A Big One

Yea I had a massive one last night. Cheers, Tim, cheers also Bath St.

See the rest of the photos at Facebook.

Society Page

The exclusive These pretzels are making me thirty event to celebrate DJ Haszari's 30th birthday was held on Saturday night (2nd Feb).
DJ Haszari seen here on the right relaxing at home as the party closed up.

The night started with a BBQ and margaritas while the last rays of sunshine were captured:


Then the celebrations eased into the night with friends and family:

Rocksteady and Electro Groupie

Ella Mental and Sonic Smith

Schraa and Rocksteady

Haszari

Haiku time

Electro beauty:
fills my veins, assaults my mind,
forces me to dance.

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...