Friday, December 31, 2010

SHG Radio Show Episode 041

Welcome to this week's edition of Subterranean Homesick Grooves™, a weekly electronica-based radio show presented on CHMA FM 106.9 at Mount Allison University in Atlantic Canada. The show is normally programmed and mixed by Jonathan Clark (as DJ Bolivia), although some weeks feature guest mixes by other Canadian DJ's. The show encompasses many sub-genres within the realm of electronic dance music, but the main focus is on progressive and tribal house, and a bit of trance & techno. Liner notes for this episode (041) can be seen below.

Para la información en español, vaya aquí.




Here’s a link so you can listen to the show or download it from SoundCloud:


In addition to being able to download each episode from SoundCloud, you can also visit our DJ Mixes folder on Dropbox (which allows for bulk downloads).  That folder hosts hundreds of episodes and other DJ mixes.  Here's the link:


And of course, you can download DJ Bolivia's individual tracks from this link:





Here are Track Listings for episode 041:

01. Aruna & Mark Eteson, "Let Go" (Nic Chagall Remix).
02. Matias Lehtola feat. Natalie Peris, "Not Enough" (Cressida Vocal Mix).
03. Nitrous Oxide, "Downforce" (Orient Mix).
04. Perpetual feat. Sandra Passero, "End of Time" (Dennis Pedersen Remix).
05. Reminder feat. Cathy Burton, "Love To Hold" (Original Mix).
06. Joop, "Choices" (Original Mix).
07. Dinka, "My Love Will Surround You" (Original Mix).
08. Ben Gold, "Icon" (Original Mix).
09. Russell G, "Idera" (Original Mix).
10. Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago" (The Signalrunners Mix).
11. Robert Nickson & Ruben Le Ronde, "Superlative" (Jo Micali Remix).
12. Arcane Science feat. Melissa Loretta, "Still Feel" (The Thrillseekers Remix).



Happy New Year's everybody! For this special New Year's Eve mix, I've got another guest mix from regular contributor Chris Blackmore, to wrap up 2010.


More information is available on our Website:
   http://www.subterraneanhomesickgrooves.ca


We also have a file containing complete track listings from all of DJ Bolivia's radio shows, studio mixes, and live sets. The PDF version can be viewed from within your browser by clicking directly. Both the PDF and the Excel versions can be downloaded by right-clicking and choosing the "save link as" option:

View as PDF file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.pdf
Download Excel file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.xlsx




Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca

Thursday, December 23, 2010

SHG Radio Show Episode 040

Welcome to this week's edition of Subterranean Homesick Grooves™, a weekly electronica-based radio show presented on CHMA FM 106.9 at Mount Allison University in Atlantic Canada. The show is normally programmed and mixed by Jonathan Clark (as DJ Bolivia), although some weeks feature guest mixes by other Canadian DJ's. The show encompasses many sub-genres within the realm of electronic dance music, but the main focus is on progressive and tribal house, and a bit of trance & techno. Liner notes for this episode (040) can be seen below.

Para la información en español, vaya aquí.




Here’s a link so you can listen to the show or download it from SoundCloud:


In addition to being able to download each episode from SoundCloud, you can also visit our DJ Mixes folder on Dropbox (which allows for bulk downloads).  That folder hosts hundreds of episodes and other DJ mixes.  Here's the link:


And of course, you can download DJ Bolivia's individual tracks from this link:





Here are Track Listings for episode 040:

01. Pryda, "Glimma" (Original Mix).
02. Science Drop, "The Sound" (Original Mix).
03. Christian Vila, "Joy & Happiness" (Treitl Hammond Remix).
04. Even 11 & U Prag Drummers, "Particles In Space" (Jaia Remix).
05. Rene Armesz & Baggi Begovic, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Original Mix).
06. Mystic Deejay & Da Saltshakerz, "Trance X" (Nobody Knows Remix).
07. Yuri Kane feat Melissa Loretta, "Daylight" (Original Mix).
08. Mischa Daniels & Tara McDonald, "Beats For You" (NOID Remix).
09. DJ Ruben A, "For The World" (Original Mix).
10. Karl Johan, "Monco" (Original Mix).
11. Dirty Impact & Royal XTC, "Tom's Diner" (Rene Rodrigezz Remix).



Pay attention to that Yuri Kane track. I really like Melissa Loretta's vocal work.


More information is available on our Website:
   http://www.subterraneanhomesickgrooves.ca


We also have a file containing complete track listings from all of DJ Bolivia's radio shows, studio mixes, and live sets. The PDF version can be viewed from within your browser by clicking directly. Both the PDF and the Excel versions can be downloaded by right-clicking and choosing the "save link as" option:

View as PDF file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.pdf
Download Excel file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.xlsx




Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca

Saturday, December 18, 2010

SHG Radio Show Episode 039

Welcome to this week's edition of Subterranean Homesick Grooves™, a weekly electronica-based radio show presented on CHMA FM 106.9 at Mount Allison University in Atlantic Canada. The show is normally programmed and mixed by Jonathan Clark (as DJ Bolivia), although some weeks feature guest mixes by other Canadian DJ's. The show encompasses many sub-genres within the realm of electronic dance music, but the main focus is on progressive and tribal house, and a bit of trance & techno. Liner notes for this episode (039) can be seen below.

Para la información en español, vaya aquí.




Here’s a link so you can listen to the show or download it from SoundCloud:


In addition to being able to download each episode from SoundCloud, you can also visit our DJ Mixes folder on Dropbox (which allows for bulk downloads).  That folder hosts hundreds of episodes and other DJ mixes.  Here's the link:


And of course, you can download DJ Bolivia's individual tracks from this link:





Here are Track Listings for episode 039:

01. Freemasons & Wynter Gordon, "Believer" (Club Mix).
02. David Deejay & Ela Rose, "I Can Feel" (Le Que Remix).
03. Ke$ha, "We R Who We R" (James Rendon Club Mix).
04. David Guetta & Rihanna, "Who's That Chick" (Martin Souza Extended Edit).
05. Rihanna, "Rockstar 101" (Dave Aude Club Mix).
06. Taio Cruz, "Higher" (Radio Edit).
07. Pink, "Raise Your Glass" (Jump Smokers Extension).
08. Avicii & Sebastien Drums, "My Feelings For You" (Original Mix).
09. Pussycat Dolls, "I Hate This Part" (Dave Aude Club Mix).
10. Swedish House Mafia, "One" (Original Mix).
11. Empire Of The Sun, "Walking On A Dream" (Johan Baath Remix).
12. Black Eyed Peas, "The Time / The Dirty Bit."
13. Rihanna, "Only Girl In The World" (Liam Keegan Remix).
14. Yolanda Be Cool, "We No Speak Americano" (Jarleen Bootleg).



