SYNAESTHESIA (2003)

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filmed live, one take, @ QC Studios in Montréal.

film & concept by TETSUOMI ANZAI, who imagined positioning this footage alongside that of a pianist & a conductor to demonstrate the fluidity of expression marked by the hands — regardless of the instrument. blog post on the filming.

“I hope to release a DVD of the final footage in the near future”.
—- (It only took 10 years to get it online.)

Camera shaking courtesy of the Rat Man; and yes, the crossfader broke around 2 minutes in. Deep bows to my compadres of the era: all those at SAT, Casa del Popolo, Mitchell @ intr_version, NAW, Bruno @ Laïka, and with those I shared the decks & stage, Fishead, Daniel Gardner, Johnny Ranger & the Mole.

Safety Scissors Live & In His Socks

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SAFETY SCISSORS
live & in his socks

with:
TOBIAS.DJ
RENNIE FOSTER
MARC GERRARD

SATURDAY MAY 4th 2013 | $15 @ DOOR
THE DEN @ BARCLAY | 1348 ROBSON | VANCOUVER

https://www.facebook.com/events/367502936695994/

It has been many years since Vancouver was shaken sideays by the quirky deep house of Safety Scissors. A man before his time, he influenced the modern house & nu-disco sound of Berlin. With acclaimed albums on PLUG RESEARCH and Pole’s ~SCAPE, he blends his own strange but sexy brand of naked soul, singing LIVE with elements of post-pop, dub house and glitch techno. He calls it “dork electronic.” We call it awesome. We welcome him back to the rainy city for the Canadian premiere of his new album on Ellen Allien’s BPITCH CONTROL, IN A MANNER OF SLEEPING.

=== SAFETY SCISSORS LIVE
BPitch Control | Berlin / NYC

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Safety+Scissors
http://www.youtube.com/artist/safety-scissors

* LIVE & in his socks 12:00-1:30AM *

Surrounded by the likes of Kit Clayton, Sutekh, Twerk, Silent Servant, Kid 606, and Matmos, Matthew Patterson Curry was a key collaborator of the San Francisco experimental electronic scene from the late ’90s onward. In May of 2000 at the very first MUTEK festival in Montreal, he debuted his live approach to future house music, singing quirky phrases overtop glitch and dub rhythms. The dub-tinged technopop was culled into the PLUG RESEARCH album PARTS WATER which was hailed as a pioneering exploration of sub-pop songwriting with experimental techno.

Subsequent worldwide touring and invitations to well respected festivals soon followed, leading him to his obligatory Berlin stint. With TAINTED LUNCH, his second full length album on Pole’s ~SCAPE label, he strayed further from his initial techno roots, defining his own brand of “dork pop”, enlisting musical comrades Kevin Blechdom, Francoise Cactus (Stereo Total), and Erlend Øye. He also has lent his talents for numerous remixes, including Matmos, Sketch Show featuring Yellow Magic Orchestra, and indie bands Grizzly Bear and Architecture In Helskinki.

During all this he also founded his PROPTRONIX label, releasing acclaimed acts like My Robot Friend and the Pigeon Funk project with SUTEKH.

With thirst for growth he relocated to New York in 2010. His third album, IN A MANNER OF SLEEPING, is forthcoming in MAY 2013 on Ellen Allien’s BPITCH CONTROL, and arises out of an extended period of recording silence. Besides the standard love and identity fare it covers themes of writer’s block, sloth, perseverance, happenstance, infinity, and relativity.

=== RENNIE FOSTER
Transmat, Dirty Works, Rebirth | Vancouver / Tokyo

http://www.facebook.com/renniefoster
http://soundcloud.com/renniefoster

* on the decks 1:30-2:30AM *

Rennie Foster has been a well respected figure in the Canadian music and art community since he was just a teenager. He influenced many as an early pioneer of the Hip-Hop / B-Boy movement and later the House Music and Techno / Rave scene.

Rennie Foster has released with Detroit labels such as Motech, Soiree, Subject Detroit, Wallshaker, Teknotika and classic techno labels like F-Communicatios, Monoid, and Synewave. He has remixed artists such as Swayzak, DJ Bone, Alain Ho, Juan Atkins and has been remixed by the likes of James Zabiela, Kiki, Mark Broom, Claude Young, and Rodriguez Jr. His tracks appear on mix CDs by Kevin Saunderson, Trentmoller and Derrick May. He was consistently ranked in the top 50 DJs in Japan by LOUD Magazine and has played venues all across Japan and in cities from New York to Paris and Frankfurt.

