#joe lectrick

Mix 002. Chill Techno Eventually Turns Unchill

May 3, 2021

New DJ mix up on my MixCloud. I was experimenting with layering Vaporwave over Techno and decided to just press record and run with it. Warning: this is an eclectic mix.

Full story of the mix:

I start off with a vaporwave intro from Hong Kong Express before going into the techno. From then on, I originally wanted to forward with a full chill, old school, melodic techno and IDM mix with tracks from B12, Oribital, 808 State, The Black Dog, and Autechre.

Then the journey veered to a Gabriel & Dresden track and immediately took a darker turn, going to some hard techno from Risa Taniguchi and Amelie Lens before veering to one of my own tracks which I would arguably classify as “aggressive trance”.

Throughout, I tried to keep my original concept going of vaporwave over techno, throwing in a couple more bits of tracks from Hong Kong Express before ending with a vaporwave twist for what is already an eclectic techno mix.

Oh yeah, another special vocal song surprise thrown in. Big kudos to anyone who gets far enough in the mix to find out what it is. 😉

I hope you all enjoy this journey!

Dance Fight Me

March 5, 2021

Are you ready to Dance Fight!?

This is a track with a bit of history behind it, actually. I had recently rewatched the famous Jean Claude Van Dance scene in Kickboxer. You know the one…

That dance, of course, ended up turning into a fight on the dance floor.

So it got me thinking about all the times that I’ve seen seen this sort of thing happen in a movie before. A dance scene that turns into a “dance fight”. That is as opposed to a “dance battle”, which is what you see in a movie like You Got Served. I mean like an actual fight on the dancefloor. For instance…

Airplane had a fight that turned into a dance, that turned into a stabbing, that inspired a dance move, that turned into an epic disco duet, that eventually turned back into a fight.

Zoolander had a break dance fight between the model who is so hot right now and an evil DJ.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle had a scene where a character needed to dance fight her way past armed guards. I’m sure I’m missing plenty of others.

It also reminded me of a story told by fellow wrestling team member back in High School, of how he was there to witness the most epic brawl between rival wrestling teams that happened at a club during 17 and under night. Members of the two teams were on the dance floor doing their thing, the two team captains bumped into each other. What followed were, in his words, “some of the sickest takedowns he’d ever seen”. As both teams started using their wrestling moves against each other mid dancerfloor, with the music still pumping. One of the guys event pulled off a “granby roll”. Anyone who’s wrestled in high school could probably attest to how sick it would be to pull that off on a dance floor.

So it got me thinking, there needs to be a song dedicated for this exact kind of occasion. Because while it might be cool to see people dropping kicks to the Beegees or Big Mountain or Herbie Hancock, I figured the world needed a dance fight song for dance fighting itself. So I pulled out my newly purchased TT-303 that I been itching to use on a track and I put together the bassline you hear on this track.

Of course, I advise all those listening to use caution when getting their dance fight on to this track, as the people who dance fight in movies are trained professionals and the seniors that brawled in that club were f*cking legends. Still, if there seems to be trouble brewing on the dance floor and things are about to go down, I’d humbly ask all DJs to be ready to “SPIN THIS SHIT!”

Dance Fight Me is available on Bandcamp on March 3, 2021 (303 day for those in the know)

Launching on all other platforms on March 26, 2021. Be sure to show your dance fight moves in a TikTok or IG Reels to this track!

Sunset Highway

January 28, 2021

I made another funky, little jam on the iKaossilator app. It made me think of a smooth drive towards the sunset. Decided to call it Sunset Highway. Check this out on my SoundCloud.

https://soundcloud.com/joelectrick/sunset-highway-ikaossilator

I’m liking this iKaosillator app for a quickie run and gun style jam when I’m on the go. It’s on my phone or iPad and I can do a live jam recording and export to a wav file or straight to SoundCloud, or I can export a loop with 5 separate track stems to an Ableton file and tweak it up more later.

Let me know what you think of this jam. If people like it enough, I’ll spend some time tweaking it up more and make a proper track for release with it. I’m considering making an EP worth of these tracks and releasing them.

If you hadn’t checked out my first iKaossilator jam, here’s the link…

Yamaha QY70

October 6, 2020

Joe Lectrick here, with a piece of gear I just picked up from eBay on the recommendation of my good friend Project Soda. The Yamaha QY70.

Yamaha QY70

I am loving this little machine! It’s like a little Digitakt in an old school Game Boy body. I originally thought that this would be nothing but 8 bit gamey style sounds and that I’d have to plug in some other synths when I’m not looking to play Chiptune sets, but there’s sounds on here that sound like they’re coming from a legit, full-size Yamaha synth.

Check out this quickie little jam I made right after I took the thing out of the box (and watched a bit of YouTube tutorial. hehe)

Love that this is so portable. I can take it to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the park. Only thing is that the screen is just like the old school Game Boys, in that they don’t have any backlighting. I’ve heard there is a little mod you can do to install a backlight inside, otherwise you’ll have to get yourself a little reading light to keep jamming in the night.

Next I’m going to try hooking up some other gear through midi and see what I can put together for the next jam.

Who else has a QY70? What do you think about this machine?