Heaven on a remix

Well, how out of it have I been lately?! In two senses, 1). working so hard I haven't been getting out to do my usual groupie thing & 2). working so hard that when I do get out & about I'm completely mashed. Yeayaa!!

So, my last two favourite gigs of the year: your very own Haszari at Pop, charging! I managed to make it despite swearing I'd never go there again cos of pretentiousness & shoe nazis, & having to reluctantly leave a firey cocktail fuelled game of Texas Holden I'm sure I was winning.
Anyways, was very glad to make a (shortlived perhaps?!) appearance and take full opportunity to be a nutter on the dfloor. Yeana!!
& last Friday, despite being asleep by 10pm following the Library kids Christmas Party, managed to rouse myself, thanks to the 1.30am text, to get down in time for Alf at Bath, to go nutters for his 45 minute filthy electro set (more challenging this time due to complete sobriety) (plus the Rage Against the Machine gem almost killed my mojo) (but was restored & more with Goose's Bring it on - probably a remix - in fact I think it's the Felix Cartel JFK remix. It's heaven).

No big gigs planned for NYE, happily stuck in Dunners with all my favourite friends who are working over the break, so we are gonna take over a three story mansion & I'm fully in charge of the techno electro set. Excited? Hell yea!!
Look out dub'n'drum'n'bass boys, here comes Miss Rogue Electro!

New podcast + playing this weekend

Well this post should be just enough to keep the blog ticking over?

I have received my new old CD player, a Denon 2000F Mk2, which is really from the dawn of the age of CD mixing but it works great (it seems to be temperamental on the odd CD but plays many scratched/burnt CDs). The buttons are rubber, which I dislike, but its instant start is instant, and making adjustments using pitch bend buttons (as opposed to a wheel, or touching the edge of a spinning record) seems to result in good mixes.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, here's the tracklist:

1. Nick Holder ft. Jemini - No More Dating DJs (John Ciafone vocal mix) [NRK Sound Division]
   
2. Freeform Five - Perspex Sex (Ewan Pearson's Hi-NRG remix) [Studio !K7]
   
3. Chuck Love - Still Funky (Acid Noodle remix) [Om]
   
4. Iz & Diz - Magnificent (Justin Martin's No Heart & Soul remix) [Om]
   
5. Ben Mono - Beatbox (Jesse Rose remix) [Compost Records]
   
6. Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler (Jesse Rose remix) [Wichita]
   
7. Dragonette - I Get Around (Van She vocal mix) [Mercury]

The mix can be downloaded directly from here or you can tune in/subscribe to get the past and present casts:
feed://www.gcast.com/u/haszari/main.xml

GCast are doing the hosting, and don't insert ads. Their interface is extremely rudimentary and it seemed to lose my tracklist/show description. Still, debatably better than silly ads and semi-social networking which is what you get at podshow.

Also I am playing this Friday and Saturday, at Bath St and Pop, so it's going to be a big weekend what with lots of people graduating.




Acknowledgements to mishtanegativity for collecting the Denon, fiddling with it and verifying its integrity for me, as well as storing it for a lil while.

Impromptuality

Well.. "this goes out, to all my family & friends/when times were hard/you were there"...

Last night I for the first time had a DJ booking tanglup and it turned out I wasn't playing at Pop. Ah well, 'sall good, cos moments before I was lamenting the fact that I wasn't able to check out Trillion (AKA Jody from Dark Tower's new band The Incredible Braking Wheel.

So that was all damn fine, country-tinged roots rock urban guerilla protest stylez, and I recommend you click the above links and friend em, and check the music, and go see em when they're in your town.

AND THEN Ellamental Anakissed, possibly spurred on by the soundz, had the bold idea to take over the fairly idle at that moment Bath St. So off marched SoNic Smith to liaise with the always genial staff at Bath St. Needless to say, they were amenable, so within 20 minutes we (and when I say we I mean Nic) had rousted 20+ people from the streetz and other more rebutable places and transformed Bath St into an impromptu rave!

Yea for emergency beat action! It went on for a couple of hours, and there was some bloody impressive dancefloor, and half way thru the smoke machine started up, boosting the atmos sufficiently.

So cheers all, see yer tonight for part 2/3.

Favourite Films of 2007

Hi everyone.

This is my first blog post. The big joke about blogging is that people who
are otherwise perfectly capable of getting a real job (ie one that
pays) spend hours of their own time working for free. It doesn't make
a lot of sense until you realise that its all just a load of
advertising - which is exactly what this post is. My favourite films
from 2007! Don't take my word for it - rent or buy the DVD today!

