Short review of everything

Waiting for Godot

I´ll start this list of reviews of recent culture activities with one of my favourite plays! I went to see Samuel Beckett´s Waiting for Godot at the Kansallisteatteri (in Helsinki) and my expectations were pretty high. Fortunately this managed to satisfy me almost on every level! I was a little worried in advance since one of the main parts was played by Esko Salminen who, in my opinion, is one of the most over appreciated actors in Finland. He however fit quite well to his part and his, yet again in my opinion, mannerism worked ok as Vladimir´s role. What lifted the play to really excellent level was Hannu-Pekka Björkman who made astonshing job as Pozzo! Every single time he opened his mouth, everything flowed towards more coherent conclusion! The setup was very traditional and I remember seeing quite similar background use in one of the television versions shown in Teema few years ago. It´s good but I think there should have been some modifications for more intense experience, specially in parts when audience was supposed to feel the "boredom" of the cast waiting for something to happen. Over all, this version was very well made and hopefully we´ll see some more Beckett in the future!

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismäki´s latest film is called Le Havre and it is really nice one! Kaurismäki has done lot´s of good films but the quality has been swinging from excellent to annoying. This time he is presenting much more positive future visions! This movie is very much a triumph of humanism and trust and caring of other people. The charachters that are naturally in tight position (ie. the police officer) are shown as people with social consciousness, though there is a distinct line between generations (contemporary world is shown in a bit ugly light). Kaurismäki´s greatest ability is to show us very beautifull scenes of the cities he is using as background, he definitely is fond of urban atmosphere! All the actors do excellent job and the soundtrack suits well to the over all feel. The theme is obviously quite hot topic and his message is clear! I would love to see a little more surreal elements in his future films, since they were the reasons why some of his works are so good!

Crazy Clown Time

Now this was unexpected! Though I knew David Lynch has had his fingers involved in the music production earlier, it was still very odd to hear the first single Good Day Today earlier this autumn. Crazy Clown Time is the first real artist album Lynch has ever made and if you are fond of his soundtracks you will not be disappointed. Some of the songs are in more typical vein, dark rockish atmospheres, but others have strange space disco, or balearic feel to them. Lynch sings himself in most of the tracks, if you can call this kind of vocal performance singing. His voice is esoteric and haunting and it does give the important impact to the end product! The album is also very long, but I think it is essential to get the hypnotic feel he seems to be chasing! I feel that he does achieve the correct vibe and in the end I will give this solid *****! It´s also note worthy that Lynch has opened a club in Paris that is trying to simulate the effect of Club Silencio in his movie Mullholland Drive. Unfortunately you can visit the club only by becoming a member and since I´m not living in Paris it would be somewhat pointless effort.

Religion & Magic in ancient Egypt

Last august I visited the British Museum to see the Egyptian section. After checking all the mummies and hieroglyphs I bought a book from the shop called Religion and Magic in ancient Egypt by Rosalie David. There was plenty of other choices available but this felt most coherent but at the same time enjoiable enough to keep my interest up. Now that I have read it I must say that the amount of information is almost overwhelming. The book is trying to cover the whole spectrum of Egyptian culture from the earliest known examples (some 5000 bce) until the demise of the ancient culture around 500 ace. It´s exhausting task even for the 400 pages it has space to show it´s contents. The book has been critizised of being mixed and incoherent in places, and I must admit that in some cases this is true. But I still think that it gains advantage with sheer volume of knowledge it can offer. Troughout the book you can get yourself sucked into the ordinary life of egyptian inhabitant and lot´s of customs are written open very well. It also works really well as a source material! One point is that some conclusions are controversial and reader must bear in mind that researchers are trying to interpret scattered writings and sources from thousands of years ago. Therefore everything you read is, in the end, only speculation. Anyway, this book is very much worth to read!

