DJ Dire

01/19/2024

Join me and The Barbary Ghost tonight at The Rumpus Room for Total Eclipse - The Weird Side of the 80's Every 1st & 3rd Friday. That's rumpus, not wumpus. Do not go into the wumpus room. You will die.

Discord: The GameI didn't really know what to expect from this game, but Hunt the Wumpus is pretty fun. It kind of reminds me of Minesweeper. You explore the...

01/19/2024

Tomorrow evening! Or actually it's tonight, as it right now it's after midnight when I'm posting this... Believe it or not I am actually going to focus on 1980's stuff, nothing earlier or later unless it's specifically asked for and it fits the theme... And the theme is big music -- music with both atmosphere and intensity, with soundscapes that evoke something grander than a mere band playing a song... Cinematic embellishments, dramatic arrangements, theatrical deliveries, unabashed use of effects, layers, and other creative devices and techniques designed to deliver a larger than life sound... No stripped down minimalist meat-and-potatoes stuff... Go big, or go home!! haha

01/05/2024

For my first magic trick of 2024, I'll be materializing at Total Eclipse - The Weird Side of the 80's Every 1st & 3rd Friday on January 19 with The Barbary Ghost, where the musical flavor palate of the night will be epic, dramatic, cinematic songs... More details to come...

01/01/2024

Earlier today I finished my compiling of select fave 2023-released tracks of a Club Séance vein. My task for the day was picking one more song to bring the total to a nice even number of 50. Last year I think I chose 49 tunes for my 2022 retrospective... Now the hard part begins... choosing a final running order for the songs for a virtual 3+ hour set to post to mixcloud when finished. My typical method is to just listen to the tunes on shuffle a bunch of times before getting inspired to start constructing the running order in a piecemeal fashion like a jigsaw puzzle....

12/06/2023

I'm not currently booked to spin anywhere for the rest of 2023... But because it's almost the end of the year, maybe it's time for me to start compiling a bunch of tunes released this year for a Club Séance / This Green City Best of 2023 virtual mix to post on Mixcloud when the new year rolls around...

11/24/2023

Last night's Dark Sparkle was big fun... Many thanks to DJ MizMargo and DJ Sage for inviting Club Séance to occupy the Dazzle Room!! And thanks to the team @ DNA Lounge for being excellent hosts... And thanks as always to DJ Chat Noir for co-DJing!! Of course, much love to everyone who turned out in support of this event and gave it a reason to happen!!

To keep the back room distinct from the front room and to avoid possible song overlap, I decided to focus on mostly more recent music, some BRAND NEW, but the year 2000 was my cut-off date... Artists I played:

Emma Anderson, Quatermass 3, Pale Dīan, Sparks, Violentene, Hooverphonic, Riki, Ladytron, Francesca e Luigi, Nation of Language, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Tears, Erasure, ZyniC, Tempers, Sally Dige, Simple Minds, Mi-Sex, Ultravox, Corpus Delicti, Duran Duran, Corlyx, FUTON, marsheaux, Marlow, White Rose Movement, Chicks on Speed, Goldfrapp, Bow Wow Wow, SIOUXSIE, Kaizers Orchestra, The Wolfmen, Mumiy Troll, John & Jehn, Blondie, the Devils, Paradox Obscur, My Own Burial, Belgrado, Lobsterbomb, Makthaverskan, Turquoise

As you can see, most of these bands have linked FB pages in my list... but for the handful that don't, see the comments to this post...

11/20/2023

11/20/2023

It's almost here... Wednesday night (Thanksgiving eve)... DJ Chat Noir and I are delighted to be able to present a very special edition of Club Séance in the Dazzle Room while DJ MizMargo and DJ Sage bring you Dark Sparkle upstairs @ DNA Lounge... I hope we'll be able to do more of these types of events in the near future...

11/08/2023

The current list of 2023 events that I'll be spinning tunes at:

Wednesday, 8 November, 7 p.m.
Cafe Colonial and Club Séance present:
Ashes Fallen and Octavian Winters
with DJs Chat Noir and Dire spinning tunes before/between bands
@ Cafe Colonial
3520 Stockton Blvd, Sacramento
https://www.facebook.com/events/572049645012811
$12 cover, ALL AGES WELCOME

Sunday, 12 November, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Norse Herb Company presents:
the Attic Market fall market and
food drive to benefit Loaves & Fishes, Sacramento
@ 5 Sips Coffee & Tea
2104 11th Avenue, Sacramento
https://www.facebook.com/events/360658936528976
FREE for ALL AGES

Wednesday, 22 November, 9:30 p.m.
Dark Sparkle presents:
Dark Sparkle's 24th Anniversary
featuring Dark Sparkle @ Above DNA, and Club Séance in the Dazzle Room
@ DNA Lounge
375 11th Street, San Francisco
https://www.facebook.com/events/198506126534044
$7 advance/before 10 p.m., $10 after 10 p.m., 18+ to enter

Saturday, 25 November, 12 noon
The Seven Veils Society: Markets of the Mystical & Macabre presents:
Ghosts of Christmas: A Dark Holiday Market
@ Sacramento Turn Verein
3349 J Street, Sacramento
https://www.facebook.com/events/553110030246972
$5 admission, ALL AGES WELCOME, free for 12 and under w/adult

Gratuitous Black Lotus photo for effect....