Rennie is most recognized for his underground anthem “Devil’s Water” released from Rebirth Records and has been featured several times in publications like DJ Magazine UK, Mixer, Mixmag, and XLR8R. His recent hit collaboration with MC Moka Only “Connect Like Four” was remixed by Samuel L. Session, Uner and members of Cobblestone Jazz and was the most charted track on Resident Advisor for April, 2011. He also had a hit in 2011 with “Savior” featuring the late Detroit legend Aaron Carl on vocals and a massive remix by Coyu and Edu Imbernon. Rennie’s tracks are often found in a diverse group of well known DJs sets from Sasha, Pete Tong and James Holden to Derrick May, Laurent Garnier and Dave Clarke.

Currently, Rennie is working on an EP for Thoughtless Music, collaborating with House Of Ninja NYC and remixing rave legends Altern-8 — amongst many other things.

=== TOBIAS.DJ
IO Sound | Whistler / Montreal

https://djtobias.com/
http://iosound.ca/
https://soundcloud.com/djtobias

* on the decks 10:45-12:00AM *

As a co-founder of the technoWest network with Dub Gnostic, tobias was one of the first to book Safety Scissors (and Sutekh) outside of San Francisco, bringing them in for the <ST-C> event CYDONIA in 1999, followed by an infamous shakedown at the Video-In with Loscil in 2002. For details from that era, check: http://shrumtribe.com/html/events.htm

Hailing from the West Coast technoculture, tobias has dj’ed warehouse raves to logging road occupations, art galleries to festivals, from Montreal to Amsterdam, Barcelona to Berlin, playing festivals worldwide including MUTEK, the New Forms Festival, Sonic Acts, MEG, and Bass Coast. DJing since 1993, tobias’ style is marked by the cut-up & non-linear mixing styles of 3-deck future techno and house, from the Afrofuturist sounds of Detroit techno and electro to 21st century minimal and dub. He can be heard on the DERadio.ca mixshow ION STORM every second Tuesday:http://deradio.ca/

Tobias has released four albums of experimental electronic music and space techno, working with Tomas Phillips, Katherine Kline, Martijn Comes, and Richard Chartier, as the offworld director of experimental electronic and space techno label IO SOUND [http://iosound.ca/]. From 2002–2008 he was Concept Engineer at the Society for Art and Technology (SAT) in Montreal, where he curated technology arts events and exhibitions [http://upgrademtl.org/]. He has likewise thrown numerous underground events as founding member of the shock surrealist outfit <ST> [http://shrumtribe.com/], hosted three radio shows with CiTR 101.9FM, and held DJ residencies in several cities worldwide.

=== MARC GERRARD
DERadio, DE Kollektiv | Vancouver
(also my brithday!!)

http://deradio.ca/artists/marc-gerrard.html
https://soundcloud.com/m-gerrard

* on the decks 9:00-10:45PM *

As far back as he can remember Marc Gerrard has been surrounded by quality music. Born in Southport, England (it’s grim up north) he comes from one of the most prolific musical countries on the planet and thus brought with him an appetite for music unique to the English.

After his first concert experience of seeing the Jackson 5 (reunion tour) at the impressionable age of 10, he has since undergone an evolution that has taken him through britpop, indie, funk and into electronic music where now as a DJ he combines the best of all his experience and has developed a virtuosity with his ability to blend the organic with the electronic, traversing genres and taking his listeners on unpredictable yet soulful musical journeys.

After playing out around the city at various venues and festivals, M. Gerrard met Major Tom whereby they quickly developed a kinship through their similar musical proclivities for blending the organic with the electronic. They most recently teamed up to form the DE Kollektiv where with their sound, they strive to explore the boundaries of genre and craft while pushing what defines electronic music. But through all this they always remember and maintain the core value of connecting with their audience by providing a memorable musical experience

ION STORM 001: comatose (I)

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ION STORM (001): comatose (I)
== mixed by tobias.dj ==

I be pleased to present the first broadcast of ION STORM, a fortnightly episode of interstellar mixing on DERadio.

