DJ Tanuki Experience : new radio show every Monday!

I moved to Portland, OR about three months ago, and have been so busy I forgot to update my blog!

I am pleased to announce my new weekly radio show on Portland Radio Authority, a cool local community internet radio station in SE Portland. My show is on Mondays from 4-6PM PST, and you can tune in online at:

http://www.praradio.org/

There are actually lots of really good DJs involved with PRA, and you can listen all day for FREE! I will endeavor to post tracklists and mp3s of some of the mixes I make, but no promises!

Lastly, I have been keeping a log of everything I've listened to in 2010 on Twitter... its fun! I only list full-length releases that I listen to from start to finish, not just individual tracks/shuffle mode. If I listened to the whole thing, you can assume it is "worth listening to!"

http://twitter.com/ethernet333

Happy 2010!

Well, a couple weeks ago I thought I would write up some sort of Best of 2009 list, but I realized that this whole blog is basically my Best of '09 list, and I'm too tired now to come up with a proper list before midnight anyway! But anyway....

What an amazing, intense, crazy year! I got a record deal, got into graduate school, visited Amsterdam and Rome, ended a major long-term relationship, bought some gear, went completely broke several times, sold some gear, got really excited about DJing with Ableton Live, played some live Ethernet shows, put out my first full-length CD, got over 30 reviews, all positive, including some proper print magazines like The Wire, and moved from Northern California to Portland, Oregon, two weeks ago as of tomorrow! And probably a number of other things, as well!

In 2010 I will be playing lots of Ethernet shows, as soon and as many as possible, basically, at least around the Portland/Eugene/Vancouver area. I have several hours of new material that I’m really happy with, but that I have been feeling like is not suited for Kranky, more like it has been improving my “chops” and production skills. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do with this past year’s worth of new tracks… I would love to put out a proper techno 12″, as I’ve made some dub techno and IDM-tinged tracks that I’m finally pleased with (and just because I love vinyl!). For Kranky, I will be working on something very deep and special, and I’m looking forward to exploring the brand new Native Instruments Absynth 5 synthesis engine, as Absynth 4 was the main compositional tool behind “144 Pulsations”.

So, my best wishes to all in 2010, I have a feeling its going to be a good one!

If you haven’t yet, please check out my Myspace page, where I’ve been posting all of the reviews of my Ethernet CD, as well as a brand new interview for The Offline People!

Happy New Year!

FREE DOWNLOADS: Rush Hour Recordings broadcasts & mixes

OK, obviously I have been getting busier and busier the past couple months, and this blog has slowed down! Since I started the blog earlier this year, I've written reviews of about 70 of my favorite albums, as well as several record label and artist profiles, and a smattering of bonus links to interesting articles or free downloads. Since this Summer, I've been taking online classes in a new masters degree program, and have been preparing to move to a new state since November... currently, my move-out date is this coming Saturday! This month I have mainly been listening to misc. new techno and classic acid house tracks, especially since I discovered the excellent selection of WAVs available for purchase from Juno Download, which seems to offer the best prices I've found. Besides brand new releases from Delsin, Ann Aimee, M>O>S and Rush Hour, Juno is also offering much of the Chicago Trax Records back-catalogue from the '80s; an awesome selection of classic acid house, a sound I've really gotten into in the last couple years. Its nice to see the classic material being released online in full, lossless quality, as the original vinyl is either stupefyingly expensive in the collectors' market, or just old and worn out-sounding! I also got a 25th Anniversary promotional shirt to celebrate and represent.
So, this month I may not actually find any time to review any music, until I'm done with my move around Xmas. In the meantime, I will be listening to the huge collection of mixes, audio specials and video reports available from Rush Hour Recordings' Broadcast webpage, which I somehow didn't notice when I wrote the label profile about them back in May. Rush Hour is one of my favorite labels promoting the sound of Amsterdam, and this year saw some great new 12" and CD releases, including Daniel Wang's Balihu collection, and re-releases of some early Rick Wilhite/KDJ 12"s and old '80s Chicago Trax 12"s too! Once again, there are literally tens of hours of free listening enjoyment here, so check it out and catch the A'dam vibe! Keep checking back on this blog, too, as I will be posting some sort of Best Of 2009 list in the next week or so!

TIP!: $1 CD sale at Brainwashed.com

Just got home from thxgiving week with the fam, heavily jetlagged and zonked, not a fan of air travel. I was pleased to find a small brown envelope in my mailbox, however, containing 6 CDs in transparent plastic sleeves from Brainwashed! I noticed last week that they are having a blow-out sale on some CDs without covers/packaging, including the entire 3CD Brainwaves 2008 compilation, the first disc from the classic '02 Brain In The Wire compilation, and some brand new releases on their Killer Pimp sublabel! The CDs are priced at only $1 each, which is what you'd pay for ONE TRACK on iTunes or Amazon, and let's face it, a real CD will always sound better than MP3, especially for this kind of full-frequency-spectrum experimental music. For 6 CDs, I paid $7 total with shipping! Brain In The Wire is worth $1 just for the Windy & Carl exclusive version of "Trembling", but you also get unreleased tracks from Legendary Pink Dots and their dub side project Twilight Circus, and a lovely drone and guitar piece by Christoph Heemann and Andreas Martin. The Brainwaves 2008 compilation is well worth $1 for each CD, for the Windy and Benoit Pioulard collaboration as Lambs Laughter, a mysterious track by Coil member Peter Christopherson as the Threshold House Boys Choir, and copious, top-notch tracks from a number of Kranky artists like Nudge, Strategy, Lichens and more. I also grabbed the new Lithops album, a side project of Microstoria and Mouse On Mars guy Jan St. Werner, as I recalled enjoying the quirky, microsound/IDM-ish '98 CD "Uni Umit" but hadn't heard anything more recent by him. There are some dodgy, noise-ridden freak-out tracks in the mix, which I tend to skip, but surely there is something for everyone's taste on these cheap discs! If you're feeling a bit more spendy, grab some of their fantastic Eye DVDs as well!

