Modern & Im/material Things

Last night, I read that Paris Hilton is launching her career as a professional DJ. Needless to say, I had a “Come to Jesus” moment with myself and decided if she can DJ, I can certainly learn to do it. So last night, I made my first ever DJ mix.  Because I’m a total nerd and project oriented, I am giving myself a ‘concept’ to work with to keep my DJ efforts disciplined and educational. This first mix isn’t perfect - I’m still learning to work on my transitions and seamless beat matching, etc. I should probably stick with one genre to keep things easy but where’s the fun in that? 

The concept?

Introducing “Summer Reading Playlists,”  in which I teach myself how to DJ by making mixes for the books of my summer reading. Mix One, “Regarding the Jams of Others” is based on the journals Susan Sontag kept in her teens and twenties. The book is Reborn and it’s pretty great. Sontag was a sharp, snarky, and brilliant budding lesbo in her youth. You get insight into her thoughts on motherhood and marriage. Weirder still is that the journal is edited by her son, who is mentioned quite a bit in the journals. 

Some of the artists in the mix include: Thunderheist, Body Language, Flying Lotus Burial, Nicolas Jaar, Portishead, Rhye, Delorean, Holy Ghost!, and Toro y Moi

And my favorite Missy Elliot song ever is on it too (“Let Me Fix My Weave”)

I’ll post a full track list in a few days. The mix can be downloaded directly from the my Soundcloud page in case you’re interested. Hopefully others will get some entertainment out of my “educational” summer project. For a first stab, it’s not all that bad. The second half is smoother than the first half but I gotta start somewhere, right? Someone, somewhere, might even think it’s kinda good. Either way, it’s an experiment in learning something new!

Playlist below (Screenshot)

Working draft of a new instrumental. Feedback welcome.

Production Notes:

DAW: Logic Studio 9
Keys = Customized Synth Patch from Logic Library
Bass = Electric Bass recorded through Midi Interface
Guitar = Hagstrom Viking RexTone Recorded Through Midi Interface; Modeling done directly in Logic
Drums= Drum loops re-worked and edited in Logic [Only part of the song not actually written and played by me] 

Part Two of my Judy Butler, Deep [Minimal?] House track. This is just an instrumental mix. Still working on making Judy Butler’s lecture work without being overkill. 

Production notes: Logic,
Synths, bass and guitar parts by C.Dennaoui
I ran my Hagstrom Viking Rex Tone through a Line 6 M13 Stompbox Modeler which is the best $400 dollars I have dropped in a long time. 

My pal Rosi, who supplied the vocals on the song “Little”, posted a final mix of one of her songs to Soundcloud today. The track, “1 to 5,” consists of her vocals layered, overdubbed using a looper. I think some kind of vinyl plugin was used on the final mix. Maybe it’s the iZotope Vinyl plugin, which is free and used by folks like Toro y Moi? Hard to say.

Either way, give the song some love; it’s a really lovely track. 

I decided to rework a song from forever ago. Not a perfect draft but much better than it was in the Fall. I wrote the song with two other women, Carley and Rosi. Due to logistics, our project (International Women) unfortunately ended sooner than I wished it had. Here’s the one thing we managed to do before Rosi headed back to London to make sweet beats and songs using a looper!

Note: Vox supplied by Carley Mostar and Rosi Croom of Autumn Music; Cello by Carley Mostar

Lyrics written by all of us

Music and Production by Me

LeXo, a Paris based electronic band, and I have spent the better part of 8 weeks ‘remixing’ and re-situating Slavoj Zizek’s Occupy Wall Street speech as an electronic music track. We are currently working on a more in depth write-up of our process working across countries, continents, DAWs as two strangers who have never met but connected in the realms of musical taste and political ideology. Expect a more formal post about that in the next week or so. In the meantime, enjoy the Zizek remix. Spread the word and share feedback. This is our attempt to reimagine how something like the Zizek speech can experienced and shared. 

#occupychristmas

P.S. I drew the cover art/portrait of Zizek in case you’re interested.

Click through for more information about LeXo’s work or my own. 

In an effort to help me grieve the death of my friend John, I wrote this song in his honor. It’s my way of paying tribute to our friendship and what he meant to me. When we were in high school, he endured countless after school phone calls during which I demoed songs I wrote. He’s one of six people in the world who has a copy of the first album of electronic music I wrote, back when I thought I was DJ Shadow/Roni Size or some shit. I don’t even have a copy of that album anymore. 

It seemed only appropriate that I write a song in his memory, a song that managed to capture some of the things I loved about him and some of the things he loved. In a sense, this is less of a “song” and more of an experiment in creating an aural memento mori. 

The song contains reworked bass and guitar parts from a song we wrote when were sixteen, a sample from one of his favorite Erykah Badu songs, and a lecture about brachiopods. Brachiopods were among his favorite fossils. More importantly, I wanted to create something beautiful and full of warmth, not some funerary dirge set to a house beat. I wanted to write John something as fierce as he was but only managed something pretty and nerdy. I guess this will have to do. Fierce electronica has never been my forte.

The song is available for download [click the link]. John’s family has asked that donations be made to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance- Metropolitan Detroit (www.dbsa-metrodetroit.org) in his honor. The song is available for download on a sliding scale. All sales/donations made from the song will go to the Depression and Biopolar Support Alliance in honor of John and out of respect for his family. 

If you’re inclined to make a donation, I’d greatly appreciate it. 

And yes, the photo is of John.

_______

Samples used in this song: 

Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady”
“Introduction to Brachiopods” by @flyingscience [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJaMlVwHsxI]