Category: Scraps

On Pause

Two sides of the same edge.

I am taking a break from this space for the time being. I plan to return, but I don’t have a plan for when that will be. There are some other things I want to work on for the next little while.

In the meantime, I invite you to consider an old turn of phrase surrounding the number of sides the same coin has. Two is how the saying goes, but there are actually three sides to the same coin. Maybe even four. The expression is sometimes used to illustrate when possibly unseen and perceived indivisible nuance is present within a situation—an illustration which is only effective if it’s possible to overlook the glaring and rudimentary counting error contained in the expression itself.

On paper, it’s clearly possible to see two sides of the same coin at the same time. Off the page, as long as there are multiple perspectives available, it’s possible to see more than two sides of the same coin at the same time. A single perspective view of all the sides of the same coin is also possible if the coin is spinning, but that introduces another dimension into the situation. Questions about the nature of observation arise immediately—philosophy and quantum mechanics go head‐to‐head. Or tail‐to‐tail.

As you can see, there’s a lot on my mind, but I’ve grown weary of looking at the same coin regardless.

Back in a bit…

AWD

A little faster now.

I’ve made another mix, and this one is legit quick—there are no sneaky speed adjustments like on Digitigrade. Did you know it started at 106 BPM and gained 28 more throughout the mix? The idea was to start from a mellow, disco‐like vibe and move to a more, uh, pie‐eyed pace by the end. I detoured instead and included a couple of nods to one of my favourite mixes of all time, Sasha’s Involver. Then I stuck a mashup mix I’d done at the beginning, and the ending was something that caught my ear at the last minute and had to be included as well. Though it started off and ended up roughly where I planned, Digitigrade still felt like it was all over the place—but I learned a lot by making it. I’m generally pleased with the way it came out, all things considered.

But this time around, I’m genuinely pleased with the result—mostly because it was unplanned. A couple weeks ago I was messing around with the DJ software I’d used for the last mix along with whatever I could find on my computer to practice with. Things evolved from there, and I ended up with just about 45 minutes of me essentially goofing around. My mindset was one of but will it blend? I tidied up after.

It reminded me, oddly, of learning to ride a bicycle. I had been instructed on how to ride one a few times, but to no avail—I remember always almost falling over. I don’t believe there was anything fundamentally incorrect about the way I was being taught—I just wasn’t getting it. It wasn’t until one day, when I had no one showing me, that I figured out how to ride a bicycle without falling over—eventually. I fell over a lot that afternoon as well. I bounced my chest off the handlebars a few times, once so badly I experienced the sensation of not being able to breathe properly. I’d never felt that before, so I actually ended up learning two things by the end of the day.

Similarly, I had been instructed on how to mix music together a few times, but it never really landed until now, when I’ve had the opportunity to quietly figure it out at my own pace.

And if this all sounds like too many words and not enough music, consider this the release party for the album, and I’m just another MC who won’t get off the mic. If I’m pretending to have an audience for these mixes, then I’m pretending to have launch events for them as well. It’s just more practice.

That said, I might take a little break from mixing. While it was really excellent to have something I could eagerly work on for hours at a time, day after day, there are some other creative projects I would like to spend as much time on and with as much singular dedication. Kerouac wrote the first draft of On the Road in three weeks. I don’t know what I’d be capable of writing in three weeks, but there’s only one way to find out—handlebars to the chest be damned.

Here’s mix number three in the meantime.

Track List

  1. Fasten Your Seatbelt — Pendulum ft. The Freestylers
  2. Intruder — Armin van Buuren ft. M.I.K.E
  3. Ghosts’n’Stuff (Original Instrumental) — Deadmau5
  4. Umbrella Beach – Owl City
  5. Love You More – Armin van Buuren ft. Racoon
  6. Wall of Sound (Parc Mix) – Airbase ft. Justine Suissa
  7. Superfabulous (RS Edition) – BT
  8. Purple Haze – Mesh
  9. Children – Robert Miles
  10. Tears After the Rainbow (2020) – Planet Funk

Digitigrade

One more for the road.

Back in August, I made Transformer. It was part mix tape, part dj set, and part something else. It was the something else part which made it the most challenging to classify—that and my abhorrence of labels in general when it comes to matters of expression. If it were possible to take years of thoughts and feelings, as well as all the observations in between, and then distill them into a single blog post, what would it look like? Easy: it would look like Transformer, an hour of music.

I’ve been at it again, musically, but this time it’s something a little more traditional: a 45 minute dj set. It’s a recording of a live performance from my living room on New Year’s Eve. It was my largest audience to date despite an incredibly exclusive guest list. Crowd estimates were upwards of one cat—whom I understand slept through most of it.

To further simulate a performance in real life—as 2020 dragged itself out of frame—I agreed with myself there would be just one recording attempt. I could practice all I wanted, but it was all or nothing after that. My first album was produced from the extreme comfort of a studio over a few days. My second would be produced all at once in less than an hour.

But why? Why would I do that to myself? It’s completely unnecessary. It’s way too much stress. And for what? I’m not even getting a cut of the cover or bar for my effort.

It’s all one take, but took a few takes. So that’s my 2020 compromise. And I left in some of the mistakes, including a massive one! But that’s my 2020 realism.

This is a club affair, so each track does play into the next. It’s supposed to be danced to, so the beat is more constant, and there is a touch of relentlessness to it. Under‐powered speakers need not apply. I engineered the file to be loud and be turned up loud, so there’s no clipping this time—life’s nash‐tastic enough as it is.

Track List

  1. Rabbit Facts (Legoshi Mix) — Grand National
  2. High Above the Clouds — Astronaut Ape
  3. Talk Amongst Yourselves (Involver Mix) — Grand National
  4. Pain Is My Relief — Airwave
  5. Belong (Sasha Remix & Prankster Edit) — Spooky
  6. This World Is Watching Me — Rank 1 & Kush
  7. Shivers (Redlight Dub) — Susana & Alex M.O.R.P.H.
  8. Soar — Eco

Same as with Transformer, listening is by request only for the time being. Again, most of this awkwardness stems from my intense desire for privacy, so if I know who you are then there’s a good chance you already know how to contact me, or perhaps you know someone who knows how to contact me.

There’s no need to listen too hard to this album, but dancing is suggested and strongly recommended. It’s been a tough one.

Happy New Year.

2020: In Review

Yes—it’s that time of year, again. Let’s just get it over with.

January

I was genuinely excited about the start of the year. There was no mistaking it for anything other than a year to mark the beginning of the future. Gone were the tedious pronunciations of the earlier years of the millennia. Did I have to acknowledge all the numbers—like I was writing a cheque—as in the year two thousand and eight? With an and? Years don’t have ands, and the future doesn’t use cheques. So clunky. Or what about twenty‐oh‐eight? What was that? Did anyone ever say that? Or the ‘aughts? Is this a hundred years ago? And the linguistic travesty awaiting the awkward teen years: the twenty‐teens? Abysmal.

It was the start of the year 2020 in January. It was now twenty‐twenty. The year finally sounded correct. The future was here. And I couldn’t have been happier. Let’s do this.

February

Okay—so things were not really going as smoothly as expected, mostly because the unexpected is traditionally not smooth, and yes—by definition—there’s always an amount of the unexpected present in the future. But, on the bright side, there was Leap Day to look forward to, a holiday I constructed for my own amusement because I didn’t think the day had received proper acknowledgement for being amazing.

It literally takes four years to create Leap Day, conjured out of nothing more than the second version of a still not so precise calendar. And then sometimes Leap Day isn’t a day and takes another four years to arrive. But it’s not a catastrophe, because it was all known in advance—it was just everything else that wasn’t. Life’s on the edge as a pandemic goes global. But it’ll be okay. Just grin and bear it.

Marpril? Munuly? Augustemvober!

A’ight—fuck it. I’m out.

See you in 2021.