have a ton of work all of a sudden, but last weekend was starting to feel sick. Against Bhu’s firm advice, i thought I would work late Sunday, and get to a good place on one job, thinking then I could sleep in, knowing I wouldn’t have any news from US until around 3pm. Bad move. Have been so goddamn sick all week, raging cough, 24 hours of fever (including stupid stupid over and over banal dreams, here cough for this board in the pile, now cough to make sure that one is at the right angle…for 24 fucking hours.). Even better, the anticipated pressure to finish on all three main jobs never materialized; one hasn’t even been heard from, and the other gave me an extra week, so it was all for nothing. Grrrrr. But I’m almost back. Healthy days, I always take them for granted, forget just how easy it is to burn off a sheaf of them.
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usually January, like August, is a pitiful joke when it comes to finding work, I just sleep through it the best i can. Somehow this year is different, got several projects live. One more big one and i can not only pay my bills, but maybe get my long-overdue new computer.
a fun one: film titles for a movie about digging up Michael jackson and making him into some leader of an army against bad guys or some such, a silly indie thing that’s low budget but surprisingly well shot. Not paying much at all, but if I wanna do film titles every piece in my portfolio adds up. They showed a trailer for it at some film festival, and in 10 days there were over 100 thousand signatures from crybaby Jax fans trying to stop it from being made. Awesome, count me in!!
second meeting with Bhu’s band went ok. skillful mediation to the rescue; don’t remember where I learned how to do this but it seems my mojo was up to the task. so, onward. Tickets are booked for a big show they’re doing in Geneva Switzerland early March, including one for me. finest. back to the rehearsal room, get this machine running again. They are expecting a huge audience for the show; they are the headlining act at a festival, and perhaps 2,000 people could be in the audience! hoping they can get some kind of CD together by then to sell. This is not made easier by the fact that we decided Bhu is going to re-take most or all of the vocals, oops. She was nervous and stressed when she did them before, and she can do better, and therefore…what the hell.
I took the dwindles of my last paycheck and bought a few small pieces of plywood and a basic set of acrylic paint. fucking hate acrylics, but in the current situation it’s the only realistic option, unless I want to wait even longer. There’s a technique i want try, easy with acrylics, first you build up a texture, then you work on the values, then you add transparent glazes to finish up with the color. With oils, building up any kind of texture means days or weeks of waiting for it to dry enough, but with acrylics, it’s more like a few hours tops, but probably not even that. then the value layer is dry in minutes, and yeah. Also, can cover it all with a matte finish later, without waiting months like you’re supposed to with oils. So, five letter-size pieces and 10 half-that await; this small, i can easily make high res scans. And then maybe finally get on with that online shop action I started ages ago.
did a marathon of DJ set editing on Sunday night into Monday, almost 5 hours of them. still wanna make one more final pass, then will toss them to y’all wolves.
Bhu’s band had some big drama the last few eeks, seemed unresolvable, and she sure wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. I offered to mediate a meeting, and last Wednesday it came together, and after nearly 3 hours, well whaddya know, i pulled it off. It was about putting the past to bed, stage one. Next meeting will be about shaping up the future, hope it goes as well, or shit’s gonna up-shake. shit. Too bad, as she got them a booking for a festival in Geneva Switzerland early March, for an expected crowd of about 2,000…headlining! So, time for a wee bit more magic.
A friend of the guy who throws the parties i am a resident at has been wanting to set up a label. To do that, you need to set up distribution deals and various permits and licenses and jerk this and that, so he said fuck it and just bought an existing label, walla. First up will be a four artist vinyl, one track each, and i am invited. A nice chugging techno thumper is requested; my constellations just got sorted. Cough of the new year almost went away, then came back. Goddammit, just piss off, papa gots work to do!
in German they wish you Guten Rutsch! which translates to “(Have a) good slide!” We slid. Bhu worked a long and very hectic shift, banging hard. I waited too long for my set to start, then i guess came on with too much enthusiasm and played to noisy…or i don’t know, the room emptied out and the bar owner turned on the lights to close my room. Fuck that place, never setting foot in there again. Didn’t bother going to Berghain, just pissed off home to crash. Monday early, my favorite DJ was scheduled to play at Berghain at 2am, so clever me took my disco nap and got there 8am, expecting the second half of his usual marathon set. Oh, he had two other gigs before, and was exhausted, played a few hours and then took off? Happy Fuckin New Year. We’ve both been in bed all week, sleeping off bad coughs and stuff, but I think today we can finally rally. On the 6th.
