I was pretty disorganised when I left, I was not a super prepared as I had hoped. Prepared as the DJ, and hooked up online for business, filming, and diligent about what I’d need to take. I ended figuring that I’d been working too hard, and my main thing was that I needed the holiday, so just accept it.

There’s what happened and how I feel about it. What happened is more interesting, but how I feel is more valuable to me.

That’s debatable because in 20 years I will value the fact that we went on tour for a week and we went to vineyards, tasting wine and picking apricots, and we broke into an abandoned office building in the christchurch quake zone, chilled philosophically in the christchurch jungle, I found a rabbits foot, we partied with all kinds of random chicks in queenstown and the sexy dentist in wanaka, where we caused crazy havoc in the hotel room with our unhinged drinking. The vanished world and elephant rocks to oamaru, and our dunedin stop down into the haunted pub, Chick’s in port chalmers.

All that stuff is interesting, and it’s brilliant because there’s a story to tell, but more so, psychologically you feel a sense of having been in the narrative, passed through it. That’s the richness of experience that is life. I come back and I don’t even understand all the stress I put myself under, I don’t understand why I was on that insane archiving binge . . . because I felt that raking over the past was more valuable than going out and living.

There’s a time for everything. I had felt constrained and caught in my own rigid routine, and I felt this slogging data mining into the dank hillside shafts leading into the past, was legitimate. It is legitimate, but you need to have more varied and healthy stimulation. I struggle for stimulation, that’s why I need this, I need to do this to progress forward physically, geographically and absorb understanding and knowledge of altered environments.

I need to charge up on this material. I need it. I need to disrupt the pattern in order to break up clogged up channels that are stuck in a loop.

At one early point in the tour I thought I was bored, it felt old, but that’s at the same point as where in most tours a day or so in, I’d be depressed and overwhelmed, withdrawn from the internet and my other crutches, irrationally feeling withdrawn from your bed, your shower, fresh clothes. That’s important, because you’re jarred from the routine you cling to.

But because this tour was more organised and smooth, at that extraction stage it was just a vague and numb disappointment. It’s the shock of recognising you’re not in kansas.

The gigs weren’t that great though, which is a pretty important component, I don’t care about crappy gigs, but you need your hit as a performer you need to get your fix of crowd response. Without that . . . well it’s part of the experience. So it about evened out, since we had a good time and checked out some cool shit. It was a bit of a disappointment to not really rock any crowds, but it was balanced out by the fact that I mostly had beds, showers, and time to check out stuff. Main issue was too many times where I thought I’d have a chance to grab a coffee or meal that didn’t happen.

I don’t know why I didn’t take those mocha sachets for coffee, and a bag of really good muesli, that’s a decent road breakfast. More the issue with meals is whether we have meals on the tab because I need a decent meal but I’d rather avoid paying for it. I like to eat at the venue anyway it feels uh congruent or something. This tour the new management wanted to cover meals, which was great, but you know me, I have to have a feed of something decent. Perhaps my standards were not really appropriate for the tour because y’know I eat some expensive shit, that’s what I’m used to.

But yeah I gotta do it, I gotta go from place to place. You need to surprise yourself and smash the routine. This is the best way I know how to do that, and I gotta keep doing it whether it costs me or it feels like a waste of time or not. I need to make it work, because if I’m going to do it

It doesn’t make sense to sit still, because you become set and limited in your ability to broaden your perspective and adapt. It doesn’t make sense to distract yourself, you’ve got to actually progress forward, which actually is moving forward in space and receiving this input as experience, knowledge and inspiration. Born to tour baby, permanent tour!

Maybe I should get a mix done for my tour. I’m going on tour and I thought I’d better get sorted out. Well now I’m supposed to be leaving in the morning and I am completely unorganised.

- Oh yeah, I do stuff like making music and DJing and stuff I just don’t tend to write about it, it’s y’know? Like dancing to architecture.

So yeah I’m going on tour doing 5 dates in the south island.

Jan 18: Franz Josef
Jan 19: Wanaka
Jan 20:Dunedin
Jan 21: Queenstown
Jan 24: Christchurch

So the first thing to think about is what to play. Any fool can jump up and play some music but if you want to represent yourself as a “real DJ” then a degree of preperation is involved. Anybody can learn to beat match but a real DJ does his homework.

Tonight I am doing my DJ homework.

Now that I’m key mixing I truly feel like I can improvise and roll out on the fly, but also a few things have changed in my DJ style since I last went on tour over 2 years ago. Really 2 years? Really. I’m not so purist about playing new tunes any more. I always play more state of mind and shapeshifter in my sets anyway when I’m on tour, but now in the last year I’m not really apologetic about playing big ramping sets of classic smash ‘em up combos if the audience aren’t discerning.

I think Drum and Bass is becoming more similar to house, with a slighter older audience than you’re average brostepper, but a ramping set can still pull in the kids for a rage, out of centre city clubs they aren’t so fussy. It’s pretty good really, if the vibe is low key I can roll out deeper tunes in key, if the vibe starts to ramp, I can switch into my long chains of banger combos.

So DJ homework means key detecting all the tunes I might choose to play.

A DJ has to be prepared, because the more you rely on technology and systems, the more you can be caught short when systems or technology falls over, so you have to be more prepared. I personally have to be more prepared because when it comes to DJing – like most things, but particularly DJing – I don’t handle stress well, and little upsets can get to me. Shitty gear at the venue is nothing you can do anything about, you just have to do the best you can, which I have experiencce of, but when your own systems let you down or are challenged, that’s where you need back up.

I’m just thinking because in the past I’ve had real trouble with nero and burning formats – I’ve had trouble over recent years turning up to parties with just mp3’s when they only have decks that will play audio, but on tour and now these days more often, I either have my mark 3’s, or clubs are more likely to have decks that play data.

but my secret problem right now is I have to rename my tunes in such a way the CDJ recognises them and puts the key code visibly in the display, for some reason, my name changes to show the key code for each song aren’t displaying, so I can’t really improvise until I sort that.