This week, we've got another departure from the usual style of the show, with a mainstream/top40 club dance music mix. This mix is also featured as Workout Mix 02 on DJ Bolivia's main website.

We'll be back to our normal format of progressive house with a touch of trance, techno, and house music in next week's show, which will be aired on Christmas Eve as regularly scheduled.


More information is available on our Website:
   http://www.subterraneanhomesickgrooves.ca


We also have a file containing complete track listings from all of DJ Bolivia's radio shows, studio mixes, and live sets. The PDF version can be viewed from within your browser by clicking directly. Both the PDF and the Excel versions can be downloaded by right-clicking and choosing the "save link as" option:

View as PDF file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.pdf
Download Excel file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.xlsx



Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Trip To Antarctica

Earlier this week I spent a few days getting photos online from a recent trip to Antarctica. I also did a bit of DJ’ing while I was down there, and have recordings of three live shows online. I’m finally getting around to my last project associated with the trip, ie. a description of what we actually did. However, before I do that, if people are curious about seeing the photos that I took, the gallery is at this link:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_antarctica2010a.html

I’ve got a few of those photos here in this blog post too, but in much smaller size & resolution. Really, you need to go to that photo page to do them justice.

Anyway, our trip lasted from November 20th to 30th, aboard a Russian scientific expedition ship called the Akademik Ioffe. The trip was organized by a friend of mine, through Quark Expeditions. There were a total of 107 passengers on the ship, although a smaller group of 17 of us were friends who were travelling together.





November 20th – Day 1

We arrived on the ship at about 4pm, turned in our passports (which the ship’s crew had to hold onto during the voyage), and got settled into our cabins. I was in a triple, and the quarters were obviously tight, but still quite clean and comfortable. We had a quick introductory meeting in the dining room at 5pm, and our expedition leader suggested that we go explore the ship and hang out on the top deck for our departure at 6pm.

We had dinner at 8pm, and a lifeboat drill afterward. Then, after watching our progress from up top for a bit, I headed to bed. I already had a scopolamine patch on to prevent nausea, and I took a gravol too, just to be safe. I expected a pretty rough trip, since there was a Beaufort force 11 storm ahead of us. That basically means waves of up to fifty feet, just slightly under hurricane force winds. However, the seas weren't expected to be bad over night, since we were protected by land for a while yet.



November 21st – Day 2

The anti-nausea drugs really put me out. Not only had I slept through the first night with no problems, I also slept through most of our first day at sea, although I had really intended to do that so I could be caught up on my rest for the adventures ahead. The ship’s crew ran lectures and demonstrations all day, with sessions talking about whales, seabirds, and several other topics. I skipped most of them, in favor of resting.

The Captain made a decision to hide behind Cape Horn before venturing out into the Drake Passage, since the weather was so bad. We actually spent most of the day fairly stationary, without making any real progress. I think a lot of people were disappointed by this delay to our adventure, knowing that it would cut down on our time in Antarctica, but I knew that the crew knew what was best. I was nervous about getting sea-sick, so I didn’t mind avoiding the storm system. I’ve only ever gotten sea-sick once in my life, during a storm on a ferry to Newfoundland, but that was definitely one of the worst feelings of my life. I figured that lots of water, only moderate amounts of food, no alcohol, scopolamine patches, gravol, and lots of rest should keep me in good shape. So far, so good. A lot of people were having trouble at supper though. By that time, we were well underway into open seas, and the ship was dancing around quite a bit. Certainly not as bad as I had expected – average big waves of probably only around ten feet. But of the seven people at my table at dinner, five bailed before eating their main course.



November 22nd – Day 3

Gravol tends to make me pretty thirsty. I had a sink in my cabin, right beside my bed, and I am pretty sure that I drank a couple dozen glasses of water. But I didn’t ever feel sick. From the sound of things though, a lot of other people were. It seemed that everyone wearing scopolamine patches were mostly OK. The crew put on more presentations throughout the day.

Our private group was given access to the Lecture Lounge for the evening, to use as late as we wanted. We moved all the chairs aside and set things up for a night of entertainment. The group stated off by doing a “Century Club” of sorts, which they called “Power Hour.” A real Century Club is one ounce of beer per minute for one hundred minutes. This group changed the rules a bit and went with an ounce and a half per minute for one hour. So in the end, they were ten ounces short of a real century. Needless to say, I had nothing to do with these shenanigans, wanting to keep my supper down. Somehow though, everyone in the group made it through without any nausea problems.

Once the drinking games were out of the way, I set up a system and played a couple hours of Drum & Bass music for the crowd. Shipboard Rave number one. We also had a couple projectors, so we could project random video graphics on the walls, and they had a Wii set up in one corner. I recorded my set, and it can be downloaded from my website. This was a bit of a historical moment in my DJ career. Normally, I’ve always mixed on turntables or CD players, but it was obviously impossible to bring a full set of that equipment with me, halfway around the world. Instead, I used Ableton to play my set, and tapped into the ships entertainment system for a speaker system. This was not the first time that I used Ableton for a live gig – I did that once before at Defcon in las Vegas in 2008. However, this was the first time that I actually recorded the set. I think it turned out pretty good. Here’s a link to that:

http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2010/12/mix-bolivia-live-in-drake-passage.html



November 23rd – Day 4

This was supposed to be our first day in Antarctica, but because of the storm delay the first day, this was our last day of travel through the Drake. People were starting to get used to the ship’s motion already, and I don’t think many people were sick. The ship’s doctor was also handing out extra anti-nauseants like candy.

I spent a lot of time on the deck of the boat during the day, watching several different types of albatross species, some other sea-birds, a whale, and our first signs of ice.



