🙂 Local Talent Promotion: Seth Abrumz – 🙂
“Flaky” or not, you have to give credit to DJ & Promoter Seth Abrumz for selflessly exposing more budding digital music artists, visual designers and dancers/poi performers to the Colorado masses than anyone else in the state this year. Seth has consistently packed more venues in Fort Collins, Greeley & Denver than anyone else, often with little direct benefit to his own musical ability promotion.
Ironically, he continues drawing out crowds of “rowdy ragers” to a music style, Dubstep, that even he admits is relatively boring. I couldn’t agree more, “Rage” is the new “Epic”, where this generally 21- crowd is more interested in “Facemelting” noise and blinding strobe lights, than an artistic style of music or visual production that promotes dancing. Much props to the GoGo Dancers who can dance to Dubstep, as there is rarely anyone in the crowd that can maintain more than 30 seconds of something resembling actual dance…. But I am digressing. 😀
There are many artists throughout Colorado that should be very thankful to the work Seth has done promoting Dubstep, without him, they’d be lucky to have more than a couple dozen fans.
🙂 Getting Out There & Living the Dream: The Kayaking Trio of Ben Stookesberry, Chris Korbulic & Pedro Oliva – 🙂
The Boyz are back in central Africa, setting first descents & exploring rivers never kayaked before, all while carrying on the legacy of their lost brethren Hendri Coetzee, who tragically lost his life to a crocodile during the groups’ first African Expedition late in 2010. Ben’s documentary, “Kadoma”, never intent to be about overwhelming inspiration & horrific tragedy, rather just some more “kayak porn” for a very small group of viewers, touched & pulled the heartstrings of thousands of kayakers and non-kayakers alike around the world.
I’m looking forward to their tales from this expedition, and would encourage those with a zest for life & experiencing new cultures to do the same. 🙂 I wouldn’t want to try to list where all they have been this year, but know they’ve made inroads to bringing the excitement of kayaking to the masses with their work on a television series in Brazil.
Humble beyond mention, well except for the flamboyant Pedro 😉 , these adventurers are out there doing it every day, living the life of their choosing. I was fortunate enough to meet all three to show them my crappy kayaking skills this year, but hell for me it’s about being out there amongst great people, and I’ll gladly “take the walk” so I can be out there again another day.
Best wishes & safe travels to them all!
🙂 Honorable Mention: Jonathan West – 🙂
Seriously I didn’t even know Krygky-eke-eke-stan even fucking existed and now he’s living & bringing renewable energy to this remote central Asian, old Soviet state for a year! Props brotha, was good seeing you this year in NOLA!
🙂 Oozing Positive Energy, Engaging the Crowd Stage Performances: Jay Jaramillo aka Project Aspect – 🙂
Although I don’t know for certain if Jay would consider his productions “Dubstep” it is generally characterized as such & within that genre of music in the local scene. Project Aspect’s opening for Vibesquad at the Fox, was one of my first shows since returning to the music scene, and the energy Jay conveyed in his work was instantly obvious to me, just as it is to his growing fan base.
As mentioned above, Dubstep doesn’t really promote dancing. 😦 The beats are too slow in my opinion & the choppy nature, non-continuation of a tract often results in the “30 second get-down” followed by the “now what am I supposed to do” irregular beat for 10 minutes. 
Not to diverge, but this facet of the music, in conjunction with limited need to do much with computer-based digital music during the broadcasting*, beat-matching is relativity simple in comparison to old school vinyl mixing DJing, the interaction with the crowd to me is more important, and here is where Jay excels!
I saw this for my first time at the Fox, and then was blown away by it, as was everyone else at Sonic Bloom, when Jay teamed up with his brother Ronny, aka Unlimited Gravity, to form Unlimited Aspect! I would argue this performance in the dome, even up against the other big names there, was the best of the weekend in bringing out the energy of the crowd, by Jay exuding so much of his own positivity & vibrancy. I see this energy every show I go to when Jay is performing, it’s addicting.
