valle zoo : future music : pure blonde dome : 2pm

danny daze - lucid dreaming - double lucky

lee burridge @ shape

danny daze. lucid dreaming.

a taste.

the friday/saturday double.

FRIDAY.

SATURDAY.

sunday party time.

more names added to hideout.

Another wave of artists have been confirmed for Hideout 2012.

Taking place at the end of June on Zrce Beach in Croatia, the second annual Hideout Festival will play host to a diverse cast of performers, from big name house DJs to underground bass artists. Today's announcement confirms 30 more acts in total, including the likes of Seth Troxler, Paul Woolford, Loco Dice, Subb-an, Nina Kraviz,Tiga and Art Department. On the bass tip, there's Scuba, Benga, Blawan,Jackmaster, Ben UFO and SBTRKT, who will DJ. All of these artists join a bill that already included Ricardo Villalobos, Skrillex, Jamie Jones and Annie Mac among others.

weekly clubbing?

an interesting article written and featured on inthemix.com.au

In an interview with our sister site FasterLouder this week, Big Day Out founder Ken West gave a frank assessment of the Australian festival scene: “This is the reality at the moment: everyone’s suffering from overspending or lack of attendance.” It’s a diagnosis that comes after Big Day Out – with a Boiler Room line-up of Royksopp, Nero,Bassnectar and Girl Talk – was forced to make some major changes to its 2012 plans.

While the claim that “everyone’s suffering” in the festival market doesn’t look so watertight from where we’re sitting, the bubble has burst. From the glut of festivals that have elbowed their way onto the scene in the last five years, only the robust remain. In our in-depth Clubs Special feature series from 2010, all the promoters we interviewed were unanimous in the opinion that festivals had taken their toll on clubs.

“You can’t take tens of thousands of people out of the club scene over summer and expect nothing to change,” said Daniel Michael from Adelaide’s biggest club, HQ. “If people spend $200-$400 at a festival then for most people that means no clubbing for a week or two – or even the whole month.” Scott Walker from Brisbane’s underground-leaning Drop had this to say: “There’s no doubt in my mind that festivals have killed or seriously maimed the club scene. It’s a shame, because in a perfect world festivals should feed the club scene by exciting the punters’ appetite and opening their ears to new sounds and artists – but in reality it only causes people to become narrow-minded and not go out in between festivals.”

They’re both points that were echoed right around the country. In the near-two-years since that feature went online, there have been numerous festival casualties. So has that spelled good news for the club scene? With fewer festivals in the picture, are we seeing more of our favourite acts on darkened dancefloors late at night? The answer, of course, will be different from city to city – especially given the trend for some key DJ tours to visit Sydney and Melbourne only.

Adelaide’s Sugar is one club that consistently takes a punt on visiting house and disco talent that may otherwise only do the Sydney-Melbourne double, and we spoke to Sugar’s managing director Driller ‘Jet’ Armstrong in 2010 about how that can be a gamble. “Joakim played on a Sunday night in Adelaide two years ago and remarked to me, ‘There is nothing like this in Paris on a Sunday night, Driller’. The club was very busy and he was shown great appreciation on the dancefloor. We had him back on a Sunday night last month and he played to 15 people!”

Trawling through the inthemix local news archive for the last couple of years, there’s certainly a trend of renowned acts here for festivals doing club shows on the side, often announced near the last-minute. However, it’s not as if standalone club tours aren’t happening. A small sample of recent (and forthcoming) visitors unattached to any festival juggernaut include Laidback Luke, John Digweed, Hernan Cattaneo, Plump DJs, Above & Beyond (to be fair, in some cities they were more concert hall than club),Hardwell, Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock, Sinden, SBTRKT, AN21 & Max Vangeli,Danger, Henry Saiz, Giuseppe Ottaviani, Ferry Corsten, John 00 Fleming, Proxy, Paul Kalkbrenner, Jamie Jones & Lee Foss, Guy J, Joris Voorn and James Zabiela.

While listing club tours from big-ticket acts is one thing, what’s happening at the level of week in, week out clubbing in 2012? Is any weekend a sure-thing for club promoters? One clear difference between right now and, let’s say, even five years ago, is how ‘occasional’ parties are. Once every four to six weeks seems to be the pattern, which could have something to do with how many appropriate club spaces are available to promoters. As a result, we’re seeing less weekly club nights – which isn’t to say there aren’t thriving ones. On the whole, however, it seems like something of a luxury in the current club scene for a promoter to have their own space every Friday or Saturday night.

