9to5 (dot cc)

 

If you’re not familiar with the FabricLive series of mixes get the fuck out of my house. Oh, it’s the internet you might say, I’m in my own house, you can’t kick me out. Yeah, well, you’re on MY website, so unless your name is Scott, Sophie or Jon (or I guess maybe if you’re one of the Vagrants) then I can still kick you out. Stop reading our stuff, right now. I swear to God. Get out of here; we don’t need your readership.

Yeah, that’s how you keep readers: you yell at them. People love being yelled at. My mom yelled at me all the time, because she loved me. She loved me the way I love you, the reader.

As I was saying, FarbricLive is a tremendous series of DJ mixes, each volume clocking in at over an hour and they come out every other month (alternating with the more club music oriented “Fabric” mixes). They’re nice because often what a DJ spins or mixes can vary quite a bit from the actual music he produces. Anyhow, FabricLive 24 is Diplo. It came out in 2005, presumably before Diplo was the official spokesperson for BlackBerry. My hands are really dry right now, and yet, I won’t moisturize. Why? Because I’m a man.

This mix is 26 tracks long but is a continuous mix, I’ll admit that I only got 6 tracks in before I got to work, but I actually took the time to go back and listen to the whole thing throughout the rest of the day, I guess that’s a recommendation?

I was also pretty distracted, I remember a lot of synth and some pretty bland club-sounding female vocalists wailing on about taking the chance to make you dance and other a million other cliché dance music lyrics. There was also this girl wearing jeggings and a Paul Frank sock monkey hat on the metro. She seriously looked to be in her mid-twenties (maybe even late twenties) and I couldn’t stop wondering why she was dressed like a child. I can’t fault someone for dressing “young” I mean, in the summer I dress basically the same way I did when I was 15. However, this was dressing like an 8 year old. I had to wonder where she was going at that time, she didn’t get off at Atwater, so she wasn’t even a Dawson student (maybe she only looked mid-twenties).

Another thing that I’ve noticed with electronic music (and I guess also with hip-hop) is that the artist often likes to say their own name. In hip-hop it’s a little less weird because it’s usually the rapper himself who will say something like “My name is xxxx and I’m straight out of xxxxx” so like; he’s introducing himself to you. In electronic music it’s this whole other thing, because it means that first of all, he’s either pre-mixed his track to have a robot voice be like “Dipppllooooo”  in the middle or he possibly just has a sound file of a robot voice saying his name that he can remind everyone that yes, they are in fact, listening to Diplo.

Why do they do this? In a DJ mix it makes a bit of sense, like, most of the time he’s not spinning his own stuff, he’s playing music created by other people but he still wants you to know that he’s the guy that’s putting it all together. Either that or DJs are just conscious that deep down they all sound alike and they need to brand the shit out of everything they play.

“Oh this song is crap, let’s get out of here!”

“Diiipppplllooooo”

“Ohhh… it’s Diplo! Let’s stay!”

Or something like that. Not a bad idea.

I’m just gonna throw my name into the middle of my Keith articles. That way you’ll Keith know who you’re reading Keith.

I like it.

Anyhow, this seemed like decent music. Good beats, neat little mixes, the kind of stuff you’d like to imagine they would play in a club but almost certainly never will since it’s just a little too far off the beaten path.  I really haven’t listened to much Diplo stuff prior, so I don’t know how this holds up against stuff he’s produced. I really only know him based on the stuff he did with M.I.A. Even though you can’t 100% judge a DJ by a DJ mix; I think this is pretty good. It gets a little weird in the middle with people singing in foreign languages (I think I identified some Spanish and some Japanese, but I could be way of the mark here, there was also some Italian in there) on top of a lot of bongo drums. Honestly, if this mix was spinning at a party I would use this time to refill my water bottle or go to the bathroom, or maybe go outside and pretend to be a smoker.

It ends strong though, a highlight being a mix of Outkast’s B.O.B. that flows into a remix of Le Tigre’s Deceptacon, that’s the sort of shit that always gets me pumped at a party. I would totally forget weird Italian bongo-rock and just remember the part at the end. Overall, this whole thing is pretty good, I would possibly play it on long car rides or something.

I hear he sucks now though, so whatever.