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Notebook 4 full and ready for storage. Show notes for MTT and Logical Aggression plus some personal notes covering 2018/06 thru 2020/08.

The Breakdance And Motivate EP by Eggfooyoung. Released by Touchin' Bass in March of 2004. Vinyl, 12". Flac, 16bit/44.1khz, ~141M. Tracklist from the side B label, durations and file size from my stored recordings of the vinyl.

This is one of my favorite records. I have a hard time thinking of an electro EP of the 2000s that I like more. I got into the style around the turn of the millennium by digging through used bins; this was one of the first new records I picked up that I really connected with.

I don't have too much to say about the three ambient pieces here. The crunchy, menacing, noisy Lake Oceola is my favorite. They're a nice addition to the EP.

The beat-driven tracks are where the action is. All four are carried by a combination of bass, snappy drums, and sound FX (zaps, wind chimes, scratching, distant vocals, other playful bits). There's a noticeable lack of obvious melody or chord progression in the first three. The fourth, Bass Bin, has a nice synth pad that smooths it out. I end up mostly paying attention to the drum program, to the changes in beat and texture. It's a similar listening experience to a particularly spare electro instrumental mix, the kind you'd find on the B-side of a 12" single. Music for boomboxes, for dancing with brooms.

Eggfooyoung is Adrian Michna, founder of the Secret Frequency Crew and later a solo artist on Ghostly International. (Magic Monday, his first LP on Ghostly, is also very good). His current project is a collaboration with Eliot Lipp called Minutes Unlimited (which I heard about just now while looking up links, seems cool to me).

The Breakdance And Motivate EP is available as a digital download over at Touchin' Bass's bandcamp page, so go check it out. Like the State Logik & Jacob record I wrote about last month this EP was in my bag for most summer shows at Ground Kontrol, making it another arcade classic.

All You Need, Scenes by State Logik & Jacob. On Narcotix Inc, released in 2000. Vinyl, 12". Flac 16bit/44.1khz, ~137M. Tracklist from the side B label (with corrections from the discogs release page), durations from my stored recordings:

A note on the discogs page for this 12" states that the A-side track titles are the reverse of what the center label says. That makes some sense, A1 sounds more like an "electro boogie" than A2 does. The tracklist above reflects that note.

The State Logik tracks are the reason I picked up this record. Both are warm, smooth, minimalist electro jams. Sampled drums, a snare that snaps, a bass synth, pads, short vocoded lyrics, sound FX. These aren't the flashiest songs, I can see how a listener could find them underwhelming, but they're easy to mix and I love 'em to bits. I've played both of these tracks on the radio before, so you can hear a few minutes of All You Need in MTT177 and a few minutes of Electro Boogie in MTT015.

The B-side is more complicated. It's dirtier, harder, more distorted. Scene 1 is a Tusken Raiders Sexy Sandpeople style jam, tough drum machine beats. Scene 2 seems to be in 3/4 (6/8?) and has a jazzy sound to it with its drum samples and nice swirling pad. Scene 3 is a chunky swamp beat, one for the bog creatures. I can't work out the meter of Scene 4, one part is maybe running in 4/4 and the rest is doing something else. In any case it's another strong breakbeat sketch, like the rest of these Scenes. Scene 3 can be heard back in MTT074; I have yet to play the others for any recorded mixes.

There's a chunk of Narcotix Inc available at beatport and at junodownload, but I couldn't find this release. Which is a shame, as the price for a used copy over at discogs looks a bit unreasonable right now. So my recommendation is, if you're ever out digging and spot this for a few bucks, pick it up.

This record was in my bag for just about every Logical Aggression summer show at Ground Kontrol since 2010, making it an arcade classic.

Shoutout to the fine folks at 360 Vinyl who filed in this in their electro section. I'd have never seen it otherwise.

I started this website back in 2016 with the intention of blogging about my music collection. It seems like a good time to try that again. No downloads or audio samples will be provided with these posts (for what I hope are obvious reasons). I just want to talk about music. Without further ado...

The Advent Presents Kombination Phunk. Metalbox records (Kombination Research affiliate), 1997. Vinyl, 4x12". Flac 16bit/44.1khz, ~373M. Tracklist and durations as per the jacket and center labels:

I picked this up from a mailorder shop in the mid 2000s as part of a large order (one of those records you throw in to try and get your money's worth out of shipping fees, you know). This is the only record I remember from that order. It's terrific. I like all these tracks.

The first five are all electro tunes. The two Dopplereffekt tracks have been edited: Porno Actress is double the length of the version on Gesamtkunstwerk, and Plastiphilia is a combination of Plastiphilia 1 & 2. These two edits in particular are perfect for DJs, four minutes and change is exactly the right length. RAC's Quexos is the original version (I think). Metaphysica by K1 has also been edited, I hear some reverse snares and things going on. The Advent's Elektra Fix is unique to this compilation, I believe.