But there’s possibly places where drum and bass won’t be suitable and of course if you look at the bigger picture of me doing the upfm beat dungeon new zealand electronica show, and just generally, I want to expand my horizons a bit more, I want to be bringing up the standard of my New Zealand dance music sets by not being so blase about it, actually keying all my tunes and culling out tunes that aren’t that good, or at least having some “go to” stuff so I can look at other spaces and palces for me as a DJ.

Not just drum and bass and new zealand electronic music, but also doing sets of kind of 1995 – 2005 classics, having a really really solid library, so you’ve got all your bpms and keys grouped together so you can start really working out and going on journeys and getting opportunities to play parties to older people who are going to want to listen to music and beats from 1995 – 2005 for the rest of their life.

They’re pushing royksopp for the big day out and they play that tune of theirs and it just makes me think of how the pre-myspace era music was always defined by all these underground hits, I’m sure you could gather hundreds of them and play sets that would get 30-somethings OMGing all night.

One thing at a time though, I’m going on tour now, but it’s interesting to think where you could go on the DJ vibe, especially when you’ve got layers of technical skill and experience. I just tend not to push it because it’s all associated by me with excitable young dudes and various wankers who all take it too seriously.

I guess it should have been obvious. Young middle class guys love mixing dance music because it’s not that easy to do and is extremely nuanced.

I gotta sort out my laptop / camera situation. And my place and whatever. This is good, good to be back in the habit of packing up and rolling out, just used to living that way, It can be quite inefficient, hard to settle and zone in, but then you’re also learnign to draw on resources in not necessarily comfortable conditions.

The thing we’re dancing around is pirates.

The reason we’re archiving is because we have to do something but we don’t want to, like shoot a pirate video, do a photoshoot to make some of our businesses a bit more professional, do our tax or crack the whip on our website, but we’d rather do archiving because it feels like we’re doing something.

Archiving won’t change my life. I’m just trying to clear out some of the weeds, stack some of the junk so it’s out of the way, and we can play pirates. I’m actually over on the pirates blog talking about kinds of pirate stuff but you know I wouldn’t be going full steam ahead if I didn’t think I was getting into some creative goodness because I’m not doing it for the money.

The fact that it makes money is just a rationalizer, so even if it isn’t exciting and fun, at least I’ll get paid and won’t feel like I’m wasting my time, we’ve been over the reasons why it’s so compelling, pirates will never get old. In ten years, I can still be a pirate. In ten years, it would be surprising to think that a similar trajectory to my cd dvd business would have to occur, what is realistically the end game?

Either some content I sell or I sell out my brand for 6 figure pay outs.

The mum’s are happy, the kids are happy, y’know? I can’t stress this enough, it’s not that I feel I’ve done a good thing, I KNOW I’ve done a good thing, I’ve made people happy.

I make more people happy than a prostitute and I only charge slightly more.

But there’s one more attraction for me, that ties to the fact that I am performing and videoing, that is access to a narrative, I’m playing a character, I’m interacting with characters, I can easily turn the

I started to think that this makes a perfect rebirth to reality compund, from the myspace era to the pirate era. Because the pirate game is very similar – online, meeting girls who play fairies, entertaining kids, etc.

The new pirates of the compound, has the opportunity to follow the lord jonathan concept of mashing fantasy characters with reality, especially when you see the pirate phase bridging to the nice young ladies phase. In this reality, pirates and fairies and trolls and fantasy characters lurk in amidst the urban chaos, so similar to the search party idea, where you put fantasized characters in a realistic space.

In reality compound, matt is a sad pirate, because he is no longer a myspace star and the lurid details of a weary path – nerd, high school president, intellectual, drug dealer, DJ, myspace personality, events promoter, pirate, entrepreneur – have left him bereft and in pained anonymity. He ends up getting drunk and bemoaning that girls don’t like him because he’s just a DJ. That’s supposed to be episode 1. In the meantime I’ll be frontloading it with all sorts.

In the second episode it’s supposed to be about me finding a girlfriend I’m seeing fairies standing in here quite fiercely. We’re setting the scene now, so we can then bring the backstory into it and the tiger penis. It’s going to get messy, that’s why we hitch it to our pirate activity.

Basically we’ve got these reality compound vibes crossing over. Everyone wants to be famous, the pretend pirate matty wants to be the greatest adventurer in the land, but he needs the help of fairy magic. Episode 2 could go very hipster pirate, leaning on lots of my fairy footage.

I worry about going full pirate because it will cloud what reality compound is about, but we’ve just traded out myspace for pirates and the connection will be told. It’s hipster pirate.

The word is I’m gonna have to go out and film a lot of pirate stuff and stitch it together, again I’m getting dodgy on this rctv2 concept. In the first episode we’re supposed to see that Matt has been reduced to a pirate and it’s bubbling underneath.

On the channel we’re going to upload:

whiskey on the rocks
the auckland pirate video
hamlet
problemantech
maximizing explosions

I don’t know about preacher mathias here, he was supposed to add to the narrative of me being desperate and trying anything. But maximizing explosions is designed to flow into the beginning of RCTV #2 and I don’t think we should interrupt that flow. It still says on the page that reality compound is about a bunch of losers that pretend they’re a band on the internet.

Maybe we just need to leave it at that and let people work it out by following the loose narrative

Now I guess it’s like:

After the band split and the memories of short lived internet fame begin to fade Matt is earnestly trying to get some of his new internet ideas off the ground.

I am trying to get into the reality compound account. Sweet, got it. I am getting the short circuit stuff up first. I’m putting up the teaser where I’m fully breaking character which wil be funny in fact, it even seems like I’m taking the piss when I’m actually being serious. The character I play now is closer to the real version of what I was like then, taking youtube all seriously like wow for real man.