(( a barrage of electronic particles ))

ION STORM broadcasts interstellar techno, future house & offworld ambient from the vaults of TOBIAS.DJ. Prepare your space voyage with occult sounds drawn from 20+ years as a technoculture catalyst and turntablist. The mission — to invade consensus reality with an all-out assault of alien frequencies. Some sex in zero gravity included. Occasional interplanetary guests from the technosphere and label IOSOUND.ca.

Liquid Fire (2012)

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LIVESTREAM HERE | YOUTUBE HD HERE

Round two showdown at the DMT Lab, flipping through some new tracks that touch on the bangin’ interface between dub & Detroit techno (with an acid taste on the tongue, of course). Thanks to DJ Test Pilot for filming the mix & providing the requisite shots of liquid fire, VJ Matsui808 for tripping me out (and upping the ante with the dark magus decahedron), and J. for stitching the whole ensemble together (a time consuming and thankless task). During this mix I blew a screw out of the crossfader, experimented with some Traktor Beatmasher & Delay efx, and switched over to a few slabs of actual vinyl at the end… as always, nothing prepared, and of course no auto sync.

 

Slave to the Rhythm (2012)

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LIVESTREAM HERE // SUBSCRIBE TO DMT LAB FOR MORE.*

A chance encounter with the DMT Lab — while writing an article on the world drumming & trance crew for Pique — led me to throw down this unprepared set on the 29th June 2012. I ran out of time to organise newer material, but what you are hearing is a slice from several (digital) crates that bear titles like “the electrik technik” and “showroom.” At points, this mix encapsulates the moment where techno meets deep trance, and where psychedelia overwhelms all sound, lost in swirling and deep rhythms, a motion and a feeling irrespective of the semantic tags of genre and style. It’s the driving rhythm, a becoming slave to the rhythm, that defines the core experience of electronic (dance) music.

Which is why this mix is called slave to the rhythm. The Afrofuturist acid roller is buried within — a remix of the Grace Jones 1985 classic — alongside a few other modern throwbacks including a wickedly dark spanking of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus by Heartthrob (1989; 2006) and Mathew Jonson’s remix of Inner City’s Good Life (1988; 2009).

*Of note, though the Livestream has poorer quality video, it doesn’t have the editing glitches of the Youtube video above. Apples & oranges.

lost in a bc forest (1997)

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lost in a bc forest

DOWNLOAD LOST IN A BC FOREST (SIDE A)
DOWNLOAD LOST IN A BC FOREST (SIDE B)

Vancouver is a peculiar place: its geography offers many different kinds of spaces for intervention and occupation. While warehouses dot its ports and industrial outlands, the city itself is surrounded by ocean, forest, and mountains. Logging roads snake up through thickly forested valleys. Waterbars and potholes bar access. Forging on means losing site of urban civilization. In these curious pockets, rave culture thrived. Many of the best raves were held far up these dirt roads, among trees and glacier-fed rivers. Occasionally, curious locals would arrive, drunk and confrontational, in pick-ups and ATVs. The best trick was to seduce them with Colt .45, spiked with a bit of pharmacology designed to endear the mind to new experiences. Conversions happened. People’s lives were changed.

This set was recorded at one such event in July, 1997. A small, but intense affair, a nameless event. I felt I had not yet mastered my skills, which was true: I could not yet replicate in live situations the consistency of mixing I was able to sustain in the studio. Sets were hit or miss; but either way, they were inspired, and a certain kind of raver — one given over to wild abandon, to giving oneself up to the noise — liked what I was doing. Unlike many other DJs of the era, I was fearless — or some would say, ignorant of the dancefloor. It was not that I didn’t care whether my experiments failed or not — I most certainly did care — but I felt that the passion of the mix, its intensity, mattered more than its perfection. I was interested in quarter-beats and chaotic, helicopter mixes; I desired speed and fury, and I rarely, if ever, planned out the order of my records beyond a track or two. These were techniques and strategies which also interested Mills and Hawtin. But I hadn’t yet trained myself to moderate headphone and monitoring volume — it took years to focus upon lower-volume mixing — so my ears fatigued quickly. These were all lessons learned, over time. But what remains is my first duplicated mix, part of a series I called Not-So-Perfect Mixtapes, of which this is volume 2. On the front cover is a clip-art GIF of a red Coleman lantern — a common source of light for backcountry endeavours of acid-fuelled stargazing and ritual dance debauchery.

