Links to Articles

Not really a blog entry - just a link to recent articles for those friends who are too lazy to signup for a membership! Newest articles at the top of each section....

Interviews:

Ronski Speed (11/08/08) 

Nick Supply (28/10/08)

Luciano (Upcoming)

Milosh (Upcoming)

 Events:

Godskitchen 10th Year Anniversary 'Angel in White' @ Homebush, Sydney (11/10/08)

Transmission - Return Of The Superstar DJ Battle (27/09/08)

Hadouken @ The Metro (06/08/08)

Mix Master Mike @ The Metro (31/05/08)

Tiesto - Elements of Life @ Hordern Pavilion (04/05/08)

Subservice @ The Cross (24/04/08)

Famous First Birthday @ Home (12/04/08)

Homeskooled@ The Burdekin (29/02/08)

Albums:

Armin Van Buuren - Armin Only Imagine DVD (06/11/08)

Various Artists - Godskitchen 10th Anniversary, mixed by John O'Callaghan & James Brooke (10/10/08)

The Diaphanoids - Astral Weekends (02/10/08)

Various Artists - DJ Master s Unmixed 19 & 20 (26/09/08)

Chaos Restored 2 - Justin Martin (22/09/08)

Toby Tobias - Space Shuffle (16/09/08)

Sia - Some People Have Real Problems (11/09/08)

Zoo Brazil - No Place Like Home (08/09/08)

Fabric 41 - Mixed By Luciano (28/08/08) 

Dave Spoon - Toolroom Knights (20/08/08)

Jamie Mchugh - Mind Games (13/08/08)

Steve Lawler - Viva Toronto (15/07/08)

Ott - Skylon 16/06/08

Various Artists - Q-Dance Australia Tour 2008 05/06/08

Tech My House 2 - Various Artists (Elektrotribe) 28/05/08 

Karl Moestl - DeFusion (Bassdrumrocker Edition) 14/05/08

Tim Weeks, Beautiful Chaos & Matt Samuels - Leaders Of The New School Triple Promo 09/05/08

The Grid - Doppelganger 29/04/08

Magik Johnson - You Are Sound 11/04/08

Sander Van Doorn - Supernaturalistic 07/04/08

Markus Schulz -  Amsterdam 08 04/03/08

Singles/EPs

Mark Knight & Funkagenda vs Paul Thomas - Arena

Milosh - Remember the Good Things

Owen & Rune RK - Life (19/09/08)

Eric Prydz - Pjanoo (16/09/08)

Flip & Djuma Sound System - Atilla EP (12/09/08)

Darren Emerson - Crash Jack (11/09/08)

Matt Samuels - Much Love EP (28/08/08)

George Andrews - Sideline Soul EP (26/08/08)

Teddy Douglas feat. Margaret Grace - Watcha Gonna Do (25/08/08)

Buy Now - Body Crash - (22/08/08)

Yass - My Only (19/08/08)

Monomusique - Fog's Light 23/06/08

Marcella Pres. Unisex Inc - Bouncing Nipples - 13/06/08

Kate Lawler - Screw You EP - 28/05/08

Spoon, Harris & Obernik - Baditude 22/05/08

Armin Only Utrecht Tracklist

Relating to my Armin DVD review, just a comparison of the tracklist from Utrecht with the tracks which made the final cut highlighted in red.

It is fascinating to see the huge chunks of time that were cut out over the length of the show � and try spotting W & W�s �Arena� which by all appearances has been dubbed over the video despite not being played on the night!

By only focusing on Armin�s mixing desk for seconds at a time or in extreme close-up, we are given the illusion of a seamless live performance with slight sound glitches every now and then the only clues.  Pretty clever stuff I reckon, but if you want a true reflection of the Armin Only experience, check out the forums for links to each part of the original broadcast on Slam FM.

Warmup Mix
01. Parker & Hanson - Aim High, Shoot Low
02. Hybrid - I Know (Keenan & Anderson Remix)
03. Armin Van Buuren vs. Lange - If You Should Go Songless (Victoria�s Secret Mashup)
04. Underworld - Beautiful Burnout (Mark Knight Remix)
05. Jaytech - Pepe�s Garden
06. Tomy Nash - Fever
07. Mazzy Star - Into Dust (John O�Callaghan Deep Dream Remix)
08. Morgan Page Featuring Lissie - Longest Road (Deadmau5 Remix)
09. Chicane Featuring Maire Brennan - Saltwater
10. Jay Luman - Ultra

Live Performance with Jaren Cerf:
11. Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren - Light The Skies (Retrobyte�s Classic Electrobounce Mix)

12. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Vera Ostrova - What If
13. Dash Berlin - Till The Sky Falls Down (Dub Mix vs. Vocal Mix)
14. Orjan Nielsen - La Guitarra
15. Glenn Frantz - Space Bar
16. ID (Track 5 from ASOT 333)
17. Cressida - 6am (Kyau & Albert Remix)
18. Glenn Morrison - Circles vs. ID (Armin Van Buuren Mashup)
19. Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Deadmau5 Remix)
20. Ilse De Lange - The Great Escape (Armin Van Buuren Remix)

Live Performance with Jaren Cerf:
21. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Jaren - Unforgiveable

22. Deadmau5 - Clockwork
23. Sia - The Girl You Lost To Cocaine (Sander Van Doorn Remix)
24. First State Featuring Elliot Johns - Your Own Way (First State�s Pounding Club Mix)
25. ID

Live Performance with Jennifer Rene:
26. Jose Amnesia Featuring Jennifer Rene - Invincible (Sied Van Riel Remix)
27. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Jennifer Rene - Fine Without You (played 2nd)

28. Nic Chagall - What You Need (Marco V Remix)
29. Armin Van Buuren - Face To Face (Played 1st)
30. Skunk Anansie - Brazen (Weep) (Richard Durand Remix)

Armin Only: Imagine
31. Intro (The Sound of Armin Van Buuren)

Live Performance with Eller Van Buuren:
32. Armin Van Buuren - Imagine

33. Leon Bolier - Ocean Drive Boulevard
34. Dyor - Emotions (Second Emotion Mix / Markus Schulz Big Room Reconstruction)
35. Orkidea & David West - God�s Garden
36. 4 Strings - Into The Night (Re-Ward Remix)
37. Peter Martijn Wijnia Presents Majesta - Not The End w/ DJ Shah Featuring Adrina Thorpe - Who Will Find Me (Acappella)
38. Alex M.O.R.P.H. - Walk The Edge (Alex M.O.R.P.H. B2B Woody Van Eyden Remix)

Live Performance with DJ Shah and Chris Jones:
39. Armin Van Buuren vs. DJ Shah Featuring Chris Jones - Going Wrong (Armin Only Mix)

40. Timbaland Featuring One Republic - Apologize (Sander Van Doorn Bootleg Mix)
41. Polymental - Chapter One (Mark Sherry Remix)
42. ID

Live Performance with Susana:
43. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Susana - If You Should Go (Aly & Fila Remix)

44. Embrace - Embrace (Ferry Fix)
45. Luke Warner & Mat Lock - Deep Psychosis (Daniel Kandi�s Cure Remix)
46. Majai - Phoria (Jorn Van Deynhoven Remix)

Live Performance with Benno De Goeij and Sharon Den Adel:
47. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Sharon Den Adel - In & Out of Love

Live Performance with Benno De Goeij and Jacqueline Govaert:
48. Armin van Buuren Featuring Jacqueline Govaert - Never Say Never

49. Santiago & Bushido - Head Trick (Original Mix)
50. Funkagenda - What The F**k
51. ID
52. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Nadia Ali - Who Is Watching (Remy & Roland Klinkenberg Remix)

Live Performance with Eller Van Buuren:
53. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Gabriel & Dresden - Zocalo (Armin In Mexico Mix)

54. Armin Van Buuren - Control Freak (Sander Van Doorn Remix)
55. Armin Van Buuren vs. Rank 1 Featuring Kush - This World Is Watching Me (Cosmic Gate Remix)

Live Performance with Susana:
56. Armin Van Buuren - Shivers (Alex M.O.R.P.H.�s Red Light Dub)

57. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Racoon - Love You More
58. Armin Van Buuren - Sail
59. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Jan Vayne - Serenity (Signum Remix)
60. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Ray Wilson - Yet Another Day (Hiver & Hammer Remix)
61. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Justine Suissa - Burned With Desire (Rising Star Mix)
62. Armin Van Buuren - Communication Part 3
63. Binary Finary - 1998 (Binary�s Finality Mix)
64. Stoneface & Terminal - Pictures (Club Mix)
65. Markus Schulz Featuring Andy Moor - Daydream (Lemon & Einar K Remix)
66. Marc Marberg with Kyau & Albert - Megashira
67. ID

Live Performance with Audrey Gallagher:
68. John O�Callaghan Featuring Audrey Gallagher - Big Sky (Agnelli & Nelson Remix)
69. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Audrey Gallagher - Hold On To Me

70. The Doppler Effect - Beauty Hides In The Deep (John O�Callaghan Remix)
71. DJ Eco - Tonight Is Forever
72. Art of Trance - Madagascar (Remix)

Live Performance with Cathy Burton:
73. Armin Van Buuren Featuring Cathy Burton - Rain

