The Eccentric Grooves of Logan 5

Many of my friends who have come to the parties I’ve had over the last, oh, seven years, will probably recognize the trademark sound of DJ No, also known as my former roommate from Hotlando, New Jersey. Or was that Orlantic City? I forget. The man is a phenomenon of breakbeat inspiration. When all over the rest of the east coast “breakbeat” encompasses a fairly narrow scope of skool with a “nu” and overuse of the word “dirty”. it’s refreshing to hear someone rock the kind of breaks that would make James Brown pop and lock to a De La Soul track while grinning about the three hits of Florida’s finest MDMA that are making his eyes bug out. Right, those kind of breaks - like a street performer doing the robot for cash, there’s something just so human and warm about DJ No’s style. I’ve gushed enough - I haven’t lived with him for years, but I’m always excited to get another DJ No mix CD in the mail (yes, some people still make CD’s). Download  DJ No - Oven Fresh  (78MB MP3) An...

Tune in  to Disco Ex Machina Radio on Wednesdays from 9pm to Midnight, Pacific Time @ KCSCradio.com , Chico State’s 51-year old student-operated radio station! It’s not without good reason that I have neglected this blog in the last 6 months - I think I’ve mentioned the new radio studios that I’ve been involved in designing and building. Well, at long last it’s time to put the rubber to the road, and the Disco Ex Machina internet radio show is happening! What to expect? I’ll be playing the type of music that we’ve been talking about here on discoex - from funk to techno and all stops in between. Plus, every week I’ll do an audio blogroll where I’ll present some of the great material that I’m listening to on other blogs, with full credit given. Listen up and you’ll discover some sources of incredible music, journalism and taste. There’s a request line, and it’s 530-898-6228. Of course, I might not have what you’re asking for until the following week, but it never hurts to a...

Review: Detroit Grand Pubahs live @ Mighty in San Francisco: October, 2006. t’s a rare treat for us to see a Detroit electro artist to personify his music  - so often the children of Motown shroud their very existence and corporeal being in mystery, in shimmering waves of distortion and the interference patterns of multiple personalities. Fortunate, then, are we to have a disciple of the funk in Paris the Black Fu. Yet Paris also chooses to obfuscate his person with wigs, hats, and rags befitting an off-the-wagon George Clinton. Still, the man shared his Scotch with any empty cup that should ask, and brought us together with the Involvement Fluid. Unlike past shows, Paris arrived with accompanyment, as every pimp has his theme music (see “I Gonna Git You Sucka”). Computer-wielding and bald-creepy masked was an unnamed friend from the Netherlands, and on Rhodes piano and saxophone another cohort earned his bus ticket by fleshing out the tunes and harmonies with a soulful touch...

Just a cute side note. This morning while listening to “Fresh Air” there was an interview with Steve Reich, the legendary composer of experimental music for tape recorders, pianos, trains and other interesting sound sources. The interview paused so we could listen to a famous early-60’s piece by Reich called “It’s gonna rain” featuring the cut-up, phasing sounds of two tape recorders manipulating a recording of a Pentacostal preacher. It started to get pretty awesome, the word blurring into an intense wall of overlapping sound, happy studio accident become legend. That’s when the local NPR radio station operator decided that these sounds coudln’t possibly be intentional, so they faded it out and announced techncial difficulties! WTF!!?!? And this is really indicative of my feelings about our local radio station. They bury their heads in Mozart and Armstrong, ignoring those geniuses of music and composition who have pushed forward even their own beloved genres of “classical” mus...

Five years ago, while a radio DJ at  KFJC  (89.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area, the best station on the planet for music nerds, seriously), fellow DJ  Trinity  and I perpetrated a little prank on the unprepared ears of the Saturday afternoon listening audience. It was “freak week”, which is a station tradition wherein DJ’s experiment with format, boundaries and ideas instead of doing their regular shows. Trinity and I took the “freak” to a new level. At noon that Saturday, after the family-oriented entertainment of Bob Emmet’s highly regarded Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack show, we dove that station directly into the gutter by playing over an hour of porno music. But not just any porno music, ho no! We selected a blend of music from classic 70’s porno films, music inspired by pornographic movies, songs that contained pornographic content, and stuff that just plain made us hot. We added another layer to this audio smut casserole by adding in sexual sounds of va...

Watch out now! I never thought I’d ever want to give up the Rane mixer, which with some half-decent treads could cut a swathe across Europe circa 1944, gunz blazing. That is, until I met this sweet grease for the skids of my thirty-onederful birthday chariot. Denon DJX-1500, meet my record collection. Records, meet your remaker. thx to my loving wife, brother and parents.

Here are my Astralab setlists for you, but no promises on absolute accuracy. I had intended to record with the new  KCSC portable flash recorder , but to my chagrin the cheapskates at Marantz ship it with a whopping 64MB of storage, which would basically get me about an hour of one set. Symbio may have gotten the second set, though, so stay chooned. Friday Sept. 1: 2:30 AM (the dark, the glowsticks and the bass) Der Dritte Raum - Teifsee [Harthouse] Martini Bros - Babyhaze [Pokerflat] Gino Vittori - Relief Again [Relief] A Guy Called Gerald - Time to Jak [Sender] Egoexpress - Knartz IV (Einmuzik Remix) [Ladomat] DK7 - Life is Everywhere [DK] Sian - Cinematheque [Dessous] Ellen Alien & Apparat - Way Out (Club Edit) [Bpitch Control] Speedy J - Something For Your Mind [Plus 8] Osborne - Bout Ready to Jak (Shake’s Mix) [Spectral] Wink - Are You There… (New Mix) [Ovum] Reinhard Voigt - Robson Ponte (Alter Ego Mix) [Kompakt Extra] DK8 - Murder Was the Bass (Reworked) ...