Don't leave just yet...

7 days between updates; I feel ashamed!

This week I've been quite busy, but in my downtime I've been listening to Anthony Pappa's excellent new tech-infused mix CD, Moments, Headroom's debut psy-trance album, Artelligent (slightly above average, but no more than that), and catching up on a bit of techno/tech house with a good night out on Friday and a few releases from the Get Physical stable.

Sadly, I don't have anything interesting to share, but don't leave just yet, because I have two very interesting interviews coming up this week, possibly within a few days of each other. One with a veteran house DJ/producer and the other with a young progressive jock.

Hang around!

Mnml

Why did I make you scroll down so far to read the text?

To get that annoying flashing image off the screen of course.

I've added a new website to the address/links section today, http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com/, an interesting page on techno, and one of the few blogs I've discovered in this past year or so that doesn't either spend all day wanking itself to death, or bore me with crap material.

They have some great stuff on both well known artists, and more obscure ones which they want to alert us to, which is really the whole point of blogs isn't it?

In addition, mnmlssg happens to be run by fellow Aussies, which is just great.

Enjoy.

p.s I should have a good interview with a trance producer/DJ going up by the end of this week, but I won't make any promises, due to the fact that he missed our meeting on Monday, which had been scheduled in for weeks. Grrrrr....

The Wrap

Well, I’ve been meaning to do a wrap up of my holiday for the past few days, but I’ve been pre-occupied with work, the M.A.N.D.Y interview, and a few other things. Anyway, here goes...(keep in mind that this post IS actually music related)

Being the first holiday I’ve had since June 2006, I was looking forward to relaxing on the beach and doing not much else. The first leg of our trip was planned for an island in Thailand called Koh Phangan, a very popular tourist destination, particularly for young Australians. Phangan is host to the famous Full Moon party, which occurs once a month, helped along by the low tide, meaning more partiers can be crammed onto the beach.

To be honest I wasn’t expecting much; I get my fair share of techno, trance, house and everything in between here in Melbourne, and thought that the Thai music selection would be fairly poor, consisting of top 50 pop music presented by trainwreck DJs. Although many of my friends had visited before, no one had really told me what to expect.

Upon arrival, our first night blew me away. Bars are positioned every fifty metres along the beach blasting their own selection of music into the open air, with r ‘n’ b, drum ‘n’ bass, tech and electro-house being well represented. By far the biggest delight was “zoom” bar, with a local Thai DJ spinning some of the most technically satisfying and mind blowing psy-trance sets I’ve ever heard, bar a few huge internationals such as John "oo" Fleming. Best of all, the sound systems are loud, and, more importantly, clear. All this for free; there is no entry fee whatsoever.

Tying in with my recent comments about mobile phones at raves, the beach at Koh Phangan is almost phone-free, due to the relatively high cost of using a mobile in another country. Many people also abandoned their digital cameras for fear of losing them on the beach in the middle of the night. This makes for an impeccable atmosphere.

Imagine, three-hundred people standing on the middle of a beach in the dead of the night, in the middle of bum-fuck no-where, just rocking, rocking with reckless abandon, knowing there is no work tomorrow, no responsibilities, just more sunny beach-filled days. No distractions from mobile phones, digital cameras, or any of that. Fifty steps away is another bunch of people doing the same thing. At the end of the night, everyone is safe in the knowledge that a comfy bed is just a short walk away. A vast majority of the crowd’s psyche is completely switched to “holiday mode”; everyone is very friendly and open to meeting new people. There are few places back home where this kind of mood can be achieved en-masse. Rarely have I found such diverse music styles all converging in the same place and creating such a powerful atmosphere.

Ironically enough, the actual full moon party isn't that great; the beach is too packed, the amount of locals trying to sell you pointless crap increases, and broken glass starts to appear on the beach, forcing people to wear shoes. No, the three lead-up nights are far more satisfying; people are content to walk around barefoot and topless as they frolic in the breaking surf to the sounds of pulsing psy-trance, farty electro-house or whatever flavour of music takes their fancy.

