Thursday, July 30, 2009

La Roux - Bulletproof (SKPmix)


On that grind, just entered another remix competition. Yet again in SKP styles, but this time I actually got a more straightforward recording setup working, so the guitars were recorded in mere hours.

I did a few things to really make the bass kick on this one, so if you can listen to it with a subwoofer, please do! It really is sort of a problem, as I always have mine plugged in and end up mixing with it. Then I unplug it to see what the mix will sound like with just regular speakers, and it sounds like it's coming out of a cell phone :-/

Anyways, go and check it out, and vote for it! I guess you can check out the other mixes and the original as well, but I haven't even done that yet...


(Click where it says vote on the remixes and then sort by most recent)

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It's Bigger Than...

A little while ago I had a bit of a conversation with Brandon Soderberg over on his blog 41yo. The actual post and all the comments are gone now, but the main issue was this album cover:


Brandon (from Baltimore) took offense to DJ Sega (from Philly) using signifiers from Baltimore Club culture - Nino "Doo Dew" Brown is a triple-reference to the character Nino Brown from the movie New Jack City, the Baltimore club group Doo Dew Kidz, and the first national club hit "Doo Doo Brown."

I myself saw his post as having a similar attitude as a certain infamous piece by Tom Breihan. Sega is one of my favourite DJ's out right now, and I didn't think he was at all deserving of the charges Brandon was laying on him (I mean look, his shirt even says he's paid his dues).

Our discussion was heated, but I think it stopped just short of a flamewar; and by the end of it I think we both saw eachother's sides of the argument more clearly.

So that brings us up to now, and Brandon's got a great new article in Baltimore's City Paper that he apparently interviewed DJ Sega for. It's all about Baltimore club music's offshoots in other cities, but is very measured and evenhanded, unlike a lot of articles touching that area.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Barletta - Panther (SKP SalaciousSound Remix)


So whew this track came about through an interesting process.

I got wind that Salacious Sound was having a remix contest for this local Toronto DJ Barletta. I've heard a couple of Barletta's tracks, but not the one that was the subject of this competition (Panther). I mean I've seen it on blogs, but I just never listened to it for one reason or another.

So I thought it would be pretty fun to remix the song without even having any knowledge of the original to base it on. I took the tracks that were provided to me and did a bit of re-arranging and effecting before even listening to them individually.

This was/is gonna be another comeback track for my "band" SKP, of which the core members are myself and mybro Ian. Both of us ran in to some difficulties recording our parts...

First off, I don't have a real dedicated recording interface at home. What I can do is bootleg my USB DJ mixer into a 4-track recorder. So what I usually do is run a mic into that and then I can record into my computer. For whatever reason, that wasn't working this time. So after trying every other possible configuration of cables between guitar and PC, I settled on this familiar chain:

guitar > amp > microphone > record on to tape in boom box; play back tape in boom box > plugged in to computer

That's familiar because it's how we used to record stuff in my room when we first started SKP. Just goes to show that crazy Rube Goldberg analog/digital spaghetti monstrosities NEVER FAIL!

Anyway, I got some passable guitar tracks layed down (including a bottleneck-slide solo, Auto-Tuned; patent pending). Ian's vocals were/are another story though, since he currently resides off the grid (without home Internet) in North Carolina. I was gonna record his vocals over the phone while he listened to another song of a similar tempo, but it just didn't end up happening.




Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Act Like You Know!

So I'm out on a flyer/poster mission last night and find myself on the corner of Richmond and Peter...
And I think I hear a little bit of this coming from someone's car...
So I was all like:
And turned to the guy in the car and said something like "that's a great song!" And he was all:
I said "DJ Blaqstarr! Tote It!" Him:
Then the song played out for a few more measures and I realized it was actually this:
But I was like "Still! Big song!" Quoth the gino:
So now I'm practically jumping up and down in the middle of Club District in the middle of the night, shouting at this guy about how I'm trying to compliment him on his music and he doesn't even know what it is he's listening to.

On another note, I also found myself in front of this place last night...
Apparently there was a huge extended hours dubstep party there that I hadn't heard a word of.

I just think it's crazy how a year-and-a-half ago, when I was first getting in to dubstep, it was almost impossible to find a place in Toronto to go to for it. Now you can just have a random party on a Tuesday night with absolutely no promotion and bring out a couple hundred random hipsters and yuppies who don't even know what DJs are playing. I asked!

Also last night, Cajmere was performing at Ultra:
As awesome as that song is though, I'm not too upset about missing that one because I'm pretty sure they won't let you in the door at Ultra unless yer over 25 and think that makes you better than everyone.