Cinco de Mayo

My Tracklisting

Pictures

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I must say that our household picked quite the perfect night for our first party of the year.

Cinco de Mayo. Celebration of the Mexican army being victorious over the invading French. Celebration of a new member of the household. Celebration of the beautiful fucking weather we've been having.

After a day of rushing around for last minute preparation, dinner was served at eight-thirty. Jes made burritos from scratch; pulled chicken, fresh vegetables, herbs and spices, spanish rice and black beans were topped with guacamole and starr's homemade salsa. Delicious!!!!

Guests began arriving around nine-thiry as Starr, Randy, JD Disclexic and I were tossing around plates to warm up the upstairs decks for our openers, Tad and Nile. As an added surprise Paul came along as well and the three of them tagged a bouncy blend of sounds from lounge to dnb. Tad stayed along to play with JD at twelve-thirty, as they dropped from dnb down to breaks.

Simultaneously, in the basement Zyler had just finished setting up the visual gear and Skunk began dropping dubstep on the chillers down below ground. Phil's decorations, along with a wall for a projection screen, kept a mellow vibe for those who wanted to relax or lay out on the shag. However, up two floors was far from relaxation.

Cosmos had fists pumping and people dancing to some old hard house. The vibe was great and the last trickle of new guests came in the door. After some quick and easy sound dampening adjustments (windows shut, fans on), the remaining guests began the subconscious game of who can last the longest.

I took over upstairs while Sir Kibbles hooked up his computer to the setup. I kept in the vein of Cosmos and brought it harder and harder.

Here are the tracks I played between three and three-thirty.

Hughes & Gamble - Twisted Synth Hard Mix
Yves de Ruyter - Psycho String
The Alien Thing feat Mark Bongwah - Ride the Pony
Yoji Biomehanika - Peace Out - Yoji's 21st Century remix
Vicious - Turkish Bazaar
CM - Psychopath
Mo-dem - Bits and Bytes (The Final Mission Mix) *see note
Span Thang EP - Span Trak
Digital Science - Digital Edge
A9

*after I mixed out of Bits and Bytes, which I had to turn the bass down a bit on while playing it, I noticed that the bass kill switch for that channel had been on for some unknown amount of time! The actual bass in that track was ridiculous.

Sir Kibbles finally found a workaround for his computer, and so tagged with JD on trance, hard dance, breaks and whatever else to close out the night til five am. While Nora chilled the basement crowd down til five-thirty. And with sunlight breaching the cloth-covered windows, the sleeping arise and say goodbyes. Gear is packed up, and finally to bed....room...to edit pictures from the night.

And here you are.


The DJs

Upstairs



Starr C.



Nile



Tad



Paul



JD Disclexic



JD and Tad working it together



Cosmos



Sir Kibbles



JD and Sir Kibbles rockin out

Downstairs



Skunk



Alex



Nora



Zyler on visuals

The Crowd




















Thanks to everyone who came out, I hope you all had a wonderful time and can't wait for the next one!

Special thanks to Mike for working the door, Peeps Jess for providing decorations, Stas and Skunk for providing sound, and Zyler and Phil for visuals and decorations.

And as always LOVE to my housemates, Jes, Shawn and Starr, you're unbelieveable!

Auditory Influx:

Here it is ten days, one new hard drive, and a few hours of culling through a gig of photo and video, and I've finally gotten pics and vids for all to see. The videos are posted at the end of the blog.



The Setup:

Saturday, the 23rd of September, 2006 was the date of Auditory Influx, the third party thrown by the residents of my Allston abode. The party coincided with our newest roommate's birthday, as well as the beginning of fall, and we wanted to bring the crowd a little something special to make up for a less than spectacular event that preceded this one. Two days were spent prepping the house for the party, from top to bottom cleaning and rearranging to meticulously taping real leaves to the walls around our front door.



The birthday girl in her birthday outfit



Unpaid help from NYC



The workers contemplate a strike



Akiva helps Prism Lighting set up


The Music:

All the DJs rocked it, Akiva, Ekko, Jeremy, Dev/Null, TechnoBitch, and DJ C upstairs, as well as JD Disclexic, Dru Styles, Ikari, Skunk, and theSunsetsDown downstairs.




Akiva



Ekko



Jeremy



Dev/Null



TechnoBitch



DJ C



JD Disclexic



Dru Styles



Ikari



Skunk



theSunsetsDown


The Visuals:


Lighting on the second floor was provided by Prism Lighting, and Alison brought a projector for VJ Bonk to display visuals over the first floor walls. Shawn even got down on the visuals for a while. And the fire...We had two guests spinning fire in the backyard for a short while, adding some oohs and ahhs from the crowd and just one more addition to an already packed night.


Steve, Prism Lighting, getting ready for the night



VJ Bonk shows off his visual mixing skills



Shawn on the video mixer



Visuals by Bonk



More visuals by Bonk




Lighting by Prism Lighting

The Crowd:


Guests started arriving around 10, greeted by Biplaw, our doorman for the night. Beirut was set up in the kitchen and the party started filling up. By midnight we had sixty to eighty people, a number which would remain constant for most of the night. It was just the right number of people to keep the dancefloors filled and various concentrations of group chatter in kitchens, bedrooms, the back stairs and of course, the roof. The roof also happened to be one of the better vantage points to view the fire poi in the backyard.



No, I swear, I'm one of the djs



The kitchen is the home of quality discourse



Jes and Russ relax on the roof



Nora and Jeremy conversate on the back porch



The Medford crew



A peek into the madness



Is this a nightclub?



The crowd enjoying the music



Dancers!



Bonk gets out on the dancefloor


The End:


The music upstairs wound down around 4:30 am, while downstairs the beats flowed til at least 6 am. With the morning sun starting to peek from behind the clouds, I cooked breakfast for the few remaining guests and the sleep bug began to bite us all. Steve, the lighting guy, woke up and we broke down his equipment and thanked him again for his services. So closed Auditory Influx, good beats, great vibes, and no hassles. Thanks to everyone who came out, performed, and helped us bring another night of music and dancing to the city of Boston.


The Strangeness:



Starr and Shawn discuss how shit gets done



Alison brought the projector, and her drunk Brit persona



Sage, the fire spinner, espouses everyone's secret desires



Passed out! Before Midnight!




Even the lighting guy had to sleep sometime



The Apt. 2 Crew hamming it up

The Videos:


Here are a few videos from the night. The first is of some dancers in the crowd, the second is a 360 degree shot of the lighting and crowd in the second floor living room, the third is fire spinners in the backyard.