Singapore Record Hunting

I was in Singapore last week so I strolled into HMV with my uncle to check out some Vinyl prices. I was surprised to find that on average a Vinyl costed only around AU$14, which is around AU$5 cheaper than Melbourne! Unfortunately HMV only had mostly hard house so I ended up buying only three commercial tunes.

A few days later I found another record store called Roxy Music, opposite the popular Funan shopping centre. Roxy Music had much more of the type of music I was after, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to go through their collection. So I ended up returning to Melbourne with just the three records I had purchased from HMV.

Looks like I'll have to add Singapore to my list of record hunting countries! New York was also good (Virgin Megastore on Times Square was the only place I had visited), but I had way too many records in my suitcase on that visit that I didn't have any space left for more records. I'll also have to see if Dubai has cheap records since I tend to go their often. I think record prices in Dubai will be similar to Singapore, but I'll have to wait for a few months to find out!

Happy Valentines Day!

I think I'm in love...with Vinyl.

1) I like the security of being able to touch the music, control it, and to be able to "see" it playing.

2) I like the convenience of being able to play on any turntable make, by simply knowing how to play on one.

3) I like the simplicity of (most) turntables; no electronics, no fuss.

4) I like the security of knowing that most bars/clubs have turntables as standard.

5) I like going and searching for my music, and being able to slap it on and listen to the entire track before buying.

6) I like carrying Vinyl around to local gigs and to feel like I'm actually carrying music. I like storing Vinyl and collecting Vinyl.

7) I like being able to do something about a skipping track!

(What I don't like is carrying Vinyl overseas, having to wipe them, the fact that they warp, paying so much per track (!!), and not being able to download music (legally) and make copies on Vinyl. But hey, nothing's perfect.)

Dinner Plain Hotel

Had a nice weekend at the Dinner Plain Hotel in Dinner Plain (about 10KM from Mount Hotham). I was invited to play at the Dinner Plain Hotel for the "Feb Fest", but unfortunately the Feb. Fest. was cancelled in the last minute. I still played to the regular Saturday night crowd at the Dinner Plain Hotel.

Dinner Plain and Hotham looked different in Summer, but the scenery was still beautiful. Lots of layers of mountain after mountain, and lots of white trees with shedded leaves along winding roads. Apparently, the Great Alpine Road that takes you to Hotham is one of the most winding roads in the world!




Dinner Plain looked a bit plain without the snow, but the architecture still gave it the look of a fairytale town. Surprisingly a very modern building was being constructed right alongside the Dinner Plain Hotel, which contrasted with the old wooden houses and motels. It will be interesting to see how well this new building blends with the old wooden ones!

On Saturday night I started the gig with some layed back tribal US/UK House and moved onto some funky quirky US stuff later on. I played US House for about two and half hours and then slowly moved onto some underground electro-ish stuff (Trentmoller, JT Donaldson) and then smoothly into some old and new Commercial tunes. They (of course) enjoyed the Commercial tunes the most! I had lots of people come up and compliment the music (including the manager -- can't harm my chances of future gigs there!), and someone even came up and got into a long conversation with me about Vinyl versus CDs! This person used to play Vinyl back in his days, but asked me why on earth am I playing Vinyl these days, when there are such sophisticated CD players out there! In the end I think I managed to convince him -- thanks to the many ITM forum threads on the Vinyl versus CDs debate!

I finished playing at around 1.15AM after which I had a chat with some of the locals at the bar who were a very friendly bunch. Some of them had been living in Dinner Plain for many years and they loved the town and everything else that came along with it -- Skiing, Mountain Biking and of course their liquor! I headed back home at around 1.30AM (4.5 hr set).

The next day (Sunday) we all woke up late and had to check out after a quick breakfast. We then headed back to Melbourne and were back home 6.5 hours later (as opposed to 5) -- thanks to a long lunch, a visit to a berry farm, and a flat tyre!

Overall it was a top weekend. Great group, great place, great bunch of locals and some great quirky bumpy chunky and funky US House!! I'd be happy to go back there for their next major event, and I'm definitely going back for some Skiing in winter.

