Your invited to Hello Ambasador!

I've got a very eventful weekend on the horizon with a whole bunch of awesome stuff going down. I'll be you to all these awesome stuff and first, we've got something very special!

Hello Ambassador will be Pretoria's very first creative confrence! Taking place in the city's State Theater, the organisers have assembled a fantastic, diverse collection of local creatives to speak at the event. Including...

... me!

This is the first time I'll be speaking at an event of this kind and I'm really looking forward to chating about VJing and throwing parties and animating stuff and playing shows and releasing music and drawing kittens. I am up on Saturday afternoon. Here's the full lineup.

RSVP to the event here!

Buy tickets here!

After the conference, there's gonna be an epic roof top after party.

The Make Overs are playing which should tell you everything you need to know. (If not, what you need to know is this is gonna be awesome.)

RSVP here!

Good Weekend: Skim Grot en die Deurskeinende Stede

Gauteng is on a roll with hooking Anja and I up with really good weekends. We don't do much on Friday night, but Saturday starts off with us heading through to Pretoria for Chinese with Maaike & Werner. Om nom nom, then head through to this month's instalment of the Doktrine's amazing Skim Grot.

We drink Kapowerade, buy lovely Mikado stickers for Seafox's case and I have the great pleasure of DJing through sunset over an awesome view of my hometown and the cool kids that have come to this very special event.

After my set we need to race through to Joburg for Kick out the Jams. before tha party starts, I need to give The KRNGY DJs a crash course in DJing. I'm pleasantly surprised to discover Jaco is joining Andreas and Martinique, meaning we're now lucky enough to have 3 of the 4 Sticky Antlers opening our garage rock party up. The kids play a totally awesome set; the boys each grab a CDJ while Martinique uses her laptop to trigger old movie samples between tracks.

It's just perfect. A totally swell crowd show up to rock out with us and by the time we head home at 4ish the night has surely earned the name "High Five".

It's a little tough dragging ourselves out of bed on Sunday, but we do. Head through to the burgeoning Maboneng district of the CBD. Last weekend we were here for the awesome Fete De La Musique, today it's Invisible Cities that has dragged us into the heart of Jozi.

It's totally awesome what Skeleton Crew are doing with these events. Throwing Sunday afternoon gigs, combining musical-polar-opposites, presenting people with something new and different and celebrating just how lucky we all are to live in a city like Johannesburg.

Bless you Skeleton Crew.

Blew.

The Humans are now dead. The Dynamo is now running.

So, as previously yelled, our Halloween party was a massive success. Of all the things I've been involved in creating over the past 5 years, "The Humans are Dead" will go down as one of the things I'm most proud to have been a part of.
The decor looked incredible. From Jasper (our monstrous robotic doorman) to the 15 meter long terror tunnel to the robot city of murder that was the stage to the DJ box of alien awesomeness to the coolest looking merch area in party history to the garden full of surprises, I've never seen a party where so many cool creations have formed an entirely new world to rock it in.
Personally I was really happy with the visuals too and I'll post those up soon.

The lighting was Peter and Peter is awesome. The end.

The soundtrack for the night was pretty swell too. Well obviously I'd say that, but from the way the crowd responded (right from when Colin and Cameron started at 6PMish) I think it's safe to say they also appreciated the little selection of some of my favourite bands and DJs.
That Girl ecstatically introduced herself to the dancefloor. Col and Cam played Dananananaykroyd. Vampire 9000 boggled minds with their loop-core joy-math and totally re-enforced my belief that Pretoria is the country's home for unique, inspired rock and roll. Kodiak got people screaming and got me dancing. Sticky Antlers tore through 30 minutes of pure awesomeness, probably terrified 80% of the audience and made the 20%'s night. Kidofdoom painted themselves gold and melted brains. Nathan Scott Phillips rocked the dancefloor. Yesterday's Pupil kept it rocking. Moe Joe worked people into a total frenzy with an incredible set and mixed it together flawlessly. Haezer destroyed.

Thank you so much to everyone that made it what it was. I have never in my life been involved in a project where so many incredibly talented people have ganged up to create something awesome for other people to enjoy.
Thanks so much MJ for drawing a small army of werewolves, robo-bats and spinal chords. Thanks fo PJ and gang for turning a tree into a 2-story-high golden robo-totem pole. Thank you Philip and Kelda for creating Jasper, the largest human killing and candy despencing bouncer-robot in party history. Maaike and Andre for 3D ghost friends. Katja for making sure the entire venue was full of severed limbs blowing in the wind. Jared for been a spraying machine of doom. Richard for teaming up with Jared to create 2 of the best jack-o-lanterns planet earth saw in 2009, and for building me the raddest robot head at the party :)

To Khyle, John and Sam for creating awesomeness and more importantly for giving me so much faith in what Dynamo can become. Thank you so much.

Cam for an awesome set, free mixes, loads of supplies and telling me to turn my lights up high.
Matt AKA Afro-bot for monster MC skills.

Henk, Willie, Duplooy and the entire Hotbox gang for taking us in and making 100 great things happen, including somehow getting the screen out of the house.

To Peter for blinding us yet again.

The Doom, The Antlers, The Vampires, P-Dog, Col, Cam, Rox, Joe and Eben for slaying with nonstop sets of awesomeness.
Alice, Anja, Cam and Lindi for teaming up with me to shoot the best visuals we've ever had for one of our parties. For showing the world that robots killing humans at a Bon Jovi concert can be fun. For making RD2D lead a synchronized dance and a making a robotic raptor pose and making tiny astronauts sit on a severed head and bringing a whole army of toys to life.

To Phil for saving our asses.

To Joe and Dom for changing everything in the space of less than a year.

To the Sunday shopping gang.

To Andreas, Martinique and family for the KRNGYness. To Lizzy and Christian for the Delight. To Maaike for the Mikado. To Misha for the Steam Room.
To Anja for EVERYTHING!

To Lewes for ghosts to get kids excited about the future.

To Liam, Ndax, Moitse, Alice and everyone else that documented the carnage.

To everyone that dressed up, made their way through that horror tunnel and rocked out on the other side. To Rick, Sophie Nathan and Lauren for been the first people ever to put real Dynamo photos online.

To the JHB kids - for been willing to drive all the way through and for your awesomely fine taste in choosing us over zeffness.

To the Cape Town kids that flew up for it. Godzilla-sized high fives to you!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
DYNAMO YEAH!!!

FROM SASS AFRICA WITH LOVE PT 2: THE CRITICAL HITS

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SASSQUATCH:

THE CRITICAL HITS

This mix is made up entirely of songs released by acts from around my extended hometown of Gauteng, South Africa. Recorded between 2005 and 2008, these songs are parts of the soundtrack for one of the happiest periods of my life. A period where, quite unexpectedly, small pockets of friends strewn between Pretoria and Johannesburg started writing music that was unlike anything that had come out of South Africa before.
Dancing to these songs, DJing them out and spending dozens of nights seeing them performed live, these songs have been the catalysts for almost all the moments I've found myself most proud to be a boy, born in Preotria in 1983.