i just went to see the doctor, and she said i can kick this, it's just a matter of time .. i still feel completely not-myself though. things keep on changing:

on tuesday it was a headache, on wednesday - thursday it was a fever, thursday - saturday it was headache + nausia, friday - today it has been headache, lack of appetite + coughing up the bad stuff.

i am the sick.

Posted by davin at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Posted by davin at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

i am feeling a wee bit better but that may just be the neocitran. last night was possibly the worst night of "sleep" i have ever had, waking up and not being able to get back to sleep because of the splitting headache / cough / coldsweats. yeaaaah. nothing much to say, really, i have been sleeping, drinking fluids, eating chicken noodle soup, not leaving the apartment. my brain doesn't work right.

Posted by davin at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

don't worry, i wont make you sick. i, in fact, will not make anyone sick. i'd tell you about the exciting stuff going on but i can't feel excited right now, or anything but this headache and this sore throat and something like a fever. no distractions, just me and The Sick. to avoid being boring here are some pix from the ferry on monday night. bye.

Posted by davin at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

today really .. beat the crap out of me .. look for a more interesting post tomorrow .. some days are just like this .. i guess ..

Posted by davin at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fang2004 posed a legit question on the rave victoria music board:

My answer:

It's a really tricky genre to play because it's easy to take the dancefloor down the wrong path. As was mentioned before, sometimes the breakdowns can get too long, or the tracks selected don't do anything. I think that's a thing that some of the trance DJ's were more guilty of a couple years ago but it sticks with people. "Oh I went to see DJ Trance and fuckin' nothing happened for an hour." Of course, for people who genuinely like to dance to a beat, this is not a problem. That being said, programming a trance set is difficult at best ..

After 7 years I am still picking up techniques and methods to read the dance floor faster, more honestly .. quite often I don't play my own favorite track (or even my own just-produced-that-night track) if it doesn't closely fit the mood of the dance floor. Sure I will do a bit of steering, but you need to balance between education and entertainment. Some DJ's, no matter the genre, forget people are there for a good time..

A comment about "having to be high on E to appreciate trance" is pure rubbish. People enjoyed chord progressions long before drugs. Think about how your favorite movie would be effected without its soundtrack, almost all of which are reliant on the same musical theory a lot of trance is.

At the end of the day, I can honestly say playing trance is a tight-rope act. You're expected to mix really well -- a sloppy 2 minute mix can really mess the whole thing up. Don't play too cheesy, don't play too intelligent. Make it go somewhere, but not too fast. Give the crowd an exciting key change between two tracks, but make sure they do not clash. Phrase your mixing perfectly. Oh yeah, and ocassionally look up. This is powerful music; it needs to be presented in the right way.

Enjoy!

Listening to: John Creamer & Stephane K - I Wish You Were Here (Lexicon Avenue Vocal mix)

Posted by davin at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

i want to be turned into this!

i got my humidifier to work. it did make a huge difference, i am not feeling so groggy this morning (also thanks to a healthy chunk of sleep) and that is A Good Thing™.

unfortunately plans to go here:

for this weekend have not worked out, so now i have this weekend open. i did all my house work yesterday evening, so i am free to do whatever. i still feel like going on some sort of adventure. suggestions?

Posted by davin at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

clicky on that last one for a larger version. i am packing tonight for a secret adventure on the weekend! wait, did i tell you about it already? drat. not a secret. wait a minute, yes it is, everything on this site is a secret! don't tell shhhhhhhhhh!

Posted by davin at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

sometimes i like to sketch. sometimes i have an idea in my head, and other times i just want to sit in front of the blank canvas and see what will come out. this is something that actually started off as a landscape, turned into a UFO, and then came in to land as a foot, or is it a shoe? or the earth?

since my camera is being an oaf these days, i have decided to start doing more illustrations again since it used to be one of my favorite things to do. i'd like to start doing it more again.

i am going to Union Bay this weekend (on Vancouver Island) and i am looking forward to seeing some new sights and capturing them in my mind. i am a ways off from feeling like spending enough time to do a full landscape illustration, but i can feel the urge coming as i start to consider honing my illustration skills again. my doodles have returned to me and with them a desire to create visually from the head. not instead of photography or anything, cause i really think the two go together.

gotta go, more work to do ..

Posted by davin at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

i haven't talked much on here about my status .. ie .. singleness, but this is the first time i have been single in 5 or 6 years on valentines day. maybe longer, i have lost track. so what? in any case, i do feel pressure as a male to do something for someone on valentines day. yeah i really feel it, and i feel like, to be perfectly blunt, i'll hear about it later if i don't. i sure have thought about it enough. that's my baggage i guess. the other part is i actually do like all the mush surrounding vday. i dislike the expectations and the guilt associated with the day. hence pressure. i do like emotionally spoiling a person. i like to participate, not spectate.

so this image above is for someone, because this is what i am doing for someone on valentines day. hooray for ambiguity. today i am dating the interweb. i love you, interweb, you are always there for me, and i know you always will be, because of your redundant networking schema.

