First up is an individual who needs no introduction to those who have frequented the DC electronic music scene over the past decade. You’ve probably seen him at U Street Music Hall performing alongside Classixx or most recently Benoit & Sergio.
Or maybe at 9:30Club, for the ridiculous 90's dance party known as "No Scrubs".
You might have even spotted him behind the booth at U Hall handling the lights that help create the perfect energy on the dance floor.
Have you noticed all those amazing posters draped over the venue’s walls? He’s responsible for those as well. Meet U Street Music co-owner and one of DC's favorite DJs, Brian Billion.
We recently caught up with the man and dished up a serving of rapid fire questions. So sit back and take a fantastic Disco voyage through his responses:
DPC: Biggest influences from the Classic Disco Era?
Give Brian's most recent mix a listen. It’s smooth and full of mood-setting Disco and House flavor.....drink it up!
Stay tuned this week, as we’ve got more spotlights, interviews, and mixes from the DJs who will be providing the grooves for DPC relaunch party, February 6, at U Street Music Hall.
Hey listeners, head-nodders, foot-tappers, and dance-floor fillers! The DPC Crew would like to announce that a week from today we'll be launching The Dance Party Chronicles "2.0". The "Little Email Chain That Could" is getting Nip-Tucked and revamped. We've come to realize that though we've been keeping you all aurally pleased, it’s past time we stimulated you visually as well. We’re like the housewife that let herself go and wears sweats everyday. So we're getting a bit of a face-lift and going up a cup size. This time next week we’ll be unveiling our new digs and overall upping our content game. To celebrate, we would like to invite you all to get down with us at our favorite venue, U Street Music Hall. DPC, will be hosting and serving up a buffet of DC's favorite local Disco selectors: U Hall Co-Owner, Brian Billion, Ozker, DJ Provoke, Smudge, DPC Residents: Mr. Bonkerz, Remote Ctrl, and William DeVon; and to top off the festivities DJ/Producer, Bit Funk, will be headlining the event. No words exist to capture the level of exhilaration we have for the whole affair. Team DPC will be in full effect on the dance floor, behind the booth, and casually sipping whiskey by the bar.
We want to get you familiar, and as excited as we are. So for this week leading up to relaunch, we'll be doing spotlight coverage on each of the DJs. We'll get things started tomorrow... For now, in the spirit of self promotion, here's some recent mixes from a few of the DPC in house disc jockeys: After the jump...
The French Express US Tour is making a stop in DC tomorrow, and to say we are excited is a gross understatement. Back when this was announced in the fall, I just about lost my marbles because having one of the four is in my mind awesome, but all four of them?!? Shut the freaking front door. I apologize in advance if any of you are within a ten foot radius of me tomorrow evening.
If you're not familiar with the record label, we've featured them on the blog here before, and at the end of the summer, I emphatically shoved Moon Boots' remix of "Headphones" in your faces.
We've got a pair of tickets to giveaway thanks to our kind friends at U Street Music Hall.
Read on to get the scoop and preview some tracks that we're excited to -hopefully- hear tomorrow: Continued after the jump...
We have been looking forward to this Saturday night for quite some time. Why you ask? Oh, you didn't ask? Well I'm going to tell you anyway. Our favorite DJ duo from down under will be playing our favorite place for dance parties in DC. That's right, Flight Facilities will be hitting the decks at U-Street Music Hall this Saturday, October 20th. To say that we are excited would be quite an understatement. This show will be their third stop on their fourteen show "Frequently Flying" tour. We will be giving away a pair of tickets to this sure to be EPIC dance party to one lucky reader. Details on how to enter are at the bottom of this post.
Flight Facilities is made up of Australian DJ/Producers Hugo Gruzman and Jimmy Lyell. The name (and logo) came from an old Australian airline that Hugo's grandfather started. FF burst onto the scene in 2010 with their debut single "Crave You" featuring Giselle. While this track helped the duo gain exposure and airtime, it wasn't until the release of their second single "Foreign Languages" featuring Jess, in 2011, that they really solidified themselves as producers. This past May they released another single, titled "With You" featuring Grovesnor. Also, Flight Facilities recently announced they will be releasing another single, "Clair De Lune" featuring Christine Hoberg on October 30. In addition to these original tracks, they have done remixes for the likes of Cut Copy, Bag Raiders, Holy Ghost, Sneaky Soundsystem, The C90's and others.
Sign a blood contract pledging your undying allegiance to us...
Or if you're not into the whole sacrilegious ceremonial thing:
First: Make sure you've "Liked" us on the Facebook and/or "Followed" us on the good'ol Twitter. Easy enough. Second(and this is the important bit): Head over to our Facebook, and "Share" the post pinned to the page OR "Retweet" the tweet referencing the ticket giveaway.
