This week Trancendance will be giving away 2 pairs of VIP tickets to rising star and Black Hole Recordings artist Steve Kaetzel at Shine Nightclub on Friday January 28, 2011, brought to you by Elite One Productions and PH1. Whether he’s remixing some of the world’s top producers or treading new ground in live performance, Steve Kaetzel is quickly rising through the ranks in the electronic dance music community. With a steady stream of releases on the legendary Black Hole Recordings and a growing catalog of remixes including the likes of Moonbeam and Zoo Brazil, DJs and clubgoers around the globe are taking swift notice of this multitalented artist.

To win the tickets you need to be listening live to Trancendance during our Sunday Jan 23rd broadcast, from 10pm – Midnight. In Vancouver, you can tune in at CiTR 101.9fm or you can tune in on-line.

When I heard Mad Maxx was coming in from Spain to play a live set of full on psytrance in Vancouver this Hallowe’en, I couldn’t wait! In the last few months I’ve rediscovered my psytrance roots, and really been loving some of the new stuff. Mad Maxx stood out as one of my favorites and I’ve featured his tracks most notably on my Journey to Here episode. (I thought I had featured him more, but am a bit excited to see that I haven’t overplayed his tracks. Maybe I’ll feature him in the Hallowe’en podcast.)

Anyways, Mad Maxx is actually Max Peterson who was born in San Diago but spent time living in France and Mexico before moving to Spain where he is currently based. In 2000, Max teamed up with Samy Guediche (CPU) and Nicolas Oesch (Mekkanikka) to create a group called Biodegradable. After the success of their album, Phaser, Max joined up with Davina Elmosnino and created the Trance Project formerly known as Sirius Isness.

Don’t miss tomorrow’s show at 23 West in Vancouver! Event info is on the Facebook Event page. You can find a little more about Mad Maxx on the Mad Maxx MySpace page. And watch for more Mad Maxx on Trancendance very soon!

The Amsterdam Dance Event is the world’s leading international conference and festival for electronic music, and is excited to announce a record breaking line up for 2010 with 165 DJs and electronic live acts taking place at 44 different clubs and stages around Amsterdam. Taking place from October 20 to 23, 2010 the Amsterdam Dance Event expects 2.500 conference delegates and 100.000 festival visitors from all around the world to descend on the city of Amsterdam during the four-day event.

For more info visit: www.amsterdam-dance-event.nl

Rave Girls at Burning Man in Black Rock Desert.

Today marks the opening of Burning Man 2010 at Black Rock city in Nevada which runs from Aug 30, 2010 through Sep 6, 2010. The enormously popular annual event now draws approximately 50,000 people but started out much smaller in 1986 (possibly even earlier) at Baker Beach in San Francisco. 1990 marked the first year the event was planned in the middle of Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles from Reno. This year’s theme is Metropolis.

Burning Man Temple in Black Rock City

In addition to the burning of the man at the end of the festival, it has become customary to erect and burn a temple. David Best was originally behind the project, which has also been led by Mark Grieve before being turned over to the Burning Man Community.

Burning Man Temple on Fire in Black Rock City

The Burning Man event is governed by 10 principles, which are radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.

Burning Man Mutant Vehicle

Mutant Vehicles are creatively modified cars and trucks, distantly similar to parade floats. Burners who intend to bring a mutant vehicle must submit their plans in advance to the Burning Man DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) for approval as well as for physical inspection at the event. Not all designs and proposals are accepted.

Photos by: mdanys and JahFae

Carl Cox has been my top influence since the first time I saw him play at Subconsious – an all night rave event that took place in the UBC hockey rinks before they stopped hosting such events. As a producer I’m not a huge fan of Carl and even his mixed CDs seem more Chicago House than I would ever listen to. But in the 3 times I’ve seen Carl Cox play on the West Coast his sets have been uber-brilliant – maybe best described as Tribal Trance. His live DJ sets – at least the one’s I’ve heard – are nothing like his house CDs.

The biggest reason I have such high respect for Carl Cox is his mixing style. When I have seen him, Carl Cox has always played on 3 turntables. His mixes are almost constant – that is – he almost always has more than one record playing. After watching and listening over the years I picked up a technique that Carl seems to employ. I swear I see Carl play in ‘tripples’ – that is 3 records that fit well together. He will mix back and forth until the first 2 records are properly lined up to peak together – then he will prep the third record to peak at the same time, but waiting until the other two peak before slamming in the third record so all three records peak at the same time and the new sound of the third record adds intensity to the peak.

Carl Cox doesn’t line up beats – he lines up entire records to fit together.

After the three records peak together there’s not much left and so a short mix leads into the beginning of the next ‘tripple’. I remember hearing these short mixes every now and then when Carl was playing and thinking how wimpy it sounded after such colossal intensity of his previous mixing. It was only when I stopped to pay attention closely that I could see why the need (and the justification) for such a short mix.

My other memories of Carl Cox are that he always played late for a headliner. He might not even start until 4 or 5am – and rumours would start that he wasn’t even going to show – but he seemed to prefer to play long sets for the die hard fans that were still going strong at 8am. I remember seeing Carl play for about 50 dancers that were left on the floor (after 1000s of others had dispersed). Another 50 people stood around the dance floor in a semi-circle just watching.

I’ve never seen a group of ravers stand and watch a DJ with such a respect as that.

Those of us still on the dance floor where absolutely exhausted – but every time it seemed like a lull to take a break, Carl would bring it up again and we were held hostage on the dance floor. Ever since that night (morning) I’ve known Carl Cox affectionately as ‘The Puppetmaster’ – his ability to keep people moving on the dance floor is second to none.

DJ Carl Cox Vancouver 2008 with Jon Rundell

Tue Oct 21, 2008 @ Plush Nightclub, Downtown, Vancouver
Cost: $35
By: Twisted Productions, Trust & Cargo