Eklektro Breakbeat of the Week

EklektroShock mix by Solar Sonic

2010-05-20T09:37:00.001-07:00

Solar Sonic Studios is happy to present "EklektroShock", our debut DJ mix for download on SoundCloud. Suggested dosage: Plug in to some big-ass speakers, kick back and enjoy!

Yahooooo!

2010-02-14T19:55:00.000-08:00

"Yahh-hoooo!" screams the ecstatic Thai guy as the beat kicks back in. Its 9am on the island of Koh Pha Ngan, and the temperature on the dancefloor is 85 degrees and climbing. The party's been going over 10 hours non-stop, with the crowd turning over in shifts... running back to their bungalows to take a break, or to wake up friends and drag them back out. This is NOT the Full Moon Party, rather, an undisclosed cove where i've been coming for years now... and a Friday night ritual that usually lingers well into Saturday... spilling out onto the beach... brunch... with nomad friends from far and wide :)

Solar Sonic means MUSIC out-of-doors... under the SUN and stars

Point B (a short story)

2010-02-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

I might just have to spend the next week homeless in a hammock..

I'm about to document one of the worst-delayed and lemons-to-lemonade kinda travel experiences i've ever dealt with in my 20 years of budget traveling. Yeah, we've all been there, snowed in at Orlando 'cause of weather in Chicago, missing the boat at Puerto Escondido... Its a chaotic world, and timetables are meant to be broken.

But if you'd indulge me by reading this little therapeutic outburst of text, i'll try my best to entertain :)

Its not so much the length or frustration of the delay (because i've certainly had worse) as much as the back to back misinformation, mystique and endless variables encountered each step of the way. I'm speaking of the wondrous and often mysterious ways of getting from point A to point B, in Thailand.

I'd been to the island of Koh Pha Ngan twice before, in 2005 and 2007; and in the 2 years between trips, it was easy to see that the word was out. My secret island was growing by leaps and bounds, and would soon no longer be tolerable by those accustomed to anything other than package tour hell and homogenization. But as the winter rains came to LA, i considered my options and decided that subletting my studio and taking 2 months in Thailand would be the way to go, and the island would be worth a look at least. And if all else fails, i'd head from there to Bali or something.

Emails to Thailand traveler friends i had met in years past had yielded precious little information... even amongst those who spent half a year at a time at my little island... just little bits like "yeah, everything's a little more crowded, a little more expensive..." pretty vague. For this trip, I was considering carting a couple bulky solar panels in addition to my usual dual-backpack music studio (as much as you could get into checked luggage without the oversize fees); so i had a sort of "special needs" in order to be able to take this trip as such, and so I'd email my friends back for details: But had they finally built the long-awaited road to the cove, or was it still boat access only? Is the internet access any faster, or cheaper (as a result of "progress" in paradise)?? All important things to know in terms of gauging what to bring, and the potential length of my stay.

At one point of the trip, i was hoping to hike to a particularly breath-taking and deserted cove and spend some time camping there with friends, doing music COMPLETELY off the grid. There was also the possibility of bringing a special WIFI antenna, so perhaps we could live-stream some of these "off-grid" jams! Sounds cool, but the intermittent replies i received back from these inquiries lacked the necessary details, and so as the time of my departure loomed closer, i opted to leave the solar panels behind this time, instead bringing: 2 Apple laptops (the new 13" and 17" MacBook Pros) with an array of controllers (LaunchPad, FaderFox, PadKontrol, bluetooth keyboard and mouse), HD video camera and mini tripod, buss-powered firewire and eSATA external hard drives (considering flaky generator power in bungalows), lots of rechargeable batteries for the monitoring system (a nice quality boombox), and the WIFI antenna.... essentially an extensive digital DJing set up with music and video production capabilities for who-knows-what might happen. I know i'd have some talented friends awaiting on the island, however i was well aware that most people come here to get AWAY from technology, communications and "obligations"; so as far as making any "plans" ahead of time, the gear logistics would be up to me. I'd be flying blind.

As soon as i landed in Bangkok i could sense a difference. The hotels were overbooked and the receptionists were unapologetic to say the least. The Thais who work in the travel services are quite efficient, but not exactly known for their "politeness"... when in doubt they just say "yes yes" to everything. Of course they've come across the aisle quite a bit to learn all of our different languages, so you can't fault them much for any lack of patience, let alone ability to share irony or abstract humor. (And when you meet a Thai who's fluent in your language, and WITHOUT a line of tourists waiting on them, you'll usually find them to be some of the warmest and best-humored people on the planet)

I spent a week in Bangkok in a decent $11 room with a rooftop pool; and so i took the opportunity to unpack ALL my hastily-packed gear from Los Angeles, and to set up my mobile music studio and see if everything was functioning correctly before i'd head to the wilds. My departure from LA was a story in itself, with bags that seemed to double in size right before throwing them in the car, racing through 9AM traffic to LAX, surrendering the check-ins to the TSA, sneaking 2 bulging carry-ons onboard, hyperventilating and barely making the plane (look, this guy's unshaven and sweating, carrying a lot of electronics, could be a terrorist). Though i'd hefted fragile music gear across the globe many times before, I could still put up a convincing argument against the old saying that "less is more". I'd come a long way since 6 weeks in Amsterdam summer '96 with a Powerbook 3400 and K2000 sampler. When you're taking a 2 month trip to Asia with the option to go 3 or 4, you're gonna want to bring as many techno toys as you can, to be ready for wherever the inspiration of the road leads you. But with options-galore, it was an excruciating process deciding what to bring and what to leave behind; what with connectivity and compatibility concerns, bang-for-your-buck, and especially, your back! And beyond the studio toys, and at the recommendation of a tech-savvy friend, 2 days before departure I finally decided to go out and buy an iPhone 3GS (used, and without AT+T contract, i'd buy a SIM card in Bangkok)... yes, the esteemed mini multimedia device which was on its way to becoming the most portable "musical instrument" on the planet. I'd learn how to use it while in transit.

Remarkable, but i didn't spend even one night "partying" in Bangkok... though i did indeed do the bit of obligatory shopping for electronic accessories at Pantip plaza, unlocking my iPhone.. and stocking up on island gear on Koh San Road. A friend of mine from San Francisco was also in Bangkok, and it wasn't until he sent me a text message saying "i guess you're gonna hold off on going to Koh Pha Ngan until after the Full Moon Party???" that it hit me: If i don't get to the island ASAP, there'll be no rooms available for me, and i'll be confronted with the ball-and-chain nightmare of 100 lbs and $9,000 of music gear between my 3 bags... with no home to stash em in. In fact it was probably already too late to get a room at the cove of my choice, so i figured i'd head for the quieter Thong Nai Pan on the north of the island, and stay there until after the Full Moon Party cleared out of Hat Rin, and ocean-view bungalows for $10 (with electricity!) would again be available at Hat Yuan... OK, i had a plan. I went to see "Mr Thai" the travel agent and learned that the 2nd class overnight train / bus / ferry combination was already booked for the night and i'd have to leave the next evening. My San Fran friend was on the fence as to whether accompany me, or else hang out with his new Thai girlfriend. In the end he decided to stay in Bangkok, but instead transferred his Thong Nai Pan room reservation to me. Cool, I was set.

I paid the extra $ in order to have a 4pm check-out, and spent most of the day between packing my room (sweating away in the non air-con), running upstairs for a swim at the pool deck, stepping out for some last-minute shopping on Koh San, followed by another quick swim, finally bundling all my bags, checking in one overflow bag for long-term storage, and leaving the hotel (!)... having one last little sit-down bite to eat before taking the taxi to the train station. Of course never trust a taxi driver's assessment of what a ride might cost you, and insist upon them running the meter. Then hope they take a direct route rather than an intentional bamboozle. So when a shameless tuk tuk driver reached out from the street corner and asked me where i was going, just for fun I asked how much to the train station and he says with a straight face "200 baht"... about $6 USD. I tossed him a glance of happy insanity and gave a little Pee Wee Herman laugh as i jumped into an air conditioned taxi right beside him. The driver said 80 baht, but i insisted on the meter. We made good time through the 5PM rush hour, and the fare came out to only 59 baht; and so i gave him his 80 baht anyway as he helped me grab my bags.

The train station had evolved considerably since my last visit in 2007. Now there were stadium-sized screens playing music videos with back to back cellphone commercials. A golden god-like character in a rice paddy holds a horn up to his mouth and blows out a huge "1-1-7-0!" in animated text. Across the valley, villagers dance to the beat and pick up their cellphones, calling and texting each other. Marshal McLuan was a prophet. Mass media begat the "Global Village", and now its in the palm of your hand (How long before its a chip implant?). Never before in the history of mankind has social change been so rapid, so tied to technology... and corporate profit. Some days i can foresee the utopia of it all, and other days all i see is Bladerunner. Factor in man's quest to be free vs. the powers-that-be, and I'm sure the next 10 to 20 years will trickle down to something perfectly in between.

Huge groups of schoolchildren were lined up single-file ready to go on field trips. Businessmen bustled by, street musicians jammed. It was Grand Central Station in South East Asia, and i grabbed some snippets with my iPhone's video cam. I was early for my train and had to ask which car i was in since they didn't put car numbers on the sides in anything other than Thai... made me feel like a real stupid tourist to have to ask... twice. I wondered if there might be some Thai version of Jack Kerouac out there somewhere, hopping boxcars. When i finally got onboard, it looked like they hadn't cleaned the 2nd class sleepers since the last time i rode them... in 2005! The sturdy pop-riveted walls were smudged everywhere with signs of travelers-past, the windows were dirty and a few cockroaches popped out to see what all the fuss was about.. unafraid. Fortunately when they undid the bunk compartments, the linens were all plastic-wrapped and freshly laundered. Also, a big change from 2005, now my compartment was mostly Thai travelers heading south, instead of foreign tourists. I had never traveled 1st or 3rd class by train, but i'm wondering if the traveling demographic of the Thais has improved in the past few years, or if this was just one exceptional trip i was on. Maybe all the tourists were riding those 600 baht double-decker buses, unaware that the seemingly bargain price was subsidized by the baggage-theft mafia; 'cause yes, its a well-known fact that sometime during the trip, while you're trying to sleep sitting up, the driver's assistant is climbing through the baggage hold, leisurely looking through the bags and grabbing cash and cameras. Its true. Look it up.

It was good to see the Thais in transit, in comfort... but i felt we should've all pitched in with some mops and rags, so we could've had a cleaner ride together. The thought of this labor made me finally FEEL the onslaught of my exhaustion... after all the running around and packing... and so i made one of the best decisions of the trip. I had visited a Thai pharmacy earlier that day to purchase a few prescription-free Valium... for specifically this purpose. With my most expensive gear-pack propped next to my pillow, and my 2nd most expensive bag tied to a pole a foot from my head, i let the train lull me to sleep.

I awoke slowly and noticed it was light outside and the train was still moving. Strange, as i was told we were to arrive at 5:30AM... just before sunrise. The left over effects of the Valium had me in a could-care-less kinda mode, so i dug into some of my rice snacks and just enjoyed the jungle scenery as it flew by. Soon i would be in paradise.

An hour flew by, and so I killed time by sending some email to friends and family on my new iPhone... "on the move, in the jungle"! My dad replied in real time, crossing 12 time zones. 2 hours later now, we were still moving. I asked a gruff-looking conductor in military type uniform, "Surrat Thani? When?" He wore his uniform proud like Napoleon, towering a foot above my head (i was seated).

"2 more stop", he said, and drew his radio like a sword from its sheath, barking some orders into it and marching out of our compartment, towards the front lines. I figured there was still plenty of time to catch the bus to the boat, and that the boat would surely be waiting for us (since i usually had to wait about 2 or 3 hours at the pier for the boat in the past), I watched other tourists in their panicky ways, but I didn't even bother to check the time. It was "all good".

I made sure my main bag was stowed carefully by the driver before grabbing a good seat on the bus... The driver told some other tourists "Bus, one hour... Boat, wait. No problem." Only fifteen minutes later we were pulling up at the pier. No boat was waiting. "Boat arrive 12:30" said the stationmaster... people grumbled. I calculated that i'd be a little late for my promised reservation check-in time of 2pm, so i emailed the reservations desk with my iPhone. I heard back within the hour. It was still "all good". When 12:30 came, i heard a disturbance coming from 2 Israeli-looking guys confronting the stationmaster. A bus had pulled up and we were all instructed to get inside. Apparently the boat would leave from another port, an hour's drive away. This might've explained the unexpectedly short 15 minute ride earlier... they were just stalling us (or maybe didn't want us to see people boarding the other boat.. already fully booked?). Thanks to the Valium, i STILL didn't care... too much. This was all part of the price of arriving in Paradise.

Some Frenchman gestured to me with a whiskey bottle and a smile, obviously drunk. His girlfriend frowned. This guy had all the mannerisms of a street bum.. mumbling to himself incomprehensibly, sudden jerky motions.. getting up to go do something, forgetting what it was, swaying a bit, and then slouching back down with a vacant smile, and then burying his head in his hands. The girl seemed a minimum of 15 years younger, and was obviously not drunk, nor appeared as homeless-ready as her companion. Sloppy Guy wore a Cesar Chavez t-shirt and had no carry-on luggage other than his whiskey bottle and Pepsi. The bus was loaded and ready to leave, except Sloppy was shouting and swaying in the back of the bus. I had no idea how the poor driver was able to understand this guy, but he motioned for Sloppy to come sit on the console by the driver's seat... 3 feet away from me... great. He flops down on his back, his head to the windshield I take an iPhone picture of this guy and his whiskey. The driver poses with him and smiles, saying the "Full Moon Party start early" and he puts the bus in gear and we're on our way. 2 or 3 hours til toes in the sand.

I overheard some Australians talking, "It was stifling... i couldn't sleep a bit the whole time it was stopped."

"Stopped?" i asked?

"Yeah, the train was stopped last night for 4 hours... and that's why we were late for the boat"

Thank you Valium! I slept right through this whole bit of hell!!!!

Sloppy Chavez is having a fitfull sleep on the driver's compartment, lashing about. Finally he gets up and walks, Charlie Chaplin style, from the front of the bus and back, falling into people along the way... The driver motions for him to sit back down up front. He lies down and slips back to unconsciousness, jerking... reminding me of a dog having a bad dream. His feet kick out and hit a girl sitting across from me. I kick him in the leg and his feet retract. His arms fly out and they hit the drivers wheel! The driver swats at him, and I spring up, ready to be Jack Bauer and save the bus, but the guy standing in the doorway beats me to it and pulls Sloppy by a belt-loop, away from the driver.

When we arrive at the ferry point, we're told we have to wait another hour for the boat.... I walk around and find an abandoned building, unlocked. I open the door and find that the room consists of a smooth polished marble floor... dancefloor? Well, if we get stuck here, i'll break out my boombox and we'll all have a party. I sit there for a few minutes, enjoying my own space and imagining what kind of strange events they might throw here. When i get back i find out that we've been told only 10 minutes till the boat arrives... but then 5 minutes later, the stationmaster says "45 minute"... what a game! Half an hour later, it shows up. We load up and i find an air conditioned compartment and get a nice seat.. all my gear's safe. Kick back and relax. First time in an air con boat... and its moving fast! 20 minutes later a conductor comes in and starts collecting 40 baht from passengers... as a surcharge for the air con. Even though its only a buck twenty five, I outright refuse to pay due to the switcheroo shit.. its the least they can do, and a few other passengers follow my lead. The guy gets a bit impatient and says we'd have to move to the outside seating. We say we're not leaving, and we wanna talk to his boss. He frowns... we've bummed him out... he yells something to a deck-hand, finally shrugs and leaves. We arrive at the island of Koh Samui 20 minutes later, next stop Koh Pha Ngan; and i go out on deck to make sure nobody unloads my bag. That's when i overhear some shouting... "5:30???!!!!" We're told we need to disembark and wait for the next boat... at 5:30! At this point, "Its all Good" turns into "You gotta be fucking kiddin me"... which turns into "Hell no, we won't go!". A few of us consider staging an uprising with a couple hundred waylayed and mismanaged travelers against a crew of 6 or so... hijacking and heading for Koh Pha Ngan... we humored this idea until one Brit spoke up and asked if anybody had their captain's license. Everybody laughs... even the Thais. Piracy would be cool, but none of us knew how to drive this boat.

Koh Samui was cloudy, shlocky, and from what i've read in the books, not at all my style of destination... though i considered just grabbing a room for the night and dealing with everything first thing the next day...hmmm... nah. I emailed my hotel reservation people again (what would i do without this iPhone?), telling them arrival was now maybe 7:30 or 8pm. I had lunch with a Hungarian guy and a Canadian girl who were heading to the Full Moon Party. I gave them some pointers on how to avoid the worst of it. "But be sure to go to the Afterhours... the next day at 11am... save your energy!" 'cause its better than the full moon party itself.

Soon 5:30 comes and goes.. and i ask the Hungarian guy to watch my gear while i go to talk to the boat manager in his office.... well, he's gone early for the day, and so i talk to a very polite travel agent. She says i'd have to pursue any complaint once i returned to Bangkok. And so i asked her to write (in Thai) on the back of my train ticket stub: "Because the train was 4 hours late, customer had to wait until 6pm for boat and lost his hotel reservation". (For all i knew, she might've just written "rock rock till you drop" in Thai... or "i'm with stupid". Refund, discount, voucher or whatever; i was going to register an official complaint (and offer some suggestions) to the agent of the "joint ticket" when i landed back in Bangkok... for what its worth (and probably not much). But at some point, the Thais could use a good dose of customer feedback.

Now it was right around 6pm and no sign of the boat.. people were getting edgy. Sloppy was spilling more whiskey (no sign of his girlfriend... did she finally leave him?) and some Irish travelers had each just cracked open another "40" of Singha beer, sittin on the sidewalk like happy winos, lads on one side, girls on the other. A beer would be nice, but regrettable later... but I was getting edgy too. No reply from the hotel people now. Edgy turned to angry... so I decided the need for my own instant mood-change and ask the Hungarian to watch my bag again while i sneak back into the restaurant bathroom to take one quick hit off a cheesy reggae bar joint i had rolled in Bangkok (not my preferred means of imbibing, but i didn't exactly have any Humbolt County homegrown, nor an oven available to bake any cookies). I exhaled out the little bathroom window vent and smiled at the teenage mischief at it all. I laughed at the irony that Sloppy could be out there publicly drunk and dangerous on fine commercial whiskey, but i had to sneak to a bathroom to enjoy my wiser choice of harmless but illegal (and therefore low-quality) elixir... on the sly. Take another hit and exhale out the funny little window... looking closer and now noticing that this vent doesn't lead outside... NO! It leads to the kitchen, and there's a prep cook 5 feet from my head, and the waitress is actually walking my way... with the special illegal aroma wafting their direction! I extinguish the joint in my hand and high-tail it out the door, through the restaurant, bowing and saying "Kup koon krup" (thank you) to the servers as i exit... just another funny tourist, heading for the boat.

When i get back, the little crowd is on the verge of uproar, but with nowhere to direct their energy. I decide that the time has come, and open up my biggest (and overflowing) backpack and pull out the high-powered boombox and select the song of the hour: Ship Of Fools by World Party! Was there ever a more appropriate track??? Heads turn... a couple people pick up on the lyrics and smile my direction. The Irish guys get up from their sidewalk perch and have a look at the boombox. I offer them to go ahead and hook-up their own iPod. Instantly i have a dozen new friends as the crowd gathers around our little boombox party, as people start grooving to the Irish lad's techno anthem of choice... real "hands in the air" kinda stuff... and the people cheer as the boat in question finally appears on the horizon.

Part II

After such an ice-breaker, we're all seated outside at the bow of the ship now... a real melting pot of nationalities represented, and the boombox is blaring away over the sounds of the whipping wind and the water. We pass the musical duties back and forth, trying out different tracks, and time finally flies. I see Koh Pha Ngan off in the distance and so i select the timeless My Sweet Lord by George Harrison... "Halleluya,... Hari Krishna...." Thank GOD (insert your choice of God), we've just about made it!

