Come check it out! I will be posting at least a mix per day until I have everything up and running. October Podcast 2009 - ‘October Acid’ - is up right now, along with a few others. THIS SITE WILL NO LONGER BE ACCESSIBLE AFTER DEC 1ST, 2009! All further podcasts will be viewable on iTunes and through www.chaosthetic.com (Note: iTunes play will probably take a while - I have to re-apply for a cast and god knows when that will be… All future casts will be viewable on my website immediately)

Also, while I have your undying attention…. Please join my Facebook fan page - I need 100 or more fans in order to have dedicated page name on their site. Right now, I need 38 more people….So tell your friends!!! You can view the page and become a fan here: The Chaosthetic on Facebook

If you would like to join the Chaosthetic mailing list, let me know! This is THE place for the most up-to-date information regarding, podcasts, tracks, gigs, and other goodies. Hit me up with an email at: chaosthetic (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks for all the support guys! I cant believe how much this thing has grown since last December…. I wouldnt be doing this without y’all, so really - THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

peace, love, fat beats.

David aka The Chaosthetic

Where did The Chaosthetic go? Yeah I have been asking myself that a lot lately…. Let’s start at the beginning.

So I promised an August mix, a Burning Man mix, and a September mix. None of that is happening, well sort of. Im sorry. Oh well. Deal with it. This mix is worth the wait, I promise.

In August, I said goodbye to my family and the town I grew up in, the space where most of these mixes were conceived. At the time, I convinced myself that absolutely nothing would change in this musical universe, despite being on the road for almost a month. This was a lofty, practically unattainable goal - I tried to throw something together one day in the car, but Yellowstone was approaching and honestly, it was way more fun to bump crazy acid breaks while watching the Wyoming mountains roll by than staring at the grey geometry of Ableton. And now (two months later!) I have finally found the time, space, and introspective stability to make music once again. And damn, it feels good.

I started this mix before arriving at Burning Man. It is both in anticipation of the event, a critique and reflection afterwards, and a general musical collage of tracks I feel really embody the event. I attended for the first time in 2008 with an army of hopes and dreams (aka misconceptions). Much like the absent minded rave-dreams I had as a teenager, I had spent a lot of time experiencing Burning Man vicariously, through pictures and video, blogs and aquaintances. I envisioned a sort of utopian electronic music paradise with no boundaries. In my eternal search for an honest “temporary autonomous zone,” Burning Man represented the holy grail. Could it actually exist? I had to go. That, and someone once told me that Burning Man was overflowing with acid-squiggly breakbeats. I mean, come on, didnt Bassnectar forge his (now overblown) notoriety caning what is now considered “playa-breaks to thousands of dust bunnies?” Sigh… once again I feel as though I was born a decade too late and now all that remains is dubstep. Freakin’ dubstep.

Just to clear things up: I enjoy dubstep. I have danced my ASS off to dubstep. But one can only take so much of a good thing (unless it comes out of a 303, in which case, bring it on!!). I have this terrible premonition that dubstep will eventually bring about the demise of rave culture in America. I have faith for places like Britain (the motherland of this genre) and further abroad as their underground has been infiltrated by the commercial media for almost two decades now and shows no sign of dissipating. Stuff that turns hard and brutal here in the US usually takes a more musical, less serious vibe in the UK - maybe a testament to the lack of gun/gang violence in that sleepy island country. But here in the good ol’ US of A, there is something called hip-hop and it attracts a certain crowd with a certain mentality who all dig a certain tempo and certain drugs. Coupled with the current hyphy fad sweeping the nation (get dumb!), crossover hits like Kid Kudi, and the slow re-ghettoization of America (yay economic depression) dubstep is primed to grow too big for its own good. Again, don’t get me wrong: I love hip-hop (stay tuned for my October mix). What I do not vibe with is popular hip-hop culture. No matter where it came from, hip-hop today is associated with violence, posturing, ego-stroking, and unconscious bulls&*#. When these activities become manifest in a scene built upon Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect, I get angry. Too much too soon? Maybe, but Im an idealist and not afraid to say so.

Dubstep is the perfect weapon of mass destruction. 1. Tempo: dubstep is technically an off-shoot of drum and bass (try double-timing your typical grungy Skream track), with elements of dub, reggae, hip-hop and jungle (some might argue two-step garage…). It appeals to a wide variety of traditional e-music heads, while also attracting a crossover crowd from the “urban” music (ha! I hate that term) world. It keeps the intensity of drum and bass while rocking basslines at tempos suitable for the seratonin-impaired. 2. Texture: all these various genres have the same sad common denominator - dark, abrasive, militant aesthetics. 3. Crowd: dubstep attracts a similarly dark crowd: the junglists, the hip-hoppers, the kids in camo, the dealers of coke, speed, and ganja. 4. Sound: dubstep is heavy, overwhelming even. The prevailing motto here is “more bass makes better music.” At times this sound can feel brutal, violent, and evil. It channels an incredibly primal energy, a sensation you feel in your stomach more than your head. But more often than not, dubstep just channels darkness - I have seen it happen, time and time again. The dance floor will clear out, the kids with the dark hoodies, the paranoid eyes, the hip-hop attitude and the designer kicks will emerge from the shadows. Dark energy is addictive - especially when it comes wrapped in shiny urban machismo, but it doesnt lead anywhere - deep down we dont really enjoy darkness for too long - especially when channeled at 70 BPM (yawn….). That and vitamin D deficiency kicks in eventually….

Maybe I’m being too harsh on dubstep. One could have almost the exact same sentiment towards drum and bass or jungle. The problem with dubstep does not lie in its emphasis on the dark and brutal. It lies in the message, the intent behind the beats. Why is this music so popular right now? Why is it that whenever I mention electronic music lately, people automatically respond with either “Bassnectar?” or , “oh, like dubstep right?” (pretty much the same thing anyway) And even more bewildering - if this music is now mainstream, commercial and no longer fueled by creativity (I mean, come on. LFO + filter + resonance + saw wave. genius.), why would every sound camp at Burning Man and their mother be forcing this stuff down our throats? Have those in charge of music at this party finally succumbed to the assumption that in order to have a good time, one must pander to the greatest common denominator? This is not a good way to channel creative energy folks. 99.99999% of the time, what the mob is into is not that interesting.