Dj Error - Pinball Fantasy

Ooh sir! I Did this mix to test my new pair of Pioneer CDJ800 mk II cd players:

  Dj Error - Pinball Fantasy by Vinguru

01 Exit 100 - Liquid (Bubble One)
02 Electrochemie LK - Schall
03 A.W.E.X. - I Like That
04 N´Joi - Bad Things (Wink´s Stabbed Filled Acid Version)
05 Hardfloor - We Will Never Stop Programming This Way
06 Mauro Picotto - Like This Like That (5am Mix)
07 Kopfuss Resonator - VPM Groove
08 Enri Lorenzo - Mobile Telephone
09 Emmanuel Top - Fusion
10 Rob Acid - Sesiroth
11 Age - Doomsday
12 Mark NRG - Attention Acid
13 Silent Breed - Acid Fucker
14 Koenig - Clap Your Hands (Electro Mix)

Tracklist contains some lesser known acid tunes and basic techno. Little bit of everything I should say. I have moved a month ago and most of my records are at the storage untill I find suitable apartment. Therefore I have only small arsenal of cd´s available (mostly techno and trance) and all the 12" are also stored. That´s why this is very much unplanned selection.

Mix starts with some funky acid bouncers and moves into a little bit harder side until Emmanuel Top takes things closer to the tranzy state of mind. In the end we get back to the funky acid business. The final track is a fine peace of innovative electro by Koenig from the brilliant Superstition label!

Primal Scream live playing SCREAMADELICA!

This may be some overly inspired blaa blaa, but damn that yesterdays gig was good! As I may have told before, I have quite a lot of records and I generally get bored about everything very fast. This means that most of the time, I change the styles and genres I listen and same albums rarely end up being playd repeatedly. Anyway, if I would try to sum those records that get the most air time, I think Primal Screams Screamadelica would be close to the top!

It´s not the best album I own, but it has characteristics that suit wide range of situations and most of all emotions! There is the psychedelic chilling along side with hands in the air party options. And extremely beautifull melodies hidden inside! Yes, when I have trouble to decide what to play next, this is a safe bet.

I found this album with a friend of mine some ten years ago. We were in a bar in the center of Helsinki (Cafe Meteori) and there was one of our favourite trance dj´s playing a special chillout set. The guy was dropping lots of classic balearic trax and suddenly this very long song with horns and gosspel choir was aired. Together we decided to ask what on earth are we listening since both of us wanted to get it. The song was what is presented in the the following video:



Next day I went to buy the album and since then I have wanted to hear it live. I really don´t mind the rest of their albums, though I have to admit that I should propably give them another change. Why I like Screamadelica is quite likely because Andrew Weatherall and the Orb were behind the production and their influence formed the basis for the acid house and dub roots.

Yesterday the awaited gig finally arrived! And the band was in a really good form! They definitely seemed to enjoy playing these old songs and the live versions of some of the songs were just astonishing! I loved every second of the gig and danced my feet sore! Last track of the first set was of course Come Together and when the song was coming to an end, rest of the band left the stage leaving Bobby Gillespie alone infront of the audience and he demanded everyone to sing the chorus for almost 5 minutes to get the encore. This was worth every cent paid for the tickets!!!

ps. Since I´m not much of a fashion enthusiast, I still do like T-shirts. Screamadelicas cover is one of the most amazing album covers ever and I just had to have a T-shirt of that since there was such available. I will include a picture of that later!

Best Tekno ever (2008 edition)

I just found an old forum post I made in 2008. It was about the top ten best tekno ever and I seem to have divided my participation into best trax and best albums categories. Anyway, here is the list from that period:

Top 10 tekno trax

1. Ultra Sonic - What is Tekno?
2. Energy 52 - Café del Mar (Nalin & Kane remix)
3. Incisions - Techno Gong
4. Misjah - Keep Your Love
5. I-F - Playstation no. 2
6. Boris Blenn - Portamento
7. Thomas Krome - Bitches from Hell
8. Lochi - London Acid City
9. Egyptian Empire - The Horn Track
10. Prodigy - No Good (Start the Dance)

Top 10 tekno albums

1. Cristian Vogel - All Music has Come to an End
2. Chemical Brothers - Dig your own Hole
3. Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
4. Juno Reactor - Transmissions
5. The Speed Freak - For You
6. Emmanuel Top - Asteroid
7. BT - ESCM
8. Various - It's Not Intelligent...And It's Not From Detroit...But It's Fuckin' 'Avin It
9. Dune - Expedicion
10. Scuba - A Mutual Antipathy

I suppose these lists would be different today if I re-did them. Some trax and albums would still make it to the new list too, but some should go back to runners up league... Albumwise this is a little closer to todays list anyhow. My taste of what´s good changes by the moods and therefore is propably different everyday.