We land, and somehow i manage to maneuver one huge rolling pack, 2 backpacks and the boombox with shoulder strap, and shuffle my way out the boat with the boombox tuned to Bob Marley's Babylon by Bus... (and oh how we loved those 2 busses today)... one of the greatest live recordings of all time, with the Kingston crowd going wild in the track.. and our crowd singing along while exiting the boat, "... So we're gonna walk,.. walk! through the realms of creation... we the generation... wrapped in great tribulation... in this Exodus... The movement of Jah People...." We shuffle off the gang-plank en masse towards the shore, solidarity between strangers, and why stop the music now just 'cause we've "arrived"? Making our slow deliberate way down the pier, we're greeted by dozens of Thais hawking taxis and rooms, rooms and taxis, and tours.. and food... "Are you ready?!!" screams Bob, and the Kingston crowd erupts... Punky Reggae Party. One of the Thai hawkers looks at me funny 'cause the boombox is most certainly (and intentionally) adding to the rukus... making bi-lingual communications all the more difficult.. but Bob wails away "It take a joyful sound... to make the world go round"... and my assessment says that 65% wanted the boombox on and 35% wanted it off... So using the voting rules of Congress, i keep the boombox on... and now start taking funnier liberties with the tracks, ie) Kiss, by Prince (in that ridiculous falsetto) "Act your age Mama, not your shoe-size, and maybe we can do the twirl..." Guys nod and give the thumbs up... Girls groove a bit and smile at me as they make their way by....

OK, 15 minutes of utter chaos and now the party's over... most people have found their taxis and have ventured onward towards their respective quests for paradise. It seems i lost my Hungarian/Canadian friends in the confusion... waiting for them at the end of the pier (while concentrating on the steady flow of musical shenanigans); and damn, we were gonna share a taxi to Thong Nai Pan. And now i'm gonna have to find one of my own (as payback for my mischief?). "Ohhh... very sorry, very sorry... Thong Nai Pan, one person??? 1500 baht." said a kind-faced Thai driver carrying a sign with all the destinations and prices.

1500 baht? $50??? in Thailand? No way man...

"OK, 1200 baht, final price"... Final whatever, i'd sooner just collapse right here on the edge of the park and sleep til dawn than truck all the way to Thong Nai Pan, where i may or may NOT have a room waiting for me... Damn... I have to think about this.... I mean, really think about this. $9000 of semi-incognito and clumsy electronics on my back, wearing me down... i suppose i could just park myself under that palm tree over there until a solution comes my way... except the palm tree is surrounded by big puddles... looks like it rained here today. OK, i need shelter, soon as possible!!... and probably a shower. A curious Thai guy walks my way and says "Where going?"... He frowns when i say Thong Nai Pan, and i frown too... and then I picture myself under that palm tree... safe above the puddles, in a big hammock; and then boom, i remember my friend Hoppy's super-brief email from paradise. "Rooms are all full, but you could always sleep on a friend's porch til something opens up. It'd be worth it!". Porch means hammock... which seems way more appealing than schizophrenic trains or puddles n palm trees. "How about new road to Hat Yuan?" i ask the driver. Bigger frown.

"New road not good. Many rains, only 4 wheel, many expensive and no drive at night."

My options were few (and getting fewer as it got later): 1) Get a room here in Thong Sala (and the driver was surely trying to sell me one); or 2) go to Hat Rin and either a) try to get a room there amongst Full Moon Mania (last resort), or b) the super long-shot: Try to get a night-time boat from Hat Rin to Hat Tien, and then suffer with the packs a few hundred yards of jungle path from the beach in the dark (was it physically possible?), to try to find a surely-surprised Hoppy, 3 days early.

"OK my friend, How much to Hat Rin?"

"800 now, or wait for next boat... you pay 100"

The next boat took about 20 minutes to arrive and another 15 for my driver to round up a crew of 7 more people for Hat Rin. During the wait, my body had just shut down. I could no longer MOVE anymore to even allow the passengers to squeeze by me, but they can see my distress; and so they all carefully make their way around me.... all eager kids ready for the Full Moon, ha! And here i am: I gotta get in and out of Hat Rin as soon as possible! The driver lets me off at the pier and i shuffle along my way, an overloaded spectacle, like that Beavis and Butthead episode where they break into a pet shop and then try to escape, weighed down by a dozen dogs humping their legs... my bags... I'm struggling with a forced smile on my face towards some fishermen. "Hat Tien?" i ask.

They all look surprised and laugh, exchanging knowing looks. I say, "I know more difficult at night, and more expensive"

They say impossible. Big waves. No boats leaving tonight at any price.

"Other pier?" I ask. And i confirm that maybe some long-tail boat driver might brave the big waves and take me from Sunrise Beach... yeah, Sunrise Beach: ground zero for the Full Moon Party... and from the looks of Hat Rin you'd think it was already in progress, rather than 2 days away.

The cacophony of Hat Rin now is unlike any other time and place destination in the world, shy of maybe Burning Man on burn night. EVERY bar, shop, hotel and taxi is blaring a different sound system. Kids walk by, consuming, chattering in all kinds of languages, with rough translations and slang exclamations... my favorite being "Dude!!" with a French accent. Its just an audio soup on the senses... and mine have been taxxed to the max already today. But my tech-nomadic training has prepared me for things like this.. eyes on the prize. Sunrise Beach is a half mile away, and i'm going to have to wind through the heart of Hat Rin to get there. I press on.

The town has changed a lot in the past 5 years.. and i've heard stories about the sleepy little village it used to be, 15 years ago, before word began to travel. Now its the Las Vegas of rave... and in mostly all the bad ways. Somewhere along the line, somebody figured mixing Red Bull with whiskey would be best served in a plastic bucket with 3 or 4 straws.. and the street is littered with empty buckets. 7-11's are dotted along every boulevard, sometimes 2 at a time... Everywhere is day-glow, little pen-light lasers, junk food carts, soccer mob English kids, hardcore Germans and girls with too much make-up for the beach. If i had to pick one musical genre for the whole she-bang, it'd be cheesy diva house music torturously crossed with gangster hip hop, in other word lots of faux fashion mixed with even more attitude... on speed. In particular, the cheap and dangerous speed from Burma that probably 20% of these kids are on, some thinking that they had bought Ecstasy... instead getting a 24 hour ride on Burmese "Yaba". I hum myself a soothing song, pushing my muscles to the max... shuffling along, dogs a-humpin', half-way there... My Sweet Lord, Get me outa here!

I take a sharp left and there's the beach! At least 7000 people on the sand, and in the center of a big circle, somebody's doing a jump-rope... except the jump-rope is on fire. The crowd is stunned in absolute awe, eyes lit up like they were witnessing the launch of Apollo 13. Man learned to tame fire a few millenia ago, but here at Hat Rin, they're trying out the process all over again... juggling with it, lighting fireworks and cigarettes, random campfires and burning effigies. There's fire everywhere plus a whole new sloppy mix of even louder sound systems blaring onto the beach. This is where it will all happen in 48 hours... And tonight is just a mere fraction of what's to come. I drag my wheeled bag upon the sand with limited success.. and now only 50 yards to go to the water.. and OMG there's a lone long-tail boat in sight! Two girls are fidgeting a few yards away, arguing "Well YOU ask him... I mean i didn't have any luck when we were trying to order dinner".

"Hey there" i smile. "Where are you guys trying to go?"

"Hat Yuan" they frown, but now my smile gets bigger (as my ride just got discounted 67%)

The waves didn't look so big, but still the boarding process involved getting wet up to your knees, which meant i had to take extra precautions for my gear! One false move and all this effort would be for naught. The ocean-view electronic studio would be easily destroyed by single dip in the salt water bath, but this was a chance i'd have to take. And 500 baht was a bargain for this ride, considering the operating conditions. But now the driver can't start the boat, and we all sit there, rocked by the waves while he opens up the motor hatch and messes with some wires. His assistant is outside, up to his shoulders in water, steadying the boat, gazing back at the shore, watching the rocket's red glare... our flag was still there. 15 minutes go by, but hey, I'm now 30 hours into this journey from Bangkok, and i'm REALLY getting used to these delays. I've learned to meditate... amidst the apocalypse.

Finally we're under way, buffeted by a bigger wave every 5 seconds, but at least there's a rhythm to it; and as far as rhythms go, this one's much preferable to the competitive train-wreck of rhythms we're leaving behind on the beach... ah, the beach. The girls turn around to look at the fading lights of Hat Rin as a giant wave hits and showers us all in spray. The girls grab each other in fear, and the driver shouts "Don't move, Don't move", meaning don't allow the boat to rock right or left, lest we capsize. Now the girls are paralyzed, cooperating perfectly, in silence. Despite my concerns for the gear, the sheer exhaustion has me calm as can be. I'm dying to ask the girls where they're staying on Hat Yuan, because by the size of these waves, i already know that a beach landing on Hat Tien is out of the question. Ah yes, just another little snafu to ponder, and i envision myself sleeping on the sand tonight... one step up from the puddly palm tree. Even though the driver hasn't yet made any mention (and maybe he should've at least brought up the possibility when we were bargaining for the ride, eh? ethics??), i KNOW i'm going to be let off with the girls at Hat Yuan, which is logistically disastrous (but of course i'm getting used to this). There's just no way i could haul my bags over that mini mountain-climb to Hat Tien to find Hoppy and his hammock, and the chances of finding a room, ANY room at Hat Yuan at 10:30PM pre-Full Moon was like one tenth of one percent. I just surrender to the absurdity and laugh out loud to myself as we round the bend and the waves start hitting us sideways. The moon breaks through the clouds and i howl at it, softly, not wanting to break the driver's attention. I feel the warm embrace of insanity and try it on for size.... Why not just lock away my gear somewhere and voyage into the jungle and live off the land?

On perfect cue, the lights of Hat Yuan come into view, and with the glow of the moon, i can almost make out the porch of my old Barcelona Bungalow room... rented out to somebody else. Strangest homecoming ever, and with a tug at my heart and happy tears in my eyes, I feel like breaking out the boombox to herald our arrival, but can't think of anything angelic enough on my iPod. The waves have died down slightly, so i shout to one of the girls, "Oh by the way, where are you guys staying?" At least the universe has a sense of humor. Or perhaps the world of coincidence is starting to come around and bless me rather than way-lay me any further, ie) Is there a spark of significance to be considered from this? Out of all the hotels and bungalows on the beach, these package-tour type girls are staying at my beloved Barcelona... the rooms with the best views in Hat Yuan.

Almost there and on the edge of hilarity, I sit up, shake my shoulders and breathe deep... tropical air flying by at boat speed is a drug in itself. I cue another road song from the nostalgic database, and what's that verse? "On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair"... Hotel California. To say i'm ready for anything would now be an understatement. Good thing, 'cause the Thai driver is suddenly shouting "Hold on!" and he guns the engine, heading straight for the shore. The boat becomes a linebacker breaking through the tackling waves and heading for the touchdown from the 50 yard line... 40.... 30.... Now the girls become cheerleaders and i'm doing the play-by-play... "Last play of the game, folks! The clock's run out, and he's at the 20... the 10.... He's gonna make it! He's gonna make it! He scores!!!" The driver jets us right up on the sand... James Bond style. People on the beach applaud, and I jump out the boat headfirst and kiss the sand for the extra point. I arrive in Hat Yuan, 3 days early, salty, exhilarated and ready to be a gypsy! "How does it feel?" asked Bob Dylan, "to be without a home? like a complete unknown? like a Rolling Stone!!!!" Shelter be damned, i breath the tropical air and immediately realize that i wouldn't have made it HERE... NOW.. if the plans had gone as planned. One way or another, my Hat Rin gamble was the best decision in the world. Brushing the sand off and trying to look not too much like a pirate, I say "Hey girls, since you're staying at The Barcelona, i wonder if i could ask you a favor...."

The 3 of us climb the rickety winding staircase to the cliffside ocean view room. Outside on their balcony, i rip open my bags and start consolidating down to my most valuable gear vs. the stuff i could leave behind, stored with perfect strangers. I'm taking my 2 Apple laptops, one AC adapter, my iPhone and charge cable.... Throw in some suntan lotion, a sarong, sunglasses, and i'm good to go. One solitary survival backpack, and i'm hitting the hill for Hat Tien!

This is the almost real-time blog... the stuff that happened 3 to 4 days ago... Stay tuned for Part 3!

Solar-Sonic Beach, beta-Broadcast, best-of

2009-05-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

From a live-streamed test broadcast on an unseasonably warm day this past January... DJing from the Solar-Sonic RV parked on the beach in Malibu, my friend Cor on camera, with bikini-clad Amanda and friends dancing... a taste of things to come, this summer. Stay tuned for http://solar-sonic.com

Sunday MLK-day Obama Eve, flash-gathering

2009-01-18T19:17:00.000-08:00

Hey, if you got the text message, then check it out:

Here's the link that will list the physical location (40 miles from downtown LA)...

http://eklektro.net/streaming.html

Yes, to mark this memorable day (last day of Bush in office):

its a malibu-beach semi-mobile video stream / flash-mob w/special guests...

and we look forward to seeing you! starting at noon PST

(we'll be on and off from noon to sunset)...

new mainpage for EKLEKTRO.NET

2008-12-19T23:41:00.001-08:00

well its about time.... we've finally got a new look happening on Eklektro.net,
with better links to the road-videos, and some announcements on the way... soon...
so in the meantime... http://eklektro.net

Eklektro on Revver video

2008-12-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hey, i'll be putting up new video posts on Revver.com (search for Eklektro)...
or look in my Blogger side-bar for the Revver widget. We like Revver 'cause it allows our quick-cut video style to look its best, in Quicktime, rather than YouTube flash (trash). AND, best of all, the word Revver has "RV" in it... twice!

10 Years of Eklektro

2008-11-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

"And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile"....

The Talking Heads prophesized, and i complied, with a giant leap into tech-nomadic living: breaking up the band, getting a warehouse, cramming on computer music, then stuffing the studio in the back of a motorhome and finally hitting the road!
10 Years of Eklektro is the slideshow that says it all, set to the original Eklektro track Time Release (circa 1999). Follow the bumpy path of one modern day nomad, and trace the evolution of "solar-sonic" living...

Special thanks to the long list of amazing souls encountered on the winding road: from the gigs, the blogs, the crazy road-trips... the pics, clips, computer tricks, graphics and brainstorms. We're just getting warmed up.... solar-sonic / cyber-delic... So here's to the next 10 years!

Join the Eklektro group on Facebook

Electronically Induced Ideas

2008-07-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

Off the Road: Reflections of a Tech-Nomad (and $4/gasoline)

It was love at first flight. After packing all my belongings and moving my music studio into a re-designed retro RV, it only took the first hundred miles of highway to have me hooked. As I crossed the Massachusetts state line in the snow, leaving behind all semblance of "home", all i could do was laugh to myself about what i had just done, having taken the plunge; i was welcoming an unknown number of months of mysteries that surely lay ahead. The year was 1999, and with the help of a revolutionary new laptop, I was an electronic musician whose bedroom studio had suddenly gone mobile! I was heading west. I was going to make music and maybe start a new band; and at first, that was about the extent of my agenda.

And soon, with the addition of solar panels and the advent of wireless internet, my new mobile lifestyle had become super-charged (year 2000), with exciting new prospects. Now that the RV's power supply and communications link were all self-contained, it seemed less like a motor-home, and more like a space ship (yet still super-low budget, thanks to no rent payments)! So wow i thought, considering how electronic artists could specifically benefit from such a liberating experience (oftentimes tied to their bedroom studios), why don't i try to inspire more arts-oriented people do this? And that's when the never-ending flood of brainstorms first began. It almost seemed my "duty" that I should utilize these new technologies to their fullest, in a quest to do something new, vital, different... solar-sonic... but exactly what? I decided that the ultimate goal would be to launch some sort of mobile broadcasting initiative for artists and musicians (2001)... a little ahead of its time??... regardless, I was getting ready to take the jump.
9-11 was all the prodding i needed. Now it was surely time to change gears, put aside personal musical aspirations, and start concentrating on mobile media!

I needed collaborators, band members, a crew of techie friends perhaps; and so i bought a 2nd identical RV to serve as a complimentary jam station, the staging ground, in conjunction with my own mobile domicile, the main RV "studio". TechTV caught wind of my project, and so i assembled a small crew to do a cross-country caravan, doing street jams and working towards starting a "broadcasting band" of tech-nomadic artists. Tech-nomadic artists? Talk about a couple far-reaching terms, even on their own, let alone juxtaposed! I knew that demonstration would be the best way to promote such concepts which had become second-nature to me, and was looking to expand through collaboration. So I started blogging web-video (2002)... long before there was such a thing as YouTube... and we kicked off Project Eklektro, and I launched Eklektro.net.

And so to find that particular combination of artist, adventurer and entrepreneur, I approached "recruitment" as a long-term project (resolved to keep this project free of any entanglements to corporate sponsorships). I built a mailing list, organized road trips and continued blogging inspirational video tracks of the process. I met some amazing artists (2003, 2004, 2005), with whom there were countless upstarts, adventures, and collaborations that seemed to be made in heaven; yet ultimately none which could actually follow through, none firing on all cylinders together long enough to actually be starting a band, damn! On top of the usual set of variables: time, place, money, artistic intent... there were the rigors of RV living to circumvent.

And so after 7 years of living mobile, gas topped $2.50, then $3 a gallon... and without any other artist willing or able to take on the quest, I started to wonder if my ideal Eklektro Karavan-tech visions would ever be fully realized. And just how long could i remain dedicated to the task, without the contributions of at least one other full-time kick-ass accomplice? This was to be a "band" after all, set up to travel and broadcast; but in addition to the obvious need for music/media talent, i realized that mobile self-sufficiency was a tall order to ask.

Still, I was fascinated with the challenge, the cyber-punk aspects, and the love/hate relationship i came to feel for my favorite city in the world: Los Angeles (2006). And so spring/summer/fall, beach/desert/mountains, I'd mostly orbit the metropolis; and when the weather turned grim, i'd treat myself to months-long winter trips (still spoiled by no rent payments). I'd video-blog the tech-nomadic bliss i'd encounter with each tropical exodus. I suppose I was seeking to inspire simple thrill-seekers to something more specific... and demonstrate each technological update which made life more magic.... laptops, solar, wireless, and electronic music... not only would "we" start a band; but we'd be ready to broadcast! I now had 8 years of hands-on research put into this project, 8 big solar panels on top of 2 RVs, mobile streaming capability and a sound system, waiting for the moment (2007). Of course machines required maintenance. Mechanical breakdowns were to be expected, and i'd always find ways to circumvent them. But physical well-being was another thing (maybe i was "in orbit" too long?), and when i rushed back from Central America in sudden need of a hospital, summer 2008 found me unpredictably Off The Road, and reflecting... (and waiting out the $4.50/gallon gas!!)

Tech-nomads (still) wanted! Stay tuned!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6992229961

Thailand Rave Island - Eklektro Retro

2008-04-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

intensive rave research, from 3 years ago

higher quality available at http://eklektro.net/ek_breakbeatweek.html

Time Machine - Eklektro / Repo Man Mash-Up

2007-11-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Eklektro Retro: Footage from 1999 and misc pre-millenium festivities, set to the Eklektro track entitled "Time Machine" and mashed up with musings by the character Miller from the 1983 film, Repo Man (also set in LA). And the moral of this story: RVs = flying saucers = Time Machines. Time flies... when you live in a time machine!

santa ana syndrome

2007-10-25T00:50:00.001-07:00

astrologers have many things to say about the phase called "mercury in retrograde", during which they claim communications scramble and technologies falter. add to the mix the meteorological phenomena of hot dry santa ana winds in southern california and you've got a rare recipe for disaster; wildfires and fall-out from malibu to the mexican border. at very least the forecast seemed like an impending dose of indian summer, and at worse, apocalypse. we fled the city and stuck to the beach

Video Breakbeat, extreme!

2007-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Found this of course on YouTube. Here somebody takes it to the limit. I gotta find out how they did this one (which software?)!

Mobile Video Breakbeat

2007-10-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

(click on this pic for sample of video breakbeat)

What is mobile video breakbeat? Using music software in unconventional ways, triggering VIDEO clips from a Korg PadKontrol MIDI drum-pad (demo forthcoming); i now PLAY visuals rather than pain-stakingly "edit" them; and so i've started to rhythmically re-assemble 7 years of nomadic RV dreams (fueled by solar power, shot on DV) into some semblance of meaning for the outside viewer (maybe?). "Playing" video without a safety net, its like trying to master a whole new form of multi-dimensional instrument... laptop "data" now mapped in little chunks (of semi-relevance) to drum-pads (the palette... one's experience)... fluctuating fully mastered grooves to all-out trainwreck and back... its lo-fidelity, yes. (but life's too short to get all hung up on hi-def) And so no better way to declare the Eklektro manifesto (over and over again): Mobile Video Breakbeat, as a form of specific artistic communication?: video samples, spoken words, phrases, atmospheres, sometimes with underlying background beats... all get re-constructed, recombined on-the-fly, semi-accidently at times (and i'm kinda likin that, semi-roulette... forecasting the direction of the karavan... musically... and as a game of chance?); and so over the coming weeks... weeks of uploaded "episodes"... weeks of trials and errors: discoveries, declarations and dares will be unveiled out of thin air; theme by theme, concept by concept (solar-sonic cyber-delic?), starting with the core belief, of which i've been convinced repeatedly is the key... and grown a chip on my shoulder to this effect: CHANGE the world, through (mass-)media, through flash-mob, through the world's best kept secret (audio-visual) (and in-person), soon surfacing: Cyber EZ Ryder

Retro Eklektro - Thailand part II

2007-09-26T20:14:00.001-07:00

This is the part II clip from back in '05, the trip where my camera died. Finally edited and uploaded...
For part one, scroll down to Feb 2006 and watch the Thai intro bit first... the train to the bus to the boat to the bus to the pick-up truck! All this with gigantic back-packs full of studio gear... techno-travel!