The remaining pieces are heady techno. C-On like Elektra Fix is original to this compilation. Waveterm by Damon Wild & Function and Flower Child by Morgan are both big tunes, New York techno by way of Synewave. Outline's track is listed as Untitled on the label and sleeve, but a helpful discogs comment identifies it as Blueprint 5 B3. Luke Slater's Battle is the most abrasive track on the comp, and the one I like the least, though it does command respect. That leaves Joey Beltram's bouncy lopsided Believer and Surgeon's menacing Scorn.

20 years later and the whole compilation still sounds great. Sides A, C, D, and E all play at 45 RPM and are cut loud. I've read that The Advent remastered everything for this release, but there's nothing on the packaging to indicate that. I don't think this is available new anywhere, so if you want it you'll have to find a used copy. Check your local used bins or the discogs marketplace. It's very much worth seeking out.

All photos in this post were taken by me (that's why they're blurry) of my copy (which is beat-up and stickered). The center label photos on discogs are tiny, so I'll close with some medium-size unreadable ones:

Selections from the Megatech Body CD (AKA the Ghost In The Shell PSX soundtrack) and the two Ghost In The Shell Tribute albums from 2004. Fast techno, 130 to 140 BPM.

Right-click save-as here or on the spectrogram above to download the mix.

This post was updated on 2020/10/17.

1. Oliver Ho / The Vision 00:00
2. System 7 vs. Derrick May / Big Sky City 02:24
3. Dave Angel / Can U Dig It? 07:36
4. Sam Reeve / Tachikoma Beat Showcase 11:09
5. Hardfloor / Spook & Spell (Fast Version) 14:36
6. Brother From Another Planet / Ishikawa Surfs The System 18:32
7. Joey Beltram / The Vertical 21:58
8. WestBam / Moonriver 26:59
9. Bryan Zentz / Interfaced 29:50
10. Kabuto / No Brain 34:04
11. Scan X / Higher [Listed on the packaging as "Reflections"] 37:46
12. Mijk Van Dijk / Soul Survivor 41:58
13. Shin Nishimura / Disorder 45:40
14. Q-Hey / Man Machine 48:24
15. Takkyu Ishino / Ghost In The Shell 51:01
16. Brother From Another Planet / Section 9 Theme 56:41

This mix is entirely comprised of tracks from three compilations. First: the 1997 Megatech Body.CD, the 2 disc limited edition, better known as the soundtrack to the Ghost In The Shell playstation video game. Second: the 2004 Ghost In The Shell Tribute Album. Third: the Ghost In The Shell Tribute Album Ver 2.0.0, also from 2004.

Wikipedia tells me that Takkyu Ishino produced the soundtrack album, and it's a terrific sampling of Detroit, European, and Japanese techno. The selection on the two tribute albums is similar, but updated for 2004. Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig was airing on TV roughly when the two tribute albums were released, so they may have been tie-in or promotional products.

So, these three albums are amazing. From the artists assembled, to the particular tracks, to the packaging and art direction. Way more hits than misses. A lot of great tracks didn't make it into this hour: CJ Bolland's tunes (as BCJ), The Advent's tunes, Adam Beyer... I tried hard to get Mijk Van Dijk's Fuchi Koma in, but couldn't find a spot for it. Maybe next time.

I bought these discs on eBay in '05 or '06 and unfortunately mine are bootlegs. Specifically the Ever Anime bootleg of the Megatech Body CD, and the Miya Records bootlegs of the first and second Tribute albums. I've wanted to record a mix of these tracks since then, and am happy to have done it now. I'll close with some blurry photos of the cover art and back tray art of my bootleg editions; be sure to click through the tracklist links above to check out the official art too.

Oh, and feel free to fast forward past my absentminded rambling at the beginning of the recording. I spent way too long introducing the show this time.

A few days ago I bought a Logitech F310 gamepad at my local thrift store. FreeBSD detected it immediately and created the appropriate uhid entry in /dev. SDL2 also saw the gamepad, which I was able to verify with Joytran. The Mednafen game console emulator did not see the device, however. Here's why:

Mednafen 1.22.2 supports three different joystick backends: Linux event devices (evdev), SDL2, and MS Windows DirectInput / XInput devices. The backend is selected when the autoconf ./configure script is run, and then that backend selection is compiled into the Mednafen binary (see the ifdef statement at line 178 in src/drivers/Joystick.cpp).

Mednafen's autoconf script selects the evdev backend if it finds the file linux/joystick.h in the header search path. The FreeBSD port devel/evdev-proto installs that joystick.h header file. So, if you have evdev-proto installed (it's required by x11-toolkits/qt5-gui) and then compile emulators/mednafen it will use evdev and not SDL2 for its joystick support.

I worked around this by commenting out parts of src/drivers/Joystick.cpp (again around line 178) to force Mednafen to use SDL2 for joysticks. I should probably post on FreeBSD's bug tracker; could submit a patch too, it's simple enough.

This whole situation is definitely a corner case. The joystick backend selection in Mednafen could be better, but I'm also doing something a little unusual here.

Posting because this took me hours to figure out, and so I'll remember next time I encounter this problem.