I have been using an old Muzik magazine that had a list of 50 greatest dance music albums as my shopping list for last 10 years, and today I have over 30 of those in my collection. I don´t agree with the whole list and it definitely is that years product but still it has given me very good hints of interesting albums. I will try to do a 2011 edition of that later this year.

Suprisingly I made a collection cd some years ago that had almost similar tracklist. Here is the cover for that!

Happosauna - Old Skool Acid Rave

ok, this is a bit different. This is a story about an event that was done by a bunch of "Jannus" in love with acid tekkno. It´s called Happosauna (Acid Sauna, translated from Finnish)!

I will include some more pictures later about the installation process and such and also from the party itself!

The event was created about a year ago, but it was put in practise actually in very short time. All the guys involved have been organizing such shows for years but recently they have had less interest to making these underground raves. It was very nice to see these old skool lovers give so much energy for the setup and planning and the party ended up being colourfull and vivid experience of relentless hedonism!

Here is a video of the headline acts performance:



Yes, it´s Healium feat. K-Larm & J.Raninen LIVE and damn that´s heavy set! The guys did have four (4!!!) Roland TB303´s and one 707 drum machine! (I´ll add a picture of that too later) Listen tot the Acid Drop at the 22-23 minute mark, it´s insanely intense! At the beginning of the video someone is shouting "Päästäkää irti" that means release it or let it loose! Obviously meaning the 303 mayhem!

Other artists included Guardian from Japan playing two sets (one hour of Hardfloor and another filled with London Acid Techno), Kokki303 dropping some evil classics with his Mexican Wrestling mask on, Looney delivering some 80´s 303House and Error spinning Emmanuel Top style monotonic acid trance! Finally Error and Looney played b2b and some other guys joined the game till late in the morning!

The obvious winner was of course Pump Panels remix of Confusion that was played about four times! There was heavy loads of classic acid like Mad Cows on Acid, Acperience, Access and Circus Bells and everyone seemed to enjoy the shit really well! And then there was the Sauna!!! That was propably the reason why some of the dj´s managed to lighten peoples garments at the end of the party...

Anyway, massive thanks goes to production partners and artists! And very big thanks to the party posse! You are really keeping the underground alive!

Inspiration trough music (and background noise)

Best writing soundtrack is Jazzy, Atmospheric Drum & Bass! This is the conclusion I have become trough recent experiments.

I´ve been writing my final thesis quite intensively and since I´m addicted to music and sounds surrounding me 24/7, I just can´t concentrate without music (and sometimes even TV open, just blabbering on the background). I have noticed this same thing at my office where I just can´t manage to get things done if there is not other people to talk to and socialize around. The best option is to sit next to a meeting that really doesn´t mean a thing to me and just reply to emails.... (am I the only one thinking this way?)

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier D&B is the best soundtrack to writing something! It has strict and fast tempo that gives your body a nice template start pushing text into blank paper. The atmospheric stuff usually doesn´t have huge climaxes that would interfere concentration. Same can be said about the lack of vocals. And it has hypnotic enough vibe to sink your thoughts deep into the subject.

Of course I have tried numerous styles of music for this purpose, but for example basic 4/4 beat just doesn´t work (not even minimal techno).

Well, this was just a brief mention... now let´s get back to business (ie. thesis writing).

Tripomatic Fairytales - a story of Jam & Spoon part 1

As a tribute to my past heroes of music and culture I hereby present the first chapter of writings! This one is about my favourite production partners: Mark Spoon and Jam El Mar! And it comes in two parts, stay tuned!