Difference between a Club DJ and a Bar DJ?

In general, more clubs have a cover charge than do bars, so the DJs at clubs get paid higher. But there is also a commitment that comes along with the higher salary, to get people onto the dance floor, which is not always the case with bars. And from my experience, the length of gigs at bars are generally longer than those at clubs, possibly because the music at clubs need to be more fresh and dynamic to keep people on the dance floor, which can be done by regularly rotating the DJs.

I personally prefer DJing in Bars, because generally the environment is more relaxed, and I can play more of the music I like -- US House. When I play at Clubs, since I don't have a big Commercial House collection, I need to be more careful in my track selection. At bars on the other hand, I can be more versatile with my larger US House collection. I've tried playing some upbeat US House at clubs, but quickly realised that it only works if played very early when people are still warming up, or later but with a good dose of Commercial tunes. People often prefer to listen to something they can sing along to, rather than just quirks, beats and an occassional mumble!

As far as skill goes, I wouldn't say either type of venue brings in more skill. In clubs you need some fresh upbeat tunes mixed in reasonably well but quickly, to keep the dance floor active. You also need to have the skill to be able to mix with louder music than you find in bars. In bars on the other hand you need to play more layed back tunes, and long smooth mixes will be appreciated (perhaps with some skillful use of the EQs). But there are also exceptions -- in some bars you can even get away with being a Juke Box! Although long smooth mixes are not necessary in clubs, the day you play like a Juke Box is the day you'll have to start looking for more gigs.

This is just from my experience anyway. Would be great to hear what others think.

DJ Clint Hargreaves

Local DJ Clint Hargreaves seems to be causing quite a bit of commotion around Melbourne, confirming the first sentence in his bio as a DJ "rapidly making his mark on the Australian dance music scene".

I have seen Clint Hargreaves play at least fifteen times, and he never ceased to amaze. He's got some of the tightest mixing skills ever, and he's able to pitch ride those turntables with any hand, and with so much ease, that it makes other good DJs seem like amateurs. Many times I've seen him slapping on a record and riding it straight into a (smooth) mix with one hand, while his other hand plays around with the mixer EQs. And he does this with all sorts of tunes -- talk about knowing your music!

At StellarBar on Bourke Street, I've seen Clint play 6 hour sets, starting off with some funk, breaks, or whatever the hell he's in the mood for, and moving on smoothly to some harder stuff. His night didn't always end at Stellar -- he had to pack up to go play at Republika. Some of the other places he's played at include The Saint at St. Kilda, Viper Room on Chapel Street, OneSixOne in Prahran, The Great Britain Hotel in Richmond, Playpen in Prahran, Love Machine ....

At clubs Clint plays some of the freshest Electro tracks and gets the crowd going each time. If the crowd was enjoying the Electro tunes, he'd play more of them. If they like the more vocal tunes, he'd give them vocal. He has such a huge music collection and an understanding of crowds that he is able to get anyone onto the dance floor. If he didn't have to cue up the next record I'm sure he'd be on the dance floor himself!

I've got no doubt Clint is going to make it big. And when does, you heard it here first!

DJing versus Lecturing

When I start a gig there's always a slight feeling of nervousness. The nervousness is a combination of not wanting to screw up a mix, not wanting anything to go wrong with the turntables (e.g. the needles could start skipping if people dance too close), and knowing that there will be a few punters coming along and making requests. Chances are, what the punters want is not something that can be played, and not something I'm going to have -- especially when I play US House; I only have a limited amount of Vinyl in my crate! After a few mixes the nervousness starts decreasing, and I start enjoying myself. For most private functions however, I'm nervous right throughout. This is because I'll be playing music I'm not too familiar with (70's funk?!?!).

When I start a lecture, there's also a slight feeling of nervousness. But this is generally only on the very first day of the lecture, when confronted with many new faces. After about a week of lecturing I get used to the audience. I would have met some of them personally, and so I'm more comfortable when delivering the lecture. But the nervousness visits on some days when find that I'm not expressing myself too well (which mainly happens if I have not prepared enough for a lecture) and when I realise that the students don't know what the hell it is that I'm trying to say!