Stuart Dempster, Tom Heasley & Eric Glick Rieman - Echoes Of Syros (2009, Full Bleed Music)

When I recently wrote about Tom Heasley's “On The Sensations Of Tone” CD, I checked out his Myspace page and was excited to read that he'd recently been working with Stuart Dempster, a founding member of Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Band. This Fall, Heasley released two CDs on his in-house Full Bleed Music label, the first being a collection of older free-jazz trio recordings, and the second a live collaboration with Dempster and keyboardist Eric Glick Rieman entitled “Echoes Of Syros”. Recorded live in Oakland, CA, the album has a very “free” and improvised feel to it, but manages to explore some very deep and lush sonic territory. In fact, I found the opening 34 minute-long title track reminiscent of the drone-ambient mastery of Steve Roach's “Magnificent Void” or “Early Man”, yet entirely organic in instrumentation. The highlight for me is still Heasley's dense, blasting tuba soundclouds, giving even the most potent analogue drone boxes and synthesizers a run for their money, but now they are blended with other-worldly layers of mouth sounds, circular breathing and “extended instrument technique” on trombone, didjeridu, conch shell and garden hose by Dempster, substituting sonically for the abstract synth noise, field recordings and resonant filter sweeps of traditional electronic ambient music. Reiman completes the trio on “prepared” Rhodes electric piano, which seems to take more of an indistinct, background role, with occasional rhythmic note taps and soft harmonic swells. The overall sound is almost primitive at times, evocative of whale sounds and bellowing beasts, with occasional soft percussive noise rattling in the background (presumably Dempster's “toys”, as credited on the cover), transitioning into long sustained drones that sound slightly Eastern-tuned. The final two pieces, “Interzone” and “The Chimaera” delve into more atonal, experimental textures, emulating bird sounds and whinnying horses via found-percussion, noise makers and horn toots. Not exactly meditative, but intense journeying music and very nice for deep listening!

FREE DOWNLOAD: Dead Milkmen - Acoustic set at Crash Bang Boom 10/30/2009

Well, this month has been all about free online listening for me, as I am nearing the end of my second online class and am now preparing to move next month! This weekend I enjoyed hearing the latest offering from Joe Jack Talcum's Bootleg Of The Month archive: a brand new "unplugged" Dead Milkmen set recorded at what-used-to-be Zipperhead punk boutique in Philly, recorded just a little over two weeks ago! As a DM fan since I got "Metaphysical Graffiti" on cassette in 5th grade, it is amazing to see the band still rocking nearly 30 years after their start (with a few breaks since the mid-'90s, of course), and the performance is funny and entertaining with a lot of energy. Unfortunately there is a screaming child who interrupts nearly every song for the first half of the performance, but maybe I am a little sensitive to crowd noise... Anyway, the recording sounds almost as good as being there. Even better, three video clips totaling about 18 minutes have made their way onto Youtube, so check those out for the full visual experience!

Download the show audio here!

Videos are here, here and here!

FREE DOWNLOADS GALORE: Archive.org Live Music Archive

So yesterday I discovered archive.org's impressive archive of Smashing Pumpkins shows, and since then I have been browsing it constantly and unearthing even more gems! As it turns out, archive.org has an insanely huge Live Music Archive, which features recordings from any band that has given their "OK" to have their live tapes shared. For the most part, this is jam band territory, with a gargantuan collection of Grateful Dead shows and their modern descendants. However, as a wander through the Artist Index reveals, there are many other non-jam bands featured. Besides Smashing Pumpkins, there are a number of other early-'90s-era alt-rock bands, including some junior high favorites of mine like Gin Blossoms, Spin Doctors and Hum. But I was most excited to find an amazing collection of Acid Mothers Temple shows, ranging as far back as some early radio performances from '98 on XFM UK and KFJC-FM in CA, all the way up to as recent as *last week*, when Kawabata Makoto played some solo shows in Oakland and SF! I have a preference for Kawabata's solo material, which tends to be more drone-oriented rather than an acid rock freak-out, so it was great to find these brand new performances, plus another from last summer! As if this wasn't enough, I next found a great selection of post-rock bands, including Fly Pan Am, Kranky-alumnae Low, Bardo Pond, all old faves of mine although I have to confess I haven't heard any of their new stuff since about '02. But the next biggest shock was not one but two huge archives, one for Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the other for their side-project/continuation A Silver Mt. Zion, each offering not five, not ten, but over 35 shows by each group, spanning a period of ten years! Well, I feel so overwhelmed I have no idea where to start, but luckily many of the shows feature listener reviews to give you a sense of the quality (I always prefer soundboard (SBD) or FM sources to audience (AUD) mic recordings, no matter how clear, but its not a strict rule). Enjoy!