Okay, well, that was a joke.  Just watched Lady Gaga get robbed of a Grammy by the sweet, innocent, and shamefully off-key Taylor Swift.  In an effort to rescue myself from the inevitable crippling depression that will soon follow, I’m sorting through recently acquired music.

If you’ve followed my music blog(s) for any length of time, you’re no doubt familiar with my love of anything related to Imogen Heap’s track, Hide & Seek.  Well, here’s another one I swiped from Chicago’s always-on-point Dani Deahl.  Once upon a time, this track used to be Hide & Seek.  Then, the Tape Deck Bros chopped it, cut it, sliced it, reordered it, rebuilt it, and threw a house beat on it.  Without the title, I wouldn’t have recognized it until it got to the breakdown.  They did it well, made it into a real house track with a filtered vocal sample, buildups, the whole deal.

Tape Deck Bros – Hide And Seek (Fuk Tha OC Remix).mp3

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I also found another really sweet remix of Fireflies by Owl City.  I know, a lot of folks think this is way too cheese to get any love.  And honestly I can’t really argue that because the reason I dig the track is that it’s kind of me and my girl’s song.  But whatever, this edit is dubsteppy and melodic and gorgeous and sounds exactly like something I would create if I were a producer.

Owl City – Fireflies (Marlow Remix).mp3

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All you Bjork fans out there, I’m guessing you’ll want to stick your fingers in your ears.   Fortunately for me, I have no real feelings one way or another about Bjork, and that allowed me not to have any preconceived notions about what a Bjork drum and bass remix ought to sound like, or whether such a thing should even exist at all.  So when I heard this a couple days ago on DI.FM, I immediately stopped what I was doing and tracked that sucka down.  Dig:

Bjork – All Is Full Of Love (Chris.Su Remix).mp3

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And while we’re on the subject of Drum and Bass remixes, here’s one I heard a couple nights ago while I was listening to Annie Mac dropping the latest dance music on BBC 1.  This is a Tiesto remix by my favorite Drum and Bass remixer, High Contrast.  It’s both melodic and grimy, moving and dirty, and it gets my ass moving.  Track is called Kaleidoscope.

Tiesto feat Jonsi – Kaleidoscope (High Contrast Remix).mp3

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Click the flyer to go to the Facebook event page.

The rumors are true: I’m spinning at next month’s Horizonz, Saturday, February 13th.  The location, as always, is the Lizard Lounge, 300 S Greenwich.  It’s the third anniversary of this monthly event, and to celebrate they will be featuring 8 local DJs: The hosts and founders Craveone and Gaia, fellow Jungle Recon members Carbon and myself, as well as special guests njntrubl, Koneka, Diddy, and Mordacai.  I’ll be closing the night out from 1AM until they shut us down.  I haven’t decided whether I’m playing Drum and Bass or Dubstep (I have lots of great new tracks in both genres), so let me know in the comments what you want to hear.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

I’ll be hosting the afterparty at my place!  For directions, text/dm/e-mail me or otherwise get in touch, or just show up to Horizonz and follow everybody else.  The afterparty is BYOB, so be prepared for that.  See you then!

A few days ago I overheard my buddy Jared say something along these lines: “Kesha? Really? Is this what music is coming to? Awful.”  I assume he’s referring to her single, “Tik Tok”.

I mean, in one sense, I can completely see where he’s coming from.  There’s nothing particularly original or groundbreaking about her single; nothing musically interesting or complex.  Sure, she’s following the trend of pop music sounding ever so slightly more electronic (which I submit can only be a good thing), and her voice and music are somewhat reminiscent of Rihanna who, while mainstream now, was a bit of a new sound when she first emerged, but Ke$ha’s not inventing any new ideas here.  Led Zeppelin she ain’t.  Also bear in mind that Jared dates a classical musician and has wildly varied tastes in music, so his exposure and deep interest in music goes far beyond the mindless drivel of corporate pop.  It stands to reason that Ke$ha would fall below his musical standards, and there’s not a thing wrong with that.

