Monday, July 27, 2009

Camp Bisco 2009 in probably too much detail

Camp Bisco is an electronic music festival that's held in Upstate New York once every summer. The first time we went was in summer 2006 as members of The Juan Maclean - I was playing keys and Nick was playing drums.

Unexpectedly, we had a fantastic time that night. Juan rubbed Petrulli oil on Nick's drums, introduced me as Nick's boyfriend, and did his best to scare the acid-crazed-hippie-children. We played a terrifying set. Great night.

This year we went sans Juans and DJ'd with James and Pat (Special Disco Version). We had our very own DFA tent and once again had an amazing time. Props to all the kids who danced in the mud. Below is a visual breakdown of the trip. Its long and probably very boring, as is our general way...

12-2pm: We met at James' apartment in Brooklyn. He ordered us all delicious breakfast burritos and we listened to records. Eventually the tour bus showed up and Matt Cash gave me a tour:

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2pm-6pm: We watched JCVD - awesome movie - and generally got our hang on.
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6pm: We almost got stuck under a bridge:

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7pm: We arrived:
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7-10pm: We walked around in the mud. I saw many strange and typical things:
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10pm: We set up these gigantic light boxes that Marcus ( Shit Robot) made . We controlled the boxes by connecting the MIDI from an AKAI MPC to a MIDI power strip which turned the lights on and off according to how we played/programmed the MPC :
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1am: Time to DJ and people actually showed up:
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2.30am: We DJ'd then handed it over to SDV, who KILLED it:

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4am: James and Pat put one final jam down. We danced like crazy. I'm wearing a bahja. It was cold and I forgot a jacket:

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5am: Time to go to bed, it was incredibly fun while it lasted:
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-Alex







Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Camp Bisco 8

The fine folks at the Camp Bisco 8 were kind enough to give us, James and Pat our own tent to close out the festival. For the "DFA Disco Tent" we brought the flags, the lightboxes, champagne, rose and had an awesome, awesome time.

Alex has some good/embarrassing footage of the party we were having on stage behind the boxes.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Newcleus VS. Holy Ghost!

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When Nick and I make music we communicate almost entirely through a series of grunts, sighs, ehhhs, and occasionally, when we're very lucky, non-sequtors like "fire!" or "jelly!" -- which mean we have something OK. Another thing we say when something is good, spooky, or funky is " oooh, Newcleus!" - which means it sounds like Newcleus - the legendary electro-rap crew from the early 80's and one of our longtime musical reference points.

So, when it came time to find remixers for our next single, I took a shot in the dark and emailed Cozmo D through the Newcleus fansite. Fast forward 3 months and Cozmo D, the man himself, is walking up the steps of our Brooklyn studio to do a final mix of his remix for our single " I Will Come Back."

Not surprisingly, Cozmo was a complete pleasure to work with. We particularly appreciated his honesty about our original track: "Honestly guys, what is this song about! It makes no sense!"

Here's a clip of us doing the final mix with Cozmo. It will be out on the DFA 12" for "I Will Come Back" soon... and its got the jelly. -- Alex


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