I¹m playing at SILO in Belgium (One of my favourite countries to play)
alongside Mark Broom, Tomaz, Redhead, Zzino and San Ostyn amongst
others....should be a great night and a good way to bring in 2005. Limited
guest passes available please email info@justinberkovi.com

As December approaches I've been very busy sorting out my studio, live act,
design work...a whole host of things. Production-wise I'm taking my time
getting used to an almost entirely digital set up and have sold virtually
all my old and crumbling gear on ebay ­ which was a great idea until I
realised I had to package it all up and send it. I won't be doing that again
in a hurry. I've been working on a dub interpretation of one of my favourite
80s pop tracks ­ the project started as an accident in my new live set and
I've gone the distance ­ already a few token DJs are playing it, more on
that soon. Also moving forward is my new live set up ­ I FINALLY packed up
my trusty old EMU sampler and Yamaha RM1x and they're now in the safe hands
of several ebay people. I thought I'd be sad to the see the old gear go but
to be honest the opposite is true ­ using ABLETON LIVE now gives me not only
so much more flexibility whilst playing but is also a whole lot more fun.

This weekend I'm playing at the Proton Club in Stuttgart ­ it's an 'M1'
night - http://www.protontheclub.de/start.htm Oddly I'm billed as a surprise
guest DJ!

Next week I take delivery of a synth from Roland (www.roland.co.uk) and
being working on some new sound design which I'm really looking forward to.

The hit track appears again on a new compilation! LAGOA 15 (CD) (release:
01/11/2004) ³Lagoa 15 is a perfect reflection of what's hot in Belgium's
premier techno club at the French border. All tracks are selected and mixed
by resident dj's Manu Kenton and Jamie Dill, including tracks from Frank
Biazzi, Jamie Anderson, Justin Berkovi, Alter Ego, Jesper Dahlback, Manu
Kenton, Len Faki, Marco Remus and many more. Lagoa 15 is again a real must
for clubbers!² www.news.be for more information

I'm interested in people's opinions on this year's I LOVE TECHNO? Was it good, bad, brilliant, awful? Please post something in the COMMENTS below. For me it was a weird one - The sound, organisation, atmosphere and general vibe seemed very different from my past two times there.

Really enjoyed last night at 'Dogma' in Edinburgh - good crowd and i always love visiting Scotland. Had my first Ableton live crash though which threw me at first - thankfully because i will never just play with a laptop alone i was able to continue playing with my trusty akai mpc. On restart however the powerbook was fine and i mixed in my Ableton set. Now on the way to i love techno which i'm really looking forward to.

I've never used a laptop for my livesets (contrary to what nonsense has been posted on various forums) until now. Whilst in Brasil (see below) I had my first and mindblowing experience of using Ableton LIVE. After another week of using it in the studio I am convinced it's the most powerful and brilliant tool i've come across in years. I have heard people like Chris Liebing rave about LIVE many times and the superlatives have simply drifted over my head - how can this software be THAT good?

Put quite simply it IS that good. Belive the hype! Not only does ableton SOUND brilliant from the later powerbooks but it has it's own timing character. After bouncing similiar tracks in Logic 7 Pro i've noticed how tightly Ableton handles audio and seems to add a new energy and dynamic in my tracks.

After much thought i've decided to ditch my old EMU / Yamaha combo which was the main hub of my live set for many years. My new set is leaps and bounds ahead of my previous work - fluid, sonically more dynamic and best of all so much more fun to play. I'll be using Ableton LIVE alongside various other small hardware machines such as the AKAI MPC1000 which is extremely loud and fat...