10/09/2023

a month and a half away...

09/18/2023

It's been a while since I've DJed anywhere, but here's what I currently have scheduled for the rest of 2023... a couple of daytime special market events, and one nightclub thing... much sonic spoopage to spin:

Saturday, 23 September, 11 a.m.
The Menagerie Oddities Market presents:
Peculiar PopUp & Curious Conjuring
@ Loot & Lore
107 Main Street Unit A, Grass Valley
https://www.facebook.com/events/1293828118163664
FREE

Sunday, 8 October, 11 a.m.
Norse Herb Company and Tres Mod Vintage and Thrift present:
The Attic Market
@ 5 Sips Coffee
2104 11th Avenue, Sacramento
https://www.facebook.com/events/602603658673094
FREE

Wednesday, 22 November, 9:30 p.m.
Dark Sparkle presents:
Dark Sparkle's 24th Anniversary
featuring Dark Sparkle @ Above DNA, and Club Séance in the Dazzle Room
@ DNA Lounge
375 11th Street, San Francisco
https://www.facebook.com/events/198506126534044
$7 advance/before 10 p.m., $10 after 10 p.m.

09/16/2023

lovely things in lovely Grass Valley next Saturday!

09/04/2023

I've finally put up more virtual compilation CDs from Club Séance and This Green City.... if you like the new wave, the post-punk, the dreampop, the coldwave, the new romantic, and the somewhat unclassifiable dark alternative but catchy and danceable stuff, you may enjoy listening to these things... The latest five are the ones I just added over the past day or so...

Dire Deparra is on Mixcloud. Listen for free to their radio shows, DJ mix sets and Podcasts

03/28/2023

Thank you x 7,634,741 to everyone who came out to the special Club Séance event on Friday evening. You are loved!! Blood Dance, Sindicato Vertical, and The Ink Bats were all astounding, and the whole vibe was magical. Gratitude to the Colony/Cafe Colonial people for their facilitation and hospitality, and kudos most of all to DJ Chat Noir who invested a huge amount of time, energy, and personal resources in making the whole thing even possible. Hopefully there will be more Séance events in the near future...

Here are the tunes I played:

01/16/2023

2022 was a miserable slog... But it was a fertile year for new music from both younger and older artists... I originally wanted to maybe find 45 to 60 minutes worth of songs unleashed upon the world last year for my portion of a Club Séance 2022 retrospective, and I thought I might have a difficult time finding enough music that I felt strongly enough about. But I was mistaken, it turned out that my actual problem was limiting the amount of music to some arbitrary number like 45 minutes or an hour. Eventually I just had to disregard any notion of a time limit and just compile as much as I wanted until I felt satisfied. The only limit I kept to was to try and stay under a vague multi-genre umbrella of music that might conceivably be suitable for play at a Club Séance night, depending on the particular event theme... I ended up with over 3 hours of tunes that span a wide and varied range from post-punk to new wave to coldwave to darkwave to dreampop to miscellaneous trippy dark and sparkly stuff...

It's definitely *not* meant to be an example of any typical Club Séance night (a few of the tunes would probably only ever get played under specific event themes); most are quite danceable (unless you are one of those people who are sadly unable to dance to anything that doesn't have a generic rave beat and tempo) but it's still not a "dance mix" per se. Plenty are trippy enough to space out to if you are so inclined. I think it's great for blasting during long drives or during housework...

Also, it's not intended to really represent Thee Absolute Best of 2022, or even suggest the best albums of 2022 (although a few are from my fave albums of the year). Many are one-off tunes, singles, B-sides, etc. But everything on the list was released as new in 2022, and represent an assortment of my fave tunes of the year...

Although it's meant for all-ages consumption, I dedicate this mix to those creatures approximately a half-century in age who remember being musically/subculturally alienated/marginalized anytime within the rough span of the late 1980s to the early 2000s... For those who were sad when their favorite bands broke up or changed their previously adventurous sound enough that it strayed too far from what made you love them in the first place... For those who found musical refuge on the left side of the radio dial (except for maybe one commercial station that embraced a "modern rock" format) until even those spaces got overrun by dreadful grunge and underbite rock and foul s**t like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morrisette, Soul Asylum, the Gin Blossoms, Hootie & the Blowfish, etc.... For those who scoured the NME and Melody Maker and related UK music mags of the pre-internet world to find out about good new music, and visited the import sections of their local and regional record shops for any new CD singles from their favorite bands (or from bands who looked like they might be worth checking out), or who discovered new faves among the opening acts of larger touring bands.... For those who remember their dance clubs being completely co-opted by sketchy egotistical DJs and promoters who pretended via advertising to showcase new dark music but instead leaned on the exact same playlist of horrible buttrave music week after week, month after month, virtually destroying the scene and replacing it with a soulless misery that didn't even pretend to be a pale imitation... For those who remember the scene being painstakingly revived over the space of a decade + by people who cared about restoring it, only to have it once again largely co-opted by opportunistic sell-out DJs and promoters who wanted to pander to the newly emerged first generation of millennial hipsters who cared nothing about quality and authenticity while basing their whole subculture around pretending to do so.

