Evan Mark - Man Behind Bluetech

I've been a bug fan of his music, it's to me a mix of dub, psychedelic, ambient, downtempo, electro, and all of those are mixed so elegantly and beautiful. And his music always maintain some spirituality and very northern california redwood vibe. I'd strongly recommend to listen up these 2 albums, 'Prima Materia' and 'Sines and Singularities' if you haven't known yet and into downtempo, ambient, dub sort of sounds. 

Anyway, recently I found this web site that interviews, I believe, electro music scene related folks, called, Fake Science, and I downloaded a couple episodes and was listening them. And one of the episodes was interviewing Evan Mark a.k.a Bluetech! I mean I've never really heard him talking before. It was always me dancing and him playing music or DJing every time I saw him. So to me it's so interesting to know how he gets inspired and make his music. Here is the interview mp3 from the Fake Science site. 

The interview was actually done almost a year ago and in the interview basically they're introducing his new music experiment with this released album called 'Emotional Ecology'. And this excitement had totally hit my body this morning once they introduced a sample from the album. It's minimal techno/house, psychedelic, progressive, electro with the spiritual vibe. But it really has an emphasis on minimal techno and psychedelic trance and those are mixed so perfectly and again elegantly. I used to listen psychedelic a lot but not these days, I've been into some other types of music, but always still love some essence of the progressive side of sound, its rhythm and speed. And one of the music types I've been into these days is Minimal Techno. Especially if I can feel the sounds and rhythm are coming from psychedelic background it drives me nuts! 

And this new album is jut about what I was hoping Minimal Techno to be and actually it went beyond my imagination! I'm still listening this album (yes, I've already got the album from iTunes!) when I'm typing but I've already totally been into this. Some are Minimal/Psychedelic, some are progressive, some are electro, some are I don't know, it's so experimental and being beyond existing music genre or what so ever. And this is the reason why I like his music and his type of musician. They always try to find a new sound and music, go beyond ordinal boundary and create something new that people have hard time to describe it but the sounds provides us pure excitement and shaking a whole body before I notice it. 

Getting our from where they've already establish themselves and could be so comfort, exploring some different worlds and trying understand them with what they have, and transforming them into a new world. 

Long story short, this album is definitely a classic and art! I totally appreciate what he has done and accomplished with this album. Since it was released a year ago, so I don't know what he's into these days. But I'll be seeing him dropping a set at Earth Dance at this September, I just can't wait !  I'm sure I'll be just going crazy and nicely shaked by his show. 

Gilles Peterson

Gilles Peterson has been my god of music for long years. First time I got into him was almost 10 years ago if not longer. He introduced me so many different kind of music in the world. Acid Jazz, Soul, Funk, Brazilian, Disco, Electro, and so many other music. And he always mix all those different kind of music so naturally together and keep crowds moving their ass ! I love all of his mix CDs and he's just so great.

So last weekend I was at Summer Stage in Central Park for some artists including Jamie Lidel, Janelle Monáe and Gilles Peterson was doing DJ between the acts. But to me I was there for Gilles Peterson while to many of the crowds he was just djing to keep music going on. So it was not really Gilles Peterson show though me and my friends were totally our ass got shaked. But once we found out that he was going to be playing at Cielo on last Thursday we were like we absolutely go to go, and we did.

It was totally Gilles Peterson night, he was playing so many different kinds of music, D&B, Electro, Soul, Funk, Disco, HipHop, Downtempo, Brazilian, Acid Jazz, oh god I can't even remember how many of those different music he was playing and guiding us through. And of course all the time we were dancing like monkey! I haven't danced that hard for a while. It was totally that experience where you couldn't stop having a big smile on your face and keep moving and jumping around.

There was actually a surprise at the middle, guess what Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest was there middle of the crowd. And we couldn't even notice until Gilles Peterson played one of Q-Tip's song and introduced him. Only NYC! and me being totally a guy from Japan, I had to take a pic with him!



Anyway, the show was totally awesome and pure fun. And I felt lucky just being there to get the vibe of everybody being their for his music and shaking their ass the whole time!

Karsh Kale & Midival Punditz

Last night I went to this show where Karsh Kale & Midival Punditz were playing their set. I have been listening their music
for last 5 years or so and I really love their music. Especially coming from SF Karsh Kale is like local champion but he's really global. And he's only been progressive and innovative on his music. Mixing with Indian music and sound with electro and breakbeats influence. And I just love Midival Punditz music, their indian/breakbeats/electro just hits a right spot of my soul and
get my ass shaking! So last night, two of them got together and were performing, once I knew that was going to be happening, I was totally excited and imagine how the show was turning out to be.

Ok, so their performance was absolutely awesome and the music was so beautiful and mind blowing. And I couldn't stop shake my ass. But the problem was that the venue or the set. So everybody was sitting at their table, some were eating dinner, some were drinking, some were waiting for their waitress to come to their table for orders. But nobody was dancing, NO DANCING!! I was like how that was possible ??? with this awesome music, yes again, their music was electro and little psychedelic breakbeats plus Indian influence, ok but it's absolutely ELECTRO! that kind of music shake your ass and you couldn't stop moving your body to any direction. And here I was with this maybe 100 or 200 people with this awesome music and NO DANCING!!

I couldn't believe that, but bottom line, the performance and the music were totally great. And with Karsh Kale drumming, which I've never seen, I like Karsh Kale even better!

So here are some video from the show.



And one more.

MacBook Air!

Ok, so after thinking going back and forth finally I've bought this new mac ! Yes, that's right, MacBook Air ! Wooow! 

I was not sure about the price, the small disk size, and that it doesn't have a DVD/CD drive, but I still could see much more advantage of having this Air. First of all, the weight, it's absolutely light and it's so thin that I can bring it anywhere and even that I can carry along with my company's laptop when I have to travel. And the design, yes, at the end of the day, it's a design. Of course it has to function in a way that I need. But after having two Mac computers I don't have any doubt on the usability compared to PCs. So that's covered. 

And there is this $99 DVD/CD drive so when I need it, for example when I want to watch DVDs, then I can just plug it in and that's it, I can enjoy movies on my Air when I'm on Amtrak train to Boston or air planes to San Francisco! 

So anyway, I go this new Air today and have been playing around. So far so good. Of course it's just the first day, it has to be good after spending so much money! And one of the reasons I got this Air is to re-start this blog. Ahmm, yep, that's really nothing to do with Air, it's just a matter of my lazyness or persistency problem. But long story short, this is the solution I came up with, so we'll see. Hahaha!