music – decode•it

Okami

It’s another mix.

I’ve made another EDM mix. And like the mixes before this one, I hesitate to call it a dj set—mostly because I do not consider myself a dj. The dj prefix comes with too many expectations, both real and imagined, as well as too much baggage, again, both real and imagined. My artist name is decidedly sans dj: it’s just mutt. Why? ‘Cause it’s a mix…

My last two mixes did not get online release parties—that is, dedicated posts on this blog, like the first three got. And that’s somewhat funny and slightly typical as my last two mixes are what I consider to be my best ones to date. They’re certainly my favourites, yet they were released under the radar—only the most attentive readers have heard snjódagur, and ruffcut is an even rarer find.

My latest mix, okami, is more experimental, devolving in a sense to some of the sneaky beat matching found in digitigrade—oddly fitting as okami started off as a remix attempt of digitigrade before becoming its own mix—which it then almost didn’t.

There are so many sounds available with EDM—it’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much—but it’s also entirely possible to get too comfortable with a certain sound, and I didn’t want to be making the same mix over and over again. I’ve tried to give each of my mixes different vibes and sounds and flows. For okami, I very much selected artists I wasn’t really familiar with and tracks I perhaps normally wouldn’t consider for mixing. And maybe I set myself too lofty a goal: I got stuck with the overall sound and flow of the tracks for weeks. It wasn’t until I spent just as many weeks away from the project that I was able to figure out what to do with it—spoiler: I was in Nunavut. But more on that later…

When I got back, and to get unstuck, I reimagined the mix as spread out over four sides of a double record set instead of an hour-long continuously playing digital file. It’s still presented as a single hour of music, but there are about three spots where there would be—and could be—pauses in the music as the needle runs out and the record needs to be flipped. Or not. It’s four sides of a whole, so each side is its own part of the mix, but each part forms a mini mix on its own. There’s no requirement to listen to it all at once, although, for now at least, that is the only way to listen to it. I haven’t put the gaps in yet, and I’ll be leaving soon for Nunavut again. Still—more on that later…

This may not be a surprise, but all my mixes have been about something. They have themes and moods. Snjódagur is about impermanence. Ruffcut is about consumption. Going back even further, Transformer is about disruption. AWD is about control. And Digitigrade is about uncertainty—likely why I tried to remix it months later.

Okami is about identity. My very noticeable writer’s gap of late could be a result of me spending more time trying to tell stories with music and lyrics instead, swapping notes for notes and tone for tone. But I can’t help it when it comes to words: I still like to have fun with them, so I like how there are at least four different ways to interpret the title of this particular mix—one for each side.

Track List

Side A

Talk Amongst Yourselves – Grand National
Not The Only One – 16BL
Surrender – Eelke Klejin Remix – Way Out West

Side B

Murder Weapon – 16BL
Pyramid – Jaytech
My Breath – Dezza with Dan Soleil

Side C

Pangaea – Envotion Remix – Michael Cassette
As You Fall (Kyau vs. Albert Remix) – Bent
Nobody Seems to Care – 16BL

Side D

Poison For Lovers – ARTY
Baja – Sasha
Abrasion – Pole Folder

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

Fasten Your Seatbelt — Pendulum ft. The Freestylers
Intruder — Armin van Buuren ft. M.I.K.E
Ghosts’n’Stuff (Original Instrumental) — Deadmau5
Umbrella Beach – Owl City
Love You More – Armin van Buuren ft. Racoon
Wall of Sound (Parc Mix) – Airbase ft. Justine Suissa
Superfabulous (RS Edition) – BT
Purple Haze – Mesh
Children – Robert Miles
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

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

Distant Stars

Now the cities we live in—could be…

My feelings of Suddenly September are slowly yielding to ones of OMG October. I don’t have anything for November yet—perhaps No Way It’s November. But I’m definitely going with Decimated December when the time comes. Combining two common and a bit incorrectly used words relating to the quality of tenness is a fitting end for 2020.

I have more pictures and stories from Iceland to post, so many I’m thinking of adding a new section to this website dedicated to photography from places I’ve visited. I’m sitting on hundreds if not thousands of travel pictures—digital and printed—most of which have never been seen by anyone but me. The work I did on my most recent post was like getting to visit Iceland again—a welcomed feeling of being somewhere else in the midst of an unusual time for travel.

