ageha tomorrow!

Posted on June 26th, 2009 by Al'x.
Categories: AleXanga.


Invitation

hey guys, just a last minute reminder that i’ll be spinning @ ageHa tomorrow! (ageHa.com)

i have 2 sets so ill split it between hiphop and house. no doubt, ill be dedicating a LOT of songs to Micheal Jackson (RIP).

i’ve attached the invitation to this message so please put it on your phone. you can also email me anytime and i’ll just forward it directly to your phone.

PLEASE show the invitation on your phone when you get to the door. there should be 2 lines- girls go to the ‘allure’ line and guys go to the normal one. but either way, make sure you show the screen!

[if you’re part of ‘e-ro productions’ or ‘turned on’, feel free to show any version of the invitation- they all have the same effect]

it’ll be my first time spinning at ageha so im super-excited.
it’s gonna be crazy~

see u guys soon!
– DJ NgaiNgai (Alex)
djngaingai@t.vodafone.ne.jp

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the next step [part 2]

Posted on February 6th, 2009 by Al'x.
Categories: AleXanga.

this post is part of a massive end-of-the-year/new years/reflection/resolution post that i began writing over a month ago.. decided to break it up into a couple of more digest-able sections that ill continue to post every week or so.

[ i made a quadriplegic man dance ]

during the last week of my residency, this dude came into the club on a wheelchair followed by 2 girls. he looked just like any other regular guy except his arms ended at the elbows and his legs ended at the knees. i dont even wanna imagine what happened but he obviously wasnt gonna let that stop him from having fun. he got himself onto one of the couches, ordered a guinness (no straw needed), and flirted with girls. o yea, he wasnt riding an automatic wheelchair, nor did he need the girls to push it. talk about strength.

so after sitting around n drinking for a lil while, he sends one of the girls to the dj booth with a song request (the game’s ‘my life’) and she goes back and starts dancing. no doubt i accepted the request and as i play the song, he sends me a drink. then he gets into his wheelchair and joins the girls on the dancefloor.

man, that almost had me in tears. this was obviously a really cool dude that had something REALLY unfortunate happen to him but he was out there having more fun than anyone else in the club. totally makes you appreciate the things you take for granted. seriously, how bad could your day have been? at least you can scratch your head! man, theres some really strong people out there and you can learn a lot from them. dont waste your potential!

its little experiences like this that really put things into perspective. i mean, what would i be doing with my life if i was in his position? what would you do? to be honest, this was one of the things that helped push me towards leaving my residency. i was growing complacent and lazy- i was making good money and things were okay. but seeing him really shook me out of it. i didnt come to japan to live a normal life- i came to have a fucking amazing life.

appreciate life, man. what do u wanna do with your life? whatever it is, dont let it pass u by cuz i know at least one person who would love to have your potential…

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the next step [part 1]

Posted on January 30th, 2009 by Al'x.
Categories: AleXanga.

so that was fast.. why does it seem like the older we get, the faster time progresses? seriously, i got to japan in january 2006 and that year flew by.. then 2007 felt even faster.. and now its like 2008 went so fast that it didnt even happen!

well, obviously it did happen, and i ended up writing a massive book of a post. so ill divide it up and post one every couple of days. here’s part 1:

[ i quit odeon ]

yea, so after almost 2 years of being the music of odeon, im done. straight up, theres no drama and no bad feelings, nothing like that. i just felt like the time is right for me to move on. i am forever grateful to the owner, heni, for giving me the opportunity to do exactly what i came here to do. i wanted a regular gig in a nice place and complete control over the music- and thats what i had.

i learned sooooooo much about, well.. everything. djing, business, networking, dancing, roppongi, tokyo, japan, people, economics, LIFE.

man, honestly, when i first started spinning at odeon, i was garbage. my music was limited, my skills were whack, my transitions were rushed, my crowd control was weak, my stamina was low. garbage. i was totally amateur and i really couldnt believe that i was actually being paid to do what i was doing.

but i practiced my ass off. everytime i was behind the decks, i was practicing. built up my endurance like crazy. went from a weekend residency to 5-day full-time residency. i used to count how many good transitions id get in a night- and itd be a bonus if i go the timing right. (now i average 1:30 or so for my transitions, hehe) i went from 1 hour sets combined with 1 hour breaks to 12 hour sets with only bathroom breaks. i was in the dj booth longer than i did anything else.

so naturally, spending that much time with the turntables, my skills leveled up like crazy. i can confidently say that im a professional dj …and ill destroy you if u think u can rock harder than i do. i guess you can say, as a dj, i grew up in odeon.

see thats the thing, a couple months back, i started to realize that i outgrew the place. i knew most of the ppl in the crowd (and their favorite songs), packed rooms didnt get me excited anymore, and i forgot what it was like to get butterflies. everything just became a little too routine- i was literally workin 9-5 too (pm to am, though).

so where does that leave me now? well, fortunately, odeon served as a great place for networking so for the forseeable future, im just going to do events only. i met a ton of promoters and event organizers and ive been slowly increasing the non-odeon gigs over the past few months. not only are they more cost effective (work less for more pay~) but theyre just more FUN. [check out the video in my last post]

also, i know i said i was gonna do it last year, but im gonna spend a LOT of my time in the studio this year. it’s great how a lot of things just come together at the right time. when i first started djing, i was all about performance and playing live. dont get me wrong, i still love it but my interest in production and composition have grown to a very serious point. im not gonna wait for good songs to come out anymore, it’s time for me to make the songs i wanna play.

