u know the beat
u know the groove
locking u into it
oh u know what im talking about
that zone

the strings/the melodies/the ambience
bringing ur mind to another place
drifting
exploring
adventurers of the antipode

ur body moving with
a will of its own
u're not in
control
oh no let it go
ur heart knows where its at
ur body recognises
the groove
oh yeah the groove, baby, let it go

let it go...
feel it

the basslines
overwhelm u, big fat
did i say fat? phat!
twisted/droning/rolling

the beats
sharp/succinct/slice
dice/drawn/quatered
im losing my mind, are u

the strings
scintillating/titillating
oh yeah, close ur eyes, feel ur mind
shudders/shivers/tingles

the build
anticipating/beating/pounding
ur heart, baby, can u feel it?
faster frenzied madness

and then

it breaks
like a wave
a trough
rolling/crashing/sinking
it draws u in
it drags u under
u're lost
so lost and yet, never been so there
u know?
yes u know what im saying
u feel it
oh yeah

just
let
go

feel it
soak it
up

move

im trying to write something tonight, but the words dont come so im just gonna tell it straight; it's all a mess so bad i cant pin down the turmoil within. and im afraid of pinning it down, its there but im kinda trying to sidestep it... afraid if i pin it down, if i name it, whatever, nothing, void, it, takes form and overwhelms me.

does that make sense?

as these things go... this is about a girl. and we've all heard the stories many times over and we've seen it all in the movies.

but this is my story, and u dont have to read this.

this is about a girl... with the biggest eyes i can float in. the impish smile with the twinkle and one dimple. she had long and the straightest hair... with bands of corvette red through it, which went with my cherry red, goatee, that is, but no more.

this is about a girl... the light in my world, the good in my world; how do i explain it? she made it all worthwhile. sha made me live instead of just breathe. she made my heart sing when i have the worst voice ever.

this is about a girl... i walked the streets with, looking up at apartments; wondering at people's lives.

i cant write this anymore, i dont know why i started... its not helping, its doing shit for me frankly speaking. im here fucked, trying to hold everything back and she's probably sleeping right now. funny how we think our sufferings are all so unique and noone ever understands... that's what's going through my head and i really dunno what im doing, i can feel it all slipping away; what i started with is gone and i am left with nothing... cept the bitterness and im trying so hard not to hate but i do and im trying trying trying to hold it back cos we all know and i know i shouldn't be giving into that.

this is about the girl... my soulmate if u will, though that begs the question... if she's not with me now, does that void the soulmate status? if we're no longer sharing, does that mean we were never meant to be? and now im doing my own head in.

this is about the girl... i spoke with, about buying furniture, about having pets and no, she doesnt like to have children.

this is about the girl... whom i shared music with, and that should be enough to indicate what she meant.

this is about the girl... i remember sitting with, looking out over the city lights, telling me, she's not afraid anymore.

this is about the girl... who told me she doesnt feel for anything, anyone, anymore.

she lost it

and i have not

so where the fuck does that leave me?

right here.

i feel the basslines
i hear the strings
i move to the beat

i smile like a fool
i cant take it

i feel the void
i feel the weight
i am weary

the hole
swallows me
whole

the centre
cannot
hold

i just finished watching serendipity.

wow.

im a sucker for these movie... gotta buy the dvd now.

for the first time since coming home, im happy tonight.

thank you.

i lay in bed
turning
fighting
losing

i feel myself
hating
bitter
not knowing

i wished
tears
come
memories
gone

i tried to think
wont
cant
please
stop

i tried to speak
no words
no sentences
no breath

i want to die
fool
loser
do it
do it

do it

i took a shot
of oblivion
waiting
let it end

if only

bouyant
floating

arms leaden
thighs achen
chest tighten

i cant see
thoughts
words
flotsam
i cant think

bouyant
floating

dark
hot
viscous

dont know
where to
go
go
go

just go

somewhere/anywhere
action/reaction
pull/push
life/death
happiness/sadness

go
go
go

im trying so hard
if only i knew
what was
wrong
right
i would fix it

fix
fix
fix

i need a high
so high
i dont feel
i dont think
just high

please

where am i
i dont belong here
not there

i exist
in this moment
of time

uncomprehending
unknowing

just get me high
so it all falls away

please.

im 3 days home and im regretting it already. the heat is sweltering, it drains and saps at me like an omnipresent leech, feeding off me. im feeling down and i dont really know why... is it the lack of my 5htp supplementation? i had thought perhaps... i'd be happy enough to be back home to not require them, but no.

i dont want to be here anymore than i want to be back there.

