SubscribeCheck out some of the songs from Nina Deli on her MySpace, especially the song Flow. I happened across it yesterday checking out some audio software (I’ll have to go into it later) and really dig it.
Naim Falandino
a guy who doesn't write enough
Tag: music
DEMF 2008: My favorite Movement so far
I have a lot to catch up on! The Wings are (despite last night’s tough loss) still leading in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Red Bull Air Race came to Detroit this past weekend and played to the biggest crowd it ever has and the Pistons managed to blow it against Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But this all too brief post is going to try and give you a little taste of what DEMF was like this year. Some have accused it of straying from its roots and going too “mainstream.” While it’s true that some more mainstream artists performed this year to say it sold out would be kind of an exaggeration. The fact of the matter is they needed to make the festival sustainable into the future, and Movement 2008 proved that Paxahau can do that and do it well.
First of all, the event was well organized. The last couple years have definitely shown improvement and this time it really showed that they knew what was going on. Beyond all stuff that festival-goers would see you could tell they had their act together by virtue of the fact that they were attracting more sponsors who were eager to jump in and take on a big role.
Second, I think the lineup speaks for itself. Despite the “mainstream” influence there were plenty of people representing the original sound. Pulling down names like Moby and Girl Talk is icing on the cake I think, not a reformulation of the festival itself. Richie Hawtin’s set was probably one of my favorite that he’s done at DEMF in the last few years. Deadmau5 was exceptional, as were Kenneth Thomas, James Zabiela, Magda, Mark Farina, Kevin Saunderson, Josh Wink and so many others that I haven’t mentioned. Beyond that there were plenty of acts I didn’t even get to see.
Third, the crowd was great. I met people from around the area and all over Michigan but from at least twelve other states, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, Australia, Brazil, Germany (lots of Germans actually), the UK and Russia. Seriously. It wasn’t like I was even going out of my way to try and find people from out of town, it’s just cemented itself as an international event.
All in all it was an amazing weekend. The weather was perfect, the sound was fantastic and plenty of good friends were around to enjoy it with. As in years past, I can’t wait till the next one.
Moby at DEMF
I’ll have to do a follow up DEMF post, but here’s just a little video I recorded with my phone of Moby’s performance, which was mindblowing. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much, but he may have been one of my favorite acts of the entire festival. If only my stupid phone had recorded longer. It cuts out right as he dropped the beat and everyone lost their mind.
Alice remixed
In poking around a bit more on YouTube the other night I found this video of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland getting remixed. I have to say, the music by itself is really good but the very well done video adds a lot.
Why the DIA is fantastic
I don’t even need to say much else, just read this quote from the Detroit Institute of Art site.
From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., boxers from Detroit’s famed Kronk gym duke it out and Mexican masked wrestlers, Revolucha, hit the mat in a ring taking center stage in Prentis Court. Ann Arbor’s The Bang! provides the backdrop with a dance party adventure mixing everything from rock’n’roll to ‘60s soul, from BritPop to HipHop.
Yes.
(That’s on a Thursday night by the way.)
Again and Again
Pretty fantastic music video set to “Again and Again” by The Bird & The Bee. I love seeing creative stuff like this. What a cutie too.
I’m no DJ
For the last four years I was confused. I wasn’t really sure if I was a producer or a DJ. Now, while there is definitely some overlap and many excellent artists have successfully done both, I felt like I was spending my time with one foot in both areas and not making a ton of progress in either. It was also getting expensive and I felt my workflow was getting more and more unwieldy. All that’s changed now. Interestingly enough, I have the fact that my mass storage disk exploded a while back and an unnecessary, costly purchase to thank for it.
You see, after I lost damn near everything I had to sit down and think about how I would recover. Being the engineer type I considered it an exercise in requirements gathering. What did I lose that was essential? How quickly did I want to have certain capabilities back? What would my new information architecture look like? I actually sketched all this out on a notepad that I kept updating and tweaking over the course of a couple days. (I should note that a home server with a RAID-5 array was part of the solution.)
Also right around the time my disk self-destructed I had my Pacemaker arrive. With serial number five (yep, #0005) you can probably tell I was pretty interested in this thing. And I certainly was. Ironically this post started out before my disk crashed as a post about what a fantastically cool device it was. I mean, sure it was $750 bucks, but still, pretty cool. There was definitely a learning curve involved with this device and it takes a fair bit of skill but I was confident that with some time I’d have it down.
