Gabriel & Dresden

Yesterday was the birthday of one of my old roommates, and a former DJ at the club that I ran, so I ended up taking him out to a Gabriel & Dresden show in Las Vegas. It was at the Lavo club at the Palazzo. Nice place.




Gabriel & Dresden took a slight break from touring together in 2009/2010, but they've been pretty busy the last eight or ten months, with appearances in more than a dozen countries. I've seen six or seven of their shows in the past. I was even supposed to see them and do some filming at a show in New York that turned out to be their "last" show before their break, but I missed a flight connection by ten minutes due to snow in Canada, and lost that opportunity. That was one of my most disappointing moments in a long time.

Last night's show at Lavo was the best one that I've seen. They are definitely on their game these days. They've got a pretty versatile set-up - Josh works predominantly on Ableton Live (where he can create unique remixes on-the-fly), and Dave occasionally uses Ableton but is completely at home with CDJ's. The only thing that I thought was odd last night was that they shared the same pair of headphones. Dave usually had them on, but Josh occasionally borrowed them. I would think that they'd use a headphone splitter cord and each have a set of their own. Anyway, I saw the entire set (about three hours) and it was tight. I especially enjoyed the remix or layering of the Eleanor Rigby vocals in their set. The only regret about the show for me is that I didn't think to write down a set list, since I recognized just about every song they played.


G&D are so influential that two of their productions are in the top ten of the 2010 edition of the Trance Top 1000 tracks of all time ("As The Rush Comes" at position #3, and their remix of Above & Beyond's "No One On Earth"). They were also voted as America's best DJ's a couple of times. If you want to learn a bit more about the duo, check out this article on wikipedia, which also has a pretty impressive discography.

Here are YouTube videos for a few of their more well-known songs that have real videos (many of their other hits don't). You'll notice that Dave and Josh sometimes work with other vocalists under different names such as Motorcycle, Andain, etc.






















If you're interested in checking out some of their other music, look for classic tracks such as "Zocalo," "Arcadia," "Summer Calling," "Around You," and more. Or check out some of their many remixes of other artists' tracks, which you can find on their discography page on Discogs (or in the list below).

Also, Dave has a popular SoundCloud page that sometimes has G&D sets on it, such as this one:

Gabriel & Dresden Live at Nocturnal Wonderland 09-24-11 by Davedresden




If you get a chance to see them anywhere, I really recommend that you check out their show!

Partial List of Their Remixes:

2001 - New Order, "Someone Like You"
2001 - Way Out West, "Mindcircus"
2001 - Groove Armada, "Superstylin'"
2002 - 4 Strings, "(Take Me Away) Into The Night"
2002 - Medicine8, "Capital Rocka"
2002 - Balligomingo, "Purify"
2002 - Andain, "Summer Calling"
2002 - Paul Oakenfold, "Southern Sun"
2002 - Tiësto, "In My Memory"
2002 - Weekend Players, "I'll Be There"
2002 - Roger Goode, "In The Beginning..."
2002 - Ils, "Music"
2002 - Jewel, "Serve The Ego"
2002 - Beber & Tamra, "Travelling On"
2003 - Annie Lennox, "A Thousand Beautiful Things"
2003 - Lili Haydn, "Anything"
2003 - Motorcycle, "As the Rush Comes"
2003 - Nalin & Kane, "Beachball"
2003 - Andain, "Beautiful Things"
2003 - Three Drives, "Carrera 2"
2003 - Sarah McLachlan, "Fallen"
2003 - G&D vs. Coldplay, "Clocks"
2003 - G&D vs. Depeche Mode, "Here Is The House"
2003 - Dave Gahan, "I Need You"
2003 - Deborah Cox, "Play Your Part"
2003 - Evanescence, "Hello"
2003 - Jewel, "Intuition"
2003 - Britney Spears feat Madonna, "Me Against The Music"
2003 - Duncan Sheik, "On A High"
2003 - Annie Lennox, "Pavement Cracks"
2003 - Grayarea, "One For The Road"
2004 - Above & Beyond, "No One On Earth"
2004 - Nelly Furtado, "Try"
2004 - Kristine W, "Save My Soul"
2004 - The Engine Room, "A Perfect Lie"
2004 - Dido, "Don't Leave Home"
2005 - Rachael Starr, "Till There Was You"
2005 - Perasma, "Swing 2 Harmony"
2005 - Motorcycle, "Around You"
2005 - Özgür Can, "Changed"
2005 - Nicol Sponberg, "Resurrection"
2006 - Gustavo Santaolalla, "The Wings"
2006 - Robbie Rivera, "Float Away"
2006 - Markus Schulz & Departure with G&D, "Without You Near"
2007 - D. Ramirez & Mark Knight, "Colombian Soul"
2007 - Monochrome, "Pearl"
2007 - 68 Beats, "Replay The Night"
2007 - The Killers, "Read My Mind"
2007 - Shiny Toy Guns, "You Are The One"
2008 - Faithless, "A Kind of Peace"
2011 - Enrique Iglesias, "Tonight I'm Loving You" (D&J)
2011 - Andain, "Promises"

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

djbolivia.ca/training

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

djbolivia.ca/tracks

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

 

Gabriel & Dresden in Boston

I just got back from an interesting weekend in Boston. I flew down to see a Gabriel & Dresden show, but also to actually meet them, courtesy of a mutual friend.

