Thank you for listening

I am playing a techno rave party in a couple weeks. Adam X and Brian Zentz, Brandon Plank and myself are playing. Spirals, the promoter has a massive fuck-off turbosound rig, imported from the Greatest of Britain.

I sat down with Dan Dagen aka Spirals last week to talk shop, go through a substantial record collection and try to ignore the stacks of speaker cabinets that take up 60% (seriously) of his living room.

He pulled up a stack of records, I pressed record on my laptop and off he went, playing an hours worth of techno in what seemed like 20 minutes. Maybe I am just hungry for beats, but he played everything I needed to hear that day.

After, we played every dj’s favorite game: “have you heard this one?” for 2 hours. Yes.

 

 Spirals uninfected techno mix: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1-sleeparchive- acd bleep- Research EP
2-sleeparchive- bleep 02- Recycle EP
3-sleeparchive- image photometer- Infrared Glow
4-surgeon- black jackal throwbacks- Force + Form
5-surgeon- sleep (ultravilotet)- Body Request
6-diversion group- all boys/no girls Playground Procedure
7-regis- execution grounds- Divine Ritual
8-portion reform- suffocate- The Supreme Negative
9-regis- aftertaste of guilt- Exercise For Institutions
10-function- disaffected- Anticipation
11-regis- white stains- Penetration
12-ancient methods-untitled – Second Method
13-the advent- light years away- Light Years Away
14-the kooky scientist- old vs. neav- O.L.D. vs. N.E.A.U.
15-sven vath- mind games-Mind Games
16-joris voorn- state of inner soul- The First Sound
17-robert hood- razr- Hoodmusic 1
18-james ruskin- return (original)-Return
19-regis and female- c/chaos- Faith Is Fear

Obviously I want to say something about this mix, but I am not sure where to begin. For starters, if you are a chin scratcher, or afraid of liking tunes because they have melody or worse yet, a breakdown, then you might want to just go back to the batcave and keep complaining about how “good music is getting harder to find”.

Not saying this is some uptempo trance fest because, well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Summer is over, and the clouds rolled in quickly to make that point. Some good ideas turned into bad ideas and I have never been less inspired to actually write music since… who knows. I have not played out less, dj or live since I started doing this over ten years ago. Just keeping below the radar,

I am not complaining, just marking the fact that this mix is cool colored. Not blue, not grey, just cool. Full of heart and feeling, but still sad and expecting.

Quality tunes though, both serious classics and some current classics in the making.

Take Dave Angel’s “Endless Motions”. Released in 1993, and full of everything that shows how important the British music scene was in pushing Techno farther and in different directions that America was going.

Jeff Samuel’s “Off the Mark” is stunner, showing off his talent for combining movement with heart. Listen and listen again. The synth work by itself is incredible, bringing that kind of emotion with something so superficially confining like Techno is work best left to the masters. The innovators. The Jeff’s.

Gregor Tresher has been catching my attention recently, taking a playful approach the the minimal and electro sound, while keeping it dance floor friendly. “A Thousand Nights” is melancholy, sexy, girls like it and clubbers love it. Chin scratchers hate it.

Orbital comes correct with “Fahrenheit 3d3″ Giving techno and acid a distinctively British lean. One of my favorite Orbital songs. 1992, yo. Seriously.

Leftfield’s “Swords” brings the whole thing down. Deep, dark and something I slept on till a few weeks ago. Not perfect, me.

 

 WZAPXQ 3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1. Intro – Cliff Martinez -  Don’t Blow It
2. Carl Craig – Technoambient
3. Dave Angel – Endless Motions
4. Trentemoller – Snowflake
5. Mat Anderson – A Heart Like Thera
6. Isolee – Beau Mot Plage
7. Jeff Samuel – Off The Mark
8. Underworld – Beautiful Burnout – Mark Knight Mix
9. Gregor Tresher – A Thousand Nights
10. Orbital – Fahrenheit 3d3
11. Fatboy Slim – Next To Nothing
12. Moby – Go
13. Leftfield – Swords
14. Aphex Twin -Ageisopolis

The video is nothing short of amazing I think. Check it below. Swords, by Leftfield