as usual, lost and drifting, my life.

i cant even focus enough to write something as much as i would like to express it... and there's no one i can tell this to who would understand, without receiving some patronising sympathies in response.

fuck that.

no one would understand what is in my head right now, as much as they think or profess to... how can they when i dont even know what is going on inside? i need some physicality, some form of action to distract myself... and i think to myself, i wished i could be intoxicated and then wake up to something else, anything else.

give me something to believe in again.

i lean against the pole
under the shelter
on a cold winter night
arms akimbo

i look infront of me

a lady
dark skinned
lined face
shawl around her head
leapord print jacket swaddled
what has she seen?
that marked her face so
hardship in her eyes
why was she alone
on this cold winter night?
i wonder about her family

a man
olive skinned
an accent
a tight jacket with frills
long limbed
pointy shoes
i gave him the time
wondering
where he is partying tonight
i hope he didnt miss his tram

a girl
in a chequed jacket
fair skinned
framed by silky black hair
legs crossed
one foot shaking
i dont like that
enraptured
lit screen of her cellular
highlighting her eyes
fingers tapping
an sms
to a boyfriend waiting?

a man
immaculately dressed
well groomed
turtle necked
peeking out of a blazer
hand gripping
a briefcase
sleek
i like it
i lit his ciggerate
he looks at and thanks me
i smiled
he looks at me again
walked away
and i looked after him
wondering
about his job
on a late saturday night

i looked to my right

a couple
asian
speaking in my mother tongue
a language i should know
but i dont
the boy is looking
not at her
the girl is pleading
hugs him
he looks not at her
wondering
will they work it out?
i hope so
been there

i look to my left

across the tracks
a man
chin touching his chest
grizzled beard
running down his torso
he shuffles
muttering to himself
sometimes leaning like me
hands cupped
around a hot drink
i see him everyday
same spot
same clothes

arms akimbo
on a cold winter night
under the shelter
i leaned againt the pole

at the tram stop
at a traffic junction
a stopover of sorts
a crossroad of sorts

and i wonder
about
the secret lives of us

mara soundsystem

what a night at sunny... imagine the setting if u will: a room all dark with hardly any "club" lights, smoke, lasers, projections... and one spotlight shining upon, not the duo, but the decks, lighting up the wispy tendrils of smoke curling around the console.

add to that, a roomful of people full of the vibe only an overseas crowd, vibe, and drugs can fuel. up for anything, anything goes.

electrifying.

i found my dancing feet again last night.

the night started off with an eclectic progressive set from gavin kietel and then handing over to gab oliver. gab played his usual deep/dark/atmospheric set which wasnt going anywhere unfortunately and i was set to chill out on the bed for the rest of the night.

mara came on after, which i dragged myself off the bed for. after a night of lethargy, took a while to get into the groove. was standing on the steps just bobbing my head. barry mixed and sarah oversaw the effects. an onslought of hollow basslines, hard sharp beats and groove proceeded. on hindsight, the set almost reminded me of the pappa experience, but funkier. they maintained the energy very well, with intermittent troughs but easily picking up the pace again with the follow-on tracks. there i was, body locked in the groove, feet flying to the beats, arms flailing to the basslines... and just when i decided to myself they rocked, sarah took the platform behind the decks, proceeding to sway and sing ontop of what barry was playing. imagine the sillouette: barry with his headphones, bent over the decks, occassionally waving his arms and jumping, hyping up the dancefloor further, his wife dancing and singing into a mike behind and above him. her soaring housey vocals overlaying the tough driving beats, at times, standing out amidst the bass drops and ambient breakdown of some tracks. sometimes envelope by the effects that travelled the speakers surrounding the room.

a very interesting and unique experience, with the effects merging with the tracks rather than detracting from them, sarah's singing... it bridged and hybridised the typical dj set and a live performance.

if getting the crowd to move is any indication of how good the performance was, my feet gave them two toes up.

the afterparty saw mara and a chaotic mass of people converging on someone's house and everyone proceeded to get fucked further. caught up with dave at sunny and chatted with the duo at the afterparty about their music, their experiences, the singapore scene, progressive sounds in general and where they saw it going.