NewYearsDay

2007-01-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

a sunny simple start to a New Year, shot with my cellphone!
here's my friend Angelo hooping to some techno-trance
at the Green Sector party, in the mountains 25 miles north of LA
Happy '007!

America Freedom to Fascism - Authorized version

2006-12-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

This is the "Director's Final Cut" authorized version of Aaron Russo's documentary, America: Freedom To Fascism (AFTF). Aaron put this documentary up "for free" on YouTube knowing that the hour has come for Americans to either be awakened to restore the Republic or be swept aside by the dark global forces of fascism that seeks to enslave mankind. Please be sure to visit http://www.freedomtofascism.com where you will soon be able to view a much higher quality "pay per view" Internet version of AFTF, buy the DVD and sign up as an affiliate to sell/distribute DVDs to others.

Additionally, if you find yourself agreeing with most of the documentary's findings, please consider researching the principles of the Libertarian Party, at http://lp.org. The tax and spend stranglehold of the US two party system must be put to a stop once and for all. Vote these criminals out of office! Protect the Constitution... Protect your Freedom... Vote Libertarian!

(Thanks for reading....
-EKG

CityJazz: pre-Eklektro archive audio

2006-11-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

Something to groove to over your Monday morning coffee...
While setting up the Silver Lake Studio, I uncovered some DAT tapes dating back about 10 years to the infancy of Eklektro: born of one particular warehouse party we threw in the frosty boston winter of '97, with the "eclectic-electronic" concept further developed via our renegade (and often car battery powered!) street jams that followed that next spring. There was never any set "band", rather just a fluctuating half dozen of us room mates and friends with synths and drums, all experimenting and seeing what we could cook up. Definitely a time of transition, as within the next year the whole crew would scatter in several directions when the warehouse was suddenly sold out from under us. That's when i weighed my options, bought the RV, minimized (and solarized) my studio... and hit the road to the west coast!
This particular jam was a one-on-one real-time recording with my friend Ryan on synths and loops, and me on live drums. I picked this rather simple and unfinished track not so much for its musical content as much as HOW it was collaboratively jammed, "written" in real-time... following in the footsteps of jazz. Yes, the next 10 years would bring incredible leaps in computer music technology... and unprecedented techno-travelin' adventures for the RV and me. So as one of the last recordings i ever made in a non-mobile studio, well the rest is Eklektro history. Stay tuned for more retro releases over the coming weeks... and a return to the VIDEO side of this blog!

All Saint's Day: more electrifying archive audio

2006-11-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

Continuing upon this pre-Eklektro AV archive trip-through-history,
for Nov 1st... "All Saints Day"
here's a heavy-duty death-defying track...
befitting for the day after Halloween, when all spirits are redeemed...
ahh ha ha!! (OK, maybe that's a stretch)...
Electric Angel Fixion, 1995
yes, in my pre-techno days, we were Nine Inch Nails wanna-be's...
and that's EKG (me) on drums and lead screams!

Halloween: bring out your dead!

2006-10-31T20:28:00.000-08:00

OK, searching my AV archives for something scary, I had to dig deep for this one... going back 11 years to my pre-nomadic life in the Boston warehouse studio, and the techno-industrial band I was fronting, called Fixion. Here's the B-side of our demo, and the track called Empty, and yes, you heard it right, the first lyrics are "When I am dead..." ha ha!! (and it kinda goes downhill from there)! something uplifting for you and yours on this hallowed eve...
So to put this all in context of pre-Eklektro history: Fixion kicked hard for about a year... until Eric went to NYC to try his hand at producing, and i went to Europe and discovered raving!
(more pre-millenium pre-Eklektro archive bits coming soon...)

Fixion was:
Vocals, drums and production: G. Weber (me)
Programming, synths and production: E. Lee (where are you Eric?)
Guitars and attitude: J. Carnabuci (where are you Joe?)

And so on the eve of a new Breakbeat of the Week,
wishing you a Happy Halloween!

ek>G

Absolutely Unedited: Eklektro in theory

2006-07-20T03:05:00.000-07:00

blog post #50 is an audio podcast, off-the-cuff and absolutely unedited, intended for playback at your leisure, on your ipod and/or while sitting in traffic... This 'Breakbeat of the Week' audio episode rambles... brainstorming out-loud as befitting of real-time, may sound like a sermon at times, but its only some utopian words off the top of one's head, musings rolling off the tongue of a tech-nomad, Siddhartha-style, solar-sonique... a Midsummer Night's ethereal dream... going for screen-play... and so conspirators wanted for Cyber EZ Ryder... Ek-lek-tro in theory. Time to shoot the movie
- E>K>G

Star Spangled Blogger

2006-07-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

For those who appreciate their freedom...
Happy Independence Day!

Eklektro Retro - beatbox megaphone

2006-07-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here's something summer-flavored and semi-cyber from 4 years ago. Camera by Matt Bass, editing by EKG using Vidvox Prophet software

Solar-powered breakbeats at the side of the street

2006-06-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Live electronic drums by EKG and a (funny) Jim Morrison quote halfway through... Here's what you can do off RV solar power on an early June afternoon... in Malibu. Special thanks to impromptu camera work by Brian "Negative 2".
Running (2) Kyocera 120-watt solar panels, a Trace 12 volt inverter, dual Roland Handsonic HPD-15 drumpads, Apple laptop, Ableton LIVE 5 software = solar-sonic free-form grooves... starts off serious and disintegrates by the minute! More like this coming soon... stay tuned...

Cyber EZ Ryder

2006-05-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

click here to view

Wow, from May Day to Memorial Day, time has surely flown since being back here in the states! But finally here's an episode to put Eklektro back in rotation, and with lots more on the way... this summer.... introducing: Cyber EZ Ryder... from Rio de Janeiro... and back to orbiting LA... semi-nomadic status, a new MacBook Pro in the studio and a backlog of beats about to break... (and seeking a local web designer willing to work for barter-pay)...
Over and out for now, and thanks for watching...
EKG

RE-United RE-Creational Vehicles

2006-05-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Funny thing that the same weekend "RV" tops the box office... these 2 get back together
Been too busy to blog... but here's the pic to prove: For the first time in nearly 3 years, the (2) Eklektro RVs are side-by-side! Pictured, the silver '76 GMC "Rocket", and the tan '78 GMC "Camel"... complimentary machines. The Camel is now half-way rebuilt after 03's catastrophic crash! So Eklektro Karavan is gearing back up, slowly... Currently looking into converting at least one of the rigs over to propane power ($2.25 / gallon vs. $3.35 for gasoline!)
Ariel view, shot from the roof-top of the new stationary studio...
(see Solar-Sonic, in silver...)

MayDay: Daily Manifesto: first audio podcast

2006-05-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Insights via nomadic perspective, 16 minutes on the topics of philosophy and politics (continued from intro); perhaps best sync'd to your iPod and listened to while sitting in traffic. Subject: Freedom, America and the underground: How we almost had a Utopian path, Where we went astray, and what we can do to get back on track; exploring historical patterns and transgressions, objective analysis and proposed solutions... in tandem with the liberating powers of technology, the merging of eastern and western philosophies, and the re-recognition of perhaps man's greatest gift... volition!

MayDay_LA: Daily Manifesto: podcast intro

2006-05-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

Breaking the 2 week silence with an audio blog entry, celebrating the 7 year nomadic anniversary of my unexpected orbit 'round the metropolis of Los Angeles... yes, exactly 7 years ago, this week! So with respect to experiences and observations as a Tech-Nomad, living and learning... experimenting, and writing new code... NOW i'm gonna fire-up the blog called "Daily Manifesto"... and this is the first episode's intro... (see part 2 later today)... (and coming soon, the new sub-blog)... enjoy
-EKG

Eklektro Rio de Janeiro : last Brazil episode!

2006-04-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

Eklektro Rio

Just in time for Easter Sunday, here's our final Eklektro Brasileiro episode, highlighting our new favorite city, Rio de Janeiro... and shot from the dazzling perspective of "Rio in a day"! Yes, after 7 exciting weeks, thousands of miles traveled and several blogged episodes; I'm back in Los Angeles now, and with a solar-powered summer on the way. So stay tuned as we trend back into our alternative energy and collaborative music pursuits, while preparing for our next phase of road adventures!
Special thanks to Eduardo from iCafe Ipanema, where Apple computers and iSight cameras will soon be the topic of a Rio retrospective clip (posting soon); and last-minute LA thanks to Brian from Naoism.com, for eleventh hour editing inspirations, and original intro soundtrack... (all done between his VJ gigs with Thomas Dolby this past weekend). More soundtrack credits: "Screamplay" by Eklektro, and Christo Rendentor soundtrack performed by Johnny Cash, "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode.

Eklektro Jungle Gringo: Into the Rain Forest!

2006-04-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Eklektro Amazon (part 2)!

So the rain forest is aptly named, and i could only take out my camera during dry intervals (and Eklektro ain't no Discovery Channel!), but there's surely enough for you to get an idea... lush, green, super-oxygenated air and sounds of a million bugs and birds. Monkeys following us down the trail and hiding from the camera... an anaconda slithered outa' sight too quick to capture (on video!)... sloths and alligators stayed hidden... but we got a taste; and then back to Alter do Chou. Rains are relentless, and once again, while camera-free i beheld a spectacle while kayaking across the lagoon: a brilliant rainbow next to an early-rising moon... behind me, the slowly setting sun... and to the other side, dark grey storm clouds rumbling in the distance! Amazon! (... and the magic happens when you leave the camera behind)
cam and editing by EKG, soundtrack "jungle" track: Eklektro "Lackluster" 1999

To the Amazon!

2006-04-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

Eklektro Amazon

This is the en-route episode, leaving Floripa and landing in Santarem, the little gateway city to the jungle... Then stay tuned for another jungle upload before onwards to Rio... and then "home"! (soundtrack beats: "Lackluster" -Eklektro 1999)

yes, its the Amazon for crying out loud....
after twelve hours in (what i'd guess you'd call) air transit...
('cause in contrast to the lightness of air):
there's the work of waiting... before even taxi-ing down the runway,
before the actual jet propulsion, anticipation along with the... ouch:
airport taxi, check in, seatbelts fastened, layover lounge, baggage claim
no balanced breakfast, sleep-starved and airline food's not all the same
on top of living a last rush of hours in Floripa, and editing... happy and drained
Florianopolis, yes i haven't slept properly in days....
coming in for a landing in Manaus, with still one flight left to go...
the clouds start to clear... and there it is....
and its the first time i ever saw that river...
and its HUGE... and we keep cruising, a few thousand feet above...
and it snakes along its way, light brown with shores of deep green teeming...
The river is living, and leading our plane along with it... Amazonia
making the Everglades seem like a miniature golf game

7 minutes of Eklektro: summing up South Brazil

2006-04-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

click here to view

Back by popular demand, this week we bring you 7 (more) minutes of Eklektro, talking-dread / talking head style, with lots of colorful flavors mixed on top... including some some straight talk about psytrance music... after this past saturday night's outdoor party. many thanks to my Brazilian Portuguese translator friend Tiago, who finally learned how to pronounce Eklektro!

April's Nomad

2006-04-01T11:50:00.000-08:00

click to view

Soon heading to the Amazon... soon back to LA
Can't believe its already April (and only 30 days til May!)...
Brazil, Brasil... Being one of the only english-speakers around here the past couple weeks, I guess the mind plays tricks with one's "verbal thoughts", and so i've been stuck in a groove of rhyming... I hope these effects are only temporary!
So this clip continues the story from December... with much more still coming...
enjoy!

December's Nomad, part 2, solar-powered drums!

2006-03-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

click to view December's Nomad, part 2

hmmm.... Breakbeat of the... Pre-ReLease?
Well i'm having a hard time deciding whether or not to include non-real-time videos here on BreakBeat of the Week... In some ways its not quite the same as fresh "vlogging"... In other ways, we're just catching up from editing studio snafus passed down to us from finicky technology... and before you know it... what happened to that blog?
So here it is, and partly 'cause I couldn't resist putting out 2 blogs back to back, saturday and sunday.... (well it WOULD've been sunday, but my local Brazilian web cafe had a Mac meltdown yesterday!) And so i guess the easy rule is, when in doubt: Vlog! 'Specially here from Brazil... where its been raining)
So this one is part 2 of a rather run-a-way piece i started editing (and couldn't stop adding to) throughout December and into January... as continuation of that episode called "December Nomad" uploaded on Dec 20... (half the footage was actually shot a month earlier on my birthday... during a strange batch of unseasonably HOT weather in Malibu CA... thanks to A for shooting and rapping) Tried to pull a quick editing frenzy to finish, but then it was time to get ready for Brazil! (AND i was outa' server space...)
So finally, here's the piece, and what comes next is a surprise even to me.... Maybe tune in later this week...? or better yet subscribe to EK_BBW... and as always, and for sake of no HTML in this future feed-burnt post, please click on eklektro dot net slash breakbeatweek dot html
and then you can see what's fresh on our channelized delivery, eventually daily!
Yes, from the perspective of conscious streams vs. episodes vs. documentaries... strange images and loops... blah blah vlogging...
So no more words / dig the drumming, and feel free to please leave blog commentary
cheers,
EKG

7 minutes of Eklektro: Talking Dread

2006-03-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well we had to go and do it... Now that we've entered the world of syndicated video blogging and have our first few dozen subscribers, it was time to put the cam on the tripod and do one of those conventional "talking head" video blogs! In this case its "talking dread"...

click to view: Talking Dread

Long overdue, you might get a kick out of this, 'cause i take the opportunity to explain (for the first time viewer) exactly what Ek-Lek-Tro is all about! Electronic music? RVs? Solar Power? ummm... Random world travel and vague video?
Well, i can certainly ramble, but hey, you can load it onto your video iPod for later consumption... So give it a good listen, and i think you'll come to understand exactly what's going on here in the world of Eklektro... 'cause its just the beginning! (And yes, we ARE looking for LA contributors and like-minded bloggers worldwide for our video channel). Many projects in the works, so be sure to subscribe to Eklektro!
Thanks to Derek Lotek and Brian Naoism for quick knob-tweaking appearances and PA graphics in this episode...
Sorry for any messy editing, bad lighting, noisy bits and what-not, but hey, this isn't "film-making"... This is vlogging!
Enjoy! and happy Breakbeat of the Week-end!
Greg

Brazil Guest-Cam from Danny N, Road to Floripa

2006-03-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

Traveling Brazil for over 3 months running, my friend Danny is a capoeira instructor and fellow electronic musician with an eye and ear for adventure! Also, his mp4 camera is a little more stealth than my Sony 3-chip, enabling him to pick up and shoot at the drop of a hat. So after hanging in Floripa a few days, we got around to comparing clips, and i offered to edit together some of his footage for this week's Breakbeat of the Week submission... So dig the lo-fi spy-cam flavor as you get to sit in on some uniquely Brazilian rituals and rhythms... Breaking beats from the streets, and the beach!
enjoy!
ek>G

click here or on the image to view part 2

camera by Danny N
(un)editing by ek>G

the above movie is an mp4 file, for wider compatiblity
an ipod compatible file is located here
but you'll need the absolute latest quicktime driver
(and perhaps a browser tweak or 2 in order to view)

Virtual Brasil: Be Here Now: Florianopolis

2006-03-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

3/10/06: Missed the plane to the Amazon! ... a sure sign of being happy where i am:
happy with the here and now... happy with the studio jungle-house... my latest new home as a tech-nomad, Florianopolis, Brasil... affectionately referred to as "Floripa":

i laugh out loud ironic and otherwise non-complain
the day i missed the plane...
unbroken Mac still in my hands, still no stolen camera
no broken bones, blown screens or viral inflictions
Here are the nomad's weekly inflections
cast to the wireless wind...
cast to my non-minions...
noisy media aimed at those on the verge,
those on the non-grid...
cast to all otherwise getting by on the perimeters of life
expressive technology in tandem, or extension to the body
from mobile phone to new home in a wilderness-studio
sprouting up on jungle-backstreets
ocean sky in the jungle night
how else could i miss a flight?
floripa brasil '06

(good news is that despite what they told me on the phone... i got through a loophole...
went to the airport with Alessandra as translator... and rebooked the Amazon for early April!)

... and so here we are, and with fresh video!

In the middle of this clip, there's a street performance which is quite intriguing... shot in Brasilia, we'd love to get a line-by-line translation of the dialog! Bear in mind that this "performance" is totally improvised, made up on-the-fly! This type of street performance is called "repente", pronounced hey-PEN-chi. So here's a spontaneous offering from a very dynamic duo Danny stumbled across. And as for the rather rhythmic and impassioned repentista? I think she could go head to head and trade rhymes with Mike D, Ad-Rock or MCA anyday! Look out, Beastie Boys!

part one

...of a 3 minute trickle-down from 3 months of fresh life-surveilance video from my friend danny's incognito cam, edited in one rainy afternoon... backpack studio style

the above clip is posted as an mp4 file, for wider compatiblity
an more compatible file for ipod is located at here
but you'll need the absolute latest quicktime driver
(and perhaps a browser tweak or 2 in order to view)

Floripa grafitti

...and of course, archives are always located at:
Eklektro Breakbeat of the Week
enjoy!
ek>G

more street beats from Salvador!

2006-03-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

Part Three

Crazy rhythms from the get-go, here's one more clip from Salvador...
Carnaval... the finale!
enjoy!

and in case you have trouble viewing, here's the same clip in non iPod codec
Part Three

Soon time to move onward: The splurge for the Brazilian Airpass was money well spent, considering the size of the Brasil and the epic 30-hour bus rides between regions. So you get 4 airline trips in 21 days, for $572 US. All this excitement and cultural absorption before settling down for a month in a beach house down south in Florianopolis.... where i'll switch to full-time editing mode and certainly some freshly-inspired electronic drum work.
But then a 5 day jaunt to the Amazon, early April... then Rio de Janeiro. Stay tuned for street-level jams from these locations as well.

Eklektro: eclectic electronics... everywhere!
over and out,
ek>G
aka gReg

Eklektro Trio Eletrico, Salvador, Carnaval part 2

2006-03-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

Carnaval continues, and the energy picks up each night. This extended jam goes for 7 minutes as you watch the "trio eletrico" make its way down the street, like a pirate ship floating past historical buildings... with the singer's mantra repeating (rough translation) "keep that evil eye off of me..." Ending with the ecstatic laughter of little kids decked out in the colors of the group...

click here for Part Two

One scene i didn't dare try to capture on video (keeping my camera safely stashed), was a walk through a secret alleyway, then down an actual hillside shanty-town around midnight Monday. we passed through 3 raucous makeshift reggae "bars", built in front of people's homes, further and further down the random palm-lined hills, down steps cut into clay, cinderblock, balconies, outhouses, gardens, dogs and cats and dreadlocked kids up WAY past their bedtime (Carnaval is for everyone!)... all along this zig-zagging trail with dancehall reggae blasting to full distortion levels. Rastas everywhere... strange mixed vibe of absolute chill and absolute tension... but this was the ONLY place in the city our guide told us we could have a quick smoke in peace. (ahh, paz.... underground of the underground)

and so we keep blogging Brazil, but don't forget our archives at
Eklektro Breakbeat of the Week

cheers!
ek>G

Blog blog blog, from Brasil!

2006-02-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

Fresh from the street jams of Carnaval, Eklektro wishes you a Happy Phat Tuesday, Salvador Bahia style! This first bit is from a couple nights ago...

click here or on the picture to view Part One

Salvador is a city of many flavors, so stay tuned... we've got much more music (coming soon).

Walking the streets with a camera is an experience in itself... and dancing makes for shaky shots, so cut us some slack and enjoy highlights from 4 hot nights in a spectacular colonial city in the tropical state of Bahia Brasil. Salvador goes OFF! Trios eletricos (sound-system trucks) and legions of parading percussion EVERYWHERE... Carnaval is best spent in either Rio or Salavador (or Recife... maybe next year). we chose Salvador since its more of a street-level affair than Rio's grandiose presentation. But all around the country, musicians of all levels prepare for months in anticipation of Carnaval's epic week. Samba schools hold open rehearsals, and the costume designers put the finishing touches on elaborate and incredibly colorful outfits for all performers. The eyes of my camera were happy and hungry all week :)

Marching drummers make their way through the crowd of revelers and pedestrians (Salvador)

And as always, you can check the latest videos, as well as the archives at:
Eklektro Breakbeat of the Week

Eklektro: eclectic electronics... everywhere!
over and out,
ek>G
aka gReg

eklektro retro: Thailand... excelsious!