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all i see are changes..

Posted on December 16th, 2008 by Al'x.
Categories: AleXanga.



me @ warehouse702 a couple weeks ago~
(i was wondering why they asked me for a picture o_O..)

so a lotta stuff has been goin on recently and its been way too long since ive written any of it down.. im not workin at all this week so its time i stopped ignoring my blog, haha

maxed out
so as soon as i got back from my san diego trip (that was only august but man, it feels like a lifetime ago, haha) i switched from weekend resident dj (thurs-sat) to full-time resident dj (tues-sat). that was cool. i was spinning at minimum 8 hours a day, 5 days a week so i leveled up like crazy and got my shit real tight. on top of that, i became a lot more involved with promotions and marketing. somehow i became a graphic designer and totally stepped up my flyer game. money was goooood.

but combined with my teaching job, which i reduced to 1 day/week, i had absolutely NO free time. check this out: there were 30 days in september and guess how many days i worked? 29. 30/31 days in october and 28/30 in november. so dont get me wrong.. i love what i do and to get paid so much for doing exactly what i wanna be doing is awesome. but one massively random event happened that really made me re-think my direction.

recession
so in early september, lehman brothers went bankrupt. do u know where the lehman office is in tokyo? yea.. right around the corner from odeon. but we didnt notice the impact right away. summer was great attendance-wise. we became the undisputed best after-hours club. itd be 11am and we’d hafta kick people out so we could go home! anyway, as autumn started progressing, the attendance fell sharply. there used to be decent crowds throughout the week (even on tuesdays at 5am o_O) but it got to the point where the club was basically empty until friday.

so i began to realize that recession hits hard in all industries- especially entertainment. i mean, what’s the first thing people cut out when they’re trying to save money? the 10,000yen ur gonna spend on a night of drinking or the 10,000yen ur gonna spend on groceries? i don’t blame them at all. hell, i dont even go out unless im geting paid to, haha. so on top of that, the rising fuel surcharges and the strength of the yen has basically killed the tourist crowd. so what happens? i end up playing music for the staff all night long for the majority of the week. i held strong and tried to be optimistic about the economy and the crowds but its not lookin good. all that time standing there behind the decks gave me a ton of time to think. conclusion? i was wasting time.

re-focus
why did i come to japan? to take over the world, right? right. i took over a lil corner of tokyo and now its time to expand. plus, residency might not be my thing anyways. i can’t stand routine and somehow i turned a traditionally non-routine job into one. playing one-off events is way more financially efficient and fun. i think the biggest sign for me was that i realized that i didnt get nervous anymore. whats performance without butterflies? a weak one.

so starting december 1st, i quit the weekdays and bought a keyboard. i figure my mixing is tight and my performance is on point so i can chill with that for a minute and switch gears towards production. im getting tired of waiting for other people to release good songs. its time for me to get other people to play MY music. oh yea, i finally went clubbing a lil while ago. got to see mr.world’s #1 DJ himself- armin van buuren @ ageha. so he rocked hard as expected.. but i noticed that technique-wise, he didn’t do anything i couldnt. performance-wise? id destroy him. so whats the difference? hes got like 20 albums released. hmph. just u wait.

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death magnetic..

Posted on September 18th, 2008 by Al'x.
Categories: AleXanga.


THIS is an awesome album.. by far my favorite album of the year. yea, im sure a lot of u guys think its random but go get it and listen- its the hotness. i guess ive been listening to way too much electronic music lately. house music by nature doesnt have any real instruments.. hiphop as well. so for me, id have to say metallica’s death magnetic is so good because of its organic sound.

organic? what? heavy metal is never organic. yea, but freaking listen to the album! its like stepping in on them in the middle of a jam session. which, as far as im concerned, is the only reason to see bands live. it doesnt sound like anything youd find on a commercial album. to me, its like they were rehearsing the songs on the album but recorded the jam sessions between the songs instead.

oh yea, and it was produced by god himself: rick rubin. i read somewhere that when they started the process of making the album, he told the members of metallica to imagine that they weren’t metallica and to imagine that they were preparing music for a battle of the bands competition. this vibe can definitely be felt all throughout the album. the average length of a song: 7 minutes. SEVEN! and its really heavy on the instrumentals. i love that part because they’re so on point- they level of instrumentation is ridiculous and they just work together so well.

hehe, did u catch that pun up there? anyway, seriously, this was the highlight of the album for me: it FEELS good. they took their time on the songs and they let each track fully breathe and become its own. its as if they didnt give a shit about commercial success with the album- they just took it back to 80’s-death-metal metallica and killed it.

so yea, i think its the best metallica album to come out in over a decade and i HIGHLY recommend ‘death magnetic’. consider it DJ NgaiNgai approved, hehe.. i think ill start doing album reviews/recommendations more often. what do u guys think?

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