Last few weeks

So I've been busy over the last few weeks; reason being i'm doing a lot of teaching work, and trying to get pints going in the meantime.

Note for others, if someone asks you to prepare lecutres for a postgrad unit, realise that people who do it full time only prepare 2 units a semester, so if your doing one, thats half your weeks time gone. It is a great experience though - you realise just how much work it is to be a full time lecturer. Nice sneak peak into the academic world.

Also have some very good students in the class - which makes it far more rewarding and interesting than undergrad teaching.

So thats what I've been up to. PhD is getting into crunch-time soon, so will probably continue my habit of not leaving the lab/house.

Trentemoller

Trentemoller came to town - what a treat! Live performance with DJ TOM - awesome!

DJ TOM did some very very nice scratching - which was great to see, but you did get a bit of that 'show off' feeling. They started with a very minimal slow set, much like most of their other live sets, but then they really kicked it up a notch with royskpops remix and the afx remix. Unfortunately they played around a bit too much with rytekkid and it didnt quite have the zaz the original one had. The set then took a turn towards the more relaxed and they played some more stuff, as well as a bit of rock , blur, etc. Closed the set with physical fraction - a nice touch.

Lots of fun was had, they spliced in lots of little tunes from around the place, trentemoller was really having some fun with the sound machine.

Overall it was pretty much as expected with some nicer bits for royskpop & co, and a very pleasant suprise at the live performance. Shame about the thursday evening thing - it meant i got sick for the weekend :(

Appologies for mis spelt tracks.

SomovaW

Hmm, this needs to be backdated a bit, but anyway. Went to see somovaw a couple of weekends ago (st pats day), for their CD launch - nothing less than awesome. Really top notch stuff for a local group, but then again, I guess pendulum were a local group till not so long ago.

A great act, a much better atmosphere this time than at IM, the performers were happy, and enjoying themselves, and engaged the crowd a lot better -- probably because most of them were their friends.

I got a free CD, so I'm stocked!

The singer is great, shes really very talented, and good looking to boot (a bit skinny thou), great outfit too.

The live drummer was fantastic at the IM gig, really pulled up the vibe there, and can really work with the audiance well. Technically decent drumming, although ocassionaly gets a bit too enthusiastic and forgets to stop :P

The main highlight for me this time round though was the man on the synths, he delved into some other styles and it was fantastic - some nice techy sounds at a few points, very enjoyable. I'm looking foward to what he can produce. Some of the drum loops need a little work, they dont fit the sound of some of somovaws other stuff, but its all good.

Anyway, night was great, set was awesome, two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

Photoshop Tutorial

A nice little tutorial on photoshop touch-ups. Haven't tried it myself, but their results look convincing!

Infected Mushroom

IM were, well, fantastic. A nice way to recover from a disapointing (despite low expectations..) Two Tribes. I had an argument with a friend last year as to whether they were the best live act I'd ever seen. Contenders were Chemical Brothers, Kraftwerk, Binary Finary and Basement Jaxx (because the shows are kinda kool, and they are really nice and friendly people).

I'm afraid I have to declare IM the winners. Although Chemical Brothers are a very close second. IM just have got everything right - the guitar work is awesome, and its just an amazing event. I don't know how to describe it really I guess.

This year they did an extended-extended-extended version of 'Cities of the Future' and it was nothing less than absolutely fantastic. My only complaint was when they would 'swap' off the stage - sure, its a two and a half hour act, but you really noticed when someone left. It shouldn't be too hard for them to 'remix' theyre old stuff so it sounds a little more consistant. Then again, I'm sure there are fans that prefer the 'old' sound..

There was also a local group that came on before them - 'Somovaw' (NOT a catchy name!) but a great live act with a fantastic singer (female) and a great drummer. A nice touch with a violin player and obviously a couple of people behind them doing the wonders with the synths. They were a bit rough and needed some work - both on their live act and their tunes (some of the drum machine loops really stood out as needing some work at parts), but they got a good reaction from the crowd so I would expect them to put in the effort to scratch up - the next releases from these guys would be worth keeping an eye on.

The drummer I've seen around in other local acts and really pulled the live performance through - I hope the rest of the members of the group are buying him beer for being the 'public face'- the rest need to work on the shyness - especially the girl (because she's going to be a center of attention, so she needs to get used to it!).

Future prohpecies were also great, but no longer being a real d'n'b fan, I don't have much to say about them other than - I enjoyed it, and they had a pretty flawless performance. Nicely built up set, good stuff.

Two Tribes

I got suckered into going to Two Tribes - and it was pretty average.

Technasia and Dylan Rhymes were great, but unfortunately they were on from 2:30 to 4:00 ish. Personally disapointed by James Lavelle, but fans of Unkle assured me he was great. I heard no stuff ups, and some decent mixing, so hats of for that technically good performance I guess?

AVB was disapointing at best - the room was hot, and his set was,.. not. Kai tracid did a nice oldskool set, which I enjoyed, but his mixing effort was pretty poor. Perhaps he was disapointed at the crowd leaving after AVB to go see Erick Morillo.

Steve Angello played some great tunes but couldn't mix them together or build a set, so it was just like listening to an unordered playlist. Disapointing. Lee Coombs was pretty decent and DJ Die sounded alright.

Big Day Out

Oh yeah, we did Big Day Out again this year. Last minute notification that we were doing visuals. They had a big LED screen this year, and we got a visit from rachel, who does the vision stuff over east. BDO was definately the worst its ever been this year, and it was reflected by the crowd - I was stunned to see the venue so empty.

We did get free food for the first time this year though. Yay??

nullarbor

So I haven't posted in a while, so I should mention nullarbor. I organized a demoparty along with Martin Masek, and it went rather well. I have no idea on numbers, all I know is there were over 100 people at the first screening and 68 at the second.

We got 7 demo entries and 8 games - not a bad show for the first year.

Big ups to all the sponsors for the support, and yes, I still need to do the feedback forms and tie up loose ends.

More on this later.