I am in the middle of creating a how-to for vgc>midi translation with puredata and other applications for use in Ableton Live, Reason, Logic, vst/vstis, etc.; but in the meantime, the Chicago Reader decided to interrogate me a bit. I'll also post the original intervew when the how-to is ready.
Additionally, I've made leaps and bounds this past week gettting my previous code creations, applications, and favorite vsts ported over to linux, which I will from now on be using for composing and performing. Much more about all this to come once Fakebeat HQ is done migrating to its new location due to anti-rave-zoning laws and our relentless-peace-breaching.
New Ways to Play Better at video games than piano? It could be your ticket to a career in music.
Sharp Darts by Miles Raymer
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/sharpdarts/080417/
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There are very few bands that have had more of an impact on dance music than Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Both groups have been sampled and resampled and have given us prototypes of what danceable grooves should sound like. A good band needs to be based around a good drummer. With example, Chris Frantz, co-founder and one half of the rhythm section in both of these monumental bands is certainly an important guy. He along with his wife Tina Waymouth helped to form Talking Heads back in art school with David Byrne and later went on to create Tom Tom Club, a band who's dedication to music for music sake becomes more apparent with every listen. Mike Dextro, limited to five questions, chats with Frantz about where he's been, where hes going, and what he finds exciting about music..png)
Marc-Alan Gray is faking waves. He recently deejayed with Justice of Ed Banger records, and is a major player in the Friday night series Robot Rock at Le Royale NYC. He has been kind enough to share his most recent remix work in collaboration w/ Vasali Gavre, under the moniker HeartMe!. MAG will be in Chicago next month playing the new Electro/Indie series Modern Love at Liars Club, as well as some raw underground party appearances. Get ready.
Mike to Fakebeat is a sound from the eye of the storm of what has been and what will be in pop and underground – his DJing, production, and current journalism in New York City. His music, much like his bio, is a map of sonic cause and effect. Even Russian glam-metal, ordained to reign supreme but of stillborn fame as its western counterparts perished before the fall of the Iron Curtain, is fulfilling this destiny through none other than Mike Dextro. His father is the drummer of eastern rock legend Kruiz. The culmination of the analog of the very nature of reality that are Dextro's degrees of separation from everything everywhere is the music itself. Mike is finshing his mp3 album in 2008 and joins Alexander Bassett and Protman bringing New York and Chicago nu-skoolers closer together, with spare time to kiss kittens.
A programmer going by the handle "
Hilary Rawk gets talked about a lot in Chicago. If there is somebody who can guarantee a party with max attendees its Hilary. Looking for a good underground party with some sophisticated hipster boys and girls? That's her too. You can also count on a lineup that traces what the upper crust of the party scene is about in Chicago. Originally not from the Midwest, we talk to Hilary about her party roots and how she came to know what this city needed next. .jpg)
Imagine yourself at a warehouse party. Maybe Detroit, Chicago, New York. Some place dirty, the kind of building that makes you wonder how you got there...and more importantly how you're going to get home at 6am when the dancing is done. The crowd is thick with young people, many probably not even 21 years old, basking in their own piece of 2008 disco history with their hands held high. So many people that its hard to make out who the DJ is, regardless you need to know. The sound is infectious, a rare moment where hundreds of people seem to just lose themselves to the music.
MarvelKind is a band that has been around a long time, approaching ten years, with a history together that goes back years before anybody ever heard of them. Chicagoans who know their music count them as one of their favorite bands. There is no mistake that they are one of the most unique pop rock groups to come out of the late nineties indie rock boom in Chicago. As that scene evaporated approaching the new millennium, it seemed to take MarvelKind with it. Ben Hughes moved to L.A. to pursue acting and solo possibilities in early 2002, leaving the rest of the band to their own projects. Electro rock band Assassins was born during this period after Aaron Miller and Dave Golitko joined forces with Irish singer/songwriter Joe Cassidy, Merritt Lear, and bass player Alex Kemp. Even with the success of their new projects there still lingered a question... Whats the MarvelKind going to do next, and when? 
I am of the belief that one's home should always have sound and music playing in it, 24/7/365. It can be music meant for direct listening, music for getting the dishes done or cleaning your toilet, music to listen to while you're making other music, or any sort of ambient or noise-masking sound designed to break the silence and occupy the mind's-ear in an effort to block out the voices of the neighbors, or even the voices in your head telling you what you ought to do to the neighbors. In any event, it should always be there. It's education. It's exercise. It helps circulate the air. 