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From The Digital Sweatshop
The Music, Art and Travels of Alan D. Oldham a.k.a. DJ T-1000.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

I am now on Myspace. Come over and say hello =) More pics, video and sound to come. Click here.


Spring Session M.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Not much new to report. Steady working on art and music. Blah blah blah, you know the drill. New album at the designer's (to be released on my new label), working on some new 4/4 stuff at the moment, and new comics sometime in 2006. Also writing the JOHNNY GAMBIT remake, God knows when that'll see the light of day.

I've become so Zen over release dates, man. Stuff'll be out when it's supposed to come out.

I'm dropping the DJ T-1000 tag soon, it's over. I'll be sending out a press release on it, but you folks who read the blog know first, 'cause you're all special like that. The time for the Terminator has come and gone.

Also, Generator is poised to start back up. All-new artists, all-new sounds, good distribution. I'm not running it, though. My business partner, Giaxia, is at the helm this time. I'm just there for advice and moral support. The first release is in the can and no, it's not me. More on this as it gets going.

The art continues, too. Working on some new gallery pieces for a new show in Europe this year. I went to this place in Wicker Park today to see if I could possibly put my art on their walls, but I dropped this big $125 Warhol book on the floor so that was that.

I thought very, very briefly about trying to do a little gallery show in Detroit during festival weekend since I'll be in town to DJ, but I was talked out of it.

The gallery on Milwaukee near Damen where I did my first show is never open when I pass by. I wouldn't be surprised if it was closed for good.

Has anybody seen Jeff Mills' "Blue Potential" DVD? How is it? I haven't gotten around to e-mailing him for a copy. Radiance?

A friend of mine burned me a copy of "Tin Drum" by Japan. That shit still sounds good. Funky and experimental at the same time, with both live instruments and electronics.

OK, going to paint now.


From Berlin With Love.

Monday, April 24, 2006

From: troy-
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:21:36 -0400
To: info@alanoldham.com
Re:

alan - -

thanks so much for the kind words, means a lot. i have an album that just came out on a u.k. label called underline, the album is enemy love and the artist is louderbach (me). i can send you a copy if you like just give me the best address.

hope to see you in berlin soon!

troy.


Isn't It Ironic.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

I'm in lust with my downstairs neighbor's big booty. It's spring and it's now unfettered by a coat. Funny thing is, she's Christian and is part of a group that promotes abstinence.

I wish I could take some pics of it to show you, but that would be stalking.

It really is nice, though, take my word for it.


Words of Wisdom.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

"He was very disillusioned, and I understand that. You break your ass, and people just say bad things about you."

--Jean-Michel Basquiat on Andy Warhol, from "Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art," Phoebe Horan, 1998


A Few Little Things.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Well, the new album is finished. I've completed all tweaks, and it's locked. Now it's CD design time. I'll post the art when I get it back from my designer. Went back to ol' HF for this one. He used to design all my Pure Sonik projects. I always thought my stuff looked the best out of all the Detroit labels design-wise, but you know, who cares.

I'm also halfway through this Jeans Team remix. I'll try and finish it by this weekend. I'm liking doing all this stuff for different kinds of people.

Saw "Good Night, and Good Luck" last night. It was brilliant. I loved that it was in black and white. And the parallel to what's happening today is striking, which is probably why they made it. Too bad, all these news channels on the air and no Edward R. Murrow to tell the truth.

Thank you, George Clooney.


Beautiful Day.

Friday, April 14, 2006

What a beautiful day in Chicago! Spring is springin', knockers are knockin'. Lotta cute little hipster girls where I live. Me and Giaxia call 'em "Yeah Yeah Yeah" chicks.

I was commissioned by yet another wonderful British woman to do a portrait of her in my style. I'm excited to start it. I'm told that some other people may want some art as well. It's looking like the UK is the hot spot for my little fine art career. The ladies there obviously have good taste ;-)

Don't worry though, Penny, you'll always be first in my heart ;-)

Trying hard at the moment to organize a new show in Europe this year after the success of the opening in Paris. I'll let you know what develops.

Got some gig offers in Europe recently, but the numbers didn't add up. It's a shame, 'cause I wanna get back to my friends in Berlin soon. I owe Alex Kowalski a breakfast!

Finishing up the new album. Just laying down some vocal tracks now. Yes, I'm singing!

I'm yelling at Giaxia to finish alanoldham.com already, damn.

Also, it's looking like I'll be back in Detroit for Paxafest weekend. Playing an after party. New promoter, super-professional. It will probably be the last gig I'll do under the "DJ T-1000" name. Details to be announced.