I’d venture to say Project Aspect will be a much more common name around the country by the end of 2012. “Much Love” Jay!
* – Production of the music is where the real work & expression of the artist’s talent occurs. “Mixing” other producers digital tracts and calling it your own… well old school “DJs” who did that with vinyl, we generally find them working the wedding & karaoke circuits today. 😀
🙂 Music I Can’t Stop Listening To!: Kaskade – 🙂
This Salt Lake City native takes the honors of being the second Mormon thing I love, right after the State of Utah, well its geography anyways! My first exposure to Kaskade was at ID Festival in Vegas, and while all the kiddies were going nuts to his infectious beats & the “melt you into a bucket of quivering chicken parts” female vocalists, I was quickly catching the bug while being mesmerized by female eyes in his visual display. It was meant to be, Kaskade & I! Stemming from my roots & affinity for high tempo house music that works so well with how my brain operates, and saturating the tracts with some of the best female vocalists in the world, I literally cannot stop listening to his music.
I take a break every so often to listen to Nero’s remix of Calvin Harris’ “Feel So Close” on a 10x repeat, but then back to Kaskade! I’ve gone so far to Google who these female vocalist are, mmmmmm…. they melt me every song, every time.
🙂 Minimal Bias, Global News aka Real Journalism: Al Jazeera English* – 🙂
I remember living at Trevor & Bree’s in Golden during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, when this “old western” suburb of the Mile High City almost had a collective brain aneurysm over the Buffalo Rose’s, a biker bar at that, hosting of Al Jazeera for their coverage of the event. I had never seen Al Jazeera, only “knowing” it was the “Anti-Christ” itself according to Faux Noise, and consisted “only” of anti-American rhetoric, US flag burning, and where Al Quead aired the beheadings of Americans taken hostage. I wrongly assumed it was only in Arabic, as MSM would like me to think, so I would never watch it “knowing” I could not understand it.
Well hello many weeks living in the middle of BumFuckUAE, and the only thing on the tele was either in Arabic, Hindi (1 of 100s of Indian languages), or consisted of Camel Racing, when what do I click to, Al Jazeera English! I’ve long been a fan of BBC for getting world news, NPR does a decent job as well, though very limited in coverage of world affairs on the whole.
In the first 3-4 hours of watching, this is what I saw: limited bias investigations covering multiple sides of each story running minutes long; no fucking sound bytes sandwiched into paid “analysts” fabrication of what occurred; coverage of 20 plus different nations, some I can honestly say I did not know existed; no shouting matches or one political favorite given 10 minutes while the opposing speaker was given 10 seconds. If “flag burning” was happening, they would show it, BUT key difference being it would come with an accounting of what was the motivation behind it, not some fucking sound byte, “All Muslims hate Americans” or some other quackery.
Searching Direct TV when I returned to the states, the best I could find were some program shares with some off the wall station that carried “Democracy Now!”, but no Al Jazeera itself. But guess what, they have live feed on their Facebook page! Hands down best find of the year!
*Apologies for the “4-letter words” within, but they are the only true way to express my 20 year frustration with MSM
🙂 Biggest One-Achievement Wonder: Occupy Wall Street – 🙂
I’ve posted enough about the “movement” that I care not to go down that path further, but let’s just say I was a large supporter of the concept in its early days until it went “mainstream” and became fashionable to support. I’m just glad these indecisive, need 100% consensus on anything to actually do something pansies chose the Vendetta mask as their “mascot” instead of tarnishing Che Guevara’s legacy by picking him up as a cliché attempt to define their revolution.
Their only accomplishment – Shutting up the Tea Party! Although, this wasn’t directly by their efforts, “dangly fingers” would have never all consented to it! 😀
🙂 2012 “Movement” I would like to see: Occupy Churches, Mosques, Synagogues & Chapels 🙂
Hans' World Travels 2.0 & Beyond 