The Gas

Nothing much has happened in the past few days. Taking things easy. I did manage to blow up the amp on one of my studio monitors. I wasn't even doing anything to it, but the thing started issuing flames and smoke. I'm going to have to see if my warranty lives up to its name. Also... for some reason my girlfriend and I have been farting for over two weeks now. It's absurd.



Pictured above: eight friends who arrived fully prepared for a night of watching movies.

posted by Eye-D Monday, December 30, 2002

Belgium

I played in Belgium last night. In Gent, to be precise. It was the hotness. We left Goes a little late but what we thought would be a two hour drive fortunately turned out to be a one hour drive, and we walked in to see the last 40 minutes of Current Value.

He played a live set off of his laptop. It seems like pretty much every DJ/producer/live-act uses a laptop these days. If you don't have one yet you are over and done with. (I still need to buy one myself.) Did I mention that his set owned? Well, it 0wñ()rz3d. His new material is very, very good. Not at all like what I expected. Much more dancefloor oriented than the older material.

Current Value had the crowd going nicely while I tried to raise the turntables and set up final scratch. It's not often that I arrive to play somewhere and the tables are already set up at a decent height so I didn't expect them be right this time. I raised them as I often do with a beer crate. That worked. The mixer was weird, too. It had no real indication as to where to plug things into it, but at the same time it had about 60 places to put RCAs into. The mixer also sported a half-functioning gain knobs that would often just shoot up and raise the levels making mixes sound crappy. Oh yeah, and the turntables were jacked up to +16, which made it hard for the final scratch to calibrate. In spite of all that I finished setting up 3 minutes before the end of Current Value's set. Current Value is a nice guy, by the way. He stayed for the entire set and we got him to do releases on Fear and Ruff-Teck. Go team!

My set went well considering the crappiness of the mixer. At first it was hard to tell whether the people were into it because it seemed like they would dance to anything. I played hard drum & bass for the first hour and ended with harder drum & bass, gabber and breakcore. They went crazy towards the end. Dreadlocks flying every which way. All of them have dreads. And Belgians smoke a lot of weed. I mean, damn... tons of people there were smoking constantly. Kebab places in Gent are open 24 hours. If anything qualifies as being the hotness it has to be that. We drove back in 57 minutes. That was also hot.



Pictured above: A Belgian raver calling for the rewind on the new Unicorn MF remix.

posted by Eye-D Sunday, December 08, 2002

Fear Event Pictures

November 30th was the night of the Fear Records label night. We had the littlest giant Atomly over from Chicago and One Ear Bass, Slacknote, DJ Hidden & myself representing the Dutch roster of Fear artists. While the event in Rotterdam that same night with Andy C had 1800+ people in attendance we clearly beat them with our whopping 250 people getting down to the sounds of whatever we threw at them.

The night was excellent. The one like Pete Mannix aka Daddy Fiz came all the way from Spain just to hang out and party. What a rockstar. Our next event will feature Pete Mannix in a Cage Match against two bottles of whiskey. To the death. Pictures of the night (and the weekend) can be found here and here.



Pictured above: Pete Mannix (in back) with the 7 surviving strippers from his cage match.

posted by Eye-D Sunday, December 08, 2002

Probe Droid

I have no intention of turning this news page into a Star Wars themed tabloid, but something odd happened today. I come home from work and see two dudes walking into my yard with ladders. Big fuck off shiny ones. So, I end up at the other end of the house and forget about the men that just invaded our backyard until I come into the kitchen to get a drink and see a tall shiny object in the backyard with a blinking, rotating red light. It looked just like a probe droid from The Empire Strikes Back. My roommate came to check it out and we couldn't really figure out what it was doing there. An hour later it was gone. I figured this would be a good thing to report for prosperity.



"Unit 89 reporting... All clear... Looks like the dudes are just making a milkshake."

posted by Eye-D Sunday, December 01, 2002

Oh wow, is that a remix?