"its my life!" -sarah, when asked by a friend what music is to her.

given a crowd, mara can easily whip them up into a frenzy. they are stopping by tokyo after leaving melbourne on friday and i am fairly certain the techno-oriented scene in japan would love their sound.

that is all.

seeing that nose
those eyes
that smile

that shy smile
with your head
tilted to your side

that tentative smile
venturing
uncertain

feeling your lips
so soft
hearing your voice
smiling

i touch you again
in my heart
in a time past

i hold you again
in my mind
memories past

my heart stops
my mind reels
my body yearns
my eyes
searching
wishing
hoping

i smiled
and did
what i wanted a month ago

i gave you the set of hairpins

1 x glass of red wine + 1 beer = headache

skin stretched tight
eyes caved hollow

the world sees me
am i moving
or is the world turning
the world slides past

voices amplified
people around me
cacophony

i look
but do not see
and hope
noone sees

i light
a smoke
and my mind
clouds

i need
to
get outta here

i lay in bed
the absence of sound
loud in my ears
soft washes of blue
colour my world

a silent world
in shades of blue
so still
so mono

i see a shadow on the wall
in a shade of blue
so still
no time

so still
so silent
cold in washes of blue

like a morgue

creamer/jamieson/foort/trance, a current state of affairs


well.... im still a bit fucked so this will be brief.

jamieson left no impression on me, unfortunately... played deep and dark, just like another dj out there at the moment, nothing stood out; which is very unfortunate considering his works as evolution... and he didnt even play their latest release, walking on fire...

...which brings me to foort, he was the one who actually dropped that... foort was pretty banging... touch and go...

...now creamer, WOW, im impressed... very nice, tasty track selection, dropped a very very nice remix of marscarter which i havent heard b4... maybe creamer's own remix? he was playing some tribal, but not boring progressive, more like, tribal with a lot of spacey, ambient sounds... very impressive tribal set... and he dropped jv - into the blue i think, last track, beautiful.

so... that's the short summary of the night, nothing else to report, cept the crowd was probably one of the sleaziest i've ever seen, and

****this deserves a section on its own****

every single time i hear it, it further reaffirms my conviction that today's trance SUCKS, it should've died a natural death with dignity in the yesteryears, rather than whoever-fuck-makes-the-music milk it for all its worth. its DEAD, get over it, TRANCE IS DEAD.

the only good trance i expect to hear are from the old days, and certain progressive tracks today incorporating the sound, very good example is the rob and skinner remix of nash-t - the dark (deep, dark, with a nice touch of trance in it... this is the only track i've heard recently which emodies this "dark trance" (can i copyright that phrase b4 it catches on?) sound). trance as *I* know it can only survive as being incorporated into other forms of music, trance as a genre today is akin to squeezing blood out of a rock.

yes... that is my rant on the current state of trance... tonight's event was a trance night, the aforementioned djs all played in the progressive side room... i stepped momentarily into the main room, firstly got disoriented by how big the room was, by the lights... and when i adjusted to the surroundings, the music hit me in its blatant obscenity, it was so fucking boring and predictable, i could've written the track if i had a sound engineer to work with.... what was mind bogglingly amazing was the number of people dancing to it.

yes i am a bigot, yes i am arrogant, now that we got that cleared up and out of the way, let me continue my rant (this post is turning out longer than i thought... damn verbal diarrhoea/introspection... if only i studied this in school, i can fucking do my essays on comedowns!)... usually i try to be open to different forms of music... they're all sounds to me, put together in a coherently pleasing manner, but the shite i heard... as much as i try, i cannot accept it AT ALL, it is a fucking affront to my ears... if i was a music nazi, i would round up all these producers and have them shot. stop contaminating these people, these sheep! stop misleading them! surly these people cannot be so deaf as to accept it... surly, i would like to believe, these people are simply not enlightened, surly they would come around if only someone could show them what is out there, without the narrow confines of predictable drum rolls, snyth riffs.

the trance of yesteryears had a grace to it, it had melody, it had some fucking self-respect... what we have today, what i heard last night, was as blatant a manipulation of human superficial emotions as any top 40s pop tune.

sorry for the rant, sorry if i offended any trance lovers in particular, i know owen still likes his trance but im sure he would have to agree with the arguments i have put out.

TRANCE IS DEAD.

unless someone can seriously prove me wrong, that is all i have to rant regarding this issue... this is my final word on the genre which has introduced the majority of us to electronic music, to which we all had a certain affinity for, to which i still get the tingles to.

i can fall in love with a voice like nicola hitchcock's, singer from mandalay.

what am i saying... i do love her voice.

House Sucks (Pessimistic Conclusion)

Now we've let the DJ Become a superstar, have we stopped listening to the music?

We have DJs who are so famous that we'd go crazy for their first record even if it was utter rubbish. We have DJs who let the club tell them what to play. We have personality DJs who can draw a crowd even though they're crap. Porno DJs who hve someone else to put on their tunes. Novelty jocks. Ex-boxers as DJs, soccer heroes behind the decks, washed-up pop stars desperate for new credibility. DJs who are shit but they've got a record in the charts.

