<DRAFT>
In 1999 I started to frequent a comic and magazine shop situated across the way from where my mother would get her hair done. I would often go into this magazine shop to kill time, browse the manga (Satoshi Urushihara's Chirality was a favorite), and check out the latest music and DJ centric mags from the UK, Mixmag being one of the best of them. They had started glueing mix cds to their covers which were themed with whatever fleeting dance music fad was set to take over the clubs till the next publication. Some of these auspicious compilations were titled things like 3 A.M. Rush and Trance & Bass. I remember flipping through, looking at the pictures of weekenders with their warpaint setting out for the night then chilling out to when the pills wore off. Minneapolis was so far away from all that but with the mix CDs the culture felt close. At the time I didn't go dig up where it was these genres had come from, their development, their components, nothing. Then I started going over to my Russian friend's house because he had a faster internet connection than I did plus a CD burner. I'd bring over a stack of CDs, my Mixmag, DJ, and Knowledge magazines and spend an afternoon downloading the charts off Limewire and later Soulseek. A lot of it was shit and there was a lot of candy rave stuff going on at the time. Happy Hardcore was very popular amongst my skater-turned-raver friends. However, what I gleaned from my time browsing the racks and the experience of looking up so much of this music was the importance of being a dedicated fanatic when it comes to art, music, culture; having a process for discovery. All of these things have never left me even if the technology has changed, formats died, people resigned to obscurity, Adidas thrifted away— the substance and the excitement for finding exciting music has not waned. What I've selected represent a varied core sample of those years spent in my room trying to replicate the intricate eyes of Urushihara's females while listening to the dance floor fillers of far away England.
</DRAFT>
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| I have a lot more respect for Deadmau5 after finding this pic. |
