dotm

and another track is done. the name for this track came to me for whatever reason and i could not -not- write a tune to go with it. and i think it’s one of my finest to date, once again pushing my production to a new level, ’cause the fun is in the innovation, especially when you’re crossing genres as this one does. there is not a spot in the track where the hithats break — this is a veritable wall of sound without a doubt. and it’s got punch to it. and large noises, of course — large noises. i played it saturday night at the pirate party and it thumped really well. i played it after that new hybrid remix of grayarea’s “gravity”, which i bought on vinyl from boomtown.
i hate vinyl.
let me qualify this. i disliked vinyl and the imperfections that it is susceptable to. however, saturday night is when i actually started to hate on it. one of the many problems with vinyl is the needle that is needed to make sound with vinyl. some needs are good, others not as good, and finally, some needles just decide to break randomly in the middle of a performance on 15,000 watt system.
such as the one sitting on that hybrid remix of grayarea. it decided to break mid-cue and drag on the record, skipping and producing muddy sound and awful bass response. so much for the mix. at this point in the night (just after midnight), i didn’t want to stop the music, so it kept going, though not sounding as spectacular as it usually would, or for that matter, should. this is a fabulous piece, one of hybrid’s best in recent years.
so what do you mix out of a failing needle?
i decided the only DJ tool i had fit for the job was the Dance of the Minataur, with its huge DJ lead in. so, i threw the CDr in the CDJ-1000, and then i layered that underneath the crappy sounding output of that needle and it worked perfectly. the lead in gave the hybrid remix enough time to play itself out before the massive bongos of DotM came in and picked up the groove.
i wasn’t quite prepared for how the bassdrum would sound.
the woosh came before the 65th bar and then..
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMPTHUMP THUMP THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMPTHUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP!
[echo, natural hall reverb]
dude! this was huge. it sounded completely massive! it sounded like one of those memorial arena parties with the huge wide open spaces and the large sound systems. this was a decent sized sound system but no other bass drum sounded like this the whole night. this was totally fully what i want!
so happy with that.
and then it occured to me, since, you know, the track had only been finished for a few hours, that i had never really mixed anything out of it in front of people before. i had been playing breaks for a bit and wanted to go in a different direction. so, like i did with the radio show, i played ASAP – Heavy Water afterwards and it worked out quite well.
the best thing about this was that during DotM i barely looked at the crowd to see the crowd response. i knew that the track was going to work and it did. while i was turned around looking through records, i could hear yelling and shouting of approval. it was awesome, but i was too busy preparing for the next mix to take it in. what a great crowd too — the dancefloor was full by 11 PM and stayed that way until i left at around 3 or 4 AM. the other DJ’s (nigel haze, yoseff and josh) played quite well, so it was probably no coincidence.
i don’t have any plans for this track yet. as far as things go on pacific front, there is plenty of material waiting to be released already, though i am pretty certain we’re looking for a remix of Dreamcache now.
that’s all for now on the music front!

Join the Conversation

3 Comments

Leave a comment