Posted by davin at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

photo by jaime

actually i just lifted a load of pressure off of me on a couple different fronts. the one i will talk about here is this: i was thinking, oh what a great website update am i going to have to do now. the last update was the sum effort of over a years worth of preparation by many people all over the world. yeah that is a tough one to follow up. if you haven't downloaded the mix yet, what on earth are you waiting for? if you like it, what i ask is that you *please* tell your friends about it. this is the only way that we're going to win at what we love doing. music for sharing.

my camera battery is still on the fritz -- or is it the charger. i don't know -- sometimes i get a few hours out of it, other times i get 5 minutes. not that super.

the emerald green track is coming together really smoothly and so is justin's remix of dreamcache. i heard a preview of dreamcache tonight and it's very encouraging. i am resequencing the vocals for the Emerald Green project in Ableton's awesome Live 4.03. jaime and i did another session and it's really coming together now.

well i met some people last night that i used to talk to online a bunch of years ago, try 5 .. and we met so randomly last night, it's so weird. funkaru and daisy. rad! #loungex lives. well maybe not, haha. but still, that is neat. yep.

good weekend. time to sleep :)!

Posted by davin at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

TRACKLISTING:

1. AFK - Emily's China (edit)
   
2. Chompers - Silent Violence (Vox version)
   
3. Obakeh - Ghosted (Habersham's tech-Phunked Up remix)
   
4. AFK - Magnetic (Chompers Mercy Kill remix)
   
5. Tiebreaker - Prominence (Steve May's Doing it for the Digital Slut remix)
   
6. Formulate - Rising Edge (Original mix)
   
7. AFK - Dreamcache (Original mix)
   
8. Formulate - Voice of Qi (Brian Seed's 8-bit Breaks remix)
   
9. Formulate - Lonely in the Middle (Ninja Dan's Water Bomber remix)
   
10. Obakeh - Ghosted (AFK's Fully Spooked remix)
    
11. Tiebreaker - Settle the Score (Original mix)
    
12. Formulate - Voice of Qi (Original mix)

Download 192k mp3

Posted by davin at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

photos by davin and jaime.

ps: i am going to lotus tonight .. if you wanna come with me, let me know :)

Posted by davin at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

You are a big mean
You made me very little
Why did you do that?

- live haiku (impressive and improvised) spoken by The Devon to me, April 2000

Vous etes un gros mechant
Vous m’avais fait(e) si petit(e)
Pourquoi avez-vous fait ca?

Tu es un gros mechant
Tu m’as fait(e) si petit(e)
Pourquoi as-tu fait ca?

- translated by The Amalia, Feburary 2005

by the way you can clicky on the image up there for a bigger one. i shot this yesterday whilst lost on a walk at lunch time on a washed-out trail that goes up the capilano river.

Posted by davin at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

as you can see, the duck on the right is taller than the duck on the left. i do not know if either of these ducks have names. i like ducks!!* i must The Sleep. good night.

Posted by davin at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Charles (Obakeh, c79, Chompers) had these Peter Tosh samples and made a very cool dub tech-house track out of them and a number of other sounds that he put together. Habersham stepped in and did a fabulous tech dub which does the business on the dance floor. I did a progressive breaks remix that sampled the original drums and voices, but stepped in a slightly different and slightly epic breaks direction. The sleeve art is Charles himself making some statues on Mt. Doug in Victoria at sunset. I can't remember when we were up there, but it was a while ago, maybe even before Pacific Front existed. I also did an ambient remix that we might put out some day as a PFR-X release, or maybe as part of a Storm Warning EP. Only time will tell..

1. Obakeh - Ghosted (Original mix)
2. Obakeh - Ghosted (Habersham's Tech-Phunked Up Dub)
3. Obakeh - Ghosted (AFK's Fully Spooked remix)

Listen and Buy (beatport.com)

Posted by davin at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

i feel like my updates haven't been reaaaally personable lately because i have so much going on that i want everyone to know about. well, rest-assured that mostly everything i post on here *is* personal (hence übersecret.) on the way:

• pictures from this weekend past (including hush shots)
  
• storm warning 001 (new mix CD)

• top secret website for adrian and gurton
  
• emerald green ch00n
  
• royal assassin ch00n
  
• josee allard remix
  
• sending PFR promo material to M8 magazine & Benz+MD

jaime spoiled me last night with a really delicious dinner in. really yummy complimentary dishes. mmmmm.

i went for a fantastic walk today beside the capilano river. took a few decent pictures too which was really nice. a possible new one for the portfolio.

camera nerd stuff: i was shooting at 50 ISO (lowest amount of 'film grain') because it was really bright out which is a bit of a luxury; F8.0 - again because it was so bright and great for extra clear shots; exposure time between 1/200th and 1/1000th of a second because it was bright enough for it so there will be virtually no motion blur. what this means is that i believe i got some outstandingly clear shots today. i should have shot in RAW mode but i wasn't thinking about it.

i am getting very excited for the U2 concert in April. how good is this one going to be? sooooooooo good. listening to U2 - Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? as I write.. gotta go, so much to do .. so little time! byeeee!

