On June 19, New York Times columnist Daniel Altman offered up a stellar column on one aspect of DJ culture rarely making the mainstream press. In the Travel section of NYTimes.com, under the heading Music, Altman’s
Never Mind the Concierge, Where’s the D.J.? spotlights thriving hotel-based lounge culture driven by talented DJs spinning a wide variety of electronic, dance, hip hop and international beats at some of the world’s coolest hotels. In these days of relentless paparazzi shoving their way into the paths of jet setting young trendsetters, high profile celebrities and well heeled, respected businessmen and women, instead of partying outside the hotel at a super hot nightspot, the party is now happening at the hotel! Where the paparazzi’s camera’s are shielded from the goings on inside.

I’d love to reprint the article here, but the NYTimes.com requires reprint fees of $150 per article for one month, so
you’ll have to follow this link to it if you can. It may not be free to view, as most NYTimes.com articles are free for a few days and then are archived and only be accessed by paying a fee. This one seems to be clear of that requirement for now.

Altman writes about Stéphane Pompougnac, DJ a the Hôtel Costes in Paris since 1997. Pompougnac’s DJ career took off spinning in the hotel’s restaurant. Actor Robert DeNiro, pop-star Madonna and a few French artists would come specifically to listen to him mix, and one day Pompougnac approached the hotel’s owner about creating a mix-CD to leave as a gift for guests. And so was born the Hôtel Costes CD on French label, Pschent, in 1999.

Other trendy, world class hotels have followed the example set by Pompougnac and the Hôtel Costes, releasing their own custom CD compilations. The Bauer in Venice, Arena in Amsterdam and the Soho Grand and sister hotel, Tribeca Grand, under the tutelage of promoter, Tommy Saleh, are now releasing compilation CD’s as well.

Nice’s Hi Hotel even brought in F-Communications superstar DJ/Producer, Laurent Garnier, and his label partner, Eric Morand to book DJs and acts at the hotel every weekend. And, Ingmari Pagenkemper, music manager at the Lydmar Hotel in Stockholm has been bringing in a variety of acts.

Here is a listing of hotel bars mentioned in the article:

Hôtel Costes, 239, rue St.-Honoré, Paris; (33-1) 42.44.50.00; www.hotelcostes.com.

Lydmar Hotel, Sturegatan 10, Stockholm; (46-8) 566 113 00; www.lydmar.se.

Hi Hotel, 3, avenue des Fleurs, Nice, France; (33-4) 97.07.26.26; www.hi-hotel.net.

Soho Grand, 310 West Broadway, New York; (212) 965-3588; www.sohogrand.com.

The Church Lounge at the Tribeca Grand, 2 Avenue of the Americas, New York, (212) 519-6677, www.tribecagrand.com.

Here are the remaining six Hôtel Costes mix CD’s, compiled by Stéphane Pompougnac and available at Amazon.com:

Okay…have you had enough Kaskade yet? Not me…I went to hear him last Thursday night at Cielo Club in New York City. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Cielo continues their commitement to the music by bringing in this breaking wunderkid from San Francisco (See last week’s post for more on Kaskade’s origins in the biz). A very cosmopolitan, sexy crowd filled the dancefloor all night as Kaskade layed down a blend of vocal vibes and deep tech house. From jazzy vocals and remixes of classic dance tracks with a darker flavor, Kaskade held the floor like a champ from when I arrived to when I left. I was definitely impressed. I think this kid’s going to be around for a long time to come.

I’m aslo really digging Cielo, because everyone seems to love to dance there. You don’t really have a lot of cats hanging out on the fringe. People just seem to really dig the music. It’s not pretentious. It’s not packed unless it’s a heavy industry night, so you can really have a great time at the club and leave with your hearing intact, little fuss and definitely no drama.

I was pleasantly suprised to run into an old friend, Sheneza Mohammed. Formerly in Marketing and Promotions and Kinetic Records, she took a little break for a while, but recently ended up back at Nettwerk America where she is East Coast Promotion Director. Big ups to Sheneza. She’s an extremely talented, creative promotions rep and she deserves a ton of credit for breaking BT, Oakenfold and Sandra Collins in America, along with the rest of the Kinetic staff. I also ran into Kaskade’s manager, Stephanie, from MCT, the same management company that reps Moby. I’d never met her, so it was good to put a face with the name.

After I was done working, I got on the dancefloor myself and was psyched when Kaskade dropped his hit, “Here I Am.” What a great record! Such a wonderful vibe. Pretty strings and keyboards, uplifiting vocals, unique sounds that melt in your head. It’s one of my favorite tracks of all time, already!

The best part about Kaskade’s music is the writing. Whenever you hear dance vocals, they’re sometimes a bit cheesy. But this track is inspirational. It’s got what it takes to transcend from a record that packs the dancefloor to a radio hit. I haven’t been following the course this song’s taken, but I hope some dance radio stations have jumped on it, because it deserves to be heard. Then again…what is radio nowadays? It’s not as important as it once was, but it’s still reaching the mainstream, where Kaskade deserves to be heard.