So it looks like there are certain similarities. When DJing I face mostly a new audience each time, so there is always some nervousness at the beginning. If I'm playing at a new venue, or if I'm doing an important gig (e.g. NYE), the nervousness is a bit more intense. Also if the DJ booth doesn't have enough space to move around, then on top of the nervousness, I start sweating and getting a bit uncomfortable. But the good thing when DJing is that most people don't stare at you the whole time -- most of the time they enjoy themselves regardless of whether you're sweating and feeling claustrophobic. And even if you do mess up a mix or two, chances are, no one heard it, or no one cared, as long as the rest of the mixes are good. But one difficulty when DJing is that you need to get used to your audience at every gig, and try to guess and change your music accordingly.

During a lecture on the other hand, you can't afford to start sweating or stammering -- otherwise the students will pick you up and drop you on your head (intellectually of course). All eyes are on you the whole time, and for each mistake you do, you lose a bit of your credibility. Since all eyes are on you, having your zipper undone won't help you either. But since you get used to your audience after each lecture, you get to know what they want, and you can teach them accordingly.

I'm not really sure if my DJing has helped my lecturing or vise versa, but I have realised that I'm not as nervous infront of an audience as I used to be a couple of years ago. So getting some experience in DJing and lecturing definitely can't be doing me any harm!

P.S. I'm still much more nervous when giving a presentation or a speech. I wonder why my nervousness level should be so different to that of when I'm delivering a lecture? Probably has something to do with people being on the same level of understanding as me when giving a presentation, or because of the pressure of needing to make people laugh when delivering a speech!

Lustre Lounge has come a long way!

Recently I did a google search on "Lustre Lounge" and was surprised to see so many nice articles about the bar. I always knew Lustre Lounge was a good bar, but I didn't realise how many good reviews and forum posts there were about it until today. Looks like the bar has come a long way to be currently regarded as one of Melbourne's most renowned boutique venues!

It has nearly been two years since I started playing at Lustre (2 years this March!), and Lustre Lounge was my first real introduction to the world of DJing (I had only done private parties before then). It was difficult to play at Lustre in the beginning, since the manager was very specific about the type of House music he wanted me to play, making it a point to tell me before I start playing, if he didn't like something I played the previous week! Also, if a mix went wrong during my set, he would make it very clear that he wasn't impressed! But I think it was because of his criticisms that I was forced to learn quickly about House music and to learn how to mix well. Before Lustre lounge I could only play RnB.

A bit later on, after I got settled in, it was just a lot of fun playing there -- the constant (constructive) feedback from the bar staff and the friendliness of the owners (not to mention the long chat sessions at the end of the night!) made it a very enjoyable venue to play at. It was ultimately because of the experience I had gained at Lustre Lounge that I was able to get gigs at other bars/events.


Here are some of the reviews I had found on google about Lustre Lounge.

Melbourne Pubs
Fast Impressions
Backpack Victoria
Mietta's
Melbourne Australia .com .au

Invited to play during Mt. Hotham's Feb Fest!

I've been invited to play during the "Feb Fest" organised by Mt. Hotham and Dinner Plain!! The festival will involve mountain biking, food and wine tasting so it looks like its going to be heaps of fun! I'll be playing at the Dinner Plain Hotel, where I played last year during the snow season.

The plan is to head over to Hotham on Friday 11th with about 4 more people, stay over at Dinner Plain on Fri and Sat nights, check out the festival on Saturday, DJ on Sat night, and head back to Melbourne on Sunday evening. Will definitely post some pics up here soon!!

Here's a description of the festival from the Mt. Hotham website:

11-12 February 2006This is a brand new event for Hotham and Dinner Plain. The weekend will feature mountain biking, food and wine tasting sessions and live music. Get a group of friends together because this will be one festival that you will not want to miss. A state level mountain biking event featuring over 180 riders will coincide with a range of activities and adventures suitable for the whole family.