I spent hours and hours this year at Burning Man wandering between stages in the hopes that I might find something above 100 BPM that wasnt electro (dont even get me started) to wiggle my butt to. One night, I passed by 7 stages on my way out past 10 o’clock before reaching the Deep End and watching the sunrise to some wicked latin house beats. In 2008, this problem did not exist. It seemed as if this year every camp, no matter their focus, had at least one night devoted to dubstep. I understand that Burning Man functions much like a normal city of 60,000 where fads and trends develop out of the underground…but for some reason I thought BM was the underground. Oh well. Mostly I think I’m pissed because I had so much fun dancing to Bassnectar last year, and suddenly all he drops is dubstep….and hiphop….and more dubstep.

On the flip side, one cant really complain about this at all. When something blows up like this, its the natural progression of people enjoying something en masse. There is nothing wrong with that, and for an event like BM, where nothing is pre-programmed, people bring what they want to bring, etc… its not as though some organization decided that dubstep would be the only music allowed. It just happened. And thats where I get nervous. This thing is blowing up. And unlike the 1999/2000 era when trance was king, this time the populace is vibing off dark, angry music. I never thought Id say this, but I long for the days when Tiesto was king and Paul Oakenfold rocked American stadiums……

The one saving grace of this year’s burn? MR. PROJECTILE!! OMFG All I can say is this, and if you dont understand, well, that sucks: 2 hour 6-8AM set, all analog gear, TB 303 (or something similar), crowd full of people with giant rubber balloons on their heads. Yeah. Fucking awesome.

So I guess this mix is my way of taking back what once was my idealist vision of the playa-breaks sound. I start things off slowly, even throwing in what could be classified as (gasp!) dubstep (KnowSleep), but the desert just calls for faster, squigglier, funkier music. If you have attended the burn at any point, please let me know what you think. Having only been a few years, this mix just scratches the surface of what must be a long legacy of amazing musical experiences. Hopefully there will continue to be more….. Enjoy!

peace, love, + fat beats.

*****I had to delete the two tracks and the two oldest mixes to host this one…. dedicated server is next on the priority list, so dont fear. You will have full access to everything by the end of the month!

Breaking BRC

01. Brian Eno & David Bryne - Come With Us

NPR - Playing By The Rules at Burning Man Festival

02. KnowSleep - Space Is The Place

03. The Crystal Method - Get Busy Child

04. Plump DJs - How Much Is Enough

05. BT - Movement In Still Life

06. Layo & Bushwacka - It’s Up To You (Shining Through) (Lee Cabrera Remix)

07. Nathan Fake - The Sky Was Pink (Holden Tool)

08. ILS - 6 Space (Next Level)

09. Steve Reich - Desert Music (Freq Nasty vs Blim Remix)

10. Hal 9000 - Blow ‘Em Out

11. DJ Dan & Simply Jeff - Funk-da-Fried Party

12. Public Sober - Strange Stuff (Eyer Loves The Acid Mix)

13. Fatboy Slim - Ya Mama (Krafty Kuts Remix)

14. Tipper - Dissolve (Si Begg Mix)

15. Bassnectar vs Echomen - Suction Cure

16. Bassnectar - In The Beginning/Agent Squish

17. Fatboy Slim - Song For Shelter

Percy Bysshe Shelly - Ozymandias

18. Groove Armada - At The River (English Riviera Mix)

Breakbeats. We want breakbeats.

Ok. You asked for it….

Lots of poetry this month. Dylan Thomas inspired me, so instead of a diatribe against society, I decided to dust off the ol’ English degree and pour some creative juice into my keyboard (of the QWERTY variety) for a change. Enjoy!

**Read poem here (sorry… this site has a really shitty HTML editor that doesnt keep any of my spacing… i know, but it matters. this way you have to be my friend too! haha New website coming September/when I arrive in Oakland) -

Facebook Artist Profile: The Chaosthetic (notes)

Midnight Sun

‘July Podcast 2009′

Intro: Dylan Thomas reading ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’

01. Stanton Warriors - Punks Dancing in the Park

02. Fatboy Slim - Everybody Needs A 303 (Plump DJs Mix)

03. Bassbin Twins - Bassbin Loops 2

04. Kraddy - Godzilla

05. Freq Nasty - Amped

06. Afghan Headspin - Bang Spanner (Vent Remix)

07. Human Resource - Dominator (Frank De Wulf Mix)

08. Cheb-I-Sabbah - Alkher Illa Doffor (Bassnectar Remix)

09. Tsunami One - Hip Hop Phenomenon

10. Tipper - Open The Jowls (VIP Mix)

11. The Chemical Brothers - Base 6

12. Rennie Pilgrem - Drumma

13. Nine Inch Nails - Closer (Static X Remix)

14. The Breakfastaz - The Pressure

15. Orbital - One Perfect Sunrise (Stereo 8 Mix)

Outro: Dylan Thomas reading ‘Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines’

A time of activity, growth, and learning. A season of extremes, physicality, and healing. A moment of quickness, hurried passions, and attempts to emulate the wild chaos of the natural world in its life-throws. Through the haze of our seasonal Alzheimer’s, it is during the summer that we suddenly remember the massive white globe that hangs above us, floating horizon to horizon. We are all sunshine - consumed, processed, canned, and consumed again. You, me, those people over there - all pure photon energy.

And what of the psychological pattern responsible for “summer mania?” There will always be that dark, cold secret of winter tugging daily at our consciences, throwing our systems into overdrive; a frenzied rush to the end. Knowledge that triggers a need to expend and expel all the euphoric energy of our selves before the seasonal binary flips us upside down, into a snow globe of introverted waiting and wanting. But we only follow her example, mother Earth’s, running into July fresh with the vigor of long days and late-evening sunsets….speeding into August rabid with sunlight, sweat dripping off our faces, muscles tan and taught…..stumbling as we charge on into September, evolved into some strange biological form, over-laden and bulbous, waiting for a passerby to notice our beauty, devour our fruits, and look up at the waning sun…..