First I offer everyone a treat: Just finished scanning an old Muzik mag pages from august 1997 (issue 27) containing a three page interview of Jam & Spoon from their german promo tour when the Kaleidoscope album was released:

Now that´s interesting to read! You must notice the rock´n roll insanity behind these guys motives! It´s important to understand that this text is written in time when electronic music was at it´s peak in destroing all the traditional music styles (ie. rock music) and bands like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and such had made their impact and were finally coming hugely popular. I even remember a cover from famous British Metal magazine; Metal Hammer where they were forced to admit that the Prodigy was taking Metal to very different direction. The Germans were not left behind even though their angle differentiated from the one that Brits had taken.

Continental supergroups were in one end like Scooter (which made music for the lowest common denominator with really cheeky aproach. I will get back to this business later but not in this text) and the other was dominated by these post war escapists who made the debauchery into form of art! Sven Väth is one of the notorius examples of this genre but I personally think that only Jam & Spoon managed to take it to the absolute limit!

I´m really sad that I didn´t make it to see their live shows or even a Dj set from Mark Spoon ever. I did try though and I should have the flyers still somewhere about the parties where Spoon should have been playing. Unfortunately as he was well known to be very complicated person every single gig that I was going to attend was cancelled for strange reasons. The last attempt was propably a year before Spoons death (that was 11.01.2006).

I do have another Muzik mag from around 2000 where Mark Spoon was awarded by the Caner of the year trophy for most insane acting in the Dj Scene (I´ll try to scan that one too if I find it somewhere). He was also known for beating up customers, club owners and generally behaving badly under influence... Well that´s not the point of this story so now on I will concentrate on their productions!

My understanding is that Jam El Mar was the one with greater production skills and Spoon was more like the front man with Djing ability and the character, but this is just a guess since no real evidence about their studio work has passed my path. The reason that I believe this is the case comes from realising Jam El Mar´s production career started years earlier in the 80´s (Spoon was a Dj troughout 80´s). Another fact is the amount of solo releases and remixes Jam has produced. In the end it doesn´t really matter because both were obviously very good friends and the productions would not have existed without each other´s contribution.

Jam El Mar or Trancy Spacer (or even Rolf Ellmer) made early records himself and in groups, most notable with Dj Dag (Dag Lerner) as Dance 2 Trance. This outfit that preceded Jam & Spoon (though their first album was from 91) basically consisted all the elements that would follow in the later years. Excellent trax include P. Ower Of A. Merican N. Atives, Where is Dag?, Hello San Fransisco, Take a Freefall and We came in Peace. All are good examples of early trancelike sound that was uprising during those times around germany. This sound was heavily influenced by such artists like KLF that had made lush trancey remixes of their big hits. Power was propably the biggest track and a huge hit all around the clubland. Their success propelled literally hundreds of poor copycats! And finally the whole eurodance phenomenon was created by inspired producers from this platform Dance 2 Trance was presenting (I´m not saying they were the only ones that contributed to this genre but they definitely were influential). Dj Dag does need his own praise too but I´m not going to concentrate on his works here (I should propably write something about the German scene generally and definitely about Love Parade and Mayday -parties).

Jam & Spoons story began within legendary R&S label with the Tales From A Danceographic Ocean ep that contained excellent songs: My First Fantastic F.F. was really experimental techno and trance fusion but the really huge track is of course infamous Stella which introduced classic Hold Me Love Me sample (or was this actually singer Plavka who was contributing to great part of Jam & Spoons records later?). The funny thing here is that My First Fantastic F.F. contains same samples as Stella but also the famous samples from Twin Peaks also used by Moby in the legendary Go! I haven´t heard myself but I know that moby actually ended up remixing Stella later on... Anyway around this time british label REACT released Age of Love by Bruno Sanchioni (of BBE fame) and Giuseppe Chierchia with Jam & Spoon Watch Out For Stella Club Mix that was to became on of the most well known classic trance record of all time! It´s funny how they decided to use this opportunity to promote their own production but since both releases are stellar it really doesn´t matter! These two trax together already gave them the legendary status they have in the scene even know!