I have to thank my peeps at Cielo, Nick Valencia and Karrie Goldberg for being so kind to me and my group. The more I hang out at that spot, the more I love it and I can see why URB Magazine hails it as the nation’s best club for 2005!

I’m going to try and hit Collette this week at Cielo. She’s a featured vocalist on Kaskade’s album and has her own music out. She’s playing Thursday night. I’m working with Lady D’s management company, Insite Worldwide, out of Chicago. Lady D and Collette are both member’s of the first female DJ collective, SuperJane along with Heather and Dayhota. I’ll report back with my comments over the weekend.

Peace,

Tony Z.

Last weekend, I went through this web site with a fine toothcomb, making all pages accessed via the main URL at http://www.netmix.com W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant. I have yet to add a few pages; notably the services, about, web site network and clients pages, which sorely need to be implemented.

Second on the agenda is the script that collects email address for the updates in the spine area on the right just underneath all the navigation for this blog. (I struck it from the homepage on Saturday). I know I installed it correctly, but for some reason it just doesn’t want to work right. I’ve emailed the programmer to ask him what what the deal is should hear something back soon to fix. Don’t bother adding your address there now until I announce here that it is fixed. You can still register for the blog.

The third thing that is bugging me (no pun intended…lol) is the Google Adsense code. You’ll notice that the ads appearing are for Japanese Pachinko machines. Yes…I wrote about these machines a month ago in a previous entry, but for some reason Google just won’t let us forget it. I’m hoping it works itself out, because there’s no way to fix it other than make sure my Channel settings in my Adsense profile are correct. They are. I’m not sure if it’s because so many people are coming through the Google gateway after looking up “Otaku” subculture and finding the my blog entry in Google’s search results. That could be one reason, but I’m not sure.

So, give me another week or so to get everything up to speed, then I’ll start working on the Mambo version of the site, which needs some graphics created and a full nav menu plotted out. I do it right, I’ll get it down the way I’ve wanted to do have Netmix since the site’s 3.0 reluanch in 1999. I’m excited to launch the new look. I think it will be a pleasant surprise!

By the way, I hope you don’t mind the Google Adsense and BlogMine ad code running at the bottom of the posts. I moved them from the top so they aren’t as intrusive. I need to make a couple of bucks to help keep this going, and hopefully growing. Thanks for your understanding.

Tony

Speak of the devil! The other day, I wrote the story below about how Jennifer Warner from Raves.com turned me onto Kaskade. Lo and behold…I get an email last night from Cielo, URB Magazines choice for Best US Club 2005, with a flyer attached annoucing Kaskade this Thursday night, June 9!

You bet your bottom I’m gonna be there to check him out. Hope to see you there. I’m bringing the camera to take some pics.

Oh…here’s the club flyer. $20 bucks to get in, $10 reduced (if you’re lucky to get on the reduced). I’ll have to dust off my connections for this one.

Tony

Last week, my friend and editor of Raves.com, Jennifer Warner and I had an impromtu IM session over AIM. We haven’t spoken in what seems like forever (really a year or so…has it been that long?). The conversation turned to MySpace.com the music-driven online social networking community. We didn’t realize we’d both signed up to the site but hadn’t connected as friends there yet.

Linking into her MySpace page, an .mp3 file of a house music track she’d embedded in her bio section began to play automatically. It was super hot! I had no idea who it was but it one of the best house music tracks I’d heard in a while. I furiously typed, "YO! What is that track playing on your page?" Jen quickly replied, "Kaskade! " She explained, Kaskade, one of her favorite house music producers, is on Om Records out of San Francisco. Of course he is! I should have known.

The Om Records imprint, synonymous with quality house music, has taken over where Strictly Rhythm so sadly left off. After selling the business to Warner Brothers in search of the big payday (a decision that made it’s owner and some of the other employees a nice chunk of change) the label couldn’t produce a platinum selling artist and the WB shut it down, leaving a gaping hole in the dance music industry during a time when our music was once again taking a backseat to all other genres AND being crunched by file-sharing and the post-9/11 economic slowdown. Thank God! Om has survived through the turmoil. Let’s hope they don’t make the same mistake. In these days of the web and digital downloading, who needs a major now anyway. Unless you want to show up on Letterman or Leno, it’s not that big a deal.

So, Kaskade? What planet have I been living on? Sure, I’ve been out of the loop, but from time to time I’m checkin’ the latest happenings on the dance charts. I can’t believe I missed out on this choice tune! And, it was released in 2003 at that! I must have been in la-la-land.

Jen’s .mp3, a remix of the Kaskade’s, “It’s You, It’s Me” by the legendary LA DJ and Billboard Dance Chart Reporter, Marques Wyatt was what I’d been listening to. It had that soft, melodic and funky deep bassline that reminded me of Gat Decor’s "Passion." There’s another one on my mind right now, maybe the Ital Rockers? I just can’t put my finger on, but I’ll think of it and add it to this posting when I do.

Layered over the track is a beautful piano that brought back memories of the classic house music track, "A Little Piano " by Soft House Company. It’s smooth, warm kick drum and happy sounding snare hits have their roots in San Fran’s deep house scene, but also sound like something you’d hear in the early 90’s, Crystal Waters hit, "Makin Happy".