There’s plenty to love about weekly nights: the sense of community, the resident DJs, the story-line that runs through the whole thing. But has all that become a kind of quaint ideal? Do we really want to be in the same room with the regular crowd each week? For Nick Braban, Director of Brisbane’s open-all-week barsoma, it’s a difficult balancing act.

“I think a large issue for us at the moment is the fact people are tending to party only one night a week,” he says. “Saturdays are always busy in Fortitude Valley, but the rest of the week can be very hit and miss. Especially for us, the genres we are pushing have a lot of crossover, so if we have a big party on a Friday or a Saturday, it can be hard to expect people to turn up the alternate night. Even though one night might be for example bass music, and the next night techno, I am finding a lot of people are crossing into both areas so are picking and choosing their parties more carefully. The crossover in these strands of music is really exciting, but it is making things logistically hard.”

So, do we want more weekly nights or have clubbing/spending habits drifted too far in the opposite direction? In April 2010, leading label Future Classic went weekly at Sydney’s Civic Underground with Adult Disco (after over a year of Saturdays, the party is now an occasional thing). When Adult Disco began in April 2010, there weren’t exactly a glut of weekly parties to choose from. “It originally started as a winter party,” Future Classic’s James McInnes told us on the party’s one-year anniversary. “We thought there was a void in Sydney when things started getting cold, all the festivals had packed up and there wasn’t anything new or interesting on the club horizon. Another reason was all the moaning in the inthemix forums that there were no decent weeklies and how boring Sydney is!” Fellow Adult Disco ringleader Chad Gillard added: “Keeping the night interesting is a big challenge. Sydney often feels like people are most interested in something shiny and new rather than the music and the quality of the night.”

Staying with Sydney for the moment, one weekly brand that’s still in rude health is Fake Club, whose Saturday night guestlist in January alone includes Calvin Harris, Dem Slackers, Zeds Dead, Bart B More and Tom Deluxx. “The entire industry has changed,” say Diego Trash and Nikolas Alavanja from Trashbags/Fake Club. “It’s definitely not as easy as the glory days of ‘07/’08. Times are hard. We have seen so many promoters fizzle out due to this fickle industry. With so many festivals, it has definitely affected the club market – but in saying that, I’m sure the festival holders are having all sorts of problems with ‘festival overload’. At the end of it all, we see it as weekly club nights will never die, but we will see less festivals. Just look at We Love Sounds and now Good Vibrations.”

Of course, it’s not just the festival boom that has posed a threat to weekly clubbing habits. “There are always factors,” says Paul Azzopardi from Sydney stalwart Chinese Laundry. “Holidays, weather, public holidays, sporting events, Council, residents who move into the inner city then complain about noise…”

Nick from barsoma adds another factor to the mix: “In south east Queensland I think the urban sprawl is a major barrier for people’s clubbing habits. For some it can be a very large commute to come into the CBD for a night out. There are venues in the surrounds of Brisbane and beyond putting on big dance parties, but these are invariably very commercial, so for those into the underground music, they really can only see gigs and parties in the CBD area.” You hear these kinds of concerns echoed from Perth to Adelaide to Melbourne to the Gold Coast.

With less international tours coming through than the rest of the country and a smaller selection of venues, Canberra’s a city where weekly habits are distinct. “People seem to be quite loyal to their night spots based on the type of people they expect to be sharing their drinking and dancing space with,” says Canberra promoter and man-about-town Duncan Jake. “But it’s not always music that they’re after. The average punters simply wants to be part of a social experience, so quite often they will just gravitate to where they think the most people will be.

“The music scene in Canberra is extremely concentrated with a small number of promoters that are in a position to put up their money to keep our scene current, as well as forward-thinking, original and diverse. However, music venues have to compete with non-music venues for patronage. Ideally the question should be: ‘Where do I want to go to hear the music I want to hear?’ but for many, the question is: ‘Where will all my friends be?’. Unfortunately, when this is a typical punter attitude, it’s only natural that good music often has to make way for something a little more dumbed-down.”

An argument that comes up often to explain the shifting fortunes of weekly club nights is that punters have become fickle. There’s less allegiance to the idea of a consistent party. Of course, there’s a flipside to that: why can’t we spread ourselves around? Isn’t that the sign of a thriving scene? Or maybe there really is something a weekly night can offer that you can’t find anywhere else. “With the rate that festivals are dropping off at the moment, I think the people that want greater musical experiences and longer sets from artists are holding out for club shows anyway,” says Paul Azzopardi. Could 2012 be the year that weeklies thrive, or are we clubbing commitment-phobes?

this saturday night.

two of perth's best nights out.

valle zoo exclusively mix the latest BPM sessions podcast.

Introducing the BPM sessions, a podcast series aimed at bridging the Gap between London and Australia. The podcast will aim at exposing the ever evolving sounds of the Australian and London house scene. Expect the BPM sessions to deliver the freshest in underground house, disco, and techno from a group of individuals that live and breathe making and playing the music that we all love...

http://bpm-sessions.podomatic.com/

Subscribe on itunes to stay up to date with this mix plus all past and future mixes.

the backyard project.

dropping deep house sets fortnightly starting 4/1/12 from 5pm - 7pm.

tune in tonight  http://www.thebackyardproject.com.au/

lucid dreaming sunset cruise.

club paraDISCO.

club paradiso.

crosstown rebels.

hideout festival croatia 2012 locked in.

habitat this friday night.

new promo shots.

 taken @ the habitat birthday photo shoot.

by adam mazur of atomic art fame.

valle zoo.

stereosonic perth.

Valle Zoo.

Guy Gerber.

three quality mixes from perth natives.

milhouse.

 Milanov - Pedo Podcast by dj milanov 

kid deep.

 Kid Deep - Vibin' Out Mixtape by kid deep 

el dario.

 Lost in Music (LD Podcast) - Mixed by El Dario by El Dario 

fore saturdays. warm up for stereosonic.

hot natured deliver.

this friday night mr jones & mr foss.

stereosonic perth set times + map.

s. troxler

“I am pretty normal, honestly” Seth Troxler opens. “I do normal things around the house and with my fiancée and friends. But with the music there is this character called Seth Troxler. Some of it is the real me, I’m sure, but some of it isn’t. It’s a different mindset altogether.”

We’re discussing Seth’s recent track record with interviews. Demands from media for his time have surged this year and, in turn, he’s earned a reputation for colourful, sometimes completely crazy comment. What are we likely to get today?


“When I give interviews it’s probably 50% me and 50% fun and games, depending on the quality of questions I’m getting asked. I do play things up but it’s no different to DJing and working in the studio; it’s all an expression of my character. It’s a lot like Andy Warhol, who lived his art publicly. And, look, I’m passionate about the music, so that is always the major focus of what I talk about with people. It’s what I do.”

Seth has, with the help of close friends Ryan Crosson, Shaun Reeves and Lee Curtiss, proceeded to turn club music radically and stylishly on its head. The Detroit four firmly established themselves around four years ago, setting up shop in Berlin as Visionquest before quickly developing a line in top-drawer gigs and remixes. Lee and Shaun had actually moved to the German capital in 2004, Seth and Ryan joining them in 2007 (Lee has since returned to the States, and Seth has moved to London). Visionquest screwed with house and techno’s then popular minimal template, marrying it to eclectic influences such as folk, Motown and electro-pop, and defining a quirky new kind of dancefloor soul. Not mainstream, not underground, not like anything gone before….

“I think our success, both as Visionquest and individuals, is down to the quality of the music we’re releasing” Seth explains. “It’s tangible but not average by any stretch. It works in a club but at home also. It tries to say something different but without being pretentious; it comes with artwork… it attempts to make a proper cultural point. It’s part of all of us, it is properly driven by our experiences; and, well, let’s be honest, we have lived.”
Seth once described Visionquest’s live show as a “psychedelic mind trip to the future,” suggesting drugs have, or have had, an important role to play in the collective’s creative process. Is that the case?
“First and foremost we’re total music geeks,” Seth replies. “We have an insane passion for all sorts of music and sounds… abstract, indie-rock, whatever. Being open-minded is vital.
That makes sense, Seth’s biographical materials going so as far to mention ‘chirping crickets’ and ‘whistling voodoo magic’ among his aural passions. But what about the drugs? History reveals many famous examples of chemically-fuelled life inspiring art – Coleridge, Pollock, The Beatles...
“We’re not about promoting a drug vibe” he stresses, “but, sure, our experiences with acid and psychedelics have helped inform who we are today. A lot of that inspiration came from the early days in Detroit when we were young kids DJing and stuff, and researching ideas about music… finding ourselves, getting otherworldly. We were a close group of friends working out what we wanted to say, and psychedelics supported that process. We might be in a different position today but we’re still questing….”