The release of Stella predicted the forth coming album but who would have dared to ask what was coming? Tripomatic Fairytales was devided into two albums 2001 and 2002 former being more dancefloor orientated work of progression and genious and the latter being one of the most innovative and relaxing chill out albums in the veins of greatest Balearic records (for example William Orbit´s Strange Cargo III). Absolutely everything works brilliantly in both of these albums, from Right in the Night´s hypnotic (and a little cheesy) melodies to Stella´s sophisticated progression to 2002´s chantings and african drums and psychedelic phonecalls. They just work! Find Me (Odyssee to Anyoona) was also released as a single. It is pretty good single but the most innovative track was Follow Me! that was included in the b-side of Right in the Night. Now this one is fine example of the driving and goalike hardtrance that would soon follow! In any case if you have even the slightest interest of the beginning of the European dance movement you need both Tripomatic Fairytales!!!

There is strange information about including and removing trax from these releases and one that was not in the original albums was Angel. This time the better song was however Can You Feel It that was also on the b-side! Heavily acidic hardtrance monster and very much recommended! It also has som resemblance to the next project Jam&Spoon's Hands On Yello - You Gotta Say Yes to another Excess (uff die 12' mix) which in my opinion is the best hardtrance / Europian Rave anthem ever! Hands on Yello as a project was something out of this world, all the remixes are brilliant but Jam & Spoon steal the moment, mainly because Yello is propably the godfather of their sound and appearance! Everything seems so natural in this context and yes the excess is total excess in the case of the song and Jam & Spoons legend!

James Blake versus Mount Kimbie

I really wish that James Blake´s (self titled) album would have similar qualities than Mount Kimbies Crooks and Lovers did have. I mean if it doesn´t it is going to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year!

Though Mount Kimbies effort was not as good as the previous ep´s had been and I must admit that I was expecting way too much from them it has grown over repeated listening to be quite well composed and interesting experimental organism. Their sound is definitely original and presents sort of tinkered maximalism. On the first listen there was already hints of great arrangements and some of the trax left me wonder how these should be working (and propably thinking about the right environment). Now, after half a year I think this is among the great electronic music albums even though it has some flaws in, say continuity...

Blake´s album however has not started to fly yet. I have listened to it trough few times now and still don´t get it. First problem was the printed lyrics, why are these here. It doesn´t seem to say anything that important and the poetry behind is not that clever. Similar artist such as Burial have left this kind of nonsense away from the covers and concentrated to leave as much as possible to listeners imagination. The songs themselves are much more skeletized than I thought they would be and in most trax the voice of James Blake himself seems to be the only noticeable element available. Of course there is deep bass here and there and some percussions and stuff but it all seems too easy.

One of the big problems with the album is that the compositions feel like old English christmas carrols! I mean it feels somehow cheap and the melodies are repetitive in a manner that gives me this weird impression. I may be alone with this argument but listen to the last track "measurements"! I just can´t get this idea out of my mind when I keep listening to it. Some vocals are very irritating and it seems that Blake is holding something back all the time. It´s like he´s afraid of letting the songs grow and sticking to the minimalism as a safe ground for being intelligent.

In discogs I gave Blake´s album three stars out of five but this is propably going to be lowered to two if I can´t find the clue behind his sound. Mount Kimbie deserves four stars for their set and I really wish they enhance the sound that was present at the ep´s to a full scale album one day.

Practice, practice, practice

Last couple of weeks I have been very busy practicing my turntable skills (as I have mentioned earlier). This is due to my new equipment which seems to work quite well. Yesterday I dug some old hard techno records from the vaults and gave them a spin. Boy was that fun!!!

It´s funny how I now notice the big difference playing different styles of music. When spinning house or trance you have to try to find suitable moments to enter and use the intros and outros to create a constant flow. You also have take care of the harmonies, check out the places where there is breaks and remember if any vocals have been used. It´s very usefull if you are aware about the composition of the full track and know for example where the bass drops for the first time. I have now got used to make the transitions using individual channel sliders and using the EQ knobs only to drop certain levels down. This seems work particularly well at the moment.