2006-02-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

click to view part 1 of 2

Given the death of my DV camera in Thailand due to sea-spray n stuff, I never had a chance to capture and upload most of my best footage while on the road! By the time i got back to LA and had the camera repaired, summer was in full swing, and the tapes sat patiently awaiting my attention... for a year! So I'm back-dating this blog post to 2/13/05, roughly a year from the date of shooting. What follows is funny documentation of perhaps my most intensive attempt at "techno travel" to date. I brought 2 Powerbooks, a 3-chip cam, good mic, headphones, audio interface, lots of hard drives, etc etc etc, and a metal-mesh security lock system, all in a HUGE backpack... and made a mad dash outa' the LA rains... for the island of Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand... a little over a month after the tragic tsunami devastated the other side of the Thai peninsula. This did nothing more than cement my decision to go, as the Thai national economy surely needed the patronage more than ever! So I was heading out with an "as-long-as-possible" agenda... was gonna chill in a beachside bungalow and do LOTS of overdue writing and editing... and for the most part, and for 3 months... I did! Check the Eklektro site's Breakbeat page for "Rave Island", my vlog of the infamous Full Moon Party, from the perspective of "rave researcher"! Enjoy, and stay tuned for part 2.

Cactusland NoHo BoHo mesh-up / LA

2006-01-07T15:07:00.000-08:00

Very eclectic, very electronic; An amazing last-minute jam at the Cactusland home and studio headquarters in North Hollywood, CA... retrospectively named The NOHO-BOHO MESH-UP (and rumor is that there are definite plans for MESH-UP2 very soon... late March).
There was so much going on by the time i got there, that i decided to just leave my drum gear in the RV to better run around and be the cameraman... 'cause the vibe of this night just HAD to be captured. THIS 3:30 MIN VIDEO IS AN EXTRACT FROM an 18 MIN VIDEO (the whole night's jam compacted)... Stay tuned for other Cactusland mesh-up clips and conscious streams; either here on Breakbeat of the Week, or on "MONKEY GO BOOM" (ODNU and TWIST VIDEO ZINE)

pictured: Idioma and Odnu
(formerly known as Crazy Bunny and Undo)

click here to view

Cam by ek>G, editing by Odnu

Music, visuals and production credits:
IDIOMA: VOCALS
ODNU: LAPTOP-KEYBOARD-GUITAR - EXTRA FOOTAGE - EDITING
CINNAMON TWIST: VOCALS - SPOKENWORDS
KARL FORNANDER: LAPTOP-KEYBOARD
ETHAN MINTON: BASS-TROMBONE
RICHARD GROSSMAN: VOCAL ARP-DIDJIRIDU
DENNIS BUNTON: LAPTOP(DJ SET)
TOM FITZGERALD : LIVE VISUALS
BLAX: EXTRA FOOTAGE
GREG WEBER: CAMERA

December's Nomad - solar-challenged

2005-12-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

Winter Solstice... the shortest day of the year; and well, its the first day of winter...
and yes its been a LONG time since we've made a real-time Eklektro video blogger entry... ever since the camera died on us in Thailand.... last spring!
So in the meantime, suddenly video podcasting has become all the rage... and so our New Year's resolution? To rekindle BREAKBEAT OF THE WEEK as a true weekly entry... ASAP... or maybe even starting with this week?

So this episode features real-time electronic drum jams run off of (increasingly rare this time of year) solar electricity... from an unseasonably warm Malibu beach.
camera rap by Alessandra; drums and blog-talk by ek>G (me).

and of course, check the "breakbeat of the week" archives (under re-construction):

stay tuned soon for part II,
and as we convert BREAKBEAT OF THE WEEK over to RSS feed,
for easy podcast subscribing!

Happy Holidaze everyone!
Greg

Click here to watch this video

EKG Mobile Video Blogger, teaser clip

2005-12-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

A look behind the scenes at the Eklektro RV (with VX2000 camera out the sunroof like a periscope), ready for action. My mobile-blogging persona is ek>G, as in Eklektro-Greg / MC, master of circuitry; and my retro-rocket '76 GMC motorhome / solar-powered studio is another EKG, as in Eklektro Kardio Geographic, the multi-system'd mechanical heart of it all, housing the electronics and delivering the landscapes and cityscapes that inspire me. We (me and the RV) cover a lot of ground... edit and upload whenever we can... and caravan, if there's anybody else motivated at the moment... ready to create... in motion... artistic spontaneity, vehicular video, re-creational and alternative energy driven. And the concepts are exponential: collaborative music, fueled by alternative energy and fleshed-out through techno travel: earth address optional!Click here to view this video

New Orleans (eklektro retro) represent!

2005-09-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

Katrina left a wake of destruction... and now our thoughts go out to all those affected by the tragedy. Here are pictures and video from our 2002 visit to The Big Easy. An enterprising kid, helping us with our street jam down by the river'edge... Eklektro Karavan '02

A little dark, pre-dawn, "camping" near Bourbon St, during our 3-day stay in New Orleans, Eklektro Karavan '02

new orleans eklektro retro, respect, represent
(click above link to view video)

2005-08-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

To burn or not to burn?
To blog....
This is a thinking-out-loud, a soul-search, and somewhat a prayer ('cause maybe i know the answer already)....
while contemplating another season's-end, as often celebrated at that giant flambe with my friends the pagans... i face another year of "hmmmm...."... to burn or not to burn. Having attended BM 5 years in a row, it had become in every sense a ritual... a sabbatical. And after last year finally facing the necessity of skipping one (came back sick from Mexico.. had to miss the Burn), and now this year, as my projects approach boiling point; well, with regards to this year's Burn, damn(!), like many of us, I have to consider the question of... productivity (time!). Because for all of its spontaneity, The Burn is certainly a commitment.... the often ridiculous gesture of hauling one's self, and one's most expressive trappings out to an ultra-remote patch of desert... living in the most harsh of conditions... piracy practiced en masse... sounds great! Sign me up... repeatedly... I'm a "lifer"!

Well, neither money (time), tamed electronics nor RVs grow on trees. And ever since moving my music studio (and my life!) into an RV, the year before my first Burn; my full-time nomadic shtick has been to combine all these elements EVERY DAY; and so each year when it was suddenly "Burningman Season" again (in terms of nomadic seasonal cycles); it was simply time to go carry on doing what i'd otherwise be doing in my motorHOME (albeit a bit dustier)... and go mix it all up with my friends the cyber-freaks, the ravers and the pagans. And while i'm certainly a Burner of the cyber-freaky nomadic persuasion, i'm not sure if i'd categorize myself as a pagan. I have belief systems betting on the existence of one incomprehensible and "supreme" being, and I view individual divinity as tied to our cognitive power (the bits of God within us... which strengthen as we seek truth), always striving for the best-possible interactions with others, with hopeful dividends spread for everyone... sharing information, intention, resources, and then celebrating our beliefs as we see fit... which is overall an ecstatic-yet-humble individual practice for me mostly. Could it be practiced communally? Maybe, though smacks a bit of "church"; and very much like the pagans, exercising ritual for the sake of ritual. well, I rejected the pomp and circumstance of Catholicism during adolescence and thankfully made my escape; and so i'm cautious of any sacraments exposing contradictory spiritual doctrine. I can't help but remain skeptical of any organized or improvised religion with belief structures "imposed". And to play devil's advocate here, to a certain extent, taken as a whole: The Burn has become a bit more "imposing" each year... in both infrastructure, as well as what seems a sometimes empty or even joyless flamboyance... instant and insistent "rituals" on parade and/or in your face... beauty or vulgarity, so much depends upon one's perspective. And Burningman has certainly grown in size over 20 years, and has welcomed ever-further extremes... that's its "thing". But what seemed at "my first Burn" a sort of healthy spiritual anarchy via pyrotechnic primal scream therapy now increasingly seems to be fostering more extreme cases of all-out spiritual nihilism. Hey, this is Burningman, not Disneyland, so idealists out there: be prepared to keep strange company; but spiritual anarchy vs. spiritual nihilism? There is a difference, and so as to not offend my friends the more positive pagans, i had to choose my words carefully (so consult your dictionary). Much as i believe in "punk", perhaps i appreciate the instant collaboration of BM more than the ethical abrasion (the impositions / inquisitions); and so if it was up to me i'd say let's put down our bibles, torahs, korans, star charts and tarot cards for just a minute... lower one's freak-flag to half-mast sometimes when given the opportunity... shut up long enough to listen and learn something, THEN let off the scream, light the fires and join the parade towards true understanding.

That said, Burningman remains one of the last true hardcore experiences to be had in this lifetime. Freaks mingle with fellow freaks, practicing radical self-expression, radical collaboration... and an ethic of tolerance if not all-out embrace; an over-riding excess to which Dionysus himself would be proud. The Burn churns out dreams and fantasies at an exponential rate all week, before the mysterious "man" becomes engulfed in flames... the famous climax. But I love Burningman on the post-Burn Sunday too... the dusty denouement to the ultimate future-culture festival ...to reflect and make sense of the experiment, while grabbing the last smoldering bits of the experience... Sunrise/sunset on sun-day implies the follow-through and the analysis (a private sacrament?) to carry this ecstatic knowledge into the coming year: yeah, oracle my witness: 6 years of living mobile, rootless, 16 years self-employed, free (as can be) of "the system"; my mind has been trained a certain way, and as much as i'm oftentimes happily a lone wolf, a soul proprietor, i dig the phenomena of festival as catalyst... of art, intrigue and even love. and i dig the dynamics: chaos... and contemplation. Another square peg that fits perfectly into the Burningman demographic mold, I'm a barter-trader... in terms of the soul as well i suppose. I'm an objectivist, a libertarian with ultimate respect for "what works for you".... which is not necessarily "what works for me"... but ain't that beautiful just the same? ie) ...the essence of love. My spiritual beliefs employ the analogies of electricity... and with respect to human interaction: circuitry ((transistors, transformers, relays, variable resistors, fuses, inverters, chargers, power conditioners, amplifiers, circuit breakers...!!!))

Well, technology is NOT God, but evolution is... or rather: the upward stride of evolution is evidence of God's handiwork; because evolution implies ascension, mutation, DNA like snowflakes (no 2 alike), the untapped 90% of our brains, communication, originality, our 6th sense(s), the next "giant leap for mankind", ESP... and language (according to Lori Anderson) is a virus. And beliefs? like superstition, urban legend or oral tradition? symbols and human systemology, ie)
Numerology is whatever we want it to be.
Dispensed so casually, does this make me a non-believer? Because i don't subscribe to any one form? am i a skeptic, due to a rather rigid mystical analysis? (Well i'd have to spend an entire lifetime gathering evidence... an entire lifetime for each one of us, in order to pass judgment. So who am I to find fault with your beliefs?) Rather I am an ultra-believer. I believe in whatever works for you. Whatever works for you without causing harm to another. Harm might be defined as something that you wouldn't want to happen to yourself. And so with respect to my friends the pagans (many ready to impose their beliefs with profound surety... many others not taking anything BUT the rituals at all seriously), well, i wouldn't want rigid multi-diety belief systems to 'happen' to me. Marley said "Jah live, children yeah...." and i think its that simple: one god and/or central energy source... reflected through all of us.... lessons of which learned from day-one... childhood beliefs (or lack thereof) carry though unto our adult realities. I rebelled against imposed Catholicism. And I'm so glad that a Catholic upbringing made me into a responsible rebel!

20 years of BurningMan, and the phenomena has indeed evolved for many into all-out religion, or at least part of their religion. From day-one on the playa in '99, I swore a vague-but-certain allegiance to BurningMan, as reinforcing my belief that ART still "happens", and is important, and is tied to our survival (the desert being part of the experience). And so i'm trying to come to terms with perhaps another year of missing Burningman (!)... and in-part my 11th hour uncertainty of attendance is due to my strict adherence to my own self-imposed "religion", year-round sacraments: auto-mechanics, the financial concerns of driving my "house", my studio, my RV... upon such a Mecca pilgrimage: $3 gas and everything... all consuming perhaps: The Re-Creational Vehicle... I "live it" every day... nomadic. The pursuit of modern-day nomadism has taken over my life. The pursuit of freedom has in many people's eyes left me anything but free. Vehicular living. And yet i'd have it no other way. Am i a fanatic?

My brother is a world-record-holding marathon runner. Yes, my sibling (2 years my junior) also sometimes pursues the super sacrificial sport of DOUBLE marathon... running 52 miles in one stretch, and his particular land-speed world record is for running 50 kilometers... on a treadmill. Such sport is all about pushing limits... and some might say to the point of ridiculous. Regardless, the pursuit requires amazing focus and discipline... and is a solo experience... perhaps the domain of fanatics. To some extent, the self-imposed ethics i've built into "my" own project (Eklektro.net) might be seen as tedious or as sacrificial as treadmill running... because once the RV-realities enter into the equation of mobile multimedia... as a full-time credo; i've found that hardly anybody else is really ready or willing to take on the same unwavering challenges of "eclectic electronics everywhere" to the extent that i am. Yes, electronic media is rocket science to begin with, and then you add the uncertainties of ever-changing atmospheres, highway wastelands or urban conditions, alternative energy sources, distractions, dodging asteroids... often excruciating, yes, but I see the more painful parts as "conditioning"... for extreme expression.. the eventuality! If the end result was ONLY to do music, then as compared to a cushy air-conditioned studio with dedicated engineer, of course this would be doing it the hard way! And for those only interested in the fruits, the polished results as opposed to the purity of process; they're missing the essential point. The analogy of spaceship is there for a reason. We are seeking to go somewhere never before explored.... creating in motion or "on-location", real-time improvisation, techno-virtuosity, transceiverism.... yes, in the case of some of my very best friends, it has sometimes taken weeks to fully explain the prospect of what it all means (which is why i'm writing a book). And to what ends? Instigation. Yes, in simple terms you could say i'm trying to change the world. I believe the world is worthy of such effort, and i believe i've got enough re-creational life and recent knowledge (learned from such unique RV angles) to propose to actually move such mountains as today's forms of media.... mountains so sorely in need of moving (to break corrupt commercial paradigms and begin anew). I am only one mere artist, but I am fortunate to live in such exciting times (early daze of pre-revolution... and its inevitable)... and so to motivate others who might think the same, i'll shelf my other art if i have to, and i'll write. I'll write about the fight, and the fighters. David and his slingshot... little techno volcanoes (independent laptops and blogs) vs. mountains of sick media: I will shake their foundations, pass the marathon finish line or die trying.

And so back to the topic at hand, today: nomadic decisions: dusty destinations?: time: unless approached seriously and productively, much as i'd love to just party with my friends: damn, there's so much news to spread, and BurningMan (while ultra-fun nonetheless) would be time spent with the already-converted... and for the price of admission and transportation, i could probably otherwise afford to finish off the retrofit of the 2nd eklektro van, and jump start the karavan!) And so Burningman or Karavan, friends sensing that i'm seeking advice say with all sincerity, "Do what you gotta do man". And i love them... like we were all back to being children... in a treehouse after school, no rules, just imagination. But when met with my inexplicable (and perhaps they feel unnecessary) intensity; then with a tapped curiosity or just best friends in healthy competition: they invariably suggest a Thoreau-like simplification, "Do what you gotta do man"... But i'm SURE that they don't fully GET IT (the quest for mobile art/media ESP at light-speed), 'cause if they did they'd know that until a few others pick up the full-time doctrine (sprinkled with each one's own favorite flavors, compositions, agenda...), then i'm all alone running the double marathon. Just in terms of breaking the news, inspiring and outlining the proposition in rough-draft: until i can better explain exactly what this IS: i know i gotta do it ALL. Why? Because it IS communicable and achievable in our lifetime: FREEDOM (individual / communal): as uncompromising, and NOT mutually exclusive. If only i could clone myself and one of us goes to Burningman.

The message: MC or DVD, main stage or street: To busk or not to busk. Burning or busking? Bottom line: If i don't go to this year's Burn, i might be able to get our street-jam project legitimately off the ground. And this is what i'm feeling... the next stages of Eklektro require a return to instrument in one's hands and feet on the street. Why must everything seem like one or the other, but not both? Time. I'm not a great subscriber to the "everything in its time" ethic. I feel the moment, and feel the moment's draw... and i can feel those lost moments dissipate too. And with respect to the contemplation of difficult decisions such as modern-day Burning? Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) said "I want to be everywhere, I want to know everything...." and ever since Downward Spiral came out and i first heard that song, I've felt every line, and i've lived life at an often manic pace, thinking that at some point Trent's supposition could start to become true; 'cause starting with a virtual reality: technology, communication and positive intention would catalyze and allow us mindful practisioners to lead multiple lives (clone ourselves psychically).... to BE everywhere. No better perspective to start than street level... "eclectic electronics everywhere", just like Eklektro first started way back in '97: Get the permit if need-be, build the rig.. and jam.

Describing the Burn to one of my best and yet-to-burn friends, i used the analogy of medicine. I picked out certain friends we had in common who were also yet-to-burn... saying "they could sure use a dose of Burningman". When asked to clarify, i said that while that particular person seemingly had it all together, in reality their main aspirations were yet to manifest, and that i felt part of the reason was that they needed to let go of certain things.... and that the Burn was an experience where they could finally "get it"... and could finally fully let go... begin to absorb, and enjoy the immersion. Well, i've immersed 5 times... and every time i've LET GO of some thing or other, major or minor, and it has been amazing! And yet "my" project of 6 years has yet to fully manifest. And just last night i felt compelled to justify this scenario to this yet-to-burn best friend (who was telling me that perhaps i needed to "let go" of certain aspects...). Am I in need of more medicine? Rather it is time to post the results of the experiment. And it is time to take these findings to the general public.

All this writing, and there is no direct answer to my question. There is no solution other than to create in motion, every moment.

Some great soul (I think it was Warhol?) said "Write, write, write: Don't wait for the muse to strike!" And so Andy certainly prophesized the act of blogging. And so if one's conscience says "Burn, burn, burn..." What do we follow up with to complete the rhyme? "Don't wait for the tides to turn" ?? how 'bout "There's lots more about life to learn" ??

Burners about to depart: i wish you all the best times of your lives! And for me, EKG: i welcome spontaneity to come grab me. Whether its Black Rock or beach busking, I'm with you... and we're all sure to be burning!

Summer Summary

2005-08-19T00:10:00.000-07:00

The past 3 months... wow! One month leading up to the summer solstice, then 2 months of summer scramble, JuneGloom at PointDume, Moontribe 12 year anniversary desert gathering 115 degrees in the shade and seeing all those crazed friends, GreenDependence Day, the LA arrival of Derek Lotek, Cyberstock, followed by the disintegration of the proposed TechnoRanch out in Hemet CA, even before it fully got off the ground... sweltering in desert heat, 2 weeks of mechanical duties trying to resuscitate the damaged "Camel" (original tan-colored Eklektro RV)... frame welding and getting ready to put it back on the road... and now, the preparations for Burningman. So this blog spot has been empty while i've been working multiple fronts and testing the waters for the best directions: developing a presence on Tribe.net, now 2 months into it. Also, Breakbeat of the Week on Eklektro.net has been vacant of new video, but i began an audio blogger of real-time unedited drum tracks using the 'ole faithful HPD15s with the ever revolutionary Ableton Live software, now unleased with version 5! http://eklektro.net/ek_audioblog.html yeah, Eklektro in general took a back seat to new web developments... or at least the new propositions (pre-launch): earthaddressoptional.org, solar-sonic.com, perpetualapollo.com and right now cyberrvpark.com. And the best news is that despite the retreat from the Hemet TechnoRanch, the cyber RV park concept is about to catch new fire, urban style... in San Francisco.. exciting news forthcoming... another seasonal migration... so stay tuned!

ek>G on Handsonic: Audio Blog, part 2

2005-07-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

live electronic drums by ek>G

via solar-powered RV studio...
making music off the sun, and uploading via cellphone...

BEWARE : this blog contains LIVE-played, raw and UN-edited blogger-style lo-res mp3s...

:: sit back, download... and turn up the bass ::
(you need the Quicktime driver installed)

dangerous_brakes_take4
6.9mb mp3: recorded live 7/9/05, Point Dume Malibu CA

EKLEKTRO_solar-sonic :: AUDIO BLOG!!