Boom.
2 Winners will be chosen at random and will have their names (+1) added to the guest list on the night of the show.
Winner or not, come say what's to the DPC and Blisspop crews. High fives, whiskeys, and dance parties will be had.
If you aren't familiar with Plastic Plates (aka Felix Xavier), you are either living on another planet or new to the disco scene. Seriously, where have you been? The Sydney born DJ/Musician/Producer who now makes his home in L.A. returns to U Street Music Hall for his third visit on Wednesday, along with headliner The MagicianPerseus for a night of disco madness. Unfortunately, The Magician had to cancel the rest of his U.S. tour due an emergency back home. Instead, D.C. will have the pleasure of getting down to French Express label boss, Perseus as headliner for the evening.
Plastic Plates has been somewhat of a quick riser, feeding off his lush remix of Adele's, "Set Fire To The Rain" early last year. His well-balanced combination of pop and disco has made him a regular on the "mix tape" circuit and helped lay the framework for mainstream exposure with takes on Katy Perry, Mark Ronson, Empire of the Sun and so on. Unlike many producers who stress the percussion and/or bass elements, Felix lets the keys/synths do the heavy lifting and the end result is...well...magical. His greatest asset is a willingness to think outside the box...or rather DJ outside the box! The point I'm illustrating is that he fears no boundaries and clearly has a desire to set himself apart from the pack. These intangibles should prove invaluable as he looks to continue disco dominance in 2012.
A lot of our readers have expressed to us that the music we share gets them through and provides the soundtrack to their work day. Coincidentally, that’s how this whole thing got started for us at DPC. It was an email chain between friends who shared music during the workday while they eagerly awaited the next dance party Somehow, through some whiskey-graced inspiration, it became a blog. The purpose of which being to spread and induce dance parties; whether you’re at home dancing in the mirror, out living it up with your crew, and most importantly, in your cubicle.
Well, what am I waiting for? Nothing really; just need to do a little more“chronicling” before making you want to dance. Go ahead and hit play if you want, just promise you’ll keep reading...I’m feeling wordy today.
Good morning DPC readers! I'm excited to announce another DPC Ticket Giveaway! This time we will be giving away a pair of tickets for 4/20-Blisspop: TIGER & WOODS (Live), Tim Sweeney, Beautiful Swimmers at U Street Music Hall. We've been looking forward to this show for quite some time and it promises to be an unforgettable night in the District. Details for entering the contest are at the end of the post.
Tiger & Woods are "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." They say that their names are Larry Tiger and David Woods; they must be fans of golf and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." T&W first emerged onto the scene in 2009 with two vinyl EP's, Hole in One and Caddy Shag, released unofficially on the Editainment Record Label.
This is a huge deal for us because it means we don't have to be hungover at work on a weekday and can enjoy our hangovers (aka: personal hell) from the comfort of our own beds/couches/friend's living room floor/bathroom on Sunday morning. #winning
In order to celerage accordingly, and because we. freaking. love. you. AND U Street Music Hall - we are giving away two pairs of tickets to the Aeroplane, Cassian, and DJ Provoke show on Saturday, February 18th.
There are a few ways you can win tickets:
Like U Street Music Hall on Facebook. If you already like them, share their page with your friends.
Share the Facebook event page on your profile, telling people the forecast for Saturday night. (You don't have to say this, but this is my prediction: Awesome with a chance of dance parties and whiskey.)
Like The Dance Party Chronicles on Facebook. If you already like us, share our page with your friends.
Follow us on Twitter, and then tweet, "@dpchronicles is hosting a giveaway to the Aeroplane, Cassian and DJ Provoke show @uhalldc"
(Explaining this makes me sleep better at night, so bear with me as I insult your intelligence.)
Please leave a separate comment below (on this blog post) for each thing you do. So... for example: if you tweet to your friends and like us on Facebook, you'll comment twice, resulting in two entries. Do all four; leave four comments. Ya dig?
And there you have it. 4 Different ways to get separate entries for the tickets. That saves you some $$ that will be spent buying drinks at the bar. (BTW, you can buy me a Bear Fight with that money, too. Or Tyler. But not Rashad because apparently he wants no part in it.)
We'll be announcing the winner next Thursday, February 16th at 12:00pm, so be sure to check back to see if you won!