Overall you have to try to make wholescale compositions with the tracks and it´s usefull to plan the setup in advance. The whole thing turns upside down when the style changes to techno. Now this is real improvisation, all I have to know is that the tracks are basically in the same tempo range. The rest is just picking basslines and percussions from one track and embedding them to the next! And now the EQ turns into a playstation! I can keep two tracks playing at the same time and let the drums fuse into a different sounding mutant of driving monster dancetune! Yesterday was the first time that I thought it would be nice to own third turntable to make transitions easier and still keeping the playfullness alive! I believe that I would be able to learn to use this kind of setup to create nice oldskool techno experience.

Offcourse I´m aware that this is nothing new to anyone deep in the game, but I wanted to share the revelation I got from these recent sessions!

Superstitious Technomix

Here we go again! This time it´s all about rave and hard trance from the 90´s! I must admit that this mix was all but easy to make and there are lots of bad shifts from track to another (I will listen this few times and if it sounds horrible I will record it again). Fortunately all the songs are excellent! And this is yet again 100% vinyl and 0% Digital bullshit !-D (yeah yeah, really wish I could afford to buy cd-players!).

During those times producers used to create very hard, strange and often long atmospheric intros and outros. They sound wonderfull if listened separately but make the continuous mix very complicated to create. The tempo was often pretty hard. I started this mix with negative pitch but still ended up having problems with some tracks that I had chosen. Few songs had also several excellent and actually quite different remixes and I had to make some compromises to manage to create good flow (for example, I would have wanted to use Mijk van Dijk remix of the Hypnotist´s song, but it was way too hard to mix in that point of set). I also had to change the first track to Future. I would have wanted to use Velocity - Lust from the other side of the 12" but it had REALLY weird last half and was virtually impossible to mix into anything with my current skills.

Anyway here is the tracklist:

01 Velocity - Future (Superstition)
02 Jens - Loops & Tings (Remix) (Superstition)
03 Marmion - Schöneberg (Marmion Remix) (Superstition)
04 Paragliders - Paraglide (Blue Sky Mix) (Superstition)
05 Steve Maison Experience Movement - Let There Be Rhythm (Mix To Heaven) (Think Green)
06 Three´n One - Reflect (Misjah Remix) (Low Spirit)
07 Lords of Octagon - Open da House (DMD)
08 Virus - Sun (Jam El Mar Remix) (Perfecto)
09 Quench - Dreams (Sirius Music)
10 The Hypnotists - House is Mine ´96 (Baby Doc Remix) (Rising High)
11 Lunatic Asylum - Meltdown 2000 (Hitch Hiker & Dumontdt´s "Love" Mix (Nebula)

TEKKNO LINK

- edit -
Just listened this once trough and there is some slighly irritating mistakes but nothing too horrible. Bigger problem seems to be that I recorded this a bit too loud. Therefore some clipping occurs and the levels wander little.

Error vs Toshiba - Green / Purple (Video)

This one is a rare Error vs Toshiba video. Heavily influenced by some german hardcore techno, Green / Purple is part of the more aggressive side of this semi-legendary boy band´s material!



Lego animation has always been big favourite of the ever experimenting posses repertuare. Following short video is also embedded in one of the guys music videos. I will upload that too if I can find it...

Nightmare Helsinki Records

I used to make music with trackers years ago (alone and with some friends). When I did things solo, I decided to create a "record label" to release the results. back then I lived in Helsinki, hence the name. The nightmare part comes from my favourite band C-Tank. Unfortunately most of my trax are now gone since my previous computer broke down and I couldn´t save the songs. I may have some of these backed up in some obscure cdr somewhere and if I happen to find them I will most definately put them available here. Anyway here´s the first seven covers of these releases (I know these are pretty amateurish but I don´t really care).