2005-07-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

BEWARE : this blog contains LIVE-played, raw and UN-edited blogger-style lo-res mp3s...
total Handsonic (Roland HPD-15 electronic hand drum) one-pass recordings... leaving in the mistakes: in favor of the groove.
So tune into live electronic drums by ek>G
Today's entry finds the ReCreational Vehicle parked high atop the LA hills... making music off the sun, and cellphone-uploading...

:: sit back, download... and turn up the bass ::
(you need the Quicktime driver installed)

dangerous_brakes_take3
16.8mb mp3: 19 minutes of extreme mantra :: solar-powered improv, recorded live at sunset 7/8/05, Point Dume Malibu CA

"Dangerous Brakes" in its current state incorporates dual Roland Handsonic HPD-15 (electronic hand-drums), played live:: triggering internal sounds layered with Ableton LIVE 4 Impulse kits (triggered real-time super low-latency on Powerbook 17)

Attention beat-makers: wanna lift grooves, correct mistakes, make killer loops??
8 track Ableton LIVE 4.12 file, self-contained, available by request:
so LIVE-savy producers feel free to email me
i can free-jam like this at the drop of a hat... hours a day...
multiple genres, characters, locations... no time for editing!
(pass it back and i'll overdub as MC...)
(producer points via Creative Commons 1/3 each)

2005-05-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

What started out as a quick email to my cohort from SystemSoular.com, who just bought his RV and is soon joining me... quickly became another writing out of control... another unstoppable flow of new ideas soon fleshed-out, and in so many ways i guess you could say we're starting our own live-played mobile internet radio breaks-station, with the motor-homing cyber-punked house-band all-in-one (so we join this email in progress, just a few days before Ziffer's arrival into full-time tech-nomadic living, starting out here on this ranch... where i'm willfully stuck now, 95 degrees in these shady RVs, and with still one month till summer: this is boot-camp).

<in other words, while it was often certainly hot in Thailand, seems Southern California is gonna vaporize me! So yo, made some phonecalls, took some opinion polls... Naoism does make one hell of a band name, and i'm wondering if you'd allow me to interject some exploding Cali colors to some of these recreational covers we've discussed, ha!... And if it kicked, would you be OK with putting the Naoism name on it? do a few, fully produced for live performance... and so assuming any given one clicks, seek the rights, and maybe even market a real release of the shit in conjunction with our own creations... creations and re-creations... Rebel Music: using it and some similar all summer as the other side of our mobile soundtrack... the things that gather crowds during 'dem impromptu street performances... and nighttime digital graphitti 'wit that higher power projector you got... Slam our own videos and logos all the fuck over LA... So: particular tunes... think of them as "summer tunes"... and after playing around with a few of these tracks the next few months, even VJing over em, content often the escapades of what we did (and nearly got arrested doing) the previous week: This is kinda like the Orange Alert idea i had for summer '03... when i started that little sub-blog on eklektro, with Jamie and Lotek writing in on it. well, let's add some to it... consider the thematic Nao-ist cultural aspects, state of the world, the misappropriated flow of the world's energies (and the fight over exactly what that means) and when in doubt in-your-face smiling punk deep hard techno message mixed with fun and games / hot rocket science w/burningman girls on vocals and tambourines (Mad Maxx / Josie and the Pussycats) aspect always present otherwise forget it. so starting with Rebel Music (such a great start)... and making the list... and also making a public-eye remake yet-to-be-released list, ie) a posting "looking for special guests" to jam with us..., a list which could be checked out by those on Tribe.net or Craigslist. Yeah, and as far as underground special guests go, LA: i want to dig that town thoroughly and quick before i once again get ready to leave it (and maybe this time we'll all do a well-timed co-migration). Shoot something serious, barely-controlled at times, and of course hilarious. (like Chili Peppers "Walk Like a Brave" video... ha! vaguely like this... but for our oh so-serious toys, and its 20 years later, and what's REALLY happened/changed since then...? the state of the world, freedom, illusion? and what do you have to say? well,... fuckin' LOTs... and loudly, barely within the limits of the law... with these parade-ready anti-Patriot Act RVs. "Oh why can't we roam... this open COUNTRY!"
(and if we got the rights for this OTHER one in particular i'm playing with... holy shit!) yeah, i sure know where to get some friends to star in it (out-takes from summer solstice)
All this and with props like Perpetual Apollo, etc... if we WANTED to get signed, we'd be SO fucking signed... don't you know, fellow Media PunkStar? and right now i say this from the dusty garage, contrasted with all this DATA on my hard drives... from 6 years of hard DRIVES... (drum/dance/drive/digitize) (and as i confront yet another RV re-design: i'm more sure than ever: everything and everyone looks great in an RV with a backdrop of silver): Eklektro super-etcetera :: and Lotek finally arrives in LA (re-locates) on 7/11 (did he schedule that on purpose? like he wants us to throw a party or something?)
and the latest idea has me laughing out loud... the band: getting some of these girls singin'... the ulterior motive aspect misconstrued like the worst of reality shows... male/female phenomena like Fleetwood Mac... auditions...? no not just anybody. only those who seek to digest the deeper data so prevalent on our websites,....only those self-described as bad-ass and able to back it up can share soundwaves with this band (jam), stage or no-stage (streamed), bands within bands (made up of nomads): out in the open and in this respect, Eklektro: as Konduktor of enegies: as the electronic drum circle formula is hyper participatory... EKG>MC and my work cut out for me. meanwhile, Naoism, the concept / the band will indeed rock you interactively (especially if before the show you study up on the "required reading"...) and dig: Naoism is not for everybody (some are happier stationary), right?: write: and so i'll shut-up and upload this treatise as May 21st's "daily manifesto": One month till summer solstice. full solar ENERGY impending, and may shock anyone parked in proximity: ha!
So in anticipation I connected all the hard drives and said jeezuz, yesterday had borrowed -2's camera, and what i shot was outa' practice, yet fantastic and really should've been streaming... and you know like i know how ridiculously soon it all WILL!
i'm so OVER editing... and the healthy contrast: Rebel Music is hands-on, like yesterday on drum-set, broke a drumstick... and as for these break beats of which i so often speak? today its apparently meant to be an HPD15 afternoon... (LIVE 4-ever) the first one in 6 months dude..

2005-05-05T14:44:00.000-07:00

5/5/05: My camera has been dead a month (in the shop), but Eklektro-theory is staying alive; and more than merely alive (since fresh-back from Thailand), its exploding (!) under control (!) and mainly 'cause so many friends are on the verge of becoming full-time tech-nomads. So is the time finally right to start "the band"??!! Time to fire up the next round of Eklektro Karavan??!!
Well, for me lately, this nomadic drift back to temporary home base (on the edge of the desert / sunny spring day) affords especial clarity of definition (the often-lacking compliment to mere vision)… spreading out and looking back at El Eklektro blogger entry from May 1st in Mexico last year… even then thinking we were on the edge of it... but so much unexpected side-trips and refinement since then... like back-pack studio traveling and writing in Thailand... intense! And what's next? even just maintaining our vehicles (and repairing broken cameras) is one hell of a prospect, and we’ve sure been kicking it… both on and off wheels, and perhaps with Amsterdam ahead, Thai-return to secret island (solar studio experiment) after So-Cal kick-off of the “band” in the fall… a calendar? Stay tuned for big postings and filling in the blanks.. later today… semi-automatic web weaponry dispensed between hedz and musician friends: blogging: back to it.

2005-02-08T05:53:00.000-08:00

1/29/05: Welcome to SouthEastAsia:
Bangkok
Introduction to the city at 2am, via one of my old rockband friends**... now ex-pat and loving it, living in the epicenter of Bangkok... He was cool to let me stay a night or 2.... as i was otherwise just passing through on my way to the islands... (objective: RV-free, to sit still a while amidst inspiring beach-scapes.... laptop studio style, and work on my forever upcoming DVD series, finish up one disk if at all possible, working title: Earth Address Optional). So mid-December's decision: Sit out the winter in LA, or take some gear to Thailand? no-brainer.

**(As testament to and despite the passing of time, the changing of ways, my Bangkok friend and I, fast forward to 2005 and we're both living out the latter part of these "rave" days... in parallel, partying plus adventure travel, both miraculously still single... and thus still kicking it! But Bangkok? nice place to visit or crazy place to live, which one is it? This is sure to be an interesting visit.)

Dropped off by $10 airport cab, doorbell, elevator, big handshakes, dump my backpacks, shave, splash water on my face to rejuvenate after 24 hours straight... in transit... I have to bust open the frozen lock on my rucksack so we can all do an imported top-shelf tequila shot (!) headrush, and we're off... out into the night... 2:30am... Outside: still probably pushing 80 degrees, and everywhere, solid humidity.... ceaseless traffic, a tropical city. Just the expectation has me feeling 15 years younger, and we're wandering around like we're back in college... catching up, talking the talk, and its a big fast talk indeed, 'cause you see, according to my friend, this city represents the Promised Land (or perhaps maybe Armageddon).
The Thai night vibe is like BladeRunner's vision of the future LA: Sidewalk sights and smells, barbequed mystery meats, strange fruits, steam out of sewer grates, rats, big neon lights, baby elephants playing horse and buggie, beggars, hustlers and of course the more obvious and desperate of Bangkok's trademark prostitutes wandering the streets. Stop at streetside cafe with the whole mad rush of city traffic on your left, the human onslaught of 3am Bangkok literally brushing up against you on the right... and everywhere: girls making eyes at you... a surreal addition to the late-night scenery. After my 2nd drink, I'm surprised how easy it is to be taken in by simple eye contact, smiles, ie) flattery in this artificial world of women, or is this the way it should be? Jet black hair and ultra-cute in a Siamese cat kinda way, somehow seeming innocent despite everything obvious (why else are they out at this hour?) My friend knows the routine, and the pitch is like this: As a foreigner, there are 3 forms of interaction with Thai women: 1) the most common low-brow cliche being the drunken-sailor-style all-out prostitution, where the price is named in advance 2) the flirtacious rapport with some young lovely... and they'll respond sometimes quite aggressively, sometimes enticingly reserved, but one thing is understood: as "farang" (foreigner) of course you pay the way for the entertainment that evening: dinner, clubs, cabs (all totally cheap by US standards), etc. And later? Wait a minute, whoa: if she gives it up, she's irrevocably "yours"... and you have to be similarly prepared to stick with her, as anything otherwise is the ultimate act of disrespect and might get you beat up by her brothers; or 3) apparently the most common and subtle (to mutually disguise any essence of sleeze) option: you give her a little bit of extra "cab" money in the morning. You establish that fine line. Unspoken prostitution... (ah HA!..), but when you think about it, the sexes, the economics... the temptation / justification: How different is this from the general ways of the world anyway?? (Make note to self: 1) don't let these interesting observations side-track 2) always carry camcorder to capture the essential trippy imagery 3) save self-respect and quickly get out of this city!)

So 4 hours after landing and an epic barrage of the senses later, already i get it: I've pretty much passed the first chapter crash-course in the overall vibe of modern day Bangkok. Enough for one evening, for this non-drinker: 1 tequila and 3 beers while talking a 200 word per minute clip, and i've reached saturation. We stop at a 7-11 hawking knock-off brands of junk food for a fraction of US convenience store price. Back home i NEVER shop at convenience stores, but somehow this perfectly caps off the night, kid-in-candy-store style: I get some dried mango packs, brightly wrapped and labeled with cryptic logos and lettering, like manufactured on some strange planet... for 30 cents each.

Time to crash... jet-lag notwithstanding, I close my eyes and I'm running through those same streets in 3D broad daylight, a magic carpet ride.... smiling to myself, having brought my 3-chip camera... the good microphone... the spirit-catchers... the smiling girls and wandering eyes.... zzzz... but wake up, wait a minute! what's the function of this trip? Am i a tourist? (ick!) I've got work to do. I'm here to write... to make DVD(s)... and in motion. Yes! Then to buckle down in some bungalow, set up my studio and "produce" the experiences and storyboard of the most recent past (Eklektro Karavan)... and of course, all along, the auto-pilot objective, electrified: to capture fresh new ambiance.... To do both is the challenge (inspiration can be a distraction), and so back to those final days of LA stress:

I bit the bullet when it was time to pack (1000 gigs of hard drives winning out over my electronic drum, sorely missed), 8 grand alone in one of the bags... cords, connectors, decisions... risk. And so down to the last minute, pay the last bills, cancel the car insurance, store the RVs, turn off the cellphone (fuck YOU Sprint!): Last week's big-pack dilemnas were instantly resolved once i stepped onto that 6am shuttle bus bound for LAX, my "studio" of the next 10 weeks and 2 bottles of contraband (tequila -gifts) packed solid to the tune of 100 lbs. on my back: Gear, have no fear! and I've even got back-up gear along for the trip, having brought 2 laptops. And so I'll give myself a week before i head to the islands, 'cause right now, DIG this city, and I'm ready for ALL the elements.... i step onto the Bangkok Metro talking on a Thai cellphone, half-way across the globe (and what time is it?)... Now minus my RV, i'm on the STREET as opposed to THE ROAD, but either way its the pavement... foreign soil certainly, and unavoidably breathing deeply this otherworldly smogbrew formula = sunshine + overcast, to the power of 8 million urban inhabitants in the mix... the mix... the visions... i give in... tomorrow... tomorrow it all begins... a strange pillow under my head, a backpack nomad on an impossible shoestring budget mission... i'm a Bedoin... drugged by exhaustion... techo-babble... Babble-On, baby... 4:30am... and some car stereo off in the distance... drifting into armageddon... "Love... Only in my dreams..." (Debbie Gibson?)... post-modern, the mantra... mantra... I sink into the deepest sleep of the strangest Siamese dreams.

Good morning... coffee... shower off the sticky candy-coating that comes with traveling... Hard to dry off when its so humid... probably 90... but i'm acclimated already with the kick of the caffeine, writing....
Thank GOD for sleep, as mental cleansing, the sorting out of the psyche...
Now, where were we? Oh yeah, Asia... I'm hungry.

2004-05-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

Jungle Fever!
well just as i was experiencing concurrent weeks of paradise, ideal solar-sonic studio conditions with the RV situation... even surviving the Semana Santa invasion to my private little jungle beach, the trip takes on a more serious tone: SURVIVAL!!
a weird domino chain of events: first, the RVs fridge dies, rather drastically changing my diet, as i had to revert to backpacking in supplies of non-perishable food from the closest habitacion, as well as my water supply (the RV wasn't easily drivable from its jungle beach perch on Playa Mal Paso, literal translation: Beach Shitty-Road). so no problem, nice exercise to Sayulita and back every few days. BUT, i guess in retrospect the death of my fridge drastically changed my diet, 'cause combined with my round the clock hours on the computer n such, my immune system got rather weak, and i caught Varicela (sounds nicer in Spanish), translation: ChickenPox! (from the Alien Children during Semana Santa?) so OK, time to leave the jungle perch anyway, a day-long proposition involving bribing a local landowner's caretaker to unlock a gate to a side path for me, 'cause what goes down doesn't always go back up so easily, when it comes to a 12,000 lb. RV with front-wheel drive. so this gets me past the steepest and rockier parts. but then i can't get up the final incline! after 3 blazing attempts, gravel flying and wheels spinning, it was looking like tow-truck time... till i got the bright idea to try it in reverse. insane, with the amount of momentum i needed, but... success! so i'm back on wheels for the first time in 5 weeks. Straight off I go get my ChickenPox medication and call up some new friends i had recently met on the beach, who live on a nearby nature reserve and had extended an invite for me to stay there. sounded like a perfect place to recuperate, right? El Rancho de la Laguna is a breath-taking bird-sanctuary, and my friends turned out to be incredible hosts, and my Spanish vocabulary soared within a week of staying there, as my pox symptoms dissipated. So i was even able to get back to a little bit of work... even burn a DVD for my friends... of the jam we had done during Easter Week when i met them all on Playa Mal Paso (excerpt of which will certainly be on the upcoming Eklektro DVD).
So flash to 2 days ago: i'm feeling almost 100% again, and decide to finally take a mountainbike ride into the thicket to check things out and see if i could spy a crocodile.... I take a tumble on the bike and the handle-bar stabs me pretty hard in the gut and i limp home and call it a day. i wake up the next day with a fresh new fever. go back to the doctor. by this time i'm dizzy and breaking out in a cold sweat. did the pox return? or did the accident indeed cause a little internal injury? Liver or spleen or??..... at least this is what i THINK my Spanish-speaking doctor is trying to tell me as he's probing around my gut and i'm nearly passing out on the exam table. but let's not forget that La Laguna is a nice breeding ground for mosquitoes... So what brought on the new fever: trauma, malaria.... or? I get referred from the clinic to the regional hospital in Puerto Vallarta. i can't reach any of my local English/Spanish fluent-speaking friends on the phone (as i lack, as does my dictionary, much of the more precise verbiage as a medical diagnosis may require). i take an aspirin and the fever breaks just long enough for me to drive myself to the hospital. As i write this, i've just exited the hospital, and thankfully my doctor spoke about as much English as i speak Spanish, so we got thru it: He's 80% sure there's no internal injury, though this MIGHT've brought on the fever, since my system was already stressed. but he's also 80% sure that i've got Typhoid... which in rare cases is transferable by mosquitoes, but more likely i caught from fridge-death fall-out: eating in a streetside restaurant. I can't believe that i'm almost relieved to hear that i've got Typhoid.... hmm.. didn't Kerouac catch that in Mexico City near the end of "On The Road"? Well if i can't revel in the epic nature of this trip, the bad with the good, then i've got no business being down here for the past few months... but i'm finally diggin the thought of soon returning to the USA... and getting a fresher start on winter down here next year... with a new fridge!

update: lab tests came in today: its neither typhoid nor malaria, so the origins of my mysterious 2nd bout with Jungle Fever remain unknown... despite all this, i'm actually pretty impressed with Mexican health services.

BTW: for those of you who might be wondering, i still haven't finished part 4 of Breakbeat of the Week's "Revelations" episode, parts 1-3 of which were uploaded on 4/15.... for the obvious reason: i woke up the next day with part one of the fever. but since then, in feverish spurts, the movie has expanded way past BBotW standard internet length anyway... about 15 minutes of crazy storyline so far... musical soundtrack DnB/IDM, created on-location during the week leading up to: The Invasion of the Alien Children... featuring an impromptu tribal jam with loads of characters... which i can hardly believe actually got recorded and filmed, and just ties the whole trip together for me. Dig it on DVD, soon. snippets to the website, sooner (http://www.eklektro.net/ek-desperados.html). voice-over text excerpts as DVD taste-test teaser, below:

The road just goes and goes...
and all the more so with this... solar-studio
the things i've seen.... the things i've come to know
the things that.. fell out of the sky...
just landed in front of my lens, totally un-contrived
burned onto hard-drive...
if i could transcribe this never-ending storyline
for the ears and the eyes, in a quest for real-time
the cosmic intention: the core of the creation...
From simple life-support to full-time inspiration,
Everybody needs a space-ship
to best draw in the divine intervention of the muse
And the mission? to find the art of life
the interplanetary search for vital bits of light
why NOT migrate to Mexico, where it seems near everything is... improvised?
and somehow sustainable, as this jungle beach has more than satisfied...
(despite the typhoid!)
with the electrolyte, the circuitry, and the bio-rhythms that have become me:
REVELATIONS
this is a wake up call for those who see a studio as something stationary
for those who see recording as an industry
or energy only-in-terms of a commodity, as something finite.
your dinosaur days are as numbered as the common copyright.

feverishly,
e>k>G

ps: maybe not totally eco-friendly, but a step in the right direction:
shy of fuel cell technology to propel an RV,
next year we're converting this rig to Mex-friendly propane!
cleaner-burning, cheaper, cool-looking tanks to mount on the roof and definitely more appropriate as Rocket-fuel!!

