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凄いです。特に３番目の写真にある、教会。息を飲む凄まじさ！今夜戻ります。
Ay que rico… Mini Mix #5
Given my recent musical troubles, I was pretty much expecting something to happen when I set to record today’s mix.
Lightning, flood, hailstorm, gozilla sequel… anything, really…
Incredibly enough, nothing went wrong, and I’m quite satisfied with the result, except for the fact I had to do it by headphones with the amp nearly turned off, for reasons obvious enough, and mixing quality is thus not at its best and brightest. But nothing to be truly ashamed of, I reckon.
Those who were only mildly thrilled by the musical digressions of the last two mixes can rejoice: the Funk is back.
Mostly Latin House tunes, to be exact: my personal sweet spot…
So put this mix on, crank the volume way up and enjoy!
Dr Dave’s MiniMix #5 (right-click here for download)
PS: If within five minutes, your feet do not start dancing under you, take your own measurements and call your local mortician to make arrangements: you are probably dead.
Keywords: salsa, lupita, latin, miami house, ATFC, MAW, que rico los tambores, una mas tequila por favor…
So sorry…
Ouch.
While I was precisely in the middle of recording a new track, the property manager called and left a message on my cellphone: seems my neighbours are not all dead after all… and some of them are apparently not happy with the level of noise coming from our place.
To be honest, there have been a few early night sessions lately and I might even have left the bay window open, which obviously would not help at all. So first thing I did was drop the level on the amp by about 90% and close every window in the apartment…
Then, there was the delicate problem of figuring what to do with the call, and more importantly with the caller. See, in most any other cases, I would have either called back and apologized or turned the volume down and forget about it, but here, the situation was a tad more complicated than that. Among the many factors worth considering, were the fact that:
Musical Performance Blunders
In music, major performance bloopers are usually caused by the most mundane details. Like realizing you forgot to plug your keyboard (or guitar, or microphone or any other electric musical appliance), right the second you hit the first key during a live act… Muting/enabling the wrong channel on your board by mistake and failing to realize how bad it sounds to the public because you got your headphones on… All typical stuff. Who never did it, never performed live.
Actually, the best one I have ever seen was not one of mine.
Back in London, some DJ-legend-I-shall-not-name-here was scheduled for a major 5-hour set at the club. Things were not looking pretty when he showed up 30 minutes late in a more than advanced state of chemically-induced mental regression.
When their headliner DJs are too wasted to perform, I’ve seen promoters use all kind of tricks to keep the show going… most often putting on a mix CD and regularly slapping the passed-out artiste out of his daze so he can wave at the crowd like he means it. Depending on where you are and who the DJ is, that usually works. But in this case, the club owner (a DJ himself) was quite adamant about having Mr. Drooling Superstar play his own set. Essentially basing his decision on the quite valid idea that such caliber of a DJ could play a set in his sleep… and that most of the assistance would be at least equally wasted anyway.
This, as it turned out, was not the best decision of the night…
Vienna Nightlife
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Atsushi is in Vienna
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Do people of Austria like rock-climbing??? Interesting wall.
Fountain Pen Forever
The Japanese word for “fountain pen” is 万年筆 (まんねんひつ: man-nen-hitsu) which literally translates to “ten thousand year brush”…
I’m not sure why, but I find that awesome.
Letters to a Young Hip-and-Coming Writer
The French tend to consider that, in order to become a talented writer, one has to spend their days in smoke-filled cafés, possibly while drinking oneself blind on exotic liquors.
Americans think the secret to becoming a good author lies in bullet lists of writing techniques and prestigious writing classes.
I am no writer (understatement if there ever was one), but something tells me they are both dead wrong.
Then again, I do not think Dan Brown is much of an author, to say nothing of the hordes of navel-gazing, bored & boring, Parisian writers who persists in trying to give their worst second-class Bret Easton Ellis rendition every single year… So what do I know…
Mini Mix Pt. 4: The Other Old School
In 1982, Tadao Kikumoto invented a little box supposed to emulate a bass player and thus help bands rehearse without one if need be. Unfortunately for him, that box didn’t sound anything like a real bass, got dissed by every self-respecting garage rock bands and was removed from production less than two years later.
