Kool Keith

Last week I went with Rozie, BJ, Patrick, Phil and a few other friends to check out Kool Keith. Its been a while since I’ve seen any live hiphop, and I must say that I found it highly enjoyable. Keith was ripping it up earlier on in the set, but later on he seemed to slow down quite a bit. Probably due to the fact that he seemed really, really stoned. Lucky for him, his sidekick Marc Live was there to back him up, which he did extremely well. So well in fact, in my eyes he almost overshadowed Keith.

One of the more amusing parts of the show was the fried chicken break. Packets of fried chicken and juice poppers were throw into the audience.

You can check out more photos here.

Derrick May @ home nightclub

Just this Saturday night passed, Derrick May played at home nightclub at Cockle Bay for their 5th Birthday party. Not too bad a night, with a pretty decent selection of techno, deep house, bumping latin sounds and some more down tempo sounds from May. Not the best performance of his that I’ve witness, but it couldn’t have been too bad since I left the place at around 5am or so. Anyway, here’s a more thorough review from Benn. I’ll put up some photos into my gallery when I get the chance as well I guess.

Underground Resistance and Jeff Mills performing in Tokyo

This bastard friend of mine flew across to Japan the other day to catch Underground Resistance play live at the same party as Jeff Mills. The night is called Time Sensitive(en), at Womb in Tokyo, which this month of October has had Jeff Mills as their Friday resident guest dj. Some people have it waaaay too lucky πŸ™

James Brown at the Basement?

I was driving to work today and along Crown St saw in big letters on a pole poster saying: JAMES BROWN. It listed support acts Professor Groove and Doug Williams. I got excited. I’m now not excited. It turned out to be a James Brown Tribute night with Professor Groove and Doug Willams. Bah! Hate it when I get my hopes up like that. 😑

Novation ReMOTE25

Wow! I think I just found my ultimate MIDI controller. It has 24 buttons, 8 knobs, 8 encoders and 8 sliders, a 2 octave semi-weighted keyboard, pitch bend joystick and plugs in via USB. All I need now is a decent laptop of my own and I’ll have a nice portable studio.

Looks like it weighs in at £299.00/€418,61, so I guess I’ll have to save up my money for a bit longer than I thought. πŸ™

Upcoming partying

There seems to be a whole lot of stuff going on at the moment. Last weekend, Darshan Jesrani from Metro Area (Environ Records) played at Mad Racket.

This weekend at tech-ni-kal are hosting former DJ Godfather cohort DJ Assault. September 19th (the week after) they’ve got Speedy J, then at the start of October they’ve got legendary Detroit Dj/Producer Kevin Saunderson of KMS fame. Bloody hell!

Also coming up is the Deep Space hosted night at Bar Europa in the City, Jupiter Jazz. More laid back styles than the usual Deep Space parties. It’ll be a nice selection of house and deeper techno. DJs on the night are Colour, James Bond, Patrick HAF, Phil Chan, RZ-1, Sleepy and XXX. And its free! Oh, its on Saturday the 4th October by the way.

The following night the Southern Outpost celebrate their 5th birthday up in Newcastle with 2300. It features Southern Outpost live, and a host of other DJ’s. More details when they come.

Akai to release new MPC

There’s been some murmuring around the web about an upcoming MPC, the MPC1000! Apparently it was uploaded to the Akai Pro website too early. The release date is set for September 16, so mark your calendar! An MPC I can finally afford! πŸ˜‰

Here’s the teaser flash animation from the Akai Pro site as well.

Update 10/09/03

French website Playback has some more information on the MPC1000. Unless you speak French, click here for the nuttily translated Babelfish version.

Continue reading “Akai to release new MPC”

New Technics Digital Turntable photos

There’s been a bit of coverage on the new Technics SLDZ1200 digital turntables. It plays CD’s and SD-Card. Apparently it is going to be released this weekend:

Technics are set to exclusively unvale the new CD DJ turntable at this years Plasa Show. The SL-DZ1200 is based on the Technics SL1210 turntable motor . The big unvaling will be at 3pm on DJ Sunday (September 7th). In addition they are set to showcase a new 4 channel mixer, with the same look as the SL-DZ1200 Plasa is on from Sunday 7th – Wednesday 10th September.
For more info – www.plasashow.com

An open letter to the Sydney Techno Community

I got forwarded this open letter:

It greatly saddens me that there are individual/s in our small Sydney techno scene that are playing us all out.
These individual/s pretend to be concerned about our scene, trying to bring the various crews together to make one big, happy community.
Shit will come back and bite them on the ass.

But in reality, the only concern they have is for themselves and how they can advance their own careers by trading off gigs for gigs, payola maybe?
It’s bad enough that our scene is so small and fragile, so when these player haters put their own ego above the good of all, it lets us all down.
Zealous or Egotistical? Make your own decision.

Eternally yours

New music in at SID shop

Over at the SID Shop there is a bunch of new tasty releases. Three newies on UR (Mad Mike, DJ Rolando and the Aquanauts), first release on new label Ignitor (Orlando Voorn), a new Red Planet EP and a new one on Hipnotech from DJ Dez. One of the more interesting things they done is release a bunch of 7″ ep’s which accompany the 12″ ep’s on UR and Red Planet. They’re supposed to be B-Sides that didn’t get pressed onto the 12″ eps. Nice concept for the collectors. Bit of a biatch on the wallet, but when has vinyl collecting not been for stuff like this?

Also while on the subject of Detroit electronic music, my friend Benn is selling a few bits and pieces on Ebay. A couple of Plus 8 Ep’s and some ghettotech as well.

Area man renames himself after autobot leader

Something that would be more in place over at The Onion, a member of Ohio’s 5694th National Guard Unit in Mansfield has renamed himself to “Optimus Prime”, after the leader of the Autobots from the 80’s children’s television series The Transformers. Optimus Prime said “I got a letter from a general at the Pentagon when the name change went through and he says it was great to have the employ of the commander of the Autobots in the National Guard.”

Futura2000 & DJ Shadow

Last night I headed over to Space3 in Chippendale to attend the opening of the Futura2000 exhibition. Rumour was that DJ Shadow was supposed to be playing there, but during the time there, I didn’t see him. Futura2000 was there though signing stuff, and DJ Blaze was playing some nice hip hop beats. But at the end of the day, the artwork failed to move me (I really can’t get into art when the room is jam packed full of scene queens… I like it empty), and I would have been better off going to the screening of Bowling for Columbine, which I had a 4 free passes to. That’ll teach me.

Get your grammar right!

Not too sure if that was a grammatically correct sentence, but go over here to visit the Apostrophe Protection Society to learn to when and when not to use you apostrophes. You can also visit their message board to alert other internet users on crimes to punctuation.