Belated Birthday

"Believing here, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear...
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend"

We sort of forgot to celebrate our 3rd Anniversary which just recently came and went. Whoops. Oh well, better late than never I guess.

I want to start off by saying how grateful I am to Sean for creating this place and keeping it going. I can't believe another year has gone by, we're getting all grown up. Sniff. Sniff.... We’re also so pleased to be celebrating this special occasion with our new friend and caregiver, Bearbaby.
With each passing year, new and exciting adventures into sight and sound continue to unfold before us, seemingly richer and more fulfilling than the last. What I'm trying to say is, I can't wait to grow old with you. Love you guys!!! But enough with emotional ramblings, in keeping with our birthday tradition, a very special gift mix was commissioned to share with all of you. In previous years our dear friend JAZ has been generous with sharing some exclusive tracks with us. This year is no different, except this time we're proud to introduce you to TJ Laserphone, a long time friend and mutual digger of all things cosmic and gold.

I wish I could go into length about this brainiac space cadet, suffice to say, he's come a long way from his days communicating via slide whistle and robot hand gestures. Riding around in his musical cosmic cabbie during SXSW will always hold fond mem's for me. But I digress, Mr Laserphone is 1/2 of the brilliant DYI circut bending electro collage outfit, E^Squared. When he's not building drum machines out of suitcases and making audio collage with cut-up flexidiscs, he's scouring record bins for dusted 12" gems. This exclusive ARAWA Bday mix is a perfect example of the unique aural tapestry only TJ knows how to sew together. I asked him to describe his process and here's what he had to say:

This 113 minute mix starts off with a very nice "champagne synthesizer" effect realized by Edrupt as a toast to Arawa on its birthday! Cheers! ... And a lively party atmosphere strikes up on cue from the synthesizer by the Science Fiction Corporation! About half of the tracks are edits or reissues but its all vinyl mixed on an Allen & Heath Xone 32 (unique filter controls! ). There are many surprises and twists to this mix, going many different places somewhat carefreely. I had a crate of select records and chose two at the start of each side. Then I just went for it! I actually played several more tracks at the end before realizing the tape had stopped! The next mix block will be all Library and X-ploitation grooves so stay tuned! ~ Tape Jockey Laserphone

TJ Laserphone - Tape Mix Side 1
TJ Laserphone - Tape Mix Side 2
(playlist in comment section)
Arawa's Birthday Toaster Mix by TJ Laserphone

HD110 cassette mix processed thru RNC1173 compressor

additional FX provided by Edrupt's Manual Data Insertion Unit and a Pro 1 synthesizer!

I wanted to leave you with a few video clips of E^2 in action. The first clip is from a video jam session I did with them and Chad A. at the Maker Faire last year


and a great live shot from recent a performance in Austin