Please allow the entire movie to load and then watch. Thank you for your patience.
Another new mix from Deejay Rhiannon. She was over here at my home-studio less than two weeks ago, having her latest mix-set Suck My Tech mastered by me.
Deejay Rhiannon – “Suck My Tech”…
Artist: Deejay Rhiannon
Title: Suck My Tech (DJ mix set)
Year: 2010
Comment: Mastered by Hashmoder (Omar Hash)
Deejay Rhiannon – “Suck My Tech” (mp3)
http://homepage.mac.com/cavecybernation/DJRhiannon_SuckMyTech.mp3 (link path)
From Rhiannon to you…
MY SISTER (DJ Veronica) thinks this is “the most hilarious mix she’s ever heard.” And she’s heard some weird shit. I didn’t mean for it to be “funny” really, but quirky, ok sure. Perhaps this is my reverse-psychological reaction to the monotonous obnoxious drone that is mainstream music here in California where I am living and where I recorded this recent mix. Ok, I shouldn’t generalize. There is plenty of great underground music to be found here. I just haven’t found it yet. At least not in LA; San Francisco, no problem. Perhaps that’s why I was intuitively more drawn to the Golden Gates than the Hollywood Hills. Speaking of which, I almost called this mix “Holly wood If She Could.” Why? Well maybe I feel like Holly, who would play funkier, heavier, more complex music in L.A. if she could; that is, if she didn’t fear being boo’d off the stage by a ravenous horde of Kanye West & Beyonce worshippers. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Beyonce and many other top 40 artists, but I also like AC Slater, Klaus Hill, and Bjork. Am I a freak of nature? Is it some special gift to have the capacity to like more than one or two genres of music? Or is it that the majority of people have unwillingly let themselves be ear-fucked by the hypnotizing effect of excessively repetitious radio airwaves?
THE HASHMODER himself asked me to write a little something about what this mix means to me, and how I put it together, etc. The truth is that I actually never planned on making a new mix at the time; I was just testing out my Vestax CD-RW recorder to see if it survived the move. I warmed up after a few mixes and off I went. None of the tracks were put in order or play-listed together prior to recording the mix. For me, the magic happens when I get completely pulled into the music and let everything else go. At that point, I trust my intuition to lead me to the next track, and so on. Sometimes I select a song and for a split second think, “Crap! This is not going to work!!” — but I go for it anyway. More often than not I’m pleasantly surprised. In fact I discovered the live mash-up of Cicada’s “Things You Say” with Dubfire’s “Roadkill” while I was playing a gig in Mexico City. Ok, I have to make a side-note here: Mexicans PARTY. And they love good house music. Apparently the Governator is worried about the immense influx of Mexican immigrants to California. If this is the case, Please tell me where they are exactly so I can open up a club smack in the middle of their makeshift American Zocalo! I’ve yet to find their kind of enthusiasm & passion for underground house music in California.
SUCK MY TECH — self-explanatory, really! Meant to be more humorous than anything. I admit there is a tad bit of “fuck you” in there somewhere… probably to all the people who give me shitty song requests. And to my dear old dad who hasn’t spoken to me since he heard the shocking news that I shot a Playboy centerfold (download PDF file) to advance my career. Come on pops, it was no secret! If you bothered to glance at your daughter’s website once a decade you might have had a heads-up! Anyway, the real truth is, “I’m just a lady bug.” ;) Thank you Larry Tee for explaining it so well. How this track relates: I love the entertainment industry and all the contrived glamour, name-dropping, and beautiful bullshit that comes with it, but it’s what I do, not who I am. It’s a character I play, and that I adore certainly, but I try to separate my exterior identity — the social identity that can be recognized, used, and altered by people you don’t even know — from my interior identity — the unique identity that is mine and mine only to share with whom I choose. And in this case my public identity is that which I’ve created for my career: Playmate, DJ, etc. My private identity, the person I am when I’m at home, is similar to the one described in that song (listen to the mix, it’s the 6th track). Anyway, Eckhart Tolle explains this shit far more eloquently than I.