Whatever, I got a warm house, some cash in the bank, and a girl who loves me very much, should be able to work with this. Liking my new mix, hoping it will lead to some real bookings this year. No DJ gigs til mid-Feb, so lots of time to do the winter productivity thing.
apparently i have decided to celebrate the end of the year with a raging cough, just great. had a bit of a hack earlier in the week, but I guess after a late night waiting for my DJ slot last night (which ended a half hour in, shitass), the body just bit tight the anchor and dove. At least I’ll get a midnight hug and kiss for the first time in like ages. Supposed to play again at this club we’ve been trying like hell to salvage, but after last night it’s fine with me if I never set foot in there again. so much wasted hope. It’s been great to have the opportunity to develop my dancefloor sets on a semi-proper system, no complaints there, but dammit, it stings to pour your heart into a set for 8 body-sprayed knuckleheads and their chicken-dancing scrawny babes. We gave it a good go, now it is SO time to kiss it goodbye. Already lining up other places; had a good party at the epic dowager of a squat Tacheles, in their little bar; small but super enthusiastic crowd. Three or four more shows lined up there.
new set online, Chromaphage. starts mellow then goes full on, 90 minutes. time to alert the entire goddamn planet, book me bitchez!
anyway, thanks for playing the home version, I’m going to go slip into the slowly warming place between the blankets and wait for midnight. Give your 2012 a nice warm hallo for me.
I guess it’s just stress. last fall I ran out of cash, and was still damned heartbroken. have had a few sessions of major stress lately, i supposed that was it. the coffee i had to take to get through the job last weeks didn’t help. did a cool ultrasound thing, saw no non-contracting tissue, though my BP is a little high. will see about how to reduce that and get back to living otherwise badly ; ) was looking good after a few months at the gym, Bhu approves of any promises to get back to that. She used to swim regularly until she got sick of greasy dirtmen drooling at her, but I’ve pointed out to her how much and well she loves to spit “fucckkoff” at such things, so maybe she’ll start up again too. just gotta stabilize my income a little better. very liking a mix I made last month, just gotta make the time to edit it and get it out there, get that little spark top catch a breeze. project I made for last job is gorgeous, will put that out as soon as they say sure.
last fall, started to notice the occasional twinge in my heart, and once in a while an unexplained pain here or there in my left arm, but never saw a doctor about it. last couple of weeks, things have gotten more distinctive, and I finally made an appointment with a cardio specialist. or, at least found when walk-in hours are, lady said bring a book. fingers crossed. a couple of friends say they have “valve issues”, for which there isn’t much of a solution except do enough cardio and avoid stress. Had an on and off freelance job the last couple of weeks, for which caffeine was required to keep from bruising my forehead from repeatedly falling asleep against the monitor. I fucking hate caffeine, and am guessing that’s what triggered it. We shall see.
but the project I was working on (and am still tweaking) is going to be damn lovely, a shot of a girl in an insufficient wee boatlet in big stormy waves. studio did the 3D of the girl and newspaper sack watercraft, bobbling along, and I did everything else. will put it up as soon as I’m allowed.
Buh’s band has four members, three of which are in another band, and the fourth has a small record label and a little bit of cash to play with. Despite his reluctance, they cajoled him into producing an album for them, which he would release, and as predicted, the project went all fuck you, no fuck you, no you shut up, etc., and now there is tension in Bhu’s band. they have been trying to resolve, but it doesn’t really seem to be settling down, so sometime soon everybody, including Bhu, is gonna have a sitdown together, and i am going to mediate. Bhus is stressed, but i am trying to keep her positive.
Will start thinking more soon about doing a project together with Bhu; if we put out an album, my friend will gladly release it. he has gotten the crew 3 days/week access to a decent little audio project studio, so i am going to try and make a lot of time to get my ass up there and work on shit, my own tracks to start but it could go anywhere. For all the security and stability I have had this past most of year, I have been pathetically uncreative. Bahhh.
will teach a one day ~8 hour workshop in After Effects around Feb 3 I think, that’s exciting. then start the proper course in maybe April. will be good to get back into that.
have been waiting forever for a box to be shipped from my sister; first effort was a slovenly clusterfuck of incompetence, but attempt number 2 seems a definite maybe. it’s at customs, let’s see if the sticker notice gets to my door okay. what a joke.