November 24th – Day 5

We were in Antarctica when we got up. And I might add, we got up early. There was a 5am wake-up call, because the expedition staff wanted to fit as much activity in as possible, to help make up for our lost day. We got into the Zodiacs (motorboats) and went for a cruise at 5:30am at Orne Harbour. We came back to the ship for breakfast, then went for another cruise at Cuverville Island. Some people went climbing, some people went kayaking, and in the afternoon we did a full beach landing at Neko Harbour. Penguins everywhere! We ended the day with a very tasty BBQ up on the deck of the ship.



November 25th – Day 6

The weather was pretty bad in the morning, so we didn’t get to go out in the Zodiacs. However, we went for a drive in the afternoon at Almirante Brown and saw a couple of bases. However, the ice was too bad to get the Zodiacs to show. We did see seals and a whale up close, and of course lots more penguins and blue ice. It was American Thanksgiving, so we had a turkey dinner on the ship. After supper, about thirty of us went camping, and all of the non-campers also did a short landing at the camp site in Paradise (Danco Island). That was pretty cool, and possibly the highlight of my trip. I got to play a short DJ set while camping. That’s an interesting story in and of itself, which you can read here:

http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2010/12/mix-bolivia-live-in-antarctica.html



November 26th – Day 7

We got up early and went back to the ship, and had a solid breakfast. I had a quick nap after breakfast, and then we went for beach landings at Jougla Point and Goudier Island. This is where we saw Lockroy Station, a British outpost. The outpost is manned for six months a year by four Commonwealth staff. Imagine spending six months living and working in a remote outpost at the bottom of the world, surrounded by penguins, with no cell phones or internet, and almost no electricity! I’d have internet withdrawal for a while, but it still sounds like heaven to me. I picked up a job application, just in case. I saw a couple seals and lots of penguins, and a few whale bones. I also bought lots of postcards at the station gift shop. After lunch, there was a quick zodiac cruise at Damoy Point, plus the kayakers and skiers went for special events. After dinner, we did a special “Titanic Night” and I DJ’ed in the ship’s lounge for quite a while, a bit of jazz and then a full DJ set. Here’s a link to that:

http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2010/12/mix-bolivia-live-on-akademik-ioffe.html



November 27th – Day 8

We spent the day today in the South Shetlands, which were a bit less snowy and ice-covered than the places we visited the previous three days. We did a beach landing in the morning at Whaler’s Bay (Deception Island), and another in the afternoon at Half Moon Island. Whaler’s Bay gave everyone a chance to do a polar plunge. After supper, we knew that we had to start heading north for Ushuaia, and this would be our last view of Antarctica. I spent several hours on deck, watching the scenery, before we finally headed out to the Drake Passage.



The Rest of the Trip

On the 28th and 29th, we passed through the Drake Passage once again. We had waves of about twenty feet one night, but everyone was a lot more comfortable going through it this time. I skipped the gravol, and just used a scopolamine patch, and felt fine. We got back to Ushuaia on the morning of the 30th without any incidents, and everyone headed off for more travelling, or to return to their homes.



If you want to download a PDF summarizing the wildlife that we saw on this trip (probably of interest to the biologist types out there), click here.

One recommendation if you ever take this trip. We drank our ship completely out of mix by the last night of the trip (mind you, I think that can partly be blamed on our small group). If you're going on this trip, and take a bottle or two of alcohol with you for your cabin, make sure you don't forget to take mix too!

Before I go, here's a late addition (June 25th, 2011): some video footage from the trip, set to a dubstep remix of Avicii's "Penguin"




All in all, it was a pretty amazing trip. You’d think that it would be easy to get sick of snow and penguins, but I’m definitely hoping to head back in November of 2012. In fact, I’m going to organize a group tour that would be open to any of my friends and associates from Mount Allison University, and also for music industry friends. Let me know if you’re interested! And again, if you haven’t already checked out the photo galleries that I have online, go up and check out that link at the top of this page. The smaller photos that I included in this blog posting really don't do the trip justice!

 
--------------------------------------

To download any of my studio mixes or recordings of lives shows, including the three live recordings from my Antarctica sets, visit:


Then go into the folder called "Bolivia's DJ Mixes & Live Shows"

Thanks for your support!

---------------------------------------



I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca


SHG Radio Show Episode 038

Welcome to this week's edition of Subterranean Homesick Grooves™, a weekly electronica-based radio show presented on CHMA FM 106.9 at Mount Allison University in Atlantic Canada. The show is normally programmed and mixed by Jonathan Clark (as DJ Bolivia), although some weeks feature guest mixes by other Canadian DJ's. The show encompasses many sub-genres within the realm of electronic dance music, but the main focus is on progressive and tribal house, and a bit of trance & techno. Liner notes for this episode (038) can be seen below.

Para la información en español, vaya aquí.




Here’s a link so you can listen to the show or download it from SoundCloud:


In addition to being able to download each episode from SoundCloud, you can also visit our DJ Mixes folder on Dropbox (which allows for bulk downloads).  That folder hosts hundreds of episodes and other DJ mixes.  Here's the link:


And of course, you can download DJ Bolivia's individual tracks from this link:





Here are Track Listings for episode 038:

01. Matthew Dekay & Lee Burridge, "Wongel" (Original Mix).
02. Cristian Exploited, "Drunko" (Dirty Secretz Remix).
03. Falko Richtberg & Sebastian Wojkowski, "Salt & Bread" (Audiojacks Bottle & Spring Remix).
04. Michael Woods, "Nitro" (Original Club Mix).
05. Christian Smith, "East Village" (Original Mix).
06. Sebjak, "Bigger" (Paul Thomas & Myke Smith Remix).
07. Wender A, "Audio Therapy" (Original Mix).
08. Mike Cortez & Milkwish, "At Night With My Lady" (Les Schmitz & Alex Del Amo Remix).
09. Jerry Aseret, "Fever" (Dub Mix).
10. Technical Lovers, "Off The Cuff" (Original Mix).


This week, we have a mostly non-vocal tech-house mix. These are tracks that I discovered when I was travelling in South America last month, and I think that I also used most of them in my live shows while I was on the road.

For anyone who is interested in seeing photos from the time that I was in Antarctica, I have those photos online now. There are links at the bottom of that page to the three shows that I played while I was down there.

Next week will be a slight change in format once again, as I take things a bit more towards mainstream top40 dance tracks for one show.



