Nothing could quite prepare me for my first time in Brasil, courtesy of the fantastic CIRCUITO guys – Andre, Gabriel and Sergio. I played with Pet Duo, Valentino, James Ruskin, Murphy, Lukas, Alvinho, Little Noise E Thiel and had an incredibly inspiring time. After my first gig of using my traditional hardware based set up I spent nearly 8 hours working frantically in Ableton LIVE to create a totally new set for my second gig. When it came to setting up my stuff James was already in full swing playing a brilliant mix of inspired techno laden with smatterings of detroit and soul...i hooked up two set-ups, the old hardware one just in case and my new ableton – MPC rig. As I started I was extremely nervous, it was my first time EVER using a laptop live but the results were so rewarding. I’ll never use ONLY a laptop (I have it synced to an MPC1000 and Electribe / midi fx) but I can now finally lay my old machines to rest. ‘LIVE’ offers me the flexibility and power I now need to deliver my best possible live sets and I cannot wait to play again.

The crowd at Circuito were incredible, they gave me the inspiration I have been needing for some time as gigs in my staple, Germany, seem to lack the buzz they used to carry. I flew home having met some great people, experienced a brief immersion in an incredible city, Sao Paulo and rejuvinated my live sets by using new technologies...it was a short but brilliant trip.

Whilst eating lunch today my girlfriend turned to me and said, 'I have some bad news that I don't think you are going to like' Minutes later I just sat there having heard of John Peel's untimely passing in Peru - in shock and sadness. As you can see from my posting below it was only days ago that I reflected on John as one of my real musical heroes. He will be very much missed.

Nothing pleases me more to be honest than when John Peel plays my music. He was, I think, the first ever DJ to air my ‘Crouton’ e.p. years ago and I remember the sheer excitement of hearing my first vinyl outing being put through all those BBC Radio One compressors and blasting out of a friends’ hifi. I can’t compare anyone else to John Peel – he goes beyond what the word ‘DJ’ now conjures up and captures a musical passion and breadth of taste few DJs can match. Living in Holland years ago I even remember catching John Peel on the BBC World Service playing a techno track – incredible!

John Peel plays 'RISING'

After a day of thrashing out design ideas in our London studio for my design
project I met up with Scott Tibbs from Roland USA, Atsuo Yukawa from Roland
Japan and Martyn Hopkins from Roland UK. Over a few beers we discussed
everything from sound design right through to new methods of live performance
control. It was great to bounce ideas around and I was chuffed to learn that
some recent programming (Patterns and sound design) I worked on will now
appear in a new product to be launched an NAMM January 2005 - I'll be
posting updates as soon as I know the machine in question. I'll also be
working on some new sound design for another new product (the nature of
which I am not allowed to know!) involving some incredibly powerful new
synthesis, can't wait!

I haven’t had much time to check out films lately but two that caught my attention were ‘Collateral’ and ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’. I could also mention Ken Loach’s ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ but it was so bad I won’t bother.

I’m a huge Michael Mann fan - ‘Heat’, ‘The Insider’, ‘Manhunter’ are brilliantly shot and entertaining films with great atmosphere. To be honest I always thought Collateral was going to disappoint – part of the reason being the implausability of Tom Cruise’s ‘look’ for the film. The aesthetic simply added frustration to what was a fairly weak film – dotted with bits of ‘buddy’ humour it really fell short of the standard I’ve come to expect from Mann over the past few years.

‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ on the other hand was a delight. Paddy Considine starred in Warp Films first production – a brutal and fairly original revenge thriller. It almost excused Considine for ‘In America’.

Thanks to everyone who turned up at 'TEST' on Friday night in Glasgow. It's
a legend of a night and I was joined by Dave Tarrida and Steve Glencross.
Dirty Hospital also played as did the Tokyo Bitches. It's always an immense
pleasure for me to take the trip up to Glasgow - a city close to my heart.
The people may be crazy (although less so as everyone gets a little older)
but are always up for it and give any regular visitor a sense of incredible
welcome. It was pretty busy and I had a very good night. Thank you.

Finally finally...this upgrade actually crept up on me. I haven¹t had much
time over the past few months to catch up with all the hi-tech music press
and so Logic Pro 7 was somewhat of a surprise. In a nutshell it¹s brilliant
­ finally Apple / Emagic have implemented audio in a way that makes some
sense. The new instruments are fantastic too ­ I missed ?Attack¹ but
Ultrabeat (the name isn¹t exactly inspiring!) is great as is Sculpture. For
£199 it¹s a fantastic upgrade but has been a long time coming and I believe
is a timely release after Ableton released Live 4. Talking of ?Live¹ I¹ve
finally decided that within the next five months or so I¹ll be ditching my
current hardware set up for my live shows. The gap between what I¹m
achieving with my studio based set up (Logic Pro) and my ageing live set
machines means that I can no longer do my set justice using the older gear.

I wonder if I¹m going to be heading for stick by using a laptop on stage? To
be honest I think the days of this kind of purist nonsense are over ­ what
you can achieve with software now is truly awesome and if it means I¹m
producing better music, putting on better live shows then it¹s got to be the
way to go.

This is Milo, our chocolate point Himalayan...he's growing all the time and i thought i'd post pictures of him as he begins to grow into a true cat. He's currently just under 9 months old.

Was good to hook up with 'Dufty', albeit briefly and play some more of my new album tracks.

Finally the new site is up...the past few parties have been inspiring and I thought i'd post some pictures here.


Justin LIVE at WOMB, Tokyo, 08.08.04


View from Rappongi Hills, Tokyo


Justin and Kazu


Area51, Brugges, Belgium, 17.09.04


Area51, Brugges, Belgium, 17.09.04