In an effort to bring unity to the Dutch drum & bass community the three lovely members of Black Sun Empire and the sole member of super rockgroup Eye-D decided to trade remixes. Black Sun Empire tackled my Unicorn MF and I reworked their Skin Deep. Both tracks originally appeared on Piruh Records number 5 and 1 respectively. So there. Well, the remixes are done! We promised each other that the basslines would be 'dik & vies'. The Emperor is pleased. Look for the release on Citrus Recordings #9.



The Emperor and his crew arrive in Utrecht to check out the remixes.

posted by Eye-D Sunday, November 17, 2002

I hate flying, Part MCLXVIII

It seems like all I do is curse at airlines these days, but this piece isn't directed at any specific airline(s). It's just that I really hate flying. And after this weekend's experience(s) I hate it more than ever.

Sunday afternoon at around 13:00 I flew an ATA prop-plane from Dayton to Chicago's Midway airport. Flight was fine, but it somehow took the bags 55 minutes to show up on the carrousel. This endangered a lunch date with a friend in Chicago, because my flight from Chicago's O'Hare airport would leave at 18:00 that same day and I didn't have time to spare to begin with. I called my friend from the train and told her to meet me at one of our favorite pizza joints. This would make me somewhat late for my international flight check-in, but I'd be damned if I was going to miss my friend and my pizza because of ATA's stupid baggage delays. I met my friend, wolfed down my pizza and had a good time. All this took place in the space of about 25 minutes.

I got back on the train to the airport and arrived there one hour before the flight. Even though this is late, the line for check-in with Air France was still immensely long. This struck me as odd, but I just went with the flow. I no longer had to be worried about missing the flight, though, because there were about 40 people in line behind me no less than 10 minutes later. It turns out that Amsterdam airport had been closed due to a storm the previous day and that all of England was still down because of this same reason. All these people in line with me were being rerouted through Paris. This was going to be fun... I could tell. Because of the amount of people that had to fly to Paris the flight left with a delay. I just knew this was going to make me miss my connecting flight from Paris to Amsterdam, but I didn't dare to dwell on the thought. On the plane I was forced to sit next to a huge black dude that looked just like Rahzel, only much bigger. As a result I wasn't able to sleep at all and managed to kill about 300 pages of Star By Star. It's good. And yes, I read Star Wars books. Bite me.

I got to Paris an hour or two too late and immediately went to the transfer desk to try and get on a new flight. The transfer desk was swamped. Really swamped. Mostly by British people who were all very angry and desperately trying to get to Britain. (Must be the salt & vinegar crisps, innit?) There were literally about 100 people ahead of me in the queue. It was bad. When I finally got to one of the ladies I told her in my best French that I was sorry I don't speak any French. She seemed very happy with her first non-angry customer. I was angry, of course, but there really isn't much of anything she could have done. The nice guy-approach worked. Most people were being put on evening flights out of Paris, but she managed to squeeze me on the 14:50 flight to Amsterdam. She also gave me a free lunch ticket. Word to her.

All this meant that I now had about 7 hours to kill in Paris. I found an information desk and asked them what they think is the best place to eat. Turns out there is a really fancy schmancy restaurant in the Paris airport. I went in there and ate my ass off on €35 worth of steak. Good lookin' out, lady! After the meal I walked towards my gate. Easy enough, but I couldn't find any seats there that were comfortable enough to sleep on so I basically tried to read some more. Reading - at this point - was getting really hard because I was so effin tired. I had to stop a few times to keep from falling asleep. (If you care, I made it up to page 430 at the end of the day.)

After the gruesome wait I finally flew to Amsterdam, where I thought my worries would end. After one hour of sitting at the carrousel I still didn't see my bags. Lots of people didn't see their bags. Time for a mob at the missing luggage desk. It was a disorganized bunch of about 30/40 people that all claimed that they "were there first". Bah. I still don't have my bag, but hopefully I will get it today or tomorrow. It's in Paris somewhere.