Of course, the fact that alcohol is so cheap helps the deal along. A “bucket” sells for just $10 US and comes with a hip flask of vodka, whisky, or whatever alcohol you like, a can of red bull and a can of soft drink. This is served in a small sand bucket and will last you at least half an hour. Beers are a few bucks. Despite Thailand’s heavy penalties for drugs, the amount of people clearly flouting this was surprising. MDMA was purported to be available at a nearby island, and mushroom shakes are openly sold at a bar on the beach, ensuring the psy-trance stage is always packed until the wee hours of the morning. Undercover Thai police constantly approaching to ask “you want pill?” provide a great source of amusement.

The strangest thing about the whole situation is that the entire town is set up purely to service all the tourists coming for the beach parties, and hence contains a primary school where all the workers' children are educated. Imagine going to sleep every night to the sounds of three-thousand odd drunk people dancing on your beach!

The rest of the trip, finishing in Koh Samui, Bangkok and Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, was uneventful in relation to dance music and hence this blog, but still enjoyable in other ways. Returning home and listening to good music for the first time in two weeks was strange and immensely satisfying; going from five hours a day to absolutely nothing makes you realise how much you depend on it, so much so that I just had to see James Zabiela play within hours of getting off an exhausting flight. Review up within the next two days.

More mixes

Still on holidays in South-East Asia, back on February 8th.

Here are a few sites I found today:

http://verybestdjsets.net/

http://www.newmixes.com/

Enjoy.

Surprise!

I've switched to an actual domain name today; chinstroking.com.

The term "chinstroker" is a tongue-in-cheek term to describe someone who over-analyses music - someone who leads with their head rather than their heart.

This is the first step in making this page a bit slicker. I'm hoping to have streaming mp3 samples up and running in the next couple of weeks too.

Who's to say, the best is yet to come?

2007 is fast drawing to a close, so I thought I may as well do a little wrap up...

This blog was opened a mere 10 months ago, and since then I've clocked up over 100 posts, some good, some bad. Hopefully I've helped you find some good music, or perhaps influenced you to see a DJ you would otherwise not have considered.

When it comes down to it, I've noticed these past months that my writing is often of a cynical or negative tone. Often I bitch about things that should perhaps be left alone. Make no mistake, I mean every word I say, but really, I love this scene more than anything in the world, the good and the bad; it's just that the bad is far easier to write about.

This year I've spent a few thousand seeing perhaps 60-70 international DJs play; and I couldn't think of a better investment. Whether I loved or hated them; a big salute to all the DJs; often their job is not as easy as we'd like to believe - thank you for the hours of euphoria, fun and pure bliss you have provided me this year, even if I've overly criticised you!

Next year will see more of the same - plenty of DJ reviews. John Tejada and Marc Romboy will be first cabs off the rank next year; just don't expect many IDs. 2008 also sees some other interesting things coming up on this page. A few interviews with some bigger names are in the works, but are taking a long time to come to fruition. As well as this, my sorting of my own music collection, a mammoth task that has taken most of my time this year, should be complete, and I can begin to focus on discovering some great new tracks and passing on the news right here.

Going on holiday overseas between 18th January and the 8th February, so updates will be a little thin on the ground during that time, however I'll be attempting to prepare some (hopefully) interesting articles in advance before then to keep things ticking over on the page whilst I'm busy getting drunk on a beach.

See you next year.

I'm cool again

Steve Bug is awesome, but I think you probably already know that.

For the past three days or so I've had the incredibly catchy hook of Traffic Signs - The Big Fake stuck in my head...and it's great. Released in 2002, this track is still entirely relevant to the current scene, and still massively popular here in Melbourne, a distinct favourite in the so called early morning "recovery" clubs (ironically, no one in history has ever recovered at said clubs, just done themselves more damage really).