And as always, a big thank you to U Street Music Hall for their generosity and putting up with all of our antics. We came for the music on St. Patrick's day in 2010, but stayed for the good times and memories : )
Wow... I just got through a live set from The Twelves that was performed at Lolita in Barcelona Spain on 11/11/11 and it is incredible. It was honestly one of the best live sets I have listened to in quite some time. Then again, it is The Twelves, so I guess I shouldn't really be surprised. These two Brazilian dudes are on another level. This is a great set to listen to help you get through a work day or to get pumped before going out for a night of partying. It has smooth track to track transitions, great layering, and varying tempos that are sure to make you dance. It features tracks from Metronomy, Azari & III, Cut Copy, Stevie Nicks, and many many more.
Tonight, Seth Troxler will be spinning at U-Street Music Hall in DC. Seth Troxler was one of the founding members of the Visionquest record label and was recently voted #2 on Resident Advisor's readers poll of the Top 100 DJs of 2011. He is originally from the Detroit, Michigan area and Detroit House is a prevalent part of his music. This guy has played sets all over the world and held down residencies at some of the biggest clubs in Europe. Here is a live set he performed this year at Creamfields in Buenos Aires:
Tomorrow night, also at U-Street Music Hall, Benoit and Sergio will be on the decks. This DJ duo grew up in different continents, but joined forces after meeting in Washington, DC in 2008. Friday they return to city where they met to help us burn up the dance floor. I hadn't heard much about these guys until my roomate Nick sent me this mix earlier in the week. Check it out, its really "tight". After hearing it, I combed through their soundcloud page and realized that I recognized a bunch of their tracks. I really like their song "Everybody" (below). This is sure to be a massive dance party and I am really looking forward to it. See you all on the dance floor!
This is the part where we tell you who gets free tickets to the show. We know that this was focused towards DPC readers in DC, but hopefully we'll be able to host more fun contests to show our readers how much we love you and/or want to bribe you.
Congratulations, andy g. "i was a fan, i am a friend, i love to dance. send me!!!" for winning two tickets to the show this Saturday, November 5th at U Street Music Hall. Please email us at dpchronicles@gmail.com so we can put your name on the guest list.
For everyone else who entered, thank you! We hope you still go to the show; it should be a great one! And don't be afraid to come say "hi"; someone came up to me at The Magician on Wednesday night and said he read le blog, but then ran away before I could corral him for an obligatory beer shoved in his face. This is probably a good thing for me and my wallet. Let's just say someone is giving up hard liquor until further notice. #stupidshitido
It's also Morgan Geist's birthday, and I heard there's gonna be cake there. If that doesn't entice you - I don't know what will. More cake for me I guess.
We are happy to announce our first (and hopefully not last) giveaway at The Dance Party Chronicles!
As you may have already figured out, we are roughly based out of Washington, DC (I say roughly cause 2/3 of DPC live in Northern VA) and are at U Street Music Hall quite a bit. We hold FDP Cards (Frequent Dance Party Cards, duh) and it was love at first dance since we first attended U Hall's opening show in March 2010 where Aeroplane threw down a crazy St. Patrick's DDP for everyone.
Although we are not affiliated with U Hall, we do want to share the love with all of our reader's who live in the area, want to check out the venue, or want a reason to head to this weekend's show featuring Solomon Sanchez and Brooklyn native's Metro Area (Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani) this Saturday, November 5th.
There are many ways to be entered into this giveaway that includes admission for you and a guest, you just need to do ONE of the following:
After you have done one of the above mentioned, comment below and you'll be entered to win tickets to the show! We will announce the winner on Friday, November 4th at 4:00 PM.
We would like to thank U Hall for donating the tickets to DPC and hope you guys will enter!
This will save you $20, people! Think of all the things you could do with an extra $20 in your pocket that night:
Buy Becca a Jager Bomb
Buy Becca (okay, fine.. anyone from DPC) a whiskey shot
Buy Becca some cookies at the 7-11 next door
Buy Morgan Geist (1/2 of Metro Area) a shot for his birthday
Use the $20 to get a cab home... don't try and walk home (That's happened before. It's a long walk. Trust me.)
Buy yourself 4 Natty Boh's
Save that $20 and be responsible (haha, that's funny - who are we kidding?)
Put that money towards more dance parties in the future!
So what are you waiting for? How about you win yourself some tickets? Happy commenting!
This is exciting stuff, people!!!!! So exciting in fact that the weekend preview will get broken down into two different posts; one for tonight and one for tomorrow.
See? We all win. But in reality, mostly me. And I guess whoever else ends up at U Street Music Hall because we will be dance partying it up with Fred Falke, Lifelike, and Micah Vellian tonight. Sorry I'm not sorry but it's been over a month since some people have had dance parties (some people = me) and I'm ready to dance it out.
