Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
What gear is DeadMau5 using?
I had the pleasure to help Joel Zimmerman, aka DeadMau5, setup his gear not once but two times at the Austin Electronic Music Festival. Toddy B and I also opened the night and you can hear the last track I played just before DeadMau5 goes on in the below video.
DeadMau5 uses a very unique setup. He’s running Abelton Live on a 17″ G5 MacBook Pro ($2-3k) outputting to an Apoge Ensemble ($2k) soundcard. He’s using a 16×16 (256) Monome controller ($800) for what I’m not totally sure and a touch screen Lemur ($3k) made by Jazz Mutant to control his effects. He’s running 4 stereo outs from his Ensemble to whatever club mixer is at hand, in our case, a Pioneer DJM-800($1600) which was also setup with a Pioneer EFX-1000 ($800). As far as I could tell, he used everything that he brought and used it well.
Ghostland Observatory with UT Marching Band
I was lucky enough to see the Ghostland show at Austin Music Hall for the CD Release party of Robotique Mystique. I found a youtube video of it and thought I would share. It was a great show, completely sold out, packed to the walls and the crowd couldn’t get enough.
Ghostland Observatory - Live ACL recording and Robotique Majestiqe Release Party
Ghostland Observatory has posted one of their new tracks, Dancing on My Grave (click to download the Let There Be Vinyl Remix), from their upcoming album Robotique Majestiqe on their myspace page. They played this thumper at their Ghostland at the Opera show at UT’s Hogg Auditorium towards the end of their set and it stuck in my head.
They are scheduled to play the Austin Music Hall on Feb. 29th and have sold the show out with a month to go. While the price of admission is a bit high ($32 before fees), you do get a copy of their new album. I’m sure it will be a killer show and I’m truly happy for all their success. They’ve got a great sound and their live show with the lasers and all is pretty intense.
Quick back story, the company I work for, Roxwel.com, hosted a SXSW party in 2005 on the roof of Light Bar. This was just before Paparazzi Lightning really started taking off and I ran the setup of the show and the mixing board for them. I’ve also worked with them at one of the Texas Rollergirls roller derbies. Both Aaron and Thomas are very professional and take their shows very seriously. Aaron, the singer, is super nice and definitely has amazing charisma. Thomas is more of a mad scientist and doesn’t come off as friendly, but from what I can tell he’s really just very focused and concerned with the sound and visuals of the show regardless of the circumstances. Thomas also used to be a rave promoter back in the late nineties and I actually attended some of his raves. I’m sure that’s where their love of lasers come from.
On that note, here’s Ghostland’s set from ACL this year, hope you enjoy it as much as I did and remember to support the artist by buying their ablums.
Ghostland Observatory Live at Austin City Limits 2007:
Also, check out some of their videos on Roxwel.com:
Ghostland Observatory - 101x In Studio (SXSW)Music Videos at www.roxwel.com
Ghostland Observatory - Sad Sad City
Free Videos at www.roxwel.com
Tool “Vicarious” DVD just announced
If you know me at all, you know that I am a serious Tool fan. I just got an email from a guy I know at Sony/BMG about them releasing a DVD. Here’s what the email said:
Tool - Vicarious
DVD in stores December 18, 2007
The long awaited video from the platinum album 10,000 Days
DVD includes a documentary that takes you through the history of Adam
Jones’ visual effects work, and the process and people involved in the
creation of the groundbreaking all CGI video “Vicarious.”
Audio commentary on the video by comedian David Cross.
A tour of Alex Grey’s CoSM.
and more……
Below is a still image from the DVD and the cover art.
Adam Freeland’s Back to Mine
I picked up a copy of Adam Freeland’s Back to Mine yesterday and I have to say….I was blown away. Its a mix of mostly indie rock tracks from last year. The mix starts out with a smooth intro and then crashes into You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead’s - Will You Smile for Me Again. It starts to smooth out and ends in a mellow chilled out state. I like the flow and wish more djs would take unique approaches to the timing and energy flow of their mixes rather than the standard arching flow that Digweed and Sasha made so famous.
Here’s the tracklisting:
1. Trail of the Dead – Will you Smile Again for Me.
2. Autobus – Turnstile Blues
3. Interpol – Untitled
4. TV on the Radio – Staring at the Sun
5. Ambulance LTD – Yoga means Union
6. The Beta Band – It’s not too beautiful
7. Jape – Floating
8. EL-P – constellation Recall
9. Elliot Smith – Needle in the Hay
10. PJ Harvey – The Slow Drug
11. Funkadelik – Maggot Brain
12. Dyke House – Sandy Strip
13. M83 – Lower Your eyes to Die with the Sun
14. Trans Am – A Single Ray of Light on an other wise cloudy Day
15. Boards of Canada – Zoetrope
Kudos to Adam for being included in this series and I can say personally that he is one of the coolest and most grounded DJs in the business at his level.
A first look at Pioneer’s SVM-1000
Beatportal reports that Sander Kleinenberg was involved in the development of the SVM-1000. I love Pioneer’s approach to getting big name DJs to help design their products. Its smart both on a marketing and R&D angle.
The SVM-1000 has an impressive range of effects and 96 khz/24 bit studio sound quality similar to the DJM-800 and also boosts a 11″ touchscreen LCD screen.
Pioneer’s patented Multiple Video Blending Technology makes it possible to mix four channels of synchronized audio and video at once. Beatportal reports that the SVM-1000 is the first four channel AV mixer, but this is incorrect. Create Digital Motion got it right and listed the AVM02 as the first four channel Audio/Video mixer.
Having done some VJing back in the day, my favorite new feature on this board is the AV Touch Effects which allow users to touch and affect visuals directly, as they appear on the panel. The mixer has 12 patterns of Touch Effects including ripple, spot, radiation, twist and cube. The drawback is there is no support for DV or HDMI and that Vegas Video is a much better tool for live video mixing. The ideal setup that I would like to see would be two people, one VJ, one DJ, with one person doing the music and one user running Vegas Video and other sources into the SVM. With that type of setup and the assignable midi knobs of the SVM, some truly amazing performances could be made.
Overall, I don’t think this mixer is going to sell well or really bring VJing to the forefront of clubbing experience, but its nice to see the concept being explored. The kicker, the SVM-1000 will cost you $5400.
With all that in mind, I’d like to recount one of my favorite past VJ experiences. I was lucky enough to see Z-Trip, Aceyalone and Gift of Gab at the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO this summer the same weekend that Daft Punk killed it at Red Rocks. Z-Trip had a full visual setup being run on side stage and Z-Trip, being Z-Trip, played his usual non-stop mashup mixture of hip hop, rock, and even some country (Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire). Every track he dropped was accompanied by its music video and as he made his mixes, the VJ mixed in the incoming music video. Some of the videos were super old and I had to laugh, but some really went well together.
Read More on Pioneer’s SVM-1000: