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many things

July 9, 2007 · by · in , ,

– I played at Storm Warning this weekend, rocking the opening action. It could have been a more coherent set of trippy, pretty downtempo and ambient, but I was really pleased with the tracks I got to play. In other Pacific Front news, my remix of ‘Lost’ should be out in August or so.

– It was also made official that my tune ‘Up’ is coming on on Kompakt as Speicher 52, in early August, with a monumental remix from Perc. Thanks is really and seriously due to Perc for this one, as he did the remix and got it signed. I just provided the original ever-rising sine tone action.

– I get to see Spain play Brazil at the U-20 World Cup on Wednesday! Spain has yet to lose a game, and Brazil has only barely won one, so the smart money should be on Spain. However, things are so swingy at this level that it really comes down to who shows up on the day. Hopefully it won’t be a 1-0 bore.

battles…

July 5, 2007 · by · in ,

…are a fucking crazy band. I don’t know if they’re math rock or post jazz, but they sound like the future to me.  They also have an endearingly awkward live show – they’re showmen by virtue of passion, not slickness, and it shows.  But they’re still a crazy good band, and are very much worth seeing if you like trying to dance to weird time signatures.

academia waltz

July 5, 2007 · by · in

Just registered for Uvic this fall.
Ahhhhhhhhhh.

how to fix soccer

July 2, 2007 · by · in

I’ve been watching the U-20 World Cup, and I have been annoyed, as per usual, at the diving and simulation of injury.  This is pretty much par for the course with high level soccer.  I have two simple answers:

Faking Injury:  If you’re hurt so bad that you must leave the field, you must leave the field as soon as possible.  You do not get to come back on until at least next stoppage of play, at the ref’s discretion.  So, if you get stretchered off and then are suddenly fit as soon as you’re off the pitch, your team plays a man short until the ref decides to have you back.  And the ref does not have to be nice about this:  If he suspects you of simulation, he is within his rights to keep you off the pitch for as long as he likes.

Diving:  The yellow cards for diving help, but they’re not enough.   FIFA / UEFA / etc need people to review game tape, hand out suspensions, and provide video footage of the incidents.  Professional players should be given fines in relation to their duplicity:  a clear, no-contact dive is a week’s wages and a three-match ban.  A player going down too easily is a half-day’s wage and a post-match yellow card.

sweaty weekend: parts 1 and 2

July 1, 2007 · by · in ,

So we’ll start at the beginning:

Chris Fortier at Lotus, on Friday night. Fortier is a really, really nice guy, and he played a really, really nice, varied set.  The rave factor was much higher than the last time I saw him, which was great to hear.  Smooth mixes, lots of vinyl, and people losing their shit == good times.  Amusingly, the resident DJs hadn’t played a record in so long that they didn’t know the decks were skipping from too much bass.  Two barstool-tops ended up saving the day though.  (and yes, I know the picture is old)

Saturday night was Kid Koala with Kieren Hebden and Steve Reid, at the Commodore, as part of Jazz Fest:

Kid Kola is pretty sick, overwhelmingly happy, and has a nasty sense of humour hidden until his “Your Mom’s Favorite DJ” veneer.  He’s also an amazing turntablist.  His chief strength, though, is not his pure technical ability.  Rather, it’s the music he chooses to apply the aforementioned staggering technical ability to that sets him apart.  To badly paraphrase someone:  “Any DJ can rock a party.  Not many DJs can rock a party with doubles of Moon River.”  A great show, other than the pointless 45 minute wait for the Kid to start his set after the openers finished:

Kieren Hebden and Steve Reid are one helluva pair.  Hebden is tall, with frizzy hair, HUGE EYES, and a serpentine neck.  When he smiles, his entire face lights up, and he begins to look human.  Reid, on the other hand, is a 63 year old black man, who plays drums like a spider in the depths of religious ecstasy.  Combined, they sound…well, like Four Tet playing with a legendary jazz drummer.  What did you expect them to sound like?  I can’t recommend them enough.

receive the light

June 27, 2007 · by · in

Releases news never rains when it could pour: my remix of Dustin H’s massive ‘Receive The Light’ has just been released on Pacific Front. It’s downtempo and clever and lush, and you can buy it here.  A longer clip is here.

various things

June 24, 2007 · by · in , , ,

– Just bought The Field’s new album, FROM HERE WE GO SUBLIME, and it’s 1001 shades of lovely.

– Also got Lusine’s remix collection, PODGELISIM. It’s not as blatantly lovely, but it covers vastly more ground, with remixes from Apparat, Tejada, Lusine himself, and so on.

– Tried out the demo for PEACEMAKER. It’s not a simple game. I like it a lot. May drop the $20 on the full version.