First off, I apologize to anybody who was under the assumption that this blog/label/podcast was punctual, or even moderately belated. I like to take my time. Its not like I have tons and tons of free time. Since its the slow season at my job (read: slow enough to look for other work) I actually have less time than before. I worked so hard over the holiday season, that from November 1st to the day before Christmas, I only had 2 days off. Except the week I had around Thanksgiving, of course, but you can’t count holidays when you are giving a war story. Actually, it was pretty rough, there were lots of 70+ hour work weeks followed by more 70+ hour weeks, with no days off in between, not to whine, but, It sounds pretty bad ass to your siblings when they whine about some union mandated bathroom break they had to miss.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have what I do when I don’t work 70+ hour weeks. Mainly, sleep-in, think about fishing, think about working on the label and think about riding my bike or going to the gym. Think about going to the gym. I am not totally lazy though. I do have a designated time for chores and cleaning. I designate time right after the Truly-Unpleasant-Potentially-Future-Mrs Anderson reminds me that I am still sitting in the same place she left me this morning. (And here I thought I was being obedient)

2 stories and a dj mix.

1. I do not have waders for fishing. Or, I do now, but I didn’t and that sucked. The Truly-Unpleasant-Potentially-Future-Mrs Anderson and her parents went in over xmas and ordered me a nice pair. Orvis pro-guide2. I actually did the ordering, and since they promised to deliver them by Xmas (GUARANTEED) I had them shipped to her parents house in Oregon, where we would be spending the holiday fly fishing with her father, who happens to be the baddest guide in southern Oregon.

Well, they were late. Promised by the 25 of december and arrived on the 4th of January and reshipped to Redmond yesterday, the 8th. Well, guess what I did today? Actually, don’t guess. Continue reading.

2. I do not have a working dj mixer. Or, I do now, but I didn’t and that sucked. The Djm-500, My bff Dickey and I shared for oh… 10 years (really) and took to possibly hundreds of shows, didn’t have that special sparkle in its step anymore. I am not sure what happened but I think we both have matured and have just drifted apart. That and none of the bass knobs held the last-position-turned-to. Seriously though, thats the only thing wrong with it. I have been cleaning up the studio getting ready for my upcoming studio fest (whenever that is) and have been eye-balling my turntables thinking about how many hours a week I used to spend on them. I swung through my local Guitar Center and picked up a Vestax VMC-004, for really cheap. Like, on-sale, out-of-box and no power supply.

44$ ($11 per channel?) A trip to radio shack settled me with an adapter that worked (AC-in? Wierd.) and I got to… do nothing really. Only one channel worked and the others worked in a “left channel only kinda way.) I wasn’t bummed, I kinda expected it, but it would have been nice to have the Vestax be really cheap AND work. I took it back and bought a little Numark DM-1002. Its small and crappy, but I got it yesterday, and I finally have mixer that works.

So guess what I did today?

I woke up early, drove out to my top-secret spot on the lower Snoqualmie River and went fishing in MY BRAND NEW WADERS. The water was too high for me to get down safely to my usual spot, so I hiked in a bit and checked out an area I had seen but hadn’t visited before. Noting special, but there was a nice pool. No action though. Not even a bump. I dead drifted some egg patterns, some egg sucking leeches and someting called a green skunk before switching out my sink-tip for my dry leader. There was no hatch to be seen. I looked pretty carefully and decided that maybe working an emerger patter might be the best bet, as there was no noticeable fish anywhere. Nothing. I went for a few dry’s but with no result. So, I did what anybody in my position would do.

I went hope grabbed a handful of Detroit and Detroit-inspired Techno and made a mix. Warning. I recorded it, but this was my first mix in many months, my first in my new hour, on a new mixer and it was just a random sampling tracks. I literally grabbed a handful out of the Techno section and went for it. Did I ever.

No trainwrecks, no cd players, no mp3’s. Just 2 channels and some Genmaicha tea.

 

 Gone Fishing Forever. [67:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tracklisting, though it may not be perfect order.

ATLON INC – Dark was the Night – Force
Jeff Samuel – AWT ep – Spectral
Nagen & Saugen – Coughlozenge Horspiel Music
Audio 17
Tim Baker – Soul Provider
Thor Inc – Eternal Atom – Harthouse
Primevil 15
Red Planet – Star Dancer
Dual Channel
User
Samuel L Session – Shakin’ Bootsy ep
Brian Zentz – Dirt Box
Oxia – Intec 08
Dual Channel
Lance Samuel – Eukatech
Heatsync – Assembly – Orbit Records