DJ BJOO

Primavera Mix by bjoo

Yes, this is long overdue.  But finally, here is my brand new DJ mix!

Thanks to The Mixtape Club for showcasing my Rejoove mix this month.

This is my gift to myself and the world in this New Year.

Let this be a year of new beginnings, fresh starts, and rejoovenation.

This mix is an appetizer.  Enjoy and savour the sweet vibrations.

Happy 2011 everyone!  Much love and happiness to all.  :-)

Beijos da bjoo.

*Download “Rejoove” mix.

10:00 p.m.  May 29, 2010.  Detroit Hart Plaza.  Multitudes cloaked in fluorescent colors holding glow stick candles begin to congregate around the amphitheater like cultish pagans ready to worship their techno gods.  I feel like a pilgrim arriving at Mecca.  One hour to go.

10:15 p.m.  The air pulsates to Josh Wink as the masses swarm the amphitheater like spermatozoa drawn toward a concrete egg.  (We really are all part sperm now that I think of it.  Although which came first, the sperm or the egg?  I think I just answered it.)

10:30 p.m.  I imagine for a moment what an ancient Greek and Roman might think if they traveled through time to witness this modern-day gathering.  I picture one saying to the other, “Caesar, the future is AWESOME.”

10:45 p.m.  Turn on the Plastikman “SYNK” iPhone app especially created for this live performance.  It allows the audience to participate in an experimental “audience-performer interaction” at specific times during the show.  Richie Hawtin makes geeky look cool.

10:55 p.m.  A massive convex LED screen spans the length of the stage unlit.  The mosh pit settles in anticipation.  Goosebumps.

11:00-12:00 a.m.  Whoooooooaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!  WTF???!!???  OMG!!!!!!!!  Wooowww!!!!!!!!   Yeeaahhhh!!!!!  You get the point.

The monster sound system roars with crystal clear sound waves that reverberate through my body.  Booming 808 and 909 bass lines send shock waves down my bones.  A psychedelic kaleidoscope of lights emits from the stage hypnotizing me.  I stand in awe enraptured.

“Dude, I think I’m having a spiritual moment.”

I think back to ancient times and suddenly feel extremely futuristic.  This moment I am beholding seems like the culmination and leading edge of artistic expression through technology.  Richie Hawtin is fucking cool.

bjoo @ plastikman LIVE @ Detroit Hart Plaza!!!

Richie Hawtin as Plastikman behind LED screen (click to enlarge)

Plastikman @ Movement Electronic Music Festival 2010

Now, no words can truly express the full extent of the jaw-dropping sensory experience that was this show.  Not even video clips can do it justice.  There seemed to be an extra special quality in the air that was almost palpable beyond the physical senses.

Maybe it was the element of homecoming for Richie, and the climactic fulfillment of showcasing his cutting-edge live show at the 10th anniversary of the festival that celebrates the iconic Detroit sound that became such an integral part of his own identity.

Whatever it was, it felt like an intimate moment was being shared between the audience and the artist in a symbiotic way beyond—or partly because of—the literal symbiosis that was formed through the interactive technology.  It was almost as if he was feeding off the audience’s energy like  some mystical deity consuming the adoration of his devotees.  We were one.

I felt complete.  It was only the first day of the festival, but I could go home happy after this one show.  That’s how good it was.  I couldn’t even walk over to the RedBull stage to hear the end of DJ Hype’s set.  It felt sacrilegious.  I wanted to keep savoring the lingering memories of Plastikman Live.

Enough talking.  Here is a collage of clips I put together from the show (just a few highlights):

Oh Plastikman, how I have missed thee!  I waited 15 years to finally see you!

Plastikman LIVE at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival was incredible, magnanimous, powerful, epic, enchanting, amazing; in a word, spiritual.

My journey to find Plastikman was elusive from the start.  I discovered his Sheet One album as a teenager at my very first job at Sam Goody while browsing through the techno CD rack.  I had just recently popped my techno cherry after picking up an URB Magazine CD purely based on its cool looking cover.  It literally blew my mind.  Who said you can’t judge a book by its cover?

Once you go techno you can never go back.

So of course I had to pick up Plastikman’s Sheet One with its cool looking perforated cover (which I later found out were perforated to look like fake acid tabs).  Maybe it was the minimal artwork or the funny looking alien man, but something just drew me to this CD like a magnet.  I didn’t know why, but I knew I had to give this one a listen.