Actually about the not caring part, a little bit of philosophy: I personally think that it is more important to do things than worry about the quality of the output. If someone doesn´t like the stuff they are always allowed to ignore it. Perhaps I should write a separate essay about this thing and particularly from the music point of view.

I also have to admit that I was more concerned about inventing funny song titles and photoshopping covers than actually producing music. Therefore only part of the releases ever were finalized. I used to get music done only when I was producing it with my friends.

I will write more about the software and equipment we used later if I find at least some of the lost tapes....

Learning the Art of Mixing

Today was yet again time to rehearse my mixing skills. I have been Djing years in various occasions but haven´t ever really tried to enhance my ability to play smooth shifts from track to another mainly because it takes some time and patient to really advance in this field.

Anyway now that I have found the time I´m struggling to get better results. There are some things that make the progress slow. First I have always thought that I have some knowledge about which songs would fit together but at the same time I think that playing should be improvising and not to program your setup in advance. I have noticed now that when my skills to find correct beats is not that good (and especially fast enough) I really should not improvise. Today I tried to make a soft oldskool progressive house mix with lush and interesting beats but in the middle the set turned into a "kiksu" mayhem with no logic and actually wrong versions of somewhat good tracks.

It´s just that when I get the feeling to play tracks I don´t seem to have the patience to do my homework and plan the set ready to play. Todays set was also way too fast because I somehow didn´t notice that the first track was quite upbeat.

I´ve got quite a lot of breakbeat tracks too that I should try to include in these mixes. It´s just yet another thing that would need more training.

The good thing is that my setup seems to work now pretty well. I also have some ideas about dubstep, electro and techno and acid mixes that I should try soon. And it seems that I´m missing some tracks that I have always wanted to own and include in some mixes so I should probably check some of these from discogs...

My Setup

Because music is one of the main reasons to write this blog I hereby present my setup and collection to give some idea in what level I´m on at the "game". My collection is somewhat problematic in terms of form. First of all I collect music in all the possible formats. I have a huge collection of CD:s and particularly CD singles (which is probably the most dead format of all) but I also do have a huge set of vinyls! Here is some pictures to give you the idea.




I have lot´s of MP3´s and even C-Cassettes but those are not the preferred formats at the moment. I have recently updated my setup the way that I hope 12" vinyl would gain advantage in the future.

About the setup: I have two Technics SL-1200 MK2 direct drive turntables. These are the so called industry standard (even though Panasonic announced last autumn that they will end the production of these classics). The ones that I own are real warhorses that have been in a professional use for years. I bought them used from a good friend of mine about six years ago (the joke here is that I have been collecting vinyl way over ten years and didn´t have any kind of turntables before).




Recently I bought new Headshells and Cartridges because the old ones had worn out and actually rusted trough. Both headshells are Technics´s own but the Cartridges are from Stanton and Ortofon. Stanton one is a classic 500-II model. It´s trustworthy and strong and will not brake easily. Problem is propably on the sound side that is not as dynamic and good as some hifi people would like these to be.

Stanton 500-II

The other one is Ortofon Night Club MKII. This one I bought last week and haven´t tried that much yet but it really feels good. I had some other ideas about this cartridge but got this one pretty cheap as it was slightly used.

Ortofon Night Club MKII

Weakest link in the setup is my mixer. It´s quite old Gemini PS-626 Pro-2 model. Here is a short list of problems I´m having with this at the moment: It has a ground noise that comes and goes without any logic reason. It sometimes loses left channel sound from all the main channels. The cross fader leaks from both sides. Most of the knobs feel like they are not properly attached. And the whole feeling is cheepish... I´m probably going to invest in a new mixer soon.



Here is my soundsystem: The old and reliable Technics Rack that I bought over fifteen years ago! I really don´t have anything to complain about this, it just rocks! The speakers could be better but they are good enough.



I also have Sennheiser HD25-1 II headphones. At the moment I don´t have proper cd players but I´m thinking of getting one or two. Anyway, since I bought the new cartridges and such, I have had new kind of inspiration to play with my records. Hopefully this enthusiasm is here to stay!