erol erol!

erol alkan. what a man. i first came across him in 2003 on a covermount cd for the (sadly now defunct) magazine muzik. to put this all in context. i read an interview with seb fontaine in ministry in august 2000, in which he said that when he was a kid at parties, controlling the music was all about power, about making sure the girls couldn't get at it to play duran duran. nowadays he conceded it was about making people dance, and that girls on film would probably sound great in a club. on this erol alkan cd, what was track three but girls on film! the cd featured a thrash punk reworking of harder, better, faster, stronger, some awesome tracks from people like codec & flexor, thin white duke and so on. so i was instantly a fan. then in 2005 he released his mindblowing bugged out/bugged in mix, which is easily one of the best mixes i have ever purchased. the rapture mixed with josh wink. sebastian's dolami, willow's song from the wicker man for god's sake! awesome. he even played four times in dublin last year, but i somehow managed to miss each show. for his first mash-up gig i was sick. i couldn't find him at the trinity ball. i had no-one to go see him with when he played in marlay park. his second mash-up gig was the night before i flew to prague at 5 am. then he played oxegen, but i was in chicago. so as soon as i saw he was set to play tbmc again, i was there. and what a night it was.

he started off with his remix of i don't feel like dancing, he played go, he went through an absolute stormer of a set which featured switch's remix of bump, the smd mix of the klaxons' magick (and that it was), the soulwax remix of standing in the way of control which touched upon simian's we are your friends (of course he didn't need to play that, the crowd sang it all), and he ended it all with daft punk's one more time/aerodynamic. and then of course he was coaxed back by the obligatory screams of "one more tune." and then he played aforementioned rapture/wink mashup before making a bit of a racket with his franz ferdinand remix. simply awesome.

but the night was marred by my missing the nitelink and having to walk to rathmines before i got a taxi. ah well...

i messed around with ableton for a while today. i don't know if i'll ever get my ahead around it. you can do some lovely things with it, but i honestly can't imagine ever djing with it. crazy. apparently gu29 was mixed on ableton. i wonder about that. if you can mix live with vinyl/cds/effects units why not do the same in the studio? this is of course coming from someone who's not quite so adept... what's it they say that taking apart is the trade of those who cannot construct? the truth of that statement always troubles me...

morning

was several hours ago. so this title is a bit of a misnomer. it's been an interesting week. back in college at last. mid-october? ridiculous! scandinavian cinema is fascinating, british cinema intriguing and principles of performance and technology is alternately baffling and hilarious. so it'll be an interesting term if nothing else.

thursday night i went to see the long blondes in crawdaddy and was delightfully entertained. i was a little perturbed to be surrounded by some seriously hardcore fans who knew all the words. i've been listening to this band for, oh about three weeks, while these fans have clearly known about them for a lot longer, even if they've yet to release an album! they were great though, irrespective of their crazy fans.

then i went off with my friend to the hub for loreana rushe's pandamonium night. having been unable for whatever reason to go until now, i was quite excited about it all. as i walked in clap your hands say yeah were being played, and over the next few hours i heard great tunes from the likes of le tigre (always makes me smile!), jens lekman, the klaxons (although i only discovered that after some frantic back and forth discussions with loreana over myspace) and, of course, many others. great night. and i spent most of it wandering about talking to randomers as my friend got with some random girl. a good night so!

although friday morning and my discussion with my dissertation supervisor was less than enjoyable. a great discussion, but i felt like muck. on friday night i went to see festen in the gate, hardly the best hangover cure, but a remarkable play nonetheless. the performances were all fantastic, the set was inspired and the use of space, imagined and real, was marvellous.

last night however i was quite disappointed. although the reviews suggested otherwise, i had high hopes for the outkast vehicle idlewild. over the last decade they've established themselves as a formidable force not only in the world of hip-hop but in the landscape of pop music. who doesn't know ms jackson and hey ya? beyond the scope of their singles, their albums never fail to deliver a bizarre melange of inspired genius, as big boi and andré 3000 bob and weave between gangster postures and introspective self-questioning. and yet their film was so painfully traditional in both its form and content. big boi deals with crazy wife? andré shows the inexperienced singer how to get along? ack, i can't even say how annoyed i am. and i thought that, with lines like the following, that misogyny was beyond them:

I hate thinkin that these the future mommas
of our chillun, they fuckin a different nigga every time
they get the feelin to, I’m willin to go the extra kilo-meter
just to see my senorita get her pillow
on the side of my bed where no good ever stay

but no, they in no way stray from typical hollywood convention in any way, using the typical pan from the girl's feet up.

ok so i kind of lost what i was saying here. so i'll stop. and it's now wednesday, not sunday...

most recent acquisition: richie hawtin - transitions (cd/dvd)... mindblowing...

this whole weekly business hasn't worked out so well. too many late nights, early mornings, and lazy, misspent evenings. so now, on a cold saturday afternoon, i finally get around to writing some more. well, the past while has been interesting. i wrote some articles for a college newspaper that, i feel at any rate, were at turns inspired and pretentious, but overall coherent. but for one awful sentence in the middle of the larger article of course. i suppose one reason for writing this blog is at the very least writing practice, and by setting some sort of weekly goal for myself i can get used to the whole deadlines business. and since no-one's reading this anyway i can say what i like! so everybody wins...

the other day i popped into a music shop in george's street arcade, looking for the richie hawtin cd/dvd set transitions, but instead came across a pile of promos, at the front of which i saw the new stanton warriors fabric mix. which isn't out until october 16th, according to fabriclondon.com at any rate. i was a little disappointed by the stanton sessions 2 (and have yet to bother playing lost files, shocking i know), not least because nearly every track was a stantons production. personally i like a little variety in my dj mixes, at least in terms of artists if not styles, so when 9 out of the 16 tracks are their own it's a little overwhelming. obviously it's not as bad as the infamous GU26, but the less said about that the better. anyway. this new mix is nice, seems like, while there's a large amount of stanton stuff, it's more party based than show-off-y. and pop ya virus is genius.

i also picked up a promo copy (ie same cd just no packaging and half the price) of destroy minimal, to which i'm currently listening. two tracks in and it's nice too, can't really complain. i can't say i know all that much about minimal, save for a few mixes from the likes of richie hawtin and james holden (oh and his dub of britney's breath on me is awesome), some nathan fake tracks (dinamo in particular) and alex smoke's paradolia. but what i'm hearing so far is good, particularly lazy fat people's big city. sort of what trance should sound like if tiesto wasn't the biggest dj in the world. i've managed to get well away from the whole techno deep house end of things so i really have no idea how to put words on these things, but i like these sounds. stephan bodzin's caligula is also impressing me. my problem, as previously stated, is that a lot of music that is new to me is old, and any cds i buy i put away and neglect for far too long. hence listening to stantons on the way home and DM now.

eghck.

i've been listening to lots of clipse lately too, mainly because i keep reading them on pitchfork. much as i've loved lord willin' ever since i bought it three years ago, i can't stop playing definition of a roller (on piracy funds terrorism, yes i'm talking about diplo again) and what happened to that boy. and we got it 4 cheap vol. 2 is awesome, i remember the first time i heard it back in march i suddenly felt "yes, hip hop is not dead/dying"... these lines may not be the best malice has ever said, but i like the way they get you with that "oooh!" factor:

first time out the gate n*gga's a grammy nominee
but whether rappin or crack momma's still proud of me
using her good dishes leaving them powdery
blow in your nose got you sniffin like allergy

on that note...