just accelerated, exponential growth with no buffer time to even absorb and digest what is out there. So the qualities that stick are those of a song that can make an immediate impression, rather than from one that might take several rounds of listening to reveal its more delicate and subtle beauty?

Again, parallel to Darwinism, and what it might mean for the evolution of music.” FK

October 4th, 2010

FRANKIE KNUCKLES INTERVIEW MAY 1989

"TOO MANY DJ'S LACK IDENTITY. THEY SHOULD FOLLOW THEIR OWN INSTINCT, NOT OTHER PEOPLES." frankie knuckles.

dj's now need to first learn how to act with integrity, then maybe they can honestly work on an original identity. maybe i'm way past my time in understanding this thing, but it's good to know there has always been small minded hacks doing weak imitations. the cause today is simple enough: anyone can spend a few months searching around the internet for good music that you used to have to spend years and years finding in record stores. on top of that, it's free if you play digitally. then it's only a matter of convincing people that you know something about what you're doing. eventually someone's gonna buy the bullshit. so 5 years ago you played drum and bass, then you got into dubstep, then house, now you only play disco, then it will be modern soul, then northern. sure, the internet's awash in tons of genres to mess with. the question is will you play them like you mean it? like you looked for it for 10 years? like you understand it? like you payed for it? you can convince as many people as will listen, but the obvious difference is written all over your face.

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