Marc Carnes in Edmonton

Last Thursday night, I was in Edmonton for the evening. I was supposed to be DJ'ing at a house party with Marc Carnes, but since I didn’t want to lug my vinyl records across the country, I suggested that he should rent a pair of CD players. I recorded part of the evening on my laptop, and I finally got around to compressing it this afternoon and figuring out all of the tracks that he played.

Marc has DJ’d for about a decade but has always used vinyl himself, so this was his first chance to try mixing with CD’s. To make things a bit more challenging for him, he had to use my music (which he was unfamiliar with), since all of his music was on vinyl. Luckily, mixing on Pioneer CDJ’s is very similar to mixing on Technics decks, because the pitch control mechanisms are designed to be almost the same. In fact, I think that CDJ’s are even easier to mix on than turntables, because you never have to worry about the needle skipping, and they hold their speed more consistently (although I can’t manipulate my placement within the track nearly as fast on the CD players).

Anyway, right-click here and choose the “save target as” option to download an mp3 recording from the evening. It’s a little over an hour long, upbeat dance music. You’d never know that it was the first time Marc had ever used CD players to play a set. Here’s a track listing:

01. Emjae feat Marcie, “Loaded Gun.”
02. Javith, Salazar, & Gil, “Kukenan.”
03. Deepologists, “History Of Electronica” (Original).
04. Marzetti, “I’m Just A DJ” (Shawn Jacobson & Jeremie Voillot Clubstompers Remix).
05. Levan, “Miau.”
06. Hedkandi, “Boogie 2Nite” (Haji Big Love Remix).
07. Tom Leeland feat Vivian Tate, “Feel My Love” (Sven Waschinsk).
08. Thee-O, “Tribal Dreams” (Original Mix).
09. Dan Sampson & Jhreal, “Solid Gold” (Thomas Penton & Jerome Remix).
10. Alibi vs Rockefeller, “Sexual Healing” (Freemason’s Vocal Mix).
11. Piece Process, “The Preacher” (Partial Vox).
12. Mike Kings, “You Want It” (Original Wanted Mix).
13. Victor Gonzales, “Better Step Up” (Bitwise Remix).
14. Dial Freaks, “28157” (Iceland Spar).

Naming Songs

I'm just going through the latest Richmond Record Pool DVD, and I'm getting a bit annoyed at the way some record companies promote themselves. Let me cut right to the chase. If you're going to name a song, use the following format:

        Artist - Song Name (Specific Remix).mp3

It is not that hard. Now I can understand someone coming up with a somewhat unconventional naming protocol if you're maybe playing around with something, or naming stuff in a hurry, or drunk. But if you're a Record Company, you need to pay attention to a simple concept. It's called MARKETING.

Let me give you an example of a "bad" job of naming a track. This is an actual example from the DVD that I'm reviewing this evening:

        drop_54_b1be_bop_DOWNLOAD.mp3

WTF? This is just ridiculous. Who is the artist? What is the track called? Why is "download" in capital letters, and what does it mean, since it's from a physical DVD? Now to assauge your curiousity, I spent a few minutes trying to puzzle it out, and the only thing I can figure out so far is that it is probably the 54th release on the Drop Records label, side B1, and the song is probably called "Be-Bop." But to be honest, after I got that far, and couldn't assign any degree of certainty to that guess, I dragged that puppy right over to the Recycle Bin (where it will not be recycled).

I'm sure there are DJ's out there who like to spend their time checking out mysterious, nebulous tracks. There is certainly a subtle appeal to a "white label" track for some DJ's. However, if I'm personally trying to quickly sort through and review 250 songs in an evening, you've just lost all hope of getting any air time from me if you don't name the song properly.

On a positive note, I'm glad to see more people starting to trade and distribute WAV files instead of 320 kbps mp3's. With the way hard drives are growing these days, it's worth the extra storage space to improve the audio quality.

