modemgirl

the bike rave was a great success! just taking a quick study break to post my mix from last night, as promised. i think it went over really well overall. 2 live crew was a big hit, and a good friend was incredulous that i mixed vengaboys with the horrorist, so i was happy :)

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you’ve likely heard me mention seaballing before, but for those of you who haven’t, it’s actually the best thing ever. a combination bike ride and mobile dance party with awesome people and beautiful scenery, it’s pretty much my religion. and then there’s Velopalooza – a 10 days of bike themed fun that takes place annually in vancouver in early june. over 70 events in under two weeks, it’s a celebration of bikes, bike culture, and everything else that goes along with the awesomeness that is being a cyclist! with events such as 80s bike ride,  super hero ride and this friday’s Bike Rave – what’s not to love? so when a good friend / avid seaballer / organizer of velopalooza (pictured below, at the superhero ride with his frankenbike bike aptly named ‘your face’) asked if i’d record a mix for the friday night BIKE RAVE, obviously i said yes!

it’s always challenging for me to organize a mix for a unknown audience – i’m pretty self conscious when it comes to my taste in music in relation to “normal” people. (obviously i use the term normal loosely here) - i know that most people didn’t grow up on a diet of tidy trax, neophyte and scott brown, so i’m well aware that my taste is pretty niche and definitely leans toward oldschool techno rave rave rather than the current wonky mashup bass housey dubstep stuff that’s usually found on the dancefloor these days. this is why i love late night college radio and don’t have much interest in playing clubs.

anyhoo! the point is, i worked pretty hard to make this mix awesome, and hopefully it will be enjoyable for consumption by bike nerds of all types, so you should come out tomorrow night and listen. vengaboys, squarepusher, flosstradamus, the horrorist, prozzak and madonna….. next to the ocean with a bunch of weirdos with glowsticks stuck to their bikes!? maybe i should bring some candy bracelets to hand out? anyone know where can i get UV bike shaped beads?

i’ll post the mix here on saturday for those of you who live out of vancouver and can’t make it!

ok, i’m going to write my CCNA exam in a couple weeks, for serious it’s true this time. so before i started studying yesterday i took a moment and did some mixing, and this is what happened. the back story is that i went to co-lab for some bass the night before, and ran into my friend leon. (yes leon, i’m blaming this on you.) i’ve only met this dude a couple times before, but i’ve decided he’s cool based purely on the fact that he likes spiral tribe and unit mobius. call me techno-prejudice!

i’ve been listening to a lot of fifth era style doom techno lately. i can’t explain it, but for some ungodly reason this is sort of what it sounds like inside my head a lot of the time. perhaps i am just fully embracing the fact that i am soon going to be officially “late night college radio techno lady” and don’t have to pretend to play normal music at all anymore? but really i’ve had an insatiable love for this kind of techno since i was a teenager and it doesn’t appear to be dissipating as i grow up despite the fact i admit it’s almost completely devoid of any technical musical merit.

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M0D3MGIRL-NETWERKKOMANDAH

this is a 40 minute livemix, no edits, far from perfect and and very much NOT for the techno lightweight. recorded in the midst of a circadian transition from day to nightwalker while studying a million hours a day, i’m not going to pretend this is accessible or nice to listen to, but still i will post it for .00000001% of the population who vibrate at the same wavelength as i do….  the first song is one of many ‘relics’ from the aqua zara vaults – a mecca of MP3s downloaded from “napster” in 28.8k glory back in 1999-2000 – and features a sample from “hello my future girlfriend, this is what i sound like” along with an assortment of hard techno, booty house, and “deathno” (but not the nice kind like you want).

this past weekend i had the good fortune of being invited to bikes inside! a “bicycle themed dance party” put on by the nice people at thisisplanb.net and jimfamous. with the promise of bike porn visuals (bikesmut.com), gastown sprints (stationary bike races), bike art, and cheap beer set to dubstep, electro and disco, i was intrigued to say the least!

the event was held at the w2 culture and media house, which is a new venue in the heart of vancouver’s notorius downtown east side, across from the newly revamped woodwards building. the venue first caught my eye a few weeks ago when i was biking down hastings to work one night, and i noticed the entire building engulfed in flame. after doing a double take and almost being run over by a motorist who was as distracted as i was, i realized i was looking at a video loop of fire being projected onto three floors worth of full sized windows.

i arrived fashionably late to the party, after helping a disenchanted unicorn recover from an unexpected rendevous with gravity, her bike, and a parked car’s side view mirror, followed by an exciting two adventure through olympimania land. i attempted to convince the nice folks working the door that i should get bonus points for having my hands covered in chain grease. they wouldn’t give me a discount, but i did get a high five. good enough for me.

the crowd was…. weird. a mishmash of hipsters, artsy weirdos and bike nerds. perhaps a bit intimidating for those who haven’t spent significant portions of their adult lives in weird little lofty after hours spaces, but not me. i took one look around and said -if everyone has another drink and a half and the dj starts playing something really fun, this party is gonna go OFF. and it did!

i arrived upstairs to catch the very tail end of the gastown sprints, which apparently is an ongoing experience featuring hipsters et al racing indoors on stationary bikes. pretty sure there’s beer involved. and lots of laughing. and dance music. i unfortunately didn’t get a chance to race due to my being  distracted by bike porn, and more beer. soon i ended up wandering back down to the first floor to check out the rest of the bike art and ran into some guy wearing a full body disco ball.

at this point everyone drank that additional beer and a half, and the racetrack on the top floor errupted into super fun time dance party as autacoid took the stage -  two dudes, a guitar, some mikes, a pedal and a roland 505! and then we danced the night away on the inside of the crazy flame projections. all in all a great success!