Music

Our first dubstep show

My brother and I have been listening to electronic music since the late 90's. After I graduated from high school, I took up the hobby of DJ'ing. I started buying vinyl records from the UK, and landed some gigs and raves and clubs around New England. It wasn't long before my younger brother Justin got interested in DJ'ing as well. He played a style of music called Drum n Bass, and I generally played electro house and techno. About a year and half ago we decided to join forces and start a project called The Swagger Jackers. We play a variety of music now, from electro to dubstep to indie rock, anything we like.We DJ and put out mixtapes, produce remixes and originals, blog, organize and promote concert events and other music industry type stuff. 

Working the controls

This summer we got to play a few good shows, I figured I would share some photos and a couple videos. This summer we have really been getting into the dubstep style of dance music. These photos are from our first all dubstep DJ set. We also have a dubstep mixtape called "War of the Worlds" that is online and available for free download. Here is a short video from our first dubstep DJ set in July.




EDIT: I have another video to share!

Summer Fun

     It has been a few months since my last post, summer is here and I am doing the best I can to not spend it attached to a computer. That is not to say I have avoided being productive however; it's just that a fresh look at my priorities seemed to be in order. My list of summer-to-do items, in order of importance: 


1. Get to the beach multiple times a week
2. Read something for fun
3. Learn something from the IHS Journalism & A Free Society conference in Philadelphia
3. Get the knee surgery I have been waiting years for
4. Forget about being dumped by my girlfriend
5. Go on computer for blogging, editing, learning new tricks etc (basically what I did the whole school semester)


     I stayed faithful to the list with the exception of the "fun reading". I just haven't found the right time to start reading, the pain after my knee surgery (ACL reconstruction) pushed my motivation levels way down. I am hoping to remedy that situation and plow through a few classics in the last few weeks of summer. There are a number of good books out there that I've been meaning to wrap my head around.


    While working on my Undergraduate Research Project (a film about the Great Depression, NCUR accepted!) I decided that journalism is  a field I was interested in. This mild interest started building into a career trajectory after I took Journalism 101 last semester and signed up for a summer conference put together by the Institute for Humane Studies. The seminar was a great experience, it was a week long networking/learning experience, where I met other like minded students from around the country and discussed advanced political topics that you wouldn't normally encounter here at Tech. The IHS features a number of different seminars they run annually. Some focus journalism, while other public policy or just even political theory, the common ground being the analysis using "classically liberal" political theory, known today as libertarianism. Some shots from the event:

Easy to make new friends here

A faculty of working professionals, nice change of pace. (National Review, Reason Magazine, The Atlantic)

The Bryn Mawr campus was breathtaking, straight out of Harry Potter

Dance Party Time...

So it is the end of the year, and my brother is driving out from CT to come visit and then we are taking a road trip back to the east coast. I don't know if I have mentioned this before but I used to DJ at a lot of clubs and raves back east. My brother is bringing some of our DJ equipment out so we can do a show here in Butte! Come and celebrate the end of the school year, here are the details :)

Here is a link to the Facebook event page!

Local Art

Thanks to Chad Okrusch and our Visual Communications class, I was able to find out about an awesome local artist, Shawn Crowe. He gave a very interesting presentation to our class about his artistic process and showed us several examples of his work. I was very impressed by his work, much of it abstract with vibrant colors. His latest series "Modern Myth", deals with retelling some classic Greek mythology. We were shown Athena, The Graces, Persephone and other classic Greek gods in some interesting poses and surrounded by beautiful colors. I personally enjoyed almost every painting that he showed us, each one rich with detail and symbolism. Even though I immediately felt the aesthetic beauty of the pieces, as he explained the motivation and the process, my appreciation for the pieces expanded tremendously. They are are very well thought out and unique. I was particularly impressed by the abstract nature of the work. I thought it was a refreshing take on classic Greek culture, a new twist on the "ideal form" that Plato popularized. The abstract nature of the work is an interesting juxtaposition of that Platonic ideal, giving the classic forms a modern colorful twist. One of my favorite pieces that he showed us dealt with Achilles, although I couldn't post that one here because it is due to be posted in a gallery soon.

If you would like to see more of Shawn's work, the Main Stope gallery on Park St. is showing a few pieces, and a few other pieces are at Jailhouse Coffee on Park St, and at the Blue Luna.

Here a few examples of his work -

  "The Graces"

"Charging Ox"

"TheStormLord"- not full title, I had it and lost it!

Bassnectar was great

So here is the short little video I made of the Bassnectar show in Bozeman, hopefully you can get a good idea of what it was all about. The crowd was really into it, I have to admit I was pretty surprised at the turnout and the intensity of the crowd.

Rail Jam this Sat

This Fri/Sat there is a Rail Jam at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds in Bozeman. It seems I have finally found something going on in Montana that caters to my specific taste, as one of my favorite dubstep producers, Bassnectar, is going to be Dj'ing at the event. I am planning to bring my camera so maybe I will have some pictures/video for my next post.

In other news....

The Clark Fork Watershed Education Project (CFWEP) has published my review of Milltown, Montana on their blog, " The Waterblogger "

Milltown, Montana: Film Creates a Cultural Portrait of Western Montana - by Aaron Briggs

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture must be worth considerably more. Judging by his latest work, I believe Rainer Komers must have taken that old adage to heart. His film Milltown, Montana takes the motion picture genre on a journey of “poetic minimalism”.

Fear the Boom and Bust

Click to visit my other blog!

***NERD ALERT***
May contain obscure knowledge of social sciences

I just have to share this video with you all, as I am very interested in the topic being discussed. It involves the controversy surrounding the two opposing philosophies of economic thought, the Austrian School vs the Keynesian. This video is great because it presents the material in a fun way, as a rap song by two historical figures. You may not have heard much about this debate, but it has shaped the fabric of American life since John Maynard Keynes influential "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money " was published in 1936. This was countered by the Austrian school when Friedrich von Hayek received a Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on Austrian Business Cycle Theory, which generally opposes most of the ideas set forth by Keynes. Our elected officials usually do not acknowledge this debate, as the Keynesian philosophy allows for plenty of government spending. As Milton Friedman once said, "we are all Keynesians now"

"Fear the Boom and Bust"