As I watched this mix export, the little yellow bar slowly approaching %100 in Ableton, I took a moment to sit back and breath in, deep. My windows wide open, the fan blowing cool, humid air laced with the remnant scents of charcoal grill and mid-season flower gardens, I realized that it is July 3rd already. Another year gone past.

In the summer of 2004 I was the driver in a car accident in which a very close friend of mine died. Since then, I have subconsciously charted the progress of time with that date as a starting point. Now, five years later, I still find myself anxious around the 3rd. Time seems to rush by a little faster, the linear pathways in my mind a little less linear. I never know quite what to do with these feelings, or whether asking “what should I do?” is a healthy way of approaching the situation. I remember clearly the day after the accident, watching fireworks with my family in Saint Peter. Each explosion in the sky shook me like an abrupt waking from a bad dream; the drop in your stomach and that sudden clarity of vision before falling back asleep. But I could not fall back asleep - I still haven’t. As pieces of firework ignited the smokey-black summer sky a kaleidoscope of burning colors, I was overcome by the sheer force and velocity of change in life. Up until then I had never considered how sudden we all are, how brief each moment can be. The firework is a eery metaphor for this sensation. Carefully constructed, wrapped in paper, packaged and sent out to be purchased by someone with an image or effect in mind, arrayed and prepared, and then in the blinking of an eye the fuse crackles, the mortar pops, and there is this moment of weightlessness, of silence, and everyone knows something is about to happen. And just before you blink, color and flame and energy explode into the atmosphere, oxygen igniting bits of magnesium and copper….light and patterns and for a split second everyone’s imagination is consumed with the shape of that brief creation. The deafening boom that follows adds emphasis to the display, as if to remind us, at the peak of our amazement, that “this too shall pass.”

Have I peered too intensely into this simple American celebration? Sure, if thats the way you want to see the world, go for it. But I will never look at reality the same way, as I did before June 3rd, 2009. I tried, let me tell you…. I went relatively crazy for a while doing so. You cannot deny the force of change in life when you have felt the full brunt of its brutal energy. Many people become depressed or full of anxiety when confronted with the true speed of reality, scared to dive deeply into anything or anyone for fear of losing that connection. Many others turn to religion and faith, letting the safety blanket of a higher power keep them warm at night. But none of this is truly comforting, there always remains a nagging unhappiness with your lot in the world. If you cannot let yourself love fully, why love at all? If you have to rely on faith to get you through the day, what happens at the end of the road, when you are left to confront this imagination as reality? Will you still keep the faith? And so the question still remains, what does one do with this knowledge? How should we walk through reality in comfort knowing that life is transitory?

Well, lately I have been looking upwards for answers. To the sun.

The embodiment of life’s brief but beautiful place in the universe, the sun is the omnipresent but often ignored spiritual center of our lives. If you consider the life span of the sun on the infinite scale of time itself, the billions of human years in which the sun burns is just blip on the radar screen, a split second of combustion and atomic energy. Its momentary existence is just a larger, more flammable, reflection of our own place in the scheme of things. Like the human physical, mental, and emotional radiation into space, the sun emits energy as well - pure photon energy - and does so without thinking why or what of it. It has given birth to life, love, and intelligence. And in the end, the sun will take all of that away, in one final, fiery cataclysm. The sun is truly the original human deity.

For our ancestors, living in direct contact with the land, the sun was the obvious creator of life. When the sun shone strongest and the days grew long, life abounded and food was plentiful. In the winter, when the sun dipped low around the horizon, the air grew colder, plants died or went dormant. The sun dictated the lives of everyone and everything, and so we created temples to the sun (Stonehenge, Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, ancient religious sites in India, Japan, China…. the list goes on and on) to honor and potentially influence its presence. As we learned to emulate the sun, with fire and later electricity, our reliance perceptively diminished. Over thousands of years we slowly grew more confident without the sun as a central figure in our spiritual lexicon and today, we find ourselves in a state of almost complete solar-denial. The sun has been stripped of its ethereal robes and broken into mechanical parts. We peer into the sun like a skin sample in a petri dish, looking for signs of illness or irregularity. We deny ourselves sunlight in the name of work and money, and demonize it in the name of health and safety. Most importantly our religions have come to deny or skew the sun-deity in favor of intangible, often destructive gods and prophets of asceticism and blind faith. Our ancestors’ spirituality didn’t require “faith.” The sun was obvious. Its presence was felt the moment you entered the world to the moment you left it. The sun was not some dictatorial creator, granting wishes and eternal life to the faithful. It was a silent, infinitely intelligent and powerful force, an energy to be respected and honored.

But in today’s world, with our knowledge of the sun’s biology, the temporal span of life and, ultimately, the universe itself, the sun has lost its omnipotent shine. We categorize and sterilize the things we fear most in life and the sun has not been spared. It hangs like a massive lightbulb above our heads, threatening to burn out at any second. And so we view it like any other threatening disease or organism. Our fear is irrational and has de-throned the sun from its rightful place in our collective consciousness. We too are just as transitory as the sun. No being is infinite, only time itself and the fractal of possibility that binds everything together can claim rights to that verb. The sun is still the center of our lives, the great giver and taker of life - we have simply stopped seeing it as one in the same as us. WIthout it, we would not survive. Why should we now, after all these years, stop worshipping the sun? Even with our scientific knowledge of its physical nature, there remains the simple fact that without its mysteriously enigmatic photon energy, we would not exist. It is the creator, the alpha and the omega, the one and only, god of sun.

Sun worship is simple. Go outside, look up. Do not question what you see. Do not think about the way you see. Just let the sun into your consciousness. In times of great fear or sadness, look up. Remind yourself that you are not the center of this reality. See that the sun is you, and you are the sun. In times of great happiness and empathy, look up. Revel in the feelings made possible by the sun’s energy. Soak in its rays and practice pure photon mindfulness. In places where you cannot see the sun, close your eyes and envision your field of vision full of the sun’s light. Let it wash over your thoughts, your breathing, your anxieties and your fears. Let it remind you of your five senses and the infinitude of stimuli around you. Find light in the darkness.

With this mix I have focussed on re-energizing the sun deity through a combination of music and quotes picked from a number of seemingly random but ultimately interconnected sources. Sun worship is alive and well today, you just have to stop searching for it, and look up.

