One of the many people we’ve met while making the movie and living and working in Boston is Juan Maclean. He makes an appearance in our Miami segment of the film as a rocker dealing with the Miami trance-party crowd. There’s a lengthy, compelling story about Juan, an artpunk from Providence and Boston making a transition to dance music and eventually landing on the the mighty hip DFA label.

Juan also used the Fotron 2000 for his album cover. The Fotron is a photo-taking robot that was partly invented by one of our Boston characters and friends: Dan Paluska. Dan is currently in Paris helping assemble a 40-ft. 8-ton robot.

Juan, Dan and the rest are few people making contributions to the dance music scene in Boston. Now living in Maine, he’s gracious enough to come down and see us and spin some world-class DJ sets. Not only does the guy have access to some of the best music in world, he can spin it like you wouldn’t believe.

Catch him tomorrow night at the Paper party, Boston’s finest D-I-Y 18+ dance party night on Boston’s famous Lansdowne Street, home to the big box clubs and right under the eye of the third-place Boston Red Sox. Yours truly will also spin records, so, you know, check us out.

If not tomorrow, cross out Thursday 19 October on your calendar, cause that night our techno night Make It New, at Cambridge’s fab Middlesex Lounge celebrates its 2nd anniversary with Juan, a live performance from popnoname and Yard from Chicago and Plong! Records.

In anticipation, here’s one of Juan’s finest remixes. A skilled producer as well as performer, Juan has done some brilliant remixes, and this is one of them. VHS or Beta are an American dance band who play house-informed dancepunk that draws significantly from French and other europeans forms for some killer live fun. Here, Juan adds a little magic touch that certainly reminds us of our friends from Koln.

VHS or Beta - “You Got Me (The Juan Maclean Remix)”

Buy his awesome full remix project here. Rave or die tonight.

Brief interlude to tell you of a special event:
The War on the War on the Lonely is a bittersweet pop opera which takes cues from 70s pop, 60s folk and dance music to tell the tale of Carnies struggling with life, death and love in a modern world. Written by two Boston scenesters, Taylor Young and Fumika Yamazaki. It’s a remarkable event.

The performance will be enhanced by killer artwork from Laura Niemi, some of which was made from Fumika’s piano.

Was a wonderful weekend here in Boston as the scene gathered Saturday night to welcome the crew from the Bunker, NYC’s stellar techno party. After a successful night of Fromage, a night of cheesy hits at the Enormous Room, where myself, Erik Pearson (aka Baltimoroder) and MicL Ptvn spun goofy fun dumb stuff until 2am, we head over to the unlockedgroove/zer0gsounds/robotlovesongs underground party to find the place packed to the gills. The surprising thing was the crowd came from all parts of the Boston scene, the crunk-lovers, some house-heads and the techno devotees all turned out.

Speaking in Code director Amy Grill was visiting NYC this weekend, where Speaking in Code’s Dan Paluska was helping build an 8-ton robot and Mike Uzzi was performing his first gig since his recent move to New York. sQuare productions’ film about the personalities in the undergound now has a new legal ally as well. A friendly lawyer has offered his services to help with questions about rights, funding and a host of other legal issues. (Thanks, Aaron!)

The Boston techno community, while small, is compelling in that is exists underneath a scene long known for its world-famous rock sound. Bands like Aerosmith, the Pixies, the Cars, Morphine, Boston and so on all established this town as a “rock town” through and through. So the trend that techno, or electronic music in general, is breaking through in The Hub is that much more interesting. Like Our Make It New techno night will celebrate it’s second anniversary Thursday October 19th; the rockin cool party on Lansdowne Street hosts David Day and DJ Juan Maclean next Thursday.

In other streams, our Fromage partner, Michael Potvin plays with a band called Campaign For Real Time. The group has recently completed a 12″ with one stunning remix from local disco band Certainly, Sir watch for that as the mp3 of the week over at the Boston Phoenix in a week or two.

One of our favorite Boston techno heads is Michael F Gill, editor of Beats by the Pound over at esteemed music magazine Stylus. On our way out of the 808 party above, he handed us a CD of his new music project, Scarlet Smears. It’s like the Avalanches of party house, a melange of sounds and vibes mixed into lengthy tracks of tribute. Here’s the first track, called “Pumpdog”:

Scarlet Smears - “Pumpdog”

It also does to house what recent bluzz act Girl Talk does to pop, mixing French Hip-Hop, party tracks and pop hits into a new collage of party music.

It’s how Boston rocks now.

For those who may have missed it:

“A remix of our last trailer. Speaking in Code is a character-driven documentary about the independent people who make and promote techno music. August 26th expect Some hot clips and behind the scenes slideshows from the film in progress will be shown throughout the night culminating in a fully-edited 10-minute sequence of charismatic BPitch Control duo Modeselektor who are about to play the gig of their career: the mega-rave at Sonar By Night in Barcelona, June 2006. It’s amazing stuff. Music: Wighnomy Brothers’ “Wombat”

Upcoming guests at Make It New. The free Thursday night techno party in Cambridge:

9/14 DJs Damien Cuvelier, Billy and David
9/21 DJs Billy Kiely with Alan w/ Alex Zahara
9/28 DJs Erik, Alan special guest Nizar

10/5 DJs Alan Manzi and David Day
10/12 DJs Billy Kiely, Erik Pearson and special guest DJ Yard [Plong!/Narita/Skam]
10/19 DJs David Day, Erik Pearson and special guest (N.E.S.T.)
10/26 DJs Billy Kiely and Alan Manzi.

Shout out to Boston homies Mistaker, Red Foxx, Taylor, Ben, Eric and everyone in the links on the right.

Red Foxx is a real smart dude that introduced us to this video which led us to this video. We wrote about him here and DJed with him here:

He’s got a remix of Kelis over at his site, which takes the neu rave sound of Exceeder and matches it with one of our favorites, Kelis:

Mason/Kelis/Nas - Exceeder (Red Foxx Blindfold Edit)

Totally slammin. Ask him about the neu rave idea, he’ll tell you all about it. We’ve seen it propogated before. It’s a worldwide meme now it appears.

Tomorrow night we add Alan Manzi to our techno night. Pictures of the last few gigs up at Flickr. More soon promise.