23 TRACKS IN 63 MINUTES. Very telling of the new DJ culture I find myself in. I trained myself as a house DJ in Vancouver. Long, seamless mixing was the goal, averaging 4 minutes or more per track usually, creating a smooth, fun vibe on the dance-floor. Since being exposed to a far more hiphop-inclined DJ scene my sets have become progressively busier, more compact and faster-paced. It’s a new style from that which I’m used to, but I’m enjoying the challenge. Averaging less than 3 (sometimes 2) minutes per track, I can’t help but think this style is representative of the A.D.D. generation that we DJs are now serving. The film industry entertains the same public and mainstream film producers continue to develop bigger/better/busier movies using technology, not to mention smoke-&-mirrors, to keep its audience’s attention and to distract them from their nagging restlessness. I think us DJs are being faced with the same challenges, at least those of us that serve the mainstream crowds (unfortunately I am sometimes one of them). In this DJ culture quick-handed Turntablists are gods. But I’m holding my own the best I can. ;) The little underground house DJ lost in Hollywood… .
I never got into depth about what each track or mix means to me. I suppose that because I didn’t record this for myself, then I must have done it for the pleasure of my friends and fans, like every other mix. I’ll use it for promotional purposes of course, but ultimately it was inspired simply by the desire to feel a certain way: funky, bouncey, dirty, fun, sexy, thoughtful… ? As long as it affects the people that listen to it in some way I’ve done my job. So ENJOY!! And finally, HUGE THANKS to Hashmoder for mastering this mix like Cesar Milan masters bad-ass bitches, with ease and prowess. Thank you Omar!!!!!
–
Should you wish to download all previous mixes, please click here.
Rhiannon Photo Gallery…
GRAND Flash Album Gallery
Skins for GRAND FlAGallery, Photo Galleries, Video Galleries
developed by CodEasily.com - WordPress Flash Templates, WordPress Themes and WordPress plugins
The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed.
Mid Summer 2009, a very close and longtime friend of mine RC Lair came to my side of town and hung out with me. Before going inside the Ocean Club for drinks, we stayed inside my car to listen to the entire Hale Bopp mix CD which he’d done in the mid 90’s. All the tracks on that CD were retro classics of electric disco/dance/italo ranging from the late 70’s through the mid 80’s. By the time we reached track-05, I was going through the car’s roof from excitement. The track was just THAT awesome … pure electronic analog circuitry … melodic and true to its form and genre its era. And I JUST HAD TO HAVE IT … and own it! So I asked RC who/what that track was, but he couldn’t remember from the top of his head, and he wasn’t going to look through his entire record collection at any time soon, because they were all stored in boxes. Now I was on a serious mission to hunt for a full-length copy of track-05. After six weeks of unsuccessful digging and searching, I still had no name of the artist nor title of the track.
A few days later, my producer friend Peter Hecher exposed me to Casco who was an Italian legend DJ and Italo music producer. I checked out his MySpace page, his main site and all other webpages related to him; listened to all his amazing original/classic Italo tracks; and downloaded few of his old live mix-sets. When listening to one of his Italo mix-sets … low and behold … track-05! Thus immediately I sent Casco an email requesting him to identify track-05 for me. Few hours later he sent me a reply, “Mito – Droid“.
After searching the net for days, I was able to find only bad quality MP3 copies. But just recently, over the net, there was a nice fellow from Europe who had an actual 12-inch record of Mito/Droid and, at my request, was kind enough to record and send me a good quality .wav digital file of it.
However, during the entire period of searching for Mito/Droid, I had discovered that it is in fact a remix of an original 1978 “Droid” track by Automat. According to SongBooks blog:
Automat was a project of a disc, from the Italians Musumarra, Gizzi and Maggi. The first two were members of the pop band La Bottega dell’Arte that was successful in Italy between 1976 and 1984. The “Automat” LP was released in 1978 as a kind of demo Synthesizer MCS70 (Memory Controller Synthesizer 70) built by Maggi. The funny highlight of the LP is the band Droid, who say they were the opening theme of a TV news at TV Globo (Brazil) in the early 80’s. In fact parts of this theme were used twice in television news, in one of them no Globo Esporte noon. This all in it for 81/82. But it was common to the Globo television, since I remember that was used in the novel called “Brilhante”, type in 80/81. There are many more electronic themes that the Globo TV used in the field of the Fantástico.
