So again more bombs to check out, this time I managed to go back out to Olympic park to see the new pieces on the wall there (was annoying because cars were parked in the way, fail), but on the way back I stumbled on the tunnel in I think near apujeong which is also full of pieces so here they are (respect the elements, hip hop and a fad, it’s a way of life!)
So just on a random walk from the subway I found these graffiti walls just sitting there
I’m always a fan of good graf so thought I would share these
Well its that time again so here is an update of the last month which was a quieter one (kinda). So first up, the gigs…
1. Double gig weekend at Bar Fly and BrandNu with Pinnacle, see the write up about it but it was a wild ass weekend
2. Stopped by Part Time Cooks gig at Somos, didn’t get to see them perform but it was almost a full house when I left and I heard good reviews overall
3. Normal Bar Fly madness every weekend
4. Special (and early) April fools party at M-Cube in Apugjeong.
So this gig was a little interesting. The venue first, well its in the CGV building, its actually a pretty cool set up, big room and they have all the equipment etc needed to host live acts or shows and pretty decent equipment at that (its the same building as the beats by dre theatre) so as you can see in the photos it works well. Now the party itself, well it was more of a show than a party, having multiple acts and singers come up and perform, so people were sitting and watching. At the end of the show I was meant to come on and the show was to turn into a ‘club’ style party which was a fail. Multiple reasons why, firstly a show turning into a party, so getting people to get in the club mood after sitting down is difficult, location, it is not in a normal club area so people might have wanted to go to other areas, also the bar was kinda small and the drinks were on the normal to high side price wise, the tech crew packing down the main speakers and equipment as well didn’t help (giving the illusion that the night was about to finish) And then I only had a shitty controller (I wasn’t getting paid enough to bring in tables etc lol) so as you can imagine, once the party left people were headed straight for the door, it looked like everyone had already made up their minds to leave after the performances, so yeah, fail! On the bright side I finished early but still go paid the original amount! But yeah, playing music after people are performing live when you are not in a club… doesn’t tend to go down so well (I had similar experiences before)
This month I also started doing recordings for people as well, here is the final production from one of my first recordings (I just helped him record the vocals, mastering and beat were done by others)
Next month I will try to start on another project I have been messing with as well, so keep an eye out for that
Lastly, I have been a little quieter this month because I have taken on a 12 week challenge with some friends, its a loose challenge thou, more on your own accountability, anyways for me its a chance to focus on myself and wellbeing a little bit more since its been a long time since I have done that and with DJn hours its always a difficult thing (esp mixing that up with normal jobs) but finally this year I have a bit of normality within my weekly routine, the change from weekday to weekend isn’t as drastic, and now I’m finally getting back into regular training and also tidying up my eating habits, so this month has been a lot of adjusting to this, its not a diet I’m doing but a full on change/adjustment to what I have been doing which Im happy to say I am making good progress on and should hopefully be ready to hit summer at full speed!
Thats all for now, have a good week!
So if you have ever met a DJ, you know they tend to be a ‘special’ kind of person or at least a little different (then again these days everyone is a dam DJ so that statement tends to loose its power) Anyways, you will probably find most DJs have obsessions, hobbies or other quirky things they do outside of DJn and music. A popular one is often video games which is definitely one of mine, others can range from strange collections to shoes or anything you can imagine really. Thou a lot of the time you will find they are based on technology and DJs tend to have more than just a little inner nerd/geek about them which is something you really need if you are to keep up with the new technology! As for myself I have a few things I am in to, but a big one has always been anime and since moving to Korea it is much easier to find things related to anime especially figures and toys. One of my favourite anime programs was Gundam Wing (the older one with the 5 Gundams etc) and since moving to Korea its been really easy to find Gundams to build, so this post is actually directed towards building one of my Gundams. I have been working on the main gun dams from the Endless Waltz Series and finally have them all, just need to build one more and put stickers on 2 more but for now here is my recent build (yeah this is about toys, get over it lol)
So this Gundam is Zero One piloted by Hiro Yui, its slightly different from the original Zero One from the original series with its colours and some slightly different structure of the wings, buster rifle and shield but overall its still pretty cool
First up is the head, a little annoying with the eye stickers
The body can be a little tricky depending on the Gundam
