Oh what fun I had last night! three glasses of Chardonnay and a champagne drink with raspberry vodka and peach juice at MEET on Gansevort and Washington, with my friend’s Jodi, Jay, Tim and Ed, and I was ready to roll on into Cielo, Manhattan’s DJ driven hot-spot to see LA’s super-hero house Dj David Alvarado and San Fran’s Jay J in the mix at the BPM Magazine sponsored, Thursday night soire.

Jay J was on point from the minute we walked in until his last tune at 1:30 AM. A lush mix of pretty, soulful deep tech-house vibes was just so much fun to dance to. As he blended track into track, some with a latin-tinged sals flavor and others with a sensuality that I hadn’t heard in such a long time, I was reminded of how much I love that West Coast, vibey, San Franciso deep sound. The club wasn’t very crowded (by 1:30 AM most of the bottle tables sat empty), but everyone there seemed to be on or around the dancefloor, most likely because people (like me) were having so much fun. My friend Jodi and I were really kicking it for a while on the dancefloor…getting into the groove and watching everyone else losing themselves in the mix.

I spoke to Jay J about the fact that he’s only spinning CD’s now. He talked about switching over and how it’s much better than having to carry so many crates, especially when you’re travelling all over and you have tighter security at the airports. I agree, but when the CD started skipping on one of his last tracks, I always feel like, for some reason, vinyl is better. I know there is a push toward MP3, and I’m wondering what kind of problems DJs are going to have with that format as well.

This begs the question, how good are clubs about checking their equipment and making sure that the laser in the CD player is clean? It used to be that we could see the tone-arm on the turntable was loose or the needle was bent or worn, but how are DJs supposed to clean CD decks? Does anyone really talk about that? I don’t know? Something I guess I’ll have to go research and write about here.

At 1:30 AM, David Alvarado jumped on the decks, but before his set I got to speak to him a bit about the club scene in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He told me that there is such a divide now in San Francisco, since the dot com crash pulled the rug out from under the city, that many people can’t afford to go out. There is an increasing divide between those who have and those who don’t, and that is really affecting the vibe out there. And, he mentioned that he was really digging LA right now and that was the place he’s feeling at this point.

The last time I saw Alvarado play was in Amsterdam at Chemistry during the annual Amsterdam Dance Event. I was floored by his mastery of deep, melodic and lush instrumental tracks that are steeped in the bridge between techno and house, what we today call tech-house. If you know techno, it’s not all about Happy Hardcore or speed records that can fry your brain. Real techno is minimal and housey, but doesn’t have the same kind of warmth of say, a record on a King Street or if you know anything on the now defunct Strictly Rhythm, Nervous Records or London’s Defected, which are more New York screaming diva, or raw, banging house-driven, anthemic type labels.

But tech-house fuses the minimalism of techno, with its electronic instrumentation and long, winding keyboard sounds with the soul of deep house and latin house, for example a Mark Grant or Lil Louis Vega. Producer/DJs like Terry Lee Brown Jr., G-Pal, Timewriter, Tony B., Onionz, and Hipp-E and Halo would fall in the tech-house category.

Once Alvardo hit the decks, his distinct taste in music was clearly apparent as the vibe changed from a fun, happy vibe that JJ created to a more intrinsically moody and serious campaign. This was okay though, because both DJs are familiar with each others style and you could tell that the crowd was ready for a more serious look at the underground sounds by that time. After four of five drinks, talking to your friends, saying hello to the promoter and getting into the groove, it was really time to get serious.

Alvarado brought the crowd into just that sort of groove…bending their minds to a different slant of sounds that they were just a bit more raw, a bit less polished and a bit more underground. A deeper groove that carried the crowd from a sexy, swingy latin flavor of Jay J to a deeper, more melodic and grinding atmosphere.

At the end of the day, Alvarado is one of the best DJs you will ever hear play live. Because of the light turnout, it’s my impression that his name doesn’t carry a lot of weight in the New York club scene, but it very well should. Maybe clubbers aren’t ready for thought provoking melody of tech-house, I don’t know, but I certainly embrace it because that’s the way my mind works.

