VOX ELECTRONIQUE || ENTERING THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE

REPORTING: #EDWINPHENIX
LOCATION: UNKNOWN
PROJECT: Week 5 Progress Report
DATE: 23/2/13

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BEGIN: REPORT

Have come to a clearing in the sonic jungle. It's been a while of insane audio madness, so I'm going to sum up the past month or so in one report. We began our endeavor into the jungle searching for the entrance to the "PARALLEL UNIVERSE". We would find the clues that would lead us to this universe through our first messengers 'Shintaro'. They are a DJ duo that we were going to have on our radio show at first, but then it turned out that they no longer perform live, however one of them would aid us by being a panelist on the show itself. In order to find the gate to the Parallel Universe it seems that we would have to find some other audio prophets to guide us to the entrance. We then were confronted with the other wordly Parallels, and Saturns.For some time we had trouble finding the appropriate time to meet with these audio Prophets, but we set our sights for the 20th of February. We had meetings with our crew on how to approach this mission, and as the date approached it was concluded that we would need the help of Lido Pimienta a breaking Canadian electronic music artist originally based out of Colombia [https://soundcloud.com/lido-pimienta/sets/lido-pimienta-color] and

Tom Avis from the electronic music blog Silent Shout [http://silentshout.ca/]. We tried approach the gateway pre maturely, but were unable to get the necessary access and equipment due to competition from other crews of prospectors on similar quests, although ours would be the holiest of all. With only 7 hours total available time to prep for our entrance to the Parallel Universe we had to come up with an entrance plan - this would be the ingeniously created VOX ELECTRONIQUE stingers created by agent Eli Roths. As I was the head of the team I took the role of hosting all of our audio Prophets while the rest of the crew tackled the technical side. We were able to get footage of the entrance to this Parallel Universe curdosy of last minute crew member Leo Ashton, however the audio was sabotaged along with our protools session - although we had tested it in advance our system crashed. I suppose this is what happens when you try to access something as heavy as the 'Parallel Universe'. The Electric Eels crew was however pleased with the outcome despite some technological hiccups that were unavoidable. The only problem was the documentation of the event being sabotaged by cosmic forces. The prophets Parallels and Saturns were very happy along with the panel hosts Lido and Tom Avis and will continue to stay in communication into the future.

Aside from this, Edwin [speaking in third person] has had a continued repor with Lido Pimienta and will likely be assisting her as his next directive. After crossing through to the Parallel Universe he feels more than confident in his ability to create a documentation of her audio Prophesies in the form of an ep which will precede the full length album entitled La Papesa. This EP will be used for performances on CBC and for touring with the Montreal electronique artist BOOGAT [https://soundcloud.com/boogat]. Many more exciting news to come, going back into the audible jungle, slowly approaching the mountain which will hold unprecedented audio magic.

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END REPORT

#garthwinters

IMG_7228, a photo by CJ Le on Flickr.

Garth Winters off the beaten path...

BACK IN THE JUNGLE || WEEK 1

REPORTING: #EDWINPHENIX
LOCATION: #KEVINFEVER STUDIOS FLA
PROJECT: Week 1 Progress Report
DATE: 15/1/13

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BEGIN: REPORT

Brainstorming ideas for the Spirit Live radio broadcast we will be putting together for the BDC directive. Looking into a couple U.S touring acts to book into the show - some friends of friends. Also looking into getting 1 or 2 duos to either play or battle off for the interview. I have some experience working with Drums and Bass duos I SMELL BLOOD and KIZ AND LEGIN when I brought them down to New York for a showcase. It would be interesting to recreate this in a Canadian studio. I was thinking about putting up Tonka Puma with Kiz and Legin instead perhaps, also another drums and bass duo. Also, we have been looking into getting Odonis Odonis and Shintaro [http://shintaro.bandcamp.com/] as potential acts.

We're in good shape.

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END REPORT

dirty debruh wong

IMG_6811, a photo by CJ Le on Flickr.

BIG ASS FAN

IMG_7002, a photo by CJ Le on Flickr.

get lost.: Some from ometepe

get lost.: Some from ometepe: Boooosh

BEGIN REPORT: AGENT CHAZ TAYLOR AKA CLIVE KROEGER

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I'm getting behind on this blog again. 

I'm typing this post sitting in a cab on our way out of Granada again. We're just going out to the edge of town to hitch hike our way back to the border of costa rica. 

The rest of the gang are all flying home tomorrow and I'm continuing on to spend new years in samara, costa rica with some new and old friends. We spent our last week riding chicken busses, at volcanic music festivals, hiking waterfalls, adopting a Canadian, hanging out with a monkey, peace sticking, putting out fires scootering to rodeos, scaring German girls, surfing volcanoes, making fun of tourists, meeting some puppies and and raccoon and general debauchery with local and world citizens.


Magma fest.

We met a girl working at the bar at our hostel in Granada who told us of a festival on ometepe island for the solstice/ end of the world. Perfect! We planned on heading there anyway and what better way to spend the end of the world than on an actively volcanic island, one with a history of mayan settlements and with a landscape dotted with ancient stone carvings. I imagined a sleepy little town to come Alive with festivities, Mayan celebrations, dancing on the streets, locals from across Nicaragua to be out and about and celebrating life and the possible end of it. What we found out however, from two girls from Frankfurt and Berlin, respectively; just finished with their volunteer work in Granada; was that magma fest was the first ever electronic music in Nicaragua, a beer sponsored, wristband affair with security guards, unculminative house music and more white people than I've seen since leaving Canada. It was like a club downtown Toronto suddenly got placed on a beach and just kept on fist bumping. I ran into our friend from the hostel in the middle of the night and she looked at me wide eyed and says, "there's a lot of coke and speed going around, I'm pretty coke and speeded up, hold on, I've gotta go do something!"And with that she was gone, never to be seen again.
It was a strange place to find yourself in the middle of your travels, when all you expected was some nice hikes and to take in the beauty of the place. The island is actually being penned as a sort of biological reserve to attract that sort of Eco tourism that it deserves. The whole party traveller cheap hostel mentality is scarce on the island and that's how it should be in my opinion. The festival was bad in the sense that it directly contradicts that mentality and a lot of locals on the island are not too impressed, the fear that it could set ometepe up as a party destination is a legitimate concern. it will be interesting to see what it will lead to in future years.

