NOBODY LISTENS TO TECHNO - Cuidad Mag Blog Mention

... there's been a techno resurgence in Los Angeles of late. I'm not talking about techno in the generic sense. People often use the word incorrectly, as if it's interchangeable with any kind of rave- or super-club-oriented music. It's not. Techno is a sub-genre of dance music, most-often affiliated with its '80s birthplace, Detroit, but also know for its evolution in Europe, particularly Frankfurt and Berlin. It is usually distinguished from similarly thumping house and trance music by its defiant minimalism, use of cymbal sounds and glitchy, bleepy, computer-crazed samples. Interestingly, Latinos have had a strong hand in the local resurgence. Angeleno DJs David Alvarado and John Tejada have become the West Coast's kings of techno and are actually more in demand in Europe than they are here (there's a bigger market for it there). Area parties, however, have created a vibrant place for them to play when they’re in town. Robert Pointer's Compression events at Latino-owned King King in Hollywood have Tejada and Luis Rosario as "resident" DJs.

Read the whole thing: Ciudad Mag Blog. Thanks to Dennis Romero of Danceblogga for dropping the good word!

Some Picts from Compression w/ Ryan Elliott - 6-22-07

Thanks to those who came out!

Full Frontal - Sasha's Maven Controller

Decent shot of Sasha's Maven controller - and its set up. This is from Rukes' site of pictures where he played at Vangaurd this last Saturday night.

All the rest of the picts are here:

http://photo.rukes.com/vanguard73/vanguard73.html

I love Derrick May.

He's a straight shooter as far as I am concerned. He even laid it out for Los Angeles when I had him here last year for Compression in a YouTube interview overseas - and we are the better for it in many ways (i.e. we'll take that Pepsi challenge Derrick!). :) Good quote here from the interview you gotta read over at Resident Advisor:

Do you think you are as enthusiastic now as you've ever been?

Yeah, I'm fired up. Tonight I was really pissed off with my set. I made a couple of bad mixes. I'm exhausted and I know that, but I don't like to blame shit on my physical whatevers. I don't accept that from anybody else so I don't accept it from myself. But it just irked me that I wasn't able to finish off like I wanted to. So if I wasn't fired up, I wouldn't care about shit like that anymore. I'd just go through the motions and be Derrick May, make my money and go home. But I care. I really care. So I'm completely fired up in a different way because now my motivation is to stay on top of what I do. I'm not interested in conquering the world with this shit anymore. I just want to stay on top of what I do. Look out for mine and try to make things happen

Go read the whole thing.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=823

Beatportal - Looks great.

This looks like this new effort by Beatport may actually be an essential daily stop in my internet travels for news. I've been watching it for a week or so, and its really shaping up to have an editorial voice as well as links to information around the internet. Having an editorial voice that shapes the news is a good differentiator for what essentially is available in other forms elsewhere - so big ups to Beatport for adding more value to their store.

Disclaimer: I've been a fan of Beatport since they launched. :)

http://www.beatportal.com/