Seth is, of course, staring down the barrel of married life. He and his fiancée Sonoya – a ballet dancer – will tie the knot next year at a ceremony featuring relatively low-level Bristol DJ Adam Gorsky behind the decks and “some philosophy professor dude” from the States; another of Seth’s good friends. The temptation to play as well must be strong but he won’t, he insists, let himself get distracted.

Which begs the question about whether or not Seth has started pondering his long-term career and future yet? An institution like marriage can easily provoke such a reaction.
“Life is really good but there have been occasions recently where I don’t feel in control of what I’m doing; my career seems to have a life of its own” he confesses. “I’m not going to let that happen next year. Right now I’m on empty, I’m completely worn out. Someone like Jamie Jones can push themselves harder than me; I don’t quite have his stamina to keep playing night after night. Don’t get me wrong, the gigs are great and I want to do lots more but, sometimes, the travel hurts and the creative juices run dry. I’m planning a big holiday at the end of the year with Sonoya, and a better work schedule after that. I can’t, and won’t repeat this year for the next 10.”
For now, there really is plenty going on. The release date of Visionquest's addition to the revered Fabric series has just been confirmed for early December, but first up is The Lab 03, the latest instalment of NRK Music’s cutting edge mix compilation series. Seth’s contribution is expectedly varied, corralling deep atmospheric cuts by Hatikvan and Bearweasel, slick tech-flecked grooves by Lindstrom, Dinky, and DJ Qu and then, on a second disc, everything from low-slung dub to freeform jazz via electro-psychedelia courtesy of Chaim, Superpitcher and Und.

“I’m really happy with the final result” he confirms. “I’ve blended a number of popular underground house and tech sounds, with some really weird shit… music at the other, more abstract end of the scale. It’s all about pushing boundaries.”
Those boundaries will shift a good distance more in the coming weeks and months as Visionquest, the label, unveils its next (eagerly awaited) tranche of releases. Crosson is set to release a new artist album with Vagabundos staple Cesar Merveille, in two hefty parts; Ewan Pearson is adding final studio touches to Footprintz’ pop-edged debut album, and tasty Italian duo Tale Of Us are also busy preparing preparing their first album.

Can Seth divulge anything more about the latter?: “It’s pretty much left the concept stage now; there are few tracks taking shape. The guys [Tale Of Us’ Karm & Matteo] have some surprises up their sleeve; the album won’t just be riffs on the deep house and techno material they’ve released before. They’re musicians; their ideas are wide-ranging. They’re outrageous.”
Visionquest’s label has found its feet rather spectacularly since launching at the start of the year. Even at this early stage of life, its A&R decisions seem to be carrying an awful lot of sway within clubland – the kind of sway that properly sets up careers. But how much of label strategy is emotional and how much hard-nosed business?

“Three of the four of us have to agree before signing anyone to the label,” Seth answers. “But we’re usually all in agreement, and we take the A&R really seriously. There are business practicalities, and there needs, obviously, to be an emotional connection to the music, but we go further than that. We ask artists to hang out with us for a few weeks; we get to know them as people and artists, make sure they’re not knobs or anything, and then we make our decision. Everyone in our family is a good friend, and that makes what we do that bit more special and successful.”

Special enough to run and run? “Yes, I really think so, things are going great so far” he concludes. “It’s…what… 30 years on from when dance music began? It feels like we’ve reached a pivotal moment where dance music is embracing all of these different ideas, a mix of underground and mainstream, and has its first chance to be universally accepted by everyone. It is becoming accepted culture, and that is completely amazing. I love being part of that.”

SOURCE: Defected.com

PDMA are now open

the perth dance music awards are open again. this year the party is being held on the 11th of december.

if you enjoy what i do please take the time to vote for me as Best Tech House DJ. 

it would be very much appreciated.

much love.

http://www.perthdancemusicawards.org/

sebastien Leger @ geisha 11/11/11

a taste from when seb hit our shores earlier this year.

this will be a show not to miss.

art department drop their essential mix.

 Art Department - Essential Mix (BBC Radio1) - 22-10-2011 by R_co 

big city nights.

this THURSDAY night

Hernan Cattaneo
Pleasurekraft
DJ PP
Evil Nine
Valle Zoo

aarin fraser's latest mix.

the man who heads up perth's hottest parties <lucid dreaming> has released his latest mix.

it is a belter of a mix so throw it on, crack a beer, sit back and enjoy.

 Love Lust Drugs by Aarin Fraser