Skrillex just teasing > these poor kids. We've grown so accustomed to the updates, tweets, videos, SoundCloud tracks and other musical posts to hit us with some insane wobbly bass or some form of a dubsteppity golden section that we get disappointed when Skrillex doesn't provide us with a nasty drop. No wub wub? Wah wah.
Sleigh Bells 'Comeback Kid' >> this week the electro-noise duo released the video for their first single from the upcoming studio album Reign of Terror. 'Comeback Kid' is a dope track with heavy guitar from Derek and a lot synth samples we've become familiar with over the last few years of Sleigh Bells subtly making their way into car commercials [Honda], extreeeeeme promos [X Games], etc. The video is fun too and doesn't hurt that Alexis is still looking fit and fly.
I'm really excited for the Reign of Terror to drop next month [sleigh-ted for FEB21]. We've been waiting nearly 2 years since their last album [Treats] and this release will allow for them to play longer shows. Their Tempe show at the Clubhouse back in 2010 was so much fun but just way too short at 30 minutes, which is about the combined time of all of their tracks at that point. It's crazy how much of an impact these two have had in such a short time and small serving. Aside from Bloc Party and The Killers dropping new albums this year, Sleigh Bells' upcoming Reign of Terror may be the release I'm most looking forward to in 2012 at this point.
Videos from Starfucker >> in Phoenix have been posted to the zBORED YouTube channel. What a dope show to kick off the year in live music for Phoenix and at the best new venue and perhaps my favorite spot these days, Crescent Ballroom. Painted Palms opened for STRFKR and before them it was some DJ that I missed while enjoying some brews on the patio during a gorgeous Phoenix evening [sounded like that DJ killed it though]. I've never seen or even heard of Painted Palms prior to this show but this band out of San Francisco brought some funk to the ballroom in almost a psychedelic sort of way and all week long their Canopy EP has been the soundtrack to my transit.
Donning hideous yet hilarious prom dresses, Starfucker opened with 'German Love' which def got the anxious atmosphere moving. It was a sellout crowd but the utmost perfect headcount since maneuvering, beer-ing and potty-ing were non-issues, more reasons why Crescent Ballroom is the answer to any show frequenter's prayers. They encored with a cover of Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Want To Have Fun' then 'Julius' and my personal favorite 'Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second'. This was definitely a more intimate show than the Outside Lands show in San Francisco but I think I liked the festival performance better. They played much longer at Golden Gate Park and I was able to get as close as I pleased with my beer in hand [the under 21 area was huge for this show and the youngens had the most prime real estate].
After the show, the band hung around the merch table with Painted Palms where lead singer Josh gave us hugs and thanked us for making this a memorable show in Phoenix, further stating that this was definitely the band's first good show here in the desert. It was such a mutual pleasure to be part of a fun gathering and performance. These are just a handful of really humble dudes from the Pacific northwest and I've been in touch with them offline so look out for a zTALK interview with these gentlemen in the next few weeks. To be continued...
Starfucker back > in the desert again. This time we'll see the Portlandia trio up close and personal at Crescent Ballroom, a venue that didn't exist when they last visited Phoenix. These dudes are definitely one of my faves in electropop and they continually get funkier and funkier with every release. Definitely come out for STRFKR tonight at the valley's newest and tightest venue a la Stateside's Charlie. Check out this vid from the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco last summer for a little taste of the 'Millions' of fun you'll have tonight.
Videos from the Eye Heart SF >> NYE party in San Francisco featuring DJ Z-Trip have been posted to the zBORED YouTube Channel. This year's party at Fort Mason was superb to the max. While last year's party with Steve Aoki was the blastest blast, this year's really blew it away with improvement in every aspect. Firstly, a much more talented DJ in Z-Trip who's broad style appeals to nearly every one of the thousands in the house. This gala was way bigger and yet the overall operational upgrade made for more bars, shorter lines, more drinks, premium booze, a more efficient coat check, unstressed bladders, etc. Please believe Eye Heart SF now knows how to do it proper.
After a few hours of DJ Craze out of Miami, Z-Trip took over the decks with about 30 minutes to spare before the 2012 ball dropped. He dropped in with a dope remix to La Roux's 'In For The Kill' then got the pavilion popping with a mashup of M.I.A.'s 'Paper Planes' and 'Passin Me By' from Pharcyde. Shortly thereafter, we approached the final 10 minutes of 2011 and Z began announcing the minute markers.