So, kudo’s to BPM for bringing Ian Pooley, Alvarado and Jay J to Cieolo over the past few weeks. I’m diggin the vibe and will be back for more. It’s my new favorite spot, even if others consider it passe, because it’s DJ driven and about the music first and the bottle service second.

On Sunday, my friend and classmate Noriko and I visited the Japan Society on Manhattan’s East Side to see an intriguing and thought provoking art exhibit entitled, Little Boy, The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture”. Created and curated by world-reknowned Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami, the show explores the impact of Japan’s otaku or “geek” subcultures in art, film, television, books, magazines and ties ties to the commercialism of Japan’s burgeoning consumer society.

The Japan Society sits just underneath the gleaming and sleek black Trump Tower condominiums at 333 East 47th Street and across from a concrete plaza of benches crowded east sider’s enjoying a coffee, reading the news, walking their dogs and generally enjoying a gorgeous, warm spring day.

To the right, just inside the entrance, stood a wall of Japanese Pachinko machines, which are a hy-brid of a slot machine and a pinball machine. Like a slot machine, Pachniko machines stand upright in the same vein as Las Vegas or Atlantic City slot machines. The difference is the player controls the velocity of hundreds of small steel balls shot into play using a knob located at the bottom right of the machine (as you can see in the rare Robo Cop machine’s picture posted here). The further clockwise you turn the knob, the more balls shoot out at a higher rate of speed and distance. Turning the knob counterclockwise slows their velocity and distance, enabling you to plot the course of your balls more precisely so they fall through a set of gates. Once through the gates, the balls are distributed in all directions down into the playing area of the machine, where they are knocked around pin-ball-like, and either disappear or are captured by special holes. After a certain number of balls land in the holes, the slot machine’s wheel activates and like in U.S. slots, if you get 3 of a kind you win a prize.

Japan’s Pachinko parlors can be found across the country. Although gambling is technically illegal in Japan, the parlors cirumvent the law by awarding you merchandise that you can exchange for cash at a shop just outside each parlor.

Noriko was suprised to see the machines. I could tell they reminded her of home. She was quick to explain what they were and how they worked. It’s the first time I’d ever seen one and I was amazed at the combination of games and wondered why they wouldn’t work here. I’ve never seen them in Atlantic City, but they must have them in Las Vegas.

After playing with the machines for a bit, we made our way up one flight of stairs into the gallery area of the building and walked through the exhibit; an interesting mix consisting of paintings and sculptures alongside merchandise from Japan’s consumer culture. For example, the Miss Kitty display contained hundreds of Miss Kitty merchandise of various shapes and sizes. From large dolls to tiny figurines, just standing in front of all of it gave you an idea of Miss Kitty’s impact on the Japanese youth. In fact, I found out that the lack of long limbs or a even a mouth for Miss Kitty was a way to promote a non-threating toy to Japanese children, who live in a culture promoting homegeony of adherence to the team values over the individual.

I was struck by many of the artists use of violence, war, fire and futuristic imagery to convey the horror of “Little Boy”, the name of one of the Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end our war with Japan and its impact on Japanese society and the transformation Japan still struggles with to this day.

A paragraph from Japan’s constitution states that it shall never be a war-mongering state, but 50+ post-war years later, is that still a realistic expectation in Japanese society. Should the country continue to be beholden to the U.S. for it’s protection, or should it transform itself into a new Japan facing down enemies on its own.

It is clearly a compelling exhibit, which together gives you the sense of Japan’s constant struggle with war and its aftermath and the catharsis Japan’s otaku subculture hope for to turn Japan towards a new future while remembering its past.

I highly recommend it.

For more information on all Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes! Programs see the Japanese Society Calendar of Events and website: http://www.japansociety.org.

Tony Z.

So, I’m on the train last week and I realize, like everyone else has in the last two years or so, that our iPod’s are just really helping us all push the boundaries of what we listen to.

