demodulated

A recent post in one of my favourite blogs, I’d Rather Be Writing, referred me to a fantastic article on the bokardo blog entitled “9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers”. Amongst other gems (including, especially, the author-asserting qualifier that all blog entries should be considered forever beta) the one suggestion that revealed a gaping hole in my own page design was the inclusion of a “greatest hits” page.

In my true-to-life self-deprecating fashion I’d like to say that it was difficult wading through the crap to find a few gems worthy of declaring my best foot to put forward. But I can’t. The truth is that, indeed amongst the crap, there are a few posts I’ve written that I’m particularly proud of and actually enjoy re-reading on occasion.

Amongst the 94 posts in my 16 months of blogging I’ve selected 13 to represent the best I have to offer. Flipping through the remaining 78 posts often made me want to delete everything but my best-of, but it’s all beta, Brian, it’s all beta.

And so I invite you, my favourite people on Earth, my new readers and old, to shift your gaze down the southeastern corner of your monitor to the “Best of Demodulated” heading on my sidebar. What you read there may be more indicative of my potential than my consistency, but that’s probably how you’re most interested in spending your valuable time anyway.

I read and appreciate each of your comments, even if critical, so don’t be dissuaded by the age of the posts.

P.s., since I’m really the only person using the search functionality I’ve removed the “Top Lookups” statistics, showing the most frequently searched keywords, from the sidebar.

Shortly following our move to our new apartment my girlfriend and I were offered a weathered but absolutely gorgeous wooden entertainment centre. Many thanks to our lovely new neighbour a few doors down who generously donated this to us. It very gracefully solves our problem of how to best display our history museum of video game consoles.

Click the thumbnail and squint a bit to picture yourself in our otherwise humble living quarters with nearly 20 years of video game entertainment at your disposal. Squint a little harder to envision a Wii in place of our very neglected GameCube.

A few years ago I was simply in awe of the newly released Windows Movie Maker - a simple to use, sufficiently powerful for hobbyists, free-of-charge video editing program. It captured my imagination and I immediately scoured the net for free stock footage with which to make pointless amateurish music videos. After about 10 hours I decided my ideas were too lofty for this humble software so I gave up about 3/4 of the way through my first production. I’ll spare you all the bruised fruits of that tireless labour.

WMM has matured a bit since then, and, after thoroughly berating my girlfriend for being a typical cat owner, the video she took of our cat in the midst of an Electric Kool-Aid Catnip Test sparked my creative fuse.

Yadda yadda yadda, 30 minutes later we’d produced this masterpiece of purposeless drivel.

Aaaaaand keyhole wipe and we’re out.

I got an email a short while ago from Hullabaloo Raves announcing an upcoming 10th anniversary reunion party. It’s been years since I went to one of these things, but I’m going to this one. Period. There are very few reasons that would bring me out of my rave-free hideyhole but this is one of them (DJs Josh Wink, R.A.W., and Ritchie Hawtin are others).

I’ve reminisced about Hullabaloo raves in the past, so I encourage you to read my thoughts on Toronto’s (and maybe North America’s) most famous rave company for some background. My ultimate Hullabaloo moment, which I describe in a little more detail in this post, is when a random girl generously gave me a bead necklace, asking nothing in return. Though I gave away the necklace I kept a few beads as a reminder. While moving out of my parents’ place I found these beads and now keep them in my jacket pocket. I remember many things about that night, even over 9 years later.

One thing I most certainly remember in flawless detail was how much I loved the set of a veteran Toronto DJ, Ruffneck, spinning some very old school techno classics spanning about 1989 to 1993. Not only did Ruffneck play many of my favourite all-time anthems, including 3 consecutive Acen tracks, but he played some of the rarest and choicest remixes thereof - always the sign of a DJ who loves what he or she does. Ruffneck is ‘longsided by a real Toronto rave institution, MC Flipside, who was renowned in the city as one of the most prominent and vocally blessed MCs of the 90’s. I bought the tape of this performance and wore it thin. The current state of my copy makes it unlistenable.

Thus it was with great elation that I downloaded the set, transcribed from pristine DAT, from the Hullabaloo forum’s list of free Bittorrent MP3s. While this is a great distribution method, it is a little less accessible than direct HTTP downloads, which are, unfortunately, prohibitively expensive considering the many gigabytes spanned in this ever-growing online catalogue. Fortunately for me, and especially for you, fair reader, this is not the case at Demodulated!

It is with great pride, and with the kind permission of Hullabaloo founder DJ Anabolic Frolic, that I redistribute my very favourite DJ set out of the 14-odd Hullabaloo parties I attended. Please download, share, and enjoy, as you ought to with all culture. That’s what the internet is for.

DJ Ruffneck live at Hullabaloo 3, Love and Magic, November 22, 1997
192kbps, 44.1khz, stereo
60:02, 84.5MB
Download (right-click to save as)

My extra special thanks go to Anabolic Frolic for generously hosting these mix sets, and especially to DJ Ruffneck and the world class Hullabaloo DJs, many of whom earn thousands of dollars for an hour’s work, for sharing their music with the world for free. That shows a lot of class.