Then the ball dropped and Z-Trip ran with it dropping a laserrific 808-version of the New Years song [Auld Lang Syne] to wish us a happy 2012 then the Skrillex remix to 'Levels' by Avicii. The rest of the night was classic Z mashing up hella Bay Area hip hop, Nor*Cal shit and a variety of tight house from over the last decade.
As expected, the party was dope to the max. Again. With the positive progression of this NYE party and the talent year over year, I don't see why I won't be back in the city again to celebrate 2013. Cheers to a fun-filled 2012, everyone. Happy New Year!
Wonder Showzen 2011 > was the shit. Looking back on a grandiose year in live music I'll go ahead and say it was probably the best in shows from my experience. Perhaps not the most shows I've been to in a calendar year or even my favorite artists ever but definitely a collective brilliance to the max. I partook all over the valley and from Cali to the Windy City I saw artists for the first time [The Black Keys, Sidney Samson, etc.], 12th time [311], long-awaited [Crystal Castles, Starfucker], and some I even never heard of prior [Manufactured Superstars].
I got to marvel at epic festivals across state lines like Lollapalooza and Outside Lands and even local classics like Fall Frenzy and Soundwave. I got to check out a brand new and instant favorite venue in Phoenix [Crescent Ballroom] as well as other east side staples for the millionth time [Marquee, Clubhouse]. All in all it was a superb year and I got to wander a music lover's paradise in 2011. I had the blastest blast with some of my best friends, made a shit ton of new ones and even enjoyed a few of these gigs on a solo mission.
It was way too hard to decide which shows were my favorite of 2011. Each were unique in that performances were distinct, my company varied and each experience were special in their own way. So instead of choosing, I'll salute all of the artists listed below that helped make my 2011 fucking phenomenal. Cheers.
12th Planet x 2 311 x 2 A Perfect Circle Above & Beyond Afrojack Arcade Fire Arctic Monkeys x 2 Beirut x 2 Best Coast The Black Keys x 2 Blink-182 Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Cage the Elephant Cee Lo Chromeo Crystal Castles CSS Deadmau5 x 3 Dirty South DJ Noah Wylie x ? The Drums x 2 Dry River Yacht Club EC Twins x 2 Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina Eminem Face to Face Flogging Molly Foo Fighters Foster the People French Horn Rebellion Friendly Fires Girl Talk x 3 Hellogoodbye Jimmy Eat World Kaskade Kid Cudi Kids at the Bar x 2 The Kills The Limousines x 2 Mayer Hawthorne Manu Chao Manufactured Superstars Matt and Kim MEN MGMT Mira Aroyo Mourning Maxwell Muse The Naked & Famous Paper Diamond Parallels Pinback Roger Sanchez The Roots Sidney Samson Skrillex x 2 Slightly Stoopid The Sounds x 2 Starfucker Steve Aoki Stir Crazy Strung Out Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano Two Fresh Yelle Z-Trip x 2
DJ Z-Trip in 2011 >> has been setting it off all over the world, hitting the decks from here to there, Australia to Japan, back and forth, etc. He lives in LA these days with residencies in several other cities but the desert homegrown Z-Trip will always call Phoenix his homebase. I recently got to catch up with him in his return to Tempe and talk about how fun this year has been before he brings in 2012 at the NYE party at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Steve Aoki rocked the massive party last year and this time the city is going to get an even sicker DJ to bring in the new year. Always a pleasure to speak with Z, here's some of what we bullshat about [stay tuned for pics/vid from the NYE party in SF].
MARC: What goes into your sets? How do you choose what this crowd is going to hear versus another?
Z-TRIP: It depends. I have different directions that I can go but it really depends on the vibe I’m getting from the crowd. If I play something and I think they’re going to like it and they might not then I’ll keep trying until I find the sweet spot. Or if I know it’s a town that I can go really deep into one style I’ll go there. If it’s a town that likes something a little bit more I’ll go that direction. But I also try to customize my sets a little bit to each town, make it a little bit more specific with themes to make it a little more interesting for me and also and to show them that I’m not just up there playing the same set that I played the night before.
MARC: What do you miss most about being a regular out here in the desert scene?