Cambridge Punk Rock Show

I flew out to Vancouver last night. I’m here to do some work on “When I Grow Old,” a track I’m recording with Mike Allison, at FaderMaster Studios. One of the sound engineers and owners at FaderMaster is Shawn Cole, an old friend and roommate, who is now teaching at the Pacific Audio Visual Institute in Vancouver, helping to run FaderMaster, and doing work at a number of other studios in his spare time.

When I got into town, Shawn immediately thrust a couple beers into my hands, and said that we were going to a punk show that evening. That kind of took me by surprise, but he said he wanted to go to the “Pub 340” to see an album release show by Cambridge. It sounded good to me, so we had a few more drinks and went to the bar.





Upon getting to the bar, we had a few more rounds of drinks, and Shawn gave me some background on Vancouver’s punk rock scene. Shawn actually produced the Cambridge album, so he knew a lot of the people in the bar. Shots of Jagermeister were only $3 each (ridiculously cheap for Vancouver), so before long, I knew a lot of people too.

There were actually four bands playing, although I only saw two of them. I think Loose Tooth was on stage when we got there, and they were singing a song that went something like, “America can suck my dick, Canada’s gonna make you her bitch.” I’m not entirely sure about the lyrics – things were already getting a bit hazy by that point. And for any Americans reading this, you shouldn’t worry that this was a sign of anti-American sentiment in your northern neighbours – I think this was actually a song of affection (after all, it was a punk rock show).

I was outside while the third band played, so I missed them entirely, but we got back inside when Cambridge was about to start. Shawn got right up into the mosh pit, while I tried to stay a bit more restrained, and took photos. The band was tight, and the crowd was into the music (and seemed to know the songs very well). It was pretty amusing seeing people getting thrown onto the stage, then back off the stage into the crowd, and dancing and smashing into each other. One of the highlights was when it looked like the head of the bass player’s instrument swung around and smashed into a bottle of beer that someone was taking a drink from. I wonder if it was a member of Loose Tooth? As Monty Python once said, “Now you see the violence inherent in the system.”





The rest of the night was fairly chaotic. We ran into two guys who were getting into a fist-fight on Hastings Street, and one of them had dropped a box of pizza on the ground just before they started fighting, so I went up and asked them if I could have the pizza. I also seem to remember Shawn trying to climb onto the roof of the Price Waterhouse building, so I could get a photo of him up there, although that memory is kind of vague. Anyway, it was an interesting start to the weekend.

Looking At The Stars

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
- Oscar Wilde

It’s time for another demo mix for my website. I had meant to do this a couple weeks ago, but some other Cubase & Ableton projects got in the way. As with my last project, I mixed this one entirely on CD players - I used a Pioneer CDJ-200 and a CDJ-1000MK3 for CD players, a Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, and I recorded the audio into Adobe Audition 2.0, with mastering & compression done in Cubase Sx.


The title is very appropriate, considering what today’s date is. Today is the 50th anniversary of the launching of the Sputnik I spacecraft, which started man’s exploration of space. Ironically, there were several tie-ins to this album title. Not only did I record this mix on the Sputnik Anniversary, but the graphic that I had chosen for the mix (earlier this week) was actually titled, “Looking At Stars,” from the Exploding Dog website. As usual, I owe thanks to Sam Brown for his artistic design – his website has a ton of funny drawings on it.

All music was sourced from the Richmond Records Pool, but in contrast to the last mix, I tried to use a few more selections with story-line vocals (as opposed to short, random vocal samples). Not all of the tracks are vocal-based, but there are certainly enough to make many of the individual tracks stand out, even to people who don’t normally listen to electronica. I also tried to mix this one at a slower tempo than I usually do (127 bpm) so it seems more restrained, and less aggressive than usual. It's almost got a deep-house feeling in a few spots.

