download: DJ Empirical, “Spring 2009 Dubstep Mix”
apr 2009

Here’s a short (~22 min) mix I did this weekend. I just replaced my needles from when they were stolen in February, so I’ve been off the decks for a minute.

Tracklist:

Chase & Status – Against All Odds (feat. Kano) (dubstep remix)
Jazzsteppa – One
Fault – Don’t Dread on Me
DZ – What You Won’t Do for Love
Cult of the 13th Hour – Wickedness
DJ Hatcha – Just a Rift
Headhunter & Ekelon – Timewarp
Lady Sovereign – A Little Bit of Shhh! (dub)


download: Flight of the Conchords, “Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor (Schwarz remix)”
feb 2009

Schwarz is RaceCarProductions‘ The Librarian and I doing co-remix duties. For the hell of it, I wanted to take this (hilarious) snippet of a track from the episode (the album wasn’t released yet) and turn it into a dancefloor gem, and Matthew was eager to help. A lot of the original electro feel is still there, but we stretched it out, added bass and acid, and chopped the hell out of the vocals.


download: DJ Empirical, “Bale Freakout Dub”
05 feb 2009

So in case you haven’t heard it yet, Christian Bale went on a little rampage on the set of… Terminator 4 or something.

Nowadays it’s cool to remix the hell out of any old audio clip that hits the web, but all the remixes I’ve heard have been wack as hell, so when stAllio! suggested that *someone* remix it well, i figured I’d give it a whirl.

This isn’t quite done yet, but it’s sharable. At this point, I’m maybe not even going to revisit it, so… yeah.


download: DJ Empirical, 3-3-2 Mix Test Run
28 jan 2009

I discovered a great mix by Wayne and Wax, an early entry in the “Blogariddims” podcast, called “Another Crunk Geneaology“. His mix “traces out another crunk genealogy, seeking the common grooves and feedback loops between crunk and clave, reggaeton and ragtime, bhangra and bounce, to name a few”. Check his lengthy explanation of the 3-3-2 beat, its influence on music, and definitely listen to his mix.

This appealed to me not only as a music nerd, but also as a dj, since I’d been mixing small sets of music with this beat for a while — I just didn’t have the proper music knowledge to identify the common element.

I spent a couple days pulling together music that uses that 3-3-2 pattern for a mix, and did a short (~18 min) test run, with a sort of random track list.

This was mostly a proof-of-concept, so there are some tracks of questionable bitrate, and lots of pitch-shift aliasing to deal with, for sure. (Then again, Ludachrist has Ableton aliasing all over his mix.)


download: DJ Empirical, Summer 2008 Mix
jul 2008

Here’s another Serato mix, an hour of mostly of dubstep, bassline house, and the like. I have at the moment lost (if I ever had it) the tracklist. I know it starts with Andrew W.K., and has Benga & Coki, Dexplicit, T2, DJ Q, TS7, some Drop the Lime… and some more stuff.


download: Donald Spivak, Introducing Donald Spivak
spring 2008

Donald Spivak a moniker I used (for a mercifully short time) when residing predominantly within the techno genre, and this set reflects an early attempt (for me) at an entirely techno dj set (though I did sneak in some mashup goodness right at the end).

Much thanks to The Librarian for quite a few of these tracks.


download: DJ Empirical, “Back Into It”
27 feb 2008

This is another “practice” set I did before one or another of my gigs; judging from the date (02/27/08), I was preparing for the March ’08 edition of Schwarz, the electronic night hosted by The Librarian and me.

As I mentioned when I uploaded this before:

i’m a little rusty, so this week is going to be devoted to un-rustifying.

i threw this together earlier just figuring out what i’m doing again 🙂 it’s mostly dubstep-ish things.

Tracklist:

77 Klash – Mad Again (feat. Johnny Osbourne)
Vex’d – Pop Pop V.I.P.
Lone Wolf – Slayed by Shadows
Aaron Spectre – Music Is the Weapon
Benga & Coki – Night (Buraka som Sistema remix)
Cloaks – Hi Tek Buzz
Drop the Lime / Mathhead – Bricks
Twista – Tattoo (a cappella)


download: Quahogs, “/rupture Removal”
09 feb 2008

This was inspired by Language Removal Service, and also People Like Us‘ “The Bits in Between“.

In fact, it can be considered a cover of the latter, as I used DJ /rupture, one of Vicki Bennett’s WFMU colleagues, as the source material. Specifically, I used the February 6, 2008 episode (see here), which featured his interview with Dexplicit.

I didn’t strictly stick to the bits in between words; I also left in self-identifiers (“Mudd Up”, “DJ /rupture”, etc.) and words like “wow” and “like”.


download: DJ Empirical, “A Quickie with DJE”
aug 2007

This is a short, 20-minute-ish Serato mix dating back to when I was first starting to play at Clique. There are a couple rough spots, but it’s a good view of where I was musically at the time.

tracklist:

Jamelia “Something About You (Mr Oizo Mix)”
Lil Mama “Lip Gloss (Kid Fresh & Haterboy ReFix)”
Lillica Libertine “Ultra 10”
Cybotron “Clear”
Debbie Gibson “Only in My Dreams”
Federico Franchi “Electron”
Chromeo “Bonafied Lovin'”
Black Ghosts “Let’s Get Physical”
Midnight Juggernauts “Road to Recovery (Miami Horror remix)”
Dandi Wind “Stop Die (remix)”
PROFF “You’ll See (original)”

I was burning it on 3″ cdrs for people for a while. Most people didn’t know what to do with them (especially people with macs) so I stopped.


download: Sandpaper Set, Live @ BASE Gallery, Cincinnati, OH 2007-03-30
30 mar 2007

I was asked to play a noise show downtown Cincinnati at a place called BASE Gallery. Instead of trying the stuff I’d been doing in The Black Fives, I wanted to do something new: play a dj set with pieces of sandpaper instead of records.

DSC_0250

I used normal turntables & needles, along with a Kaoss Pad for effects. Someone asked, in a myspace comment, something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t that mess up your needles?”

In short, yes:

sandpaper needles

The blue needle on the left of the low-quality scanner image is a new needle; the two black ones were old, worn out needles i hadn’t yet thrown away. As you can see, the sandpaper completely ravaged them. 🙂

And for the record (no pun), I used multiple grits of sandpaper over the course of the set, and some with masking tape in a plus-sign shape across the sandpaper to make a kind of rhythmic sound.