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Audion

A heads up to Miami's downtown cognoscenti: Michigan's esteemed Ghostly International label will be celebrating 10 years of forward-thinking music and subculture at White Room on Saturday, December 5. Founded in 1999 by DJ Sam Valenti, Ghostly has become one of the most highly-acclaimed international platforms for cutting-edge and genre-defying contemporary music and multimedia, along with its more dancefloor-centric sister imprint Spectral Sound.

Ghostly's eclectic musical contingent will be represented on December 5 by the experimental Detroit techno/avant-pop forays of Audion, a.k.a. Matthew Dear, electro-tech producers Michna and Bodycode, and synthpoppers Solvent, along with Get Physical's M.A.N.D.Y. and Miami's own DJ Conway. This much anticipated musical extravaganza also marks the return of Miami's beloved SAFE, who brought us some of the finest underground electronic dance music bookings of the last couple years, and will be teaming up with Miami's legendary festival audio designer Terry McNeil to guarantee this will be one night of mind-blowing sounds. 

Click here to get your $15 pre-sale tickets.

Ghostly International 10 Year Anniversary Party. Saturday, December 5. 10 p.m.-5 a.m. White Room. 1306 N. Miami Ave., Miami.

photo by Gokhan Kali

via myspace.com/djmednas

Benton Galgay may play records, but he's got his own ideas about what it means to be a DJ. First off, aside from Wooden Shjips, there are very few new artists he's into spinning. And when he does wax au courant, it's on behalf of labels such as Sublime Frequencies, Needless Records, or RVNG of the NRDS, Turntable Lab, and Dublab, rather than any individual act. In fact, when Galgay was general manager at WVUM, he teamed with Turntable Lab on numerous occasions, and turned PS 14 into a de facto broadcast booth for that outfit's music.

What might be even odder about the White Plains-raised Galgay is that he's most fond of No Wave. For the unschooled, that's a short-lived, yet highly influential school of late-'70s/early'80s New York noisemakers which began with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and James Chance and the Contortions, and pretty much ended with Liquid Liquid, Konk, and the 99 Records collective. And when Galgay's not reeling with that racket, he's into prog-pop like the Alan Parsons Project and Gary Wright, which is just the kind of music that aforementioned racket was in part formed to protest.
    
Then again, maybe Galgay's getting with the fluffier stuff of the '70s is simply a case of sheer irony, because he's also well bent toward neo-old school rock from Stone Roses and Primal Scream. And each of those bands does have some strands of No Wave running up their sleeves. It could also be that Galgay's an arch contrarian, and that he's loathe to lurk in the same corners as everybody else. 

via myspace.com/damagedgoods

Few DJs would think to cut through Florence, Italy and New York City in order to get to Fort Lauderdale. Then again, few DJs have proven the logic of a circuitous route quite like Dean Michaels. In fact, it appears that Michaels is so intent on spinning his way straight into ubiquity, he doesn't care how many rotations it takes. And who's to argue with that? 

Sometimes you just want to have fun, without some egghead turntablist letting his noggin interfere with your nightlife. And you don't need no stinking holier-than-thou white label purist insisting that you worship every nuance of a track's rarity. You want to hit the club, and you want to dance -- that's it.

But just because you're into the fun stuff doesn't mean you want the DJ to dumb things down. Hell, you know full well that even the stupidest-sounding set takes a bit of smarts to pull off right. You also know that just because a DJ can spell LMFAO doesn't mean he or she knows where it goes.

That's why you dig DJ Ruen. The cat doesn't let his smarts get in the way of some good dirty fun. And whether he's housing up a party rocker or rocking out a house anthem, you know that he's minding the floor. So you're free to forget about everything except what you came for -- that is, to lose yourself.