Cold Tropics » chicago

streetwalker live in san francisco

paul j. — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:11:27 +0000

Streetwalker from Chicago played a couple of shows in the Bay Area this summer. Didn’t see huge crowds for the SF show which was too bad because they did stuff like this:

Big space with white walls on 16th St. with a weird vibe because it was half live dance music/half performance art with a schedule that switched between one and the other rather than have performance art the first half, dancing the 2nd. So that meant that you would get into ravey dance zones with lasers for an hour only to get pulled back into some bleak reality where you have to suddenly get very quiet because something very serious/weird needs to be watched. I shouldn’t even knock the performance art stuff really, it isn’t my thing, but it wasn’t bad by any means, but the presentation was fucked up.

chicago is always legendary

paul j. — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:52:15 +0000

what the fuck. jamming this late at night.

I remember when I was in France I told some guy I was from Chicago, and he asked me if I had ever been shot. No one asks me that anymore, what the hell.

jukin’ mixes for all the real dancers

paul j. — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:27:05 +0000

Big ups to XLR8R for getting DJ Rashad (w/ some help from DJ Spinn) to put together this banging mix. My personal favorite is “All I Do is Smoke Trees”, but the whole mix is great from start to finish, and really is a perfect example of all the awesome energy and inspiration coming out of Chicago.

juke mixtape of the year

paul j. — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:39:59 +0000

Big up to the juke mixtape on Chrissy Muderbot’s blog. Rock this several times a week, repeat.

2010.

paul j. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:07:57 +0000

Well I’m back and readjusting to my normal life after extensive post-holiday travels. I have high hopes for the new year, and have lots of friends that are getting their lives back on track after the harsh reality that intruded into so many people’s lives in 2009. The most exciting thing for me is finally having a practice space to play loud music in again. Back in the 1990s it seemed like finding out about cool music was relatively difficult, but having a place to create music was relatively easy. Nearly two decades later the opposite is true. Music as a commodity is not so valuable anymore, but volume is an extremely valuable commodity these days.

Those of you who enjoyed the Deep Earth track I played on my Chicago podcast will be pleased to hear they have a second cassette release in the works, and are now digitally distributing the first one.

Lets all share even more awesome music in 2010.

chronic boom

paul j. — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:37:59 +0000

via Urban Dictionary:

1. chronic boom
The act of attaching copious amounts of marijuana to any type of dynamite or firework which results in a massive explosion of kush that spreads a god-like odor throughout the land.

I used to play guitar in a rock band called Scalpels, which existed between 2002 and 2008. We played quite a bit of music that absorbed heavy, psychedelic music, and free jazz. At the time I sort of saw it as a critical and necessary intervention into received music history, although I’m not so sure about that these days. We had a lot of ad hoc releases. Now you can purchase this cassette release. Also available is a cassette for the group Deep Earth, a track of which was featured on my first podcast, so if you were into that you’ll want to check this out as well.

There is something still alluring about cassette culture. It used to be the loser format of the various releases, but it was also the format that help get music bootlegging culture to where it is today, and tapes allowed musicians to operate at minimal cost, which is always totally crucial.