– Been reading DMZ, which is amazing, and the LENSMAN series, which is so 1950’s-pulp as to be astonishing. Can’t recommend DMZ enough. LENSMAN is worth reading if you’re into the history of sci-fi like me.

– Finally, I made my first project in SCRATCH. I need to make it visually better, so other people can user it ,and then I’ll post it up. It’s a ‘guess-the-tone’ toy, designed to teach me basic pitch recognition.

tide pool mix #7: caleb fox – pretty girl, pretty fish

June 24, 2007 · by · in

An hour-long snapshot of modern and post-modern techno, straight out of New Westminster.  Grab it here.

ep thoughts, part 1

June 20, 2007 · by · in ,

Like I said below, I want to take the time to really analyze each track and get into the whys and wherefores of it. But I don’t have time, so you get quick hits.

Fightmagicitem:
– God, what key is this in? Such a weird track to mix.
– I *hate* the way the dotted-note bass riff sounds in the beginning.
– Really pleased with the hi-hat sounds. Normally I mix them way too hot.
– This track was originally an experiment in sounding like Luke Chable, especially in terms of drum flares.
– I was also in a phase of fucking around with the power of kickdrums, and putting them in weird places. I thought it’d be neat to have the drum fills hit blatantly harder than the main kick.
– Very happy with the melodies, including the one rip-off that I didn’t notice until I had the track mastered and done. C’est la vie.
– Is the huge triple breakdown too much? The filtered break could use a dash of reverb, for me.
– And the never-ending final swoosh is totally sick. Ha.

Rocket Summer:
– So, yeah. I wrote an electroprog tune. Sue me.
– The best part about this one is that it’s a perfect DJ tool. You start it and you’re in BIG FUCKING ELECTROSYNTH land, and you finish with a big happy melody.
– I think I stole the ending melody from Tetris. Oops.
– My friend Steve took me to task on this one, for not making two tracks out of it. As I said, it’s a perfect DJ tool, and does exactly what I wanted it to do, so there.
– Some of the panning on the drums is overactive.
– The acid-filter sweep crescendo is my favorite part of the whole song.

Strictly Ballroom:
– A hideously simple tune. It’s an arp, a bassline, a pad, a break, and some big drums.
– Isn’t that what techno is all about?
– It makes an amazing opening track. The break & fade in resets people, and the 4/4 ending lets you move out of electro into battletech.
– I originally wanted to have the arp be automated, but I couldn’t make Arpache cooperate, so I did it by hand. Took me ages, but it was worth it.
– Aftering playing it out on a few BIG SYSTEMS, I think I could have the bass a little quieter, and give the kick more room to shine.

Soft Places:
– Totally my least favorite tune on the EP. Or rather, the one that worked out the worst, to me.
– This was written to match a eponymus SANDMAN story by Neil Gaiman, and it comes close.
– Mostly, they’re mix issues. The piano is almost always too loud and too dry. But I do love my pianos.
– The big huge drum/echo/swoosh also gets too screamy. That’s the point, but it shouldn’t risk hurting ears.
– I do love the original trumpet hits and string parts though. Again, this’d be a doozey of an opening track, assuming you don’t make people run in fear.
– Really, I shouldn’t have made this a dance tune. But I do so love dancing. At some point, you can’t please both masters.
– The big synth hit is the Sandman. Duhhh.

On the EP as a whole:
Was never meant to be a single EP. God, not at all. I made 6 tracks for a demo, took one for Tide Pool (Save Vs. Wands), and sent the rest out. Oddly enough, what I thought was the strongest track, a kind of Gwill Morris-ish prog number, wasn’t picked up by Primal. Mmmph is going to put it out, eventually.

OUT NOW: Fractal – Rocket Summer EP

June 18, 2007 · by · in

Almost exactly a year after I wrote it, my debut EP of original music (on a label that isn’t my own) has been released. You can buy it on CD from the Primal Recordings website, or as a download from Beatport and fine online stores everywhere. Label promospeak follows – I will hopefully find time to write down my thoughts on the tracks, now that I’m separated from them by a year.

The Rocket Summer EP is undoubtedly the most experimental and leftfield Primal release to date, something deeper, quirkier and downright genius in our opinion.

Fightmagicitem starts off the EP, a complex layered work, offbeat drum patterns, filmscore style synths and spun-in effects…. all leading to the most glorious glitchy crescendo. Rocket Summer carries on these themes but adds tech house structures and basslines. Strictly Ballroom is the most leftfield of the tracks, seemingly random bleepy synths big basslines. Soft Places rounds off the EP with a haunting, outerspace-styled,downtempo offering.