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.

Record Pool Picks, September 2007

For those of you who follow electronic dance music, here are my favorites from the September 2007 Richmond Record Pool shipment:

Warmup Tracks:
- Alexander Miguel, “I Ol Be Back” (Original)
- Alexander Miguel, “Speed” (Original)
- Diogenes Club, “Jaunt” (Harry Peat Remix)
- DJ Bia, “Dennumarstant” (Original)
- Frangellico, “Hammelin Tales” (Original)
- Frangellico, “Sherwood Forest” (Original)
- Hyperia, “Blue” (Original)
- James Sadoway, “Never Suspect” (Stellar Mansion Remix)
- Jondi & Spesh, “I Drank It” (Real Sugar Mix)
- Openair, “Anticlimax” (Jay Cox Remix)
- Openair, “Anticlimax” (Mark Leroy)
- Paul Kwitek, “Black Ocean” (Paul Kwitek & Jonatan Tesei Remix)
- Tyler Michaud & Define Crazy, “Rock Is Dead” (Tyler Michaud Remix)

Studio Mixes:
- Adam Byrd, “Time Machine” (Original Mix)
- Elfsong, “Twisted Souls” (Downkill Remix)
- Francis Blaid, “Tweak” (RCFC Remix)
- George From The Jungle, “Rodeo Winner” (Original)
- Pavel Pryde, “22” (DC Project Remix)
- Openair, “Anticlimax” (Luke Porter)
- Paul Kwitek, “Black Ocean” (Retroid Remix)
- Python, “Cult” (Original)
- Voltek, “Babylon” (Original Mix)

Live Sets:
- Adam Byrd, “Time Machine” (Machine Mix)
- HiJackers Space, “Take My Hand” (Original)
- Pavel Pryde, “22” (Original Mix)
- Interstate, “I’m Waiting” (Tyler Michaud Remix)
- Jay Kaufman, “Bright Light Keep On Fading” (MattLok’s Darkbeat Mix)
- MattLok, “Rock The Box” (Original Mix)
- Openair, “Anticlimax” (Original)
- Victor Gonzales, “Better Step Up” (Bitwise Remix)

The Tragically Hip

I saw the Tragically Hip playing in Halifax last night at the Metro Centre. It was packed, not surprisingly. And since my blog is read by a lot of music fans who live outside of Canada, I need to do a bit of promotion here. If you’re Canadian, you can pretty much stop reading now, because you’ll already know a lot about this band. But if you want to learn more, carry on.





First, you need to know that “The Hip” are Canada’s greatest rock band. The drummer, Johnny Fay, was once interviewed by Billboard, and when the subject of being in Canada’s best band came up, he said it was, “kind of like being the world’s tallest midget.” In 1989, the band apparently did a show where they opened for Nirvana, and less than a hundred people showed up.

The group has ten studio albums to their credit at the moment (disregarding their first self-titled album, which was only an EP). If I had to pick my favorites, I would recommend their first five albums, starting with “Up To Here,” and with “Fully Completely” probably being my top choice. Unfortunately, I haven’t spent a lot of time listening to any of the albums that came after “Trouble At The Henhouse.” I need to go out and buy the others though, because I know a few of the songs on them, and I know that I'm missing out on other gems.

I’ve seen the Hip perform dozens of times. The first times were in Banff in 1990. I had a few weeks off from my summer job planting trees, so I decided to hitchhike to Banff to wash dishes in a restaurant (The Magie & Stump) to pass the time for a week. During that week, I went with a couple friends to the Silver City nightclub every single evening. There was a band playing, and I thought that they were pretty good. Nobody else seemed to agree, because except for Friday and Saturday night, there were only about ten people in the bar each night. Anyway, after seeing them the first night, I was hooked. I kept coming back, and I watched them from about ten feet away, five or six nights that week. It wasn’t until about four or five years later, when they were starting to get famous and I saw them play at Mount Allison University, that I recognized them and realized that it was the same band. Since then, I’ve seen them in quite a few full concerts, and I also saw them in a small venue in Edmonton when they did their album release for “In Between Evolution,” with just a couple hundred people invited. I have photos from that night online here:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_hip.html

An interesting thing about the Hip is that if I had to pick my favorite five songs, I couldn’t. Not a chance. I might be able to get away with my favorite thirty, but even that would be hard to narrow down. Their music and sound are solid, and even though I’m not usually one to pay a lot of attention to lyrics, Gord Downie is brilliant. The funny thing is that I don’t even know if he writes all the lyrics. I’ve always assumed so, because he is their lead singer, but that’s not necessarily true. His improvisational abilities in live shows though, are legendary.

“New Orleans Is Sinking” was one of their earliest songs, written a decade and a half ago, and it’s one of their best-known songs. However, after Katrina, many radio stations stopped playing it in deference to the residents of New Orleans. The Hip are actually playing a show in New Orleans on October 20th of this year.

Anyway, so if you like rock music, and haven’t listened to this band before, take a Canadian’s advice and check them out. If this is the first you’ve heard about them, you’re missing out on one of Canada’s best-kept secrets.