I was sitting at Bhu’s bar the other night, and she said oh you should talk to this guy. Turns he’s from NYC too, and was often at Twilo, the big shrine to all things debauched, especially techno, that I used to frequent. He said were you there the night of the fire? Oh yes, i especially was. Back in 2001, a big DJ was scheduled to play there (Digweed, if you must), and he insisted they have a chillout system/DJ, so the club built a little chainlink booth in the men’s room, with sound in the hallway as well. Pretty cool; everybody pees, so everybody had to be subjected to my devious mischief at least a few times during the ride. A little hard to see more than a foot into the dark beyond the front-lit fencing, but no matter. Good fun. Soat one point, i had a couple few tracks layered together, and it was somehow too creepy even for me; i actually felt this cyliner of greasy nastiness roiling in the far top corner of the room, and decided I better get that shit off and put on something safer, just ewwww, done. whew. Moving right along. Five minutes later a friend stops in and says we’re clearing the club out, there’s a fire in the ceiling on the other side of the far wall. You know, right behind where i was generating the creepy roil. Oopsie! So, yeah, 2,000 rolling ravers out into the February cold. Most of my friends have heard this story,
But here’s the kicker: this guy even had a picture from the street! Behold!!
how damn cool is that!
in other news, I am getting a license to Maya soon; this is a brilliant thing. It is THE hot platform for high-end 3D, and one does not meddle in cracks of it unless one wants very much to have it phone home and tell the police where to send the bill. And it happens, in fact it’s almost guaranteed. So damn excited about this!
starting some woodworking; thinking i will make my desk a standing desk, not sure how that will work. will have a stool with a back on it for some tasks, but will try to be up off my ass as much as possible. At my age, the risk of heart disease increases radically when you let the ass parts go numb.
went to DJ last night at a party, expected to open for two hours then dawdle around and see about maybe closing the party for maybe another hour or two. opening set went almost 3 hours, and the closing set….nearly 4 hours. Holy shit, I DJed almost 7 hours of boomers yesterday. In the second set, a few came up behind the DJ booth to ask for requests, or to tell me it needed to be much harder and faster (not my least favorite request ever, but you don’t need to come back a second time and express your disappointment). Lighting on the dancefloor is very dim, so it’s hard to see the dancers, not that there were much more than a dozen or so anyway, sigh, so it makes it very hard to connect, which is what dancefloor DJing is kind of all about, which kind of messes with the energy thing, pouring hard and not getting the loop to know how it’s hitting. Was a blast, but I was sure glad to see the lights slowly come on this morning just before noon.
meeting last week went well, just a tentative budget but if their client bites it will be a lot of work, and included in the budget is enough for me to get a new system, NEED and WANT. When I got home, there was one rush job waiting, and an offer to teach a class next semester, and also a request to meet with that woman about a project. Well my oh scooty my! Rocked out the rush job, client totally jazzed about results, will pay fast, niiiiice. Went to meeting today about other project, will go again next week to see their better-resolved plans and then give estimate, but it should go ahead i think. Damn it’s nice to have paper in my pocket that I earned myself.
Did a fun mix at the party last Friday; was asked to bring in as much acid as possible (ie tracks featuring a TB303, the classic acid sound), and it went great. Und zo, ElfElfElf, 2 hours of bent.
Just bought a thick folder of new tracks, lots of prep work to do tonight, then tomorrow i go rent some time on a big system and go work on a bunch of new mixes: one deep dark techno, full late hour psychedelic rage-on, then a warmup-to-bumpinish mix, then a mix to maybe get a few gigs at bars, bubbly house. Thinking around 5 hours total. I got some work to do tonight getting it organized.
anybody other than Patrick still reading this damn thing? Hi Pat!
mooof. hell i dunno. stuff going on but at this point whatever. this isn’t much of a travel blog anymore, mostly just a scattered record of my mundane here and there struggles and lameouts. maybe I’ve just had little more than false starts lately and it shows.
been trying to get together a couple of new mixes for, ding, the bell: too damn long. went Tues to the club where we do our parties, set up on the main system but the bass was super muddy and I really just didn’t feel connected, big busy mix with too many elements trying too hard. The monitoring was not so clean, would cut out a part and not even hear the difference. went two hours and at end felt no victory, want better. so went back yesterday to try again on much better system in smaller room, but my friend was busy with it recording a couple of people jamming on a potential track together, so I am making other plans. Going to a meeting in a bit with client from last big job, a big job appears to be flirting us up, and we are going to talk about how to budget it better this time. Hoping for a REALLY big one to end out the year. We shall see, but if there’s time next week I’m going to rent a day at a space near here, where there’s a pretty solid system, and make both mixes. goddammit, I wanna play! but the other obvious problem is that I am not living this, not spending enough time getting to know my tracks, feeling out ways to work them off each other, and mainly am certainly not anywhere near exploiting the capabilities of this wild software I use. Not even sure I’ll get to play this weekend; hope we can crack the curse, and get enough people to justify opening the second room.
a couple of weeks ago was at Bhu’s bar, and saw a friend, and he says oh do you know Zack? and around my shoulder comes my number one favorite DJ, DVS-1. The two times I’ve seen him here, i always give him big smiles around the DJ booth, and huh, he recognized me, and then we ended up chatting for about an hour, how about that.
