oooooh I am excited for this show.
reasons why I think JunkieXL is worth checking out:

• Remixed Dave Gahan (from Depeche Mode)’s “Dirty Sticky Floors” and it roxx
• Remixed Sarah McLachlan’s “World On Fire” and it roxx
• Remixed Infusion’s “Legacy” and it’s stupid good.
• Co-produced Sasha’s superb “Airdrawndagger” album
• Co-produced Conjure 1 (Delerium offshoot)’s debut album
• Produced Bon Voyage, Zerotonine, Beauty Never Fades, Breezer, and the rather huge double CD RadioJXL.

well that’s all i could come up with a minute ago but it’s plenty of reason to go. if you don’t know the music that well, he’s doing a live pa show so it’ll be plenty more interesting than your regular dj show and he makes really fun dance music. whirred.
the irony of me writing about ‘techno’ whilst listing to a mixed list of janis joplin, norah jones and ella fitzgerrald .. makes me laugh. variety, i say .. helps me appreciate everything more. 🙂
happy friday everybody!

[censored]

charles had a really cool idea on saturday night. a cross-interview between the two of us. this is especially cool for me because i love asking the tough questions, and one of the things i miss about radio is being able to do that.
this is an interview with charles paul, also known as the man behind Chompers dubs and the Obakeh project. i asked him ten questions; he gave me ten answers:

1. what was your biggest accomplishment of 2004?
   Hmm, that’s a tough one. So many things happened in the last year. *pauses* I would have to say that there wasn’t one thing in particular that I’d claim as my biggest accomplishment, but rather a series of many accomplishments that amount to one big one. I mean, for starters, I have been able to find a voice through my music. Stylistically, the music I’ve made in the last 4 months or so has really started to become stylistically cohesive. Other accomplishments that I feel compelled to mention are; the decision to go back to school and continue with my studies; holding down two jobs, which was something I’d never done before. Actually, to be quite honest my biggest accomplishment of 2004 has been surviving what has been a very difficult year.
2. where do you see yourself in 2.37 years?
   Realistically, I’ll still be in school and in Victoria at that time. Hopefully I’ll have a vinyl release or two by then. Alternatively I may find myself in a larger city, but hopefully still working towards my degree.
3. where do you get the ideas for the little people that you draw?
   Where? Ummm, I dunno really. Sometimes I just put pen to paper and that’s what comes out. Other times, I look at something and try to imagine what it would look like through my eyes. And even further, sometimes I am merely copying something that I saw somewhere.
4. what is your ambition, and how do you plan on getting there?
   Oof. I wasn’t ready for that one. My ambition is a multi-headed goddess-beast. “She gives with one hand and then she takes with the other”[/kids_in_the_hall] I guess I have many ambitions. Most of them are to be proficient at expressing myself in a myriad of mediums such as; music, text, art, visual etc. I’d really like to be in a position to use those mediums to earn a living. I honestly couldn’t stick to one thing, I would start to feel limited by what I could say. Hardwork, discipline and dedication are the only things that I can use to get there. Unless there is some sort of secret udnerground rail-road I am not aware of?
5. have you forgotten anybody?
   Yes? I don’t know…
   

6. who was your first best friend, what was that persons name, and what earned them the title?
   Some kid named ‘Martin’ from California. When my mom brought down there, We stayed at my Uncle Michael’s. I must have been maybe four or five? Anyway, this kid’s parents came over and they brought him and we went to disneyland together. In all that excitement we became best friends. I’ve never seen or heard from/about him since. That was about 1983 I believe..
7. if you could be somewhere else right now, where would it be, regardless of time and space?
   Ooooh! Good one. So many possibilities! I’d like to witness Ney York in the 60’s, Edo period Japan( perfereably in a non christian denominitive faction) Can I choose to look different? Because that would make the Japan thing a bit easier. Even though it’s not too far off, I’d like to have witnessed first hand the rise of Electronic music in the Uk in the early 90’s. Geez, there are so many times and events I’d love to have seen first hand…
8. What is it about Japan/Asia that fascinates you?
   Ok, fair enough.
   Initially I was drawn to more contemporary aspects of Japanese media, mostly in the form of music and animation or movies, but deciding to invest more time in researching a culture on a less superficial context, I found a richness that I was immediately drawn to. I feel like I can kind of identify with the notions of tradition and routine. Asia in general is such an ancient civilisation, I think it’s among the first civilisations really, (i’m not sure of the dates to be honest) and because of that it’s developed such an intensely rich and colourful history. I am also quite drawn to much of the mythologies of asia, Ancient civilisations develop extremely rich histories and mythologies, the root of which forms much of the cultural norms today that I find so fascinating. *phew* Another richly rewarding facet of this interest is learning language. I am absolutley amazed by language. Japanese is my second language so far, demo mata, watashi no nihongo ga jouzu ja arimasen.