For those of you who aren't familiar with electronic music, these two are incredibly talented. Among other things, Dave Dresden is a talent scout for Pete Tong, and was a journalist for DJ Times, Mixer, DMA, and Billboard magazine, where he has done interviews with Paul Oakenfold, Moby, Todd Terry, Sasha & Digweed, Puff Daddy, BT, The Crystal Method, Keoki, Josh Wink, the Chemical Brothers, and Deep Dish. Josh Gabriel was the sound designer for the Oddworld video games, was co-founder of Mixman Technologies (remixing software), did work for for Warner Brothers & Sony Music, and was the mastering engineer on Disney's "Aladdin" soundtrack.

  

As a duo, the two of them are very highly ranked as DJ's (23rd in the world, to be exact), according to the current standings on www.thedjlist.com. They also have their own record label in San Francisco, called Organized Nature. However, they are probably most well known for their production skills, whether it is individually, as a duo, or in partnerships with other musicians and producers (including releases under the monikers Andain & Motorcyle). For the non-electronica fan, they are probably most well-known recently for "Tracking Treasure Down," which was #1 on Billboard a few months ago, in July of this year. Here's a link to the video for that song on YouTube (the link is visible on my real blog, but not in the Facebook feed):

Aside from that well-known hit, they have a very extensive string of other #1 hits over the past few years, and they've worked directly with or done remixes for a huge variety of well-known artists, including Coldplay, New Order, Tiesto, 4 Strings, Paul Oakenfold, Roger Goode, Sarah MacLaughlan, Jewel, Afrika Bambaataa, Armin van Buuren, The Crystal Method, Dido, Nelly Furtado, Fischerspooner, Groove Armada, Annie Lennox, Britney Spears, Depeche Mode, Madonna, and others.

Anyway, the weekend got off to a bit of a rough start when I forgot to go through my luggage carefully before flying. I've probably taken at least 300 commercial flights before, so I definitely should have known better, but I wasn't really thinking. I have a "travel bag" which is always packed, but the last time I used it was when I was just travelling in Canada. Consequently, when I got to airport security, I had to throw out my shaving cream (because it was in an aerosol can), and my drugs (you'll note that I said drugs, not narcotics). Then, the officer going through my bag asked me if I really expected to be allowed to take a wine opener on the plane. I guess the large pointy metal stabbing tool and sharp knife didn't exactly meet regulations.

I got to Boston pretty early on Friday morning, which led to a new dilemma, since it was 10am and I couldn't check into the hotel until 2pm. I don't normally drink before 5pm (unless it is a continuation of the previous night's festivities) but I thought that since I was on vacation, I'd make an exception, so I went to an Irish Pub for breakfast. And lunch. The Pub was about three doors down from the hotel, and there were several hundred students staying at the hotel for a Harvard Model United Nations event, so there were people to talk to everywhere.

After lunch, I went back to the hotel. That evening, Kate and another friend picked me up, and we went out for drinks to a pizza place & bar beside Fenway Park. We were planning to meet Josh & Dave fairly early, but their plane had been delayed in Chicago due to winds, so they didn't get into Boston until around midnight. When we went back downtown to meet them, they were having problems checking in because it was past midnight and the hotel computers wouldn't let people claim their room after midnight, so they came up to my room for about an hour before the show while they tried to sort things out.

The rest of the night was pretty fun. Rise was a fantastic little after-hours club. It was smaller than I expected, about the same size or smaller than the after-hours clubs I usually frequent in the Maritimes, but the cleanliness was unbelievable, and the lighting was incredibly well-done for such a small venue. Rise is a private members-only club (plus a limited number of guests for each member), so I think that most people who were there actually knew each other. Once they got started, Dave & Josh played until 7am, and it was a pretty interesting set since they played a fair number of their own tracks, and I knew quite a bit of the music. They ended the night with their remix of "The Wings" by Gustavo Santaolalla - I think that the original might have been the closing track from Brokeback Mountain.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. It's been a few years since I've been to Boston, but it has so many universities and students around that it completely reminds me of Halifax. There are very few US cities that I'd ever want to live in, but Boston would probably be the one exception (or maybe San Francisco).

Saturday night was pretty fun too, but that's another story. Coming home was fairly uneventful, except that our flight crew didn't show up for the flight out of Newark. It was kind of funny actually, since they eventually had to be paged on the airport intercom system: "Paging flight crew XXX, can you please report to gate C99. We need you to fly a plane."

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

djbolivia.ca/training

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

djbolivia.ca/tracks

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