Nov
2008

Mixsets - The Newschool Archives

Looza in the Mix - Hände hoch! Knicklichtkontrolle! (beta) (87:16)

My take on a nu-rave mixset. Unfortunately there are a lot of bugs in this one, I experienced dropouts while recording and did test a normalizer which unfortunately dipped the volume way too much whenever I moved the crossfader. Thats’ why it’s called “beta”, I won’t do a proper version though, enjoy it or don’t.

01 Justice Ft Uffie - The Party (La Riots Bootlegmix)
02 Palermo Disko Machine - Pump
03 Tiga - Far From Home (Digitalism Remix)
04 Justice - Waters Of Nazareth (Erol Alkan Remix)
05 Para One - Dudun Dun (MSTRKRFT Remix)
06 1up - Yeah, Dance To My Record
07 Sono - A New Cage (Digitalism Remix)
08 DHG - Tour De Force (Looza Remix)
09 DJ Technic - Gabryelle (Olav Basoski Remix)
10 Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned (Justice Remix)
11 Justice - DANCE
12 Sebastian - Walkman
13 Digitalism - Zdarlight
14 Digitalism - Zdarlight (Discodrome Remix)
15 A Touch of Class - Streetdub
16 In Flagranti - Uncanny Hinting
17 The Fox - Ride on
18 Digitalism - I want I want
19 Cajuan Dance Party - Dance or not Dance
20 Cajuan Dance Party - Carlights (Pink Grease Remix)
21 The Plectrons - Chorus (Mirz Brün Remix)

Stream or Download this mix.

And low and behold, there are also some T-Shirts avaiable for that mix! Check here for North America, Europe or Germany.

Samurai Champloo - Round1 (63:36)

“Samurai Champloo” is an anime series created by Shinichiro Watanabe, who is also the creator of “Cowboy Bebop”. While “Cowboy Bebop” featured mainly a japanese approach to jazz, funk and bigband-style-music by Yoko Kanno, “Samurai Champloos” soundtrack consists of a japanese approach to instrumental hiphop/breakbeat by artists like Nujabes, Force of Nature and Tsutchie.
I took some of the best tracks from the soundtracks and mixed them together, as an appetizer.

Please be sure to check the official Samurai Champloo DVD Homepage and get the anime series aswell as the soundtracks. Amazon has it all.

Stream or Download this mix.

Looza in the Mix -Breaks for Breakfast (100:23)

Just some broken beats/breakbeats thrown together after some friends simply asked me for “a new mix”, featuring chemical brothers, jazzanova, kenny dope, domu, 4hero and others. I didn’t plan or rehearse this mix at all, I just started it and did ride the sound. So no tracklist avaiable, sorry. But Broken Beats-Mixes are generally very hard to come by, so you might want to check this one out.
Contains the usual problems and hiccups which are kinda my trademark.

Download this mix.

Looza in the Mix -Sunday Morning House (79:43)

On a Saturday night I was to tired to go to a club, so I went to bed, got up early and made this mixset.

Two minutes after I started the neighbor came knocking because of the noise, so I had to do this at very a very low volume. Also I fucked up badly one time, I still hope you have fun.

01 inland knights - no stopping
02 swirl people vs east coast boogiemen - mile high club (swirl people remix)
03 joey youngman - submission
04 swirl people - future signs (inland knights remix)
05 dave spoon - front lounge
06 swirl people - reflex success
07 buscemi - jazz bumper (looza edit)
08 crazy penis - bad dismount
09 dj gregory - solaris
10 gavin froome - get up
11 stevie sole & geoff m. ft open door - automatic (swirl people dub)
12 peven everett - stuck (groove assasins re-rub mix)
13 swirl people - family vacation
14 joey youngman - bless my soul
15 swirl people - watcha gonna do (inland knights mix)
16 inland knights - the rebel
17 metro area 4 - muria (looza edit)

Stream or Download this mix.

Looza in the Mix - Scene-Drum and Bass from the 90s Part One (46:23) and Two (44:51)

Two mixes I did in the late 90s (obvious by the fact that they are tailored to fit on a 90min-tape) which feature only drum&bass-inspired Mulitchannel-Tracker-Tunes (XMs and ITs) from the scene.

I feel horrible for not being able to provide tracklists for these two mixes, I simply lost those lists ages ago… If you can name any of these tracks please help me by posting a comment.

However, I hope this is a pleasant trip down the memory lane for some people. Enjoy!
(Btw, I managed to feature atleast one track twice in those mixes… I salute myself for that.)

Download Part1 and Download Part2

Filed as: Mixsets, Music. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark
Nov
2008

Mixsets - The Oldschool Archives

Looza in the Mix - Eastern Jazz Vol.1 (58:53)

01 dielo - country of flowers - ussr - no date (late 60s ?)
02 bogdan holownia trio - rosemary’s baby title - poland - no date (70s)
03 vaclav zharadnik bigband with slide hampton - fashank in blues - cssr - 1971
04 travelling birds - straight answer - poland - no date (70s)
05 zbigniew namyslowski quartet - song of the pterodactyl - poland - no date (late 70s)
06 electra - hall of the mountain king - gdr - 1976
07 günther fischer quintett - konglomerat - gdr - 1978
08 vaclav zharadnik bigband with slide hampton - b&s (suite in 3 parts) - cssr - 1971
09 uschi brüning with günther fischer - ohne lieder leben - gdr - 1974
10 günther fischer quintett - maschinerie - gdr - 1978

Stream or Download this mix. If you like this mix, go check eastern-crates.com.

