WestsideWax - Bazooka Bass Floating Dancefloor Dragonflies [Dirty Biz]

[WestsideWax]

TIMING IS EVERYTHING. CURRENTLY, I'M WRITING TO YOU FROM THE NORTHWEST FACE OF LOBUCHE FAR EAST, A SMALL MOUNTAIN IN KHUMBU, NEPAL. IT'S VERY WINDY UP HERE, WHICH IS WHY I HAVE TO TYPE LIKE THIS. ANYWAY, THIS MIX IS ABOUT TIMING AND HUMANNESS AND RECORDS AND COMPUTERS AND MUSIC.

Of course, the actuality of things is that it's 1:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, and I'm laying across the loveseat in the front room after having spent a half hour slowly and painfully extricating myself and the laptop from the bedroom, after having spent the hour and a half before that writhing around in post-cycling accident, cramped tendo calcaneus agony, trying to simultaneously focus on my breathing, shift to a semi-comfortable position (there wasn't one) and not wake T., whose weekday rise time is now 6:15 a.m., (with a kickass new job to make it worthwhile).

But back to the bike accident. If my rear axle hadn't broken on Friday night on the way to work, I most likely wouldn't have taken my ride in to have it repaired and tuned up. If the most competent Mike at Newson's Bike and Skate hadn't tightened up my brakes, I probably would not have slammed on them in time to safely roll off said ride as it was rapidly being pushed to the curb by a car that swung a hard right on a green, sans signal. The driver was apologetic, I ended up bruised in a few places (no breaks – the now herb-quelled pain was simply cramping and stiffness that accompanied the ½ hour of sleep I'm guessing I nabbed earlier), and hopefully in Mike's skilled hands I'll get away with just needing to have my front wheel trued.

Timing. I make mention of this often to others, that when recording a mix, I always endeavour to recreate that 'live' experience - that of going completely off the rails in a hazy, dark, sweaty concrete box at some ungodly hour where strangely enough, given the right combination of audience, sonic messengers and substance (in complete fairness, anything from clean air to the more illicit fare), the concept of time can appear to vanish altogether. Having experienced playing both the bedroom and the big room, I can understand how difficult it can be for many neophyte DJs to come up with mixes that express something more than “these are a bunch of tracks I like that I think fit well together” - it can never really be proven how well they do fit until you obtain the opportunity to try to get someone other than yourself to dance to them.

If I could proffer one piece of advice regarding getting-out-of-the-bedroom DJing, it would be that programming is a huge aspect of the craft – MASSIVE (back on Lobuche Far East for a second...) Rely too much on what's hot, what everyone else is caning for the next 24 hours, and you'll quickly find yourself swallowed up in a sea of vacuous intellectualism and baseless one-upmanship – have fun sloughing your way to the mushy middle. When heart-centred, DJing is a deep, visceral expression of the self – the best of the best convey the sum of their personalities and experience each and every time they step up. In my ideal world, that's how it would be for everyone – powerful, moving stories, void of trendy superficiality and profit-minded motivation.

So, back to timing. If I hadn't been born in '69, I wouldn't have been a teenager when my friend POA bought his vinyl copy of Funky Alternatives 1 (peep Discogs, peeps...), and I probably wouldn't have ended up securing my second copy (the first having been left behind, somewhere) of this absolutely deadly compilation LP a couple of years back when DJ Iain (of Toronto's Lizard Lounge – I took over the club's 'Sex on Sundays' residency in 1990, when he gave it up after several years at the helm) cleared out about 6,000 pieces from his old collection.

