Music

Music is a necessity. Though I focus mostly on alternative/industrial/EBM/electronic styles, my tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging.

The Rhythm of Life

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Many, many years ago (though not in a galaxy far, far away), I spent ten years as a member of the Alaska Children’s Choir.

Originally founded by Renda Horn and Julie Baxley in 1979 as the Anchorage Girl’s Choir, the Anchorage Boy’s Choir was formed a few years later as a sibling organization, and I was one of the founding members. The two eventually merged into the Anchorage Girl’s and Boy’s Choir, and over the years became first the Anchorage Children’s Choir, and eventually the Alaska Children’s Choir.

The founder and director for many of the years I was in the choir was Renda Horn, a wonderful, energetic woman with more life bottled up inside her than most other people I’ve ever known. She had a great love of both music and children, and was able to use these to corral a bunch of children into an internationally award winning children’s choir — and those of us in the choir were as fond of her as she was of us.

One year, probably around 1986 or ’87, the choir went on tour through England. I don’t remember the full itinerary anymore, but I do have quite a few good memories of the trip; from exiting a station on the London Underground to emerge practically at the base of Big Ben and being able to gaze up at it glowing golden in the sunset on a sunny evening, to one of the other choir members accidentally pulling the handle off of a cathedral door and being momentarily panicked when my father (who was chaperoning the trip) reminded him of the “you break it, you buy it” rule.

My strongest memory of the trip, though, revolves around a single song. Our show-stopper piece that year was a song called “The Rhythm of Life” — fun lyrics, an upbeat tempo, and a gorgeous arrangement that made every part fun to sing had quickly made it a favorite, and we’d all become quite fond of ending our concerts with this number.

We’d been doing quite a few performances over the course of the trip, were nearing the end of our stay in England, and emotions had been running a bit high as looking forward to returning home battled with the excitement of visiting a foreign country. One of our final concerts was in a little church in some town (whose name I have long since forgotten), and somewhat unusually, was a short performance during the church service — it may be that Renda or one of the other choir members had relations in this town and was able to set up this special performance, though I’m not entirely sure.

We sang a short selection of the pieces in our repertoire and, as had become standard, ended with “The Rhythm of Life”. We were all arranged on the steps in front of the altar, and as the song progressed, the clouds that had been obscuring the sky that morning parted, sending warm golden light through the windows of the church. The church building itself seemed to be acoustically perfect, taking our voices and wrapping them around us and the congregation and on up into the rafters and beyond. Renda’s smile grew wider as she watched “her kids” give the performance of a lifetime that day. Her eyes started to glisten, and soon started to overflow with tears of pure joy in the moment — and by the end of the song, most of the choir had joined her (and I’m not at all ashamed to admit that nearly twenty years later, I’m getting a bit misty eyed reliving the memory as I write this down).

We got a standing ovation that day — no small feat, given the stereotypical British reserve combined with our performing in the midst of a C of E service — and while the choir has received many standing ovations over the years, in my mind that has always been, and always will be, the standing ovation.

The Rhythm of LifeOver the years, that song (and that day) has popped into my head from time to time, nearly always guaranteeing a smile, no matter what I’m doing. This morning I came across an incredibly clever ad from Guinness (6Mb QT .mov, linked to the right) that uses an arrangement of “The Rhythm of Life” as its music track. Noticing a few differences in the lyrics from what I’d learned, I went searching to see what I could find out about the song.

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Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright…

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A few weeks ago, Prairie had a Monday off and was able to come out to the Vogue‘s Sunday Fetish night with me. While we were there, we heard a very nice track that caught our ear, with a slow, driving tempo, pulsing drums, and using William Blake’s The Tyger as its lyrics.

I went to ask DJ Eternal Darkness who the artist was, Googled it when I got home…and got nothing. No hits at all. When I asked Doug about it the next week, he told me that he’d gotten it straight from the artist.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to notice that in his weekly playlists for this past week, Doug had included a link to download the song! A very little bit of web sleuthing (i.e., taking the filename out of the URL to go straight to the home directory) led me to Julie Rowlette’s site, where in addition to The Tiger, she has three other (more standard house style) tracks available to download on her music page.

The Tiger is by far my favorite, but the others certainly aren’t bad at all, and Julie’s got a gorgeous voice. Go give her a listen!

iTunes “Tiger, The” by Juliette 6 (2005, 6:26).

Podcast 8: Eclecticism

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And again, I’m running late. Sensing a trend yet? This, then, is the next of my mixes to go up — and probably the last one for a little while, as I don’t have any ready to go up, and the next few weeks are probably going to be busy with apartment hunting for Prairie and I. Hopefully once things are settled down again, I’ll actually start putting new mixes up. That’s the plan, at least.

This is probably my favorite of the mixes I have available right now. There’s no real set style through the piece, I just slapped together a bunch of tracks that I happened to like a lot. Luckily, it all seems to work pretty well…possibly better than it should?