More information is available on our Website:
   http://www.subterraneanhomesickgrooves.ca


We also have a file containing complete track listings from all of DJ Bolivia's radio shows, studio mixes, and live sets. The PDF version can be viewed from within your browser by clicking directly. Both the PDF and the Excel versions can be downloaded by right-clicking and choosing the "save link as" option:

View as PDF file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.pdf
Download Excel file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.xlsx



Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Mix: Bolivia, "Live on the Akademik Ioffe"

And finally, here's the third set that I played a few weeks ago. Again, a different style: this one is a little under three hours of tech-house, recorded in the ship's lounge on the RV Akademik Ioffe scientific expedition ship.
 



I was a little hesitant to put this set online. Technically speaking, this is the most chaotic of the three sets that I played. I did this in Ableton, but I had no ability to cue background tracks because I was using a borrowed laptop without a USB sound card (audio coming out of the headphone jack), and I had to mix everything visually based on the waveform files that Ableton showed me. I was also using a mouse, which was better than the scroll pad, but it still precluded me from playing with the EQ controls or doing really smooth fades. No effects either. So a lot of the mixes are more the start/stop type, and I just tried to time them well. The end result was that the first hour has some unconventional mixing at times, and the section from the twenty-five minute to thirty minute mark is something that I wish I could do over. But I've listened to the mix several times over the past few days, and also has a lot of good stuff in it.


To download any of my studio mixes or recordings of lives shows, visit:


Then go into the folder called "Bolivia's DJ Mixes & Live Shows"

Thanks for your support!


Here are the track listings from this particular set:

01. Kozin Escodero Dessy, "Little Cafe" (Preview Mix).
02. Jerry Aseret, "Fever" (Dub Mix).
03. Falko Richtberg & Sebastian Wojkowski, "Salt & Bread" (Audiojacks Bottle & Spring Remix).
04. Larix, "To Defeat" (Original Mix).
05. Michael Woods, "Nitro" (Original Club Mix).
06. Toge, "Shiver" (Riot Remix).
07. Alexander Som, "Dirty Bonita" (Original Mix).
08. Christian Smith, "Automatic" (Original Mix).
09. Cristian Exploited, "Drunko" (Dirty Secretz Remix).
10. Timothy Allan, "Bring It Back" (Original Mix).
11. Umek, "Gatex 2010" (Original Mix).
12. Christian Smith, "East Village" (Original Mix).
13. Matthew Dekay & Lee Burridge, "Wongel" (Original Mix).
14. Da Fresh, "Once Again" (Original Mix).
15. Wender A, "Audio Therapy" (Original Mix).
16. Wender A, "Mothership In Sao Paulo" (Original Mix).
17. Bolivia, "Global Underground" (David Anthony Remix).
18. Thomas Penton & DJ Samer, "No Left Turn" (Kotoswitch Remix).
19. Geshe, "Question Mark" (Tech Mix).
20. Frank Garcia, "I Say To You" (Original Mix).
21. Diffuse Members, "Mikrofon" (Original Mix).
22. Lazy Jay, "After Dark" (Mystique & Amro Mix).
23. Stefano Noferini, "Mama" (Back Home Mix).
24. Sebjak, "Bigger" (Paul Thomas & Myke Smith Remix).
25. Manuel De La Mare & Marshall, "Blackbird" (Original Mix).
26. Piatto, "MC202" (Original Mix).
27. Technical Lovers, "Off The Cuff" (Original Mix).
28. Umek, "Gatex 2010" (Original Mix).

I also had a couple dozen other progressive house tracks and some house loops playing subtly in the background. Maybe not as subtly as in my last set, because quite often you can specifically tell what they are. Still, I considered them to be background filler material, so I didn't include them in the track listings above. In the future though, I'll probably try to concentrate more on loops and non-vocal segments rather than fuller tracks.

By the way, since the evening started out as a "tuxedo night" theme, I also played jazz for an hour and a half before I started this set, but I didn't bother recording that part of the evening.



If anyone reading this is a member of any message boards where other people might enjoy listening to this mix, I'd really appreciate you sharing the link to this post. Here's the specific URL:
http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2010/12/mix-bolivia-live-on-akademik-ioffe.html


Also, you can click here to see my full photo galleries from the trip.




I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca


Monday, December 6, 2010

Mix: Bolivia, "Live in Antarctica 2010"

Ok, here's the second of the three shows that I played while I was travelling this past month, and it's the one that will undoubtedly be the most popular. This one is just over an hour long, and it's mostly my normal style of progressive house, with a tiny bit of trance, house, and tech-house all mixed in. Lots of vocals.

To the best of my knowledge (and Google's), this is the first DJ mix ever to have been recorded live in Antarctica (and put online). When I first found out about the trip two years ago, I thought to myself that it would be interesting to have a live show recorded there, to put on my website. After all, a lot of other DJ's can eventually hit shows on six of the seven continents, but Antarctica has to be a tough one. I then searched the net and couldn't actually find any. Of course, there has been lots of regular music recorded there, since a lot of the people at the various bases have instruments, so there is a lot of live jamming happening there all the time. And other people have written songs (including electronica tracks) that are Antarctica themed or that feature sound recordings there. But no DJ sets. I kind of quietly held my breath for the last two years, wondering if I might end up being the first. At the moment, I think I succeeded, which is kind of cool.




The challenges of doing a show down there are a bit unexpected. Doing a show on a ship that is anchored somewhere offshore is technically still "in Antarctica," but I wanted to go a step further. We had an overnight camping trip there, which I figured would provide the perfect opportunity. However, it wasn't as easy as it might seem.