With those influences, or at least the one’s I hear anyway, I wanted to find out more about the cat making this melodic, funky and soulful dance music. Who is Kaskade? I set out on a web search to satisfy my own curiousity and hopefully hip you to some cool music I didn’t even know about myself.

33-year old Ryan Raddon aka Kaskade, is a Chicago native and former production assistant to Om Records head of A&R, Chris Smith. He worked his way to San Francisco after spending his college years in Salt Lake City where he attended a Mormon university. While in Salt Lake, Raddon put together a long-running, successful house music night, opened a record store and did a two-year stint as a mix-show DJ on a local radio station.

According to the Om Records web site, released in 2003,“It’s You, It’s Me” (OM-120vlp), received “strong support from Billboard Magazine, Radio One (UK), KCRW (LA), BPM Magazine and URB. Touring through over six countries in 2002, Kaskade is now poised as a break through artist following in the foot steps of Zero 7 and Miguel Migs.”

For more on Kaskade, see this interview on the VirginMegaMagazine.com web site. I also didn’t realize that Amazon.com is offering free downoads of some of the tracks from albums. Click on this link to download the .mp3 of Call Me Wise by Kaskade from the album, “It’s You, It’s Me.”

In 2004, Kaskade released a his sophmore album, “In the Moment (OM-157).” The Om Records web site writes, “A busy year of non-stop International touring after the release of “Its You, Its Me” – Featured in “What’s Hot this Summer” – Entertainment Weekly. Kaskade brings forth a sultry soundtrack of powerful HITS with In the Moment. The opening track “Steppin’ Out” will heat up dancefloor’s everywhere. Kaskade teams up with the illustrious Collette on “I Like the Way,” and “Sweet Love” features heart-stopping vocals by Joslyn. Voted “Best New DJ” by URB Magazine last year – This release is proof that hard work has finally paid off for this DJ-Producer: In the Moment is a dancefloor journey into soul, harmonies, pop & funk – An album that will make all music-lovers groove. Kaskade brings you In The Moment.”

With single remixes of Steppin’ Out” by BT, Jason Hodges & Greenskeepers commissioned by Om, Kaskade supported the album during a brief International tour in May and June of 2004. You can click on this link to download the single My Time from Kaskade’s album In The Moment from the Vigin Mega web site.

Jen and I started IM’ing each other about tracks we liked and music that’s making it East, but not West, and vice versa. I told her a must have is a track that I’m really feeling right now; the Jacques Lu Cont, Thin White Duke remix of The Killers, “Mr. Brightside.” The remix hit the top of the Billboard Club Play chart a few weeks ago. I can’t seem to get it out of my head.

I downloaded a 128-bit version, but the quality was horrible. So I went to the iTunes store and sure enough, it was available in Apple’s proprietary AAC format. I love the song so much, I spent the change to download it and have been gleeful ever since. It rocks my headphones most days as I ride the big grey caterpillar through the dark subway tunnels under this dreaded city.

You’re going to have to find a download of this one yourself as I can’t link to Apple’s iTunes Music Store here and I’m not sure if you can get it through Napster or Rhapsody.

If you come across it, make sure you also listen to my friend Jonathan Benedict’s version he remixed for radio. The Lindberg Palace Club Mix was featured on the same 12″ and is more DJ friendly, with an extended 64-beat intro and a catchy 80’s synth pop feel. It got a ton of play at alternative radio.

Tony Zeoli

Last month’s rumor that Apple will change chip suppliers from IBM to Intel has been confirmed. On Friday, CNet.com reported Apple founder and CEO, Steve Jobs is expected to announce the switch in his keynote speech on Monday during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.

This is a seismic shift in the computer market as personal computer makers generally don’t shift allegiances to chip makers on a whim, since operating systems are closely tied to specific processors. However, Apple has grown increasingly frustrated with IBM, their current Power PC chip manufacturer, who have yet to deliver a G5 chip that runs cool enough in Powerbook and iBook laptops. The machines don’t have enough room inside for the large fans necessary to keep the computers cool. In the never ending race for faster computing, Apple must keep up with other computer manufacturers or face losing momentum and sales.

Wall Street analysts are concerned the time it takes to develop a next generation OS compatible with Intel’s chip will hurt Apple’s reputation with consumers and force the computer maker to take too long to deliver products too market. Apple says thier current Mac OS, which is similar to the open source Free BSD operng system currently running on Intel’s X86 chip, is compatible.

Apple will start with new chips for the MacMini in 2006 and Power Mac’s will have new Intel chips by 2007.

In a related story, CNet reports that Hollywood may applaud the deal, since Intel has been negotiating at length with the movie industry regarding downloadable movies. CNet staff writer, Michael Michael Kanellos writers, “Apple has been working with Taiwanese contract manufacturers for the last year on a portable video player. Intel has designed several of these units, which later got sold by outfits like Sonicblue. Right now, however, sources have not said Apple and Intel are working on these products.”