It’s cringey and guess what? It’s perfect!!!

There we go, the reality compound account is officially back open for business

Talking about insurance, mortgages and loans has put my ad yield for the week up from the $5 average to about $7. Making big dollars here on this blog right now.

Heading back to the big match up – remember, it all starts with a fantasy. An ideal of how things should be, a goal, the ability of all humankind, that of abstract thought. One action will set a scheme in motion. Reality is a cruel tyrant.

A dream can be a powerful thing. It can liberate you, it can take you anywhere or it can take over. We like to think our dreams make us who we are, but is it more just conditioning, programming, the perfect picture put forward by the media and society of what you should be like? Or are we burdened by the sheer possibilities rather than released?

I like to frame everything by choice. It’s an active approach.

Fantasy or reality? It doesn’t have to be black and white but when you make a choice you decide where you want to place your own boundaries.

When last we left the big match up, fantasy had been giving reality hell until out of nowhere, reality landed a few solid blows, claiming I was just a little capitalist swaddling, crying until I got my sportscars and skinny girlfriends and gastronomic nuance that would stil leave me bawling and bleating for more.

Fantasy looked dazed, the gaze aglaze, legs of jelly wobbled. Making money and beats like a saintly monk of service, but something has to give, this is fantasy we’re talking about. Dreams never die. Money is boring without a dream, and music isn’t immune to the charms of the odd hope. Fantasy could turn this fight around in a second.

But what is the truth? Is it what I know, or what I hope? OHH! Another blow to the head of fantasy, that looked like it hurt the big man.

Which way will the result of this great contest of pugilism fall? Reality has proven scrappier in this fight than anyone expected

God too much writing, way way too much writing and damn it if I can’t get off my arse and start to edit some of this crap. God I couldn’t even finish reading some of the TLDR blog posts, but I think that’s the point.

It’s philosophical exhaustion, hitting the treadmill until there is no fight left in the body to resist the truth.

We have to set out to make good tunes, we can’t poke a turd with a stick and proclaim genius, nor can we poke a hundred turds with a hundred sticks.

Then I found 2 million reasons why getting and having isn’t really up there with being and doing.

Reality has really turned around the outcome of this fight.

I read back to the lord jonathon post and that’s a really a nice summation of the lord jonathon trip and then of course you’ve got the space captain romantech sending out the vibe squad search party so there are narrative parallels.

The round up of all the treatments for my manuscripts was pretty good seeing how many ideas I still had from almost a decade ago, but I forgot one, my most recent one from before “how to be awesome”

It was more of a screen play about a band that goes on tour, it’s a road trip movie smashed into a slasher – I love recombinant genres! I’m mainly writing this stuff down now so I don’t forget – that’s part of what this blog does as well, I’ve had so many ideas I thought I’d just get round to, it’s now very real I could forget them altogether.

There may be some foreshadowing auckland, especially around the singer who is an incredible narcissist, to the point many assume it’s an act, but then it rps into road movie fare, and real capers / comedy of errors stuff that frames the tour as a mess anyway. It’s only when the group gets to dunedin that something changes, and at each following gig, one of the tour party disappears. The tour is already a complete trainwreck so the remaining group can only struggle on, the situation becoming weirder and more uncomfortable.

It concludes with the singer surviving alone, it’s framed as an escape until he returns to dunedin to find the pad they stayed in is a condemned building, and no one ever lived there. I imagined this scene where he journeys into the basement and he believes he is about to perform for a massive crowd.

It’s only at this point we realise the singer isn’t some tortured gothy guy, but a complete maniac, who is hearing the voices of dead people and driven by his own fantastic narcissistic delusions to kill everyone on the tour as it feeds into some narrative where he’s basically Jared Leto.

In fact this guy was Jared Leto before 30 secs was even big, maybe that’s what he’s so bummed about hahaha. But yeah he’s pretty much a killer psychotic Jared Leto guy who doesn’t think there’s a stadium that’s been built that’s big enough for how excruciatingly incredible his majestic powers of rock.

The main reason I wanted to do this is you could do it with 2 bands, 2 vans and a tour round the south island. Like if in 10 years I wanted to start making films, this might be the first one, especially if I could make it 30mins. Maybe it could be a prelude to doing an official reality compound myspace movie.

It could just be called Short Circuit in honour of our tours. It would be great if it was a kind of bloghaus electro indie band where the members were all interchangeable.

“I play synth . . . we all play synth!”

(so that as the band members are picked off, they can still function as a band)

There’s also the australian one which was just basically going to car crash creepy david lynch dreamtime vibes into raw aboriginal underclass culture, but I think there was still 2 white kids in it – the teacher’s son and the pub owners daughter.

To me the moneyshot is in creepy arty horror being juxtaposed with gritty ultra reality – you’ve got spooky ancient dreamtime vibes and then this crazy culture of aboriginals where there is no petrol allowed and serious community matters can only be enforced by shutting the pub.

Crocodiles bite and eat aboriginals who try to cross the river for alcohol. 12 year old girls hang themselves for attention. Snakes slither and other crazy desert animals.

Don’t forget about you insurance, mortgages and loans!

It’s hopeful to think that announcing long boring posts as “TL:DR”’s could kind of be a way to lock away endless ramblings but no doubt it’ll just allow me to write more droning raves, which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to get the blog a bit snappier at least. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll learn eventually.

Soul Science – Low Key / Power Supply – is out now //  Soulscience – Power Supply/Lowkey (AMBRA003) Release Date 28/07/2011 by Ambra Recordings

What do you do when you’re a DJ?

What do you want to do?

Get free holidays. Get paid to play even in my hometown. Be able to charge decent coin for festivals. Sometimes get a cheque for selling music and be like . . . hey! And sell lots of advertising for insurance, mortgages and loans of course!

One day, write a really awesome tune, press 500, maybe even 1000, and selling them all in a few months. That’s the one.