Track 01: Medway, "Trauma." [Benz & MD Mix].
This is actually an older track, which I think might have been first released in 2002 (or before?) Medway became well-known with a series of EP albums on the Hooj Choons label in the late 1990’s, and then really hit it big with their track “Release” (which I actually included on the very first demo mix that I ever published on my website). This particular mix was done by two awesome Canadian DJ/producers, Greg Benz and Marco Di Carlo, from London (Ontario). I really liked the introduction for their version of this song, so it was a perfect track to use at the beginning of “Looking At The Stars”.

Track 02: Girl Nobody, "Hello, It’s Me." [Marc Mitchell].
Girl Nobody is a Vancouver band featuring singer Marta Jaciubek-McKeever, whose works range from pop to trip-hop to dub and beyond. This particular remix was done by Mark Mitchell, a well-known UK producer. I’ve featured Girl Nobody in the past, including their “Why Am I Alone?” track on my “Dancing Baloney” mix. This is another female vocalist whose voice I love. I’m flying out to Vancouver tomorrow morning to do some mixing and mastering work on an audio project that Mike Allison & I are collaborating on, so I’m going to see if I can track down Girl Nobody while I’m there.

Track 03: Noel Sanger feat. Dauby, "My Prayer." [Original].
I think this is probably the first time that I have ever mixed two tracks on a demo without bothering to beat-mix them properly. The ending of the previous track and the intro of this track just merged so well due to the ambient noises that I did a “radio-style” mix. Noel Sanger is certainly not a new name in electronic music, having toured with BT for years, and his tracks are getting regular play from DJ’s such as Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk, Judge Jules, and Marcus Schultz. This is the second time that I’ve used a Noel Sanger track on a mix, after using “One Drop” on “Partisan Scream Fest.”

Track 04: Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City." [Spin Science Remix].
Neil Quigley has been repeatedly tagged by John Digweed as one of UK’s top emerging talents. Nick Muir is the “other half” of Bedrock, along with Digweed himself. In this track, they’ve put together a track that I really like, which seems to be very organically deep-house influenced, in my opinion.

Track 05: Gustavo Bravetti, “Sail With Me." [Ariel Perazzoli].
Gustavo Bravetti is a Uruguayan performer/producer who is very well known in Montevideo and around South America for his live performances, not just as a conventional DJ. I’m not sure who is doing the singing for him on this track. Ariel Perazzoli, also of Montevideo, did this particular remix for Bravetti.

Track 06: BS As Deep, "The Finder."
BS As Deep is Diego Sebastian Colquhoun from Argentina. “The Finder” became a pretty big hit after it was played by Hernan Cattaneo at the Creamfields festival.

Track 07: Mike Mucci, "On & On." [Evolved Mix].
Mike Mucci is of course still well known in his hometown of Miami as a DJ, but he is increasingly spending more and more time in the studio dealing with production work for Amplitude and other projects.

Track 08: 4Mal, "Red Dust." [Dust & Ashes Dub].
4Mal is a pair of Russian producers, Anton Guzev and Evgeny Svalov. A couple of their other well-known tracks are “Where I Belong” and “Twilight.”

Track 09: Pagano, "Marvellous." [Pagano In Heaven Mix].
Pagano is an Italian DJ/producer now based out of London. The list of clubs that he has played at this year (see his MySpace page) is rather impressive.

Track 10: Deepsky feat. Jes, "Ghost." [Joe Bermudez & Klubjumpers].
Deepsky is Jason Blum, based out of Los Angeles. Ghost was a popular track earlier this year, and is certainly not Blum’s only major hit. However, I first became aware of his talents due to several remixes that he did for other artists (including Madonna, Oakenfold, The Crystal Method, and others). Jes is none other than Jes Brieden (of the group Motorcycle - with Gabriel & Dresden), and anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I love her voice.

Anyway, go here to see the web page where you can download the mix. This is an MP3 mix, 123 megabytes in size, 67 minutes of audio, encoded at 256 kbps.