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Eclecticism (1h 17m 32s, 88.74Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Dario G ‘Carnival de Paris’
  2. Goodmen ‘Give it Up (Batacuda Refrescante/Hot Tracks)’
  3. Chemical Brothers ‘It Doesn’t Matter’
  4. Fatboy Slim ‘Song for Shelter’
  5. Lionrock ‘Are You Ready to Testify?’
  6. A3 ‘Woke Up This Morning (Drillaz in the Church)’
  7. Psykosonik ‘Unlearn (Hot Tracks)’
  8. Everything But the Girl ‘Wrong (Deep Dish)’
  9. Annie Lennox ‘Little Bird (Utah Saints)’
  10. Clivilles & Cole ‘A Deeper Love (Underground Club)’
  11. Sagat ‘Fuk Dat (Raw)’
  12. Lemon Interrupt ‘Big Mouth’
  13. Technoclassix ‘In the Hall of the Techno King’

The DJ Test

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Rebecca just got a job as a professional DJ for AMS Entertainment, and in her post celebrating her successful certification, mentioned that she’d had to take a test to get the job. This struck my sense of humor, and has prompted the following exchange…

Rebecca:

I just passed the test today, I’m finally a certified DJ for AMS Entertainment!! My first event is this Saturday afternoon!

Me:

…there’s a test for DJ’ing? (boggle) Is it multiple choice?

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Podcast 07: Where Time Becomes A Loop

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Ooops — and I thought I was late last week, when the mix showed up in the afternoon instead of the morning. This time, I’m two days late! Sorry about that…. In any case, here’s the next of my mixes to go up. We’re moving back into longer sessions again, with this one coming in at just under an hour. Of all the mixes I’ve had sitting around, this is one of my top three favorites, with my third favorite being last week’s ‘ToriMix’, and my top favorite coming next week.

Incidentally, DJ H. Geek (aka Kory Roth), the artist behind the second track in this mix, is a friend of mine from back in Anchorage who I used to DJ with at Gig’s. Good guy, and apparently living down in Portland now. RelveleR, who contribute the sixth track, is also part of Kory’s Collective Conscience team. More tracks from Kory can be found at his site.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Where Time Becomes A Loop (58m 41s, 80.61Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Orbital ‘Time Becomes’

  2. DJ Geek ‘Travelling (Long)’

  3. Erasure ‘Run to the Sun (Amber Solaire)’

  4. BT ‘Remember (Paul Van Dyk’s Recollected)’

  5. Blue Amazon ‘The Javelin’

  6. ReleveleR ‘Sourpuss (UBE)’

  7. Sarah MacLachlan ‘I Love You (BT)’

  8. ATB ‘Don’t Stop (SQ-1)’

  9. Aqua ‘Dr. Jones (Antiloop Club)’

  10. Orbital ‘Time Becomes’

Podcast 06: ToriMix v2

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A little late today, but here’s number six in my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. Another “theme” mix, this is a forty-five minute mix of Tori Amos’ dance remixes. As a fan of Tori and bouncing around on the dance floor, this one was probably bound to come out sooner or later during my DJ days.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: ToriMix v2 (46m 37s, 53.36Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Tori Amos ‘God (Rainforest Resort)’

  2. Tori Amos ‘In the Springtime of his Voodoo (Hasbrouck Heights Club)’

  3. Tori Amos ‘Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’)’

  4. Tori Amos ‘Jackie’s Strength (Wedding Cake Meltdown)’

  5. Tori Amos ‘Talula (BT’s Synethaesia)’

  6. BT feat. Tori Amos ‘Blue Skies (Hot Tracks)’

Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers

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Bag'n'Pipe HoppersOne of the local street performers I enjoy running into is the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers. Actually two performers who team up together from time to time — Don P. Scobie on bagpipes* and Jesse Bishop (or Bishnutz) on drums — their combination of traditional Scottish piping and modern hip-hop beats is always fun to stumble across.

Last Friday evening while waiting for the Half-Blood Prince to come out, Prairie and I took a wander and found the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers playing at the corner of 4th and Pine. Their playing had attracted a small crowd of onlookers, including a few b-boys breakdancing beside them, so I grabbed my camera and recorded a few minutes of video.

May 2010 Update: Though the Bag’n’Pipe Hoppers are no more, Don has gone on to form a new outfit, Nae Regrets. Worth checking out!

  • Prairie’s especially fond of running across Don (a.k.a. “the hot bagpiper guy“), whether or not he’s playing with Jesse. Her only complaint about the performance we saw was that Don wasn’t wearing his kilt. :)

Podcast 05: A Fine Day’s Mix

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The fifth of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. This one is another “theme” idea I had, and depending on how much you like the base song, could be either enjoyable or excruciating, as it strings together four versions of the same theme into one 22-minute track. I actually like it…kind of dreamy background music.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: A Fine Day’s Mix (22m 51s, 26.16Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Opus III “It’s A Fine Day”
  2. Orbital “Halcyon & On & On”
  3. Orbital “Halcyon (Hot Tracks)”
  4. Miss Jane “It’s a Fine Day (Exit)”

Podcast 04: Mission Accomplished

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The fourth of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. This one starts a few that move away from the “Difficult Listening Hour” series to explore some other ideas I had running through my head. It’s shorter, not quite half an hour long, and has something of a ‘spy music’ theme.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Mission Accomplished (27m 41s, 31.69Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen ‘Mission Impossible (Junior’s Hard/Intro)’
  2. Propellerheads ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’
  3. Moby ‘James Bond Theme (Hot Tracks)’
  4. Propellerheads ‘Spy Break’
  5. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen ‘Mission Impossible (Junior’s Hard)’