I know that this has been written about over and over, but I still can’t get over the fact that my iPod has helped me achieve musical paradise in that I am not constrained any longer by the physical limitations of a compact disc or cassette tape. And, now that I am really aware of this, I truly believe that this revolution in music consumption is going to open up doors for the music industry like never before.

As I looked across the aisle to a girl sitting in a seat directly across from me, I noticed her CD player and through my complete understanding of the transition from compact disc to MP3, I had this incredible feeling of power, that I had broken free of the chains that bound my musical consumption. I looked down at my own iPod and I thought to myself, this is just incredible. The fact that I can take all this music on the go with me, and I only have a 20 Gig. Wait til I upgrade. Or, even better, wait another 5 years when the limitations have become almost non-existent and the future is more than we imagine today.

In the DJ and electronic music industry, the events of the last 2 to 5 years are going to change the way music is played in nightclubs all over the world. When DJs moved from vinly to compact disc, it was not because of sound quality. CD’s will always be inferior to vinyl because you just don’t have the bass response you need below 20khz on a CD to make an impact in the bass response on the dancefloor. Anyone can tell when a DJ goes from CD to vinly and back. This is why DJs will alwasys support vinyl, because nothing can replicate the warmth that dance and electronic music needs other than vinyl to convey the proper depth of the artists intentions in a nightclub environment. I think people don’t go to nightclubs just for the liquore and the girls/boys they want to meet. I think they also go because they know now, they are going to have a far superior listening experience because of the high aural quality of the music being played over the club’s sound system.

This leaves our industry in a dilemna. How do DJs take advantage of the incredibly mobile MP3, which is the first format that I believe will possibly replace vinyl in many a DJs box. You’ll no longer have six crates of records, but one computer and an external hardrive. And, how is that going to translate to the crowds who love to see Djs do what they do? Are people going to be just as enamored with Sasha who is now converting to playing almost all of his music digitally, or is the excitement going to fade on guys that play only digital and a huge retro backlash forces all DJs to continue to play at least some vinyl?

These and many other issues are going to play out over the course of the next few years as many DJs adjust to the possiblity of bringing huge music libraries with them to the club, editing on the fly, dropping in samples by triggering with a mouse instead of scratching it in with their hands.

I think the people at Final Scratch have created the first generation digital product to allow DJs to emulate what they do in a club with what they do digitally. But I’m also enamored with the Technics Digital Turntables, which I feel are really the ones to watch out for. I am absolutely amazed at their precision, look and feel and will certainly be in line to purchase a few when I have the finances to cover the cost.

I am sure that having the new Technics will do for my DJ career what the iPod did for rediscovering my love of music in the first place. For the past 4 years, I’ve been recovering from the dot com abyss and trying to figure out what I wanted to do in digital music over the next five years. The iPod is helping me to figure that out, believe it or not.

I’m listening to a wide variety of music. From The Killers to Jeff Mills and LCD SoundSystem to Terry Lee Brown Jr., I’ve got such a vibrant collection of music on my machine, which keeps me entertained and in a musical trance during the hours I shuttle back and forth on the train from my home in Bay Ridge to my evening classes at New York University in Manhattan.

Having the ability to scan so much music on one device that sits in my pocket will help me when I buy my digital tables. I’ll know all my song so much better than I did when I had them on vinyl. And, if I have that much music in my library, it’ll be easier to bring it all to the club, instead of having to leave records at home that I wasn’t sure I was going to play.

This is what makes me so excited about digital music. It give you so many options, so much more to work with. The only downside is sound quality. So I try to rip all my files at 320kbps to maximize the quality, but then you run into storage issues with the larger file sizes the 320 codec generates. But with external hard drive prices coming down, this isn’t so much of a problem anymore.

I’m going to do some testing with TraktorDJ, PCDJ, and download a few tracks from Beatport and see what I like the best. Then I’ll come back with a review after working with each system and vendor and let you know what I think.

BTW, sorry about not posting over the last two weeks. Last week, my cable modem was out, but I’m back online. And this week, I had to shoot photographs for my bro’s wedding on Wednesday in Boston.

Tony Z.