Friday, August 26, 2011

Free Mix Friday! That Plastics get remixed by Sassquatch and Jaysynth!

Earlier this year Jason (Jaysynth, On Travel, J-Dawg) and I (Ben, Sassquatch, B-Cat) were approached by Cape Town band The Plastics to do a remix of one of the songs from their album Shark. You may recall the album making
the list of my ten favourite local releases of last year? Well if you don't, it did and because i liked it so much I was super excited to do a remix of one of the tracks. We picked out the orchestral pop number Jukebox and spent a few weeks working on turning it into a bit of a dancefloor number. We were pretty damn happy with how things turned out, and, with the band a few days away from a little tour of Durban and Pretoria, they've finally decieded to release this little beast - hope you guys enjoy it!
Jukebox - (Jaysynth & Sassquatch Remix) by The Plastics

You are invited! Bliksem!

"Bliksem!" is a heart-warming tale of friendship, cuddles, huge basslines, handclaps and fuckloads of soul. The story of two squirrels, the nimble Sassquatch, scurrying around The Musical Forest, gathering up the finest funk punk gems he can get his little paws on, and big old Matt Suttner, kicking back in his den and snacking on only the most delectable nuggets of pure disco goodness. In seasons passed the two were responsible for changing the face of Pretorian night-life with their Sovereign Academy adventures. This time around it's nothing as grand, just two furry little buddies, free entrance, snuggles and disco. No Dubstep? No cover? No Skippy? No School? No agro? Just disco?! BLIKSEM!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Grietfest Ticket winners!

So we had a whole bunch of entries for our free Grietfest tickets comp. People are clearly pretty damn excited for tomorrow nights festival! Wading through all the entries and choosing winners was pretty tough; before i announce the winners there are a few honorable mentions that almost got tickets:
Runners up:
Dylan Steenkamp:
Yes Dylan, this really could be the coolest dog alive.
Patrick Dinneen:
For being the only person to post his own doggy content, to be specific, this lovely little puppy from his blog. He also posted the legendary Skateboarding Dog, but as you'll see, would later be outdone by even more awesome dog and skateboard related business.
Kyle Opperman:
For being too rock and roll to care (or too high to realise) that he was posting awesome cats in an awesome dog contest.
Cameron Lowry
When I set up this comp I told myself the first person to post a link to Hyperbole and a Half would be an insant winner. It is, afterall, the single greatest journal of dog ownership in recorded human history. Unfortunately for Cam he's one of my best friends, so making him a winner would have just felt wrong. Sorry Cam. Sam.
Winners:
Lynell van Heerden
It's dogs having a party - COME ON!
Alikat:
Hooked us up with this link to high speed photography of dogs shaking their heads. On of the craziest things I've ever seen.
Princess Greta:
Linked us to Doggelganger - a website that allows humans to find a look-alike canine looking for a good home. Cute idea and rad site. You win!
Lindi Goosen:
So this has got to be my favourite entry of all the links I was sent. Lindi does happen to be my friend, but if you have a problem with that, just watch this video again and I gaurentee you won't be mad at me anymore.
Lindi and Lynell, you're names will be at the door when you get to Grietfest, remember your ID to prove who you are. Alikat and Princess Greta - WE NEED YOUR HUMAN NAMES! Please drop me a comment with them so I can get you on the list - if you haven't done this by 4 i'll have to give your tickets to one of the runners up!
Thanks to everyone for all the fun stuff you sent through for this - I'll see ya'll tomorrow night at grietfest!

You are invited! I scream for spring!

It's been one miserably cold winter in Johannesburg this year. The good news is it's almost over, and to celebrate the girls from electro-rock upstarts Aneva, invited Ri and I to play a show with them at Kitchener's on Spring Day. This is gonna be mountains of fun!

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Hooray for Humans! Free Grietfest tickets!

Griet's first monster-sized, tripple stage electronic music festival is around the corner, going down this Saturday at Town Hall! The fine doggies of Griet have hooked SMAC up with no less than 4 tickets to the event and we're giving them out to good homes!

To win one of the tickets simply leave us a comment, with your full name and a link to some cool doggy-related content. Pics, vids, gifs, whatever, so long as it got some canine in it. For example, I was pretty taken by this:


We'll choose our favourite links and announce the winners on Friday and see you at grietfest on Saturday!

We do this all the time: The Vinyl Vultures hatch!