So I just finally finished off my “Pure Juice” remix, I really wanted to make it something, but hey, I gave it my best, and I think I gave it the right attitude. Not being satisfied is the right attitude, and also just moving on if you can’t pull a next level play off.

But that’s the 8th tune I’ve finished this year and I’ve got another 3 that I’m also finishing for release, so if you think about it, it beats any other year when I might not have really released more than one or two things in a proper way. I’m actually having probably my best year in music yet, it’s just that it’s not all a big thrill like it used to be so it doesn’t seem big. Digital labels, podcasts, this is what it is now.

You get a tune on some DJ’s who has more clout than you, then . . . sweet. Rinse and repeat. Get your rep.

But hey, what’s a proper way to release tunes? What’s proper? Pretending all those dozens of crappy tunes I gave away online and on crappy homemade CD’s never happened?

Well . . . no! But you can’t insist on dumping ratty demos on your fans unless they’re insane enough to want to know. That’s the archive is about, for me to enjoy.

When I’m 70, I want to just get insane piles of crazy drugs, go into my website and then just play, stream two, three hundred songs I wrote and get twisted, get my perceptions deepened, reflect, find meaning. Spend up on a millenium of hosting fees, so any time between now and the decline of civilization as we know it, crazy nosey people can wander into my strange little digital cave.

But that’s behind the door, really you just want to make a few points about the vibe with the music, maybe some of the better tunes that stand up or have a significance. You don’t want to be forcing dozens of crappy sounding tracks on people. If they want to hear all kinds of crappy tunes there will be full lists available.

Different lists and categories for people to check through, different filters.

Time/chronological filter, self-release/label filter (retail filter), professional mastering filter.

There’s a relative point where unless it’s research, curious interest or fanatic obsession, normal, fresh fans don’t want to listen to a bunch of crappy old tunes, but in 6 months time I probably still won’t have 20 tunes properly mastered and released on proper labels. So it makes sense that I would want to showcase some of my demos that were popular over the years, especially because at the time they were my top songs, not just an old demo going nowhere.

So people can see I HAVE written almost 100 songs. To me, I am very attached to the fact that I have been writing for years, I am not a natural, and I just struggled my way through. And if one day I actually become good, then people can recognise it wasn’t a hollywood story, I’m not special, I didn’t have any talent for music, I just worked hard.

No talent for music, just passion and enthusiasm.

But after a few years with 50 odd tunes on release, the you get a little tighter, sure, you can see the demos from the mid 00’s if you like but hey. Who knows how I’ll choose to curate my collection. It’s about keeping the real fans supplied with as much info as they can take in, but not turning off casual fans who are in the process of digging around and dveloping an interest.

You don’t want to say HEY! LISTEN TO DOZENS OF CRAPPY DEMO’S FROM THE MID 00′S!!!

You come up with something new. The “Early Days” mix. “Free Download Era” 2004 – 2007. Little curated collections, you see what’s going on? hyper curation. Curation of curation. Meta curation!

You want to use your website to offer the 5 minute experience or the 5 hours (or 5 days???) experience depending on what fans want.

But for now we need to distinguish between the more serious music offerings and old demos, by using proper labels and professional mastering as 2 of the main qualifying breaks.

You got to be able to buy it, but especially, on itunes or beatport. And it should be mastered. That’s the ideal of a proper release, it is to me now, anyway. If you can’t buy it on a decent site, or you can’t play it in a club next to your favourite tune without it sounding seriously second rate, then it’s not really up to scratch is it?

So Recognition was my first tune, Release was the first one played on Radio, Tunes like Moving On and Metro Sound were the first ones to start getting thousands of downloads. Almost Home was the first one released on Tmet. So I guess that was my first release. I got my tunes for Oceanic Chill mastered – Where’s Baby, and Mandroid Remix, as well as Small Turtle. Then I think comes My Tom Bosley and Sharkweek Remixes because especially the sharkweek remixes were mastered and came out on a label. There’s the NSU remixes I did – Neutron Star, the one with the numbers – 16786. Is that it? Yup just the 2 before recently.

So how will it be presented in the archive? Music timeline, the there’ll be little periods on that timeline, but then there will also be a purchase (reverse) timeline, of tunes you can purchase. I guess an official discography too? That’s what I’m talking about I guess, but it will also include demos that appeared on themed CD’s (data:bass releases etc) and were uploaded to mp3 sites for distribution.

Why is this important all of a sudden? Because it’s nice to put your memories in a little box and to be able to show off and curate your work. Come with me back to 2001 and hear some of the music I made – they’re good songs but I really can’t understand how I thought my music sounded like what was coming through the speakers at a club. I do want to experiment with putting these songs into mixes, or doing crazy mashups where they morph into futuristic bangers.

I’ve been kind of down on myself about not getting anything done since I managed to get work kind of controllable, but then I already know I’ll probably release 11 tunes – at least – this year. Sure not really great tunes, but still, tunes coming out properly on labels and being played by some DJ’s. That’s great.

What if I release at least 11 tunes next year, but they were all better than this 11? That’d also be great. They’d be startig to be pretty good tunes, and if in 2013 I released at least another 11 tunes even better than that, then I reckon my tunes would be selling, the top drum and bass DJ’s would be playing the tunes, and I could tour strategically off it. I might get a cheque for selling music. I might even get offered a vinyl. Sweet.

So I was saying how like well, it takes months to get a tune out, I get that now. You can possibly speed it up, but why bother? It’s like packing kiwifruit. Just get another tray on the conveyer belt. Damn, now I’m thinking about packing kiwifruit. But any way, at the end of the line, someone’s eating juicy kiwifruit, it just takes time to get there.

It’s like this. Getting good gigs, sure, but not getting paid. Tunes up for sale, but sales will be a drop in the ocean, negligible. I hope at least more people start coming to the blog but it means I have to start writing more about relevant subjects. Or, not even, just try and do a writing good, so it’s not always going on and on. Try and write about something. Including the old insurance quotes, mortgages, and loan approval, but just – less stream of conscious and more diligently framed pieces.