The shoulders can be a pain in the ass as well as the arms, not to build but being the more mobile of joints they often fall off the easiest
The wings are usually easily movable and can be used to counter balance nicely
The legs are usually the easiest part to build and the most sturdy
And here is the body assembled, but still need to add in the weapons
And finally here is the full assembly with weapons
So as the tittle suggests a few weeks ago we held a big party at Bar Fly, so time to throw up a quick review since that weekend not only did I have this party here but also did a special performance with Pinnacle at both Bar Fly and also at BrandNu! So was a busy weekend, anyways lets get right to it
So, Bar Fly, well Friday nights are usually pretty busy but because of the party this time we held multiple events during the night and also had a lot of ‘friends’ and regulars come thru so it was extra busy and the crowd was in a very good mood and ready to party. I asked Pinnacle if he wanted to perform again, being a nightclub keeping it short and sharp is always key so we decided to keep it to 4 club ish songs and hit em hard which we did. The good thing about Bar Fly people is they are an appreciative audience and seemed to be loving every minute of it, so the performance part of it went really well. The night started off well with tables full before 11, people kept coming in and by 12ish the place was pretty busy, drink specials kept the bar busy. We jumped on around fish and rocked out, then the girls jumped on stage and danced and gave out free T-shirts, lastly big ass balloons with confetti in them went flying around which was a pretty cool idea! Anyways click the video to watch most of the live performance
Now, the next gig was at BrandNu on Saturday night, I was a little worried about this, we were given an hour time slot to fill in, now an hour is a long time to fill in a club set, and it wasn’t till afterwards that I realised the mistake, but anyways, first thing, so we did sound check, all was good, came to the club, jumped on and started to go thru the set, the plan was to do 5 songs, then DJ Break, quick freestyle session then 5 more songs then out, so instead of hitting it hard and fast like Bar Fly, this time we had to set it up properly, the only problem was, BrandNu is a club, a hip hop club, with kids/people who aren’t really there for the ‘music’, meaning they only like the kind of rubbish that is in the top 10 these days, music with no substance, just party music. I have nothing against it in a club however when you try to bring in a live act that does have substance, 2 things happen
1. People don’t like it because they have to listen to it to understand it
2. People don’t know it so they automatically don’t like it
Given the beats we were playing compared to the beats the club normally plays, the 2nd option was more prevalent… and its a tough one because you have to expose people to music somehow yet often they only want to hear what they know regardless of how good the song might be and this is even more so prevalent in a clubbing situation. So of course the music and the performance was not really appreciated by the people there, some people were digging it, but the majority were just like ‘meh’ so yeah, it was a tough night, but lesson learned, next time listen more closely to my doubts lol then again it was pretty last minute.
Anyways, both were good gigs, obviously Bar Fly was a lot better but BrandNu was still good to throw down in. Now that Pinnacle is back in the states it will be a small while till we gig it out again, but maybe during summer…
Chur
Well ignoring the fact that its been a shitty Monday (and I’m now posting this on Tuesday), time to throw up a quick brief on a special selector session at the Hongdae DJ Korea store on Saturday.
So firstly a quick overview of what selector sessions are… Well it was the brainchild of Ingram Jones who use to work here for DJ Korea, he was trying to get different DJs together to use a piece of equipment called the selector, which basically allows you to plug multiple DJ interfaces (e.g. Serato and Traktor)
But it was not only to use this little piece of equipment but it was also to provide a forum for DJs to get together (primarily turntable DJs) which is something that is needed and is something I want to continue and to expand on (but more on that later)
So on Saturday decided to do a special selector session with DJ Mo Beatz since he was over here performing that night at Lucidream thanks to Pinnacle. Kinda messed up on the organisation of it but at least managed to get 2 good DJs to come down and jam out, DJ Tom Slick and DJ Tezz. So to start with it was just a normal jam session in the hongdae store, the interest from other people to come down and listen isn’t very high at the moment, actually it’s non-existent so there is a lot of work needed and unfortunately both their good sets were only for our own ears however we did get to play on the new reloop turntables which are really good (review still to come, need to properly figure out how to use the midi natively on it)
So, obviously bringing Mo Beatz to a meet and greet to no people would be a waste, instead we decided to move the DJ set up outside (something I was eventually wanting to build up to doing esp over the summer) and do some promo and jam out for the hordes of people who walk by on the Hongdae streets, and it worked out pretty well. Will def be doing this again in the future