The night gets started at 10pm with Micah Vellian (1/3 of Volta Bureau) getting the dance floor going. Rashad has mentioned Vellian before here. A personal favorite of mine is his and Eastman's disco house track, "No Sleep".
Normally I enjoy staying at my house until midnight so I can allow for adequate drinking time, butttt I'm going to push for an early arrival to U Hall tomorrow. I'm curious to see what Vellian will drop, and I'm hoping he drops some deep house to start out the night. I only say that because I really enjoyed his "Green Mix" he just dropped on Soundcloud this past week - featuring deep house.
Matin - Turning Wiretappeur - Furry Walls Gwen Maze, Jef K - Boy Meets Girl Marius - Love Gun (6th Borough Project Version) Chmara Winter - Powidlo Jin Choi - Half Baked (Maceo Plex Deep Remix) Alain Ho - Into A Deep (Hot Toddy Remix) DJ Roland Clark pres. Urban Soul - What Do I Gotta Do (Silver City Space Mix) Art Of Tones - Dolces Cram - A Good Night (Purple Disco Machine Remix) Micah Vellian - Pink Baby Pig Body Language - Falling Out (Tiger & Woods Remix)
As the night continues and I get more drunk, Lifelike and Fred Falke will hit the DJ Booths at U Hall. To be completely honest, I wasn't sold to go out on a Friday night. You know cause I have things to do like organize my closet or wash my hair... but after giving a few listens to some mixes - I am beyond excited for what's to come.
When Lifelike (Laurent Ash) hits the stage, I am hoping to hear some underground French House music. Basically one straight up dance party that never ends. Lifelike is a world-famous producer from France who has been asked to remix songs from such artists such as La Roux, Chromeo, and Moby. "Discopolis", Lifelike's most notable track (with Kris Menace) is a dance. freaking. party. Great build up. Great beat. Great all around track.
And if you want more dance parties or to hear more recent tracks from Lifelike, head over to his Soundcloud page here. (sidenote: anyone else recognize this from an OL mix - specifically their Miami afterparty?!)
And last, but certainly not least - Fred Falke. Falke is a musician (bassist) as well as a producer. He has worked closely with Kris Menace (like Lifelike) and also remixed songs for Metronomy, Robyn, and The Whitest Boy Alive. Our friend, Mr. Bonkerz, put together a Falke mix, featuring all remixes by Falke. It's awesome.
Alesha Dixon - The Boy Does Nothing (Fred Falke Remix) Annie - Anthonio (Fred Falke Remix) Miami Horror - Make You Mine (Fred Falke Remix) Sneaky Sound System - I Love It (Fred Falke Remix) The Whitest Boy Alive - Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix) Burns - First Move (Fred Falke Remix) Zero 7 - Destiny (Fred Falke Remix) Keith - Mona Lisa's Son (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix)
Soooooooo basically after all of those words and music, if you live in the Metropolitan area and aren't convinced to come out tonight - you're craaazy. Or I'm just really bad at the art of persuasion. Come say "hi" if you head out tonight. Unless you're creepy cause then I'll probably run away ;)
Earlier this week I posted a mix from Volta Bureau's Micah Vellian. Today I have one from another third of the DJ troupe, Will Eastman. D.C.'s own has put together a mix consisting of "...re-imagining of some classic and newer jackin house and techno as deep and cosmic house in the disco bpm range" (Source). I couldn't have put it better. It's great blend of dark House and Techno tracks. The selection of House tracks are very good, but the hard untz of the Techno tracks got me moving. There's plenty of build up moments that will leave you with goosebumps when the tension is released. Eastman includes a number of Volta Bureaus productions as well. Their remix of Codebreaker's "Desire" definitely got my attention. Also, their unreleased track "Hot", which is just that, closes out the mix nicely.
I mentioned it earlier this week, but the DPC crew will be getting our whiskey and dance on at U Street Music Hall this Saturday. Volta Bureau is throwing a shindig for the release of their debut single "Hope".
DPC is especially excited because we’ll be in attendance (dancing and whiskey-ing) for the release partyheadlined by Gui Borrato! Looks like due to some visa issues, Gui Borrato is being rescheduled. Instead it will be Volta Bureau, Jay Simon, Chris Nitti, and Lxsx Frxnk!
It should be a rump shaking affair at (Will Eastman co-owned) U Street Music Hall. In the meantime, check out this deep disco/house mix they put together for us. It’s got some good stuff waiting for you: opens with an unreleased track, “Hot”; has some great remixes of theirs; and closes with “Hope”. A sexy one indeed, I was into this mix from start to finish. Enjoy!