Antarctica is almost entirely a pristine and rugged wilderness. I love it. As a heavy environmentalist, I was pretty concerned on the way down that I'd see tourist activity that would frustrate me. However, that was not the case. There is an organization called IAATO (the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators) which is comprised of about four dozen companies, and they are a self-regulating agency which ensures that tourism doesn't leave any impact on the continent. And the staff from our expedition (Quark) were extremely diligent, which I found to be extremely reassuring. Let me illustrate by going over a few of the rules we had to follow:

- Not allowed to disturb wildlife, ie. we weren't allowed to approach closer than 5 meters to any penguins, although the penguins generally don't seem too scared of humans. Penguins would often approach us a lot closer than that, but it had to be them coming to us, not us getting close to them.
- Not allowed to walk in trails that the penguins use.
- Not allowed to bring ANY food onto the shore. An example used to illustrate why this was a problem: a chocolate bar contains egg products. When they are manufactured, the candy isn't cooked to a high enough temperature to completely kill certain bacteria or pathogens in the eggs. This doesn't matter to humans, but this could introduce a fatal organism to a penguin or other bird which could wipe out an entire colony quite easily.
- Not allowed to bring ANY beverages onto the shore, except bottled water. Similar reasons as above. Talk about a "dry" event.
- Not allowed to leave human waste behind. That's right, we weren't allowed to pee in the snow. Human waste had to be brought back to the ship when we departed. An important consideration since we were there overnight!
- Our boots had to be disinfected and sterilized each time we got on or off the expedition ship. The risk there was that one of us would step in some penguin poop and it would get onto our boots and then be transferred to another colony, and somehow infect that second colony and wipe it out. Unfortunately, this rule is in effect because there have been some colonies wiped out that they think were because of this problem.
- Our expedition staff had to go use snowshoes and tramp out trails for the human visitors to use. If we stepped off a trail and went down through the snow to our waist (which definitely happened a few times to each of us), we had to fill the boot hole afterwards, so a penguin wouldn't fall into it and get trapped and die.
- Obviously, things like kleenex and plastic wrappers in our pockets had to be monitored carefully, so they didn't fall out and create litter.

I was really glad to see that all these kind of rules are in effect. But when thinking about doing a live show there, I also had to consider that there was no electricity, and amplified instruments were not allowed because the sound would really carry, and might confuse and upset the penguins.



So anyway, we spent a night camping overnight on the shore on November 25th, at a place called Paradise (Danco Island, but maybe it should be renamed Dance Island). There were thirty of us in the group, the maximum that Quark could get a permit for. We didn't have tents; we were just in sleeping bags, sleeping on the snow. I know that a lot of people immediately would think at this point that we were crazy. Perhaps, but to a Canadian, camping in the snow is not that strange (well, at least not to some of us). And a bunch of people in our group were definite techno fans, so I figured that there was a way to pull it off. I took the laptop and did a set with Ableton. Obviously, it was a pretty quiet set, for a pretty small but appreciative crowd. The laptop was no louder than human voices, but in the quiet, it was good enough for people to dance to. We didn't have any fancy lighting effects of course, but then again it was summer there, so the sun never sets. The only real problem was that my laptop is a few years old, and even though I charged it fully before we went to shore, I had less than an hour and a half of battery life. So the set is only slightly over an hour long.

Because I was working on a laptop without even a controller, I had to do everything with the mousepad. To make sure that I got a good sounding set, I had to play extremely conservatively. Luckily, once files are properly warped in Ableton, a crab-eater seal could have probably produced a good sounding set. There are absolutely no effects in this set. I didn't even play with the EQ 3's. I just started and stopped tracks (overlapped, of course), and made basic volume changes (usually sharp changes, and there were only a few times that I tried to do smooth fades with the scroll pad). Also, I usually always kept a third tech-house track or house loops playing in the background at just under half volume, to give the set the continuity that I needed, and keep the sound full all the time. Ableton is amazing - between the "background track" trick, and using a basic DJ mastering plug-in to keep output in a tight range, this is actually a great sounding set. A lot of people are going to really enjoy it.

To download any of my studio mixes or recordings of lives shows, visit:


Then go into the folder called "Bolivia's DJ Mixes & Live Shows"

Thanks for your support!


I started the set with one of my own tracks, "Global Underground (Alone In New York)." This particular remix is pretty trancy, and it was done by Gregg Morrish. If anyone wants to download it, you can grab it for free from my Dropbox Folder.



Here are the track listings from this particular set:

01. Bolivia, "Global Underground" (Gregg Morrish Remix).
02. Timo Garcia & Amber Jolene, "Lady Luck City Lights" (Solee Remix).
03. Green Velvet, "La La Land" (Pleasurekraft Sideshow Remix).
04. Ivan Gomez, "No Name" (Sisko Electrofanatik Remix).
05. Gabriel & Castellon, "Hit The Bottom" (Original Mix).
06. Jon Rundell, "Top Shelf" (Original Mix).
07. Hugo & Marshall, "Mortal Coil" (Original Mix).
08. Milkwish, "Gotta Be Moved" (Mario da Ragnio Remix).
09. Lewis Lastella, "Pumpz Up The Volume" (Original Mix).
10. Tarska, "Midnight" (Lee Nova Techmix).
11. DJ Crash & JAVE, "Ice Cream" (Original Mix).
12. Hernan Paredes, "Right Now" (Extended Mix).
13. Max Bett, "Mad Clinic" (Original Mix).
14. Angel Stoxx, "I Dropped My E On The Dancefloor" (Original Mix).
15. Luca M, "Grumpli" (Original Mix).

As mentioned, I had about a dozen other tech-house tracks and some house loops playing subtly in the background. For example, listen around the seven minute mark - you'll hear one track that I dropped out for about two seconds from 7:27 to 7:29 (I don't know why). I'm not listing them here, because I don't think any of them are readily identifiable.


Finally, just in case anyone wants to see something cool, Shadow set up his Canon on a tripod for the night, and set it to take a time-lapse sequence throughout the night. He turned it into a video and put it onto YouTube. It's neat because there was a penguin colony inland from us, and during the night, a lot of them came and started wandering through our camping area. The lens cap cover blew sideways during the night, but you can still see what happened throughout the night (including our ship circling around in the bay, and a very light snowstorm that blew through during the night). And you can also click here to see my full photo galleries from the trip.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkAHY3zjOGk



I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca



Sunday, December 5, 2010

Mix: Bolivia, "Live in the Drake Passage"

Here's the first of the three shows that I played while I was travelling this past month. This one is just over two hours long, and it's a drum & bass mix. The next two shows were progressive house and tech house, my normal style. It's been quite a while since I've done a drum & bass mix (probably five or six years), but even though I don't play it very often, I enjoy listening to it. This doesn't mean a permanent switch in style, although I would definitely play other live DnB sets if someone booked me specifically to play that kind of show.

This set is interesting because this is the first time that I've ever recorded and made a live set available that I did with Ableton Live. And actually, although I've been doing my radio shows lately with Ableton, this is only the second live show that I've ever done on a laptop (the first was in Vegas in 2008 for DefCon 16, but I didn't record that and put it online). However, because I couldn't carry a full set of DJ equipment in my luggage for the trip, I ended up using Ableton for all three sets, instead of mixing on vinyl or CD's.