Z-TRIP: There’s way more opportunity out here than in places like LA, New York, whatever. The scene is still bubbling and finding itself and always reformatting and refiguring itself out. People come and go and you have your core people as well but there’s still an opportunity for people to really rise up and be the king or queen of whatever it is out here. It was also a bit frustrating because we didn’t always have the vehicles to do the things that we wanted to do so we had to make it up ourselves and get really creative. In LA and now that I’ve gotten over that hump, it’s easier for me to do what I want to do but I miss having the weekly out here that all the locals would come out to. It was very organic, very real and there was opportunity to conquer the world. People coming up here know that. You know that if you live here. In LA not so much. New York, not so much.
MARC: The last time we spoke, we talked about vinyl versus digital. Have your views on what vinyl is to the scene changed over the years?
Z-TRIP: Yeah because the technology has changed. Digital media is running the world and it’s easier to perform in that regard. But I’m always up for a challenge and I like the challenge that vinyl presented because when you threw that record on you only had so many ways to manipulate it. Now you can take a song, chop it, re-edit, slow it down, speed it up, pitch shift it. You can do so much to it that the possibilities are almost endless which is great but it’s also made the challenge go away. To me it’s made DJ-ing with digital format so easy that anyone can do it so it’s made it a little bit lazier. When you watch a DJ go up there and play digitally some people just get away with murder because it’s easy to do now. I miss the little bit of that that even playing field where if you didn’t own that record, you couldn’t play it. If you heard somebody play that record you couldn’t Shazam it, then download it and have it the next day - you had to go out and find the record. It made DJ-ing a bit more interesting, a bit more fun. Being inspired by other DJ’s and the hunt for the right record, there was an art to that, sort of like a chase or a treasure hunt. But it’s also really cool, it’s a double edged sword any way you look at it. If I hear something that somebody plays I can shazam it and now I got the song that was going to be in my head. Being able to roll around with my laptop able to play anything that’s in my collection is awesome but I do miss that leveled ground and the work that would have to go into really pushing the boundaries. Eventually it will get to that point again. People will find new ways to flip it and freak it. With digital there are people who really work that format, I like to think that I do as well, and keep it interesting. But there’s plenty of people who just hit play.
MARC: So are you still using vinyl anymore in your sets?
Z-TRIP: I use Serato so the 2 records aren't vinyl but I haven’t gone 100% digital where I’m doing nothing with anything and just touching a couple of buttons. I still like to scratch. I like the ability to fuck up a mix here and there. I like a crowd to be able to hear that. If a mix goes off and comes back on there’s a journey and a ride that happens. A lot of DJ’s who just start out digitally might not have ever saw or heard or remember guys spinning vinyl. Listening to old house DJ’s spin records versus house DJ’s now spinning digital tracks is a little bit of a different thing. I miss that but at the same time I don’t miss it so much that I’m like ‘FUCK DIGITAL’. I’m all about it.
MARC: I'm starting to produce now and I’m having so much fun with Ableton, Pro Tools and Reason. As a producer, what do you think are the best tools out there?
Z-TRIP: I think Ableton is amazing. I think Native Instruments has a lot of good stuff. I’ve always been a Pro Tools guy because I know it. For DJ-ing I think Serato is good. Traktor is good. There’s so many different kinds. Logic is a really good program. It really depends on preference. It used to be like Coke or Pepsi, now there’s a million different colas that you can choose from. Same rules apply to working with music in the digital world.
MARC: I've been taking an electronic music class, experimenting with the programs, going onto YouTube and finding demos. What's the best way to master the tools?
Z-TRIP: That’s the best way to do it. You maybe want some proper training but also find out what makes it work for you. I look at DJ-ing like how all the Jedi’s had different lightsabers and different techniques. One guy had a round one, another guy had a double lightsaber. It’s all just different kinds. They’re all lightsabers but I DJ different than that person DJ’s and this guy uses gear differently than that guy. The diversity in it makes it really interesting. If everyone is on the same platform doing the same thing, no new boundaries are really going to get broken. Your style and your technique could be doing something totally backwards from someone else’s but you’re flipping it and making it work. If you can find a way to make it work for you, that’s very unique and it’s going to make you stand out. I think it’s important to go down those roads and try new shit out.
MARC: We love you because you’re one of the best DJ’s in the world and you're from Phoenix. Anything you want to tell the people of out here?
Z-TRIP: I’m just honored and stoked to have taken it this far and it really wouldn’t have happened without the push from everyone out here. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported when I was just getting started because that was the push that got me to where I am now. It’s great to be back home.
zB