‘Back From Where We Came’

01. Mylo - Sunworshipper

02. Rae Davis - Pyramids

03. Quantic - Sound Of Everything

04. Jef Stott - Funky Nawari (Drumspyder’s Midnight Snack Wrap Up)

05. Static Revenger - Happy People (Christian J. Rhodes Mix)

06. Supreme Beings Of Leisure - Sublime

07. Suphala - Transport

08. DJ Vadim - Talk To Me ft Sena

09. Laird & John Pickett - Ohhhh Ma Ma Ma

10. Roy Ayers - Everybody Loves The Sunshine (9th Wonder Remix)

11. Bob Marley & The Wailers - Don’t Rock My Boat (Stuhr Remix)

12. Yoshinori Sunahara - Spiral Never Before

13. Flying Lotus - Melt!

14. Stolen Identity - Hey (Omganic Mix)

15. Röyksopp - Eple (Original Edit)

16. Mr. Projectile - Sinking

17. Fisk Industries - On Thursday

**Audio quotes, in order of appearance: Swami Manasa Datta, George Carlon, Neal Conan, Paul Rao, DeeperThanTheSea reading from Robert Louis Stevensen’s “Summer Sun”, Logan Phillips reading from “The Sun Said Shine.”

Well, sorta. More later.

This is my first ‘finished’ product. Be kind. Constructive critcism glady accepted!

Enjoy

Why do we love this simple, often cliche/repetitive music? Why does that heart-pounding, four-on-the-floor kick drum grip us so? Many have theorized that house speaks to the most primal, reptile brain memory - of our mother’s heart beat in the womb (about 70 bpm, though resting is slightly less (which, doubled = 130 bpm or thereabouts)). Others site similarities between the tribal drumming and trance-dance ceremonies of our cultural ancestors on the plains of Africa. Others still see house as a sort of post-post-post modern (at some point, cant we just call it all music?) blues, the natural outgrowth of a century of oppression/hope based music.

Why do I think house has survived the test of time? Well, in part I believe the truth lies in all of the previous theories - we crave this music because it speaks to something historical, triggers a sort of socialized genetics in each of us. It is also “cool” in the same sense that jazz was “cool”, that sensation of being pulled in, of having a musical ambiance greater than the track itself - a feeling that pervades the whole genre. This sensation is what gives certain music the power to survive, across time. Another, possibly more applicable, term for this feeling is “vibe”. Jazz has its vibe, of smokey cafes and complicated, rushing sadness intertwined with hard hitting grooves and intricate, layered soundscapes. Reggae has its vibe of laid-back, earthy wanderings, of hazy, smiling rastas and revolutionary aggression. And house has its vibe of inner-city energies, movement, of warm disco lights and glistening muscles - of that indescribable, low-frequency embrace, erasing insecurity and inequality in one fell swoop of its great mothering arms.

House was the original “rave” music, America’s furthest reaching and least publicized musical legacy. Sometimes I envision house becoming the jazz of the future, a genre that in 40 years will be historicized and glamorized, cataloged and researched in much the same was that musicologists pour over the last 80 years of jazz history. Maybe this is a little far-fetched, as it is hard to compare the musical complexity of Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Salt Peanuts’ to the stoned simplicity of DJ Pierre’s ‘Acid Traxx’. And some argue that it is a little too early to tell whether or not house will last much longer (though 20 years in, I don’t see any sign of its offspring dying off…) Maybe the problem lies in trying to make a musical comparison between the two. The similarity between jazz and house does not lie in their musical theory, but in their social history. Both fueled change wherever they went (and will go!) - social, mental and spiritual changes that cannot be denied. To drive the point a little further outside the box, both function as massively new strange-attractors (see Lorenz, chaos theory) in society, seemingly unbounded, creating ripples wherever their sounds wander…

I have never been to a legit (100%) house party that was violent, unsafe, or disturbing. Maybe I have experienced only the beautiful side of this scene, but deep down I have a hard time believing that anyone with malicious intent could survive in a room full of people meditating through movement on words like “rise up”, “we are free” and “love is all that matters”. House is too pure for manipulation, too simple of a concept to ruin. Too innate to ignore.

And so, with that rather lengthy introduction I leave you this offering to the house godz. There is definitely some history here, and enough sampling and editing to give a seasoned musicologist a dedicated hard-on. I hope you enjoy - but don’t forget to dance a little. This ain’t no arm-chair music.

Long live the funky-ass beat.

‘Just Dig In The Dirt’

01. Motor City - Raw Cuts

02. LoSoul - Overland (Audio clip: Michael Jackson - Billie Jean)

03. Kinky Movement - Back To My Roots

04. Inland Knights - Hot Soup

05. Monoman - Bootgang

06. Louis Botella - Your Love

07. Tim Deluxe - It Just Won’t Do (Club Mix)

08. Rube - Get Up!

09. Beatfanatic - Cookin (2006 Rework)

10. Chuck Love - Beautiful Thang (Trevor Loveys Tenerloin Tug & Rub)

11. E-Tones - Get On Up

12. Taka Boom - Taka’s Groove (Blakdoktor Mix)

13. LoSoul - Lies (Watch You Lift) (Club Vocal Mix)

14. Inland Knights - Slummin It (Audio clip: Leif Tellmann)

I began my love affair with electronic music in 2000 after downloading an early version of Napster and stumbling upon the Chemical Brothers’ remix of Mercury Rev - Bottleneck Stomp (a track I’ll throw down later this summer, just wait, it’s incredible, still!). I remember pulling my crappy little computer speakers down onto the floor, positioning my head between them, turning up the bass, and just laying there whilst an alien audio universe wound its way down my brain stem and into my soul. I’ve never felt quite that ecstatic since - it was a complete out of body experience and for better or worse, infected me with the incurable virus, EDM fanaticism.