Now I didn't pay to see any of these but I do recommend them. If
anyone wants a lengthier and more serious appraisal of the films I've
looked at, all the year's reviews are available at critic.co.nz. Some
from me and some from the other good people that I organised in my
capacity as Critic Film Ed. Some interviews too. Worth a look.

No particular order:

1. Zodiac (Dir. David Fincher)
Is this movie about obsessives or by obsessives? Maybe for obsessives since
this is the only film I went to see twice this year. Not as dark as you
might think, just very detailed with great characters and unflashy
but pitch-perfect direction. Closer to Scorcese than say, Ferrara, which is a turnaround for Fincher.

2. Black Book (Dir. Paul Verhoeven)
An absolute riot of sex, violence and backstabbing. Its ridiculously
entertaining and quite scandalous - "good" Nazis and the Dutch
resistance behaving badly.

3. Little Children (Dir. Todd Field)
Funny and dark and sad. Like real life only with paedophiles. Did you
know that Todd Field was the piano player in Eyes Wide Shut? (Thanks
imdb.com).
Shades of Kubrick here, the direction is very cool and controlled.

4. Day Watch (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov)
Who knows what the hell this movie about. It's quite convoluted but
smart enough not to take itself too seriously. Ideas, ideas, ideas. Maybe too
many but it looks fantastic. A genuinely original vampire film. You
don't need to see the first movie Nightwatch but, you know, it helps.

5. Transformers (Dir. Michael Bay)
Say what you like about Bay but he knows how to make 'em big. Apart
from the visuals which are pretty much state-of-the-art, he manages to
make it come together storywise. Spielberg's influence is pretty apparent in all
that boyhood fantasy stuff. Shia LaBeouf will go far and adds a lot to
the film. Not quite Close Encounters but what is?

6. Golden Door (Dir. Emanuele Crialese)
I probably watched about 50 festival films this year. This was one of
those pleasant surprises. Check out the festival site for more info
(http://nzff.telecom.co.nz) but it's basically an dirt-poor family of
Italian hicks coming to America in in the 1800s. The film never
actually goes beyond US Immigration control but you'll learn a lot
about what makes America tick from this - it's a real eye-opener.
(Scorcese was involved in production which makes a lot of sense).

8. Blades of Glory (Dirs. Josh Gordon, Will Speck)
Funny, funny, funny. High-concept certainly but it's not a bad concept
and it's got enough stupidity and wrongness to drown that out anyway. Heder and
Ferrell are fire and ice, baby.

9. Exiled (Dir. Johnnie To)
I was expected something along the lines of early John Woo but this
was something else entirely. There's a political element to the film which I don't really
understand but for me it was about a bunch of losers - an interesting
take on the gangster genre which borrows a lot from the revisionist
western. (Actually there seemed to be a lot of
films about losers this year - Half Nelson, Eagle vs Shark, Perfume
etc).

10. Control (Dir. Anton Corbijn)
I highly recommend Corbijn's music video collection although he is
probably best known as a photographer. He's a perfect choice for
director (since he knew the band quite well) and he does a great job
in his first feature. Don't let the black and white put you off, the ending is obviously sad
but the material is also quite funny at times. (After a long search I
have concluded that Corbijn never worked with New Order on a music
video which I find strange).

Also:
Pan's Labyrinth: didn't hit me quite as hard as others but very good nonetheless
Science of Sleep: I saw it last year. Probably my best review - i had
to fill half a page so i let loose.
Black Snake Moan: lots of energy but what is this film trying to say?
(read Sight & Sound for some ideas)
Eastern Promises: because I just saw it and I had already written the
list. Very very good.

I missed these and it pisses me off:
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
Inland Empire
Death Proof (coming out this week!)

Have a nice XXXmas everyone!
You have been enchanted...

Pop Quiz

What is the current 'so-hot-right-now' electro house description?

a. dirty
b. chunky
c. indie
d. punk

What are the nicknames of Justice dj duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay?
a. Tom and Jerry
b. The Rock and The Terminator
c. Rhythm and Vines
d. The Moustache and The Chinese Boy

Which Rihanna 'Umbrella' remix was played by Dick 'Majik' Johnson at Bath St on Friday night?

a. Vandalism
b. The Mint Chicks
c. Diplo
d. None of the above

Which band is considered the most successful French electro house collaboration of all time?

a. Alloy Mental
b. Daft Punk
c. Groove Armada
d. Dimitri from Paris

Who played the voice of Megatron in the 2007 Transformers movie?

a. Peter Cullen
b. Laurence Fishburne
c. Hugo Weaving
d. James Earl Jones

Needs more lists

Three respectable ways to die:

1. After being rescued from the sea by a navy cutter, making witty and biting comments about the sexual orientation of navy personnel until they throw you back overboard. ‘Eye of the Tiger’ plays in the background on the ships announcement system.