2004-04-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

Hola mi Gente,
wow, over 2 weeks in one stationary place, simultaneously the most peaceful and most stressful experience i've ever had, if you can imagine this. anyone who comes down here (remote Mexico) with as much gear as i have is destined to become a marked man, and while i've kept things ultra-incognito, other than throwing last week's party (!)... and even then, hardly anyone saw inside the RV... regardless, parking in extremely remote (vulnerable locations is never the best idea with an RV... despite how tranquilo it is here... (and with all this GEAR!): i mean, i had JUST gotten used to the fact that i pretty much own this little patch of beach... never more than a few passerby's by day... lulled to sleep every night by the sound of the waves, woken up by jungle birds, the perfect shade of the canopy keeping the temperature as perfect as you could request from up above... gentle ocean breeze... So sunday afternoon... writing, and a truck ambles down the path... i step outside my door and see 2 police officers, different uniforms, and one with his machine gun drawn (!)... telling me that i'm parked on property "privado". "Entiendo, pero..." I try to explain that i had spoken with some local people who said it should not be any problem for me to camp here, pero si necesito a salir ahora (but if i need to leave NOW... ((was i going to raise any issue with a machine gun wielding welcome wagon?))? I explain that i had chosen this place because it was so quiet and perfect for working, and that i was a writer, and that i had made arrangements with the local tow-truck driver to help me get out, when it was time to go... and if it was time to go NOW, then NO problema, i'll go find him right away... if they could understand, its just a bit expensive, so i figured i'd stay until someone requested that i leave. "Tienes una chica al dentro?" (You have a girl inside? said the machine-gun cop, spitting, smiling and acting the total machismo. "No hoy!" (Not today, i smile back and say)... "trabajando..." (working...). They ask a few more questions, and i'm waiting to see if they're going to try to weasel a bribe or something... wishing my fridge was working so i could offer them a cold beer... pretty much the only reason i keep beer on hand in Mexico. But the mood is already lightening, and the older officer says "No problema", shakes my hand and says i can stay. I'm pretty much shocked, first by the gun so flagrantly in my face, then by the sanction to stay... on private property. They get back in their pick-up and hustle off. Now i'm left even more stunned. What brought them all the way out here? Did they have mafioso-bandito friends, and now they're cluing them in? I couldn't concentrate on work, sat pondering my security for a while, and crashed early. In the morning i was thanking God i was left undisturbed during the night, weighing my odds constantly. Monday I awoke to the nicest weather yet (a real 9.9 day, as opposed to the usual 8.5 to 9.5)... solar was kicking... I saw only a couple people from a distance, didn't speak to a soul... incredibly productive day. Captured 5 tapes worth of video to the hard drives and started putting together the rough outline for DVD #1... the rough storyboard to the first release... (i'll release chapter 4 of 6 first... then 5, 6, then back-track to 1, 2 and 3): "Revelations", the first chapter to be assembled and produced from 5 years of audio/video archives, which coincides (same title and theme) with this next Eklektro Breakbeat of the Week, Eklektro Mexico episode number 4... after "Impetus", "Exodus", "Excelsious"... "Revelations" is next in line... and thematically right on cue, as true-to-life revelations have unveiled themselves indeed these past few tropical weeks! I expect i can have the first disk's master finished within 2-3 weeks (fed-exed and duped perhaps 4-6 weeks?) and by the time i finish Breakbeat, umm... "of the Week" number 5 and 6: "Definition" and "Exhibition", it'll be time to head back to the states... its gonna be HOT here in a month! but bottom line, and the biggest weight off my head, here in DVD desperado-land: i WILL indeed finish a DVD before leaving this country... perhaps even have "Definition" (disk #2)'s master in hand by border-crossing time) and best of all, i've discovered that if my formula pans out, i should have enough material for 6 DVD's, released one at a time over the next 6 (or 12) months. and as to actually PRODUCING the disks, as this new experimental format affords, something somewhat interactive... I began reading the manual for DVD Studio Pro 2 software, and i'm incredibly excited. With a bit of study, this program added to my arsenal, as well as some new video styles i've worked on in the past 3 episodes, my relatively new 3-chip camera and much-expanded array of firewire 800 hard drives, i'm gonna be able to churn out the content. It seems that becoming a DVD "recording artist" is indeed my destiny, and yes, there's a method to the madness (the nomadic theme... 5 years of living it, 5 years of writing, Breakbeat of the Week as practice, and promo... and all along the DEFINING, the part that has taken all the TIME)... and it just took sitting STILL in one place for a little while, in the peace and quiet, in order to see the light: instead of being overwhelmed by the prospect of putting out that one end-all disk... rather: Chapters, multiple releases: definitely reflecting cycles in my nomadic life. And so its soon time to make an Exodus out of my beloved perch down here... despite the tow-truck fee (i'm gonna see if i can get a 2 for 1 deal... so i can come back next week). One thing i've learned over the years, its best to move around. And i haven't even seen Puerto Vallarta, and that's the only place to use the bank machine, and i'm down to $5 worth of pesos... am getting a bit tired of the water rationing (only bathing in the ocean the past 2 weeks... soap is hard to control with such big waves! ... and washing dishes with seawater) and i want to see if i can fix my fridge, aluminum-weld my door, change the oil, and get back onto some cheap internet... see just a little bit more of the region... and then there's Semana Santa: gotta find a refuge. Mexican families take to the beach in partying droves for the gran fiesta of Easter Week, often Beverly Hillbilly's style, always loudly(!)... so i gotta find a new place to park me, or be prepared to join quite a different party... for an entire week!
Over and out,
e>k>G

2004-03-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

blogger entry: 3/20/04
spring equinox!
spring comes to mexico, and so much has changed in the past 2 weeks, mainly my perspective... drastically! numero uno, Paolo having to depart northward and back to life, instead of being able to gallavant further south with me... in general, so many uncertainties about being able to make this project self-sustaining, down here where the roads eat vehicles alive... i certainly understand Paolo's reasons for having to get back... but have a feeling i'll soon see him again down here in these climes... so then, from Mazatlan: the next 9 hours drive, further south... a big question mark... and a gracious landing... in the sweetest of jungle towns: Sayulita, to which i wrote an ode :)

i am overblown, Sayulita, and yes i know timing is everything...
after a 9 hour day of driving: indeed
an hour before landing having bought some mysterious jungle fruit
from a smiling woman street vendor (later come to find this fruit is an aphrodisiac)....
and so i've never come to so quickly love a place,
a village... this throbbing jungle mini-city
or at least it seems a sort of homecoming,
with homefires burning many times that what Zipolite could ever be...
ie) unspoiled: enchanted: Sayulita
Just that one more tankfull of gas
and that last bit of bumpy mileage that has in fact spared me.
maybe subconsciously Mazatlan scared me, or justifiably put me on guard;
But it was immediately apparent, now, as i touched down in the townsquare
about an hour after sunset on a tropical saturday evening....
center of activity, maybe still 75 degrees... a mild ocean breeze:
there is a purity and prosperity around Sayulita...
beautiful people, beautiful night, a rhythm and flavor just right...
and i walked right into it, a dusty astronaut beat from the road-burn..
...to a hero's welcome (welcome home to the well-kept secret): Sayulita
for anyone who understands, instantly with a smile, what they've found... Sayulita
twilight arrival in a jungle-town... like stumbling upon BurningMan, in progress! Sayulita
like i'm 16 again, summer and sneaking out at night... Sayulita

looking for my friend Eva, at the internet cafe,
the hub of the well-scrubbed jet-set and their social activities...
an artful artery on the info super-highway (is this still Mexico?)
I walked in (or was i levitating?)
with a fixture of a smile, like through the gates of heaven,
half a dozen girls that made my jaw drop, dressed jungle-sexy
Eva was out for the night...
instead a great guy who bought me a beer, and his beautiful wife, ex-patriots:
they were already living my dream... that i'd dreamt up on the Zipolite beach:
and i return 8 years later, with an RV, computers, solar panels...
and via walkie talkies, they led me to their perfect little jungle house...
and the next day, the perfect jungle beach, HERE: at the bottom of this hill...
and now with my RV indeed stuck, blissfully (too steep a climb for front-wheel drive)
in the middle of the night (the sound of waves and jungle noise)
beautiful beach: where next week we'll throw a bitchin jungle party...
and then we'll absolutely need a tow-truck to come rescue me!
or perhaps i'll stay lodged right here... absolutely safe from anything
safe from uncertainty... under swaying palms... mi estudio y yo...
camping out in the wilds, just a mile from the "city", not a fear in me: Sayulita
i have been taken under her wing / i have been given the brass ring
like Kerouac's mecca, in On the Road, the finale:
except that these best things are free: atmosphere and energy: sustainability...
and i know that this is just the beginning...
nomadically speaking, this is a home i know i'm not soon leaving...

...and a few days later, the ode comes true:
presenting, Sunday 3/21: Eklektro Equinoxio
solar-powered electronic drum circle all-day
electronic music and campfires all night
"Playa de Passion"... just a half-mile walk from Sayulita...
and this perfect location just landed in my lap...

and as i learn more about the area, i come to learn what a fantastic
arena it is for new sounds, with world travelers always passing thru...
with casual beach locations ever-ready for the enterprising...
how easy it is to throw live events....
and how great to come to meet Aaron (DJ Propane Albatross)... and his wife Andie ... sailors, turned Mexican homesteaders... or eklektro "home-fires" as i like to say....
I have a feeling this party is only the beginning...
and while Aaron's extra 2 solar panels turned out to be a fantastic loaner...
given how much shade we have to deal with here in the tropics.. near the beach,
the vegetation grows thick... but we have solutions for everything...
I have a strong feeling this area will come to be my half-the-year kinda home...
and i'm not soon leaving...
but when i do, i suspect it will be a quick trip back (june?), and I will be leaving the RV down here (thru BurningMan, and rainy season here)...
going back for 3 months or so, to fix the Camel, to consolidate storage...
to further liquidate, and try to find a ride back down.. amongst my friends
who might want to get a jump on the season... after Burningman...
bring broken stuff back to get fixed...
bring more stuff down, to perfect the systems...
Eklektro Mexico... who knew?

2004-03-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

once again fallen behind on the blogger, though NOW, while i've finally got a bit of TIME, and we've certainly found the PLACE, we're currently just a bit challenged by cyber-SPACE in that we're currently situated in Mazatlan, Mexico, and internet cafes are either too-touristicly expensive, or a bit of a cross-town drive. this, i grant you, is very little to complain about, as the situation otherwise is pretty damn ideal! although indeed epic in every sense, as i look back: a trip exactly like this (with a solar-powered studio/RV/domicile as transport/turtle-shell) has been several years in the making. when i first traveled to the tropical Mexican coast (1990, playa Zipolite, state of Oaxaca), there was no such thing as internet. As i returned over the years, i began to fantasize about having my whole bedroom recording studio transported down for the winter, and then, without interruptions, i would finally have the clarity of thought and the inspiration of new vistas to allow entirely new works to flesh-out. so goes the theory. so I suppose that I began this process from the minimal side back in '97, when i returned to Zipolite with some fresh new portable technology in my backpack: a Roland MC303 Groovebox that i had converted to run off battery power. Hammock plus headphones, and i began my first explorations into Drum n Bass music. Laptops were still not quite feasible audio recording or editing devices yet, but that very next year, i would travel to Amsterdam with a sort of porta-studio based on a Mac Powerbook 3400c... continuing on to a deserted little Greek isle for a month, armed with some relaxing reading: 3 thick owner's manuals for the Kurzweil K2000 sampler. and then, soon after relocating semi-permanently via RV from Boston to Los Angeles, the grand-daddy of airborne studio trips, Arabic style, The Morocco 2001 festival, where we not only performed with the new super-portable Roland HPD-15 electronic hand-drum, but also brought dual Mac laptops, DV cameras, a mobile video editing suite... and dual LCD video projectors to provide custom created-on-location visuals for the festival. So, yes tech-travel has been a fascination, and i suppose a specialty of mine for quite some time, and most of the time (amazingly-so), on a shoestring budget.
Last winter i attempted a grand-scale revisitation to Mexico, via RV (the first trip since an exploratory RV journey into Baja in '99) with much updated gear, and all housed inside my retro-fitted '76 silver GMC motorhome. the pitch was that i was not going to return without a CD of music composed during the trip... via the mobile studio fueled by solar electricity. I had 2 lovely Israeli girls as my traveling partners, camera-helpers and expert cooks... so i could concentrate on work. But multiple systems breakdowns converged on us, from 2 dead hard drives, to a bad laptop logic board, to as simple-but-vital a scenario as 2 deep cycle batteries failing on me (the Mexican welding shop back in Los Angeles had accidently burned a hole and battery acid slowly drained out). When i returned to LA (without the CD), the transmission promptly decided to go back south... and so much for that particular attempt to go solar-sonic.
So flashing forward to the present day's journey, and today's blogger entry: when i mention that this trip has been several years in the making, believe me that this is no casual remark. Meanwhile many skills have been learned in the process, and the gear itself continues to get ever-more powerful and ever-more portable.... in other words we've raised the bar a bit: We're not returning without an original music and video DVD, of multiple theme...of multiple location... but in general celebration of the marriage of mobility and creativity: when and where one ideally wishes to pursue it (spontaneously? not exactly, but this is the dream). and today, this is where we're pursuing it: we're not kicking it poolside at some Mazatlan highrise, rather we're parked in one of the most beautiful half-forgotten sandy beachfront parking lots between hi-rent properties, and we've even picked up jobs: keep the parking lot clean, and we can stay overnight free! you can have your palm-lined $20/night RV parks, with tennis courts and hot showers. we're sittin pretty right where the local people go after a hard day of work, to drink a cerveza by sunset, or for a weekend hang-out: this beach is the REAL place to be. and its especially nice to be accepted by the locals, as an exception to what they most commonly see: the pampered vacationing gringo: they take us at face value, for what we are. not that i give tours of the interiors of the studio per se. i just tell them in my basic Spanish that i'm a drummer and a writer... working in Mexico... and then they see us picking up the grounds: hard-working gringos.
So as i sat down to write today's blogger entry, i was going to start out by saying how ecstatic and fortunate we are to have made it where we are, and when looking back, how it was some 3 serious months of planning, garage-work and studio preparation to get this RV outfitted, systems backed-up (like Noah's Ark: two by two: 2 laptops, 2 cameras, 2 HPD-15's) bulletproofed, and transported all these bumpy miles down here... studio intact! The last 3 months especially, driven at a winter nomad's maddening pace to get outa' Dodge. after the holidays, it still took us a month and a half to settle various details for a trip of such amazing potentials and uncertain horizons... and then just cross that border! and so now there's no specific time frame other than "no regreso sin DVD"... desperado style. Eklektro Karavan's Breakbeat of the Week has expanded its storylines (and its camera angles, thanks to the karavanning Paolo and his self-contained studiovanagon), and so, while back on track thematically, Breakbeat of the WEEK has totally missed its weekly deadlines... whatever... as long as the sun keeps us fueled, as long as the creativity flows, as long as the roof doesn't leak, as long as the banditos.... umm... i don't even want to think about that.
Hasta la Vista!!
e>k>G

2003-12-21T13:05:00.000-08:00

Winter Solstice: the shortest day of the year is challenging for those of us living on solar power:

Getting the systems ready for Mexico migration, I considered making this the first entry to that still-unused section of the eklektro.net website, accessible via the mainpage: The Philosophy of Gear: (under construction)
Philosophy, 'cause a lot of thought/consideration and testing/fine-tuning goes into mere SUBSISTENCE in an RV orbiting LA... let alone a self-contained solar-powered STUDIO... south of the border.
So when considering an exodus this winter, indeed outside the USA... via RV... seeking to complete the final push of finished-product work on my upcoming DVD, i'm preparing to stay down there for a succession of months... and the systems have got to be in perfect working order... with back-up systems... and stepping back and looking (and laughing) at it; it gets to be more and more like the space mission each and every day... transmission: to go where no RV has ever gone before... why? The Philosophy: Gear... for the sake of experimental on-location media: like the moon mission...
so indulge me in this ongoing analogy: RV as rocketship::

MID-DECEMBER's DIGITAL NOMAD... Revelations from behind the wheel
...like another (motor)home-cooked meal and a hot shower... in a parking lot somewhere between your urban chores and the beach... till security's kickin' you out and you're driving on, Live and Let Die-style till sometime after sundown your RV's a big dog circling slow before laying down at night, find some quiet safe space to sleep, inadvertently wake up early, start the engines with exciting uncertainties amplified day to day... orbiting LA!! :: yeah its OK (great!) to deal with the little logistical downsides of urban rootlessness when you've got the spring/summer/autumn SoCal weather and solar-power to energize you... but winter?
gotta' get OUT.

ie) the price of living mobile / remote / responsible, ultra-all of the above, all of the time, 24/7 urban intermittent exodus apocalypse desert island monolith motorhome affords willful isolation, fluctuating in and out of town like the tides, experimental taste-testings of anti-gravity: hollywood's (hallowed be thy name) potential for depravity, observed from safe distance: fireworks, or how fame and corruption equals mutation (and really bad role models)... from the mainstream (and even so-called underground)... ensuing media explosions and trickle-down dodging of space-junk... (an interesting past-time in the spring/summer/autumn... at one's leisure... but during the winter?)
gotta' get OUT.

surfing SoCal's diverse and often harsh atmospheres, salmon swimming upstream? or rather lab-rats seeking to dissect the strange equation of stardom, art/starvation/temptation on the tip of the tongue: techno (and Ravers, we've been GONE from the get-go) and with tougher techno toys, making pirate noise, kinda outside society kinda thing, or at least truckdriver king of my modest mobile domain today, a RIG after all... and "over and out" hollered over pseudo CB radio, over the wind, stopping only to guzzle up at the pump, love a good truckstop, love to be in motion... and when stopped/camped/beached (still floating)? For a fleeting moment TODAY i think i physically FELT the lack of root (fixed "apartment" or "house"... Holidaze? or did it have to do with the weather?: last taste of mid-70's mid-December and kinda Santa Ana breezy). warm, yet artificial, a warning? I felt it, like detecting a mild earthquake, feeling one'self mildly afloat... vertigo? ... something like it? or rather, a perception... an urge... ....a data analysis.... a seasonal signal: flashing in the back of my sometimes black and white animal-dream mind, interrupts me... chewing, staring into space, sixth sense: translate: Its time to MIGRATE...
gotta' get OUT.

...or at least there's an uproot impending... alone or by herd, a brontosaurus bird: a motorhome taking flight paints funny pictures, funny words: "cosmonaut" sounds a bit too much like comrade, or comedy... "astronaut"? too potentially beaurocratic, and while constitutionally-speaking I'm a hard-core patriot, i prefer dolphin to hawk or dove, politically leaning Libertarian, i prefer perception that we are all fellow space travelers essentially. we all chart our own waters, and while we should always throw a line to someone who is legitimately drowning, government at most should serve as lifeguard only. we must all first learn to swim, and then set out to responsibly keep ourselves afloat. and if i seek to be exemplary, it is as a VEHICLE, for others also seeking to escape the artificiality; and if you want i'm sure i could provide proof: yes, the RV has become me. i am a re-creational vehicle. and perhaps the migrational urge is a virulent strain of technometeorological-INSTINCT that i've developed (start the engines), like a more complex (some may say stifled) sense of smell...(grey-water tank leaking) i can't tell, but i know that the experience has changed me, running on rechargeable batteries (astrology in retrograde) and solar, and i seek further, unlimited options, the unbearable lightness of being, and i say this after 5 years full-time on the road... not a bad deal, all told. Its time to show my hand.

OBSERVATIONS OF A DIGITAL NOMAD:
(miscellania that'll all in some way make it to the DVD... thematically):
whether streetside, off-road or beachside (a "sweet ride")...as this sleeker version of turtle-shell / live-in vehicle affords ("rent-free"? incredibly expensive actually!... to the point of sacrificial...); we (me+RV+anybody who rides with me) are jettisoned at will and oracle-poised upon a rotating cultural observation deck of sorts...a panoramic view perhaps, in that we're solar and wireless, off the grid, pancakes on the griddle while driving and i like to see it in the eyes of those who ride with me sometimes...fresh sunrise and making coffee in the Mojave... a clean desert horizon, envisioning: opportunity: north/south/east/west... in that our RV's front porch changes every day... its either Close Encounters of the Third Kind landing party descending down the runway... urban, in-person... vs. virtual: telecommunications, like Lost in Space; or in-between: an LA impersonal kinda Seaworld, a rush hour behind car window glass, airtight, aquariummmed... the ways in which i/we see the alien species... a subspecies of that which was the ancestry of me: all languishing afloat, watch em flip and do tricks.... and sometimes if they'd swim in, perhaps i'd feed em from the digital kitchens, all's i needs is a bit of kitchen help: co-educational, a kid's TV show, a field trip, won't you be my Raver/neighbor, Mister Rogers meets Buck Rogers... Speed Racer, spouting techno terminology and radical beats, DV cam feed from the cockpit/pulpit... Eklektro video-RadioShow: wireless transmission, and fool-hardy enough to believe any of this makes any difference... awareness? food-chain? all eyes on the same dream? would this be capitalism if i was to suggest we seize the day? The Transgressor: E>K>G : go ahead: or at least try to keep up with me

in a 5 year scheme of things, EKLEKTRO.NET is "almost" ready to launch the new systems content...
closing in on DVD release, a space-oddity perhaps, coming in for a landing this spring, in orbit with E>K>G, alter ego Transgressor and associates Systemsoular... and Naoism, and many more... all independent transceivers in campground / concert... kicking off in a land where its often still legal to do so: may we suggest Mexico?

though i know most of my friends aren't gonna be ready to spring on out in January, if it turns out this way, then perhaps its best i get down there solo and get to work anyway... But what about February? what about making it a big collaborative experiment? i find the beach... the lawless Mexican stretch of sand. the proximity to essentials like internet... I send back salvos, and people karavan on down... or take a cheap bus... and we all live and work and create and relax for a couple/few weeks... and document the experiment... and then i either finish the editing or no regreso... no return... Its a do-or-die DVD... So, ETA back to the USA... April...?