I could really use a few unimaginative dreams. I seem to wake up every day on the far side of some excruciating epic, drained and in need of a big break. Recalibration, i need one. suppose it would help not to watch big splashy movies just before lights out. Fine, you try it.
time to warsh and get on the train to SW Berlin. Where I live, in Germany! That’s still MAD AWESOME!!!
when DJs/producers “make it”, the process can begin and get air rather abruptly. One of the main ways it happens is by someone charting one of your tracks someplace significant, adding it to their top ten for whichever month. Dr. Walker, the promoter I work with, used to be one of the kings of the German techno scene, then went away to Crete and points beyond for several years, and faded off the radar. All of a sudden, his blip is back and beeping loud. He has a track on the new Berghain mix/compilation (someone had to tell him, the label that licensed it never contacted him), and now Resident Advisor has asked him for a new chart. And I’m going to be on it. Righteous! Psychedelic Kitchen is his netlabel, meaning stuff will only be released digitally, at least to begin. Next step is to get the shit mixed down and officially released! Eh, better make some other tracks, I have two but more would be damn fine. I guess he’ll chart jundiev or firkof, both on my site.
Still pushing to finish my two new mixes, one for bar, housey, not so dancey, and the other full on raging dark trippy techno. The bar one seems to be organized and about ready to go; bought a few new strong tracks for the darkfloor, but will probably leave that loosely sorted so i can be spontaneous. Hopefully going to get to mix that one on the actual mainfloor system at the club we do parties at, can’t wait!
Bhu’s remix track seems to be ready to go to mastering; they did a really great job, and hopefully we’ll get to deliver it to the label in person, we both really want to see their faces. I don’t think anyone was expecting it to come out this good. It’s really something, very proud of her!
Bhu’s club’s label (Ostgut Ton) invited her to do a remix of one of the tracks on their label, Steffi’s “Sadness”. Seeing as it basically has about six words sighed over and over, wasn’t much opportunity for her to soar vocally, so she and i worked out about 20 lines of lyrics, and her band came up with a gorgeous simple riff that’s quite moving. It should be released as a 7″ around the end of the year; the other side is a rather comical character that does a stiflingly cliche grind of noisy indu-rawk, with that ridiculous wolfman-teeth raspy growl, haven’t heard what he’s done but let’s just drop that subject right now. Today there was a photo shoot for the two of them, up on the roof of the club, which was previously a huge heat-generating plant. I had heard of the vast room in the back that they are fixing up to be a concert hall. Holy fucking shit, that thing is insane! Concrete hopper chutes in the 100′ ceiling 20′ on a side, ventilation holes just as big, everything 5x bigger than normal. Whuh. Roof was unremarkable but it was still pretty cool to be up on top of my shrine.
She’s got a show coming up next weekend, and she’s a long-standing favored/special child in the club’s family, so we went up to the office at the top of the other building, i was umgawd so verklempt! she passed out a few flyers to the various people there, got to shake the hands of the two bosses, didn’t show it but i was totally gassed. It’s also nice for them to see us together in the daytime, makes her look good; we are ten months together now, and we look great together, very affectionate and playful, and they’ve seen her through plenty of tough times.
Her show is in a great room, wood-panelled with nice acoustics, but so far the guy running the place seems to be a no-show, which is stressing her. Just trying to gently coax her in the direction of promoting it as best she can, and hope her bandmate running the technical-issue side of things can get the shit at least to adequate. We shall see.
Finally got paid from the second job last round, so nice to have cash in pocket. i could easily spend it four times over so it’s not that lasting a change but we’ll see. time to hustle the fuck out of the world of possibilities. i have doc i made of all my contacts in the music world, goes on to about four columns of 10 pt type, so maybe something will splash ashore for my efforts. wanna do CD covers, flyers, etc. Would really like to finally start getting a nice chunk of my income from the dance music world. Still never got paid for the flyers/poster i did in August, and i doubt that fucking worm will ever come up with anything but attitude and self-pity, so it’s up to me to exploit the hell out of it into something lasting.
and the other clock hasn’t moved: it’s still well fucking high time i fall off my thumb and make some tracks already. right now mostly focussing on a couple of mixes, one spacey but positive house/light tech for bar gigs, and the other a deep hard dancefloor mix, have found so many incredible new tracks to fold into a 4D thrall. The promoter I’m working with is really into where I’m going, and seems up for helping me land some gigs. His name carries major weight with anyone who’s been around the scene for long, so the ball is in my hands. Ready set…fucking hell just get on with it.
