Monday, March 30, 2009

Special Shout out to Seeps

The lovely Lady Miss Jessica Emily Seepersaud has created her blog DJ Seeps. You can catch Seeps every Friday at The We Just Wanna Dance Parties @ East River bar 97 S. 6th St. & Bedford Ave. This Girl loves the new jack and introduced me to The Loose Ends a few hot summers ago. For only playing for over a year she is rocking her mixes pretty nice and tightly kept, keep it tight, reel right!!!

Slow to Speak Series/Dope Jams

If your ever visiting New York please take the time to take the train over to Brooklyn's Dope Jams. On regular occasion, artists such as Kai Alce, Moodymann, Joe Claussel to name a few, may stop by to thrown down a set. I especially enjoy this store's Slow to Speak Series (super rare). Besides the label Slow to speak there also exist the sub labels Gay Records,Feed.back and Celebrate Life, where they do strictly limited represses from popular rock and pop artists. Please be sure to subscribe to their newsletter which is always refreshing to hear constructive witticism on today's dance music scene. Criticism is totally missing in today's society and Paul Nickerson's article below certainly contains an original perspective on the current consciousness of today's collectors. Point blank here we go!!!!

“As we wrap up 2008, we find ourselves in the same musical bind that has plagued us for close to a decade: records are still judged through comparison—their validation tied to their ability to mimic & replicate, to feign originality under the completely unoriginal umbrella of predestined sound & carefully constructed presentation. “man, that record is so Detroit!” or “that sounds like an old Garage record”; if I wired the store to record every conversation of the last year, I could literally compile hours of this sort of useless banter. It’s come to a point where most record buyers purchase music based on image, on packaging, rather than taking the time to clear their head, open their ears and actually listen to the records they’re buying. This seems to be a simple task of anti-dogmatic conditioning, but the wretched grip of rigid-music-as-fad-ideology has proven practically unyielding in it’s hold over the ears & minds of countless dance music “aficionado’s.” Too many good people have been seduced by the fantasy of belonging to a privileged and select group of underground enthusiasts, who have, in their eyes, already earned their ear, their taste and their aesthetic superiority simply by pledging their loyalty to the often-despised but secretly cherished underworld of dance music—that secret society of connoisseurs and devoted enthusiasts who have already won the holy war of music simply by uttering the words “I like House” or “I like Techno,” and then proudly standing in defiance, separating themselves from the rest and in so doing defining themselves as people & as consumers. But after all is said (and said, and said) and done, a record is dope or it isn’t. Either it makes the cut or it doesn’t.”

-Johnny G

Friday, March 27, 2009

This is What Iam Feelin Right Now!!!

1.Gary's Gang- Knock Me Out- Arista

2.Gino Soccio- Remember- Atlantic

3.Amin Peck- Coda- Connection

4.Black Science Orchestra- Save us-???

5.Samson & Delilah-I can feel your love-???

6.Paul Lewis-Innercity Blues

7.Touché - Wrap It Up - Emergency

8.Issac Hayes-Love Can't Turn Around- Stax

9.Lenny Williams - Midnight Girl - ABC

10.Fatback Band - Take It Anywhere You Want It - Spring

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Warm Up Mix

My Zshare account if finally working...Just recorded this last night while sifting through the shelves of VINYL... wait did I say VINYL???!!! I apologize for the static connection,but bear with me this is VINYL, no serato shit!!! Also since the zshare account is now accepting my uploads I promise to post the previous mixes that I posted. Enjoy!

http://www.zshare.net/audio/57511369e68d3170/

Saturday, March 21, 2009

This is the jam right now



Carl Craig/Paperclip people sampled this when he did "Parking Politics on Planet E... Here see for yourself:

https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/home/detail/1/beatport#app=2e00&a486-index=3

Monday, March 16, 2009

Bickley St Sessions

Bickley St Mix

1. “Night Flight”-The Revenge-JISCO MUSIC
2. “Fit Together”(Cosmo Remix)-Spektrum- Eskimo
3. “Chico”-Les Edits Du Golem
4. “Aphreako “(JMA Edit)-Ray Mang-N.E.W.S.
5. “Mediterraneo”-Dr. Beat From San Sebastian
(Sunshine’s extended headspace version)-Eskimo
6. “Epics and Donuts”- Altz vs Mungolian Jetset-Luna Flicks
7. “For us All”-Omar S-FHXE
8. “Epics Part 2”-Mungolian Jetset-Luna Flicks
9. “Jack Orchestra”-Mauser-Generator Music
10. “Day (Mix 1)”-Omar S-Fhxe
11. “Walking the Dragon-Mauser-Generator Music

This mix series is intended to express a full range of inspiration that I'm feelin at the moment. Save as, burn to CD and sit back while in the car.