Mo Beatz himself had a nice little set, its good to see a DJ who DJ’s for famous artists actually have solid skills, he had a couple of nice routines down pretty well so was def enjoying it as well as the people walking by too, thou a lot of them prob didn’t understand the true extent of what he was doing, Korea crowds are still appreciative so thats always refreshing
Have to give a big shout out to DJ Mo Beatz for coming thru and doing his thing, Pinnacle for hooking it up, Tom Slick and Tezz for laying down some beats, DJ Breakson for sliding thru and all who came by
PS I will edit this later on to make it flow a bit better but for now…
Well its been a crazy weekend and had a couple of good shows but there was also a lot of other things going on around Seoul as well. I will post up a review etc about them later on once I track down the videos but for now I got a couple of mentions I want to make
First up need to give a shout out to the bro CJ Gardner aka CJ Infinite and for dropping his new tracks, if you want to peep them and you def should check out his sound cloud here
The beats are really nice (I’m a big fan of old school sounding beats or beats with an older more natural sound to them) and CJs flow over them has its own uniqueness about it that makes the tracks nice to listen to and a nice break from a lot of the rubbish thats gets constant airplay these days. There is a lot of really good hip hop out there, you just need to go and find it but you should always support local artists as they always need plenty of support and most of them really deserve
Speaking of supporting local artists, the Seoul expat scene has been getting a much needed injection of support recently. Its a hard scene thou because expats are usually only here short term, very rarely long term so it makes maintaing a community very difficulty. So when artists start thinking of strengthening the community then they deserve mention and support. There are a lot of people here who have been putting in hard work who deserve mention but will save that for another time, for now this post shout out goes to Part Time Cooks, a group of 3 dope expat MC’s who have come together to form what should be an exciting crew. Now I don’t know much of their back ground but I have heard some of their stuff and it is def worth checking out, but the reason for the shout out is their willingness to get out and support other artists and also what will hopefully be a weekly or very regular web series from them interviewing and showcasing the local expat talent in and around Korea. Its this support and giving back to the community that will help keep it strong here in Korea and I applaud their efforts to do so. Check out the video below for their first instalment video. The editing could use a little work but as far as content goes and being the first instalment, its very good and has me looking forward to more! A scene is only as good as its support so again I urge you to get out there and support local artists
Also make sure you go check out their show coming up in conjunction with Show Kings on the 29th of March
See you there! Chur!
So short post today, just a quick story about how I got my DJ Name. Those who know me, know I’ve gone by many aliases over the years that have been attempted to be placed on me by others, some good, some ok, others just dumb but the one that has stuck is Blaze and that is also the one I have had the longest. But the thing that does confuse people when they first meet me is they assume being from NZ and having the name Blaze means I smoke weed etc, the whole Blaze it up thing but I actually don’t smoke weed and have never smoked it. The worst thing is the name is pretty popular and there are a lot of Blaze’s around, the most famous one being Just Blaze (who is the man) but the thing is I have been using my name (at least the origin of it) since the early 90’s when I first hit high school, Blaze is short for Blazing_187 which was my first gaming tag I used to always use when playing video games and it was also my first email address which I still have to this day!
So Blazing, kinda of self explanatory when it comes to video games, I love FPS games so blazing guns etc is where that comes from, now as for 187, remember this movie?
Well this is where the 187 part comes from, watched this and was like ah, 187 is the code for murder, so decided my gamer tag should be blazing murder shortened down to blazing_187. And of course when I started DJn it was easier to shorten it down again to Blaze and thus you have DJ Blaze!
Now as for the aka part that I have used in all of my social media, well given that DJ Blaze is a popular name I needed something easy to distinguish the name from other DJ Blazes out there. I settled on aka (also known as) because I did go thru a period trying to figure out a better alias and also having various others ones used on me by people from different areas in my life there was a lot to choose from, so in the end it would be what ever some one called me and aka DJ Blaze (Hey its Dragon aka DJ Blaze) so I decided to stick with akadjblaze since not only does it have some history to it, its also easy to remember and unique enough for me to have it as my user name across all social media sites I use
So there it is, the history of my name and how it came about. Chur!
God dam its March already?! What the hell… Anyways, time for a quick review of the last month….
