Quite the month for All Day I Dream…
We stepped outside of our home base of New York in June and took a road trip to the weekly and superb Sunday party, Piknic Electronik, in Montreal. Our signature material shaded Jean Drapeau park and Hoj and I played to over five thousand smiling faces in to the dusk. “Wow” was a word spilled from many a mouth that day. Mine included.
We also launched in Los Angeles which will be our adopted West Coast home this year. West Hollywood’s Egyptian theater courtyard drew a beautiful and mixed crowd that gave me the same feeling and connectivity I get playing at Burning Man and Lightning In A Bottle festivals. Without a word of a lie this was (for me) the best party I’ve ever played in Los Angeles in the fifteen years I’ve been going. We will be hosting a few more events through the year in some cool spaces we’ve found. Matthew (Dekay) and I will be playing on a fantastic roof top in Chinatown on July 22nd. The roof has great views and we are switching back to using the D+B sound we used all last year in New York. Trust me when I say it’s amazing! Click here for event details.
New York’s season opener was beyond mobbed. More so than we predicted so our apologies if you were a little more squished than usual. Unfortunately the venue, beautiful as it is, had been experiencing issues with the neighbors complaining about sound levels from previous events held there. Annoyingly we ended up taking the fall for everyone else’s noise complaints. This was why the sound levels were low that day. That said the party was still pretty damn good. The two bridges and the Hudson River made for a fantastic backdrop.
We’ve since regrouped and will be taking the event aboard a beautiful boat on July 15th. All Day I Dream of Floating! This will then lead us nicely back in to Brooklyn for the rest of our Summer events. We have found a new space we’re excited to work on with our production ideas. Oh, and sound will be back at a more appropriate level for a party!
What else has been going on? Oh! Lightning in a bottle festival in Irvine, California was beyond magical. The whole festival is always a really special weekend. I spent a few days eating amazing Vegetarian food and checking out all sorts of different music and performance work. Somehow I still didn’t make it to yoga (due to my somewhat lazy nature and being a little out of it) but did get to hear a few people speak and a lovely friend of mine called Shawni sing beautifully. LIB and the Woogie stage have been kind enough to bring me back for three years in a row and give me three hours to play as the sunsets. Thanks to Jessie and Sami and everyone who came and supported the stage over the weekend. What a fantastic crowd this year! I was really into the set Idiot Savant played and, once again, Pumkin. A perfect set to follow on from. Woo, fuck, yeah!
Matthew and I launched our other record label in July. The sister label (or is it the brother label as All Day I Dream seems more like a lady!) Get Weird will see releases geared more towards the music we play after dark. A place for the more dubby, techy, slinky, sultry rhythms and grooves. Are you going to Get Weird?
The first release is Konrad Black’s ‘Devastator’. I think it’s a pretty special groove. I’ve been playing it for a year already and it still makes its way in to almost all of my sets. Sexy with a dark twisted melody that finds its way in towards the end and my favorite bass line of his for years. On the flip side is ‘Tubby’ from Matt and I. A wobbly little workout.
‘Lost In A Moment’ finally saw the light of day. Released on Germany’s Innervisions label (owned by Dixon and Ame) it’s riding nicely up the online stores vinyl and digital charts. Thanks to anyone out there who’s supporting it.
We’ve pushed back the next All Day I Dream release to the first week of September. ‘Afterhours Olympics’ from our friends in Serbia and ‘Holding On’ by Matthew and I really is holding on! More news on this release to follow.
The clock is ticking down towards Burning Man festival and I’m excited. As usual I will be hosting Friday night into Saturday lunchtime with some of my favorite DJ’s from the USA. On the line up again this year are Mike Khoury, Hoj and Atish. I’m sure I’ll be adding a few more between now and then.
Thanks to everyone who’s been coming out and supporting my events both in the clubs and at our day parties. I feel something is stirring in a big way in underground electronic music again. San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Denver and more have been some of the best parties I’ve ever played here. The events have been ridiculously busy and the parties amazing. It feels like it’s only just beginning too.
Finally, I know there are some people out there that quake at and complain about artists like deadtoad, the swedish house toads (just a stupid game I’ve made up replacing a part of any DJ’s name with ‘toad. try it. it’s fun!) and Skrillex being on the cover of or written about in Rolling Stone. The thing is that that issue also mentioned Seth Troxler, Wolf and Lamb, Jamie Jones, the Robot Heart bus from Burning man and more.
Surely with the current huge growth spurt within electronic music that all sorts of genres of all sorts of depths will benefit? The commercial end of the spectrum will always be represented by someone prepared to state the musically obvious. I don’t want to do that and it therefore (mostly) excludes me from playing to thirty thousand teenage glowstick waving ravers at events like Electric Daisy Carnival. It’s my choice and I stick by it. I embrace it. Some of those glowstick waving teenagers will eventually grow up and, more importantly, musically outward. At that point perhaps they will discover, embrace and love the music we all share a passion for. Not that I’m totally adverse to it but, I’d be cool with them leaving the glowsticks at home though. 
Love from the cloud
Float gently back to earth from the ethereal experience that is Burning Man by joining our daydream for party three in Los Angeles. Lee Burridge and Matthew Dekay return to their rooftop retreat once again to carry on where they left off in July. As those of you that were there already know that day instilled smiles and happiness in us all that was carried away in to the following weeks.