In 1987, Nathaniel Pierre Jones (just Pierre, to his friends) wondered what would happen if you were to tweak the knobs on this funny little box in ways that had probably not been intended by its creator, while playing it really really loud.
Seven years later, Joshua Winkleman (Josh to his friends, Wink to his fans) wondered what would happen if you were to tweak the knobs even more while playing with it.
Much tweaking and bleeping ensued.
Good part about dragging an eye more bloodshot than a flock of Transylvanian bats is that I can’t do much, except stay in the dark and make noise. Which in turn means I’m holding pretty good with my average two-three-mix-a-week production plan.
This mix is also kind of old school. Wait. Come back: there’s no Prince this time. I’m talking about the other Old School.
If you’ve ever gone dancing in the outdoors sometime during the past fifteen years, chances are you know most of these tracks. If you’ve not, then here is your chance to see why you missed out. Suffice it to say that one of my favorite instrument of all times is heavily represented (and I’m probably going straight to Musician Hell for even calling that an instrument).
So this is yet another nostalgia mix, I know, but for aforementioned strained-eye reasons, I really cannot stare much at a computer screen these days, and that reduce by as much my options in terms of making bleeping sounds of my own to go on a mix. Good part about this old school is that I got it all down there on lovely vinyl.
As a result, no prod on this mix, save maybe for some liberal use of sampling trickery, but that doesn’t really qualify…
And before you go and enjoy, I should probably add a fair warning: some of the music on this mix probably could be considered… huh…
“agressive” is not quite the word, but…
OK, let me put it this way: there are basically two type of reactions to it… Some people will shake their head rhythmically while making weird little snake movements with their hands, while others will repress tears of pain and clench their teeth to make sure their fillings do not come out while addressing a quick eulogy to their late eardrums.
Rule of thumb is that people past their thirties tend to belong to the latter category, but go ahead, make the stats lie!
And now that you’ve all been warned:
Dr Dave’s MiniMix #4 (right-click here for download)
Don’t cry Sunshine, next week will be back to good ole’ Funky House. Promise.
Keywords: techno, electronic, psychedelic house, 303, more 303, noisy, tweety-tweety-tit, Underworld, Rollo, Josh Wink, Arrigo Boito, Grayhound, Mefistofele, rez, no sleep, people, consciousness many levels higher…
Bande à part!
As part of our ongoing series (yea, I know, there are so many series going on around here, it’s starting to look like NBC) on Artsy French Movies, let me present the movie of the night. I mean, not exactly the only movie of the night, but I don’t think Candy Bottoms: Nuns in Heat III really deserves a review of its own (my roommate gives it two thumbs up. well at least one, right this moment).
The movie is Band of Outsiders… Bande à part in French, notable in that it also happens to be Tarentino’s production company’s name: what a freaking nerd.
I know, it’s quite surprising I had never seen that movie given that 1) I spent a small but crucial share of my formative years studying in Paris and 2) I have seen most French classics of that time. especially Nouvelle Vague ones (and no, it was not to try and impress some cute bookish girl with an infatuation for old movies. actually, maybe it was. never mind).
There is a reasonable explanation for that: I really cannot stand Jean-Luc Godard. Not the work, the man. See: I was apparently born a couple decades too late. I would have probably liked him ok back then. What makes me dislike him is not even the way he very efficiently shot his own career in the foot, back in the sixties, by abandoning art production in favor of political involvement with a few fringe ideologies. Granted, he did not make the best choice in his fringe ideology affiliations (Mao anyone?), but still, that’s the kind of thing I could actually like him for. No: the problem is that he has now become an insufferable old snob, more full of himself than ever. Whining, staring at his navel, fustigating the youth of today and overall assuming his position as compulsory authority of modern cinema. Always that same old pattern: people overturned by their ambition into the very people they were setting themselves against, rebellious kids turning bourgeois, punk joining the establishment, burning man selling t-shirts on the web etc.
Plus, the man is an awful bore, dribbling inane vacuous aphorisms on life and himself whenever he manages to grab a camera.
So, while I absolutely love François Truffaut, and even though they worked together a lot, I had always ignored a few “seminal” French snobby movies, on the sole ground that they wore his signature. Bande à part was one.
Was I missing out?