Johnny G

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Nights Over Egypt

This song is stuck in my mind while I drink my wine,



Goodnight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMymXoJ79Nw

Monday, March 2, 2009

The debt I owe to Jon Hassell

Lately I've been really into John Hassell, especially his early ablum Vernal Equinox released in 77'. I stumpled upon this ablum looking for a specific track called "Toucan Ocean", a great balearic tune. Check out DJ Deep's Deep Library Show 10, here features "Toucan Ocean". I highly recomend searching for this LP its super rare. The whole ablum is mostly light island rhythms augmented by Hassel's alien effector-trumpet. I've posted an article below featured in the UK's Guardia wrtten by Brain Eno, here:


I arrived in New York on a beautiful spring day in April 1978. I'd intended to stay for a week but the visit stretched on and on and I ended up staying for about five years.
Those first few months in the city were a formative time for me. I didn't know many people, and I had time on my hands, so I was open to things in a way that I might not have been in a more familiar landscape. I listened to a lot of live music and bought a heap of records. One of the most important was by a musician I'd never heard of - a trumpeter called Jon Hassell. It was called Vernal Equinox.
This record fascinated me. It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal minimalism. It was a music I felt I'd been waiting for.
I discovered later, after I met and became friends with Jon, that he referred to his invention as Fourth World Music (which became the subtitle of the first album we made together: Possible Musics). I learned subsequently that Jon had studied at Darmstadt with Stockhausen (as indeed had Holger Czukay from Can, another occasional colleague), that he'd played on the first recording of Terry Riley's seminal In C, and that he'd studied with the great Indian singer Pran Nath.
We had a lot to talk about. We had both come through experimental music traditions - the European one, as exemplified by Stockhausen and Cornelius Cardew, and the American one of Cage and Terry Riley and LaMonte Young. At the same time, we were aware of the beauty and sophistication of all the music being made outside our culture - what is now called "world music". And we were both intrigued by the possibilities of new musical technology.
But beyond these issues, there was a deeper idea: that music was a place where you conducted and displayed new social experiments. Jon's experiment was to imagine a "coffee coloured" world - a globalised world constantly integrating and hybridising, where differences were celebrated and dignified - and to try to realise it in music.
His unusual articulacy - and the unexpected scope of his references - inspired me. In general, artists don't talk much about how or why they make their work, especially "why". Jon does. He is a theorist and a practitioner, and his theories are as elegant and as attractive as his music: because in fact his music is the embodiment of those theories.
We spent a lot of time together, time that changed my mind in many ways. We talked about music as embodied philosophy, for every music implies a philosophical position even when its creators aren't conscious of it. And we talked about sex and sensuality, about trying to make a music that embraced the whole being and not just the bit above the neck (or just the bit below it).
It was in these conversations that, among other things, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which I made with David Byrne in 1981, was nurtured. All of us were interested in collage, in making musical particle colliders where we could crash different cultural forms with all their emotional baggage and see what came out of the collisions, what new worlds they suggested.
If I had to name one over-riding principle in Jon's work it would be that of respect. He looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music. He sees dignity and beauty in all forms of the dance of life.
I owe a lot to Jon. Actually, a lot of people owe a lot to Jon. He has planted a strong and fertile seed whose fruits are still being gathered.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Tequilla Sunrise Shopping Mix

Went record shopping yesterday at Tequilla Sunrise records in Philly(more to come on this Vinyl Shop, I really like the imports here, reminds me of 611 during the late 90's)...Tony the owner presented me with some real nice imports and re-edits. So I made the mix as promised over the weekend, posting and tracklisting to come on Monday morning, sorry for the delay but my head is killing me.

-Johnny G