Happy New Year!!

NYE '06 was the bomb!! LazZ and myself blew the roof off at the LustreLounge Masquerade party, playing tunes for 6 hours, ranging from Retro and Funk, to House and RnB!

To prepare for this event, I went about an hour before the party started at 9PM, with my Numark mixer. Since my mixer had only 3 channels (and their one has 4), I had to connect my mixer such that we can switch between a shared channel (shared between the left turntable and the left CD player) when we switch between LazZ and myself. After doing the connections and testing the mixer I realised how good the sound quality was -- didn't realise how good the speakers at Lustre were until this day!! Just throw in a better mixer and you've got some killer sound quality.

I started playing some of my Tribal/Jazzy layed back US/UK House Vinyl (e.g. Trentmoller, JT Donaldson) from 9PM to about 10.15PM after which LazZ arrived. People were enjoying the US House (Or so it seemed -- they were blowing their party horns to the Jazzy instrumentals!). At about 10.15 LazZ took over and warmed them up with some danceable 80's (Billy Joel, Cindy Lauper etc.) till close to 11.30PM. People were dancing and enjoying themselves, although there weren't a lot of people there as yet. I played from 11.30PM, into 2006, before handing it back to LazZ at about 1.15AM. I played mostly mainstream House (Eric Prydz, Armand Van Helden) -- with the good sound quality the place was going crazy!


At this time (at around 1AM) the place was getting packed. People flooded in from the Federation Square fireworks, and everyone was dancing and having a good time. They welcomed the more upbeat 80s by LazZ, since it was something they could sing along and dance to, and then I took over for the last half hour or so and finished it off with some RnB.

Overall a top night...definitely worth cancelling the party we were supposed to attend ;-) Will do it again next year if we can!

Our Engagement Party

My fiance and I celebrated our engagement at Lustre Lounge where LazZ and I work. We had a cocktail party for around seventy guests, which included mostly family and close friends of myself and my fiance (pic on left). This was a good crowd for Lustre Lounge, although we could have fitted in about thirty more people. The function lasted four hours.

As far as the music went, we didn't really hire a DJ for the night! Instead, LazZ made some non-stop mixes (80's & RnB) and I made a non-stop mix ("Sega & Baila"). We used MixMeister Pro. for making the mixes, although I must say my "Sega & Baila" (i.e. (similar sounding) danceable Sri Lankan music and danceable Mauritian music) mix was horrible -- thanks to creating the mix on an old version of MixMeister, and then transferring the mix to the latest version in the last minute to burn the CD! However I do hope that people at least got the main message of the "Sega and Bail"a mix, i.e.: the two cultures can coexist. But unfortunately, the mix could also have given them the impression, that they can't coexist peacefully!

The switching between CDs on the CDJs was mostly done by Fabrice (a.k.a. DJ Fab?), my (future) bro-in-law (pic on top right), who also played some nice slow warm-up music on the CDJs at the beginning. The sequencing of the warm-up music was chosen by DJ Fab, from a list created by my dad and (future) mom-in-law, from my dad's oldies collection. This was DJ Fab's first time playing overseas, in a real bar, on a real DJ system, so I doubt he'll forget the night any time soon! I wonder if he can now call himself an international DJ in Mauritius?









Towards the half-way mark, when the more danceable tunes were playing, a small dance group started forming, and they danced for a while to some of the Sega music. But soon the Sega music was over, and since we had already played the 80's mix earlier, we had only RnB left! As expected, the dancing didn't continue for too much longer!

The organisation of the event was handled by Lustre Lounge, who did a fantastic job of it as usual. Catering for the event was provided by Shane recommended by Lustre Lounge, who was very timely and organised in bringing and serving the food. All photographs shown above(except for the pic of DJ Fab), and more, were taken by the Wasantha Wimalaratne, who also did a fantastic (and very professional) job of it.

Overall, I think the night went very smoothly. Next time (i.e.at the wedding, not at a second engagement!), we'll be booking the venue for about six hours, and I'll try and get the message across a bit better, that the two cultures can coexist peacefully!