I’m all for people bashing electronic music if they are funny while they do it. He’s not funny. My advise to him would be to stick to music… if I liked any of his music.

“As a child and teenager, Rollins suffered from depression and low self-esteem.[1] In the fourth grade, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and took Ritalin for several years so that he could focus during school.” – Wikipedia.org

For more info: henryrollins.com

You can’t be a ravetard without a Glow Stick. Here’s how they are made. This video also points out that these things are chemicals so when you’re on five hits of ecstacy and your stick breaks do not drink the liquid! Who knew yellow would be so much brighter?

“10mL Diethyl Phthalate (solvent), 3mg of fluorescent dye, 50mg TCPO, 100mg sodium acetate, 3mL 30% hydrogen peroxide” – NurdRage

via Laughing Squid

Today’s edition of Sunday Sounds is a playlist of early Rave tracks. I was deeply involved with this era so this playlist could be really long but for my own sanity I just picked 10 tracks. So go take some E, crack a few glo-sticks, find your most retarded clothes and press play.

“There’s a rainbow inside your mind!” – Praga Kahn

You want to make music like this? For gear I suggest an Akai S950, discs of breakbeat samples, Roland Juno-2, Roland TR-909, Roland TB-303.

I created this playlist over at Playlist.com. My profile there: thingstocome

Here’s some video from a Rave called Tunnelvision which happened sometime in 1995. As you can see the event takes place in a public tunnel and lasts until 7:00am which causes the locals to complain. However, surprisingly the promoters secured all the proper permits so the event was not shut down. Between scenes of people dancing (which are hilarious) you get a glimpse of the local news coverage of the event.

I started playing events like this in 1992. I would bring a Roland TR-909, 2 TB-303s, SBX-80 Sync Box, a small Boss 8 channel mixer which when pushed distorted in a delightfully frighting way and a Shure SM-58 microphone to yell at people with. Sometimes I would let people come on stage and twist the knobs on one of the 303s.

This video is fun to watch but the events in New York were far more crazy.

A good way to practice your music making skills and possibly get noticed is to enter a remix contest. It’s also a good way for label’s to procure a “free” track that sits above the average remix. My old friend John Selway sent me an email this morning:

hey man

how’s things? we started Serotonin records again and we’re doing a contest with FOEM.info for an upcoming release.

http://foem.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=97

maybe you’d consider giving us a nod on your blog..?

best,
J

I met John in the early 90s at Suny Purchase. He lived down the hall from me and I heard the sound of a Roland TB-303 coming from his room. Only a few weeks earlier I was at club Mars in the Astro Turf room listening to a British DJ play Acid House for the first time. I remember that night being so blown away and wondering what the hell equipment made those sounds. John was more than happy to let me in on the secret and within a week I bought my own 303 from Rogue Music in NYC for $350. Back at school John and I started a band called Disintegrator. We had 303′s and 909′s synced to Atari’s and Amiga’s using a Roland SBX-80. We also hacked audio outputs onto a bunch of electronic toy guns and started playing live.

A DJ named Frankie Bones from Brooklyn returned from a gig in the UK. This wasn’t a normal DJ gig for him as he witnessed the birth of the Rave Scene and he was determined to show everyone in NYC what he experienced. He opened a store called Groove, a bunch of record labels and got the first techno events going in the USA called Storm Rave. This was the beginning of the Rave scene in New York. Everyone knew this was the beginning of something new and John and I had Disintegrator demo cassettes with us at all times. It wasn’t long before we met Frankie’s brother Adam X and a Jimmy Crash. They had a new label called Direct Drive and offered to release Disintegrator. At the time I had no idea I would still be doing this 16 years later!

So back to the remix contest. There are two tracks to be remixed this time: Schismism and/or Facts by Synapse. You can remix both tracks or only one. Two remixes per track is maximum. The contest ends on August 31, 2008. The prize is at least one original vinyl release on Serotonin, one remix in exchange from Synapse, Vinyl from the Serotonin backstock and some T-shirts.

For more info:
selwaymusic.net
myspace.com/serotoninrecords

Being an expat living in Berlin I remind myself of NYC by reading a photo blog aptly titled “New York Daily Photo“. When I read today’s post I knew I has to mention it here. Apparently last Friday night in Union Square there was a silent rave! First off, you know someone is old and out of touch when they use the word rave but that’s what everyone is calling it so I will play along.

Friday’s silent rave was organized by Jonnie Wesson, an 18 year old exchange student from Britain, attending the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn. Silent raves are popular in London and Europe – large scale silent discos with thousands of participants have taken place in the U.K. “The basic premise is that a hundred or a thousand or a few thousand people all turn up in a public place, turn on their own headphones and dance” says Wesson. “It’s always fantastic and weird to see thousands of people dancing silently. It’s always in a public space, but it’s not meant to cause disruption, but only because it’s the last place you’d expect that sort of thing.” The rave at Union Square was organized by Wesson through a Facebook site. It was scheduled to start at 6:17 PM. “It’s a random time that fits in with the ethos of the flash mob.” – newyorkdailyphoto.blogspot.com

I have to say this is majorly spastic. In my last post I said to go to a circuit bending festival is worth is even if your girlfriend laughs at you. If you go to a silent rave you deserve to be laughed at! Then again, the weather is nice and it’s more fun than the television.

By the way I have my own daily photo blog from Berlin. Everyday I put a photo up so come and take a look:
http://theberlinimage.blogspot.com/

The photo you see above is from: A. Seraphin
More photos from the Silent Rave on The Village Voice’s website: click here