Might check out Richie's thing the night before just to see my favorite minimal rockstar DJ, Troy Pierce. He completely killed me in Berlin last fall.

Checked my air miles the other day and I have enough to go to San Diego this year for Comic Con...weeeee! This time, I'll take more pics.

For all my activity though I feel frustrated. Everything is so slowwwwwww. People are soooo conservative, nobody's really into anything creative anymore, war, economic uncertainty. I'm fighting the times.

But the only thing to do about it is stay positive, healthy, and outlast the bullshit. Stockpile your art and music and wait for the right time. I've turned my back on all negativity and negative people in 2006. If you've e-mailed me recently, and you haven't gotten a reply, that's probably why =)


The Orietta St. Cloud Story.

Sunday, April 09, 2006



I was just going through some old stuff and came across the Orietta St. Cloud CD/comic book. Here are some notes on how I created the character.

It was 1993 and I had just finished a comic book for Saskia Slegers a.k.a. Miss Djax. I was on a roll and wanted to keep going. I was a big fan of the "Dirty Pair" comic, which was new at the time. The Dirty Pair were this manga duo of sexy government agents that fought interplanetary terrorists and criminals, but always managed to blow a lot of stuff up in the process, whole city blocks, small planets. The stories were always funny and sexy.

I wanted to do something like that.

There was a girl I had met in Australia named Orieta (one "t"). She was the girlfriend of one of Adelaide's top DJs, Groove Terminator. I remember her as being really super-cute, Polynesian. When it came time to name my character, I named it after her.

Also in Australia, there was this local DJ named Danger Girl. What a cool name for a character. It was simple and kitsch, kinda '60s spy-style.

I even named one of the supporting characters after yet another Australian chick who was my foreign love affair at the time, Katrina Picozzi.

Visually, there was this woman who had a weight loss infomercial on American TV back then named Susan Powter. She was tall, blond, athletic, with a butch haircut like Annie Lennox. She was the first model for Danger Girl.

I started the first Danger Girl comic in '92, and finished it in '93. It was featured as an insert in the "Orietta's Theme" 12-inch on my label Generator. It was co-published by Caliber Press, a local comic company, and was actually distributed in comic shops as well as record stores.

Then, Muzik magazine from London approached me in late '94. They wanted me to do a comic strip for their magazine. Their original concept was for me to do a funny ha-ha comic strip about Detroit Techno. Little cartoons of Derrick May, Juan Atkins, etc. Shitty concept. I ended up pitching them Danger Girl instead. Straight sci-fi action with guns, nothing to do with techno.

Surprisingly, they bought it. But then again anything from Detroit was hot in those days. The first Orietta strip came out in spring '95 in the first issue of Muzik.

I did five strips. They were in color (I painted them), they came out great. I got cancelled, though, and the sixth one that wrapped up the story never came out. Oh well, I got paid and it was OK exposure. This was right around the time of the "True People" compilation I was on (thanks Eddie Fowlkes), and I also painted the cover for the "Beyond the Third Wave" record (thanks Peter Wohelski), plus had a track on it, so I was rolling in dough.

Around this time I met Mr. Howard Chaykin at a comic convention. I've always been a big fan of his. I collected all his comics and hung on his every word in interviews.

I showed him this comic I did called "Brian Deadlock" which was basically a ripoff of him. He's got a huge ego and was impressed =) He gave me his personal contact info in L.A. (!) and we stayed in touch. He ended up writing the foreward to the Orietta comic I did in the late '90s (see below).

It was a little later that Wildstorm Comics came out with their Danger Girl character, and it was super-hot. I had to drop that moniker and went with "The Sexy Adventures of Orietta St. Cloud."

Now it was '96 and my DJ/production career was on full blast. In between DJ tours and starting Pure Sonik I kept hacking away at a new Orietta comic. A little bit here, a little bit there. By 2000, it was finished.

This is where my ego goes insane. First, I wanted the book in color, which cost a lot of money, which I shouldn't have spent. I should have just done it cheap in black and white. Then I got the bright idea of doing a soundtrack for the comic. I figured I'd ask my Amazing Techno Friends to do tracks for it.

At the first Muzikundmaschine conference in Berlin in 2000, I approached my old friend the great Mr. Jeff Mills about doing the main theme. I knew Jeff would do it if he was the main guy. He ended up doing two tracks for it, the beginning theme and the end.

I also knew that if Jeff was down, Richie would be. He was at the conference too and won an award that weekend. Rich let me have a track that had been unreleased at the time ("PKamb"), but it went exactly with the comic.