I cleared Dutch customs around 18:20, which meant I'd already missed the train home and had to wait for another one. I called my roommate to let him know I was going to be late. He told me a friend of ours happened to be in Rotterdam that day, so I bought a ticket there and called him and coordinated with him to have him drive me back down to Goes. Ready for this? There were no trains to Rotterdam that day due to unforseen circumstances. (The same storm that had been cock-blocking travellers across the world all weekend.) I called my friend and told him I'd get to Rotterdam late. As an alternative I tried to get on a train to Utrecht (taking the long way around) but the platform looked like a bee hive with tons of people pushing each other over to get on the trains. F that. I resorted to trying the buses. Same thing going on there. (If you know what a bunch of football hooligans trying to get on a train or bus looks like you'll have an idea.) I reported back to my friend and he said he'd just come and get me at the airport (which is an hour from Rotterdam). He called me 10 minutes later telling me an accident happened on the road he's on. More delay. So, I sit there at the airport for a few more hours. I no longer cared. I mean, what's a few more hours on a day like this? I made it home around 22:30. Go me. Luckily I won't have to fly anymore till December.



I ain't gettin' on no plane!

posted by Eye-D Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Eat my nuts, KLM.

I had yet another bad run in with KLM today. I know that I've sworn not to fly KLM ever again, but this unfortunate incident happened to a friend for whom I'd booked the flight. KLM is the only airline that flies from his location, so there weren't any other options. Man, I hate KLM. I'd really hate to type it out all again, so below follows a little snippet from an IRC transcript about the whole situation:

<Eye-D> I just spent 30 minutes arguing and yelling at KLM UK.
<Eye-D> They were trying to cock block me.
<Eye-D> I had paid for a ticket for a friend of mine by credit card.
<Eye-D> I sent them a copy of the card by fax.
<Eye-D> Got the reservation number. All seemed in order.
<Eye-D> Friend shows up at the airport today and the KLM people say they never got my fax.
<Eye-D> So I call KLM UK who is not letting him on his flight.
<Eye-D> I resend the fax. There is haste.
<Eye-D> I call them.
<Eye-D> They can't read it or make it out. Whatever their problem is.
<Eye-D> I curse and send them another fax; this time also the back of the CC is included. Far more legible than the first one.
<Eye-D> They still can't read it. They are dumb.
<Eye-D> They then claim that he can't get on a later flight because the ticket is non changable and non refundable.
<Eye-D> I say, "What?! Let me speak to the supervisor."
<Eye-D> I ask where they get off trying to tell me they'll charge me because they have my CC number from the online booking I did last week but won't let him fly because they can't read the fax.
<Eye-D> Before I even get to speak to the supervisor the lady assures me that it's all been taken care of now, but that there'll be an additional charge for my friend to get on a later flight.
<Eye-D> I call my friend and give him the supervisor's name and told him to be sure to mention it and say that she INSISTED the flight be changed for free.
<Eye-D> The only good part is that this happened while I was teaching.
<Eye-D> I told my kids that this would be a good listening exercise.
<Eye-D> And they sat there mesmerized at my cursing.
<Eye-D> Especially when it got to the part where they told me they'd charge my card but wouldn't let him fly or change his ticket.
<Eye-D> I told that guy to go fuck himself.
<Eye-D> Honestly.


Do not be fooled by my guise... I am an agent of Satan.

posted by Eye-D Thursday, October 10, 2002

Cheers, mate!

A wise man once said, "There's nothing like a weekend in England to wear you out." Maybe no one really said that, but it damn well should be said. So, last Friday I played at a night called Oblivion in Leicester, which is about an hour and a half north of London. (It's really only an hour from London if you have the kind of chauffeur that I had, though.)