9. whats the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?
   Yeah… WE could go over that, Or, I can just say this; I don’t really believe that I’ve done incredibly stupid things, only things to learn from and to try not repeat. Most of my recent stupidisms fall under the ‘love’ category though. I’m kind of learning all of that stuff all over again.
10. whats the smartest thing you’ve ever done?
    Excercise a great deal of patience.

check out

• www.chompers-dubs.com
• Chompers artist page on the Pacific Front Recordings website

Charles is one of Pacific Front Recordings mainstays and an all-around good guy. part of the reason you see the degree of honesty that you see on my website is due in part to my own reading of his website and how clearly he writes there, not really too concerned with who is reading what, but rather more interested in getting it out of the head and written out somewhere. You’ll see Charles’ story of how he met me at the radio station when I was ego tripping at my prime time Saturday night radio show. My first impression of Charles was that he had incredibly good taste in music and that I wanted him to come back to the show many times to share his selections with us. I knew, right away, that this guy had something special going on in the music department — and that sentiment becomes truer and truer as time goes by.

note: this is .. i don’t know 7 years old? the picture is from my going away party a few months ago. steve is one of my very best friends — he’s seen me at some of my most rough times and some of my very best times. he’s a talented newsman on cfax 1070, is an entertaining hockey player, can dance all night, play bass, and is our group of friends “Designated Asshole,” a distinction he carries with pride. Although sometimes he abbreviates it to “DA,” you know, just so certain people are not offended by the designation. Perhaps they might get jealous if they were to learn the truth.
I met Steve back in the day off of the Victoria Freenet, now known as the Victoria Telecommunity Network. They set up an IRC server so a few of us night owls could chat — they restricted the hours on the server from 10 PM – 8 AM (or something) and we’d eagerly wait to login and start yapping when we were 17 or 18. 8 or 9 years ago. Matt, Me, Steve, (Travelling) Pete, Kristen, Stephanie would hang out in a channel named #zero and shoot the [bleep] until the wee hours of the morning. Honourable mentions go to Jennifer Lucy (Spider) and Cecelia (kitten / coffee) for the random drop in. I miss those times — occassionally we’d be up til 7 AM if the conversation was good; it happened many times. We’d decide at 2 AM to meet up at Alzu’s and it was the coolest thing ever; we could operate in stealth, no phone ringing up the parents or anything! *sneak*
Steve’s name online was “Iowa” and I thought it would be funny to mock him by calling myself “ariz0na”. As luck would have it, I had IRC set up to remember which nickname I used last and so ariz0na stuck, and people started calling me ariz0na. I kept it, it sounded cool. That’s about the entirety of my connection to The State of Arizona. That and I have a cool friend named Christine from Arizona, but she’s moving to Boston (?!) next week or soon, so that’ll be that. And that has little to do with .. anything. Thank you for reading.
i thought it’d be funny to take Steve’s webpage and make it into a blog entry so you can get to know the steve that many of my closest friends know. the link to my site doesn’t work because somebody vindictive (cough, netpig johnny, cough) at the victoria telecommunity network nuked my account for no good reason, even though i contributed decent monitary donations several times to their pithy little non-for-profit organization. not that i am bitter; i found the website archived on my own server; indeed i have outsmarted even myself. cunning!
That is all.

mmmmm .. photography, earl grey tea and coldplay.
A warning sign
I missed the good part then I realized
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses
A warning sign
You came back to haunt me and I realized
That you were an island and I passed you by
And you were an island to discover
Come on in
I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in
I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign
When the truth is, I miss you
Yeah the truth is, that I miss you so
And I’m tired I should not have let you go
Ooooooooooooooooo
So I crawl back into your open arms
words: coldplay – ‘warning sign’ (came on randomly..)

hello sunday,
here’s two things for me: a haircut and lipbalm.
i’m doing much better today. that person from yesterday has died and a new person has woken up. i’ve learned in the last 24 hours to stop blaming myself when things go wrong, and to just acknowledge that — hey, not everything goes the way you want it to. and that just sucks — it’s a more passive attitude, which I guess makes me less involved, but it’s a healthier angle than automatically blaming yourself for things that are clearly out of your control, or anyone’s control really.
that’s just the way it goes.
a third: almost done planning a new mix. i put a quota on myself of two mixes -maximum- per year because putting them together is quite a demanding process. well it’s 2005 and, as the boss of this apartment, i say that the turntables need to start earning their rent.
stats junk: just over one third of 2004 saw approximately 66 gigs in downloads of my mixes from crashed.net — this doesn’t include the mixes hosted on ravevictoria.com — for an an approximate total of 830 mix cd downloads. i wonder with who and where they ended up, but there’s no way of knowing really. the most popular mix continues to be ‘the rush’ which has pulled 25 gigs of bandwidth on its own on 283 downloads. it’s also the newest.
so i’m putting together a new unnamed mix that will be up on the website upon completion, and also a demo for club promoters in Vancouver. dj ariz0na needs to get booked, and that is that. a few years ago in victoria and vancouver i had the luxury of being able to get booked based on reputation (not a bad thing) and the radio power, but times are different. so, lets get to it!
a fourth: leah gave me a really nice picture frame that holds three pictures seperately from a bar. imma choose three photos and put it up today. i got measuring tape and everything, i’m not eyeballing it like i did the two giants above the turntables. yessah.
a fifth: i have [censored] great friends.
thank you, that is all.
music: 21st Century Fux – Sunspirit

hiya. here are some pix from last night at sonar, where LTJ Bukem & MC Conrad played.