2. Trying to stop a bar fight between a unicorn and a dolphin solely in an attempt to impress mother nature and perhaps score her later that night.


3. Getting blown up by your own TNT while trying to catch that pesky roadrunner.

lend a hand + get down + IQ tests

This is more of a catchup/keepitmoving/six cents post.

Hype Machine will change if we all leave our browsers open

More importantly, haszaristwocents is gonna deliver a stack of clicks that way given our massive readership. Click on this and leave the browser open and repeat for all browsers/machines you can find.

Mo' Mentum at Bath St with Haszari

I'm playing at Bath St this friday, short notice, but very exciting all the same. It's all me so it's gonna be self indulgent but you like what I like so should be a massive night.


Mo' Mentum @ Bath St Friday 19th Oct

IQ tests are bad

There was an article in The Listener about IQ tests recently. This got me all fired up as all mention of IQ does, ya know, everyone knows that any concept of IQ has to be totally flawed and probably very culture specific.

Anyway I didn't end up with a coherent enough opinion to post about it (tho I really wanted to!), but the point of this 1/3rd post is who to blame regarding IQ silliness:

1. the media, for occasionally misreporting IQ related findings and theories
2. IQ researchers, for even bothering to try and develop the concept of IQ as reliable and relevant

So, I ask ya, what's your opinion? Comment back.

$2 down the toilet

Last weekend I indulged in an evening out and about on the town, popping into a few of my favourite haunts for a toast here and a dance there, and discovered on a visit to the powder room, someone had dropped $2 down the toilet. This sparked a stimulating discussion about for how much money one would stick their hand down a bar toilet. $50 was the call.

In a recent OUSA pub safety review, unfortunately limited to only those establishments in North Dunedin, it was discovered that the general loo situation here is somewhat disturbing. I would tend to endorse this statement; & this particular powder room has always been a pet peeve of mine, ever since the door got pulled off its rails leaving distinct lack of privacy. Being a private kind of girl I kicked it rather forcibly back onto its rails.
See I always knew those martial aerobics classes would come in handy.

On an alternative note, it would really make my night if bar staff and door staff please know the name of your dj. Now that the fink has finally folded, we have no regular tangible gig guide. We’re not all ignorant teeny bopper slappers, some of us are truly there for the music.
& I’m not talking about the latest remix of total eclipse of the heart.

Better Faster

So how do you convert dub tracks to DnB? Well it seems you just have to play it at twice the speed; try it out with 'The Black Seeds - Cool Me Down'.

Windows media player has the ability to change the speed that songs are played back at ('Play Speed Settings'), which is accessed by a convenient slider in a panel to the side of the play list meaning you can mess around with it as much as you want while the track plays. A friend* of mine discovered this after listening to 'Stereophonics - Superman' which he described as "comically slow". However, he found that when cranked up to 1.4 speed it produced a good, easy to listen to beat.

This inspired him to go through his music collection finding tracks for an album that he labeled "Better Faster". Here's a track listing!

01 - Stereophonics - Superman
02 - And you will know us by the trail of dead - Naked Sun
03 - Pluto - Moja Rijeka
04 - Chris Isaak - Somebody's Crying
05 - Aberfeldy - A Friend Like You
06 - Fur Patrol - Into the Sun
07 - Stereophonics - Pedalpusher
08 - Coldplay - Talk
09 - Evermore - Inside Of Me
10 - Fat Freddy's Drop - Ernie
11 - The Black Seeds - Cool Me Down (at x2)
12 - Fat Freddy's Drop - Roady (at x2)
13 - Sola Rosa - The C'mon (at x2)
14 - Minuit - Boy With The Aubergine Hair
15 - Breaks Co-Op - The Sound Inside
16 - Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeats

He put this description on the album

"Even as fast as x2 speed they still sound alright, some of them even seem to change genre. I've tried to include those that are 'different' when played
faster as opposed to just sounding 'faster' - or just cause they sound cool sped up."

There are some issues to take into consideration if you're going to start speeding tracks up. Obviously it works better for slower tracks (so any Magnetic Fields song will do). And speeding up an already fast track made me feel a bit like I was having a panic attack, it just seems a little intense. There is also the potential for making the lyrics so distorted that you can't understand them - it's always going to be tempting to put the speed up to 8x, but so far it hasn't been a very satisfying experience.

Now I suppose I should put together an album called 'Better Slower'. Yes, I'm looking at you Punk genre.

* Full credit to Dean for inventing the Better Faster presentation method.