Growing within is sense of interior inevitability. The heat came on in my building the other night. The luscious greens of spring and summer are incorporating more yellows, reds, browns, and purples—this time of year is among my favourite times of the year: it’s the best of so many worlds. And for balance: my least favourite time of the year is the last couple of weeks in winter when all that’s left of the season is mostly sharp, icy brown snow filled with gravel, cigarette butts, and what I always assume is just dog poop.

Earlier in the summer I shared some pictures from inside and around my building. They were all taken with my phone’s camera, but this time I’m sharing some pictures I’ve taken with my new digital SLR. It’s been a while since I’ve had full access to an image’s depth of field and exposure—I have to remind myself a photograph need not always be flat and uniformly exposed. I’d say it’s just like remembering how to ride a bicycle, but that’s traditionally an outside activity. I also remember bouncing my chest off the handlebars of the bike a few times before I actually learned how to ride a bicycle, so perhaps some analogies are best left in the past.

Given the current public health climate, sometimes I feel like I’m conducting surveillance on the outside when I take pictures from the window inside the apartment.

With just a few colour and point of view adjustments now it looks like I’m stalking the outside.

As well as a paper dragon, if you look carefully.

Luna loves looking out the window, and sometimes I’ll watch her as she does. Sometimes she’ll notice.

And sometimes she doesn’t.

Paper dragon number two.

Extreme exterior surveillance mode activated—but I’m still inside.

Brightness abounds.

Even in the darker corners.

Or the unexpected ones.

I’ve been listening to Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs again. It’s an older album of theirs—from 2010—but I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. It’s one of the few albums I have on record because of how interesting it is. Or have on an LP. Or have on vinyl… —the word choice can be highly age‐dependant, but the words are all referring to the same thing: phonographs—pictures of sound.

We Used to Wait is still my favourite track, but Suburban War is a good one too. Have a listen, if you’d like.

Transformer

Wish you were here.

This past weekend was to be my traditional late August trip to Algonquin. It didn’t happen. The event was cancelled a few months ago due to Covid‐19. It was a strange realization all throughout this month—no expansive night sky, no sunrise mornings, no lazy afternoons, no campfires, …and no raves in the woods.

The last night in Algonquin—and the second last night in recent years—had always featured a dance running late into the early morning. I would always go, always dance, always close the place out, and always thought about how intensely fun it would be to put together a DJ set and perform it at the dance the following year. But I never followed through. I just danced. I love to dance.

On Sunday night I was feeling down—a brutal mix of indifference and nostalgia. And then I thought about maybe making that mix I’d always never made instead of sitting around feeling poorly. So I gave it a shot.

I’ve never done any audio work before, but after three solid days of hacking my way through software and tutorials, my mix is finished. I even gave it a title and made it some cover art. So professional.

This mix is not is a club affair with each track playing into the next as the same beat drives relentlessly from under‐powered speakers. I can’t stand that stuff, not anymore at least. This mix is unconventional. Some of the tracks flow into the next ones. Some don’t. I had to temper my desire to produce something I was happy with and produce something at all—I’ll far too often use the excuse of it’s not good enough yet to keep me from finishing something I’ve started. This mix was something I wanted to finish. I was having fun working on it, and of course it’s not good enough yet—it’s my first one.

I liken this mix to a postcard to a dance I didn’t get to attend, to a crowd that wasn’t there, to an event that never ran, because right now everything is all messed up. But it’s also a postcard to all the dances, all the nights, all the years, all fifteen of them—and all that’s ever been messed up about anything.

Oh… right. A link to the album. This is a little awkward. I don’t have an official link. If you’d like to listen it, please contact me. I’ll send you an unofficial link. 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.

If you’ve got access to big headphones or a bangin’ stereo then I recommend either of those for full listening enjoyment. I like dynamic range, so the sounds go from really quiet to really not and everywhere else in between. And since it is a postcard, I’m also going to suggest reading it on purpose rather than just putting it on in the background. It’s mostly for listening, but please also dance should the need arise.