May 2009 Record Pool Picks

My top picks from this month's Richmond Record Pool are as follows:

Live Progressive Sets:
- Creamer & K, "Forget The World" (Zoltan Kontes & Jerome Robins Mix)

Mainstream Club Sets:
- Rhythm & Michelle Weeks, "Peace" (Orienta-Rhythm Resound Mix)
- Szloboda, "Listen To Your Faith" (Mineral Walter vs D-System Remix)

Studio Mixes:
- Sami Dee, "Just Believe" (Sami Dee’s Club Mix)
- Szloboda, "Listen To Your Faith" (Norman Crack Remix)

Warmup Tracks:
- DJ Observer & Daniel Heatcliff, "Fake Call" (3am Ocean Drive Remix)
- Eclectica, "O’ Spectra" (Original Mix)
- Federico Giust, "Bicicleta" (Roca & Lewinger Remix)
- Human8, "Fetish" (Original Mix)
- Human8, "Irish Dragon" (Original Mix)
- Stereo K, "Plug Me In" (Original Mix)

This was a smaller shipment again, hence the reason that the number of "best tracks" is pretty low. Rather than picking out a single track that I like, I’ll just comment that some of the productions by Hungarian progressive house producer Human8 have been catching my attention lately.

April 2009 Record Pool Picks

Here, only slightly late, are my April picks from the Richmond Record Pool shipment.

Live Progressive Sets:
No suitable tracks in this shipment.

Mainstream Club Sets:
- Matt Samuels & Abigail Bailey, "Killer" (Original Vocal Mix)

Studio Mixes:
- Audiowhores & Haze, "Stay" (Audiowhores Club Mix)
- Kenneth Thomas feat Colleen Riley, "Wish You Were Here" (Zoltan Kontes Remix)
- Vibrasphere, "Isolation" (Hidra Remix)

Warmup Tracks:
- Alex Rellic, "Take Me Higher" (David Ackerman’s Dubbed Out Mix)
- Audiowhores & Haze, "Stay" (Audiowhores Dub Instrumental)
- Austin Leeds & Etienne Ozborne, "Do It With Me" (Dub Mix)
- Benny Maze, "Lucid Dream" (Original)
- Freekers, "Lost Sandy Beach"
- John Orbiter, "Leck Mich Ich Brauch" (Elektro Mechanic Freakz Remix)
- Kimito Lopez, "Unicorn"
- LS Project, "Finally"
- LS Project, "Sunshine"
- Minilogue, "Animals" (Beat Pharmacy Six Feet Under Mix)
- Roddy Reynaert, "Jetstream"
- Shoreliners, "Handelskai" (Human8 Remix)

The April Pool shipment, as you can see above, had a lot of tracks that I’d play in a warmup set – generally non-vocal progressive house tracks with decent drums and production, but not necessarily good in a club during a peak-hour set. Maybe I’ll try to record a ten or twelve-hour set in August when I have some free time. I could call it something ridiculous like, “Bolivia’s Best Beach Background Beats.” Nothing that really catches your ear – just a lot of great non-stop tracks.

This shipment also had some cuts of some classic tracks. However, my pick of the month for April would be the Vibrasphere track, "Isolation."

February 2009 Record Pool Picks

As I write this, it’s early May and I’m sitting on the side of a logging road, on top of a mountain in British Columbia. My internet connectivity in camp is pretty spotty, but I hope I’ll be able to post this to my blog at some point in the next week or so. No matter – these ratings are already three months late. However, now that I’m working on the West Coast again, I usually spend several hours of each day driving around, so I finally have a lot of time to listen to music and to start getting caught up on my monthly record ratings.

Although the shipments from the Pool haven’t been too outstanding for several of the past months, I was extremely happy with this month’s shipment. There were quite a few tracks that I really liked, which I’ll be playing frequently. So here we go with this month’s picks:

Live Progressive Sets:
- Noel Sanger, "One More Time" (Michael Harrington Remix)
- Oko Tek, "Futuro" (Original)
- Starkillers, "Able & Uneasy" (The Unreal Mix)
- Anthony Grant, "Through The Light" (Progressive Mind Remix)

Mainstream Club Sets:
- Reead, "Nobody’s Innocent" (Vertical Smile Remix)
- Shontelle, "T-Shirt" (Bimbo Jones Remix)