We go to superclubs that only exists to support a lucrative brand name so that a company run by people who don't dance can make millions from T-shirts, compilation CDs and alcohol and tobacco sponsorship. We listen to a few big-name DJs on the radio and let them totally rule our tastes. when their name's on a mix album we trust it without thinking and rush out to buy it. The DJ is a corporate whore.

The DJ has chopped and mixed and mergd every kind of music until there's no chance of a "next big thing". All we can expect is the next remix, a variation of a theme. And the music is so effective now, especially when consumed with drugs, that no one cares whether it's actually any good. It's just an infallible, Pavlovian technology of pleasure. At the end of the seventies people decided "disco sucks"; at the end of the nineties, house, trance, garage... SUCKS! (techno and drum'n'bass are just boring). The only difference is we haven't notice how much it sucks yet, because the commercial club industry has got us in the palm of its hand. As long as it gets me throwing my fists in the air with my eyes glued shut on my Friday night podium, I dont give a fuck whether it has any artistic value.

Our precious, once-underground culture has been co-opted into a great mainstream capitalist hegemony.

Is going clubbing special anymore, or is it just like going to the pub?

The greatest success of dance culture is suppose to be that it now has acts who are at home playing American stadiums. But it's not a triumph for dance music to disguise itself as soemthing that's existed for 35 years or more. The Prodigy are just The Rolling Stones for a new generation. The record labels have just squeezed them into the rock-star rulebook so they can market them better. They'll go on tour when the album comes out. We'll all scream when they come onstage and the music biz is happy.

Dance revolution... Where?

Club culture was built on togetherness, on participation, equality, communion. When it works you shouldn't be able to tell the dancer from the dance. It was founded on the idea that the clubbers are the stars, not the short guy who fiddles with the record player. If we're on a dancefloor but we're all weatching the DJ, or if we're in an arena all looking at the stage, we are no longer doing what it's all about: we are once more an audience and no longer the event.

Dance culture has been completely stolen by the forces of commercialism.

OK?

Good.

That's the pessimistic conclusion over with.


The Global Underground (Optimistic Conclusion)

But the dialectic saves the day.

In dance music, there's always an underground.

This is at its most creative just after things have got horribly commercial.

The mainstream picks up on something, burns it up, and declares it dead. But meanwhile, pioneers have moved on and are free to push things further, to reclaim the momentum and come up with something new.

So rail about supercommercial club cultures all you like. It's all true, every pessimistic word, but it doesn't matter because there's always an underground, always something fresh on the horizon.

For every cheesy commecial DJ who's happy to play what the record pluggers send him, who charts records he doesn't like just so he stays on the mailing list, who plays records he hates because everyone else is playing them, and who has no problem with a club giving him "guidelines" on what and what not to play, there's another DJ who loves music, who searches out and buys records rather than just playing promotional freebies, who develops his own style, who throws his own parties, who generates his own following, who creates new music.

There'll always be an underground and it will always be filled with people who love music, not as a job but as the center piece to their life - even if manipulative drug pop seems to rule the day and even if most clubs are clogged with DJs who have abandoned their missionary zeal to return to the safe job of musical waiter. The exceptions are where the energy lies.

The fragmentation of dance music into scores of specialised genres is another reason for excitement. This works directly against the idea of of the superclub and the prostitute DJ, and can only encourage experimentation and creativity. You can bet sooner or later, out of these devious little scenes will come soemthing interesting, and inevitably something momentous. That's how we got disco, hip hop, house, and in recent years, that's how jungle emerged, and drum'n'bass, UK garage (speed garage), two-step, coastal breaks...

What's next? Who knows - all that's certain is that something somewhere is busy evolving, just like it's always done.

We spent the last forty years recording pop music, now we're gonna have incredible fun recycling it into any form we want. The band is dead, long live the DJ. No more waiting for the next big thing, let's look forward to the next amazing tweak, the next gut-wrenching new noise, the next unbelievbable collision of sampled sound.

And dance music is now truly international and internationalist. Musical possibilities have become global. The established centers of our story have splintered so much that the next great record might just as likely come from Norway as from New York. And with words losing out to the universal beat, we all speak the same language. French people cn finally make music that English people like. In fact you can bet that any really radical styles of dance music will emerge from somewhere truly bizarre, far away from the intense scrutiny of the dance media and the commentators who swoop on anything novel before it has a chance to spread its wings.