Almost bursting with anticipation, I flung myself inside my sister’s car as soon as she picked me up from work and ravenously tore open the CD.  Strangely, the CD itself looked very much out of place.  There was no alien logo or track names, but rather some obscure text about who-knows-what.  I figured that was intentional in some avant-garde way.

I inserted the CD into the stereo deck and hit play…. but there was nothing!  Ok, maybe he is just REALLY minimal, I thought.  But track after track there was nothing but silence.  He can’t possibly be THAT minimal, I wondered.

My heart sank.

Of course my Sam Goody coworkers didn’t believe me when I told them it was the wrong CD, and eyed me skeptically as they handed me my refund.  And there was no way for me to easily find this album again since the internet was still in its infancy.  So all I could do was imagine what it sounded like, which I did.

Meanwhile, I took a detour into an ascetic religious path, which in hindsight was like divine intervention as it saved me (and my brain cells) from being sucked down the rabbit hole of delinquency that some fellow teenagers were falling into.  Jesus saves.

It wasn’t for another 4 years that I would venture back to my electronic music roots by way of downtempo and drum&bass.  And I don’t remember when exactly my ears finally got to scratch their Richie itch, but all I remember was that I felt an instant recognition.  Plastikman sounded exactly like I had imagined!  It was like meeting my musical soul mate.

Fast forward to Memorial weekend 2010, Detroit, Michigan.

Here I am at the Detroit Hart Plaza about to witness the most anticipated performance of my life.

To be continued…

1. I spend a lot of time thinking about the Universe and how tiny we all are.
2. I also think of how gigantic we are to a bacteria.  To the bacteria I am just a terrain.  It does not know my name.  It cannot grasp the internet or postmodernism.
3. I think we are like bacteria, too, just strolling along on this Terrain…or so we think!
4. I refused to learn Korean as a child because I thought the language and culture were rather sexist and hierarchical.
5. I get motor ticks when I’m excited.
6. My mother dropped me on my head twice as a baby.
7. I think #6 caused #5.
8. I think humans are crazy.  But I also think that sanity is relative, and insanity is genius’ evil twin.
9. I think our bodies are a microcosm and reflection of the natural world at large, and that humans are Earth’s living cells that have become cancerous.  Climate change or global warming is Earth’s fever as She attempts to purge the human dis-ease.
10. I do not chase after balls.
11. I laugh on the inside because I like to conserve my energy.
12. I’ve been told by 5 people that I remind them of Daria.  Thanks.
13. I don’t care for small talk.  I like it real deep.  Word?
14. I won a creative writing award in 3rd grade in Brazil; “Best of Campus Video” and “Best Dance on Film” at the 2003 Five College Film Festival in Amherst, MA; and the 2005 Buzzlife/Scion Battle of the DJs at Club Nation in Washington, DC.
15. I believe peace is attainable because human potential is limitless.
16. I don’t care for most traditions, ceremonies, or rituals of any kind.
17. I believe women will change the world once we heal our individual and collective wounds, begin loving ourselves fully, and recognize our divine female essence, which I think is re-emerging in the human psyche and will be the dominant state of mind in the future.  Move over boys.
18. I love strong intelligent women, and I love being a woman.
19. I find it hard to be social during the daylight because I’m a night owl.
20. I’m controversially idealistic in a detached contemplative way.
21. Thinking is my favorite pastime.
22. I think dreams are gifts and portals to other dimensions of existence like a playground for our imagination.
23. It takes a lot to faze me.
24. Some people call me “Captain Random.”
25. I love myself.

This is my live mix from “The Golden Era of Drum&Bass” party in Washington, DC on April 9, 2010.

This is just a sampling of some of the first drum&bass tunes that got me hooked into this genre of dance music, and which inevitably left a lingering impression on me.  There is just something playful, funky, hypnotic, and EXCITING about drum&bass that gets my body moving!

I just love how music can take you away into another level of being, where you forget about the usual concerns and just DANCE.

“Without music, life would be a mistake…. I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.”-Friedrich Nietzsche

bjoo – LIVE @ Golden Era of Drum n Bass by bjoo

bjoo – Champion Selection by bjoo

Thank you for dropping by my blog.  This is where you will find my latest mixes, music, events, and musings about life.

And by the way, since I’m doing introductions, my DJ name is pronounced as bee-joo, and it rather sounds like jewel in French (bijou) or kiss in Portuguese (beijo).

I like DJing because it is like cooking with sound.  You throw in a bunch of ingredients and mix them up to create flavorful music.   I like mine with a beefy bass line and some chopped up breakbeats thrown in for good measure.  Hmm…sounds delicious!

Bon appetit!

Test test test…