Drug n Decibel

2003-11-12T15:55:00.000-08:00

Eklektro Blogger entry (!) The first in 4 months (!)
Oh yeah, we've been pretty busy: from that particular point A this past summer, to this particular point B upon the verge of LA winter, a strange twisty route, especially the past 6 months of the journey, marked from Moontribe to Moontribe, and at every broken down point in between (those latest blogger entries) and dedicated to those of you i've had infrequent yet ever-intense dialog with when pertaining to WHAT its all about, what we have in common, music/media manifestos, art vs. entertainment in both the underground and public arena, vs. promotions and marketing, and exactly what do you put on a DVD? Digital Nomadic elements: to each their own is the beauty, and establishing definitions of all modular formats in between is the crux. relative to audience/consumers/considerations of earning income to eat while keeping at bay the energy-suckers, tax collectors and bills-payable that most often precipitate the sell-out, historically speaking, fuck that. rather we perfect our stock and trade, of which the definition is every bit as important as the output: and the mission: legitimizing the gypsy... via accountability, ie) meeting halfway the authorities and standing one's ground, HOW and WHEN to spring into action, political discussions along all the fences and nuances (not to the point of side-track discourse or coffeeshop chat/inaction please, nor the vice of over-editing before transmitting, we're perhaps mid-way upon the quest for real-time), the appeal of a free media stream and WHO has it (everybody), and what its to be used for: in these tech-crazy days of the $100 net-ready beater laptop, or loaded $2000 laptop (could-be a "radio station" via $50/month cellphone mid-speed internet CONNECTION), and so we painstakingly put together our own instruction booklet, written daily and rarely edited: commentary from the trenches: keep working at it and to everyone so inclined: please create and perfect your own mobile living systems... more RVs ASAP: be fruitful, multiply, share and time-share. upload and outspeak upon multiple platforms, and to each their own portal, linked. And Eklektro? instigation network first and foremost, hopefully serves to be inspirational (and point in fact demonstrative of the rigors of technology... TRY this at home... TRY this on the road... simultaneously, and perhaps we can soon solve society's blatant techno-cultural problems one mile-marker at a time) the concept of information distribution (protecting of truths), in regards to life/liberty/free speech/sustainability: we present the karavan project, performance (tour) and/or merchandising of media product itself, umm... ethically; all these are secondary with respect to our main and all-encompassing issue: as freshly landed upon our lap again today: protecting our constitutional rights... in the proving ground. and most lately, the california desert:

moontribe 11/9/03
the tally and the cleaning up...
(an aside on the subject of 11-9, the inversion of 9-11, came and went almost without incident...
completely forgot to commemorate the 11-9 eklektro party we threw as a 2-day desert event 2 years ago... losing track of time. post 9-11: how free ARE we?)
11-9: the day after....

11/10/03 tragic constitution-breaching comedy and a waste of taxpayer money...
the hassle continues: the issues:
right to assemble, the policy of the bureau of land management, the politics of the san bernadino police, squandered man-power/resources and invasion of our "privacy" on public land...
helicopters at moontribe, a 6 hour / dozen squad car, k-9 cout d'etat of free land rights...
as some attendees of the gathering became detainees, approached, questioned and temporarily taken into custody on any of several (trumped up) issues: the usual suspects: drug and decibel... permit? charging for the event? intoxicated and/or missing persons?
the means: searches and roadblocks and
the wholesale trouncing of 1st (assembly), 14th (due process) and possibly 4th amendment (?) rights (if you were there and have factual data to account, please write back, albeit anonymous if you'd like)... many WELCOMED the police... cooperated when questioned...
the missing person? a possible spin rumor perhaps generated by the police themselves
as there is no public record presented yet in the public forum for someone having called the authorities to report someone missing. an undercover off-duty police officer could have made that call for that matter. we want a public record of WHO called, from which phone or cellphone at what hour... and if any of these wrongful detentions come to court, we would demand proof of or access to the recording...
an aside: (interesting imagery) the peaceful protest: the 100 person strong circle formed upon turning-off of the soundsystem (almost looked like a helicopter landing pad)
We were all ears, with sound system OFF, wanting to know one good reason WHY this disruption, this show of force in contrast to what was being created and experienced by so many responsible individuals...
sonic decibel levels.. disturbance? polluting of the environment?
public record...as far as we know at this time, nobody got a ticket
BIAS
busts: based on the bad rep of "raves"... perhaps incorrect statistics?
what about drug use between desert "ravers" vs. your common urban nightclubbers.. or the LA "gang" issue? could make an interesting research project... and pie graph...
discrimination of those pushing the limits of freedom out in the desert... where we can cause no harm to others. decriminalization is of course the main issue
...meanwhile, the transgression pattern continues: harassing a non-commercial, non-denominational venture, a mobile camp-out group, connoisseurs and curators of experimental electronic beats and new techno group-consumptional directions in music... social gathering and cooperation...
BUSTED!
re-examination of the infrastructure of land-use
the "crack-house law" as it DOES NOT APPLY to noncommercial gatherings in the wilderness. the constitutionality of road-blocks, as compared to warehouse rave-busts of the 90's. we are a non-commercial venture, and what if we WERE commercial, in regards to exchange of tangible taxable goods?
is this the unspoken view? gov't gotta make money on us?
How to best present the case:
possible solution: all eyes on deck: web-cams and satellite connection, publicized.
supported by paid-for ($1 per view perhaps, as donation, nationwide) streaming broadcasts of these events, in tandem with the protection of our constitutional rights.
(audience-fueled, as hands-on dynamic, open to ideas and feedback, involvement, sharing of info-assets: the funding of lawyers (to protect us all): The EMDEF (Electronic Music Defense Fund)
and to keep rolling, and the ability to fan-out...
the mobile media vehicle(s) and the interface(s) and the performing artists, crew, support production and public speakers... a learning party.
with an important caveat, as to not alienate, drift from main issue or confuse:
no left/right politics issues, no particular party affiliations nor endorsing of candidates
this is an issue of simple public land-rights, discrimination, innocent until proven guilty vs. probable cause (it is probable at ANY urban nightclub that you will find illegal substances if you forcefully surprise search ALL of the clientele... is this an age of prohibition? "thought police"...? We must keep in check The Patriot Act. We mustn't allow ANY abuse of our civil rights. And as data streams in after this latest incident... stay alert, stay tuned, stay free.
E>K>G

2003-08-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

well all y'all, I've been beatin it around in RV-hell for 6 weeks now... a month and a half post-CRASHed (totalled) RV, absolutely ridiculous uprooted studio and camper home all-in-one post crash = none/neither, uprooted and chiropractically kinked up, working in the East LA summer heat to better prep the silver spare RV to ergonomically suit me ASAP means sleepin next to RR tracks, and working with greasy tools and floor jacks breathing smog isn't exactly what the doctor ordered...but with every aspect of gear broken down, what am I supposed to do? blow all the insurance money to be pampered to and/or have the mechanics do all the work?... and still like it or not, murphy's law you get money and it gets absorbed by laundry lists of shit to fix between 2 RVs... ridiculous... but the Rocket was never fully set-up, and it completes the equation that in its first year of 20,000 miles it would've earned now well over $10k of repairs (50 cents per mile long surpassed and dangerously close to a dollar if I didn't do so much of the work myself... inescapable), and so perhaps I was a little short, given the Baja punishment it had taken last winter, and burningman, and even with the transmission I knew the math was still running a bit more reasonable than the Camel's track-record and that we had it coming... So, during this last garage visit, wanting to never again experience anything like the 60 mile per hour front-wheel blow-out I had a couple weeks previous on the Hollywood freeway (when I nearly died in the left lane and then have to change a tire in 100 degree heat), and so believe me when I say I feel like a spaceship's captain, troubleshooting, i shake the front wheels like i've grudgingly suspected and wham, another couple grand on suspension (declared dangerous) and on TOP of all the stuff that I've otherwise set out to fix, or ergomonically refine on my own... re-designs, decisions, materials, installations... more uprooting when you gotta sleep between the powertools and sawdust and laptops needing to be reconfigured for new softwares, and so the experience has completely shut down all creativity 'cept sometimes between garage hours when I get a chance to do some angry bits of writing... they start off like never to be sent emails, messages in bottles and damn if I haven't been a ship-wrecked pirate, and if it wasn't for the 18 grand then I probably would've been driven to do something drastic by now... the insurance fight and the ups and downs of last month... might've blown it all off, got a lawyer and took off to go hitch-hiking through europe.. but when I was sitting in the office of the sharp-dressed lawyer dude who's all of my age, all high-rent and waste of view-space and airconditioning.. having taken me half an hour to find parking for my motorhomestudio on Wilshire, he's talking the shark talk salespitch gonna get rich and I see a picture hanging on the wall behind him... of him shaking hands with Gray Davis and smiling, and so I bullshitted out of signing any papers and right there blew off the idea of empowering another lawyer... the sick process. And so I'm glad I solved at least half of it already by getting up there in the face of my insurance company, to whom i'm nothing but a 20 page fax and forceful voice on the other end of the phone... though it sucked another week of my life and now its suddenly end of summer and nearly time to file those already extended taxes for '02, the write-off I wanna amortize over 5 years... when I blew 15 grand taking 2 RVs coast to coast and back, expressly for the promotion of a particular idea and (hand in hand) for the hell of it, to TEST the systems, and a hell of an idea if not so ahead of its time and so it'd take some time to even find some people to cook it up with, or bring some people back to LA with us... via a digital karavan? ( "we have the technology" duh, mobile streaming.. whatever... and whatever it takes) expressly to meet and start working with the likes of you and yours... we keep TALKING about a mobile network, and I know damn-well first-hand it takes a foolish jumping-off of sorts to get things started, and yeah its all been slated, and yet you haven't made it out to LA all summer... and now you're supposed to give me a call about burningman... in other words, Armageddon, the immediacy of the moment, real-time media, testing of systems, communications... ahem... the whole thing could use a good dose of pyrotechnics... and (yelled like the Pink Floyd dude at the end of 'nuther Brick in the Wall:) "I'm STILL waiting!"
came close many times, but TODAY will mark the first day I will plug in the HPD-15 since the crash... the first day I will get solar-sonic with the drum, and I better hurry before something else goes wrong... from Point DOOM (for the first time in 2 weeks)
over and out,
E>K-fucking>G

2003-07-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

Living within the systems: geographically challenged locations: post-crash RVTBDD (RV-studio totalled by drunk driver!) situation update:

No other way to be actively overseeing the mechanisms of the rebuild process (and no choice in the matter!), camping out at the garage... (reimbursement first, thank god for uninsured motorist coverage) and awaiting insurance results (and when we repaint shall we go for the exact same shade of silver? i think so), and should i get a chiropractic 2nd opinion? if i was in a wheel chair as a result of this drunken out of control kid (his 2nd offense), you know i'd sure feel some... shall we say animosity? here its just rage fueled by a bit of pain.. but AMPLIFIED intent, and tomorrow promises to be a D-day, for both me and the RV... i expect to get word on initial RV settlement, a spinal therapy workshop... and in terms of time-frame to both straighten me out as well as put the humpty dumpty back together again...at an uncertain pace this summer, but yet another bright-side opportunity to leap-frog in an ever-improved way...
but DAMN, being thrown unbennounced (NOT in the driver seat having the luxury of bracing for the crash, but rather working in the back with headphones on and typing... judging from the impact of that crash i certainly could've been as fragile as my laptop... and died.

and so i looked back at last week's tapes, both pre and post crash and i can honestly say i know i do my best audio/video shit both preliminary and in the midst of catastrophe... but even more spooky, the material that came out just previously, within hours of the crash... as if i inadvertently or even willfully sucked such energy out of the cosmos... or so would say some of my more neo-mystic friends... the question of hyper-pace, proposition, collaboration, indicative of taste, I'm certainly scheming, cooking up, and specifically last week: 4 days solo and straight after the summer solstice string of multi-night urban gatherings and fullmoon camp-out party performance engagements.. i wait all year for that exact atmosphere and then crank out at sustained write speed... post June gloom Malibu, mobile studio: music, video and drumming and lyric and graphic and impending wireless upload... the subject matter itself spiralling upward, seemingly limitless, and then: CRASH: prophetic:?? just like last year at this exact same time::there was an underlying building of intensity, leading up to the blown engine on the highspeed road back home... and in TX... yes...of course... cosmic energy and/or something like that... no time to over-analyze it... i'd still consider my self FORTUNATE.

and SO i was and AM still now about to speak out, and my position is loud enough at least to warrant obtaining specific liability insurance, first and foremost full coverage, as i am ready to put out to free market some whole new kind of product or product line/lyric and tracks/intellectual property/daily=real-time radio: Eklektro, this is publicity statement #1, delivered in corresponding experimental format, as i know that we must first seek to protect thy own interests.... OK, so its been 4 years of development, sewing such seeds, and the time and the season is perfect, sleeping in the streets, camping at the beach, composing, streaming... the process of assembling interconnected systems with other mobile friends, and i'm finished with the preliminary, just one little rebuild project to go... some preliminary funds freed-up inadvertently, and look out for the raw new music content and/or theorizing that might fly out of me in the coming weeks, re-creating full velocity, and if i was an asshole i'd say something cliche like eat my dust or don't tread on me! How about welcome aboard? Create in motion baby!
E>K>G

2003-07-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

OK, its come to our attention that our web servers are down, which has crippled the Eklektro.net website as well as caused emails to either bounce or fade away in cyberspace... Please resend all mail to this earthlink address (warehouse600@earthlink.net. We'd like to hear from you!).

So all THIS hassle after last week's struggle... still continuing... the trickle-down of having the tan RV (The Camel) totalled by a drunk driver... now exactly one week of immediately-changed surrounds and reordered realities... crashed up and dropped down at the east LA bodyshop garage, within a heatwave... a week which would've otherwise been spent working on cool shit out at the beach! So we're relocated, grounded against our will, and without AC... and rather than giving up the ship, i'm working from within ground zero, the wounded RV... documenting damages, dusting off, digging out and otherwise protecting interests... sleeping next to RR tracks... the downtime inciting more aggressive documentary media energies... and nowhere to post 'em just yet... but once again, please stay tuned... the new servers are propagating!

In the meantime, emergency cash liquidity for a good cause:) Eklektro T-shirts are on sale for $10 each plus $3 shipping... the specific page on the site is of course down, but we've got most sizes, in black, blue, green and white... and we accept paypal at warehouse600@earthlink.net.

And in the meantime: if anyone can recommend and/or donate a coastal safe-haven, we'd unbelievably appreciate it! an off-street temporary location where we can park the wounded vehicle for a few weeks once we finish the mechanical repairs (bent frame+), and where we can continue to work within the studio, while doing paint-job prepwork at night? the RV is not really THAT unsightly, and its gonna look great when we bounce back in matching silver!

and lest we forget: considering the crusade towards mobile streaming....
http://eklektro.blogspot.com

so OK friends, fear not, fear nothing, we're fighting back after the crash, counting blessings (and we're happy to be alive)! See you soon,
E>K>G
greg/eklektro.net

2003-06-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

PS: let me know (or please remind me) if you want me to send (or re-send) you an invite to join this blog... to be able to post to it... or i can move its hosting to LiveJournal format so its totally open-ended/free-form, or under a different topic than eklektro... you name it... open to suggestion. thanx! G

2003-06-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

YO my faithful, and greetings and thanks for reading, and what a busy last 10 days, from Gathering of the Tribes, to 10-year anniversary Moontribe... the latter 3 days so perfectly getting back to the core of WHY we gather, WHAT we are driven to create, and with WHOM we choose to recreate... and to bring it beyond.... further... and into further focus... and into the environs of Summer Solstice, Southern California, a well-needed several hundred mile karavan stretch.... and then back to LA... and a few choice days of solar compositional time willfully marooned in Malibu... the lifting of June Gloom, ready to launch this weekend with Cyber EZ Ryders........
......... and then last night The Camel and i get hit by a drunk driver.

pretty cool having the life flash in front of you, and I got air, and some sideways whiplash, as did ALL my gear: drums, dishes and laptops scattered and mixed with bits of refrigerator contents.... results of being hit head-on while otherwise peacefully parked beachside and unsuspecting the drive-by DWI. so now its work, paperwork, testing systems and pushing the cybernetic limits of the Ryders: ie) The Camel: can we rebuild her? (do you recall exactly this time last year and the blown engine in TX? we tend to bounce back bigger.) my 26' friend who housed and fed me and led me to this state, and whose solar energetic ways keep me thinking ever higher... and now we're all getting wireless... 'specially my friends in the process of following me out here from the east coast... and AZ's on-fire Systemsoular launching full-nomad and soon to join our orbit of LA... We've got the definition, the flow, the means, the state of the art systems.... an awaiting audience needing to see this kind of hands-on... mmm... vitality! fuck documentary... stream exactly this... the letting-off-steam jams that result from these escapades and experiences... I make my best late-night laptop shit when down and out in parking lots. and i drum best under the sunny skylights (skylab). i see the same vibe and hear the same stories from all of YOU and we've got to mix and sync all these experiences in the state of Nao, ON the road: create in motion and put it OUT! and so i'm beat-up and tireless, sleepless since last night's crash yet spouting off propositions of direction like an undying breakbeat village idiot... and in my gut i've GOT to start this streaming shit for real, now! I've already been configuring and scheming for a year and a half (live-jam stream plan launched during NYE '02 Moontribe... project Eklektro Karavan) and so I esteeem to come back from this crash with The Camel sporting Rocket-matching (and intimidating strength-in-numbers 4th amendment anonymous) SILVER... = fleet. with a new steering column, radiator, AC, bumpers, front fiberglass and straightened front frame... not to mention my new awaiting regimen of chiropractic treatments hopefully also serving to straighten out my studio slouch. no better rehabilitator than Summer, and so what if we're not touring as previously-planned for this summer with MotionDetector... Euro-side....? So Cal is a scene just begging for it and our synchronicities threaten to bring it... another generational summer of love if we're not careful... and the spirit of 1776 is right round the corner next couple weeks... the over-the-counter symbolism ready for our co-opt... technology in our hands = a controlling interest in the phenomena of freedom ("enduring"), and damn the government's torpedos (!)... I feel the best intent of my alter ego coming on, politico, and its ready to free-form... libertarian stylee... I want to beat the fuck out of independence day drums... and i only hope (self-imposed symbolical dead-line) we can resurrect the mobile media machine in time for July 4... a time-frame which gives us another 40-some days afterwards to refine in time for Burningman (if you're familiar with this year's theme, spirituality... proposed project: Cyber-Evangelic). fits the timeframe... thematic, as I believe we're ready to start with the demonstrational phase of operations, as Eklektro theory-in-practice comes in many modes and levels of LIVE electronic performance: Festival (outdoors, tours), Demonstrational (tactical, street performance, protest), Conventional (clubs, gigs, standard staging and digital DJ sets) and Intellectual (lectures, tech-seminars, spoken word and instructional materials)... This is merely the outline. it is YOU who provide the flavor. and armed with proper promo from all of us, i promise you an innovative and relentless "marketing" campaign until we reach artistic solvency.... ie) whenever you would choose to go under the umbrella of Eklektro, i propose positive cash-flow, self-contained, and with members maintaining a fluctuating and secure touring system within 6 months. i'm serious, and this plan depends upon tapping an unconventional cash-cow.... so please help me develop our "artist profiles" to reflect the diversity of talent, presentation, and best foot forward production that we COULD provide. and of course each site would be privy to the same info... similar if not same structure...