Anyway, this is a rather superfluous post other than to let the world know that after a year and a half of devotion, I'm officially sick of trance music again (at least for the time being), and infatuated once more with the boppy, dreary strains of early-morning tech-house and techno, which officially makes me cool again (trance is not so cool, apparently).

My music tastes tend to vary in cycles which are completely unrelated to the mainstream, so don't be surprised if this time next year I'm posting exclusively about speedcore tracks (just kidding).

To celebrate this near-revelation, I spent my incredibly hungover Sunday listening to old favourites from Joris Voorn, Deetron and Agoria while doing pointless repetitive tasks. This, this, and this eased my pain considerably, as did one of these, and these. Also this helped. Agoria was lovely as usual, and Deetron flat-out awesome.

To techno!

Selections begin

Ok, so I'm back at the office today after working a combined total of 39 hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The boss even let me sleep in today!

After checking my email earlier, for the first time in several months, I realised I have received a number of emails from people relating to my articles and whatnot, thankfully none abusive.

A note: if you want to send me an email, I'll now be checking regularly.

Anyway, so one of these emails praised my taste in music and wondered if I knew any websites with good charts, or whether I could make some of my own.

Hence a new type of post is born. "Selections" will simply be a list of music that I am enjoying at the moment, in no particular order, and from any time frame and genre.

Each post will be accompanied by a completely unrelated picture...just because I want to.

Updates soon...I promise.

Work's been a pretty hectic this week, hence no updates.

I slept three hours last night, worked twelve today, and didn't manage to eat once, unless you count that Red Bull at lunch, or the glass of milk for "breakfast".

Doing it all again tomorrow, so no time to mooch around the office writing articles for my blog.

Never fear, Godskitchen is this weekend, so there will be plenty of reviews up early next week!

Predictions:

Richard Durand will somehow manage to become both CEO of Kraft worldwide, and be elected as President of Switzerland in the same day. Also, the set will consist of 19 Richard Durand tracks, and one random one, which Durand will play for two minutes before mixing into Smack My Bitch Up.

Rank 1 will bore the shit out of me with their unimaginative "electro-trance".

The Thrillseekers (actually one guy), who I know next to nothing about, will blow me away with a brilliant set ala Gareth Emery, Mark Norman and Mark Sherry.

M.I.K.E will either be insanely awesome, or impossibly boring.

Don't stop reading, more to come soon.

Future Proofing

Back in April I posted a short article outlining my dilemmas in organising my collection of digital music.

What I would like to discuss today, which that article touched only briefly on, is the concept of future proofing.

I suppose the main reason that I have struggled so vehemently with my computer these past few months is because I envisage myself, at some stage in twenty or so years, having my own personal library of music. I envisage a perfectly ordered collection of classics on my hard drive, where anything can be found instantly with just a few clicks.

The reason that this idea seems to attractive to me is because of the situation I see my parents and their generation in. Generally, music from their youth (60's and 70's), is unavailable to them on demand. Radio is their major avenue, for which they constantly bemoan the lack of variety. If they want to hear a particular song, tuning in to the "oldies" station and hoping it gets played is their best option.

Granted, plenty of their old classics, such as Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and Pink Floyd have all been re-released on CD, of which they are now the proud owners.

However, it remains that a large portion of the music from their youth is now unavailable to them.

At times I imagine myself in this position and, honestly; it's completely intolerable to me. In 2060, how else will I relive my youth but to listen to all my old tunes? While my parents may well be able to buy copies of their old favourites on CD, I do not envisage the same being true for myself in fifty years.

When CDs are superceded, just as vinyls and tapes were, and make no mistake, they will be, I highly doubt that the music I enjoy now will be available in this new format simply because what I listen to currently is "less than mainstream", and, in fifty years, demand will not be high enough to justify a re-release.

