last gasp of the DJ, Lines of Flight 2009

I was offered an impromptu DJ slot at the legendary Dunedin experimental music festival Lines of Flight on Friday, filling in for Peter Kirk, who hosts the experimental radio show A'sides for Betaville, which I have been sporadically involved with since its beginnings in late 2007 on Lyttelton's independent broadcast station Volcano 88:5FM.

Despite being currently fairly uninterested in live DJing (apart from the prospect of developing a no-electricity set with wind up gramophones), the challenge of providing a segue from artist to artist, something i'd become used to thinking-through on a regular basis during my organisational involvement hosting monthly events with the Borderline Ballroom experimental music group in Christchurch from 2007-8, led to something pleasingly minimal, near-inaudible, and raw, heavy on field recordings and live outtakes.

While I didn't go in the A'sides direction of maximalism and kept everything gesturally restrained to the laptop and a single CDJ, a lot of the audio was sourced from my archive of bootleg recordings, many featuring people present in the room, with the general idea of not competing with the music, but providing a convivial, yet stimulating ambiance. Less cegeste than 'suggest' for a night, I felt rather privileged to be able to provide such transitions for the sounds of Peter Wright (Christchurch), Crude (Dunedin), EYE (Dunedin), and the wonderful Xe (Auckland - (Rachel Shearer, Guy Treadgold, Sean O'Reilly, and Dean Roberts)).