tobias.dj
May 2012

cydonia.sessions.o1 (2010)

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tobias.dj @ Upgrade International NYC (2005)

DOWNLOAD CYDONIA.SESSIONS.o1

In 2010, I recorded a series of online broadcasts for net pirates & djs entitled the cydonia.sessions. Each set followed a thematic resonance through strains of techno, house, and electro, capturing the way in which I tend to construct and deconstruct sets around fragmented motifs and recurring signatures of sound. The sets were recorded by a third-party server; some came out alright, others had unfortunate gaps of several seconds that led to frustratingly incomplete recordings. The cydonia.sessions were also designed as tests of my Traktor Scratch platform, which I configured as a digital vinyl system that required manual beatmatching. With the Traktor Scratch (Pro) software combined with my Technics SL1200s and the Mackie d4.Pro mixer, all the parameters of techno-turntablism are still at play. The main difference is that the source of the music has shifted from the vinyl medium itself to digital files on the laptop. Vinyl has been divorced from its recording content, becoming a pure form, an instrument for performativity. Instead of selecting and manipulating analog vinyl, I work with digital vinyl, which offers similar tactile methods of control and play. Indeed this is all it is: a control/playback component of the turntable-mixer assemblage. Part of me appreciates this. Yet, the effect is not the same: the laptop screen is distracting, and I miss the aesthetics of crate-digging records and flipping on and off the vinyl. I don’t close my eyes as much. These are all things to be overcome, as I can no longer purchase vinyl where I live. DJ record stores — like movie theatres, indie book sellers, and movie rental outlets — are a thing of the past. Objects that combined content with functionality are obsolete; today’s objects channel content from elsewhere (a laptop, cloud, distributed network) while their form serves to manipulate this delocalized content. “Thick” objects have become “empty” containers. By splitting content from form, digital vinyl has opened up other possibilities (such as liberating the wear and tear of vinyl from the degradation of the music itself), even as it forms part of a trend of dismantling public space (I miss the Thursday nights at Bassix, when new vinyl would arrive; all the city’s DJs would be there, hunting through the fresh wax). With digital integration, I have certainly taken advantage of the effects and looping possibilities of Traktor with the addition of the X1 controller. I’ve often worked with effects in the mix, and Traktor’s selection is superb, with the X1 offering well-designed handling that bridges turntablism with performative remixing. The cydonia.sessions capture a few of the results, as well as forays into my ever growing digital collection of music.

Photo — tobias.dj @ Upgrade International NYC, Eyebeam (2005).

tobias.dj
April 2012

within.indecent.obscurity [take two] (2009)

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This is a mix to drink absynthe too. Living in Whistler is an exercise in musical & cultural isolation. I should’ve realised that trying to play music such as this in a “dude? where’s my skis?” culture was a lost cause. Even as I held down a residency at the Savage Beagle (in Whistler Village), attracting European djs & househeads (and filling the upstairs bar with head-nodding patrons), I couldn’t convince management (nor other local DJs/promoters) that what I was doing was worthwhile—or even popular elsewhere. “It’s hot in Berlin!” I would say—but it would matter not. Whistler is not the place for risk-taking mixing, subtlety, or experimental approaches to dancefloor semantics. So I present to you my manifesto of house music, mixed with abandon, and without precision.

This mix dives deep into minimal house & abstract rhythms. The psychedelic, drifting effects of ketaminimal, held for long, drawn out mixes, warps the head. I can dance to shit like this for hours.

This was the first mix I released where I used a Digital Vinyl System (Traktor Scratch). All manual beatmatching, and no prepared records.

tobias.dj
April 2012

within.indecent.obscurity (2009)

dusk & cloud (2009)

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dusk & cloud (2009)

DOWNLOAD DUSK & CLOUD

This mix gathers a few strains of my becomings as a DJ, namely minimalist strains of deep house and dub techno dating back to the mid’90s. Though my mixtapes from the late ’90s were hard as nails, I began by djing deep house @ Sugar Refinery (RIP), with Robby Luv Dub as my adopted mentor. I often mixed deep house with dub techno at the post-rave Sunday sessions and loft parties of the era. This mix touches upon a few of those records, though keeping this side of the techno aesthetic (a retro deep house mix is still to come). Still vinyl, still unprepared.

tobias.dj
April 2012