I hopped on my bike and made my way to the train station to take the train to the airport to make my way to London Luton. Nothing really exciting happened on the flight, which is good considering the stuff I'm usually forced to go through on flights. I did have a bit of laugh at the expense of a really, really fat Dutch kid wearing a "got root?" sweater (which he was still wearing when I saw him again two days later). The kid needed two whole seats on the plane but still looked at everyone like he had root on both their home and office machines. All I can say is he had root on an entire row of seats.

I had to piss like a tiger about 5 minutes into the flight but EasyJet seems to want to pretty much charge you for everything - probably including taking a (or the) piss - so I decided to hit the bathroom after I landed. Now, I have been to many airport restrooms in my life but - damn - this shit was uncalled for. They smelled like a graveyard for some sort of piss-monster species that consists purely of... piss.

I was met at the airport by a friend of the promoter who drove me to Leicester while blasting German hard trance. Nice fellow, but not the sort of music I'd pick were I to pick up a DJ. I much prefer to bang artists like Ludacris and Drunken Master on such occasions. When we finally got to Leicester we parked right across the street from the venue and went into a nearby pub. That's what people do there, you know. In this pub we ran into UK rockstars Enticer, Infrared and Element Abuse. Top blokes, all of them. My driver left me in their dirty hands so he could go home and get ready for the night. Man, I drank a pint of coke in a pub while reading through newpapers looking for page 3 girls. That was a new experience for me.

We walked over to the venue a few hours later and noticed it looked like a team of commandos had just suicide bombed it. This could not be good. The upstairs room (reserver for "hard dance", whatever that may be) was fine, but this pile of debris wasn't going to help anyone. While everyone ran around in panic trying to find a solution for the problem this presented I crashed on a couch for a bit with half an eye on the placement of a new sound system in the basement. Don't let the word 'new' excite you. This system sounded like one of those old crappy real audio files that sounds like it's recorded under water. It was fucking terrible. What was worse, though, was a DJ playing a track with 'sieg heil' samples. (Smurf wearing his girlfriend's underwear and his feeling the need to show everyone this every 5 minutes didn't even come close this.) Rumor has it that this is a track by Neophyte. I sincerely hope they have more sense than that.

The promoter decided to move the hardcore upstairs and the hard dance crew got to party on the real audio system. Good for them. The music, from this point on, was very, very good. Some of it was ridiculously weird breakcore and stupendously fast speedcore but the crowed loved it all. Everyone was very friendly and people essentially danced all night. Hightlights of the hardcore room for me were: 1) the first track in Fracture 4's live PA, 2) Broken Yolk purposely trainwrecking The Ace of Spades with a speedcore record, and 3) people coming up to me every 5 records asking if I'd be willing to sell the currently playing record. I played a pretty diverse set. Slow hardcore, mid-tempo hardcore (that is around 180 BPM), speedcore, drum & bass and breakcore. I don't think they were used to a hardcore DJ playing drum & bass. The sound setup was actually not bad apart from a really weird mixer that made it so I didn't really know what I was doing the first 10 minutes. I hope no one noticed. Having whole (empty) glasses of beer fall on the tables while spinning was not good, though. If you ask me I'd say I did well. Everyone there was excellent and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It was also great to finally meet Smurf and the rest of the UK hardcore massive. Rockstars and top blokes all around.

Now, it wasn't until after the party that things got a bit out of hand. I didn't get to sleep until way too late because Tom (my host and driver) had to stay at the venue till the end of the night. That was 7 o'clock. To make a very long story a little shorter I ended up missing my flight. It was also the last flight out that day. Shit. We called EasyJet and they told us that we'd have to get down to Luton anyway because that's the only place the ticket could be changed. Bullshit, of course, but we had to go anyway. We drove to a pub (yes) to borrow Tom's friend Greg's car. Greg ended up going with us and entertained us all with his drunk antics and anecdotes. Top bloke. Once we got to Luton we picked out the coolest looking dude behind the service counter and asked him if it was possible to change the ticket without the 25 pounds service charge that we were told we could potentially be charged. One of the not-so-cool service agents immediately jumped in and angrily said it was 25 pounds. Tom, who had been up for far too long to be fazed by this, gave him an angry look and said some mean words to the man (who looked a lot like a monkey in an orange suit) and this apparently amused the cool one so much that he made the change for free. On the way back north we stopped at a gas station and it is there that I discovered the joy that is salt & vinegar flavored potato chips. Nice one! I'm going to have to go back for this stuff. Too good.