But the point is there’s a way to start getting paid for gigs and make enough money from your tunes that you bother to notice, and most of all throngs of people who can’t come to your gigs and download the music free or off some podcast, come to your blog and start milling around because I write whole bunches of droning nonsense that people can get down with. Because I’m a remotely acknowledged Drum and Bass D-lister.

Tunes. It’s all about having the tunes.

If your tunes are great, they will sell, if they sell, then DJ’s will be playing them and fileswapping will be all on, and pretty soon you can get bookings and tour. That’s all I ever wanted. A free holiday.

I mean to me if DJ’s are playing your tunes around the world, and you get a free holiday every few months – without loss of income – that’s a big qualifier, but also in New Zealand, that’s what I’m talking about.

You need to be able to do a dozen gigs a year in NZ that make you $500. That’s what I mean. You do 2 tours and a few festivals so you can make some money. You don’t play in your local club for less than $200.

But you need big tunes. A big tune is all that you’ll need. But there are different audiences, that can be targeted. It would be nice and convenient to score an underground hit in New Zealand, but it might not play that way. We may find that it’s only south america or east europe that we can make happen.

Well what can we write so I can put it on the conveyor belt and get it on?

A vocal tune?

Hang em High
It’s Done
Higher (Remix)
Secret Place
Trinity
Paper Tigers

Ill Fish
Avatar
Drama

I’m pretty sure we have to go on a deep journey. We need to really get deep deep inside the vibe. Maybe I should go on a holiday or a random road trip and hole up in some motel somewhere weird, I guess that’s an aspect of touring I forgot I love – being somewhere where nobody knows you or will be around to remind you what deviousness you got up to.

The freshness and change of circumstances and outlook can get the vibe on, is it easy just to set up your computer and monitors and go crazy? Make something fresh?

That’s only one tangent. For now, finishing one song after the other is fine, and still sharpening my skills, but at some point I’ll want to try to make a fresh move, to come up with something deeper. I can tell that there are deeper spaces to go to, but whether you can come back from those spaces with music that is deeper remains to be seen, but I certainly don’t see why it shouldn’t be strategically investigated, whether by road trip, or otherwise.

What are we going to do with drum and bass in 2011?

Well, there’s mixing and there’s gigging and there’s tunes.

DJROMANTECH2010MIX-MAKEBELIEVE by romantech

JUST SLIPPED MY NEW DJ MIX UNDER THE TREE FOR YA!

http://dnbshare.com/download/DJROMANTECH2010MIX-MAKEBELIEVE.MP3.html

It’s a bit of a pyramid there, mixing is kind of something, gigging is kind of important, and tunes are mostly the issue.

Well with mixing I think we just want to put out another mix at the end of 2011, and if possible maybe step up to a mid year mixtape. Nothing much really. Make a mix, make cd’s, give them away. I want to do a podcast at some stage but I need a more robust platform, then I guess I’d be moving to quarterly – save that for 2012.

Gigging, well I’d like to take steps towards touring more often and possibly getting paid more – and I say that rather hopefully, because I don’t know exactly what to do to push that forward except sit back in the passnger seat of fates ride, possibly to remain doing gigs at fu etc.

I’d like to play more out of auckland mainly but im not sure how to make it happen, that is manage my commitment to that goal without it becoming overly draining, thats the problem with tours, it seems the only way to smooth the wheels is to build your rep in the hope that invitations and opportunities will materialise as you establish yourself – you just have to make clear you are open to opportunities to play outside of auckland.

Tunes in 2011 is what it’s all about.

Mixing is only something that is about promoting the fact I make tunes, gigging, well I like to test my mixing, and I like to be apparent and promote my name, and feel like I’m involved, but again, it’s just going through the paces, keeping it steady for when the tunes are coming through.

I can release another mix in 12 months and do a dozen odd gigs before now and then, but it’s the tunes that will define my progress. The

We need to start on our next step, we have 4 tunes to work up for local activity, which should take me at least the whole break, but then we’re firing through new ideas, and ideas that don’t catch fire are filing into a pool where they will either get taken up again or will be gathered for an underground release.

It’s like a new system:

- does a label want the tune?

- has got a special something?

- can it be developed to the standard of around 5 songs on a self released EP?

- can a concept be built for the launch?

pull out the old plan – EP / minimix + youtube short / full mix

So either we’re going to get more songs signed, or we’ll go ahead with Microscope, see how that goes, and re-evaluate the eventuality of having many tunes that are worthwhile but labels don’t want, and what to do at that point, because otherwise, as long as tunes keep getting signed, I’ll just keep trying to write them until we get the breakthrough tune, which could still take 2 years.

But new directions, taking the approach that I do not make drum and bass, I just write and mix music at drum and bass tempo . . . and also, singers and pop sensibilities will be parts of the treasures discovered on this blog and elsewhere contributing to my music in 2011.

It all started when BLACK PANTHA and EMU embarked on a 16 date nationwide tour. Our van was our accomodation and when we hit midwinter in Invercargill EMU had to fly to Auckland to attend a funeral and returned to find BLACK PANTHA in jail – he was ‘warming up the van’ after ‘networking’ at the pub.

The FUZZ impounded the van for a month but somehow we convinced the local judge to release it as we were important musicians. The next day we ran off the road in snow conditions enroute Queenstown but got a farmer to get us out with tractor !

On that tour we had ORGANIKISMNESS and STATE:OF:MIND in support, BLACK PANTHA morphed via FROSTY BOY and now runs the HEAVY BASS scene in Auckland.

The level was set, SHORT:CIRCUIT live alternative electronica was born to take new electronica around NZ.
One month before SC1 Darcy was standing up through the VAN MOONROOF getting footage for EMU’s Secret Remix video when the FUZZ arrived and locked him up and impounded the van for thirty days.
What the FUZZ failed to see was the ill state of the van steering which was severely impeded as the result of a hit-and-run enroute from Whangarei. The van could not turn right which was a challenge when navigating Wellington streets, the crew were equally amused and alarmed.