And if I hadn't purchased that record, I wouldn't have dropped the instrumental version of Colourbox's 'Manic' somewhere in the first third of this mix, distractedly off-beat, with a couple of seconds of fruitless salvage effort before I bailed on it. And timing is such that in all likelihood, 6 months ago, when I was feeling less than confident about my own sense of timing in regard to most aspects of my life, I would have used that DJ-dreaded shoes-in-the-dryer moment as an excuse to not put out what's actually an otherwise pretty tasty, burn-through-twenty-platters-in-under-an-hour ride, if I don't say so myself.* I play vinyl, I play all of what I own and am no longer enslaved by trends and mindless consumption, I work quickly, improvise and take huge chances, believing the the end result will be fruitful – more often than not, I'm finding that as long as that

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND INTO YOUR BODY
CHALLENGE YOURSELF
LOSE YOURSELF
SURPRISE YOURSELF!

spontaneity is in full effect, occasional glaring fuck-ups in a mix merely serve as a reminder that there's a real human being at work and play, actively seeking to convey the sum of their personality and experience to those who love to be moved.

Tales from the Westside, y'all – here's hoping this one moves ya!

52:55, 320kbps mp3, all wax, improv'd from start to end on 2.5 x 1200 (2.5 = running three decks, but not at full-throttle )

Tracklist:

1. Headroom - Ekab - Planet Rhythm Records
2. Untitled - Oliver Ho - Light and Dark
3. DJ Bone - The Music (Rennie Foster's No Lights, No Fights Remix) - Subject Detroit
4. Surgeon - Machine Language - Downwards
5. Johannes Heil - P.A.X. Part 2 - Kanzleramt
6. Untitled - Frankie Bones - Remains
7. Jovonn - Drum Drum - BBE
8. Colourbox - Manic (Instrumental Mix) - Trance Records
9. Roy Davis Jr & Jay Juniel* / Men From The Nile Featuring Peven Everett – Watch Them Come!!! - Underground Therapy Muzik
10. Maurice Fulton Presents Melonsniffers – This Is What You Want (Dr Scratch Stomp Mix) - Pagan
11. Traxx - My Soul - Nation
12. Moodymann - Music People - Planet E
13. DJ Slip - Player - Kanzleramt
14. DJ Slip - Work Me Over - Kanzleramt
15. Lenk – Narcotics (Fred Remix) - Planet Rhythm Records
16. Anthony Child – Over Napoli - Slut Smalls
17. Dafluke - Outta Bodai (Mossa & Pero Mix) - Complot
18. Random Noise Generation – Falling In Dub - Filth Records
19. Coco Steel & Lovebomb - Feel It (original mix) - Warp Records
20. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft - Der Räuber Und Der Prinz - Virgin

(*Also doesn't hurt that this mix was made in the presence of the magic triumvirate mentioned earlier...necessary elements for a good tone!)

[Awesomer]

I listened to your mix, streamed via subsonic to my iphone/earbuds, while reading a book in the Oklahoma city Denny's. Really. Your mix did a great job of drowning out the pop country that was playing on the overhead speakers. Here's my feedback, written on the phone in the backseat, from somewhere in Tennessee, as we roll on across the country.

- I liked your track selection, but this is the very specific kind of techno I own a lot of on vinyl, so I might be prejudiced.. "feel it" is still the jam and still gave me goose bumps. Selection made harmonic sense as well.

- as you pointed out, there were a few rough mixes, including one pretty tragic one. But from the very first Aggressive-and-somewhat-imprecise-yet-undeniably-dope first patterned cuts on the very first mix, I felt that feeling you described above.. "a dj is playing his heart out for us." you can't fake this or teach it, but it is what elevates music, makes it exciting to dance to, &c.

- djtechtools forum is hard to use on a phone. The comment box has no scroll bars. Edit : guess you're supposed to use two finger scroll.

- levels were good throughout, especially for a vinyl mix with this pace of mixing.

- "get out of your head and into your body" is good advice and a phrasing I won't forget.

Thanks for posting, and keep at it!

[WestsideWax]

Love it when the review is as creative as the write-up! Glad to hear the mix provided vital ear protection when most needed , and very cool that you get where I'm coming from. In a day and age where nearly everything is computer precise, I still like to hear some humanness coming from my DJs every once in a while...

A bit tied up with the non-DJing end of things right now, keeping my fingers busy helping people heal with shiatsu, but we're hosting an intimate, all-vinyl get together in a week and a bit - will definitely be recording and will hopefully have something new to post shortly!

peace!