So, as a result of missing this flight I had to stay in Kettering (where my driver lived) for an extra day. This wasn't bad (I had fun), but was certainly an adventure. It consisted of 1) meeting some very nice people, 2) seeing people stay up for four days in a row on beer, weed and pills, 3) greasing EasyJet employees, and 4 almost getting beat up in a pub for daring to eat a pizza. It was pretty crazy to see someone who's on pills, drunk and stoned drive 90 miles an hour while composing text messages on a cell phone. I will update this piece when I find the words for it.

People in England party hard. Maybe it's just me, but... damn. Beer to get drunk, then drugs to sober up so you can get drunk again. Tom told me that people have pretty much nothing else to do but to get fucked where they live. (Fucked by drugs and alcohol that is.) I can't really hang with all that but no one took offense to me not joining in. I mostly got the approving, "Fair play, mate."

The next day, much to my surprise, I missed the flight again. I had to leave Kettering around 10 the next morning, and at 3 in the morning Tom and his friends decided to head to an illegal rave in London. I didn't think much good would come from that, so I decided to call it a night and sleep. Seven hours later I got a call from Tom who reported that his car got blocked in by two other cars and that they were unable to take me to the airport. Shit. An hour or two later Tom finally found the person(s) blocking him in and was able to deliver me to the aiport in time for another flight. This time the EasyJet employee decided to call some other people to his desk who would rate my excuse. I essentially laid the story of the whole weekend on him which got me yet another free ticket change. Go me!



Cheers, mate. Bob is your uncle. Nice one.

posted by Eye-D Monday, September 30, 2002

Back up in your ass with the resurrection...

I finished a new track for the next release on Black Monolith Records by your favorite rockgroup The Outside Agency. You may grace your computer's harddrive with its digital presence by clicking on this link. If you've been doing your homework you may have noticed that all my tracks of late have had a snippet from a movie tacked on at the end. This track is no exception and features the wonderful Samir Nayeenanajar. All four tracks for the new TOA release are pretty much finished, so keep an eye on this space for the release date.



PC Load Letter?! What the fuck does that mean?!"

posted by Eye-D Sunday, June 16, 2002

Knowledge

Chris Muniz of Knowledge Magazine recently interviewed pretty much everyone who has anything to do with drum & bass music in the Netherlands. I am still trying to get my hands on an actual copy of the issue, but I did receive some scans. I have uploaded them here, here and here for your enjoyment.



A member of Black Sun Empire demonstrates typical Dutch production techniques.

posted by Eye-D Thursday, June 13, 2002

Interview

I do (online) interviews sometimes, and I often lose track of where they end up. In light of that I have decided - in my infinite wisdom - to start publishing these on the site. This is an interview I did for a magazine a few minutes ago. My dementia has already reached the level where I don't really remember who or what the interview was for, but enjoy it anyway. You can read the exchange here, and you can read an older interview that I did with Lotus Magazine here.



So, how do you make your basslines?

posted by Eye-D Sunday, May 26, 2002

Enter the Deathchant

Hidden, myself and our two homeboys Sheep and Eelco went to the Deathchant event in The Hague last night. It wasn't bad overall... DJ Producer was excellent, and so was Hellfish, although not to the same degree. They played almost exclusively Deathchant records, which makes it a challenge to keep things interesting, but they did well. A definite plus was that they knew who we were and cited our releases on Mokum as some of their influences. Go ego boost! The PA by FFF was surprisingly good. I had just met this guy last week at a drum & bass event in the area and was surprised to hear him play hardcore records at the wrong speed. (This was a drum & bass event, after all.) Nice breakcore with heavy, heavy jungle basslines.