  



A little background about the trip: this was not a traditional cruise. It was a smaller ship, an "expedition ship," not a cruise ship. A large group of us had been planning this for a few years, thanks to the efforts of a good friend of mine (Pinguino) from Los Angeles. I met Pinguino several years ago in Seattle when I was playing at an illicit rave under an interstate overpass. We were talking about places that we'd like to travel, and I mentioned Antarctica. She told me her name, and said that she loved penguins and also wanted to visit there. Fast forward a year or two, and she emailed me and asked if I wanted to be an official DJ for an expedition trip. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. By the way, the profile photo that I currently have on my Facebook fan page and MySpace page was taken by Pinguino that night under the bridge - she's a professional photographer among other careers.

So anyway, almost one fifth of the passengers on the trip were part of our special group. Lots of DefCon people, lots of photography/film professionals, lots of really fun IT people. Although I could have played in the lounge every single night of the trip, I really wanted to focus more on the trip than partying, so I planned to focus on doing only three main sets.

This was the first set, from November 22nd. This was our third night on the ship, almost all the way through the Drake Passage, so we were getting into calmer waters and nobody was really too seasick anymore. I had wanted to do a Drum & Bass set at some point, because I hadn't done one in years, and the group that I was travelling with was definitely receptive. The Drake seemed to be an appropriate place for it. Chaotic, just like jungle music. Let me put things into perspective: the Drake Sea is known as the roughest sea in the world. When we were entering it, the Captain slowed down so we wouldn't hit a Beaufort Category 11 storm full-on. If you look up the details on a category 11 storm, you'll see why. Waves approaching fifty feet! Our ship was less than twenty feet from the waterline to the main deck. You can see the problem. Incidentally, even when we were crossing in "calmer" conditions shortly afterward, we had some waves approaching about twenty feet, and the spray was hitting my cabin porthole one night (main deck, third story of six). Also, the photo above was taken in the lee of the Cape Horn, in calm seas, before we actually got out into the Drake proper.

So in the midst of all this, on the night before we officially arrived in Antarctica, Pinguino came to me and said, "It's time, we're ready to party." The ship's crew let us use the main lecture hall for the night, and after most of the others had a few beverages, I played this set.







To download any of my studio mixes or recordings of lives shows, visit:


Then go into the folder called "Bolivia's DJ Mixes & Live Shows"

Thanks for your support!



I prefer to listen to drum & bass that is fairly jazzy, not the really hardcore stuff. This set progresses from some fairly relaxed tracks at around 165bpm, to eventually hit some pretty aggressive tracks at close to 175bpm. Personally, I prefer the first three quarters of the mix, although for a live set, the more aggressive tracks are more appropriate. My audience wasn't really a dance audience though, they were all just chilling and enjoying the music and the good company. To be honest, the last five minutes of this set is pretty hard stuff, and I wouldn't normally ever play this aggressively if I was making mixes for myself. Most of the tracks are pretty new stuff. Not much else to say. We had a good night, and went out to take a lot of photos of penguins a few hours later.

I'll have the second and third set available here on the blog in the next couple of days. Set number two, a progressive house set, is a little over an hour long and actually recorded while we were camping in Antarctica (possibly the first live recorded DJ set in history that was made available on the internet). Set three is a full three hours of tech-house, for a full-on party in the ship's lounge on "Titanic Night."


By the way, if anyone is curious, here are the track listings from this particular set:

01. Black Sun Empire & Jade, "Deadhouse" (Original Mix).
02. Chewy Lay, "Struggle" (Original Mix).
03. WPL, "Port Of Call" (Original Mix).
04. False Angel, "Redemption" (Aural Imbalance Remix).
05. Hot, "No Problem Dub" (Original Mix).
06. Smooth Stab & Aelyn, "These Words Between Us" (LofiSky Atmos Remix).
07. Command Strange, "Soul Booster" (Original Mix).
08. Command Strange, "Next Time" (Original Mix).
09. Kulprit, "Babylonian" (Original Mix).
10. Bad Weed, "Cherry Oh Jugglin" (Original Mix).
11. DJ Rusty, "System Failed" (Original Mix).
12. Wax Pusher, "Two Toke Pass" (Original Mix).
13. BComplex, "Reflections" (Original Mix).
14. Submorphics, "Revalation" (Original Mix).
15. NW2, "Pink Socks" (DJ Pleasure Remix).
16. Mutated Forms, "Shapes And Colours" (Original Mix).
17. Danny The Wildchild, "Die Clown" (Original Mix).
18. Grandad, "The Door" (Original Mix).
19. DJ Sly & MC Bassman, "Stone Cold" (Original Mix).
20. Black Sun Empire, "Extraction" (Original Mix).
21. V8, "Digital Damnation" (Original Mix).
22. Rockwell, "DJ Friendly Unit Shifter" (Original Mix).
23. DJ AlfE, "Born Bad" (Original Mix).
24. Sawgood, "No" (Ozma Remix).
25. Od, "The Fly" (Original Mix).
26. DJ Pleasure, "Venger" (2010 Mix).
27. Nanotek, "The Vengeful" (Original Mix).
28. Digital Era, "Dance Mother Fucker" (Original Mix).
29. Arsenic, "Start The War" (Original Mix).

(And since I was using Ableton, I had a lot of other random loops playing here and there throughout the mix).



If anyone reading this is a member of any Drum & Bass message boards where other people might enjoy listening to this mix, I'd really appreciate you sharing the link to this post. Here's the specific URL:
http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2010/12/mix-bolivia-live-in-drake-passage.html


Also, you can click here to see my full photo galleries from the trip.




---------------------------------------



I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca


Saturday, December 4, 2010

SHG Radio Show Episode 037

Welcome to this week's edition of Subterranean Homesick Grooves™, a weekly electronica-based radio show presented on CHMA FM 106.9 at Mount Allison University in Atlantic Canada. The show is normally programmed and mixed by Jonathan Clark (as DJ Bolivia), although some weeks feature guest mixes by other Canadian DJ's. The show encompasses many sub-genres within the realm of electronic dance music, but the main focus is on progressive and tribal house, and a bit of trance & techno. Liner notes for this episode (037) can be seen below.