So I may be living nose-to-grindstone at this garage for the next 2 weeks... dry heat and grease as opposed to beach... I could be doing some of my best-ever drumming at night if anybody wants to come out here and record/jam industrial style with me. there's RR tracks n noise within a hundred feet of my disabled domicile. the owner of the shop gives us the run of the place at night. many percussive surfaces and power tools. i want to sand 'er down and start preppin for paint. anybody who can help this flow faster in any way these next couple weeks gets my gratitude and premium barter for whatever i've got that you need... copyright free. if you got this blog-link, i consider you full conspirator and on-the-team... and if i'm not mistaken, i believe its your team, as i think we're all talking the same terms. but let's keep fronting multiple domains: (in no particular order): fishing for funding, trolling for tours, kicking it for the love of the kick:
Systemsoular.com, Naoism.com, MarkTrance.com (unlaunched), Knobfreak.com (unlaunched), Negative2?.... Cactusland.org, ICTV1.com, Eklektro.net/com/org, UMF.net? PatriotReact.net (unlaunched)...
and we're ALL all-ways under construction... work in progress... ready for the next relaunch...
dig you all,
E>K>G

2003-06-14T03:04:00.000-07:00

mobile BLOG:
Not quite streaming media, but being online at 90mph... at 3am, flying through the desert with a full moon is a bit of a trip. We're still in the Sprint footprint, but i'm sure we'll lose reception soon. This would've been an interesting trip to stream, but ever more apparent exactly how many synchronized persons it would take to maintain an audio stream of live-played electronica while the RVs are in motion. to my knowledge this particular weird broadcasting configuration has never been done before... especially with wireless MIDI between vehicles... jamming in tandem. not sure how an Airport's range might be affected by motion. we'll open this project up again next weekend... but for now... gotta hit the party before sunrise!

2003-06-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

...a late night last night, and with RVs camped out at Qtopia for the Gathering of the Tribes:
suddenly this blog takes a turn, but consistent with what we were previously proposing for June 20th or so, (if you scroll down some) except that it jumps a whole week earlier, as we make an exodus from LA this friday afternoon, for a 3-4 hour drive out to points unknown (rather undisclosed). But along the way, it appears at this moment that all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, and that we will finally achieve our experimental objective of MOBILE and free-form electronica streaming via cellphone/laptop feed (if not this week, then definitely next week!)... stream live performance while in-motion... from inside the RVs, while enroute to the event. even jamming wireless MIDI between the 2 RVs. and it appears that we may indeed have the donated server and a ready-configured laptop to crunch the numbers, leaving our Macs available to stay on the music... so oh yes, please stay tuned...

So from the intentional/political level, and on the topic of what we would ideally set out to achieve... and what we can experiment with all summer here in LA: mobile events (non-promoted parties) that orbit the city, with "audience" numbers always in the vicinity of the legal non-permit limit of 45 at a time.. current limits on the right to assemble (a detraction, but something we can sure work within, being on the move, orbiting LA... ) and if it gets larger, we branch off: satellite systems, 2 or more web-connected RVs if need be.

...events to test the extent of our civil liberties and rights to assemble. an exercise/excuse to be organizing our abilities to communicate on the fly.. to be connected in real-time, with pirate radio (internet) broadcast....

EKG@eklektro.net

2003-06-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

Eklektro Karavan Productions
presents you with a proposition:
Orbiting-LA (the first in a series?)
and at this exploratory level, by invite-only:

Orange Alert...
"There was a strange vibe in the air, the kind of feeling one gets when there's a sudden shift about to take place... the kind of feeling when you lose sight of where you are on the map... and the world jumps, the cultural clock tick tocks, sirens go off, unmarked cars fly by and you're in the midst of it, as an urban dweller with helicopters circling overhead... smoke on the horizon... video cameras, radio waves, billboards, bumper stickers... guns?"
Adrenalin, we laugh it off, dismiss such talk and try to walk on the bright side... the game of numbers, survival is after-all a positivity quest. obsessing upon the acknowledged lessening of our odds (Orange Alert), in conventional terms, threatens to lessen the immediate experience in front of us... LIVING! Orange Alert? and so perhaps these days we try to kidnap panic's wasted energy, channel and run with the excitability: to CREATE a bit more rather than otherwise over-analyze, recreate rather than fallback, procreate rather than retract... long and short of it you're reading something from another one of "them"... a music-driven new millenial hippy; with a tech-chip on my shoulder, freedom-loving: Summer 2003 and it looks like a good time to activate freedom-enabling technologies. Now that we've got that out of the way, welcome to my particular take on the same portal i share with a cherished batch of others: to broadcast the scene as it flies by... this moment in time... the vitality... and scenery... Be intense and inspirational if you care to be... and i'd rather be thought of as industrious than as another one in the industry. And still we want to produce artful "product", and where do you stand on this? Through this process, and as shared-dividend, we'd like to examine the position of new media, ie) mega-corporate/investment/compromise-free... we've built the beginnings of network interface as could resound any of the countless or co-opted commercial media messages... We have (2) solarized and web-enabled mobile RV studios at the ready, and we'd like to use this performance/broadcast portal-formula as a soapbox to keep our countrymen free.... as "one nation under a groove" implies internationally, and as internet is border-free... live FREE or die.

Whether hawk or dove, tuned-in or happily oblivious, stock broker or embittered artist... and whether you're a subscriber to conspiracy theories or not... the day is/was/will-be mixed with uncertainties... accelerating in changing times, shifting economies, tightened belts and borders, wandering eyes... and indeed now literally, suddenly, unconstitutionally... a domestic crackdown, a retraction of rights including those of public group dynamics... the Patriot Act, read up on it. If not monitored, it could (has indeed already begun) begin the process of treating citizens like schoolchildren. Seems like the best of times to stand one's ground: deliberately, responsibly, gloriously... consider these 3 different states, and live them out simultaneously... matter-of-factly... but multi-tasking takes practice... and today's best target exercise?: THE RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE. the regimen? throw lots of responsible and successful parties... organize that utopian string of super-intentional and traveling block parties...
and in this respect, and with respectful invitation to The Gathering of the Tribes, the timing is amazing... Eklektro Karavan and Cyber EZ Ryders present... a proposed summer of live semi-local and mobile events:

secretly...

Somewhere, sometime in the vicinity of the summer solstice (June20/21 or so?), Eklektro.net and CyberEZRyders Mark Trance and EKG, in association with Club Q-topia, DreamCircus, LAFCO, Learning Party (on wheels), Naoism, Motion Detector, the tail-end of Lollapolooza and all ending-up at Burningman; WE, the unofficial LA satellite sub-Society for Summer 03 will present version one of what COULD be a new weekly non-promoted promotional event:
Orange Alert: a formula for fun, a seat of learning where we all get a chance to ride shotgun, a last-ditch last-minute-announced mobile party and synchronization attempt, with multiple locations, surprise special guest performers, electronic drum circle performance, sometimes wtih lo-fi realtime broadcast... ,and more... streetside, beachside, mountaintop or downtown desert... from afternoon thru late evening, with lunch and dinner served ..., we will let this event unfold into what it will BE... super-variably and free-formed, ie (we are NOT with-holding info, we are just now (thanks to techno-illogical innovations) experimenting with the concept of NOT being tied down to pre-planned details, NOT having to go throw the power play of "promoting" what is essentially a FREE-for-all and YET, and THEREFORE, we will be aiming to execute an intelligently-thrown, super-well-intended, creatilvely covert and perhaps one of the most demonstrational and timely parties you may ever attend... VITAL to kicking off the summer, vital to breaking the molds, help us redefine what makes for a good time... (renegade style) through mobility and interconnectivity... "potentiality" as theme... as each gathering may include possible urban exodus, optional camp-out, as well as quality down-time, the obligatory systems tests and configuration sessions... we will get increasingly better at this. Through this process, the music regains its vitality, its method of delivery, and with our complimentary RVs built for speed, we esteem to be the most notorious portable sound system... but please don't expect that we'll have giant speakers and flashy lighting, as we are running our party completely off of SOLAR POWER and are looking to maximize the interactive performance possibilities when the number of audience, level of production, ratio of live to net audience (will we indeed stream this time?), all blissfully indeterminable... and promoter to performer, interchangeable... and these types of parties are usually best achievable in mid-level numbers... and FREE to the VIP-invited, as well as the chance crossed-path public... but we need your participation in order to pull this off and transform it into something more than just a portable sound system and 2 guys jamming from RVs... more artful than a protest... more subtle than a peace rally... perhaps a techno version of the "Be-In", as well as a live mobile network demonstration. we need you to help us communicate the right message to those whose paths we cross...

To keep wheels turning: at this level, admission-free: beyond the a spontaneous free barter or gift economy hopefully as an afterthought... for necessary resources... vehicle upkeep, audio/video gear that don't come cheap... we're resourceful, and a little goes a long way... and we want to get the streaming project up to speed, with project Eklektro bringing you continuing FREE electronic vibes all summer... we invite you to become involved however you may choose... as artist, supporter, promoter and vibe maintainence crew... But even soliciting your input we need to be clear and deliberate... and respectful: WE WANT IT TO BE KNOWN THAT AT NO TIME WILL WE EXPECT TO HAVE TIME TO MAKE SPECIAL PHONECALLS TO RALLY INDIVIDUALS, OR MAKE SPECIAL INVITATIONS BEYOND BLOG OR EMAIL OR WEBSITE... and please don't take offense that we don't. but if you're comfortable and current with either blogging, web-forum or email, then please know that we await your input, your feedback, your intelligence data collected from your side of the city... and all these salvos will be addressed, answered on a daily if not hourly basis, cellphone wireless internet, and i think this is the only way we'd be able to do this effectively without going crazy; essentially batch-process our communication updates via blog. Or so we'll see. LA is a big place, and to be in the right place at the right time certainly involves networking. and whether you care to become hands-on involved, or just tune in on the web, we intend to do our best to keep you up to date and in the loop.
And speaking of loops...
Music: kicking if off: the beauty of this party is that it indeed will BE what it will be, and the variety of jams and special guests with special gear promises to keep things super-eclectic, and speaking of hectic; even if our trip route tires out all the performing guests, you ALWAYS get the latest beats of our mobile "house-band", Cyber EZ Ryders, featuring the never-ending electronic achives and real-time remixes of Mark Trance, now currently completely set-up inside the 23' silver 6-wheeler, The Rocket; with drums, effects and super-minimal megaphone MC interjections by E>K>G (EklektroGreg), fluctuating from machine to machine, together directing a mobile orchestration in which you are invited to collaborate... attend/perform/enjoy/record... this is a special invitational, starting with those who GET it... no big-gig illusional dynamic of promoter and ticket-buyer... we're letting you in on the experiment, and it doesn't take much imagination to believe that it just might parallel our electro-cultural needs at the moment, artistically. So come help us pull it off!

Eklektro stands for alternative means of live electronic media delivery, suggesting exploring the "purpose" and uses for performance-media as new communicative tools... and in this day and age; awakening the full purpose of the media artist, or digital nomad... karavan... for whom the day begins with a wake-up transmission... sytems status check and navigation report... And as for exactly when we decide to "call" the party? Often the weather, the gear or the moon has a say in it.. so stay tuned for clues on this blog... the real-time morning broadcast (blog announcement and/or eventual audio stream)... this is the formula, the message tree, for what will be a day and night-long 24 hour party...if and when it is MEANT
to be.

So please exuse the understated request to please STAY tuned :)
Looking forward to hearing back from you...

E>K>G

2003-06-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

(for the last-minute alternatively-announced event to be called sometime around June 20th:) this is a special invitation, and you have been singled out to RSVP for directions and details. they will NOT be posted on the site, and once we are on the day-of the party (and we will announce on the morning of, so we need you to check every morning at 9 on our blog or eventual "daily manifesto" page... for those that are up that early... the morning update...)
the URL will be announced the morning-of. clues as to which side of town are announced by noon, and the party starts at 1PM with the final word of initial launch location... with half-hour updated route-projections, in case you want to check in as we hit the other side of town... orbiting LA, theory into practice: exercising intelligent communications, maximizing freedoms. Are you ready for this road trip?

behind the scenes:
we do not need too big of a soundsystem, so we will not need to charge people, or any necessarily huge in-person audience to cover any astronomical expenses... (our return on our investment will come from the eventual sale of our weekly data-CDs and monthly DVDs). too-large an "event" will attract unwanted attention for what is to be otherwise and for our purposes maximizing our current legal rights/limitations of no more than 45 persons gathered at one time without a permit... and we can to some creative extent get around this... if we spread out at a distance with 2 vehicles connected wireless internet... we can jam from perhaps a mile apart...on and off the buses... mass carpooling recommended... moving from bus to bus. the right to assemble... to scramble... to dance

stay tuned for mild-mannered email with encrypted URL (you'll know what to do)
this email will otherwise self-destruct... .it pays to check your email twice per day... and that's all it'll take...

misc to-do list: convert blog to LIVE JOURNAL, put up web page dedicated to the creation of the event, but changing URLs.. a treasure map, and a search for clues taking you on a tour through each other's mainpages... mainpage requirements: under 100k pageload, with optional message/media art URL for those to click or not click... the stress is that we all insert certain vital message media our postings... we suggest for example, if you're a digital DJ, what equipment you might like to bring and what BPM you might like to jam at... but you MUST RSVP to "attend"... we hold an informal LA rehearsal a few days previous, as well as "virtual rehearsal" (the web-blog) on eklektro.net... Solar-sonic: a collection of live-recorded outdoor street performances

2003-06-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

Eklektro Karavan Productions Presents: Orbiting-LA
the first in a series, by invite-only:
Orange Alert...
"There was a strange vibe in the air, the kind of feeling one gets when there's a sudden shift about to take place... the kind of feeling when you lose sight of where you are on the map... and the world jumps, the cultural clock tick tocks, sirens go off, unmarked cars fly by and you're in the midst of it, as an urban dweller with helicopters circling overhead... smoke on the horizon... video cameras, radio waves, billboards, bumper stickers... guns?" Adrenalin, we laugh it off and try to walk on the bright side.
Whether hawk or dove, tuned-in or happily oblivious, stock broker or embittered artist... and whether you're a subscriber to conspiracy theories or not... the day is/was/will-be mixed with uncertainties... accelerating in changing times, shifting economies, tightened belts and borders, wandering eyes... and indeed now literally, suddenly, unconstitutionally... a domestic crackdown, a retraction of rights including those of public group dynamics... the Patriot Act, read up on it. It begins to treat citizens like schoolchildren. Seems like the best of times to stand one's ground: deliberately, responsibly, gloriously... consider these 3 different states, and live them out simultaneously... matter-of-factly... but multi-tasking takes practice... and today's best target exercise?: THE RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE. the regimen? throw lots of parties... organize a string of super-intentional and traveling block parties...
and in this respect, Eklektro Karavan and Cyber EZ Ryders present... a proposed summer of live semi-local and mobile events:

secretly...

Somewhere, sometime in the vicinity of the summer solstice (June20/21 or so?), Eklektro.net and CyberEZRyders Mark Trance and EKG, in association with Club Q-topia, DreamCircus, LAFCO, Learning Party (on wheels), Naoism, Motion Detector, the tail-end of Lollapolooza and all ending-up at Burningman; WE, the unofficial LA satellite sub-Society for Summer 03 will present version one of what COULD be a new weekly event:
Orange Alert: a formula for fun, a seat of learning where we all get a chance to ride shotgun, a last-ditch last-minute-announced mobile party and synchronization attempt, with multiple locations, surprise special guest performers, lo-fi realtime broadcast, electronic drum circle performance, and more... streetside, beachside, mountaintop or downtown desert... from afternoon thru late evening, with lunch and dinner served ..., we will let this event unfold into what it will BE... super-variably and free-formed, ie (we are NOT with-holding info, we are just now (thanks to techno-illogical innovations) experimenting with the concept of NOT being tied down to pre-planned details, NOT having to go throw the power play of "promoting" what is essentially a FREE-for-all and YET, and THEREFORE, we will be aiming to execute an intelligently-thrown, super-well-intended and perhaps one of the most demonstrational and timely parties you may ever attend... VITAL to kicking off the summer, vital to breaking the molds, help us redefine what makes for a good time... (renegade style!) through mobility and interconnectivity... "potentiality" as theme, a party of opportunity... as each gathering may include possible urban exodus, optional camp-out, as well as quality down-time, the obligatory systems tests and configuration sessions... we will get increasingly better at this. Through this process, the music regains its vitality, its method of delivery, and with our complimentary RVs built for speed, we esteem to be the most notorious portable sound system... but please don't expect that we'll have giant speakers and flashy lighting, as we are running our party completely off of SOLAR POWER and are looking to maximize the interactive performance possibilities when the number of audience, level of production, ratio of live to net audience (will we indeed stream this time?), all blissfully indeterminable... and promoter to performer, interchangeable... and these types of parties are usually best achievable in mid-level numbers... and FREE to the VIP-invited, as well as the chance crossed-path public... but we need your participation in order to pull this off and transform it into something more than just a portable sound system and 2 guys jamming from RVs... more artful than a protest... more subtle than a peace rally... perhaps a techno version of the "Be-In", as well as a live mobile network demonstration. we need you to help us communicate the right message to those whose paths we cross...

To keep wheels turning: at this level, admission-free: beyond the a spontaneous free barter or gift economy hopefully as an afterthought... for necessary resources... vehicle upkeep, audio/video gear that don't come cheap... we're resourceful, and a little goes a long way... and we want to get the streaming project up to speed, with project Eklektro bringing you continuing FREE electronic vibes all summer... we invite you to become involved however you may choose... as artist, supporter, promoter and vibe maintainence crew... But even soliciting your input we need to be clear and deliberate... and respectful: WE WANT IT TO BE KNOWN THAT AT NO TIME WILL WE EXPECT TO HAVE TIME TO MAKE SPECIAL PHONECALLS TO RALLY INDIVIDUALS, OR MAKE SPECIAL INVITATIONS BEYOND BLOG OR EMAIL OR WEBSITE... and please don't take offense that we don't. but if you're comfortable and current with either blogging, web-forum or email, then please know that we await your input, your feedback, your intelligence data collected from your side of the city... and all these salvos will be addressed, answered on a daily if not hourly basis, cellphone wireless internet, and i think this is the only way we'd be able to do this effectively without going crazy; essentially batch-process our communication updates via blog. Or so we'll see. LA is a big place, and to be in the right place at the right time certainly involves networking. and whether you care to become hands-on involved, or just tune in on the web, we intend to do our best to keep you up to date and in the loop.
And speaking of loops...
Music: kicking if off: the beauty of this party is that it indeed will BE what it will be, and the variety of jams and special guests with special gear promises to keep things super-eclectic, and speaking of hectic; even if our trip route tires out all the performing guests, you ALWAYS get the latest beats of our mobile "house-band", Cyber EZ Ryders, featuring the never-ending electronic achives and real-time remixes of Mark Trance, now currently completely set-up inside the 23' silver 6-wheeler, The Rocket; with drums, effects and super-minimal megaphone MC interjections by E>K>G (EklektroGreg), fluctuating from machine to machine, together directing a mobile orchestration in which you are invited to collaborate... attend/perform/enjoy/record... this is a special invitational, starting with those who GET it... no big-gig illusional dynamic of promoter and ticket-buyer... we're letting you in on the experiment, and it doesn't take much imagination to believe that it just might parallel our electro-cultural needs at the moment, artistically. So come help us pull it off!

Eklektro stands for alternative means of live electronic media delivery, suggesting exploring the "purpose" and uses for performance-media as new communicative tools... and in this day and age; awakening the full purpose of the media artist, or digital nomad... karavan... for whom the day begins with a wake-up transmission... sytems status check and navigation report... And as for exactly when we decide to "call" the party? Often the weather, the gear or the moon has a say in it.. so stay tuned for clues on this blog... the real-time morning broadcast (blog announcement and/or eventual audio stream)... this is the formula, the message tree, for what will be a day and night-long 24 hour party...if and when it is MEANT
to be.

So please exuse the understated request to please STAY tuned :)
Looking forward to hearing back from you...

E>K>G

2003-06-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

"Originality, an impossible state... we must forever strive for."
E>K>G

Eklektro is eclectic electronics... everywhere!

1998-10-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

(Four score and 7 and a half years ago to be safe... as text cascades by date,
I date this post to coincide with the fate-filled day I bought my first RV):

Here is the Eklektro blogger mission-statement as would otherwise be limited to 500 words on the Eklektro blogger main-page:

NOW LAUNCHING: all things eclectic/electronic in regards to music/media when crossed with RV mobility and wireless web: beat-makers, synthesists and specifically 'digital' DJs / VJs and infinite electronic drum circles = MC mobile multi-medium collaborative driven by tech-nomadic houseband // the escapades of Eklektro Karavan // solar-sonic ramblings and live events (and behind the scenes) improvisational rave-instrumental cyber-jazz theory-into-practice = punktronica / interactive on-location jam-streaming and creative distribution of commercial-free media content = integrative entertainment: Daily Manifesto, Breakbeat of the Week-ly show and (we propose) monthly DVDs (produced exclusively on the road) / the philosophy of gear / electro-organics / living in bungalow RVs and auto-mechanics / electronic ethic / aesthetic as tied to action, ie) instigation formula to the power and accelerated pace of individual artists in united states of societal evolution, worldwide and often orbiting LA (lost angeles anonymous)... Eklektro is eclectic electronics... everywhere!!!