Posted by: Matt

I started to write up an epic post about how much I heart L.A. breakcore pop band Captain Ahab, about how they have a new album out in a few weeks and are touring the West Coast right f*cking NOW but the Wikipedia article pretty much sums up everything I wanted to say about them:

Captain Ahab is an electropop duo based in Los Angeles, California. They refer to their sound, a DIY take on dance music, as ravesploitation. The band is made up of Jonathan Snipes and Jim Merson. A typical Captain Ahab live performance consists of playback of recorded beats from a computer and vigorous singing by both members of the band. While performing, members of Captain Ahab are usually partially undressed, covered in sweat, and constantly forcing themselves into physical contact with members of the audience. While their lyrics are satirically misogynistic, their live performance is thoroughly homoerotic.

In June 2006, Captain Ahab won the Snakes on a Plane music contest, with their song “Snakes on the Brain”.

On September 28th, 2006, the song “Girls Gone Wild” was played briefly in “The Convention”, the second episode of the third season of The Office.

Their single “Was Love” was written for and played in the first season episode “Gravedancing” on the Syfy series Caprica.

Jonathan writes and performs the music. Jim gets naked and dances. Jonathan also teaches at UCLA and contributes music and sound design to several television shows. Jim rubs his sweat on you.

I’ve seen them twice at the Hemlock here in San Francisco and had an absolute blast both times. As luck would have it, they are playing there again this Friday (3.19), and I highly recommend you all go with me. Seriously.

Videos with music after the jump.
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Posted by: Jay

Alright ladies and gents, ready for another trip in the Waaaaay Back Machine?  This week I’m reaching into our digital shoe box* of classic mix tapes and pulling out another F-8 classic, “The Electric Temple” AKA “Mars’s Red Tape”.  I’m not sure if this is my favorite overall Mars tape, but it definitely has my favorite side.

* Is there really any better way to keep your tapes than in a shoe box?  Literally every tape we’ve digitized here has come out of someone’s shoe box: Cor’s, mine, Ben’s… we were all saddened to here that Alex emptied his shoe box of tapes into the garbage before we had a chance to get at them…

Side A has it’s jams: “Trance Emotions” is a nice starting song when you’re mixing unapologetic trance; the last two tracks are sweeping classics (one of which, the second to last, I still refuse to get rid of on vinyl); and then there’s the track three appearance of what we called “The Egyptian Song”, later discovered to actually be named “Snake Charmer” by Carpe Diem*, which was always caused pandemonium amongst my group of friends when played live, in a car, on a boom box… really playing this song at any time at any volume back in the day would make one of us pee our pants.**

* I’ll feature this tomorrow as our “Bonus Beat”, stay tuned in.

** Yup, that’s all one sentence.  I amaze myself.

But it’s side B that’s really the classic.  Mars starts us off with some “Infinity” by Guru Josh and just never looks back.  Trance hit after trance hit for 40 straight minutes!  We got “Out of the Blue”; there’s whatever the song is called that comes in after at about 18:35 that still to this day moves me; then the “Bun BE-dum… bun BI BE BE-dum” song, which should not to be confused with the “BE bun, be-bi-dun-be BE bun…”* track that comes in around 31:10; the violin track; and the list just goes on and on.  If I want to hear classic SF melodic/cybertrance from the late 90’s (AKA classic German melodic/cybertrance from a few years earlier) I’m headed straight for side two “The Electric Temple”.

So get your glow sticks out, dust of your ultra baggy pants, candy bracelets and neon tops ’cause we’re about to go a’ravin!

* You know what’s even more ridiculous than trying to sing a trance song for someone?  Yeah, trying to type one out.

Mars - “The Electric Temple” - Side A

Mars - “The Electric Temple” - Side B

For more from Mars, visit him at his website*

If you’d like the remastered, hi-quality CD of this mix, it’s available from F8’s shop HERE.

Posted by: Jay

His name really sums it up: “Legendary International Superstar DJ Tiësto”.  Ohh wait, that’s not actually his name??  Well it should be.  I don’t think anyone in this contest has as much fame, played for as many people, has as much international recognition, has won as many awards, or has pulled down as much dough as Tiësto.  Dude even has his own shoes!  But this isn’t an international popularity contest, and I actually think his mega-fame hurts him our circles (I know I’ve come to tune him out entirely due to over-exposure, over-hype and overuse of divas).  But the question still remains: can Tiësto BUMP, or is he just an over-hyped, diva-loving, low quality cheese-trance peddler?  Find out after the jump!

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Posted by: Jay

I love driving fast.  Cor loves driving fast.  Hella our friends love driving fast.  To pay homage to this need for speed, Cor and I got together five years ago to make this set, Octane, meant to be the soundtrack for that next stretch of road.

The concept was simple: combine as many songs as we could that made us want to drive with excessive speed.  The result however was far more than either of us had anticipated.  With all of its voice samples, varied styles, great mixes and kickass tracks, this set took on a life of its own and still delights to this day!   It moves from breaks to house, progressive to cybertrance, tribal to old-school rave, all while keeping that persistent, driving beat that urges you to go ever faster.

Whether it be your yearly pilgrimage to Black Rock desert, or just your daily commute, may Octane speed you to your next destination.  And just so you know: “On green I’m going for it.”

“Octane” – DJ Cor & DJ Jay – (one long track, right click and “Save as…”)

As we released this as a CD back in the day we have all the tracks cut up, zipped up and available to be downloaded in full 320 kbps glory!  Enjoy, just be careful: this set WILL get you into trouble.

“Octane” – DJ Cor & DJ Jay – (.zip file with tracks cut up, right click and “Save as…”)

Tracklist, movies sampled and more after the jump.

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Posted by: Cor

Ah, here’s a Cor and Jay tape for the ages. We recorded this as a give-away for a “rave” we threw in the pizza junction at UC Santa Cruz in 2000. If memory serves, we recorded about 40 copies of this tape from one master copy on our dual-deck tape recorder… a process that took us weeks. These days all I have to do to propagate it anew is record the tape one last time and throw it on the internets. Yes, I love technology.

This tape marks the point where Jay and I started to break apart stylistically (although we’ve started merging back together in recent years thanks to the rise of electro house.) I had started phasing out the trance in favor of house music, changing my name from the trancy “Paradigm” to plain ol’ DJ Cor (all the house DJs just used their first names… DJ Dan, Tony, Garth, etc.) It was a relief to both Jay and I to finally diverge a bit. We no longer struggled to define our DJ “sounds” from one another, we didn’t need to argue over which one of us would get to feature mutually beloved songs on our mixes, and best of all, we could record tapes like this one, with a variety of styles. There’s something here for everyone.* I kick things off on side A with some hard & funky house, while Jay rocks side B with some classic hands-in-the-air anthem trance. It’s a flashback mix, no doubt, and certainly sounds dated at this point, but we still love it. What do you think? Do any of these tracks bring you back to your raving days?

*Provided everyone enjoys either house or trance music circa 2000.

Bump Side A - DJ Cor (Right click to download)

Bump Side B - Paradox (Right click to download)