Looza in the Mix - Eastern Jazz Vol.2 (58:15)

01 bemibem - jajecznica - poland - 1974
02 bemibem - podaruj mi troche slonca - poland - 1974
03 c&k vocal - dockyards, railroads, shoes and hunger - poland - 1978
04 novi singers - brownie - poland - 1967
05 sun ship - prymka - poland - 1979
06 günther fischer - an HE - gdr - 1974
07 c&k vocal - khorovod - poland - 1978
08 günther fischer quintett - eisblumen - gdr - 1978
09 impuls - spirala - czechoslovakia - no date (early 70s)
10 na szkle malowane - wodo zimna wodo - poland - no date (late 70s)
11 michal urbaniak group - bengal - poland - 1972
12 c&k vocal - generation - poland - 1978

Stream or Download this mix. If you like this mix, go check eastern-crates.com.

Looza in the Mix - Non Stop Beat (68:28)

70 minutes with (partly jazzed-up) funk and disco tracks from the GDR, Poland, the CSSR and the USSR.

01 vaclav neckar and bacily - planetarium - 1977 - cssr
02 Walter Kubiczeck - rotidor - 1984 - gdr
03 orchestra of the polish radio - na opak - 1975
04 walter kubiczeck - tentakel - gdr- 1979
05 uschi brüning - hochzeitsnacht - gdr - 1975
06 veronika fischer band - halte an - gdr 1975
07 ensemble melodiya - devil’s wheel - ussr - 1974
08 interlude - sounds from the sputnik
09 raymond pauls - ardievas vasarai - ussr - no year
10 orchestra adolf wonneberg - esos tiernos ojos - gdr - 1969
11 alojz bouda - prisiel som - cssr - 1976
12 jazz cellula - preteky na kolonade - cssr - 1977
13 syrius - kinyujtom kezem - hungary - 1976
14 orchestra volkmar schmidt - popcorn - gdr - no year
15 uschi brüning - welch ein zufall - gdr - 1976
16 manfred krug - wenns draußen grün wird - gdr - 1972
17 günther fischer - lila und rot - gdr - 1984
18 neoton family - diskocece - hungary - 1980
19 locomotiv gt - forbidden fruit- hungary - 1976
20 interlude - steps on different stairs
21 manfred krug - ende der platte - 1971

Interludes from an AMIGA-Record containig soundeffects for home-made movies from 1980. Cover from an AMIGA-Compilation from 1976.

Sorry for the bad scratching and the small mistakes (especially the levels), I got stoned while doing this. Have fun though. And lots of thanx to efka for letting me use his studio and the two turntables and providing me with polish apple-lemonade.

Stream or Download this mix. If you like this mix, go check eastern-crates.com.

Looza in the Mix - My Idea of Lounge (63:10)

A mix I did ages ago and that is still my secret weapon. Features very mellow/moody western funk and jazz and this is the mix I always bring along when DJing, for the early morning hours when the night is drawing to a close and I really just want finish my set, finally grab a beer (don’t drink and spin!), chill out and have a chat with someone (the woman working behind the bar for example).
Unfortunately there is no tracklist for this, but you won’t need one to enjoy it.

Download this mix.

Looza in the Mix - Big Screen, Small Screen (52:41)

A very old mix of mine that explores music for movies and television shows.

01 monday night football theme - johnny pearson - tv theme (1970, USA)
02 three days of the condor theme - david grusin - three days of the condor (1975, USA)
03 dum maro dum - asha bhosle - bollywood
04 bullitt main title (record version) - lalo shifrin - bullitt (1968, USA)
05 getting nowhere in a hurry (instrumental) - roy budd - get carter (1971, GB)
06 viva la felicita (instrumental) - franco godi - il signor rossi cerca la felicità, tv series (1975, IT)
07 lekar ham diwana dil - asha bhosle - bollywood
08 the party - henry mancini - the party (1968, USA)
09 dance music from hare rama hare krishna - ??? - bollywood
10 stiletto - sid ramin - stiletto (1969, USA)
11 ??? - ??? - bollywood
12 medical center theme - lalo shifrin - tv series (1969, USA)
13 streets of san francisco theme - pat williams - tv series (1972, USA)
14 jewel thief - ??? - bollywood
15 vega$ theme - domenic frontiere - tv series (1978, USA)
16 mannix theme - lalo shifrin - tv series (1967, USA)
17 wiggy - henry mancini - the party (1968, USA)
18 ice pick mike - lalo shifrin - bullitt (1968, USA)
19 experiment in terror - henry mancini - experiment in terror (1962, USA)
20 the saint theme - leslie charteris - tv series (1962, USA)
21 tango on mars - peter thomas - raumpatroullie orion, tv series (1966, GER)
22 suicide is painless - johnny mandel - MASH, tv series (1972, USA)

I am sorry I can give you so little info about the bollywood tracks, I have no info myself, because all those tracks came from compilations or other shady sources.