(As an aside, I believe that the next format after CDs will be USB dongles, pre-loaded with music and locked so that they cannot be copied. Cars and "USB players" will simply have a slot in which to plug the dongle, and music will be played directly from it.)

My intention then, should be plainly clear to you now. Accumulate all the music I can, whilst it is available, in the hope that I can carry it into the future with me. I have vivid thoughts of me as a ninety year old, sitting in a nursing home somewhere, and listening to a Booka Shade set from 2006.

The real battle that then, is keeping up with storage formats constantly changing over the years. mp3 may be the status quo now, but who is to say that a superior format will not arise in 20 years, and that I will then have to convert my entire collection to ensure it's longevity?

Or perhaps, more likely, we will finally make the jump to quantum computing, and current files will somehow need to be converted in order to be stored on these computers of the future?

Now you see why maintaining an up-t0-date collection is important to me. It's already getting hard to find some tunes from the mid to late nineties, such as the trance classic, Schiller - Das Glockenspiel (Humate Remix).

Not only does this generation have the advantage over our parents' generation in that we can ensure the longevity of our music collection, but keeping up to date with current musical trends is also far easier.

Where once your musical education might have halted with the arrival of children in your life, and the subsequent decline in visits to pubs, clubs and record stores where you might learn about music, these days it is absurdly easy for anyone, or any age, to visit and online download site and keep track of new music.

I sincerely hope that at the age of fifty, or perhaps even of eighty or ninety, I'm still visiting beatport and sifting through hours of music to sort the gems from the rubbish. Or perhaps, like all adults seem eventually to do, I may become completely disillusioned with contemporary music, and stick to my old hoarded classics from the 90's, 00's and 10's?

I guard my hard drive jealously in anticipation of that day...

mp3 MADNESS

After about eighteen months of procrastinating, I have finally decided to organize my mp3 collection.

Procedure is as follows:

1. I hear a song, hear about it, or see it's name on a list of new releases.

2. I download it into a folder labelled with the year and month that I found it.

3. At the end of the month I trawl through the folder and pick out the songs I like, which go into a new folder for burning to CD.

In my infinite wisdom, I never bothered to delete the tracks I didn't like. For some months, there are one hundred songs sitting in the folder, in others, as many as five hundred (I was only working twenty hours a week at the time and had a good internet plan, ok?).

As a result of my tomfoolery, I have some THREE THOUSAND mp3's sitting in folders, waiting to be listened to and sorted. Most have filenames like this:

[jett 09 2005] - 87 - emjae - bodymusic (orignal mix)

This is totally unacceptable to me, because firstly, it makes finding anything impossible without a search, and since my computer is a complete piece of shit, that's generally out of the question.

Secondly, I'm an anally retentive bastard. Every word must be capitalised correctly, and square brackets changed to rounded ones. I can't help it, that's just the way I am, and if that involves painstakingly renaming five thousand files, then so be it.

Fortunately, I have the help of an excellent little program called mp3 tag tools, which not only renames files en-masse, but modifies ID tags too! Less fortunately, it's not the quickest program around, and tagging 500 files could have you waiting for an hour or so.


That's not my screen shot by the way, it's taken from the site. Just thought I'd throw that out there, lest I be tarred with the "Britney Spears" brush, which is actually more of a permanent marker.

Anyway, back to my sorting and cataloguing; it's not all bad. Just then I rediscovered three gems I hadn't thought about in over a year or so, which is always good.

Michael Mayer - Touch
Ozgur Can - Just Go With It
Tom De Neef - Adobe

The big problem I have really is that of the tracks waiting to be sorted, I am probably familiar with just three thousand of them. "Easy!" I hear you say, "just sort through and delete the songs you've never heard of!"

I'd already thought that myself, but quickly dispelled this foolish notion when I hit "Aalto - Resolution (Oliver Prime Remix)"; a track I had never heard. I have, however, heard the original mix, which in my opinion is a great song.

