Still here + thoughts on Veld

Posted By: Shagz
Date:

Hey everybody!

Yup, I'm still around, still alive, but as it sometimes happens, making mixes and just djing in general has taken a back seat as of late to a bunch of other life priorities. I'm still buying and listening to music, still going to live shows (Caravan Palace and Tycho this year, and most recently I was at Veld, see below), and even still buying gear - my long serving Rane TTM 57SL fell victim to end of life as did Serato Scratch as a piece of software, so I was forced (not entirely begrudgingly) to upgrade to Serato DJ and I picked up a Pioneer DJ S9 to accompany and run the software.

But yea, just haven't had the energy, time, or inspiration to work on any new mixes and get on the decks. I've also become very worried about my ear health as of late, and I'm doing less and less dj gigs because of it.

But I can still be working the "bedroom dj" angle and I'm hoping I can fix this drought of dj mixes soon.

I certainly got a lot of inspiration this past weekend at Veld, the big EDM festival in Toronto that's been running the last 5 years. I've done big festivals in the past, but never a multi-day festival and not for a while. It was a pretty awesome event, worth the expense, but now that I've done it, I don't think I have to do it again. :)

Veld highlights...

• Zedd dropping his bootleg of "One More Time". It owes a lot to the original, and he didn't change it that much, but the effect on the audience is nuclear
• Tiesto's dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty foray into some kind of bootyhouseIdon'tknowwhatbutwowpeopleloveit (YouTube does not do any justice to how heavy that bass is)
• Grey: fusing multiple half and double time genres with a fresh coat of rock guitar
• Robin Schulz was the first dj of the weekend to stay off the mic and just let the music speak for itself, and show a little humour and fun, including this funky electro swing jazz track with Michael Buble
• Another dj to stay off the mic, and probably the act that I had the most fun at, was Tchami. Rocking a priest collar and running intricate, beautiful stained glass/church architecture inspired visuals, his modern take on jackin' house fused uplifting piano chords and vocals with bouncy bass lines, funky skipping beats and surprise drops
• Major Lazer was intense, a force of nature. I feel like they only have a couple of tricks up their sleeve though. They're great tricks, but...hmmm.

Lowlights

• EDM's occasional creative bankruptcy. I sat with a stopwatch and timed how often the breakdowns were happening: for one performer, it was about every 60-90 seconds. :( It felt pretty pointless after a while, you can't maintain that level of energy without boring people.
• That said, I guess the modern festival environment is all about multiple "sprints" vs the older school of a "marathon". You don't vibe out with the occasional impactful, emotional breakdown/buildup. Now it's "go really really hard!" for 30 seconds and then rest up during the extended breakdown.
• Oh, and please get off the mic. I don't need to be told that you want to me go #$%@ing crazy for every big drop you play.
• Only one female artist in the line up, Nicole Moudaber :/

Other thoughts...

• Every generation expresses itself in fashion trends that people will always find strange: I had giant wooden bead necklaces, and I guess now we have plastic bead face masks/scarfs? :)

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