Turn your Light up High
presents:
Thur 4 Aug 2011

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Good weekend: She Vox and The Vinyl Vultures

This past weekend was definitely one of the most awesome variety, and what's more an extra long one at that. Starting on Thursday night, Cam, under his Turn your Light Up High banner, hosted Vinyl Vultures. As the name suggests it was a party soundtracked entirely off records, and Cam assembled a pretty great collection of Vultures to provide it. Ash, Ri, Chad, Cam and Ben to be exact.
By the time I got there at 8 Kitchener's was already uncharacteristically full for a Thursday. Ri started the night off with a lovely laid back set, but as soon as Chad took over things broke down into a killer little dance party. Cam kept the part going and then it was time for me to break out my crate of precious black gems.
Back when Ri and I started DJing we used to squeeze a bit of vinyl into our sets, but pretty early on decided it'd be best for us to stick to CD. I haven't tried playing off the format since. With the mountain of records Anja got me while she lived in the UK, dusty gems I've dug up myself and intercontinental presents from Jun and Evan, I was atomically excited to play my first vinyl only set.
And as much as I was excited about my set beforehand, I was double as excited with how it actually went. There's something so satisfying about flapping between a crate of covers, picking something out, counting grooves and putting the needle down. It just so much more rewarding than playing off CDs. Needless to say I had an amazing time. Said amazingness was undoubtably highlighted by spinning my Los Camp 10" and an insane mass-handclap-athon breaking out in Kitcheners. It was beautiful.
And then more amazingness would follow, in the fom of Ash, most-certainly one of my favourite DJs around.
And after his awesomeness some 1 on 1 fun followed. Some time around 2 Cam brought his massively succesfully first vinyl party to a close with a record of African Animal sounds, it was just perfect.
I had to be up rather painfully early on Friday morning, but I couldn't complain - I had to race around and buy art supplies for the installation Feiyue had asked me to do in the window of Mooks that afternoon. There's little in life that makes me as happy as drawing, and having people ask me to draw whatever I want for them is always a very welcome surprise. The last time I was invited to do something like this was Ke Ai's Popobe designer toy exhibition, where I got to turn a giant white bear into a giant mecha-kitten monster.
For Feiyue's Shapes campaign, i decided to invent an imaginary band called the shapes. This "kittencore" band involved little cats driving giant robots and making them play instruments. bringing this concept to life in a very short time limit was a little daunting, but as soon as I got into the window and started drawing i just had the best time. The guys at Mooks were super welcoming, Cam paid me a little visit and best of all the whole thing was soundtracked by some of my favourite music. I wish I could spend every Friday afternoon drawing in shop windows listening to TV on the Radio.
I spent the rest of the normal weekend not doing too much outside of animating things for UK 70ies prog-rock icons, playing X-Box and easing into life in my new home.
Ri had moved in during the week, and outside of the general awesomeness of sharing a rooftop with on of my favourite people ever, this fact was made even better by Ri bringing Chi along with him.
One winter's evening back in 2005 I helped Ri move into a new home in Brixton. As we were bringing in Ri's stuff we discovered a box of abandoned kittens in the empty house. I obviously freaked out, although the litter mostly wanted nothing to do with us stupid humans. That was of course, other than one little grey and white kitten that wouldn't leave us alone. Needless to say Ri adopted little kitten, called him Chi and he would go on to be a ray of sunshine in my life everytime I'd see him. Fast forward 6 years and I'm lucky enough to call this little guy my third housemate.
So the weekend would usually have ended with the final hours of sunday evening, but this past one was special. With the public holiday of Woman's Day on Tuesday, Ri and I threw She Vox to celebrate on Monday night. Lindi opened things up as Calamity Jane, and for the first time since winter struck, the high Five Dancefloor started rocking right from the first set.
Ri played some loveliness after that.
And then it was my chance to bring The Sass. For each of our themed High Fives I've needed to prepare some music for the night (it's not like I usually play much surf or swing), but with She Vox I didn't have to at all. Ever since I started DJing my collection has featured a hefty chunk of awesome songs featuring awesome girls.
My set flew by in a blur. The crowd was just lovely and I got a huge kick out of dropping femme favourites from Le Tigre, YYYs, We Have Band and Saturday Looks Good to Me. Honestly it was the most solid set I've played in ages and by the time I had to finish I still had a mountain of planned rockers I hadn't even gotten to play.
Luckily Maude was bringing more awesomeness, so I couldn't complain.
And Shady Lane ended my awesome weekend off with more of the same.