So, as a true music aficionado, herein lies my dilemma:

How can I delete the track without listening to it? It may well be one of the best tracks I have ever heard, seeing as I loved the original. I simply can't bring myself to take this chance!

I've come up with a solution that is even more daunting than the original problem, but in twenty years I will be thanking myself for:

I will attempt to purchase every song in my collection in either WAV or 320kbps mp3, depending on how much I like the song.

This will not only include three thousand unsorted mp3s, but also the three thousand that have been catalogued.

As I've stated in earlier posts, mp3s sound terrible to my ears these days, unless they are 320kbps. Granted, 320 is a lot easier to find than it used to be, but WAVs still satisfy me a lot more, with their deep, rich bass, well-defined mid-range and sweet highs, which make music, especially trance, just that bit better.

In the process I have decided to download vinyl and CD covers to accompany the music files themselves, completing what will be literally the perfect collection.

I estimate this will take me a few years, all the while with new music pouring in and demanding my attention, not to mention DJing itself, work and all the other distractions I encounter in my life.

I think I may well become beatport's best customer...ever; either that or the local insane asylum's.

Upcoming Reviews

Big weekend! Every part of my body is hating me right now, especially my ears, which took a six-hour, close range pounding at the hands of various monstrous Nexo installations.

Upcoming reviews, hopefully within the next few days:

Rex The Dog
Sander Van Doorn
Ferry Corsten
Joachim Garraud

Last weekend, more than ever before, I learnt the value of a good venue and and a large, enthusiastic crowd. I saw Rex play twice in twelve hours, the first set with a bad system and a less than impressive crowd. The sound system at the second venue was tops, which was completely wasted on a "crowd" of twenty people who seemed just as disillusioned as me with the pub trying to be a club, yet not selling Red Bull. What kind of place doesn't sell Red Bull?!

I won't be surprised if Rex The Dog never comes back to Melbourne. Twice he has visited, and three times played gigs to pitiful crowds in crap venues. Annoyingly, I missed his fourth gig, only to hear it was a success. For a city that usually treats its DJs with utmost respect, three bad sets out of four surprises me immensely. The most irritating thing about it is the fact that I KNOW he has fans in Melbourne, and lots of them, yet none of them ever seem to turn up to his sets.

Perhaps it's the complete lack of sets available on the internet (If you're reading this Rex, *hint-hint*)? How often do you hear people say that they are looking forward to seeing a DJ because they downloaded two or three sets before ever hearing them play live? The only thing close to a set on the internet is the brilliant mini mix that Rex did for Annie Mac's radio show in the UK. It's available on Rex's site, or from a direct link here.

Track listing is as follows:

Mel & Kim 'Showing Out' (Supreme)
Bangkok Impact 'Masters Of The Universe' (Creme Organization)
S'Express 'Theme From S'Express' (Rhythm King)
The Prodigy 'Girls Acapella' (XL Recordings)
Ellen Allien 'Trashscapes (Anthony Rother Mix)' (BPitch Control)
DJ Koze 'Brutalga Square' (KOMPAKT)
Mel & Kim 'Respectable' (Supreme)

There is also a rather lame interview which was done before the show here.

Hello, internet.

Hello, internet.

Today I came up with the clever (and highly original!) idea of starting a blog about my biggest passion; Electronic Dance Music, or EDM, as many internerds like to call it. Apparently enough of my time isn't wasted on the internet already.

From here on in you will find random stuff about DJs, DJing, new tunes, producing, raves and whatnot. I will take much pleasure in praising or dismantling DJs I have seen.

At the moment I can't be bothered typing anything in-depth, so here is a list of EDM sites that I visit with fair regularity:

www.beatport.com
www.discogs.com
www.di.fm
www.rexthedog.net
www.juno.co.uk
www.whoop.co.uk
www.kompakt-net.com/
www.boxer-recordings.com/

Enjoy. Next post soon; when I can be bothered.