Tiebreaker – Markarian 421

Around the time I was making Eclipse, Anand had started work on our third track. This one started off as a pretty deadly breakbeat that Anand had programmed while he was over one time. I made a bassline, Anand tweaked it a bunch and we started in on the atmospherics. The sample is a fellow talking about Quasars and in particular they were tracking this one which seemed to be moving away from the earth at an incredible speed. They are not talking about Markarian 421 (read this link, it’s super neat), which is categorized as a Blazar (type of quasar from my understanding).

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Markarian 421 is particularly notabable, however, as it is roughly the same brightness as our entire galaxy and is suspected to have a black hole as part of it’s object, as well as a companion galaxy. Blazars are regarded as being the most volatile object in the universe, and I think it might be because the black hole is actually rejecting “new submissions” and projecting them in two beams perpendicular to accretion disk surrounding it. One of those beams is, apparently, pointed directly at earth. Anyway if you are interested in this, read this article on Markarian 421, it is much better at explaining it than I am. Kind of hard to imagine, but there you have it. Maaaahh-seeev. Some of the noises in this track are mimicking waves of light and also pulses. Australian house and breaks producer extraordinare Jarius Miller does a funky progressive house remix, and Ritual Sounds / Moontribe’s Seed (DJ Brian if you ever picked up one of his Hardesertrance CD’s on Moonshine) does a nasty breaks remix with Phokus.

  1. Tiebreaker – Markarian 421 (Original mix)
  2. Tiebreaker – Markarian 421 (Jarius Miller remix)
  3. Tiebreaker – Markarian 421 (Seed and Phokus remix)

just say no to atlanta

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seriously folks, if you have any chance of having to connect in atlanta, avoid it. avoid being around flights to atlanta, even if you’re not taking them. this flight to atlanta shown here was double-booking the gate that my flight to vancouver was supposed to leave from, causing my flight to vancouver to be late, letting me through customs 10 minutes after the last flight to victoria was leaving vancouver. yes i stayed over night in the airport because by the time the customs had been cleared, no one from united airlines was available and they were not answering their phones. i have written them a letter documenting the events.
oh by the way i will be posting more pics from the actual trip. just had to get this bit about atlanta off of my chest.

AFK – Pacific Front Sessions: March 2006

  1. Phokus – The Sleeper (DDS Remix) – Ritual Sounds
  2. AFK – Lush (Matt Rowan and Jaytech Remix) – Proton Music
  3. Deepsky and Marc Mitchell – Lost In The Moment (LP’s Litmus Paper Mix) – Proton Music
  4. AFK – Eclipse (Fractal’s Transit of Venus Remix) – Pacific Front
  5. Tiebreaker – Markarian 421 (Jarius Miller Remix) – Pacific Front
  6. Nero – Resonator (Dustin H Remix) – L2 Recordings
  7. Hybrid – I Know (Dale Anderson Remix) – CDR
  8. Amani vs Teapot – Musiki Ukabili (AFK Remix) – Ritual Sounds
Download: AFK – Pacific Front Sessions: March 2006

shatlanta

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stupid things:
guy at counter in victoria says “get your baggage when you get into vancouver because you’ll need to pass it through customs in vancouver.”
apparently security is pretty tight in victoria to vancouver flights now, even more so than vancouver to atlanta. figure that one out. in victoria i had to take off a lot more than what i am used to. the girl kept on asking me to take things off so i blurted out “want me to take off my t-shirt too?” and then i smirked. i was pretty uncomfortable and i thought that it was getting ridiculous so i had to say something. she blushed a bit and that was it, i was through.
i arrive in vancouver.
i ask the dude at the baggage counter where my baggage is because it isn’t showing up and he says “it’s coming.”
*waits 1 hour for baggage in vancouver*
again, i ask the dude at the baggage counter where my baggage is and he says “err you been waiting a while. uhh lemme check your piece o paper that tells me everything. oh here go through international customs and then it’ll be on your left.”
*does that*
*sees no baggage, asks*
i am told that there is no baggage there. i am lead through the international customs in reverse and i find air canada so that they can attempt to clear up the situation. they say that my baggage is going straight through to atlanta and that i can clear it there before going to tampa bay.
ooooookay!
did you know that milestones in the vancouver international airport is only open until 9 pm? did you care? no. but when your red eye flight to atlanta has no in-flight meal, you are probably interested in eating before you do not eat for several hours. luckily i was able to slip in under the wire and eat a fantastic steak with veggies. mmm it was good. i have some granola bars just in case i should get hungry in atlanta, but red meat takes forever to digest so i should be alright.
—
okay let me tell you about atlanta, holy what a boondoggle this was. i got in with 1.5 hours to do the get baggage, transfer baggage, go through customs, go through security, get boarding pass, enter plane.
atlanta has to be the worst airport I’ve ever been in. big long lineups for everything. even at 6 in the morning.. it was nuts. i almost missed my flight because their domestic inspection (which, again, was a joke) took forever. nobody working there really seemed to care either. then i was selected for a “random” search at customs (who are they kidding with the word random?). that took more time out of the equation and after this i had to take a train all the way across the airport (it’s huge) to get to my plane. so i did that and ran to my gate with 4 minutes before departure. yeah that’s right, 4 minutes at full throttle. what a horrid airport. lucky for me delta/atlanta is a boondoggle in all regards and the flight had been delayed by 40 minutes.
i made a new friend! we had some interesting discussions. her name is gloria and she’s from anchorage alaska and could tell where i was from by my “accent.” sure aboot that eh!?
so i am in sarasota, florida now and it’s pretty sweet. instead of leaving the windows open to heat up the neighbourhood, you leave windows open to warm the place up. yeah it’s warm here and it always blows my mind that when i step outside, it’s warmer. my first thought is that the building i stepped out of is radiating heat. and then it doesn’t go away. and it’s all “nice, i like!”
i didn’t sleep all night and now i am drinking coffee. krishen has the same computer and monitor set up as me, and also the same chair, but not the same desk. my desk is better. haha. ok it turns out that it is the same desk but different configuration. but he has an isight and his computer isn’t overheating and it’s faster than mine by a bit now with his most recent upgrade so i am a bit jealous. shut up!
we’re going to go check out the town and see what is cool there. paint the town rad.
ps: my mom does not approve of the language in this post.