But when he said that, I felt an unexpected and completely irrational twinge of defensiveness.  Because in spite of itself and in spite of myself, I love this track.  Thinking more about this, I was reminded of something my homeboy DJ CraveOne (JUNGLE RECON REPRAZENT) told me that he once heard from a party DJ, and the basic theme of it was basically, “you’re thinking about it the wrong way.”

The argument was that this type of music isn’t intended to be complex or groundbreaking or fascinating.  It’s not a piece you’re going to study in your musical theory courses.  That’s not what this is about.

This is about getting down.  This is about a track that’s fun to sing, a beat that’s fun and easy to dance to, and a song with words that are easy to remember so you can sing along when you’re staggering out the door of the club at 2AM.  This is a style of music that’s intended to get in your head and stay there.  This is the music you nod your head to when there’s no music to be heard, because it’s playing in your head.  When this song drops at the club, girls jump up to dance because they heard it on the radio in the car on the way to work one day, and when they did, they thought, “if I were at the club I would totally dance to this.”  (And everyone knows that when the girls jump up and dance, all the guys mindlessly follow.)  So by that measure, I’d have to say that in spite of being mindless pop drivel, this is a damn good song because it’s been playing in my head nonstop for about two months, and I still don’t hate it.

Here’s the Fred Falke Radio remix, which has found its way into regular rotation in my more mainstream gigs.

Kesha – Tik Tok (Fred Falke Radio remix).mp3

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In addition to DJing, my other hobby is photography.  If you’re interested, go check out my photoblog at www.shutterbuggery.org. There’s not much up at the moment, but I’ll be posting a bunch of old images as well as keeping up with new stuff.

is a band I could stand to hear more from.  I mean, what’s not to love? Their roots are in the midwest (the Oklahoma City area, to be specific), they have a great electroclash sound, they cover 80s songs in fine fashion… I’m a fan.

I first heard of them around 2005 or so, when their first popular single Le Disko was getting a lot of air play:

Shiny Toy Guns – Le Disko.mp3

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They’ve also done a couple fantastic 80s covers, one of which you probably heard in a Lincoln MKZ commercial.

Shiny Toy Guns – Major Tom.mp3

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And here’s their rework of the Blue Oyster Cult classic, Burnin’ For You, which was used in another Lincoln commercial, this time for the MKS.

Shiny Toy Guns – Burnin For You.mp3

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Oh, and I almost forgot their rendition of Puttin’ on the Ritz:

Shiny Toy Guns – Ritz.mp3

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Last night’s gig at the Intrust Arena was interesting.  It was a strange crowd, mostly just a walking crowd, passing through.  And playing a couple 20ish minute sets was also weird.  I got no real feedback from anyone so it was hard to know what to play.  I could have just gone with crowd pleasers, party music, but that wouldn’t have really been me, would it?  My second set was all dubstep.

This Tuesday the 12th, ROKICT is holding a local music night at the new Intrust Arena.  It’s not going to be much, but I’ll be spinning between bands, at 6:45 and 7:45.  Mostly poppy stuff, but hey, it’s a chance to get out and play.

I’ll be spinning at Finn’s tonight, so come check it out!

One of my readers, Josh over at sour.org (by the way, go check him out – he’s a fantastic artist) commented to one of the previous entries about glitch-hop and mentioned the Glitch Mob.  He’s right, they deserve a mention because they are one of the pioneering glitch acts.  Here’s one of my favorites by them, called Nalepa.

The_Glitch_Mob-Nalepa_Monday_Remix.mp3

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While we’re at it, let me give you a couple more glitch tracks I’ve personally been enjoying recently.  Here’s a glitchy rework of Ginuwine’s old track Pony, done by Wolf Intervals.  Fun stuff here.

Wolf Intervals-Pony.mp3

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Here’s another glitch cover of an old track.  If the party is live enough, you can never go wrong with some Bee Gees, and this version of Stayin Alive is “proper”, as my buddy DJ Carbon put it.

stayin-alive-teddybears-remix.mp3

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Enjoy!