Studio Mixes:
- George Acosta feat. John Sindoni, "Manifest" (Chris Domingo Remix)
- James Nelson, "Relax" (David AK Remix)
- P Lion, "Happy Children" (KJ Remix)
- Roy Davis Jr., "I Have A Vision" (The Juan Remix)
- Roy Davis Jr., "I Have A Vision" (Fred Falk Remix)
- Toro Y Moi, "Left Alone At Night" (Pink Skull Remix)
- Anthony Grant, "Through The Light" (Beautiful Remix)

Warmup Tracks:
- DJ Filip, "One Day" (Original)
- P Lion, "Happy Children" (Demy Shine Dub Remix)
- Add 2 Basket, "Budapest" (Snake Sedrick Happy Times)
- Austin Leeds, "I Can’t Get Away" (Dennis D & Patrick M Remix)

There were several tracks this month which could have qualified for my favorite of the month. You can see that P Lion’s "Happy Children" and Anthony Grant’s "Through The Light" both got listed in a couple of categories, but I’ll have to take the Fred Falk Remix of "I Have A Vision" by Roy Davis Jr. as February’s top pick. It’s not a dance floor killer by any means, but it’s the sort of track that I’ll definitely want to throw into a relaxing studio mix sometime, when I get a chance to get back into the studio. I don’t know off-hand who the vocalist is, although I’m sure that I could figure it out pretty quickly if I had an internet connection. However, if I could describe the style right now, it sounds (to me) sort of like the vocalist from Girl Nobody, singing in a style reminiscent of early 1990’s Stone Roses tracks. In other words, pretty unique.

There was no March shipment from the Pool, so I’ll be releasing my April picks in a few more days. In the meantime, I'll just sit on a mountain top, wishing that I had my DJ equipment here.

Armin van Buuren Photos

This past Sunday night, I got a chance to see Armin van Buuren in Halifax, Nova Scotia, courtesy of Underdog Productions. I wasn’t actually playing on the bill that night, I just went to relax and take some photos. It was my first night using a new camera (a basic Canon XSi digital SLR), but I managed to get a few decent shots. Here's the link:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_armin2009a.html

I owe a big thanks to Armin for being so accommodating with the photography.



Armin has been ranked by DJ Mag as the #1 DJ in the world for the past couple of years. To lend credence to this assessment, consider this: his signature A State Of Trance radio show is listened to by thirty million fans - every single week. Wow. I’ve had my website online for about seven years and I’ve only had around fifteen thousand mixes directly distributed during that time (although I’m sure with pass-alongs, the number is probably a lot higher).

Armin is Dutch. He’s got a law degree, but wanted to give up that career to pursue his love of music. He’s a producer, who has a number of huge hits, both as singles and from the several albums that he has self-produced. He doesn’t use an engineer – he does all of his own production work. He loves his fans, and is always happy to sign autographs and shake hands at the end of his shows.

Some of Armin's well-known hits include Love You More, Blue Fear, Exhale, This World Is Watching Me, Communication, In And Out Of Love, Burned With Desire, Serenity, and Yet Another Day (and a few of the older tracks in this list have only been officially released on YouTube very recently, so they haven't had a lot of views yet). But that's only a very short list of tracks that I could quickly find videos for. For a full look at his portfolio, check out Discogs. The list of work that he has produced is simply staggering.

Check out his website at www.arminvanbuuren.com

Record Pool Picks, January 2009

Here are my picks from the smaller Richmond Record Pool shipment in January. Now that Christmas is over, I hope that we'll start seeing a flood of new music in the coming months.

Live Progressive Sets:
- Elsewhere, “Stay Tuned” (Original Mix)

Mainstream Club Sets:
- AFTC, “Give Me Love” (Ocean Trench Mix)
- Pussycat Dolls, “Bottle Pop” (Dave Aude Club Mix)
- U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name” (DJ Preach Remix)

Studio Mixes:
No suitable tracks in this shipment

Warmup Tracks:
- AFTC, “Give Me Love” (Ocean Trench Instrumental Mix)
- Expected Reaction, “Feeling” (Carlos Lopez & Luigi Rodriguez Mix)
- K-Scope, “Star Kissed”


It’s hard for me to pick a favorite track for this month’s shipment. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed in the shipment this month. There was a lot of techy, glitchy, minimalistic stuff, which I don’t really play. There were several good trance tracks, but I don’t really include those in my lists because trance does not go over well in Atlantic Canada, unlike most of the rest of the world. There certainly wasn’t a lot of normal progressive house of the type that I prefer.

