wish i could have made it out this year i was really looking fwd to flying lotus and glitch mob …. oh and the ghetto tech my friends make fun of me for liking it im glad im not the only one

all else i have pretty much seen

theres a review up on my site my friend did if you feel like reading

http://whattimeisyourflight.blogspot.com/

Why did you need to specify that they were white?

but those paxa-tards are super lame.

On DEMF itself, I had a good time this year…it was only my 2nd time so can’t compare to the earlier festivals. As Tom mentioned the stage setup this year was just bizarre…I could deal with the Red Bull and Beatport changes but the Real Detroit stage was absolutely horrifying.
Still, wanting badly to hear the artists playing there that pretty much never make it out to NYC I sucked it up and sat in the pit by the raised stage…Last year the sound wasn’t great but at least I could see the f!@cking DJs!?! This year with the raised setup the dancers couldnt see the DJ and it was thus much harder for them to establish a presence. Still, I must say that Mike Huckaby, Anthony Rother and Jay Denham were the highlights for me. Mike played his usual progression between dope deep house and dubby techno which was nice. Rother just brought some of the freshest / most unusual sounds heard at the festival full of vivid electro synth washes and analogue beats. Jay Denham basically pummelled everyone into submission with some of the hardest stuff I’ve heard in ages that managed to remain funky. Overall really impressed…unfortunately my ears were in pretty atrocious pain afterwards…C2 please fix this!!!

B

For me I always had played vinyl and always had played the original cuts they way they were made. When I got into producing I started thinking about playing records more like production. I started wanting to make records fit together as close to perfect as possible by cutting frequencies with eqs or filters and maybe looping two separate parts of a track that are in key and work together like a new track. This stems from production. I also really got more into the use of FXs because of production. I had and have a great desire to do my own ‘edits’, this influence came from two things, one producing and two, KENNY DIXON JR. (Example: I own an ultra rare KDJ edit of “Rainbow Children” by Prince, and I think its 50x better then the original) Installing Traktor on my MBP allowed me to do all these things. In fact I could create an ‘edit’ and play it on vinyl 2 minutes later, not to mention that I can play one of my own tracks on vinyl mere minutes after its creation. (I can also play my new tracks as if they were records in clubs and test them out, meaning see if I like the way they feel and sound on the floor and in my sets.)

I don’t think ‘playing live’ gives someone more legitimacy either. In fact, I think this is what I’m trying to say. I don’t think anyone should expect my live set to be exciting, no more exciting then watching someone play records. I just think that if you play records well it can be an amazing experience, if you play them poorly then probably not so much. I think it works the same with a live set. DJ set or Live set if it flows, and grooves, and is emotional and meaningful to you and your ideas about good music, well then you’ve done your job.

For me digital audio has just been like traveling another path. I played vinyl (and still do) I owned analogue gear, samplers, drum machines, FX processors, FM synths, digital keyboards, compressors and more. I also own Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, Traktor Scratch, and more. To me its just more things to learn about and experience and really just to allow me to express myself.

I’m kind-of going on and on but I just wanted to make my point that I truly believe that digital is not always a bad thing.

moving on to “live” performances with laptops, i am not against these either. but as i do know at least a little bit about how these things work, it makes me very critical when i see things that don’t match up. for example, when flying lotus would play, he had these long intro bits for his tracks that appeared to be contructed of him triggering samples by tapping on something. this is all well and good, until i notice that sometimes the rhythm he is tapping is not exactly what is playing, even on the same sound that had previously been being played at each tap. what am i supposed to think about this? as for the Innervisions guys, there were four guys three of which IIRC were using laptops. and more than any actual interaction with their computers, there was a whole lot of dancing behind them. again, what am i supposed to think?

what it really all boils down to is that i believe in playing records as an end. it is an artform and 100% acceptable method of performance. “adding” to it generally tends to actually subtract from it in my experience. while i do appreciate a nice live electronic music performance, i feel like it really needs to have something interesting to offer the listeners that takes it above and beyond a great deejay set. so so so few live acts have done that for me. the UR live groups, DBX, Carl Craig, Egyptian Lover (whose set consisted of live parts and deejaying mixed together), and a few others have been capable of that. mostly, you get these half assed “performances” that really are not more interesting to me than someone playing records. i do not find that “playing live” gives someone more legitimacy than just playing records. maybe it does that in other peoples’ eyes because they are not truly interested in deejaying, but those people should maybe go back to seeing live music instead.

Nothing against the WB. I think its funny as well, I really just used it as a point of reference. Maybe they planned on taking Beatport’s money and spending it on vinyl.
Honeslty, I’ve never played with CD either. I can’t even work those things. For me one of the most appealing things about Traktor is the ‘coded vinyl records’. I thought it was the next best thing to vinyl. I think I brought this up more less now to get it off my shoulders. I guess I just wanted to come out and say that as much as I love vinyl I’m willing to embrace new technology as well (this is not a self-righteous comment) and I even goes as far as to use it, like it, and see the benefits of it. I respect ISM, I really dig this blog so I decided that it was time for me, as a regular reader and music lover, to give my opinion about what it means for me to be using a laptop and digital audio to do things that in the past I only used analogue. SOLID.