It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum…and I’m all outta gum

Dang, it's been 6 crazy months since a proper update. I guess facebook would be to blame. The fact that I'm fully booked up until mid september also has something to do with it. I'm still amazed by the feedback I'm getting for last years Ozora fest. You people should know that I am doing other gigs too and it has been going rather well Things have been so hectic lately it's made me question weather I need to let some of my hobbies go. The obvious one to suffer has been gaming, most people will point out that it's a good thing, and that I need to grow up. Those people need a good kick in the balls. I find it fascinating how many times I hear this argument tossed around. If there's one thing I love about modern video games is that they have storylines and proper writing which surpass many of today's movies in just about every possible way. Mass Effect 2 comes to mind, the intro of that game along with everything else just makes me glad to pick up a gamepad every now and then. I've been properly pissed off about the whole Roger Ebert shite that went down but I won't waste my breath on it since so many dedicated gamers have already jumped at his throat.

But still, I have been gaming very little as of late and despite the fact that I don't consider it to be a sign of growing up, it still makes me wonder if I'll be doing this 10 years from now. One thing that did get my nostalgic heart pumping again were so many of Nintendo's E3 trailers for remakes of old titles I've grown to love over the years. So yeah, it's a good time to be a gamer, too bad I don't have the time. The main reason is the fact that I'm compiling for Flow records, which btw has let me do A&R for their downtempo section, which (if you're been living under a rock) means I get to compile more releases in the future as well as help select tracks for artists albums, singles etc. On top of that my job has been crazy hectic in the last couple of months as tons of projects had to be completed. Good thing is that it's finally letting down now and I can focus more on music.

The summer festival season has kicked off for me, after a gig in Belgium with Khainz and last week's Solstice festival in Ruigoord, Amsterdam...my next international spot seems to be...well...Tanzania A much bigger step indeed, a bigger challenge as well since I'm not just doing a gig there. Full blown stage management for a 15 days festival is surely going to be a hard job. But if there's one thing I enjoy it's being part of the psychedelic trance scene, and being kept apart from it for too long is something I never intend to do again. I've spent so much time and energy trying to bring life into the local Croatian scene that it drained away all my energy. Being able to say "no more" was a really hard but necessary thing to do. The worst part is the fact that I still can't quite pinpoint what it is that went so wrong. A general atmosphere of a country going bankrupt? A breakup with a girlfriend that works in a party organization? Music that has stayed in 2006 and refuses to move on? Bad sound systems? Bad DJs? Bad crowds?...you guessed it...everything of the above. So we have a typical Croatian story here. Me being one of the few people that actually managed to get outside our borders with his music...and not being booked anywhere inside my own country. Granted I have a few good ones coming up here actually and the situation isn't as bad...it's just that it's so hard to come back to this mentality once you've been blessed with a great party with great people, a crystal clear sound system and amazing music to boot. How do you come back to something that's 10 levels below and still manage to have a good time. I'm sorry but I can't.

One thing I used to hate about myself was the fact that I picked up other people's accents, you know...spend 2 days with someone and I'm using their catchphrases and speaking in the same manner. It always bothered me until my work college said that the biggest sign of someone's limited perspective is the fact that they always talk the same. It made me look at it in an entirely different way. If you can never change the way you talk then surely you can also never change the way you think or act. It made me realize that I wasn't losing my own identity in this process, but rather gaining a different perspective...sure it's just a catchphrase or a longer/shorter articulation of some part of a word, but that's where everything starts. I felt an urge to share this because if there's one thing that people keep telling me is how good my English accent is. I wouldn't have gotten there if I felt the urge to keep my eastern European perspective. Sure we're talking American cartoons here but it still counts as something.

Anyway I better wrap this up...here's a youtube clip of my last gig in Ruigoord, loved it

keep it coming!

Posted on June 24th at 04:55 by Dovla Previous entry | Next entry