After my initial trip down the e-music rabbit hole, I found some Blank and Jones, some Crystal Method, some ubiquitous Paul Oakenfold (Gamemaster anyone?) and Fatboy Slim, eventually entering the world of late 2001/2002 proggy trance/techno. Since then, I have (sort of) unthinkingly vilified this genre and its grand sweeping synth pads, ethereal vocals, Balearic bongos and tribal beats….believing the glory days to be over and gone, telling everyone that the only thing progressive about trance anymore is the number of people leaving the scene….  During the creation of this mix, I realized how much of a fool I was to stop listening to these old tunes. What I gave up when I stopped digging deeper into that music. Trance and prog are the emotional, teary-eyed children of the electronic world. I know my initial fascination with this music is not unique – so many people get into trance first, and then find their way down into the darkness that exists after the rush subsides. But, emotions are good to keep around. If you keep blasting people with the same relentless bass, fucked up vocals and trippy sounds capes they just get depressed and leave. The binary nature of our reality requires that there be a rise before a fall, and vice versa. I’ve been falling a lot lately, and with summer fast approaching, its high time we started to rise up. This mix showcases a bit of The Chaosthetic’s proggy/tribal techtrance and house side (hah! genres…), my version of the “hands in the air, scream to the stars, smiles all around” sort of vibe that existed in Platonic form before uplifting techno went all Tiesto and big money. This mix also taps my more emotional, pensive side - a space I have found myself in a lot during the last two months for reasons I wont bother you with here. Lets just say that learning to love unconditionally is a long, possibly never ending, path full of switchbacks, booby traps, and not enough water in the Nalgene. Along with the tunes, as usual I’ve included samples from some of my more enlightening YouTube wanderings. Check the track listing if you would like to hear more.

Where I live in Minnesota right now, hot, humid air is creeping into the crisp coolness of spring, reminding everyone that summer is just around the corner and yes, we have something wonderful to look forward to. Each morning I try to fit in an hours worth of yoga in the sunshine (or whatever happens to be out there) - an incredibly invigorating habit at 9:00 AM (and subsequently unnerving to the calculated monotony of our neighbors, I’m sure). Recently, during a moment of extreme concentration as I attempted to hold a handstand, I was struck by how infrequently most people take time out of their “lives” to just be, noticing how every morning, I see nobody else around, just birds and squirrels and the random lost dog. My handstand quickly dissolved and I found myself in a crumbled heap, face in the grass. And instead of picking myself up, I lay there, meditating in that position of gravitational submission, letting my five senses gorge themselves on the moment. I’m talking about the sensation you had as a child, sitting in the yard staring up at the clouds, forgetting the time of day. The overwhelming sensation of freedom when you let gravity take hold on a swing, dipping down to rise up into the air.  The concentration in stillness and the grainy shadows on the wall just before falling asleep. The complete abandon and joy you felt spinning in circles or dancing until you lost your balance, letting the ground fold in around you. I have learned through many, many failures and restarts and complete breakdowns that these moments of letting go, of releasing attachment and just letting emotions come as fully and intensely as they must – that these moments are what keep us alive and healthy. This is how we grow – one must fall down in order to get up. In the same vein, one must release emotions in order to see them clearly and move forward. This release is, like Michael Brown describes in this mix, the first step in learning to love you, and subsequently to attracting the love of others. If we ignore pieces of ourselves, how can we fully love others?

The civilization that we exist in, that was provided to us at birth, does not (currently) hold a place in space or time for this release outside of childhood (and the underground). Even as a child, your time is unfairly cut-off at the “teenage” boundary – suddenly expected to live the life of a “functioning” adult, in control of your emotions and your thoughts. This controlled, emotionless way of life is unhealthy – mentally, physically, and spiritually. It prays on our relationships: to each other and to our selves. It eats away at security, puts conditions on our relations, fosters anxiety, and furthers negative thought-loops. When you recognize an emotion and push it away, you do not fully remove it from your being. It still exists, but now on its own, in the dark recesses of your subconscious ready to change and shift and grow into something even more intense and worrisome. Each time we stifle an emotion, push it to the back of our minds, we create a mental/emotional poison out of a potentially healing experience. The size or content of your emotion(s) does not matter - the result is always the same. Although the result of emotional release may be complicated in the short term, it will always be more healthy than keeping the feelings behind bars.   We human beings are intensely complicated creatures, built from a system of chemical responses to stimuli. If you look at living as a “sensual” experience, then the more we feel of life and the more fully we respond to human stimuli – aka relationships. So get out there, have a breakdown. Listen to some gorgeous trance and let down those jaded barriers. Let the euphoria seep out from the corners of your mind, the smile from the corners of your mouth. Let the tears come and the words flow all jumbled and incomprehensible. Hit the ground, jump up, dance, or sit quietly and listen. Do whatever, but do it fully and consciously.

And then, when you are finished, do it again.

And again.

And again.