Highlights/Points of note
– Finally got a website up and running
– Set up my home studio
– Watched ‘What difference does it make: A film about making music’ at the Beats by Dre Theatre thanks to Redbull
– Managed to successful revive ‘Selector Sessions’ for 2014
– Finally managed to check out Octagon
– New students arriving at Bar Fly
– Had a great night DJn at Dojo for an Old Skool night
So February is usually a very quiet month here in Korea except towards the last week when the students finally arrive back, the good thing this year is it has been a very mild winter but still word around is that a lot of clubs have had a struggling winter which isn’t surprising given the amount of new places that keep opening, Korea has a huge population but the number of people who actually frequent night clubs isn’t enough to sustain the amount of clubs there are now, however thats another story.
So the revival of selector sessions, I will post more about this in another post but in short it was a success given I had 2 DJs pull out on the day, but I managed to get the lifestream up and running and also go to have my first test of the new Reloop 8000 midi turntables (review also on its way) so it was a good start and will hopefully build more on it as the year goes on
So, finally managed to check out Octagon, one of the I guess elite VIP styled clubs in Gangnam (basically big ass club, bottom of a hotel, shit load of expensive ass VIP tables, rooms, expensive drinks centred around a DJ up on a stage and a dance floor) Now like the other clubs it is really nice, bit of a maze but the decor is usually really modern, the sound systems are awesome and in general they are awesome places. In a future post ill also talk more about how people act in clubs like this but for now it was just good to finally get there, see it and most importantly, listen and observe.
Bar Fly was slow most of this month but the last week saw a couple of big parties, lots of new students in town so the universities do their usual orientation etc, but of course students don’t tend to spend much money and parties start early which means they end early… again more about this in another post 🙂
So lastly I have to mention ‘Back in the Day’ 80’s and 90’s party at Dojo. Now normally I am against DJs only playing an hour etc but for parties like this, it works great, having 6 different DJ’s express their take on a couple of exciting decades of music is always something to see, unfortunately I couldn’t stay long but from what I understand, it was a great night and I am looking forward to doing it again! But it is also good because it is the start of a local initiative to strengthen the local DJ and local brand scene in the Dojo area. The article about not bitching about a scene and go out and create it yourself was really good and this will hopefully lead to good things and I’m very happy to be part of it and help build up not only the scene here but also in my own venture to build up a stronger DJ scene with DJ Korea
Right, thats it for now, there is a lot that I will expand on but for now, month over… on to the next one
Chur!
So welcome to my residency, Bar Fly in Sinchon, a long time student favourite and one of the only clubs in the Sinchon area. Home of craziness, scandals, cheap drinks, helpful regulars, good bar staff and good people, can’t ask for much more from a local bar (well you can but thats another issue) So lets have a quick look around with what Im working with
So the DJ Booth, DJM 800 (in desperate need of new faders and a service, same with the CDJs…), CDJ 2000’s, SL4, my laptop, iPad (touchOSC) and dicers. Out putting video to a projector and 4 screens around the bar. Not a bad set up for a mid level club.
View looking next to the DJ Booth, there is space upstairs and this is looking down to the floor level tables and bar, screen and projector as well as your useless advertising sign board posted pointlessly in the corner lol oh yeah, and top stage with stripper poles!
Looking at the bar from up top, its a nicely enough set out bar with plenty of room, as you can see a lot of junk hanging from the ceiling…
Looking down at the dance floor, it is a decent size club, you wouldn’t think so from the outside but that is always the surprising things with clubs here, most are built in the basements of buildings and can be very deceiving from the outside
Looking out on the club…
And lastly a look at the crowd, this was a student party, as you can see a lot of foreign students that night, usually its mostly Koreans but still a lot of foreign students come here to party and there is a strong crowd of foreign regulars who come as well, not to mention that a lot of the Koreans there are Korean/Russians, Korean/Spanish etc, it really is a diverse range of people which adds to the place
Its open during the week but not many people come through, Friday nights are usually the one, also a good vibe with people hitting it hard after work or a week of studying, Saturday is hit and miss depending on the week, the crowd fluctuates depending on parties and University schedules. Being in a University area it really dictates the mood of the area as you would expect. So there it is, a quick run down on the place, I might post up more about it later on, introduce the staff and regulars, drinks etc but thats for later on.
(just a note, when I say crazy, I don’t mean it in a bad way, for some reason over here people associate the word crazy with meaning bad, but I mean it in a good way)
And just for good measure, here is some fun with fire
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akadjblaze 