Bur despite all that we still got more liquored up and danced harder then anyone else at the place. We had a great fucking time with our German friends from the ferry and our aforementioned friend shine. You guys are amazing!
Also we snuck in and didn't pay for the party or camping, take that magma fest! The budget prevails.

Our next days on the Isla were amazing, we said goodbye to our friends and headed to a beautiful little town on the southern end called Merida. We stayed at a gorgeous hostel, camping for 3 bucks a night. We met a few lovely young families
And enjoyed The biggest buffet I've ever had in my life, after that we were invited to a post graduation party down the street and the whole town was there! There was a dj with a big old sound system, women selling drinks and smokes from buckets behind a folding table and if you had to piss it was the forest or nothing. The dj set up on a basketball court and all the dancing was there, we had fun salsa dancing with some local hunnies, getting harassed by the town drunks and enjoying the actual humanity of the whole affair, it was an actual community come together to celebrate and have a good time. There was young nica boys grinding up on girls, shy girls asking us to dance and one CRAZY salsa dancer taking these girls for a spin, they could barely keep up! It was a stark contrast to magma fest the night before an we loved it. 

We hiked volcan Maderas the next day, well halfway, to a beautiful waterfall spilling down from a hundred feet above us into a little pool we could swim in, there was even a rainbow, it was that fuckin beautiful. On the hike we met zac. We became fast friends and he was soon as important a member in our group as any of us. And he was Canadian, a maritimer! We talked about magma fest, he was there as well and ended up getting a lot of his stuff stolen, iPod, camera, money, his first aid kit? But he never complained however and really had an admirable character. Reminded me to just keep trucking. Don't let individual shitty experiences take away from the whole, not even a little. 

On our way back to the hostel we stopped to eat at a little restaurant, not worth mentioning except it was some of the best fucking chicken we ever ate, and spaghetti.. and one of the owners of the place saw us jamming on our ukes and pulled a dusty old beaten up guitar out Of the closet, spent 45 minutes tuning the damn thing then blew our minds with some amazing Spanish guitar an a awesome rendition of la bamba. Just wild.

Zac stayed at our hostel that night, already a good enough friend to crash in out tents and the next morning we were off, a two and half hour drive across the island on a cramped sweaty chicken bus to the port town of moyagulpa. There we rented motorbikes and spent the afternoon driving around the island, where we stumbled upon a rodeo. A genuuuine Nicaraguan rodeo. There were wasted old men fighting with each other as much as the bulls, young kids taking some risks with some seriously pissed off bulls and a pizza truck!
The actual spectacle was super cruel and actually pretty rough to watch, those bulls were being treated very poorly, people throwing garbage at them, anything they could to Piss them off. I think rodeos are a little romanticized. Despite that it was fun and we left feeling like we saw something you don't see everyday. 

We took the bikes back eventually to catch the ferry that the guy who rented us the bikes told us left at 530, but of course it was gone at four and he tried to get us to stay at his hostel. Hustler! But it turned out as a blessing because after we ditched him we found a great place to stay, but the story gets weird.

We arrived and found two other friends we had net on the hike, kiia and sophie, two girls from Finland and Quebec. Also the hostel owner had monkeys, capuchins, one Of which was as friendly as any dog and I crossed a check off my bucket list. Playing with a fucking monkey!!! I then had a shower and was walked in on by some Pervy old local dude and that was gross. 

Anyway This was Christmas eve so we all went out for dinner but when we returned we found the entire back part of the hostel on fire! It was a Sort of cabinas structure made with a roof of banana leaves That housed the hammocks, which is of course where i was set up to sleep that Night. There were about forty people back there throwing buckets of water on the flames and I had a heart attack finding all my stuff which had been scattered in the chaos. I didn't lose anything expensive or important luckily and eventually the flames went out and we returned to the festivities. Also I got an upgrade to the "master suite" . double beds and a private bathroom, not too shabby. The rest of the night was a blast, hanging with our new friends and salsa dancing at the club next door.

Anyway...
Ive typed a lot on a small keyboard and I'm ready To go eat.

We split into groups this morning, saying goodbye in case we didn't see each other again; Dylan ad Janny fly out of San jose and ross and Kveshe from Liberia, quite a distance from each other; and we successfully hitch hiked across the country to the border. However I made a last minute decision to stay in Nicaragua one more night, I turned into San Juan del sur instead of heading to the border, so I said goodbye to Ross an Kveshe and and I'm goin to surf tommorow and head to costa tommorow night.
It's been some of the best days of my life traveling with you all and I'll miss it dearly. 
Pura vida bitches.

I'm ready for chapter two.

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END REPORT.

oh no I know this feeling, it creeps inside of me

starin' down the cano in anticipation, after ascending 1000 feet with Chaz and Steve

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http://gayaschristmas.bandcamp.com/track/frosty-beach-party-spawn-remix

http://flavors.me/spawn

http://edwinphenix.blogspot.com

http://surf-bored.blogspot.com

http://surfsupdeathisland.tumblr.com