With Jeff and Rich in the pocket, everybody else was a breeze. My tour buddy Stewart Walker was there in Berlin too, he said yes right away. The Advent, Bryan Zentz, all good. My old friend from Rome, Marco Passarani, was down to do a new track for me after all our collaborations on Generator. Carola at Tresor let me have a Terrence Dixon track that I liked, for free.

The whole gimmick was that I sent each artist only the pages I wanted them to score. Nobody saw the whole book until it was finished.

Nobody took advances, either. All the artists were super-cool about money.

But I still ended up spending a lot on the project. Packaging, design, manufacturing, mailouts, blah blah blah.

Ultimately, though, I was disappointed in the reaction the project got, based on the work we put into it. Lackluster to me, even with the superstar names. That was when I realized that techno people were all about records, gear and software, no visuals, and comic book people weren't about techno at all, just pictures. Two separate worlds. And those were the only things I was good at, electronic music and comics =P

We made a little money back though and paid our artists royalty checks. We even cut Mills and Hawtin a couple of measly checks =) I took pride in that (that I was able to pay my guys, not that the checks were measly).

I've been thinking about doing one more Orietta comic, a final one where I finish the character's story arc. It would be more for my own closure than anything. Ori was the '90s, I'm on to this new character now. You'll see the new comic this year, God willing.

There's a happy ending, though. When I did my art show in Paris last year, I brought a few Oriettas and they sold out that night =)


We Get Letters.

Monday, April 03, 2006

From: "alastair kelly"
Date: March 24, 2006 8:22:31 AM CST
To: info@alanoldham.com
Subject: TRACK ID


Hi Alan,

I'm desperately trying to get hold of one of your tracks!!
It was the last track played on Dave Clarke's Essential Mix, June 1994. It was listed as:

DJ T-1000 - "The Real Shit" (Generator)

I've been looking through the Generator Records catalogue and can't find any track called that, under any alias of your's that i know of. The closest thing i could see was 'The Real Camille," on this release:
http://www.discogs.com/release/100934

Please help me to ID it.... I need that track..

Regards,

Alastair


Alastair,

The track you're looking for is actually a soundbite at the end of the b-side of GEN002 (DJ T-1000 Liquid Metal Meltdown 10"), it is mis-identified on Discogs. The sample was taken from an old tape of a New Music Seminar panel. The voice you hear is Juan Atkins, not me, as many have thought.

That record has been out of print for years and years, I only have 2 of my own (a label copy and a white label), and no they're not for sale =)

And never name a track after a girlfriend. You'll live to regret it.


From: stuart adams
Date: April 1, 2006 8:12:24 AM CST
To: info@alanoldham.com
Subject: johnny gambit / gambit associates


hi

please could you tell me which particular comics by
alan d oldham, were included with which particular
transmat releases; also what was the artwork design of
those particular transmat releases?

thanking you in anticipation

regards

stuart, teesside, cleveland, uk


Hello Stuart,

My "Gambit and Associates" # 1 was featured inside "Nude Photo" which I also did the art for. That artwork depicted a pair of legs with mesh pantyhose and high heels on the a-side, and a female bomber pilot on the b-side, with a red jacket. If you have that one, then that is the 1st pressing and is valuable. Derrick later put out pressings with other label art that was not as memorable as mine, ha ha.

Any questions for me? info@alanoldham.com


Blah Blah Blah.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Spent all weekend working on this lowtempo album. I keep delaying it 'cause I keep tweaking it in Cubase. It will definitely be out this spring, though. I want it to be a lifestyle record, something you can chill or have sex to. That's my whole new direction.

I'm excited because I've been on this lowtempo/trip-hop thing for over a year, but you out there haven't heard it yet.

Also finishing the Penelope paintings. One last dash of paint. Penny's talking about coming to Chicago from London to pick them up since I won't be in Berlin for awhile. I love being me sometimes. Got wealthy, exotic, blonde women flying in from other countries just to see the artist. =)

Next up are the Airiel remixes and this spec remix for Jeans Team (Berlin) that I haven't gotten around to yet. Then the trip-hop stuff with Emilie (who's in China now playing out!). If I don't have deadlines, I will screw around with something forever.

Speaking of forever, alanoldham.com is still being worked on. These things take time. One thing I do know is that all the comics I've ever done (Johnny Gambit, Generator Comics, the +8 one, etc.) are being scanned and will be on the site as PDF files.

And yes I am working on new comic books, I get new ideas all the time. It's getting the money to put them out is the holdup. It's way cheaper in this climate to put out CDs.

I've been thinking a lot about doing a podcast, getting back to my radio roots. It wouldn't be techno though. Just my favorite music. What do you guys think of that?

I'm like blah blah blah. Let me stop.