Today we mourn the loss one of my great heroes–the late Mitch Mitchell. Mitch was the insanely talented and influential drummer for Jimi Hendrix and The Experience. He died in a hotel room in Portland, OR last Wednesday. His legacy lives on in all of us.

The Techno Mix

The Hip Hop Mix

It may have been whimsical, spontaneous, myopic, and downright irresponsible. Nonetheless, Lena, Adam, and I recently adopted some feral kitties we found on the internet. I would suggest you avoid looking in the community>pets section of craigslist if you’re at all inclined to fall in love with free, adorable, desperate looking animals in search of a good home.

These kittens are maybe 5 weeks old and have been separated from their mommy for at least a week now. They smell bad, have diarrhea, whine a bunch, and have fleas….but LOOK at them. Are they not the cutest? We’re a little worried because the cream colored one has a fat belly and probably has worms. He seems constipated because when he poops his little feet tremble and he makes a scrunched up little poopy face (cute overload). But in a week we’ll have them on the deworming medicine and everything should be okay.

In the meantime we’re trying to come up with names for these little fatties. Right now they seem too small to even have proper names. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. We’ve been throwing around these names for the orange guy:
Feyd, Wade, Dark Matter, Jaleel, Bumpy, Killer, Malalo and Quaimpy.
And for the calico girl:
Misha and Pony.

But we’re having a hard time coming up with something that sticks so if any one has any ideas we’re open to suggestions.

Also, if anyone has any kitty health tips or advice please let us know.

Hey Friends! After an inexcusably long absence from the Lasercave community, I’m excited to present Bowlpack III from your favorite Lasercave mp3J, Senor Bowlpack B. This thick mix is a lot more hectic than the previous two, however, I only had the last 3 nights to work on it so it doesn’t feel complete. Here’s my excuse briefly: In January the software I use to make these mixes (Ableton Live 5) “phoned home” so to speak. In other words it realized that there was a copyright violation and very cleverly disabled the software and made it impossible for me to simply re-install it. Shortly thereafter, the computers power supply gave out. Once I moved out of Philly I finally took the thing to the Genius bar and got it fixed. This was 6 days ago. 5 Days ago I backed up and reinitialized my hard drive. 4 days ago I reinstalled some of my crucial software. And for the past three nights I’ve been laboring to bring you people the best that I can give in danceable party jams before leaving for a very epic roadtrip with Ms. Lena Sradnick tomorrow afternoon. Actually, I’ve gotten a lot quicker and more comfortable with Ableton Live recently and realize I can crank these jams out quicker than before. In fact, I bet I could do this shit live, at a party or something, if someone gave me the chance. You should all give a try at using Live if you have any interest. Additionally I’ve included in this post a remix of Max Tundra’s song Lysine. This artsy remix emerged somewhat incidentally while working on this mix but I think it sounds pretty nice. Please enjoy both.

Click here to download Bowlpack III
Click here to download the Lysine remix

Ladies and Gentlemen: I present to you a Lasercave/Basic Beats exclusive. Here’s a remix I recently composed for Yacht’s forthcoming LP, “I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real.” It’s a a lot different from other stuff he’s done, not that that’s bad. It’s more of a feel good, techno-pop sing-a-long, PacificNorthWest kinda record similar to The Blow’s very successful Paper Television record (which he produced) and a departure from his earlier, chordal, DSP-driven efforts. The songs are really positive, fun dance jams. Anyways, he’s got an accompanying DVD to be released with his new record which will feature a number of remixes including (he assures me) this one. It will be available from States Rights Records in May. Enjoy.

If you didn’t click the “Here” at the top of the page with the link to the song, here’s another here for you to click.

Welcome to my Lasercave blog, “Basic Beats.” I intend to post things I’ve been making and working on here. Since I’m working from home and being mostly unemployed these days I have a lot of time to work on my “projects.” To remain motivated these days in my stoned-out, existential-crisis ridden life I’ve been spurring myself on to create one thing a day that I could get at least a Creative Commons license on at some point. It doesn’t really have to be much. A computer beat, the beginnings of a song, progress in band practice, a photoshop project, a mix for a friend. It’s probably bad for my end game, because a lot of the time I don’t go back to a project I started, but this has helped me a bit keep some creative focus and helps give me a sense of what I want to be doing in the near future with my life. Lasercave has already been a venue for some of my stuff (podcasts, video w/ Jade and Unsettling of America chapter coming soon) so I figure that this “Basic Beats” thing is just an extension of what Tim and everyone already have going on here.

Also, I think I’m gonna start a mixtape club on this page. Of course it’s not gonna be a “mixtape” club for real because MP3s are so many degrees removed from cassettes but I’ll give you downloadable .zip files with playlists and colorful homemade pictures. Think of the .zip as a gift similar to a mixtape. You open it up and it’s a little package of goodies with a bunch of songs and colorful album art. I’ll probably write an accompanying blog post sincerely trying to figure out what it is I like about the music I put on each mix.
Sometimes the mixes will be themed and other times it’ll just be songs that I like or have been listening to recently. I intend to get back into producing longer format mashups and mixes like the 2 Bowlpack B podcasts but right now my version of Ableton Live 5 (the software that makes it all possible) isn’t working on this computer.

So anyways, I figured I’d provide a first mix for this site launch. This “Vol. 1″ is focused mostly on electronic dance music that, abashedly, I admit I love. Most of this stuff is very stripped down, meticulously produced music, constructed from what sometimes sounds like an intentionally minimal pallette of digital sounds. I guess it’s House Music, but who really cares? I wanted to do something more generic and accessible for this mix so if this isn’t your cup of tea forgive me. I intend to do more accessible comps in the future. Anyways, enjoy.

http://www.verzend.be/v/7462215/Basic_Beats_01.zip.html

If there are any problems accessing this link let me know.

-Jeffrey