House Master C

Having just celebrated his 44th birthday, HMC shows no signs of letting up. In what ended up being more like a reunion party, HMC along with Angelo, T-Bot and Scott T rewound the clock for a night of music, old and new at Cargo on Hindley Street West.

A mixed crowd, a combination of the headz plus the newer Garage club crowd meant the vibe was exactly that - mixed. However, it was great to catch up with so many old faces. HMC dropped many an old favourite, from Kenny Larkin’s “Integration”, “Humanoid” by Stakker, “Flash” by Fix, his latest under the Late Nite Tuff Guy monicker “I Get Deep” - a flavourful workout sampling the vocal from Roland Clark’s “I Get Deep” and a loop of Rework’s “Anyway I Know You” that was taken from Richie Hawtin’s “DE9 - Closer To The Edit” compilation, and of course - the one track that started it all for Juice Records, “Life Support System”.

I left around 4, and this was probably a a blessing in disguise - albeit one wearing leathers.

View the full photo set on Flickr.

Moodymann finally makes his way to Australian shores with a show at the Sydney Festival on January 26. He’s playing at the Mad Racket party at the Hyde Park Barracks. Be sure to get your tickets early as they sell out every year!

There’s some other great shows at the Barracks this year, including Andy Weatherall, Amp Fiddler and Spank Rock.

There’s some problems currently with the last.fm weekly charts - so no fresh music right now.

That said, here’s a great new mix from Dave Choe and Matt Aubusson of Glitch in Sydney. Had it in the car for a few days now and loving it. Tasty goodness from the likes of 2000 and 1 and Magda. They do promise a tracklisting shortly.

Some great action around town coming up as we swing into the summer season.

The Minimal Fuss crew are throwing their first birthday bash on Friday, November 2nd with Ewan Pearson (Kompakt) and Dixon (Get Physical, Sonar Kollektiv & Innervisions) on the lineup! Joining them on the lineup will be Declan Lee, Dave Choe, Ben Korbel and Matt Aubusson as well as maybe one more surprise international at Oxford Art Factory! Check the Youtube video invite below.

…and then there’s the Mad Racket 9th birthday featuring Chris Duckenfield on Saturday, October 27th. Check out the Mad Racket site for further info.

No, it’s not inside a club or at a festival. It’s the Town Hall steps on a Friday afternoon!

This morning I was getting emails from colleagues who were all hung up on the notion of a flashmob. Comments such as - “What is it?”, “Huh? I don’t geddit.”, and “Bizarre!” were just some of the email floating around today. People who would have no idea about websites such as inthemix were all buzzing with the notion of the flashmob.

I arrived at Town Hall steps at 5:40pm, taking up a prime position to be able to watch the event unfold. People started to arrive, but I couldn’t discern between what was a normal number of people congregating at this location, an iconic city meeting place, and what were numbers in excess of this.

Then it became quite evident. More and more people with headphones on began to arrive.

With a loudhailer in hand, Jay Hemsworth from inthemix announced to all that it was 6:11pm. It was time to dance. And for ten minutes, people did. There was hollering and whooping but still no music to be heard.

A few hundred people dancing to the sound of their own MP3 player. The phenomenon, a twist on the flashmob, this was the ‘flashrave’.

View the full photoset on Flickr. Further coverage on news.com.au - I’m up the back on the left in the green shirt (if you squint hard enough!).

That’s Brennan Green if you were wondering!

Mad Racket proudly presents the return of the Canadian New Yorker, deep disco dub don Brennan Green. Playing his unique brand of spaced-out disco and beyond, the mean little green one has been jetsetting the globe for the past few years. Still, he manages to pop out a few productions and remixes, including one for his Norwegian buddy Lindstrom.

This Saturday, the usual place. Get on down… but I won’t be seeing you there this time around!

Hold on a second. What? Yes!

New York’s clubbers are preparing themselves for a special DJ face-off that will see two of the world’s biggest DJs play head-to-head at the city’s Pacha nightclub.

Techno warrior Richie Hawtin will join forces with New York house legend Danny Tenaglia for a musical merger on Friday 8th June that at first seems a little odd.

Whilst Richie Hawtin is famous for his glitchy minimal and pounding futurist techno, Tenaglia’s roots are in disco, soul, R&B and house.

If the two DJs were to play back-to-back with their usual styles, it might be a soundclash too great to bear but for one night only Tenaglia will strictly be wearing his techno baseball cap.