Posted by davin at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

jaime came with me for an amazing weekend in victoria. it is nice to go with someone who likes to travel. it turns the normally mundane parts of the trip into the one of the highlights..

friday = dinner + drinks with the gang from work @ hugos. muchly good fun.

saturday = a wee bit o work stuff, jacob spoilt me with smoked salmon again, some photography, coffee, shopping, dinner at amalia's.. and then hush.

wow. hush rules.

thank you to braeden and all @ hush for having me over for what will be remembered as a legendary weekend. i had a great time playing and everyone was up for the mad tunes. i'd been stoked to DJ with Braeden for a good while now since it always rocks when we're DJing together and Saturday night was no exception.

thanks to those who stayed 'til the end -- mind you the night went in a flash and was over before we knew it!

i apologize for the last track being cut off; it is the new Emerald Green tune and i would've liked to play the whole thing for you because it really is marvellous. unfortunately the management had to cut it off the sound system pretty early into it in order to clear out the bar. (it was well past 2 AM). next time!

it was particularly pleasing to see people go bonkers for the upcoming Pacific Front Recordings release - Formulate - Voice of Qi [Seed remix] .. talk about encouraging .. 10/10 crowd response.

amalia made us all a crazy fabulous dinner; thanks for your hospitality. :D

i will post some of the pictures soon..

* * *

i got u2 tickets.

booyah.

* * *

sunday was appropriately lazy and consisted of watching a movie, eating and travelling back to vancouver on the shortest ever ferry ride ..

Posted by davin at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

U2 plays GM Place in Vancouver on Thursday, April 28, 2005.

There's a limit of 8 tickets total per person, with a max of 2 General admission floor tickets.

ahhhhhhhhh. i can not miss this concert. that's part of why i am here, right, vancouver, more stuff happenin'. like for example U2 coming to play a show. how fast will this sell out.. i'm not very good at getting tickets, i have proven in the past. if anyone i know is going and is planning on running the gauntlet with ticketbastard .. and is able to snag me a pair .. that would be crazy good. pleeeeease! *grovel*

Posted by davin at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

After a year of planning, connecting, producing and remixing, it looks like we have a music label on our hands. And not a bad one either. Ambient, progressive house, tribal-tech, breaks and a lot in-between; the cohesion between the artists on Pacific Front Recordings is displayed rawly in this mix as it moves smoothly from style to style without missing a beat. Artists and remixers that span the shores of the Pacific -- from the heat of Los Angeles, to the mist of Victoria and Vancouver and the far reaches of Melbourne, Australia. I don't know what it's like there, but I'd like to visit some time and tell you what the weather's like.

Thank you to those who have supported us as we've been delivering the goods. Support has come from around the world -- Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, USA, Italy, Japan and more. Your support means a tonne to us and we're really stoked that our music is finding its way to where you are.

The new mix 'Storm Warning 001' will debut on Proton Radio tonight at 10 PM PST and will kick off the series of mixed CD's from Pacific Front Recordings.

Here is the tracklisting:
 
1. AFK - Emily's China (edit)
2. Chompers - Silent Violence (Vox version)
3. Obakeh - Ghosted (Habersham's tech-Phunked Up remix)
4. AFK - Magnetic (Chompers Mercy Kill remix)
5. Tiebreaker - Prominence (Steve May's Doing it for the Digital Slut remix)
6. Formulate - Rising Edge (Original mix)
7. AFK - Dreamcache (Original mix)
8. Formulate - Voice of Qi (Brian Seed's 8-bit Breaks remix)
9. Formulate - Lonely in the Middle (Ninja Dan's Water Bomber remix)
10. Obakeh - Ghosted (AFK's Fully Spooked remix)
11. Tiebreaker - Settle the Score (Original mix)
12. Formulate - Voice of Qi (Original mix)

Enjoy!

Davin / ariz0na / AFK / Tiebreaker / Emerald Green / Royal Assassin
Pacific Front Recordings

Posted by davin at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

that's the 11" x 17" that is going up all over Victoria right now. wheeeeeeee! we'll be making our way to the island on friday evening, 6 pm ferry most likely.

commander canes will be running with the boss sound, this saturday night at hush! (that's me.)

i am so excited for this. it's going to be radsauce. cd giveaways of my newest mix of super upfront Pacific Front Recordings choons and all.

Posted by davin at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

i am mourning the possible loss of the magnet creatures. oh my!

this is post #900.

i think it's going to be in point form at least right now.

i had a superb night last night working on a secret project. also went for a walk, and did a little photography. the interesting positions i get into when going for a shot (even with a flip out LCD) get me some attention, heh heh. last night it came in the form of an ambulence pulling over off of the highway to horseshoe bay, shining a spotlight at me for a few minutes and a worker cautiously approached me. no i was not dead, i wasn't going to jump -- he got closer and saw what i was doing and waved, grinned and ran off. haha, awesooome. i'll post the picture i took later -- it wasn't anything super spectacular, just an overpass time exposure. the story is better than the shot.

imo.

okay so much for point form. back to work. byeeee!

music: REM - The Great Beyond (Hybrid remix)

Posted by davin at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)