74. Ernesto vs. Bastian - Thrill
75. Nenes vs. Cosmic Gate Featuring Denise Rivera - Body of Teksha (Filo & Peri Mashup)
76. Simon Patterson - Smack

Live Performance with Elles De Graaf:
77. Armin Van Buuren Presents Perpetuous Dreamer - The Sound of Goodbye (Armin�s Tribal Feel vs. Nic Chagall Remix)

78. D-unity - Area 57 (Captivating Sounds)
79. Bissen Presents The Crossover - Quicksand (Joint Operations Centre Remix)
80. Way Out West - The Fall (Richard Durand Remix)
81. Andy Ling - Fixation (Airwave Remix)
82. Armin Van Buuren - Rush Hour
83. Oasis - Champagne Supernova (Remix)

Live Performance with Jennifer Rene:
84. Jose Amnesia Featuring Jennifer Rene - Louder (Jon O�Bir Remix)

85. Aly & Fila - Lost Language
86. Club Scene Investigators - Direct Dizko (Sander Van Doorn Remix)
87. Umek - Gatex (Ti�sto Remix) w/ Faithless - Insomnia (Acappella)
88. Rex Mundi vs. Ronski Speed - The Perspective Space (Markus Schulz Mashup)
89. L.S.G. - Hidden Sun of Venus (12″ Mix)
90. L.S.G. - Netherworld (Oliver Prime Remix)
91. Sean Tyas - Lift
92. Midway - Monkey Forest (Jonas Stenberg Remix)
93. Marco V - Simulated (Marco V 2006 Edit)
94. Veracocha - Carte Blanche (Cosmic Gate Remix)

Encore:
95. Cassandra Fox - Touch Me (Mike Koglin & Jono Grant Remix)
96. Armin vs. Ti�sto Featuring Ray Wilson - Yet Another Suburban Train

If Only....

Smart bloke that Kipling (Rudyard, not Mr Belgian Fancy)

He wrote ‘If’ after all - you know, stirring British stuff: "If you can keep your head when all about you , Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...." - sounds like a typical Monday morning at the office to me, but I get the point.

It's a pity Wenger didn’t pin that poem up in the Anfield dressing room on Tuesday night. I guess he might have had it in French, although ‘Si’ doesn’t quite have the same resonance and gravitas....

If, If If - If only -

If only Senderos hadn’t done a Senderos

If only Ade had put his chances away like he was doing two months ago

If only the game had ended thirty seconds after Theo’s incredible run

If only Babel hadn't embezzled the penalty that was rightfully Hleb’s last week

If only Gerrard had done a de Rossi

If only I didn’t care so much

But ‘If’ doesn’t win you the Champions League.

And if only we can keep Robin fit and Cesc happy next season, and if only we sign on a keeper halfway between genteel and three-steins-short-of-a-bierkeller, and if only we throw in a couple of six-foot centrebacks and a Portuguese winger, then we can dream

 And if we can dream.....

Happy Bissextile Day!

Much like the Olympics or my best mate’s missus, February 29^th only comes once every four years. It eats, shoots and leaves without much fanfare, and isn’t really all that significant unless you were born on this date. Having read up on it, it has something to do with Gregorian monks, but suffice to say, you don’t want to know why we have this rogue day in our calendars.

Traditionally, a leap day is the one day that a woman can propose to her partner and historically a refusal would lead to the fella copping a fine - anything from a kiss to money for some ice (the sparkly kind). In Greece, there is a superstition that it is bad luck to marry on a leap year, which severely affects the revenues of many function centres and wedding DJ’s forcing several into closure/retirement. Possibly. 

In further trivial news, Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta ‘Pirates of Penzance’ revolves around the hero Frederic being contracted to a pirate king until he reaches his 21^st birthday. However, as he was born on Feb 29 and only has a birthday every 4 years, he will be 88 years old upon his release from the contract - something I fear with my current job.

There are even communities for parents of leap year babies, insurance/license issues pages and even a ‘Using Your Extra Day Wisely’ page, all to be found at the fantastic timewaster  www.leapyearday.com.

Other famous leaplings include talking dolphin Dawn Fraser, heat-packing entrepreneur Ja Rule and mistress of sleaze Joan Collins.

Leaptastic. Make it count people.

To be or not to be?

I read somewhere that if you stuck twelve monkeys in a room with an equal number of typewriters then eventually they would type the complete works of Shakespeare.

I think that’s amazing - don’t you?

But then I began to wonder how you’d find these particular twelve apes - are they chimps or orang-utans or maybe spider monkeys (eight legs? that should up the words per minute).

Anyway, suppose you only managed to get hold of seven of them, would that result in some of the plays being unfinished or would you just get the tragedies and none of the comedies?

What if the sonnets ended up having only 11 lines - would they still make sense?