What’s more, Danny Tenaglia will actually be playing after Hawtin, not before him as one might expect.

“Richie is gonna blow the house down until 5am and I’m gonna try to pick up the pieces,” Danny said about the Made At Pacha event.

Courtesy of Beatportal.

Well it’s been and gone. Hopefully I’ll be there next year. Anyway, Patrick and Merodii have both taken some snaps.

Rhythm & Sound - All 6 hours of it

AUX-88

View full Patrick’s set and Merodii’s sets - Day 1, 2 and 3… and there’s the Soul Skate gig with KDJ.

Yes… I’m jealous.

So…. what are you doing in May?

Laurent returns to Australia for his first visit since 2000 - this time playing at The Cross, a smallish venue tucked up on top of The Bourbon down in Kings Cross. This, in addition to the Melbourne gig on Friday and the Playground Weekender festival where he played on Sunday.

Feelin’ It

Not the best set I’ve heard him play, but it kept us out late! A wide range of sounds, including the classic Derrick May Rhythim Is Rhythim (sic) track “Beyond The Dance”, the Carl Craig remix of Inner City’s “Good Life”, some New Order for good measure, plus a tangle of drum’n'bass and the classic Ralphie Rosario “U Used To Hold Me” which had all the hands in the air. Unfortunately, no “Acid Eiffel” and word has it that the best two hours were the last two hours. Of course, that’s when we’d gone to bed!

*ahem* Goons

Now playing: Rhythm Is Rhythm - “Beyond The Dance”

A solid night of music at quite a slick little venue - no comparison to venue in its previous state with stark white walls and a soundsystem lacking any punch. The Klipsch rig in that room was punchy, a little more bass perhaps, but certainly one of the higher quality purpose-built spaces in Sydney. My only gripe was that the bar prices for a nightclub were more top-end bar. $9 for a Peroni’s not cheap and neither is $5 for a 300mL bottle of water. A shame the balcony space was closed off early as well. Why not close the small front room and keep the balcony open?

View the full photo set.

Web 2.0 - now, come on, tell me… you’re not sick of the term yet are you? It had to be the most overused term at ad:tech Sydney this week (I’ll get to the event itself in a post to come over the next few days) and if I wasn’t sick of it then, I certainly am now.

Personally, I think what’s more frustrating is that the notion of it isn’t new, nor is the application of it to the medium, but it’s more the fact that everybody thinks if they’re not web two-point-o-ifying their website and online capability, they’ll miss the boat.

Now, whilst this maybe true to an extent, more to the point is that people are developing capability for the sake of it, without actually thinking about how it may work, or why it may work. Also, there’s the copycats out there as well, thinking that if they build another Myspace.com that’s green and red, and contain some nuances of difference, then people will flock to it. Forget it. Don’t forget, there’s Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, Eons, Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkMe, MSN Spaces, it’s just a little crowded in the social and business networking spheres… and then don’t forget there were sites like SixDegrees. Now, fallen by the wayside, because they were either too early on the scene, didn’t have their objectives mapped out as a business, or simply delivered a crap user-experience.

That said, I found a new collaborative site today, upcoming.org (which incidently, I stumbled across via last.fm. I’m heading of to San Francisco and Seattle in a couple of weeks time and will have a bit of time up my sleeve, so I thought I’d see what was coming up. I’d been in contact with an acquaintance through the music game a week back and he’d already given me the run down on a couple of events that were on whilst I was there, but I was thinking about things to do other than going to gigs. I’d also checked out the local Citysearch, and found it a little lacking.

So, I found out that Derrick May & Gary Bredow hosting a screening of Hi-Tech Soul with a Q&A session and an after-party with the man himself on the decks. Now, that’s just Friday night, in addition to Fuckwerk Friday. So much for finding other things to do!

Saturday night, there’s Butane doing a live PA at Low End. Happy days.. and no, I’m not going to spend two or so days asleep by day in SF - let me assure you!

Back to the topic of discussion, web 2.0, definately has its uses, and when done well, it’s great. However, look before you leap. Think about your rationale for doing what you’re doing here and what benefit it can drive your business.

As for the other reason for the post, well… I just wanted to make a few of you jealous. That said, the Mad Racket crew are putting on another great party featuring Claude von Stroke which is on whilst I’m in Seattle. Unfortunately, I miss him in SF by 10 days.