Here we are now: entertain us

Here’s a bulleted list:

• Apparently I’m getting behind on my blog posting quota.


• I feel like I should make a music related post.

Conclusion drawn from the bulleted list:

I’m going to make a post about cover songs.

One cover of notable interest is ‘Paul Anka - Smells Like Teen Spirit’, which is obviously a Nirvana cover. It has a kind of swing beat with some trumpets and other horn type instruments. The contrast to the original is so huge that I highly recommend getting a copy to listen to (legally of course) - the change in genre of the original to the cover is really quite remarkable*. However, while being an extremely interesting cover version and well worth listening too, I found it quite quickly became annoying. If you’re familiar with Nirvana’s lyrics then you probably wouldn’t lynch me if I was to label them as somewhat complicated (replace complicated with nonsensical). Now, no disrespect to Kurt, but if you can actually HEAR his lyrics, as you can in a swing cover, then the stupidity of the lyrics becomes readily apparent and largely difficult to ignore.

“With the lights out its less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now
Entertain us
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My libido
Yea”

Hmmm. Thanks for messing up future covers of your songs Kurt.

So anyway, who’s a Nick Cave fan? Yeah, me neither. And quite frankly his song ‘The Mercy Seat’ blows. Apparently it’s his signature song, and if that’s his signature then he needs to work on his handwriting skills (you see what I did there, I don’t even know what you call that kind of genius). There’s so much going on (noisy guitars and drums and some sort of string instruments (violins?) along with various sound effects) that’s it a bit hard to listen too. There’s no doubt it’s a powerful song though, telling the story of a man on death row waiting to be executed on the electric chair, detailing his final thoughts and worries. What would really make this song something special would be if an old-school country singer with a deep & powerful voice did a version. Well, thankfully, Johnny Cash gave us just that in 2000 on his American III: Solitary Man album. Go buy it. Or borrow it off DJ Haszari, I’m sure he has a copy.

Now, I like ‘back’ as much as the next man, unless of course that man is Sir Mix-a-Lot. According to his 1992 track ‘Baby Got Back’ he is a big fan of the ladies that have big butts (“I like big butts and I cannot lie”). I’m not here to question the validity of the statement of whether or not he can lie, perhaps he has a very serious moral code that he strictly adheres to. I’m here to tell you that the Jonathan Coulton version of the song is very entertaining. It’s an acoustic, easy to listen to version of the song that might appeal even if you didn’t like Sir Mix-a-lot’s original (what? do you have the fear of the black man or something?)

This writing in a serious manner is hard work. Screw it - I have to eat my lunch - also check out these:

Green Day – Working Class Hero (cover of John Lennon)
Easy Star All-Stars – Let Down (cover of Radiohead)
some rock band covering Army of Me by Bjork (note DJ Hazsari added this bit about Bjork when he edited my post and destroyed my artist intent)
any cover of Britney Spears (ditto about destroying artist intent yadda yadda)

* see I can talk like a cock if I want.

The Jacket

I've remastered and tidied up The Jacket, used some more sample, and made a housier version which may be more clubby. They're all available at last.fm (see player below) or GarageBand which is a good option if you wanna iLike me on Facebook.

I used the EQ in excellent JAMin to make the spectrum roughly flat (it was quite low-end-heavy and there were little dips here and there). I didn't use any compression, but I think the EQing left a lot of room for makeup gain, so it could well be a lot louder. Anyone know about mastering? I don't.

If you want higher bit rate versions send me an email, sweet as..



ADDITIONAL ADDITIONAL:
The new ("original") version is now in the last.fm player (128k) and still available at zshare too (320k).

TOP POST UPDATE:
There's a new version I've put on zshare (cos I know all you blog readers love viewing zshare ads).. it has a nice complementary sub and some swooshes here and there and the drums are tidied up:
Haszari - The Jacket (original) [320kbps]

It'll go up on Last FM (etc) eventually but they're rejecting the 128k bla bla bla ...

Original post follows...

Here is a work-in-progress track currently called "Jacket". I'm happier with this (even in its current state) than I have been with any homemade music thus far. Here's a last.fm player, and the track is free-downloadable from last.fm, so go and grab it!

It was made with my favourite free software: ZynAddSubFX synth, Hydrogen drum machine, Ardour digital audio workstation, and sequencer Rosegarden. This is all installed and configured to run with low latency by default in the wonderful free operating system (Debian based) 64Studio.

Now your bit: leave comments below or let me know more directly what you reckon, what would make it better, etc etc. Thanks.

Content time - check that attitude at the door

Instead of kicking off a podcast, which am still 2% reticent on (I think I want to talk and mix on a podcast, watch out), here is a tiny promo mix.