Anyway, despite that, there were a few good tracks. For instance, it’s really hard to do a good remix of a conventional rock song, but Preach did an admirable job with the old U2 track. And I’m impressed with the Pussycat Dolls remixes, because there were several other remixes in the shipment that crossed into radio/urban formats, and which were well done. I find that it isn’t often you find a track that translates successfully across several formats, especially when they are at significantly different tempos.

Record Pool Picks, November 2008

Earlier tonight, the power went out in my hometown (Sackville). Actually, a transformer exploded up the street and the power pole caught on fire, and NB Power ended up turning off the downtown grid for about four hours while they replaced it. During this time, I actually continued to cook at the Olive Branch. However, without electric power, I was limited to the propane stove and candlelight. At one point, I was trying to do dishes with a flashlight nestled between my head and shoulder. The light was shining into the dishpit, so between shining it into the slightly murky middle sink full of water, and then shining it into the left compartment where I was spraying steamy water, I suddenly realized that I should write a blog posting about the diffraction of light, and about how much I hate movies that purport to show laser beams in space.

However, I then remembered that I am weeks behind in my work, so a post like that should wait for Christmas Day, when I'm full of wine and sarcastic wit. So instead, once I was done cooking, I finished listening to the November shipment from the Richmond Record Pool, and here are my top picks of the month ...

Live Progressive Sets:
- Kurd Maverick, “All Over The World”

Mainstream Club Sets:
- Dfuse & Hiratzka, “This Is Our Time” (Obama Bootleg)
- New Order, “Faith” (Bootleg)
- Solange, “Sandcastle Disco” (Club Mix)

Studio Mixes:
- Addex, “Night Life”
- Benjamin Leung feat Amanda Sampson, “Don’t Care” (Original Mix)
- DQ’s, “I Want You Here” (Original Mix)
- Hibernate, “Feeling” (Original)

Warmup Tracks:
- DJ Borra, “Black Sun” (Andrez Remix)
- Duvar, “Parameter” (Bjoern Stolpmann Remix)
- Fei Xue, “Flying Snow”

My favorite track from this month’s shipment was unquestionably the “This Is Our Time” track. When I put together the first mix on my website ("I Await The Morning") about six years ago, I mixed a lot of political quotes over the top of some laid-back house tracks from Hooj Choons. Most of the samples that I used were from the immediate aftermath of 911, because they were the easiest ones to find at the time. Back then, the internet was a much sparser landscape than it is at the present time, at least for people looking for wave quality sound bites. “This Is Our Time” was done a lot better than my original demo mix was, and it was ironic to hear it, because when I was watching the US Election results and Obama’s victory speech at the Pub, I thought it was a very well-written speech and thought that it would be interesting to overlay samples over a track of my own (which is what happened to create this track). As one recent CNN interviewee said, Obama has what is arguably the first pop culture presidency. Unfortunately, the Pub was (and is) a bit of a disaster from the move that had happened four weeks prior to that night, so I never did have time to put this project into motion myself. Luckily, someone else did. Click on this player to listen (the player is not visible in facebook, only in my original blog):



I should also applaud the individual who put together the bootleg of REM’s “Nightswimming.” You would think that it would be impossible to successfully combine REM, a trebly version of the Amen Break, and vocal samples of a guy who sounds like he’s sticking his tongue out at you. Well, you’re probably right. However, for a few brief moments, I almost thought that this bootleg could work. I thought that it was "a good effort under duress," even though the bootleg definitely didn’t make my best tracks list. However, I'll let you be the judge ...

James Sadoway Artist Album Released

A friend of mine, James Sadoway, has just released his first full-length album of self-produced electronica tracks. And for a limited time, he's offering free downloads of the entire album here on my website:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/jamessadoway.html

The album itself has quite a bit of diversity, from deeper house to faster breaks-influenced tracks. For those who like remixes, he's got four tracks remixed from Holden & Thompson (Nothing), Ace Of Base (Cruel Summer), Gabriel & Dresden (Tracking Treasure Down), and Plummet (Damaged). Of those, I'm especially fond of the energy that James put into Tracking Treasure Down.

Of course, James also has a number of his original tracks on the album, many of which feature the vocals of Vancouver pop vocalist Armstrong Jr. Two that I enjoy in particular are "Shut Up" and "Float Like A Butterfly."

Anyway, if you enjoy electronic dance music, I suggest you download the full album and check it out. To listen to "Float Like A Butterfly," click on the player here (visible in the original blog only, not in the Facebook notes feed).