01. Go That Deep (Paul Woolford Dub Mix) – Nufrequency (Audio clip: Dr. Barbara Frederickson)

02. Destiny (Photek Remix) - Zero 7

03. Two Full Moons And A Trout 2000 - Union Jack

04. Les Djinns (Djuma Soundsystem Mix) - Trentmoller

05. Start Chasing (Extrawelt Remix) - Alexander Kowalski & Barca Baxant

06. The Man With The Red Face - Laurent Garnier

07. American Beauty - White Label

08. Submarines - DJ Zinc

09. Moment - Damian Lazarus feat. Bjork

10. Manfedman - Dan Doran & Broken

11. Belo Horizonte - Alexander Kowalski (Audio clip: Michael Brown)

12. Long Circuit - Milton Jackson & Droido

13. The Light - Vital Substance

1. Round And Around - DJ Frane

2. The Lish - Dabrye

3. Lazy Day (feat. KFlay) - Mochipet

4. Smith Street - Layo & Bushwacka!

5. Evil Ways (Karriem Riggins Remix) - Willie Bobo

6. Fire (Cottonbelly Remix) - Miguel Migs

7. GNG BNG - Flying Lotus

8. Hi-Potent - Roni Size & Reprazent

9. One Day in My Garden - Amon Tobin

10. I Was Livid - Squarepusher

11. Love Is What We Need - London Funk Allstars

12. Dream Suite Featuring Ditch Massive - Take

13. Let Your Hair Down Girl - Metaform

14. Mystic Bounce by Ronnie Foster - Madlib

15. When I Go Home - Mummer

16. Lizzie’s Balloon - Stephane Pompougnac

17. Raedawn - Viktor Vaughn

18. I Against I - Mos Def

19. To Make Manifest - Thavius Beck

20. Nepalese Bliss - Irresistible Force

21. Gravity Bouncer - Rithma

22. Racing Green - High Contrast

This mix is, once again, a change of pace…..if I ever had one at all. I have developed a slight problem over the years as a DJ/collector of music/rave freak - I cant find just one groove that I dig all the time. You know how most DJs just rock (and know it like the back of their mind) one or two genres of music? Yeah, well I cant seem to do that. There are benefits to limiting one’s scope as a DJ, similar to the blinders people in academix put on as they dig further into their studies, ending up with degrees in such interesting things as “8th dimensional particle physics” or “the biology of the iris of a chimpanzee’s eye.” Right. And such specificity has its place in our world. We NEED those DJ Dan’s and those Breakfastaz and those Tiestos just as much as we need 8th dimensional particle physicists…. ok so bad analogy (maybe?). But you get the picture right? Honestly, besides a house or drum and bass DJ who really knows his shit, I have always had more fun at a party where DJs are pulling from the left and the right and the allaround. And often, these people are the most successful, or at least the most revered. To name just a few: Layo & Bushwacka, Bassnectar, Ursula 1000, Si Begg, Rithma, BT….. the list goes on and on. Even in music, the linear mindset, the bounded system, just doesnt cut it for longer than a few years. Science is finding this out the hard way - with so many specified areas of study, and so many complicated and unspecific diseases and problems confronting them on a daily basis, it is becoming more and more pertinent that people collaborate, communicate, and get fractal with it. Complication is not a dirty word any longer, it is a reality. Musically, devoting yourself and your respective audience to one beat or one flavor of sound is a little like the old skool meat and potatoes diet - yeah sure it feeds you, but does it nourish you?

When I first started DJing, I spun, like most wide-eyed 18 year olds with a bevy of Paul Jokenfold and Ibiza Hitz 2001 Vol. 89 in their back pockets, four on the floor house music. I think the first record I bought was Armand Van Helden’s “My My My.” Low and behold, on the back of that disc was a sweet latin break-beat remix and I discovered that, by laying something syncopated and broken over the robot-rigid house beat on the A side did some super neat things to my feet/ears/booty. House just wants to get broken, breaks just want to get housed. It was exciting, I thought I had discovered the holy grail of DJing - nobody else was doing this…I thought. And really, not many people were. Or are now. But taking house and breaks and slamming the two together isnt hard. They’re both about 130 BPM, give or take, and constructed in 16 bar segments. As the years progressed and my musical lexicon grew in magnitudes, I realized that 130 BPM got old unless something, the tempo or the texture, changed - the human mind needs a break every once in a while. This is why dubstep is so damn popular these days - take any genre, half-time it, dub the fuck out of the bassline and ram it up against an epic build up/breakdown —> instant dancefloor madness. I think we will only see more of this as time progresses. With programs like Ableton infiltrating the EDM world and more power pitch/tempo software built everyday, the DJs who stick to a single genre are going to fall by the wayside. I used to wonder what the next big move in this scene would be, it felt as though everything had been done already and EDM was just polishing the edges, focussing the lens a little more each year. Nothing groundbreaking. In a way, my worries were true - there is no “the next acid sound” on the horizon, no crazy beat that hasnt already been done in some manner or format. BUT, progress is being made, ground is being broken in a subtle and wonderful way - experimentation, getting back to what DJing is/was all about. Asking the question “I wonder what that would sound like” and trying it. Progress is made in this manner not only in music, but in every field imaginable. Alexander Flemming didnt follow a logical, preconceived path to his famous penicillin. As wiki says, “It was an example of fortuitous accident.” The Tangelo, in my opinion the world’s most perfect fruit, didnt happen because of a legacy of tangelo study or a tangelo economy. Nope, just some horticulturalist who said lets see what happens if we cross this ugly ass asian grapefruit the size of a volleyball with a tangerine! If we, and I say “we” in two senses - as a global human society and as an underground dance community - are to keep on keepin on, we have to fall a little. Get dirty. Fail. Get embarrassed. Experiment. Slam shit together, rip it apart. Isnt that the original spirit of the “rave” - to provide and inhabit a space to “go mental” in, to reach a little farther into the void, just to see what happens, what you bring back? So go crazy and see what happens. The next time you find yourself wondering “what if…” stop wondering, and just DO IT. Static = no change = death.

As Niels Bohr (the veritable “father” of quantum mechanics) once said to a colleague, “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.”

01. Bring Back The Love (Mungolian Jetset Dub) - Bebel Gilberto **w/ unknown sample

02. Love Here (Lusine Remix) - Mr. Projectile

03. Dissolve (Si Begg Mix) - Tipper

04. Serious Brainskin - Von Sudenfed

05. Ooh Yeah (Lionfish Remix) - Lucky Goat

06. Boop (Skeewiff Remix) - Ursula 1000

07. I Wish You Were Here (PMT Remix) - John Creamer and Stephane K

08. Falling (Stanton Warriors Remix) - Gabrielle

09. Flat Ripple - Tipper

10. Rise (Denny Popof Remix) - Rhythm Code

11. Dun Dun - Electric Skychurch

12. Come On Chaos - Luke Vibert

13. Think (About It) - Lyn Collins

Mostly though, my anxieties concern feelings about the future. For people my age and younger, these are tricky beasts to put in a single prosaic cage. On one hand there is this hope that once our parent’s capitalist, boom ‘n bust culture is playing bingo and sucking meals through straws, the world will look a little more sustainable, a degree more safe, a lot more connected and understood. On the other hand, I see the mess we were handed down in all its chaotic and unfathomable (un)glory, and the lack of enthusiasm so many of my peers have for change (let alone anything besides buying plastic shit and World of Warcraft). The future is scary, full of the “helicopter parent’s” children, generation Y, of the momma’s boys and girls. To add to the complexity, we live in a world where progress is no longer made in the great leaps and bounds of our ancestors. Maybe Terrance McKenna was right, just a few years too late and little too “new age” - the great consciousness shift is not going to be one of telepathy or world destruction, nuclear holocaust or alien salvation. No, it IS one of thought processes, a change from the linear to the non-linear, the closed system to the open, the finite to the infinite. Our species has become too complicated, too interconnected, to ignore the reality of chaos and the chaos of reality. But how will those of us now entering the social dynamic as active constituents fit in? If we can’t enter the system (aka find jobs…), how are we to feel motivated about fixing it? How can we impact the consciousness’ of a million+ situated and confident old-school thinkers who still believe in the finite realm of this and that, right and wrong? How many more people will suffer, how much more of the system will have to collapse, before the world wakes up to the amazing power of collective thought, information sharing, understanding, compassion, and non-linear science?

