for the google record:

leenie is cute.

There.

tonight, on too damn late!

Or rather, Sunday Morning, for those of you that are keeping track.  I’m going to be playing at Dust-Up 2, with Cory, from 0630 AM to “can’t”, on Saturday night.  I hear tell there are other djs playing, but as far as I’m concerned, those are merely vicious rumours.  I hope to see you there.

when you’re this BT, they call you Mister.

So all y’all haters who didn’t make it down to Hush to see BT play really did miss out.

Somewhat to my surprise, to be honest, he pulled a monsterous Ableton set out of his laptop, complete with hordes of tastefully epic effects, thunderous drum hits, as well as the vocals from ‘Dreaming’, almost all of ‘Flaming June’, and then ‘Loves Comes Again’ and ‘Somnambulist’ to close. The man is, as is his reputation, in to his music. He’s also a serially nice guy, even though he knocked the power-cord to the amp out by accident when he was setting up.

Other highlights of the evening include BT using my headphones, BT finising his set, stopping the music, yelling “Fuck Yeah!”, and sweeping offstage majestically…into the girl’s washroom, then coming back to encore. Then there was Matt attacking Braeden with his record crate. And Dave bringing me the shot of Wild Turkey (which is why all the pictures he took are blurry). And Matt playing his lovely new Freeform Five remix, and me getting to play my new tune ‘Rocket Summer’ out, and so on. A lovely night, all in all.

Welcome To The Tide Pool

It is with much fear, trepadition, excitment, and general school-girl-esq giddyness that I announce that TIDE POOL IS LIVE.  (<-- click there to visit the new site) *flare of trumpets*

left write wrong

I was working on a tune with Steve Surly, of Narcisse Blonde fame, and we got to discussing the use of ideas and hooks when writing “dance music”. I have a habit of trying to cram lots of ideas into a single track – mostly because I get bored easily.

Of late, I’ve started to write stuff that introduces a new hook or riff or idea, and then doesn’t bother to justify it or fully explore it. For example, I just finished a really bassline / fx driven thing that’s about 6:30 long and has a gigantic pad + melody that appears over the end and outro. The track never comes back to full steam with the melody though.

Steve was saying that I should try and keep those ideas to seperate tracks and double my musical output. It seems to me that if every riff had to be the centerpiece of a track, things would get boring fairly quickly. To use the above example, I like the idea of a track that has a melody fill at the end, both as a setup for more melodic music, or just as a brief interlude before going back to more techy / bassline business.

As a DJ, things like that help the flow of my sets, if I use them properly. And I’m by no means saying that *every* track should be structured like this, or that Steve’s wrong and I’m right. There’s always room for 6 minutes of basslines and good drum programming – but there’s also room for 8 minutes of thematic transition, or 4 minutes of hihats, and so on and so on and so on.

do it like deko-ze

Deko-ze is my favorite DJ in the whole world.  If you ever get a chance to see him, take it.

what a goal

For anyone who is local to Victoria and who likes playing soccer, there are two games that happen near my house on Monday night – one is at the field at Sir James Douglas, and one is at the field right next door, on Brooke Street.  Go to Google Maps and search for “Brooke Street, Victoria, BC”, and you should be able to find both fields.  I generally play, and badly, at the Brooke park game.

(Also, Davin and myself finished up the next Royal Assassin tune last night, and it is looking to be out on Pacific Front sometime soon.  Hazzah!)

the russians are coming

One of the things I’ve always said is that no one should be allowed to enter politics until they’ve played Civilization:

Not only is it a spectacular game that offers all kinds of insight in to running an city, tribe, empire, monarchy, and so on, it also demonstrates just how easy it is to be horrible to other people. How many of you, when you played it, broke alliances, invaded your allies, and generally drove people underfoot like so much cattle? Do I see some raised hands? Yes, I think I do.

Now there’s a second must-play for all of you who want to rule the world: Defcon:


Defcon, which is roughly a simulation of a global thermonuclear war, is an important game for politicians for two reasons. One, it’s multiplayer. Two, you can alter alliances in the middle of the game. Hello, Machiavelli. The chances for abusive diplomacy are just shockingly high.

So call up your country’s leader and ask them: have they ever tamed all the barbarians and brought peace to the world? Have they ever knocked out all of an ally’s radar with submarines before launching a precise tactical strike, saving their nation in the process?

I mean, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d vote for anyone who’s done both.

earplug weekend

Let’s just hit some highlights from a memorable and exhausting few days:

–  Standing in the parking lot at Apex with my records, two tanks of gas for the generators, and the promoter’s sister, debating if we should just set the parking lot on fire and leave.

– Hanging from some scaffolding at VEMF on Sunday night, watching a full Centinnial Square dance around to Adrienne Sanchez

– 0500 Saturday night now, playing twisted techno with Caleb at Apex, so much so that someone decided to pitch his sleeping bag right in front of our speakers, and nod his head to sleep.

– Going to bed about as hard as possible on Sunday night at 0200.  Good times.

vemf & apex!

Oh, and by the way, this long weekend is both VEMF here in sleepy Victoria, and Apex Project in somewhat spastic Chilliwack, outside of Vancouver.

I can’t speak for Apex ’cause I’ve never been before, but VEMF is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and if you even have the slightest interest in electronic music, you should go. It is basically all day in Centennial Square, and then at Hush and the Jungle Room after that. I am helping out with the “How to make music with Reason” production seminar at around 1300 on Saturday. I am then playing at Apex at 0400 hours on Saturday night. I am then coming BACK to Victoria for VEMF part 2 on Sunday, which will be both tired, tired, and awesome.

Hope to see you out. : )