Friday gig, was hoping for a late set and a full crowd. got the late set. sigh. went on around 8.30am to an almost empty club, played almost a half hour before fade to boohoo. whatever. the new tracks are fucking killer! the good news is when I get my new mix sequenced out a bit, my buddy the promoter is going to arrange for me to go the club and mix on the big system, wayyyy fuck yeah. so, time to arrange. there’s a link to the set on my soundcloud page, haven’t put it up on my site yet. starts a bit bumbly, but the last half is as solid as it gets.
shoutout to awesome friend Patrick, who lost a longtime friend, since childhood, this week to a heart attack. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, and must be having a hell of a time with this. Big group hug in his general direction.
put in some time this week on beatport, where i buy all my tracks, or at least used to when i occasionally had disposable income. really dug long and hard, and if you put in the time, eventually it pays off. Sometimes you go through 50 or 100 tracks (or much more) before you find one for the hold bin, and then suddenly you find 5 out of 20 for the cart. Found one amazing new producer, named Quantic Spectroscopy (look him up on soundcloud.com), who is extremely prolific, and alarmingly consistent in quality. Wrote him on soundcloud, and he responded enthusiastically, think i made a new bud. So, anyway, feeling tentatively confident that i have a good bag of stuff now. Hold that thought.
Go to Berghain. Totally floored by Dino Sabatini’s live set, massive. Go upstairs, hear Monika Kruse do a set that is not only massive and all that, but even groovy, too, something even harder to pull off than energy. Then go downstairs and hear Marcel Fengler (my favorite of the Berghain residents) tear up a massive expert set. Goddammit people, I am trying to contrive some valid confidence here, did you have to pick this weekend to raise the damn bar so high yet again? Wankers, thanks a lot.
but back to beatport. at the moment, my severely-culled cart is twice my budget, and i still have a couple of heavy names to check the catalogs of. One way or another, i want to make the cuts, and work out a new mix before end of week. We’ll see. Playing Friday night, like to have a new one in pocket. Good problems, let’s step up.
tried not to get hopes up too much for DJ gig Friday night, and a good thing. attendance was o-kay, but didn’t really reach any kind of critical mass. here and there i got a tiny crowd of howling dancers going in my room, but I couldn’t seem to keep them. the club has a deep repuation as being a bunch of dumbasses from the suburbs, all body spray and proto-gay tight clothes, what are called douchebags in the US, and that stank is hard to shake. i hope my buddy Ingmar, who does all the work of hustling us into existence, will diversify to other clubs, he seems to understand it’s probably needed. but i got to play big and rugged, and recorded the set; will edit it up into something presentable this week. next.
today we are going to Berghain at 4pm (!) for a set by one of my faves. pretty comical to go out to a flea market, walk in the sunshine…then go into a big dark room full of raging bass and dance a few hours. hell why not.
woo hoo, our party this Friday is currently ranked the third most popular party on Resident Advisor, that’s not nothing. We are above a couple of pretty damn good parties, i am quite pleasantly surprised. We have permission to go late, like, into the following evening, so let’s see how it goes. going to take a stack of flyers out tomorrow for a long walk, and see what we can do to make it a success. Well hell why not.
Got paid today, what a nice change from being brokeass. paid the rent, put some cash in Bhu’s hand, and went shopping for a bundle of tasty eaty. Now to get back on it and make the next damn jobs materialize.
Bhu’s band went into studio this week to record. I was busy Monday with a 16 hour day dragging that damn job over the finishing line, but went with Tues, Th, and Friday, being support crew and a bit of vocal coach. She really has some damn pipes on her, quite something. Band is pretty tight, but the guitarist in particular is a real gem. can’t wait to hear the finished product, which probably won’t make it to mixdown for at least a month or so. I’ll probably be doing the cover art for it.
just hanging low waiting for the money from the jobs to land. how much longer, can it be…
just finished a project for a small studio, working for a pretty huge client. was wayyyy underbudgeted, got paid for 6 days and worked 12, but hopefully it was a good investment; the company is a big composites research group, part of a very large research group, so tons of manufacturers of all flavors will be seeing the video, and the guy did a good job, so…yeah, glad it’s over. Friday I was there 17 hours trying to finish up, then yesterday it was 16. guh, get in the damn box already. tomorrow is the big tradeshow or conference or what the fuck ever, so hopefully it won’t be long before my client’s phone starts ringing with work for us. we shall see.
in the meantime, here’s a little taste of the work, a design for a futuristic lightweight electric car, cute, huh?