These are all thoughts that pray on my emotions day in and day out, often finding their way into my work, for better or worse. What place does a party scene have in this crumbling world of sad old men and their giant egos? Should we celebrate right now, and why? I am often reminded of the speech Lorin Ashton (aka Bassnectar) gave his first night playing at Burning Man last August. Right at the peak, the very orgiastic climax of that thing he does, he cut the sound and proceeded to ‘lecture’ the crowd on excess, privilege, and partying for no reason, ending with the proclamation that he would not be back next year unless ’something’ changed. What, sir Lorin, did you mean by that? Or do you, like the rest of us, have no idea what needs to change because its become too damn complicated? Burning Man is such a barometer of all things rave and counter-culture in America. On one hand, it is this amazingly large TAZ, a miles-wide tabula rasa, for creative expression. That sounds pure enough, something worth celebrating, right? On the other hand, it is an expensive, egoistic game for the Western world’s privileged and bored, of drugs and self-destruction for nothingsake, a sort of massive circle jerk for rich and intelligent white people. You could say that raving began on similarly pure grounds, fueled by the excitement inherent in subverting the system, creating a zone where creative expression could be fed unbounded, no matter the consequences. And what do we have left, twenty years later? A culture that survives like the WA prairies, littered with invasive plants, the endemic species either pushed into little clusters or eradicated entirely. Like so many counter-cultures with the “all-inclusive” motto, the rave has learned its lesson, found that consequences do matter. Except that now, the inbred mutation that lives on in the mainstream system shows no sign of writing itself into the history books like the flower-wearing 1960’s legacy did. Little girls in fishnets, promoters with Escalades, music with no soul… People with money love to feel justified, included - LOVED. No matter if it cost them 60 dollars at the door or the morning after price of too much chemical happiness. We are just as at fault as they are, having glorified the setting, the ideology, and the drug use because it helped us find peace, eventually. Who knew that not everyone would come to the same conclusion?? I appreciate what you did, Lorin, because for the rest of that week, I couldnt look at the event quite the same. For the rest of my life, really. I love what the EDM culture has given me - I treasure it, promote it, and glorify it. But I cant seem to get over the fact that, in the end, its just a party yo. A big, messy, noisy, party.

I think thats enough of a rant for today. Ill leave y’all to this mix. In the end, words on a page are just another bounded system of somewhat interpretive thought. Music, well, thats pretty damn infinite.

Is there hope? Ill let you decide….

01. Gold Rush - Quiet Village

02. Seventh Wave - Jimpster

03. Echoes (Petter Airguitar Remix) - Trafik

04. Outskirts - Booka Shade

05. Getting Out Of Something - Stimming

06. Ligaya (Odd Nosdam Remix) - Alias & Tarsier

07. Untangle - Four Tet

08. Luna Rd - Kilowatts

09. Changes (Swayzack Darkfarmer Remix) - Tahiti 80

10. Soft and Open - Boom Bip

11. TimeSome - Bil Bless

12. Impossible and Overwhelming - Bassnectar

I had originally envisioned this mix as an ode to springtime in Washington, where the sun returns like a rectal injection of “damn that feels good” and washes any lasting pigment from our vitamin D parched skin. Having returned to Minnesota, where I constructed this mix, I found myself experiencing spring a little earlier and a lot more raw (so for those of you still in the thrall of cloudy blah, I apologize for the preemptive nature of this mix…. just stash it away for a sunny day, or close your eyes and envision it). Over the course of three days here it went from below zero windchill to sixty degrees and sunny. The gray and white that covered everything when I flew in on the 1st of March suddenly replaced by washed out browns and yellows. It is easy to fall into the unhealthy pattern of assuming that this beauty isnt meant to last, that if things can change in three days, it could all go back to cold toes and snow blowers. But eventually, summer will be here, and gone, and we will have spent more time thinking about the world around us than actually enjoying it. As the singular (and incredibly random YouTube find) Nancy Today says, “don’t sleep in, get up!”.

This mix is radically different from anything Ive done before. I think I got a little carried away with the awesome, brutal track-destructive powers of Ableton, realizing that I can take anything (anything!) and cut and paste until my heart stops beating or my parents (weird, yea.) start complaining from the noise. But in my opinion, variety is indeed the spice of life, and how much more varied can you get than Michael Jackson crooning over Amon Tobin? Hah! This might also be more downtempo than y’all are used to, but Ive been feeling pretty laid back lately, probably the result of almost three months now without a full-time job. In some ways though, it fits. Spring is not a full-throttle time of year. It is subtle, always changing, and full of surprises. So is this mix. Hopefully it works.

This time of year holds so many intense memories for me, more so than at any other point on this solar-centric calendar (and probably due to the cascade of forgotten chemicals that seep back into my life around this time). Spring has always been the season for for forgiveness: of yourself during the receding four months of slowly building, deprived insanity. For realization: that the price we pay for such happiness during the summer is a looooong winter purgatory and that if a million zillion birds can find their way back home, so can we. And for change: toss out the old, in with the new, let the energy wind its way back up again, the cycle repeat itself, let Obama save us all….