Abetting this dramatic crashing of borders is the rise of the Internet as a force for musical distribution. If house music was the fufilment o the do it yourself punk ethos, then netcasting and clever compression formats like MP3 take things even further. The means of music production have long been in the hands of the masses; now we have the means of distribution too, and record companies - who were only ever banks stupid enough to lend money to musicians - are redundant. Any DJ can create a global community of listeners on the Net. Djs in a club in New York can play to the dancefloor of a club in London. A DJ can make music in his own home, transmit it to another DJ across the world, who can press it himself onto a CD and play it when he does on in a club in Singapore in a couple of hours.


The Buzz Remains

The disc jockey has been with us for almost a century now. In that time he has been ignored, misunderstood, despised, worshipped and adored. He has stayed in the forefront of music, twisting and shaping it into fresh forms, perverting technology and forcing from it stunning new sounds. He has conjured a long series of novel genres in his endless search for material to keep his dancers moving. In the US the DJ created amazing music, then the UK gave him a home and made him a star. He continued his magic and around him there grew a musical culture more revolutionary and more enduring than any before.

After the 1988 summer of love, kids in Britain were finally enjoying the transcendent rituals on which the US evolution of dance music had been based. They finally understood the real power of a DJ, and in large numbers. Now, having conquered Europe and much of the southern hemisphere, the music is spreading back across the Atlantic. Having forged music more truly universal than any preceding it, the DJ is arguably a conduit for celebration and communion on a global scale. It's possible that the DJ is the ultimate expression of the ancient shamanic role; that the DJ is the greatest witchdoctor there has ever been, unmatched at shaking us out of the drudge of the day and into the life of the night.

Why do we worship at the knees of the record-slinger? Because he is occasionally capable of divinity. When it all connects in a club, there's nowhere you can have more fun.

"A really great DJ is totally capable of making a bad record sound okay, a good record sound great, and a great record sound fantastic - by the context they put them in, and what they put around them. How they steer them. They can do all kinds of tricks. A great DJ can make people spontaneously cheer just for a little squelchy noise. Which is quite insane really. A little noise like "wha-wha-wha" and people go, "Yeeeaah!" They can have people clapping along to a cymbal, just by the way they're bringing it in. When it's done well, it's fantastic. If it's done really well, it can be quite transcendental."

It's a mystical art indeed. It seems so banal, but it holds the potential of phenomenal, inexpressable power. A great DJ can arouse more raw emotion in his audience than the composer of the most bittersweet opera, or the author of the most uplifting novel, or the director of the most life-affirming film.

When you're DJing and you're great at it, you're not playing records, you're playing the dancefloor. You're not just mixing tunes, you're mixing energy and emotions, mixing from surprise into hope and happiness, cutting from liberation to ecstacy to love. When it goes right, you're inside the bodies of everyone in the room, you know what they're feeling and where they're going and you're taking them there. You're sweeping them off the earthly plane and transporting them to a higher place. You're moving their bodies and their souls with the music that flows from your fingertips.

You're putting them in the moment.
"Sweaty palms. Huge smiles. That kind of intenseness when you're in the zone, when you're in the box on your own. Oh my God! What's the next record? Frantically searching, making sure your instinct's right, changing your mind, then going back to your first choice, then ripping that out and putting it on at the last minute... and it works!

"And seeing people smiling.
"And singing.
"And going crazy."

[bill brewster and frank broughton - last night a dj saved my life]

is it better to not find a soulmate, or to find and lose one?
by losing one, does that mean the person was not meant to be your soulmate afterall?

questions.

a phone call and im booked for the flight back to singapore. as usual i left it too late... something about these things, the human mind, or rather, mine, always seem to assume there's enough time or its never too late... says much about my character huh? procastination is a sublime art.

feeling quite chirpy today... i think thanks to the 5htp i took last night... well, i'll enjoy it while i can.

listening to tyrant 2... no words of mine are descriptive enough for the sounds in this compilation, trippy, dubby, twisted, fucked up, its all good. somehow... i always seem to play cd1 at a certain time in the day and when it comes to an end, the sun is setting outside my window, which complements the music beautifully... kinda funky, and yet whimsical... an ode to end of the day.

shall attempt to integrate with society tonight... hope it works.

nothing like a bit of digweed to end the night with... my god...

pole folder - planetary activity -> tone depth - rumblefish -> porter + debo - deported... epic metallic synths/soaring strings/angry bass guitar -> tribal chant/percussion/stiring strings -> deep/dark/techy/subtle melody F U C K!!!!!!!!!!!!

digweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed *runs around screaming*

[digweed - welcome 2002 (pole folder - planetary activity)]

S I G H