So Many Animal Calls: 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.