Para la información en español, vaya aquí.




Here’s a link so you can listen to the show or download it from SoundCloud:


In addition to being able to download each episode from SoundCloud, you can also visit our DJ Mixes folder on Dropbox (which allows for bulk downloads).  That folder hosts hundreds of episodes and other DJ mixes.  Here's the link:


And of course, you can download DJ Bolivia's individual tracks from this link:





Here are Track Listings for episode 037:

01. Laidback Luke & Robyn, "Indestructible" (Original Mix).
02. Emii, "Mr. Romeo" (Seamus Haji Club Mix).
03. Tomcraft, "A Place Called Soul" (Original Mix).
04. John Dahlback, "Kairo" (Original Mix).
05. Chris Kaeser & Stonebridge, "Rescue Me" (Original Mix).
06. Moris & Minor feat. Brenda, "Is This The Groove" (Ian Carey Remix).
07. Avicii, "Malo" (Alex Gaudino & Jason Rooney Remix).
08. Toni Bass & David Penn feat. Sheilah Cuffy, "I Will Take A Chance."
09. Seamus Haji, "Angels Of Love" (Seamus Haji's Big Love Mix).
10. The Temper Trap, "Sweet Disposition" (Morgan Page Remix).
11. Nordstage & Mahjong, "Never Let U Go" (Extended Mix).
12. Burns & Fred Falke, "You Stopped Loving Me" (Original Mix).
13. Love Inc., "Broken Bones" (I Used To Sell You Things You Could Only Find On A Dancefloor Remix).
14. Solu Music feat. Kimblee, "Fade" (Eric Kupper Remix).
15. Kaskade feat. Joslyn, "It's You, It's Me" (Extended Mix).



DJ Bolivia is back as the show's host, after several weeks travelling in South America and down to Antarctica. Big thanks to Chris Blackmore, for taking care of the show while Bolivia was away. This week's show is still mixed by Chris, and is another mix of vocal, well-known tracks.

For those of you who are interested in hearing some live sets that Bolivia recorded while in the Antarctic region, there will be three sets posted on his blog at djbolivia.blogspot.com over the coming week, so be sure to check them out. There is also a review of Creamfields Buenos Aires already there, posted a couple weeks ago.





More information is available on our Website:
   http://www.subterraneanhomesickgrooves.ca


We also have a file containing complete track listings from all of DJ Bolivia's radio shows, studio mixes, and live sets. The PDF version can be viewed from within your browser by clicking directly. Both the PDF and the Excel versions can be downloaded by right-clicking and choosing the "save link as" option:

View as PDF file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.pdf
Download Excel file: http://www.djbolivia.ca/complete_track_history_djbolivia.xlsx




Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
        SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
        YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
        Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
        Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
        Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Creamfields Buenos Aires 2010

Creamfields is an annual electronic music festival which is held all over the world. The original was in England, and organized by the owners of the Cream nightclub. The event has grown and Creamfields festivals have been held in more than a dozen countries, but the one in Buenos Aires is one of the most successful in the world. The year, the 2010 festival was held on November 13th, and I was there.





(Click on any photos here to see them in higher resolution)


Creamfields Buenos Aires has been plagued by bad weather for its history. It has rained just about every year since the festival started in 2001, but this year was an exception. Saturday was hot and sunny, 27 degrees Celsius (remember that winter in the northern hemisphere is summer in South America). Organizers reported that it was going to be the biggest attendance in the event's history, with between seventy and a hundred thousand people.

With five stages, and more than sixty DJ's, it it impossible to see everyone. Some tough choices had to be made. I'll give some feedback on the sets that I did manage to see in a minute, but to put things in context, some of the world-class DJ's that I did NOT have time to see included Steve Lawler, Nick Warren, Calvin Harris, Laidback Luke, Mark Knight, and Marco Carola. Tragic.

The first set that I saw was Bad Boy Orange. To be honest, I'd never heard of him. At first I wondered if this was Bad Boy Bill and he had changed his name, because I think Bill's favorite color is orange. But it wasn't, it was a drum & bass DJ from Buenos Aires. He played an interesting set, switching between a lot of different styles.

Next up was Paul Kalkbrenner. Anyone who has seen the German film "Berlin Calling" would recognize him as the lead actor in the movie, which is a story about a DJ/producer. I've featured one of his tracks from the movie, "Sand & Sky," in my radio show (his brother was the vocalist). He didn't look like he was having a very good time during his set due to technical problems. The bass was very distorted at the start of the set, until the sound engineers got it figured out, and then at the end, the music just died halfway through his last track. It looked like he walked off the stage in frustration. But aside from those problems, which certainly didn't appear to be his fault, it was a good set. Very appropriate programming considering the slot he was playing - he didn't try to play aggressively, and it was a good warmup for sets to come. Basically, he played a slower progressive/tech house set.

Next up was Paul van Dyk, with a hard, pounding trance set. PVD started at 10pm, so it was pretty early in the night still, but the festival was getting pretty full by now. It's the first time that I've been right in the middle of a dance floor of probably fifteen thousand people, and it was pretty insane. Not the place for someone with claustrophobia. I think of all the DJ's that I saw, van Dyk was the one who did the best at turning a dance floor into a "living organism," which isn't surprising since trance music is the best genre for really working with breakdowns that people can anticipate.

On to Richie Hawtin. Hawtin is a techno DJ, and as such, his notoriety within Canada is a lot lower than it is outside of Canada. Unless you know electronic music well, you probably haven't even heard of him, even if you're Canadian. But outside of Canada, I would assume that he is Canada's second best-known DJ after Deadmau5, even more recognized than people like Max Graham and John Acquaviva. The amount of touring that he does is just incredible. Hawtin has used dozens of aliases in his production over the years, and one of the most common of those was Plastikman. His set at Creamfields was under the Plastikman monikor. He plays a dirty, minimal techno, with absolutely no vocals of course. There is a lot of interaction between his music and a visual show. This was one of my favorite parts of the festival. Technically speaking, it was unquestionably one of the best sets of the entire festival. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the entire thing because I was trying to catch so many different DJ's, but it was pretty tough to walk away before he finished. Incidentally, I mentioned Max Graham a minute ago. The Argentinians really enjoy electronic music. Max Graham was playing in Buenos Aires on the same night as the festival, although he was in the city, at Crobar.