Danny Is My Friend

I just got a new music demo mix put together for the website this weekend. This is the first one that I’ve had time to do in over half a year, so it’s long overdue. This one is also pretty unique. Every other studio mix that I’ve done in the past was recorded using a pair of turntables, with vinyl records, but this is the first mix that I’ve ever done using music on CD’s. For equipment, 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 kind of random. I went onto the Exploding Dog website to find a graphic to use for the front cover of the CD case, and the very first one that I looked at was called “Danny Is My Friend.” Usually I go through hundreds of files before I find one that I like, but this one had an interesting graphic, and since two of the tracks on the CD are by producers whose first names are Danny, I thought I’d use it. 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, so it's a mix of tribal and progressive house music, not top-40. In the past, if I made a studio mix, you could count on hearing most of those same tracks if I played at a live show. However, I’m trying to get away from that trend, so my live shows will be a little more interesting for people who have already heard my mixes from the website. Accordingly, this mix is a bit more abstract and less danceable in some places, but great for listening to when you’re going for a drive, working out, cleaning up around the house, or anything like that. I’m going to try to focus on saving the more danceable tracks for sets that I play at clubs and parties. The track listings are below, with a little bit of info about each producer, where I could find it:

Track 01: Matt Cerf, "Clearwater."
Matt originally went to McGill for agricultural engineering, but decided to move into music production instead. Now based in Los Angelos, Matt has had tracks in play on Quebec’s Music Plus network, and has released productions on labels such as Baroque, Armada, Somatic Sense, DeepBlue, and Sirup. More info about Matt can be seen at www.myspace.com/mattcerf. I like this track because of the slow and quiet introduction, which builds pretty slowly with a sporadic breakbeat until a steady 4/4 beat finally comes in with just a couple minutes left in the song. A good track to use as an opener.

Track 02: Chiba Unit vs David Phillips, "Unforgettable Time." [Desert Dwellers Remix].
Chiba Unit is a collaboration between producers David Phillips (www.thedjlist.com/djs/david_phillips) of Germany and Marcel Best (www.thedjlist.com/djs/marcelbest) of Switzerland. This track is very unique due to the vocals and the strange timing syncopations.

Track 03: Alejandro Rado, "The Dream."
Alejandro is a DJ and producer from Argentina with a regular radio show on www.tribalmixes.org. You can check out his MySpace page at www.myspace.com/alerado. This track has some trance influences, and it reminds me of an older tracks from the late 1990's, which I think might have been called "Arms Of Orion" by the Tea Freaks.

Track 04: Christian Duran, "Madreselva" [Roman Lieske 2007 Remix].
Christian is a Spanish producer who has DJ residencies at a number of clubs in Madrid & Valencia. Madreselva was originally released in 2004, and enjoyed quite a bit of chart success at the time, but I enjoyed this 2007 remix by Roman Lieske. MySpace: www.myspace.com/christianduran. Another memorable track due to the vocals. Incidentally, there are a lot of Spanish vocals on this mix, although that was more by accident than design.

Track 05: Javith, Salazar, & Gil, "Kukenan" [Tribal Remix].
Venezuelan producer Eduardo Javith (www.eduardojavith.com) has worked on productions with well-known names such as Chus, Marcello Castelli, and Bob Sinclair. I really don’t know much at all about Salazar & Gil.

Track 06: Zur-Face, "Manhattan Grooves" [Original].
Zur-Face is a pair of guys living in Bogota, Columbia, with a residency at that city’s well-known Theatron club. They’ve worked alongside other producers such as Jose Acosta, Eduardo Perez, and DC Project, and recently had a track, “Cosmopolitan Drink,” appearing on Global Underground’s Paris mix by Nick Warren (GU30). MySpace: www.myspace.com/zurface. I really like the work that Zur-Face has done, both on their own tracks and on remixes of other people tracks. I’ll probably be using their remixes in my sets fairly often.

Track 07: Danny Tuval & Vic, "La Caress" [Zur-Face Enchantement Spagnol Mix].
Danny Tuval is one of Israel’s most well-known DJ’s, having residencies at clubs in Eilat & Tel Aviv, and has shared the decks with notable DJ’s such as Junior Vasquez, Paul Okenfold, Nick Waren, Satoshi Tomiie, and Tarrantella. More info here: www.dannytuval.com/index6.htm.

Track 08: Mentalman, "Sick" [Original].
I can’t find any information about this producer. I like the track though.

Track 09: Danny Teneglia, "Dibiza" [Chus & Ceballos Midnite X-Press Mix].
I don’t even know where to begin. Danny Teneglia is unquestionably the biggest name on this demo. Originally from New York, Danny has held residencies at some of the world best-known nightclubs, and has two Global Underground mixes to his name. If there was one DJ that I could ever see performing live, it would be this man. Go to his website and look at his personal discography, and you’ll be blown away by the work that he’s done over the past two decades. Website: http://www.dannytenaglia.com.

Track 10: Tarot feat Kasey Ryan, "Conscious."
Tarot (Taro Fujita) grew up in Tokyo, but studied audio engineering in New York, before he moved back to Japan. He has collaborated with Kasey Ryan on other works too, such as “Simple Things,” a track he produced with Bob Marbach. MySpace: www.myspace.com/tarotrecords. This is the only track on the mix with any significant amount of vocals in English.

Go here to see the web page where you can download the covers or the mix itself. This is an MP3 mix, 116 megabytes in size, 64 minutes of audio, encoded at 256 kbps. I hope you enjoy it ...