And, even locating seven or eight of these monkeys could be extremely difficult - I mean are they even all in the same troop or even in jungles near each other? Do they get on ok? Writers can be ever so temperamental you know.

What if some have been captured and are even now languishing in a private zoo, deprived of access to a biro and an exercise book? What a terrible waste of talent.

On balance I think we should just try to seek out a couple of them and get them to knock out Henry IV (both parts of course) and maybe one or two rib-ticklers like Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado.

I imagine we’d need to find a female chimp if we wanted slushy stuff like Romeo and Juliet and perhaps a moody gorilla for Coriolanus.

And another thing, why typewriters - what’s that all about?

Do you suppose it might be because their long digits can’t cope with a laptop?

It would be so much easier if they could become PC literate (and I don’t mean teaching them not to play with themselves in public or throw their poo around.)

Have to admit I’m not too sure that they should be shown the spell check though, a lot of Will’s stuff had pretty strange spellings - and as for the punctuation, just don’t go there.

But hang on a minute - what am I thinking, this is all a bit stupid don’t you think?

Let’s get real here. Put these clever baboons to work on something original for a few bananas, some cheap mirrors and a couple of bags of peanuts we are probably looking at a mini-series. And if they are as good as we are led to believe, well, I smell the sweet victory of a little gold statue and I don’t mean of King Kong!

Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them in return for a big bag of Planters.

Now where did I put that big net?

All The Gear

Right-o, let’s do this. One last safety check and then we’re away….

1) Complete ten years as a hardcore(enough) raver/tunespotter – check
2) Carefully choose an arena-worthy DJ moniker – check
3) Do the CD vs Vinyl argument to death. – check
4) Scratch head, flip coin - check
5) Research equipment on DJ Forums - check
6) Look at bank balance, repeat step 4 – check.
7) Haggle over price for aforesaid equipment – check.
8) Get talked into powered-speakers that tip the scales over budget – (the more you spend the more you save, I’ll need good speakers when I’m playing the Metro…) – check
9) Wait six weeks patiently (?) for them to deliver wrong setup. – check
10) Set wife on the manager of record store – check
11) Connect all leads and power on. – check

Too easy. I’ve got a pile of printed e-books for dummies and a batch of banging tunes ready to be mixed seamlessly into the perfect set. Let’s do this thing.

Hey, what’s the big idea? What do you mean there’s nothing in the manual beyond connecting the equipment? Ok, I get it; it’s all about trial and error – kind of like in the boudoir, right?

You see, the trouble is once you’ve got the equipment, everybody wants to come round and have a go and lend a critical ear to see how you’re going. I soon discover that the first three weeks are best spent alone in a locked room with the speakers on low – god forbid anyone should hear these sounds I’m making (although I’m sure Richard James could market them). I am now beginning to understand why my dad wouldn’t let me have a violin.

The worst thing is, just when you feel you are getting somewhere, you realize that you have the crossfader set to ‘THRU' meaning that the expectant punters (Denise the lazy-eyed cockatiel) have been hearing all of your beatmatching through the master speakers. No wonder it sounded like the perfect mix in my cans – I was only listening to the left channel! Or worst of all, you fade into the second track only to suddenly realize (far too late) that it isn’t playing on the master and you are fading into silence! Or, or, or get this one - you have accidentally hit the fader-start button which means as soon as you touch the cross or channel fader, the track coming in goes back to it’s original cue, leaving your painstaking efforts to align them utterly redundant.

It’s a bit like learning to drive, but without an instructor. You make your mistakes, and get into personal habits that may or may not be the same as other DJ’s. But that is the beauty of it – no two mixes will sound the same (unless you’re Peter Hook) – I’m not saying I could pick a DJ by simply listening to a transition, but everyone has their style, and although mine is more Bananaman than Banana Republic  at the moment, it’s definitely on an upward curve.

I tried to showcase my mad skills last week after splitting a crate of grog with my best mate, a seasoned vinyl DJ. Turns out being unable to focus on the 6 deck setup rollercoastering in front of me was the least of my problems. Failing miserably and swearing at the swirling, mocking LEDs, I sloshed off to bed defeated and ashamed. It wasn’t until the next morning, mouth still reeking of vomit that I discovered that one of the decks wasn’t plugged into the mains. Luckily my mate had the identical mouthrot and we greeted each other with appropriate decorum. Maybe next time.

So for now, it’s all about practice, practice, practice and looking over my shoulder to make sure no-one except Denise is listening. It works both ways – have you ever watched a friend or family member put themselves out there and perform so badly your skin crawls and your vertebrae cringe? It’s not just for my sake that the door is locked, but don’t worry, one day I’ll be making people cringe in public – and getting paid for it! I said maybe. In the meantime though, I promise I won’t give up my day job. Not just yet, anywho.