$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].