I have lived my entire life in latitudes with four seasons, where nobody is immune to the self-actualization that occurs each April when the sun pokes its lazy-ass head through the clouds and shows you what really matters. The seasons help us understand that nothing is constant, not the world, not ourselves. This cyclic, up and down, manic and depressive system is quite similar to the ethos of a rave or any sort of large underground dance gathering. You enter the party in the spring, full of stress, jadedness, and mild neurosis from the long workweek, the stress of doing life in this flawed social system. You start to move, explore your surroundings, talk to people, yell out when you hear something you like. Suddenly it is hot, sweaty. People are smiling, you feel good, your body feels good. The DJs are getting better and your mind is racing. It is summer and you never want this to end; you are creative, full of energy. And suddenly, it is 2 AM and you realize the crowd is thinning out, loosing its leaves. The headliner has finished and the dynamic is changing. It is fall, and some strange shit starts coming out of the speakers, something you never heard before. Your legs are just on the edge of fatigue, but you keep dancing, keep looking back over your shoulder to see if summer has followed you, if the crowd is still there with you. You push through the fatigue, the worry, the sneaking sadness and suddenly it is winter and you are in a trance, no longer caring about who or what or anything but the sound coming out of those speakers and the tilt of the world as you spin, around and around and around…. Someone has turned off the lights and many people have moved into the shadows, nursing bad habits and bad decisions because morning doesn’t really exist, does it? All that matters now is you and the ground and the DJ and just when you think you can’t go on any longer, the room starts to glow with that faint blue light of morning. People become visible, their eyes half-open, their faces ashen, long and puffy. The music begins to rise again and the living return to the dance floor, slowly, still huddled in hoodies and jackets as if they were (really?) about to go home…. The blue light turns to purple morphing into yellow and people start to shed clothing as the temperature rises. The music takes on a new-found urgency, and suddenly your feet don’t feel so heavy any longer. Someone starts to shout and out of nowhere the dance floor is full again. People are smiling, some crying, all happy in their own way. We made it, you think to yourself, it is springtime. Finally. Forgiveness. Realization. Change. And you walk out the door, back to your tent, out of the warehouse and into the sunlit morning wondering, “did that really happen?” “Was I really there?” “Where the f**k am I?”

01.     outside my bedroom window when i was young - PUZZLE

*sample: Stressed Out - A Tribe Called Quest

02.     Isn’t This A Lovely Day - Layo & Bushwacka

03.     Remember The Time - Michael Jackson

04.     Chomp Samba     - Amon Tobin

05.     Everything Is Alright - Four Tet

06.     Secret Sun - Jimpster (ft. Rasiyah)

07.     Don’t Mind If I Do (Groove Armada 100 Club Remix) - Bushy

08.     High Low - Michael Franti & Spearhead

09.     Bleed - Shiloh

10.     Cactus Girl (KiloWatts Spikey Fingers Dub) - Chakaharta

11.     Cultivation of the Imagination - Mr. Meeble

12.     Tilt - Plump DJs

13.     Palmistry - Tabla Beat Science

14.     Rubiayat - Coldcut

15.     Down Here On The Ground - Grant Green (ft. Dianne Reeves)

**With sound clips from the following individuals (in order of appearance): Nancy Today, John Dobson, Dr. Matthew Fox

And what a concept it turned out to be…. The Christmas Mix 2008 was built during a time of extreme mental-chaotic-reworking in my life, one which has yet to find resolution. Take equal parts job/relationship stress, the sun depressed mist of dampened energy that descends on WA each year for 6 months, and the mind-altering effects of too much theoretical physics. Dump into a shaker with 2 oz rain/snow. Shake violently. Pour into a collins glass. Garnish with mushrooms. Despite everything else that might have affected the outcome of this mix, my conceptual seed lies in the words of today’s leading future-thinkers, especially one Nassim Haramein. More than anyone else in the last four years, this man has changed the way I view the world and I wanted this mix to add a sensual emphasis to some of the incredible concepts that he and other future-minded thinkers are presenting to the world today. I have fallen in love with the simultaneously grounding and insanity-inducing fact that ‘out of chaos forms order’. Understanding this, you suddenly see chaos everywhere, from the blank space in the iris of a loved one’s eye to the dynamics of a dance floor at 3 AM and realize that: nothing exists, and everything does in the same infinitely small moment! I have taken this concept one step further - that ‘out of chaos forms beauty’ and have applied it to my musical aesthetic and life-philosophy. Nothing feels more intense than an uplifting melody creeping out of the turmoil of a dissonant acid riff, more euphoric than the sunrise after a night spent wandering the dark halls of your mind, more beautiful than the random generation of one person from two cells…..

And to add complication to an already complicated mess, this mix represents a frustration with the current state of all things ‘rave’ and ‘underground’ in America. From Aphex Twin’s ‘Digeridoo’ (1992) to the Jean Elan’s re-working of ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ (2008), this mix spans almost two decades of EDM history. 2 DECADES PEOPLE! This thing we do, from the warehouse to the club, the mountain to the massive - it has a history, a legacy if you will. So why, when I go to a party, do I hear the same five tracks over and over again, made within the last two years by some bored, stoned Italian in his multi-million dollar studio? Phuture recorded ‘Acid Trax’ more or less on accident - in his bedroom with a buddy using a 303, a crappy tape deck, and not much else - the track went on to fuel England’s summer of love, the fevered dreams of countless young/old people on drugs, and helped re-appropriate such quintessentially “rave” things as the smiley face, glowsticks, and big floppy white gloves…. We have SO much music at our finger tips now, 20 years later. Listen to it it folks. Electric Skychurch is just as relevant today as it was years ago, BT was ten years too early with Movement in Still Life. The music of the underground golden era is so relevant now, our economy facing an even worse down-turn than it saw after the stock market crash of the 80’s. America looking more and more like the Margaret Thatcher fascist state that forced 20% of Britain’s population to eat MDMA - the looming presence of 2012 eerily remeniscent of the 2000 era ‘end o the world’ anxiety. I still cant decide how I feel about the way this mix ends, with Burial’s distant and melancholy ‘Shell of Light’ - a rain-slick glimmer of the rush those lucky bastards must have felt rolling up to an airplane hanger outside of London in 1989 knowing that they were a part of something raw, something beyond their wildest dreams…. Someone give this 2009 a kick in the pants.

You can’t move forward unless you know why you’re moving.

** With sound/speech clips from (in somewhat of an order): Michio Kaku, Nassim Haramein, Richard Dawkins, Sir Martin Rees, Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher, The Matrix, Unknown, Bill Hicks, Bob Thurman, NPR