I was able to find and download the entire Automat album on torrents. There were only four tracks in total, and all of them were in mono. At first I’d thought it was an accident by the person who recorded the album to digital, but in fact the original source of recording was done in mono. So I took the liberty to re-master Automat’s Droid, making it pseudo-stereo, adding true stereo ambient reverbs with independent left/right parameter settings, and enhancing the track’s overall low, mid and high range across its spectrum frequency (by using Waves Linear Phase Multiband plugin, among other RTAS plugins, in Protools). I’ve included both the original/mono and my enhanced re-mastered versions for comparison.
All in all, I find that Droid sounds very similar to Vangelis‘ Pulstar (1976). To my ears, it seems that Droid borrowed heavily from the melody of Pulstar with noticeable variations, although both manage to stand out away from each other at the same time.
As a bonus, I managed to find a great Italo remix of Pulstar by Hipnosis (thank you Beat Electric).
Mito – “Droid” (12″ Remix)…
Artist: Mito
Title: Droid (12″ Remix)
Year: 1982
Label: Zanza Records
Mito – “Droid” (12″ Remix) (mp3)
Automat – “Droid” (Hashmoder Remaster)…
Artist: Automat
Title: Droid (Hashmoder Remaster)
Year: 1978 (2009)
Label: EMI Odeon
Automat – “Droid” (Hashmoder Remaster) (mp3)
Automat – “Droid” (Original, mono version)…
Artist: Automat
Title: Droid (Original, mono version)
Year: 1978
Label: EMI Odeon
Automat – “Droid” (Original) (mp3)
Vangelis – “Pulstar” (Vangelis original)…
Artist: Vangelis
Title: Pulstar
Year: 1976
Label: RCA
Hipnosis – “Pulstar” (remix of Vangelis)…
Artist: Hipnosis
Title: Pulstar
Year: 1982 ?
Label: ?
Vangelis in his studio, early 80's.
Friday, December 4, 2009 -- by Hashmoder
In :: 411 KNOWLEDGE DROP, :: RAP HIPHOP (OLDSCHOOL & ROOTS), HOMEPAGE, MUSIC
In :: 411 KNOWLEDGE DROP, :: RAP HIPHOP (OLDSCHOOL & ROOTS), HOMEPAGE, MUSIC
Spring 1988, Denham Village, Buckinghamshire, UK ….. on the way to Syco Systems (high-end pro audio shop — by appointment only — caters only to high-end clientele and famous artists such as Peter Gabriel) to pick up the gear for my first studio (see pictures below) ….. I heard this track by Mantornix on the radio.
Notice: If you need to know more about Mantronix and the man himself, Kurt Mantronik, refer to my previous blog Hanson & Davis. Please read that first and then come back here and continue reading this blog/article.
I used to dream about having a Linn-9000 one day, so I could load my own drum samples and program beats with its sequencer; I used to sit for hours and drool over the brochures of the Roland D-50 synth and think about how breathy and paddy (also see video below) my tracks would sound along with the Linn-9000 drums pulsing underneath. The D-50 was revolutionary at its time (1987), because it was the first synth to have built-in effects, such as the the reverb, attack-transient samples and linear synthesis, among many other things. When I went to Syco Systems with my dad to buy the new gear, Kendall Wrightson (see quick shout-out below) informed me that the Linn-9000 was no longer in production, because its parent company went bankrupt; however, its designer Roger Linn had come up with a much better machine through Akai. He pointed his finger towards the Akai MPC60 at the other end of the room. It was GORGEOUS. It looked like a mean machine with a tilting LCD screen! Oh, those 16 square rubber finger pads. I didn’t hesitate to add it on the transaction. Kendall said something along the lines that he had one in stock, boxed and with Tony Banks’ name on it (yes, Tony Banks — the keyboardist of Genesis), but Tony didn’t want it at the time. When I looked at the box, sure enough his name was in fact printed on the shipping label.