Anyway the van was liberated one day before tour launch and we set sail. The GREENMATICS, EMU, ROMANTECH and a poet named SHANE who was in charge of door and entourage.
Oh and around one hundtred thousand party pills which we were to give freely to punters. High times, good deal !

In Cristchurch we met DR.HITCHCOCK, key to the scene, ISO12 in Dunedin and HALLUCIAGEA in P.Nth who supported from the getgo not to mention the MOXHAM crew led by head jockey MICHAELA MANLEY.

The manager at the time showed his renegade attitude when he booked the crew into a ’smoking cessation and healthy living on a budget’ gig at CPIT CHCH – not the intended image but the free condoms were greatly appreciated !

Fast forward to SHORT:CIRCUIT 3 was quickly implemented with DEANO joining on vocals. He’s currently masquerading as WILLY WONKY in Dunedin and cranking out some mean art. Also deep undercover was OPIUO aka TEKTONIKS – He was spotted in the early lineup of CURE MOTEL and since then he’s been touring relentlessly and just about to drop the first album check :

We got CNZ FUNDING to do DUNEDIN FRINGE FESTIVAL at which the festival manager came to our show and left half way through – it was either the support act MURDERBIKE, Darcy’s onstage nudity or Matt’s cat freaking antics which did it. Take the money and run, that’s what we did and by the 12th gig the DJ’s had fled in horror – it was down to Darcy and Shane to do the last show, Barrytown. When we rocked into town with a ghettoblaster the promoter was curious to know where the six acts reppd on the poster were. We told him that we change costumes, and so we did. Front of house was a frankenstein system made of a 15W Marshall, a 60W cube amp and the ghettoblaster. The locals gave us weed and accomodation and set us up a gig the next night in Westport, uh oh. 30 minutes after downing the eye fillet and 15 minutes into the set the bar owner took issue with our poetry and keyboard set and threw us out even when the punters voted for us to stay ! Our fans push started the van and we fled the enlightened south island for the safety of shark invested Auckland.

The video component was going strong, lead by Matt’s send-up style and Darcy’s tech / story ability which screened on Auckland’s ALT TV, webisodes here ::

When DJ Ashtray came with us to Ohakune the FUZZ turned up again and NOISE CONTROLED the sound system. Taupo shut us down and threw us out.

Somewhere along the way REALITY COMPOUND went into schizophrenic conflict but his rave style synths can be heard on SHAPE:SHIFTER’s 2010 album as they tell us ‘wikkidness increase’ while ROMANTECH has a comfortable 10,000 myspace friends and is pimp’n a 5-series.

DISASTER RADIO was last seen droppiing his wot 600th album?! and touring Europe. TERRA NINE is doing the same. SHARKWEEK dropped an album and continues his eclectic collage arts.
http://CARTOONBEATS.COM/ was born from SONIC SMITH, HASZARI & STRAY THEORIES repping the South Island sound.

By the time SC5 rolled around we had a hired van and the crew were hassling management for accomodation so we got some good beds in various houses of ill-repute with CAT CAMP as über photo/stylist entourage.

Darcy took off to join OPIUO in Melbourne and is gigging and making films there. He returns for performances, his film GODSPELL, bar mitzvah’s and anyone cool who want’s to party.

http://godspell-movie.com/

Shane Hollands is now cranking his band FREAKY MEAT around New Zealand, he’s also the lead character in the aforementioned feature film.

http://freakymeat.co.nz/

SC5.5 and SC6 brought NSU from the long-running BEATDUNGEON who exploded with a burst of new energy as did the NEO-KALASHNIKOVS, last spotted recording in L.A.

Thanks to all the venues, interisland ferry, poster artists Erin Greer, Josh Weeks and Colin Kaldendbach. Rachael for behind-the-scenes management, Kurb Promotion, None Gallery, Moxham Ave.

Featured acts !

Pikachunes
Emerald Green
NSU
Goldenaxe
Rubberspy
Cherry’s Gemstones
Nude on the Moon
DJ Ashtray
Neo Kalashnikovs
Haluciagea
Stress Cadet
Murderbike
Fidgits
Emcee Curio
NaS-T
Toby Nice
DJ Ming
Insole
O.D.D.

We never made any money, we never lost money. A heap of fun and experience but the lawyers fees were just getting too high.

A lot of the artists got pretty high as well, they’ve persisted and succeeded.

SC was a dream realised, it’s now in hiatus . . . may the Beats be with you !

sincerely, the manager

( thanks darcy for posting this, we don’t have FTP where I’m at )

Following on from an episode featuring the failed inspection . . .

I’ve always said, since I packed kiwifruit in the kiwifruit land packhouse, realising there were mysterious lost feelings, that music and art was an opportunity to rediscover and resolve lingering emotion.

I don’t know if it’s as simple as saying that was then, this is now, and there will always be a disembodied sense vying between connection and loss of connection.

There’s some meaning in the feeling.

This is all true but I have lurched off now on a macro tangent. The point I was making was that it’s not about being the best, it’s about getting better, and in growing, understanding the nature of growth.

It’s a macro tangent because getting signed is a step along a path which I don’t yet comprehend the destination. From my experiences with money, I understand that the further you get, the less you’re really going to value it.

The journey of fame and recognition, even if it’s just the kids round the local scene or getting reasonably popular in New Zealand, is limited. With art it’s a journey into the soul. It is just like telling tales around the fire in the days of prehistory.

I share my story, so that others may learn, and the best stories get told again.

Beyond becoming somebody art is the journey to find out who that somebody is.

With each step moving further away from the need for recognition, vindication and closer to discovering the true nature of what and how things happened to make you who you are.

The idea was to put something out.