Download this mix.

Filed as: Mixsets, Music. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark
Nov
2008

Pixeling in Photoshop

Just some notes about Pixeling in Photoshop. I started doing graphics on the C64, so I am used to pixeling and still use it whenever I have to (or want to).

A few hints to make it abit easier :

1. You dont have to zoom in and out of your picture while working on it. Instead, you can use the “new window for” command to open a second view for a picture. Scale one to 1600% and one to 200% and you can pixel easily while seeing what it looks like on the second view.

2. You can define a pixel grid, see the screenshot. The grid will be visible only in the 1600%-view if you enable it there.

3. Use the “X” Shortcut, which switches background and foreground colour. Make foreground black, background white and pixel away. You can do atleast the outlines and be able to “delete” wrong pixels.

4. Obviously, the tool to use is the pencil with a size of 1 and “precise cursor” switched on.

Filed as: Graphics, Graphics-Misc. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark
Nov
2008

Photography

Photography and me is like Romeo and Juliet… Somehow we can’t get together.

Whenever I acquire some means of taking pictures (not only cameras, also for example a mobile phone with a camera built in) I manage to break or loose it or get it stolen by someone. This happened a dozen of times in the past ~15 years, it really seems I am doomed concerning this.

This is also the current status quo, I can’t take pictures at the moment. All that is left at the moment is an old flickr-account that I can’t even access anymore because I signed up with some fake data, lost the password and because I can’t remember where my made-up-on-the-spot fake character is living (or what his pets name is) I can’t get a new password.

Check it out anyway.

But hopefully this will change soon atleast for some time (until I manage to loose/break my camera or have it stolen again)

Filed as: Graphics, Photography. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark
Nov
2008

Better “Random Header Image” for Wordpress

So, this is something I figured out myself and that I am pretty proud of, because I actually have no idea about PHP. I just have some history in coding and basically know how syntax does generally look and where to tweak.

So, I was searching for a way to rotate the headerimages for this page without much hassle like having to setup lists of images to be used and similar. I just wanted to be able add/delete images into a specific directory and have some script figure the rest out.

One of the easiest ways is obviously to use a script as header-image (mostly called random.php, there are loads of resources on the web about this) which reads all the images in a directory, selects one randomly and displays it.
The problem with this approach is that the images are not cachable, the browser is trying to load an image called “random.php” and the server returns a different file everytime this happens. Bad solution.

Then I found a solution by John Crenshaw from Wordpress-Hacks.com which was nearly the solution I was looking for. The only problem his solution had: It dynamically generates a complete <img>-tag in your wordpress-header.php which is fine as long as your really just want to have an image as header.

But I wanted an image that is displayed as background-image of a div (you know, for fancy text over it and stuff).

So, without further ado, my solution:

  1. You create a directory within your themes-folder, I called mine “header” (wp-content/themes/yourtheme/header/)
  2. Upload all the header-pics you want to use there, jpg, gif and png will work.
  3. Edit your functions.php file and add this at the end: 
     
    function randomHeader() {
        # Init files array
        $files = array();
        # Set header images directory
        $dir = get_template_directory() . '/header/';
        if(!is_dir($dir))  {
            echo 'The specified header image directory is not a valid directory.';
            // DEBUG
            //echo $dir . '<br />';
        }else{
            if($handle = opendir($dir)) {
                while(($file = readdir($handle)) !== false) {
                    if(preg_match('#(\.jpg$|\.gif$|\.png$)#', $file)) {
                        $files[] = $file;
                    }
                }
                closedir($handle);
                # Generate random number between 0 and size of files array
                $num = mt_rand(0, sizeof($files) - 1);
                # Echo random header image
                echo  get_bloginfo('template_url') . '/header/' . $files[$num];
            }else{
                echo 'Could not open the specified directory.';
                // DEBUG
                //echo $dir . '<br />';
            }
        }
    }

    As I said earlier, original, marvellous code by John Crenshaw, all credit to him.
    The two small things I changed:

    I changed the rand()-function to mt_rand(). Actually I have no idea why, but google told me it’s a good idea. (Remember, I honestly don’t have a clue about PHP).

    But the more important part: His echo-function (is this even the correct term?) has changed from creating an <img>-tag to just give the URL of a random image from the /header/-directory we created earlier.

  4. And now comes the sweetness: Edit your header.php and style.css files.
    Usually you have a <div id=”header”> and a corresponding #header in the css-file where a background image is defined. Remove the URL part for #header in the styles.css. Now edit header.php and change the <div id=”header”> into

     
    <div id="header" style="background-image:url('<?php randomHeader(); ?>');">

Cool, you’re done: Random; cacheable, fully css-able header images without any effort of maintaining a database or similar.

Filed as: Misc Stuff. Comments (4) Share/Save/Bookmark