The tracklist goes like this:
1. College - Teenage Color (Russ Chimes mix)
2. Santos - Toilet
3. DJ Busy - Dick In A Box
4. Plump DJs - Something Goin' On
5. Bonde do Role - Gasolina (Crookers Crunk mix)
6. White Trash Kids - Heart Shaped Box
7. Tommy Trash - Slide (Sta mix)

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the blogs that provided me with the 50% mp3 content and thanks to ME for buying the other half on vinyl.

Thanks especially to Sta for the massivest true-blue-bigroom-house + huge electro remix that is Slide (I guess thanks Tommy Trash for putting the original together, should find out who that damn fine vocalist is too).

Thanks Crookers for being so cool all the time, and thanks Bonde do Role for giving Crookers some ideal grist for their crunk-mill.

And last but not least, thanks Justin Timberlake.

Postscript

Sta's done a remix of Busy Child by Crystal Method! Better listen to that now.

The LINK to THE MIX

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DA0VAGTC

Let me know any comments whines or opinions in comments here or myspace or in person etc.... cheers.

Val Kilmer and Paragraphs

Everybody knows who Val Kilmer is right? Correct! He's the dude that was called 'Ice' in Top Gun which was the coolest name in the movie (to be fair, 'Maverick' was a cooler name but that Tom Cruise nut job went all Scientology and sullied the memory of it so that means 'Ice' is now top).

Val Kilmer was also Batman at one point but unfortunately he kind of sucked. He wasn't as bad as that Michael Keaton dude and it would never be a challenge to beat George Clooney at the acting game so I suppose he could have done worse.

There was another Batman which came out a while back which I haven't seen, hopefully that shit had Sean Connery as Batman 'cause damn man, that would be trippin'. So I guess when you look at it that way he was actually a good Batman, I mean, it's all relative, amIright or amIright? I am so right.

Apparently Mr Kilmer was also in Tombstone, True Romance and a bunch of other gold but I don't really remember - It was a long time ago.

Apparently a brother is meant to put paragraphs in his posts, so this here is the second (H: fifth) paragraph just for HASZARI THE BLOG POST HITLER!!!

Aron City

I'm not sure I should be allowed to post on your blog, 'specially since it's called haszaristwocents (self referential - instant 2 points!) as I am obviously not haszari. Do I have to contribute two cents as well and do these funds finally end up with a charity?

Anyhow, here is some content:

I've noticed my hair can occasionally take on a bit of a Johnny Bravo look. At the front it all sticks straight up sometimes and I'm not sure why. Why did evolution develop this particular hair feature for me? Is this meant to help me escape tigers or make crappy tools out of stones and a stick? I guess it's like it says in "Like a prayer" by Madonna - "Life is a mystery".

[insert witty social commentary here].

Update: Haszari takes on new PR role for Gabriel & Dresden

Since bringing up the issue of song-destroying monotonous electro remixes, I have gone out and shown my support for the track by buying the old-arse not relevant original mix from that dang beatport.

Just before I did this, I found a presumably old remix competition which had the parts of the song freely downloadable (128k mp3)! Great!

The bonus is that now that I realise the original doesn't have much of an intro, I might be able to give it one with a bit of looping of some of those parts. And I keep the smug "I actually bought this" warm fuzzy feeling.

Slightly curious is that one of the parts is kick and it seems to be eight minutes of kick drum (with gaps for breaks of course). (The others are vocal, bass, drums and music.) I guess this is house music; the kick is pretty important right?

Cheers, Remix Mag and Gabriel & Dresden.

CORRECTION

On Energy Flash on Saturday, I mistakenly led Schraa to believe that Climbatize by The Prodigy dates back to the old-school, hardcore days. By way of an excuse, the Z in the title (along with perhaps my hankering for a Chris Lake remix of some true rave business?) may have been the only reason I ventured forth this information.

King Unique sacrifices "song" for relevant electro

I heard the King Unique remix of Gabriel & Dresden's "Tracking Treasure Down" on the weekend while helping out with our local house music radio show, Energy Flash on Radio 1.

My reaction was: the original was a great crossover clubby trance pop song, with a very pop/song structure, and King Unique succeeded in using the vocal over a much more constant/monotonous (i.e. the chord changes are not there) electro track.

Which is fine and all, obviously that's more relevant, and that's what I tend to be into a lot of the time, but for me it had the effect of making the vocal fairly irrelevant.

If you want to hear the King Unique remix, listen to the energyflash podcast. If you want to hear the original, get in a time machine and go back to last year and listen to Pete Tong's Essential Selection thru early/mid 2006.