That was the idea behind the inspection, to put something out that we could promote and say we’d done.

The idea was to put something out but we didn’t we failed immensely, and again our journey of perserverance reaches along the path of redemption.

With each step moving further away from the need for recognition, vindication and closer to discovering the true nature of what and how things happened to make you who you are.

The need for attention and recognition is the young mans game. The desire for true self discovery is true art.

My first Drum and Bass track ever was called “Recognition” (you can check it out/download)

My first track ever was called “recognition”. I even sampled the smiths and the pixies, “let me get what I want this time” so I could “Fucking die”, what I wanted of course being . . . recognition. It almost makes me feel romantic about it but that’s just it. I’ve changed from the person who just wants to make a drum and bass track so I can be in the bfm top ten and get a little article about me in the front section of Pavement magazine.

Rosebud.

Maybe I can pay for a special edition of pavement to come out so I can feature as a new up and coming producer with a fresh sound.

That’s the funny thing about reality compound is expressing that desire to hang on to the past and be romantic. Reality Compound is the secret code which is a drama about me trying to recapture those vibes is ridiculous way, while in my serious romantech music, I go in.

I travel through time to the moment.

Working on “Recognition” using rebirth and importing into samplitude, down in western springs.

I saw Evan Kiljoy from Concord Dawn and he said he would master it. Except I only had it on a cassette tape recorded from running my computer through my stereo.

I didn’t have a CD burner.

Those were still flash.

Haha it’s taken me 10 years to get my act together and get $150 so he can master a tune.

But documenting stuff like that and being all manic on it like a caricature of myself will go to expressing that point, you’re only young once. You only learn once, you only find it out once, you only experience it once.

What it is is what it is.

You can’t change it. You can’t have regrets, you’ve got to own your story.

So I have 2 stories the Reality Compound which celebrates fumbled, bungled and forced efforts to resuscitate the vibe, only to learn the lesson of your 20’s – that there’s more to life than partying and bouncing from one hope to another. You’ve got to find yourself, as with that quote a few posts back, it’s in relinquishing the freedom of possibility for the few outcomes you can hold on to.

But there’s another story of the time travelling Romantech who appears in the moment from the past to see and understand what it really is.

He appears to revisit the kiwifruit packing line.

He revisits the slug in the kittens food bowl

The jumble of tour moments on short circuit tours, what the meaning inside really is.

We knew that the kiwifruit line was the essence of change, memories like vapours coming over you, but seeming so lost, so detached, the feeling that can be sensed physically and emotionally, of change.

I saw the slug and how it’s slimy way spoke to me of disease and death and so we turn away from the truth of our own fate, rotting, to be blissful in our ignorance.

The tour that promises so much, to every boy and girl who longs to be recognised, to live the dream, nothing is easy. The fanciful dream of pursuit must be thrashed out of the young, romantic and idealistic musicians.

The young people with their dreams and their shallow impatient longing, that goes so often unfulfilled, the ultimate negotiation must then begin.

That’s what Reality Compound is about, the negotiation of accepting the dream is just a dream.

But in Romantech’s time travels, we come to understand how these moments define who I am, what I see.

In the kiwifruit, the slug, the tour, there is meaning in the feeling.

It’s okay to want things to be the way they were, but the fact they never will be is what makes them so beautiful to watch.

It comes back to one thing, you’re only young once. You’re only that stupid once, and that’s your story. You can have regrets or you can craft something beautiful for others to see, feel, understand, experience and know what it is to get older, reduced to a single moment when an idea shoots through your head and you see things for what they finally are.

Understanding brings knowledge and wisdom, an understanding of why you do the things you do.

I write because it brings me this knowledge.

We just wanted to put something out, to take one significant step toward a dream. But we failed, failed inspection. The name represents the fact that we tried, that we failed, and the story continues.

A story in which by revisiting places, vibes, emotions in narratives and art I can break open fresh meaning in the feelings I am left with from these experiences that made me who I am, that made these things, this art, chapters in the story of what I discovered.

FREE DRUM AND BASS Mp3 – my first ever drum and bass tune from the year 2000!!!

10 years of producing drum and bass in the rear view!!!

My first Drum and Bass track ever was called “Recognition” (you can check it out/download)

I bought a bass guitar! I just went on Trademe and had a look for a giggle. Bid up to $79 and I actually got it!

Auction finished on a sunday morning – bad move for selling to muso’s, but hey – their loss, my gain.

I’m really excited about it. At first it just seemed like something cool to do, that I could do – another thing I like about being older now – often you can actually see that somethings just not going to work out.

But since I got the thing home, and realised what a good deal I got, and started playing, I got really excited about it, I got a big rush, just playing again and getting into it.

I had actually talked about getting a bass earlier on the blog, but I can’t find any of the best examples at this point, so just for your info its not exactly just out of the blue.

For a bit of history, I played bass in our high school indie/shoegaze band “Furver” which I am tending to invoke as I move forward on the next step – originally it was my Trip Hop outfit “Further” and I think that’s what it will be whenever I collaborate on non-drum and bass projects, well you can be in my band Further.

If you want.

It’ll still be a Trip Hop thing, but also a more indie, more spaced out and even dubsteppy thing. So back to the roots, but also baring fruits!

The idea of the Bass came in seeing so many white stripes type line ups emerging in my vicinity – there was cure motel and there was the neo-kalishnikovs, both which I toured with on Short Circuit tours, neither of which had a bass player.

But it was also a concept I called “Blenheim on a Tuesday” I saw singer/songwriters playing places like Blenheim on a Tuesday and I wanted to work out how I could play a cafe in a place like Blenheim on a Tuesday, so I could tour hard, playing 5 or more gigs a week.

Not with a pumping drum and bass set. But I could if I did low key trip hop/indie/alt country vibe.

This also came from a lot of discussion between darcy and I which led to him doing Cure Motel, that we felt instruments were needed to connect with audiences when the bloom came of the rose of the dance/electronica scene that grew in the 90’s. People wanted to see action, and as long as it sounded good then, great.

The common thread of course was versatility and economy when on tour or putting together a nights entertainment, and if you dig deep enough on this blog and elsewhere you’ll see how the concept of convergence led to idea I had of how a perfect performance would pitch itself.

I can play trip hop and slung back spacious and basscious stuff at the beginning of a gig, I can make it deeper and more meaningful with a vocalist there and I can progress toward more indie and alt country vibes, they can get heavier in their indie and punky disco influence, another band could take over at that point or I could just forge ahead into nu disco, indie rave, and electro, I could do some reality compound electroclash if I wanted to or just play the instrumentals. A DJ could take over playing house, breaks, electro even dubstep, or I could be the DJ, using my own way to get to the drum and bass place, then I’m able to go to the full blown shoegaze dubstep business, it could be an epic headliner, or completely slung out to be a dreamy wind down, and then back to where we started, trip hop, dreamy beats.

36 mins – trip hop / dreampop / alt country
36 mins – indie, electroclash, nu rave
36 mins – electro / house / breaks
36 mins – drum and bass
36 mins – dubstep / dreamstep / trip hop

and though each step mixes together, each can be played an individual short set, parts can be removed or added or elongated as is suitable to the venue.

If people want a drum and bass set or a live indie dubstep fusion band they can have it.

Or they can have the show I put on, and possibly, where I had to, I could carry a whole night on my own.

The amount of blog posts I’m putting out right now is doing nothing for this blog, and it’s a real bummer, I guess the Romantech site doesn’t seem to be about anything.

I got plenty of other sites that do well, but not this one, because it’s not really about anything.

Oh man I am cracking it in business right now, though, just to let people who might possibly follow the timeline know that the tone may change around here now that I’m getting my earn on again.

But it actually doesn’t change my artistic situation as much as it manages to sedate my general disposition, so really, I’ve got to push on with where it’s really at, the artistic activities. I’m preparing a major video assault, first getting into business videos, then some romantech videos, and then bunching the romantech videos into reality compound TV #2 and then dropping episode #3 the official comeback, featuring my kurb video style mutating into RC.

I also could do something with whatever old footage is available – first a teaser, such as the “short circuit diaries #1″ which could accompany the new “romantech diaries”. The full short circuit should be available on the reconditioned “get real” cd-rom. But then coming up to the tiger penis episode, or it’s own episode, I could explore the myspace tiger penis connections as a kind of flashback episode.

Actually I could really Lost on it and milk the flashbacks, hard. Learn to use narrative and visual suggestion, photos in a documentary style to tell the stories.

The first episode will foreshadow this, this shows how the reality of the show now is rooted in a series of episodes that have occured before the current setting.

So I’ve got to lay some creative foundation here for the new video. No matter how I ooze back into it, the main episode to jump start the new timeline is the maximizing explosions concept.

- I’m starting off talking about business, maximizing explosions, I might even use the hard hat.

- then music will fade in, I think it must be my first indie dubstep banger, and the kurb talking will fade out, eventually replaced by my voiceover.

Well What can sayI got sick of the myspace buzz. I woke up and realised I wasn’t a celebrity, I wasn’t cool, I didn’t matter . . .

Is that what I wanted to be remembered for?

But on Myspace, I was someone.

but I was alive because I was there, I was young and I knew one day it would be over, your song would be sung and it would be time to get off the stage, but I don’t wanna get off the stage, I never had my chance . . .

I thought money would fix me, that I could buy my way to heaven, and maybe I’m stupid enough to believe I still can, wouldn’t that be the easy way out?

Or maybe I still believe that there is only one story . . . and that is the story of a guy, and what he saw . . . goddamit I don’t know anything, It wasn’t much but I can only tell you what I saw.

And what I saw was it was just right there, it was just beyond my reach, it could be sweet, I could be one of them, I could be somebody, I didn’t want to have to get old, I didn’t want to be forgotten, there was still time . . .

then the business thing fades back and  break character, shane is of screen bringing up rc etc and i’m trying to avoid it and keep going on about business in an uptight way.

then it cuts straight to pirates

I need to bring out the way it was more, and the transformation.

Then finally the resolution, I don’t know about it, what suits the narrative, that I felt it was all there for me but . . .

Pirates

How did it come to this?

Then I’m doing my pirate thing, maybe with shane filming, out lynmall, montage, sunset/dusk, “do you remember that time on tour” “yeah. lets not talk about it”.

segue to night. Talking to girls

“Yes I’m a pirate do you want to be my wench. We’re making a video for youtube.”

“How did it come to this? I’m dressed as a pirate, I’m in downtown auckland, and I don’t have a hope in hell.”

“Do you remember that time on tour, that . . . ”

That’s when I gush forward drunkenly about Volita.

“Why didn’t she want me?”

culminating in the loser DJ rant, then flipping to a big musical drop where it rides out, me stumbling about town, dancing, falling over, passing out.

FIN

I think I should do kurb artists as an episode, and of course Lord Jonathan the 17th century internet marketer.

And super lover man. Where is the baby. Where’s my baby?

MORE LOST TWEETS

I’m reinventing myself as a young businessman who can’t leave behind the myspace’n bass lifestyle of the heady 00’s #ohwait #reaffirmation

have your fun, have your kids, have your regrets, have your funeral . . . hey, don’t let me hold you up

Heading to a strategy meeting in my garden to consult plant community on growth implementation #imimportant #noiam #quitecontrary

I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Thats why I don’t know any pretty girls.

I just know their numbers. haha

its like this, once you’ve got some money, you can make more. Once you’ve got one girl . . . well, after that you’re just looking for trouble

They say “More money, more problems” but when it comes to girls, it just takes the one and you already there

I always tell people I’m in internet marketing, if I wasn’t good at that I wouldn’t be doing much else.