Next, I went over to the Cream Arena stage, where I caught the last fifteen minutes of Hernan Cattaneo. He's actually from Buenos Aires, and of course is incredibly popular in Argentina. He was playing a good progressive house style. I wish I could have seen a lot more of his set. Immediately after Cattaneo was Sasha. I didn't really want to stay for Sasha's set (even though he is one of my favorite DJ's) because I'd seen him before, but he was another one that was hard to walk away from.

Faithless was playing on the main stage by this point, so I wandered over there. That set didn't really excite me. They have great music, but it's hard to translate electronic music to a live performance of that music (as opposed to DJ'ing with the original recordings). Also, something appeared to have gone wrong, because they finished their set a lot earlier than the schedule indicated, and ended with an apology for circumstances beyond their control. I'm not sure what happened. Great production team though.

I popped over to the Arena One stage next and caught a few minutes of Steve Angello. Sort of a progressive house style, but definitely closer to traditional house and more mainstream than Cattaneo or Sasha. I had no time budgeted to hear more of his set, so I moved on quickly.

David Guetta was next, on the main stage. Here is where I saw the most interesting phenomena of the entire festival. When Guetta got onto stage, he called out on the microphone and it rang out across most of the fesitval grounds. The main stage was sort of an open stage, whereas the other four were more enclosed. Anyway, when he hollered out on the microphone, about twenty thousand people from all over the festival grounds just suddenly turned and rushed to the main stage. It was almost like Guetta had announced they were giving out bags of money. Anyway, I saw him in Montreal a few years ago, and it was ok but not outstanding. I have a ton of respect for him as a producer, he's obviously one of the very best in the world for the mainstream style he specializes in. But his strength is as a producer, not as a technical DJ (although my bet is that he'll definitely beat out Tiesto and maybe Armin van Buuren in the DJ Mag top 100 rankings next year). He started his set with "Getting Over You," then a track that I didn't recognize, then "Club Can't Handle Me," then "Like a G6." At this point I left, since those are all mainstream club tracks that I can hear anywhere.

Dubfire was my next destination. Dubfire (one half of the well-known Deep Dish duo) focuses on techno when he works alone, whereas Deep Dish focuses on progressive house. I would have to say that this was my favorite set of the night. The interesting thing is that there were no outstanding tracks that he played. Just a generic & smooth, almost exclusively non-vocal performance. It was great for the dancers though, because it was a technically superior set, with no real significant distractions. It had a great rolling flow to it. Also, Dubfire was playing in the Cocoon Arena, which was the smallest stage by far, so there were only a few hundred people in it and there was lots of room to dance. I stayed for almost his entire set.

After Dubfire, I actually came back to the main stage and saw the end of Guetta's set, which was interesting. He played a track that he said he had just finished on the plane that afternoon, and which nobody had ever heard before. He said that he was having so much fun at the party that he was going to call it "Argentina" when it's released. It sounded more like a Swedish House Mafia track than a traditional Guetta track, but I'm sure it will be pretty well known soon. You can hear it on YouTube already (there were thousands of cameras and mobile phones taking photos and videos). BTW, good to see Guetta on Twitter calling Creamfields BA the "best party on the planet."

Carl Cox was playing in the Delta Arena by this point. So I went to check it out. If I had to pick three DJ's "must see" DJ's that I hadn't seen before, Carl Cox would definitely be on that short list (along with Danny Tenaglia & John Digweed). However, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to see very much of his set at Creamfields without missing out on other things, so I made a conscious sacrifice and figured that I'd only watch him for about fifteen minutes, and plan to go see him specifically somewhere else in the future, where I could enjoy his show better. In the short time I saw him, he was on the microphone a couple times - his usual style, to get the crowd worked up.

By this point, it was past 4am, and I went back to the main stage. I wanted to see the closing act on pretty much every stage, but I knew it wasn't possible, so I figured to end the festival by catching Fatboy Slim's entire set (assuming that I liked the start of it). It seemed that about fifty thousand other people had the same plan. I wasn't disappointed, his set was another favorite of the weekend. He started out with about thirty seconds of his "Star 69" track then thirty seconds of "Praise You," and then started getting into full songs (he came back to each of those initial tracks near the end of his set, in their entirety). Fatboy Slim has had a lot of really well-known tracks, and they're all pretty vocal, mainstream tracks. I think he covered all of them in his set. He appeared to be playing on vinyl, which was interesting, because I'm not sure how he synced the videos to the music. His set had a pretty intense video component on all the big screens, with both computer generated graphical sections, and conventional footage (such as Harvey Keitel floating around from the "Weapon Of Choice" video). Anyway, it was another really strong set, and would have definitely appealed even to people who don't listen to electronic music.

So all in all, I'd go with Richie Hawtin, Dubfire, and Fatboy Slim as my favorite sets of the festival.

Some of the things that I really liked about the festival:
- The security was really, really good. They weren't intimidating or hassling people, but they were paying a lot of attention to keeping the lineups from turning into crushes. They would let groups of people into waiting areas rather than open access, so there was no pushing or shoving anywhere.
- Sound quality was pretty good everywhere. There was a big node in the front and center of the main stage where the trebles and mids were pretty minimal, so it was very bassy, but overall each stage had great sound.
- Aside from Paul Kalkbrenner and Fatboy Slim starting each of their sets with a teaser of a song that they played again later in their sets, there was not a single song that I heard twice throughout the entire night.

Room for improvement:
- There were no garbage cans! None! Argentina has no recycling program, so unbelievable amounts of plastic are just going to the landfills. So sad. Everybody just threw all of their empty bottles and hamburger wrappers and drink cups on the ground when they were done. By the end of the night, everyone was wading through a sea of trash. Apparently, this is normal for Argentina, and people just come in afterward and clean up the entire park, but I just couldn't feel comfortable about throwing trash or recyclables onto the ground. Some NGO's really need to go to South America and change the culture there with respect to recycling. Also, it was hard to dance with drink cups everywhere.
- The only real food was hamburgers. There were half a dozen hamburger stands throughout the festival grounds, but only one stand that sold pizzas. Not good for the vegetarians.

All in all, it was an eye-opening experience. The festival grounds were pretty far from where I was staying, and it took a lot of walking plus a few buses and trains to get home (three hours). But despite that, I'd love to go again next year!












I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca