Have a great Xmas, take care over the silly season!
December 25, 2011
November 11, 2011
August 15, 2011
Still Here / Europe 2011
Hello, yes I’m still around.
It’s winter here in Sydney. I’ve not been up to much really. Lots of indoor activities, watching TV shows and movies, playing Portal 2, making music with Ableton Live, and spending hours sorting through digital music files, as per usual spending more time doing that than actually mixing with any of the music, or sorting out how to use my MIDI controller with Traktor Scratch Pro, which reminds me I need to install the new version I bought ages ago. I’ve also been putting my track ID skills to use on the mixesdb site, track-listing a bunch of sets.
Still listening to lots of music, a lot of my own creations, but also John Tejada‘s ‘Parabolas’ album, is getting a lot of plays, it’s really grown on me to become one of my favourite recent electronic music albums.
With nothing much on music/club/techno wise of interest to me, I’ve had a 2 month break from clubbing. I couldn’t miss seeing Jesper Dahlbäck in early June, and Alex Smoke [Live] on the w/end just gone though, both at Chinese Laundry, but that’s all I’ve got out to recently. I enjoyed their sets, heard some great sounds, but they were far from special nights out.
Seeing Sandwell District play in Melbourne for 5+ hours in a small underground venue, through a Funktion One, back in April was a special night out, heard so much excellent techno music. Hoping for more of that on our holiday…
Joanne and I are heading off to Europe soon for a holiday. We’ll be visiting these places:
Netherlands / Amsterdam
Germany / Frankfurt, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Münster, Hamburg
Sweden / Stockholm
Czech Republic / Prague
France / Paris, Bordeaux, St. Emilion
United Kingdom / London, Birmingham, Portsmouth, Windsor
We’re looking forward to visiting new places, re-visiting some places we love, doing lots of walking and sightseeing, catching up with friends and family, eating lots of fine food, and drinking fine wines (Bordeaux!), and of course checking out a lot of techno/music events and club nights.
Joanne has done an amazing job of researching, and booking things for our holiday. It’s going to be a busy one, but we’re both keen for that.
We’re not spending as much time clubbing in Berlin as we did on our last holiday, but I think we’ll be enjoying a lot more music we’re passionate about. We had a lot of nights out in Berlin last time, that were fun, but we heard way too much uninspiring tech-house/house music.
We’re both very much back into techno these days, sounds from people like: Function, Regis, (Sandwell District), Silent Servant, DVS1, Peter Van Hoesen, Mike Dehnert, Surgeon, Marcel Fengler, Roman Lindau, Marcelus, Lucy, Planetary Assault Systems, Xhin, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Norman Nodge, and Skudge, you get the idea. So, we’re planning to try and see many of them play while on our holiday, they are all pretty much EU based.
Some music/club/techno things we’ve locked in already, that I’m excited about…
The day after we arrive… Mystery Land 2011 in Amsterdam, which techno wise features: Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Richie Hawtin, Ben Sims, and in the Electric Deluxe area: Marcel Dettman, James Ruskin, Marcel Fengler, Speedy J and Dave Clarke. The event is huge! Hoping to see Rodriguez Jr. as well.
A Fachwerk label night with Mike Dehnert and Roman Lindau in Münster.
Seeing Surgeon playing in his hometown Birmingham.
A night at Berghain in Berlin with G-Man [Live], Norman Nodge, Marcel Fengler and more. Just excited to be going to Berghain again really.
I’ll list up the events properly soon.
As excited as I am to be heading off to Europe, still a little disappointed that back in Sydney while I’m away in September, I’ll be missing music events with Robag Wruhme, and Lucy. I’ve actually seen Robag Wruhme play before anyway. Plus stand up comedian Louis CK, and legend of comedy John Cleese. Have some laughs for me if you’re going.
Stephen Merchant
Speaking of comedy, whilst we’re in London, we’ll be heading to dubstep’s home Croydon, to see UK comedy legend Stephen Merchant of Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington fame, doing his stand up show. Looking forward to that. I enjoyed hearing him voice Wheatley in the Portal 2 game. Enjoyed that game, but found it a little too easy puzzle wise.
More soon.
April 9, 2011
Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to me! I can’t believe I’m 40, scary…
Some nice music/party for my celebrations…
October 10, 2010
July 23, 2010
iTunes video problem, fixed, solution.
This is the broken, messed up, corrupted, pixelated, blocky, green, purple with black dots and lines video I see when I try to play any videos or video podcasts in iTunes at the moment, I can hear the audio ok, but the video is messed up.
This started after version 9 of iTunes, current version is 9.2.1.4.
If I right click and select full screen when playing a video, I can actually see it fine, but it’s messed up like that above, at smaller sizes, and when played either inside iTunes or in a separate window. The same video files play fine with QuickTime, WMP11, or VNC etc.
I’m running Windows XP Pro SP3, with a ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 video card, and Catalyst 10.6 drivers.
Yeah, my gaming video card, a Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX died a few months back, I’m currently saving $ for a ATI Radeon 5970 so I can play games again properly, OS holiday is going to delay this.
I couldn’t find any mention of others with this video problem in iTunes, looking/searching on the Apple iTunes for Windows forum on the Apple site, and I’ve been Googling around for a few weeks looking for a solution.
Last night I came across a page that suggested the following for general video playback issues with iTunes on Windows, XP, Vista, Windows 7 etc.
1. Close iTunes.
2. Go to Windows Control Panel (Start > Control Panel).
3. Double click QuickTime.
4. Go to the Advanced tab.
5. Remove the tick on Enable Direct3D video acceleration.
6. Select Safe mode (GDI only).
7. Click Apply, OK.
9. Reboot.
I tired it, and it worked, it fixed my problem, videos play again via iTunes. Not sure why/how this fixes the issue, or if it’s an iTunes or video drivers issue, but all is good now.
I Hope this helps someone else out there.
April 21, 2010
God Vs Techno
Damn that Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, messing with my techno, man! ;P
Agoria – cancelled last w/end, unable to get a flight.
Redshape [Live] – cancelled this coming w/end, unable to get a flight.
I was actually really looking forward to seeing both of these guys play here in Sydney. No doubt a bunch of other international DJs, live acts etc. probably won’t be making it to gigs in time, around the world, and to here in Australia this w/end, if they’re coming from U.K or Europe.
Thick ash clouds from eruptions of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, have been blowing into U.K and Europe air space, cancelling flights to and from the U.K and Europe, closing airports etc. It’s all over the news.
I read the abrasive ash causes all sorts of problems for jet engines, damaging fan blades, and with the temperatures jet engines run at, they can turn the ash to molten glass, causing the engine to seize up, nasty!
Fingers crossed this all clears up, and Dave Clarke, Joris Voorn, and Steve Rachmad can make it here from Amsterdam for the Creamfields tour, starting in Sydney at the end of next week.
Latest news today, the volcano is still erupting, sending out more ash clouds, a lot of flights are still cancelled, the back-log keeps growing. Airlines must be frantic to resume services.
Pretty selfish of me to complain about missing some techno because of this. I feel really sorry for all the people affected, separated from family and friends, stranded around the world, stuck in airports. Travel, transport, and business plans and activities halted. With the added pain of some traveller’s insurance not covering costs incurred of accommodation, expenses, and for other transport arrangements, because this is an ‘act of god’. I would imagine there would also be a lot of U.K and Europe post, cargo and air-freight items being held up here and there as well, not good.
April 9, 2010
The Cake Is A Lie : Happy Birthday To Me!
Yes, it’s my birthday today, Happy 39th Birthday, old man!
The Cake Is A Lie? It’s from Portal (game), as is that picture, sequal coming soon…
April 2, 2010
March 17, 2010
Hello!
Hello, wow, it’s March already… Life goes by faster the older you get, I’m sure of it. I hope you’re all well and all is going well.
It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged any thoughts and comments here about all the music I’ve been listening to, and club/music events I’ve got out to, and continue to get out to.
I have trouble synchronising my spare time, energy, motivation and enthusiasm I think, well, that’s my excuse. Or maybe I’m just really busy, or maybe just lazy.
The truth is, work is all work no play these days, it’s brain numbing. Nights at home are spent chilling, enjoying all the wonderful TV shows discovered via channel BT with Joanne, that’s become a passion.
It’s not all TV at home though, I’m often on the PC, seeking out music, messing around with Ableton Live (never seem to progress beyond initial track ideas, but it’s fun), or spending time killing enemies inside FPS PC games, it should probably be a concern how much enjoyment I get from that. I’ll have a chat about FPS PC games soon, I must get around to installing and playing Bioshock 2 soon.
Weekends are usually always busy for us, eating out, catching up with friends and family, seeing movies, clubbing, partying, recovering. There are also the weekends where I love to just relax and do as little as possible, but it’s the busy weekends that are the most memorable and rewarding. You certainly appreciate weekends more when you work full time.
So, the blog is being neglected. I’m starting to think it would be better if I just posted up smaller, shorter, quicker things here more often than doing what I have been, which is these grand plans to write up lengthy, detailed reviews/posts with lists of tracks spotted in DJs sets. I start writing them, but they never get finished, so they’re never posted. I have a drafts folder full of them. I’m not sure there would be any benefit finishing them and posting them now, unless you really want to know the names of a bunch of tracks Joris Voorn played at Nevermind in February 2009, wow that was more than a year ago.
As suggested by James from the SydneyLovesTechno blog, I also wanted to write up a follow up on 2009, my best (and worst) of 2009 club/music wise, with charts etc. But now that we’re well into 2010, wondering if it’s still worth doing.
On that point, something that has become very clear to me, is that the most enjoyable and inspiring music things I’ve seen and experienced out over recent years have all been live performances, people playing their own music live with laptops, hardware, instruments etc. Mathew Jonson, Laurent Garnier, John Tejada, Alex Smoke, HMC, Robert Babicz, Orbital, Depeche Mode all come to mind.
I’m just not hearing or seeing anything that interesting in DJ sets these days, I’m not being inspired but a set of music. Considering all the hardware, controllers, software around these days for DJs to use, you would think there would be a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening. Perhaps all this future DJing technology just isn’t being used within the genres of music I like. Techno isn’t technology music anymore? I don’t believe that. What’s Richie Hawtin up to? Perhaps it’s because the music isn’t as good/interesting to me anymore…
Music is still a big passion. Listening to it is a big part of my life. I’m always seeking new stuff out, collecting music, buying stuff on Beatport, downloading podcasts and DJ mixes. Or having musical trips down memory lane via YouTube clips. It’s always nice to have new stuff to listen to on my iPod on my public transport travels during the working week. I love my iPod I use it every single day.
A lot of the time at home I feel like I spend more time organising my digital music collection, than actually using it to mix with. Every weekend I think about recording some DJ mixes, but it never seems to happen, I never find the time. I can’t believe I managed to record a 2 hour mix/DJ set for my Internet radio show, every single week in years gone by. I really would love to do some more DJ mixes.
The sounds? To be honest, I’m not really hearing much unique, inspirational, special, memorable new music within the techno, tech-house, minimal, and deep-house genres I like. I had a brief love affair with nu-disco, but it’s not exciting me as much anymore. Perhaps I’ve been into it all for too long. There’s just too much stuff sounding all the same/heard it all before, too much music trying to fit in, not enough stuff pushing forward into new directions. Is it because anyone with a computer and some music software can churn out tracks now?
But it’s not all bad, it’s the rare gems I come across that keep me interested in seeking out more music, but you don’t come across them us much anymore. I’m hard to please. I’ll post up a list of music I’ve been enjoying recently, shortly.
So, like I said, I think I’ll post up shorter things more often from now on… He says after posting this essay… /me rolls eyes.
Anyway, enough dribble, hello, I’m still here, more soon.