One thing I have to address, though... There were approximately 300/400 people there, and I'd say at least 100 of them were Neo Nazis. How the fuck did that happen? I'd heard about these people representing at hardcore events before, but it'd been so long since I'd really been to one in The Netherlands that I never gave it much thought. Very disturbing. I wish one of the DJs could have mustered up enough nuts to play Die Nazi Scum. Somebody kill these guys, please.



Just a little closer, motherfucker.

posted by Eye-D Sunday, April 07, 2002

Thou shalt not 86.

I found myself using the term "to 86 someone" recently and realized that I knew little of the term's origin. I did some digging with my friend Brian and we have so far found that there is a myriad of explanations about how the term came into general use.

1. The Delmonico's origin. This seems to be the most widely-accepted explanation, and may even have some proof to it. Ribeye steak (sometimes other items are used, depending on which story you read) was item number 86 at Delmonico's. On one, or more, occasions, they ran out of item "86", which somehow became shorthand for running out of anything.

2. The "8 feet by 6 feet" theory. Since a coffin is 8-feet long and goes six-feet under when someone dies, when it is buried, they are "8 by 6'ed", which shortened to "86'ed".

3. Article 86 of the New York State Liquor Code. Apparently, it defines when someone should be refused alcohol, or "86'ed".

4. Soup kitchen Sad Sack. Back in the days when they had soup kitchens, they would only make enough soup for 85 people. If you were the 86th, no soup for you!

5. British Merchant Marine left onshore. A standard British Merchant ship carried a complement of 85 sailors. The 86th? Left ashore.

6. New York's 21 Club had only 85 tables. "Yes, sir, you are number 86, tonight... Can I get your name?

7. Fountain workers numerology. According to The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, fountain workers had a long lexicon of terms, including "ninety-nine," for the head soda jerk; "ninety-eight," for the assistant; "psst ninety-eight," meaning the assistant manager is snooping; "thirty-three," for cherry Coke; "fifty-five," for root beer; and "eighty-seven and a half," for a good-looking girl out front. (In the bar, the code for a comely patron is "check the ice" at the end of the bar, or wherever that person might be.) "Eight-six" meant "we're out".

8. Bartender trick. When bartenders used to run out of 100 Proof, they would substitute "86 proof".

9. Morse code. Telegrapher's shorthand for "no more".



Bitch, just scroll the fuck on.

posted by Eye-D Monday, March 25, 2002

We Moved As One

We recently added an old video we once had in rotation as The Outside Agency to the immense TOA website. Go look for it. The website will be updated somewhere in the near future to encompass all material ever recorded by us as TOA, and will have a separate page for each of our releases. Be on the lookout. In the meantime... watch the video.



Dude, I told you Eddie Van Halen would make this a most triumphant video.

posted by Eye-D Friday, February 22, 2002

Acid Mixes

I have removed acid mix 2.0 from the site on account of myself not completely liking it. A lot of people downloaded it, so you may still be able to find it through the magic of filesharing if you really want it. I have acquired a bunch of new acid records and will redo the mix in the form of acid mix 2.1. If a remix gets a .1 increment it means a complete redoing, and a .01 increment means an edit. So if you look carefully you'll see that acid mix 1.0 underwent a slight edit. This was done for my girlfriend who hates house. Don't ask. My goal is to one day have 82 minutes and 30 seconds of acid mix (probably 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0) and to release them as one fully indexed CD with track-listings and artwork for $6.66. Check out the acid mix 1.01 here.



The Underground CD Duplication Squad hard at work.

posted by Eye-D Friday, February 22, 2002