But while I was spec’ing out my “brave new world” of computing something happened. I realized that DJing itself wasn’t really what I liked. What I liked was live performance with sampling. At that moment everything kind of snapped into place and I realized the reason I was constantly fighting with the ideas behind what “DJing” meant to me was I actually wasn’t trying to really DJ in the true sense of it and in fact didn’t want to DJ. I wanted to produce! It might sound funny or odd that it took me this long to realize that simple fact, but there you have it.
I still want to perform live in the future, it would just be a different kind of show. Truth be told, one of the great things about using Ableton Live as your main DAW is that you can perform out in a way that’s strikingly similar to how you produce in the studio. That’s one of the things I love about it and I definitely want to try and keep my workflow as loose and creative as possible to encourage that mindset.
So as I rebuilt my main audio workstation I kept all this in mind and streamlined my processes and even my gear setup. I returned the Pacemaker (somewhat sadly I must admit) and decided that the money I would have spent on it would be better suited to saving up for a new keyboard or possibly a guitar. I have to say now that I’ve done all this I am feeling less burdened and more creative. It’s funny how a change in mindset can affect so much.
I’ll have something cool for people to listen to here by the end of the weekend hopefully!
Boomerang by Cirrus
I know I’ve been bad lately and haven’t posted much. Sorry, I’ll explain that later tonight in a different posting. This one is just to say that this song that I found on Pandora is one of my new favorite tracks. Beautiful vocals and great musical structure to the song itself.
Great stuff huh? Makes me even consider getting voice lessons myself; vocals can go along way to making a good bit of music great. Well, even if I don’t go that route I think I’ll definitely consider putting up an add looking for a female vocalist looking to do some collaboration.
Breathe
I’ve been listening to Pink Floyd basically non-stop for the past two days now. It’s probably because we heard that tribute band the other night that got me going on this kick, but also because the philosophical nature of a lot of their lyrics is hitting close to home at the moment. The music itself is sublime (Gilmour is one of the greatest guitarists of all time in my opinion, saying nothing of the fantastic bass playing that Waters provided while he was with the band) and when you combine that with their lyrics I can easily say that Pink Floyd is one of the greatest – quite possibly the greatest – bands of all time.
Anyway, one of their songs that I like the most is “Breathe” off of The Dark Side of the Moon. I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves in this case:
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don’t be afraid to care.
Leave but don’t leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down it’s time to dig another one.For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.
I really need to learn to play guitar. Then I need to magically learn to play guitar like David Gilmour.
The Fountain Soundtrack
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of watching The Fountain I highly recommend that you do. I don’t think it’s the best movie made or anything, but it is definitely an experience that is worth having if only for the supremely beautiful visuals and stunning soundtrack. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find a really wonderful story that definitely gives you something to think about. But that’s not what I’m going to talk about this time.
The soundtrack for The Fountain is – without question – my favorite movie soundtrack of all time. It was done by Clint Mansell who is good friends with Darren Aronofsky (the director of this film). They’ve worked on several other things before; probably most notably Requiem for a Dream (another great soundtrack). San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet (who I am a huge fan of) primarily performed the soundtrack for The Fountain and the results are fantastic. Their minimal style is really appealing to me; strings like these just beg to be sampled.
The entire soundtrack is basically gold. The movie is great, especially the way the visuals complement the music, but honestly the soundtrack is probably the best thing about the entire movie. I have found myself listening to it for quite some time now. In particular it makes great music for working or driving I’ve found. It’s also inspired me at times and I’ve found myself wishing that I could remix some of the music.
Turns out I’m not the only one. In poking around online I actually found this site from Twentieth Century Fox which lets fans download individual parts from a track, remix them and then upload the finished result for others to vote on. I’m quite impressed with a few of them. For example, I think this one is probably my favorite at the moment.
I’ll definitely have to take a little time this weekend and see what kind of rough cut I can come up with.
About Naim
Naim is a 27 year old software magician, electronic musician and puzzlematician. By day he is a pro software architect and developer. By night he is at the helm of KnowLogik, a tech-creative R&D, strategy and design outfit. Naim is an information and design geek who loves making and learning stuff. In his spare time he writes, takes photos, and is chill.