After picking up my new studio gear from Syco, I stopped by Our Price record store, bought the 12-inch of Simple Simon and then drove home from London to my parent’s country-home in Denham Village. I love this track through and through. It’s very melodic and street-emotional, especially the bassline. Love the guitars (which are not real but tone-sampled and played from a keyboard sampler). The sound and style is very different from Mantronix’ previous releases which were more freestyle-based. Simple Simon sounded more mature but still had that “Mantronix” feel … perhaps it was the snappy, hard drum samples and programming coming from an E-mu SP-1200. Whatever it was, it certainly had the Mantronix‘ stamp with MC Tee’s rap vocals. These two guys really stood out with this one.
I used to play both A and B sides of the 12-inch. Check out the amazing editing and fast-gating on You Dubba Regard mix, which were very hard to produce. Around that same time of year, the Latin Rascals were doing clever edits like this, with stutters, splice-edits and gated chops. Check out their sound/edits on Information Society’s – What’s On Your Mind which I’ve blogged about previously.
Quick shout-out to Kendall Wrightson:
Kendall Wrightson who was my personal salesman at Syco Systems. He was very well-known in the pro-audio industry, for representing and selling high-end gear like the Fairlight (watch Kendall’s demonstration), Syclaviers, SSL mixer consoles, etc.. There were times when Kendall used to let me and my best friend Noel Derblich to go inside one of Syco’s studio rooms and transfer samples from the E-mu Emulator-III (also watch video here) to my Akai MPC60 drum-sampler/sequencer (64 midi channel, 99 tracks). Kendall was also featured in several documentaries about music technology.
Mantronix – “Simple Simon” (You Gotta Rock Hard)…
Artist: Mantronix
Title: Simple Simon (You Gotta Rock Hard)
Year: 1988
Label: 10 Records (UK)
Media Source: Recorded straight from 12-inch record to enhanced digital.
Simple Simon – “Simple Simon” (You Gotta Rock Hard) (mp3)
Mantronix- “Simple Simon” (You Dubba Regard)…
Artist: Mantornix
Title: Simple Simon (You Dubba Regard)
Year: 1988
Label: 10 Records (UK)
Media Source: Recorded straight from 12-inch record to enhanced digital.
Mantronix – “Simple Simon” (You Dubba Regard) (mp3)
My first studio with nice gear which I've bought from Syco Systems, London. Kendall Wrightson was my personal salesman. See his videos below.
While the norm for most tracks go anywhere between 3:30 to 6:00 minutes in length, I prefer 15:00 minutes or longer, like the four seasons. Give me 4 long tracks to fill the hour, and I’ll be one very happy Iraqi. I love tracks that take me on long journeys through various movements. One of my all-time favorite synth-pop groups is PROPAGANDA from germany … who sound like twisted ABBA + Industrial + TechnoPop + Darkness. My favorite Proganda track is P:Machinery. I’ve taken two 12-inch vinyl versions of that track and conjoined them together as one … the way I want to listen to P:Machinery by:
Propaganda
Although he produced only a handful of tracks of renown and disappeared into obscurity almost as quickly as he had emerged from it, Manny ( Man ) Parrish is nonetheless one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music. Helping to lay the foundation of electro, hip-hop, freestyle, and techno, as well as the dozens of subgenres to splinter off from those, Parrish introduced the aesthetic of European electronic pop to the American club scene by combining the plugged-in disco-funk of Giorgio Moroder and the man-machine music of Kraftwerk with the beefed-up rhythms and cut’n'mix approach of nascent hip-hop. As a result, tracks like “Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” and “Boogie Down Bronx” were period-defining works that provided the basic genetic material for everyone from Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys to Autechre and Andrea Parker — and they remain undisputed classics of early hip-hop and electro to this day.
Man Parrish
What made Trevor Horn’s productions stand out was his unique and genius production techniques and the heavy use of state-of-the-art pro-audio gear, which made him become the torch-bearer for the kind of technology-led pop music which was hip and incredibly disciplined. Trevor Horn’s 12-inch remixes were uniquely long (anywhere from 8 to 13 minutes in duration) and told stories which took the listeners through long instrumental journeys at the begenning of tracks until the climax is reached (around the 5/6 or 7 minute mark). After the climax, the original or alternate full vocal version of the track takes over from that point on to the end, lasting additional 3.5 to 5 minutes in length.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Trevor Horn is the guy who produced and performed “
The Buggles
Recent Comments