If there is one good thing to say about the horribly hypergentrified internet today is that in spite of itself, it enabled yet another revival of various dark underground music scenes over the past 15+ years... but now the s**tty economy threatens everything... Sympathetic and supportive venues are lucky to last a couple of years before owners are forced or strongly convinced to sell... Surviving spaces struggle to pay rent and keep up with the costs of doing business... The ronapocalypse did nothing to help things... And U.S. customs/immigration is still intolerably obstructive and corrupt for most touring artists to be able to visit this country. But still, we can all go online and discover and sample new music from all over the globe, and attempt to network with one another and try to organize new things, although moronic social media company policies incrementally make that more difficult. I wish we could go back to the internet circa 2005 or so, before it was completely overgentrified, and do something to help preserve it in that state...

Sorry, this descended into a total rant and lamentation... I really just hope you enjoy this selection of 2022 songs. Please support any of your local venues, artists, DJs, etc. who actually do care about the scene and put effort into keeping it alive and evolving. And don't support those who don't care about it, who only seek to exploit and make $$ and a name for themselves, who stick to limiting things to the overplayed and/or trendy and safe in order to put the least amount of effort and investment possible into something they truly have no passion about.

Originally I tried to come up with maybe a 45- to 60-minute selection of 2022 releases, but I couldn't stop, and I gave up trying to limit myself other than staying under a vague multi-genre umbrella of music that could conceivably be suitable for play at a Club Séance night, depending on the parti...

01/04/2023

Twenty of my fave 2022 albums, non-genre specific, not in any particular order... First one here, the rest in comments (make sure to show "All Comments" instead of "Most Relevant")....

Alpha's latest might be my fave from them

12 track album

01/02/2023

2022 felt like another relatively dead year for new music, but then when compiling tracks released during the year for a "best of" thing, I realized that the exact opposite was true... So much great new music unleashed upon the world... Maybe a post-lockdown creativity rush? I've think I've finally reached the "pens down" moment with a selection of 41 songs that I don't care to whittle down any further...

11/30/2022

This just in.... This week's Club Séance will actually be happening on Friday night like usual instead of Thursday night....

09/16/2022

It was a fun evening @ Cafe Colonial... The show was excellent, the temperature was just right (thank goodness for sane weather)... Nox Novacula were top quality; I highly recommend seeing them play live if you are into the sort of music they do...

Someone there asked me if I would post the list of songs that I played, so here it is...

----------------
the Pretty Things - "Defecting Grey" (I generally will play something unusual for line/level check before starting my set proper)
----------------
Wire - "In Every City?"
Earl Brutus - "The S.A.S. and the Glam that Goes With It"
the Pre New - "Flaccid Astronaut"
the Fall - "He Pep!"
the Nightingales - "Thick and Thin"
Sadie Sads - "L.H.O.O.Q."
Mephisto Walz - "Tangia"
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - "Silence"
Current Affairs - "Crimes"
Chrome - "Looking for Your Door"
Belfegore - "Love"
Swann Danger - "Burn"
Kokushoku Elegy - "Yume no Narukoro"
Killers for Christian - "Water"
Bootblacks - "A Pale Fire"
Night Sins - "Knife to the Sky"
Trentemøller - "Redefine"
Panda Riot - "Black Pyramids"
School '94 - "Common Sense"
Velvet Condom - "Spiritualized"
Suede - "Turn Off Your Brain and Yell"
Nouveaux - "Dust on the Mirror"
Atomizer - "Underdog"
Baroque Bo****lo - "Today"
Cinema Strange - "Sadist Sagittarius" [Haven's request... haha]
1919 - "Slave"
----------------
[Ex-Heir live performance]
----------------
You've Got Foetus on Your Breath - "Mark of the Ostracizor"
Cab Williamson's Waxworks - "Yul Brynner"
Moth - "Frozen Tears"
Rendez-Vous - "Youth"
the Danse Society - "Hide"
An April March - "Jade"
Plastique Noir - "Torn Brazil"
the Beauty of Gemina - "One Step to Heaven"
Christ vs. Warhol - "Fool's Gold"
----------------
[Nox Novacula live performance]
----------------
Autumn - "Still Breathing"
Artefact - "Siren"
Public Service - "Carole"
Second Still - "Ashes"
Ashrae Fax - "The Big Lie"

09/12/2022

I'll be spinning some tunes at the next monthly Club Séance on October 7... There will be maximum spoopage... Event link in comments (otherwise FB would probably only show this post to like 5 people, because of idiotic FB algorithms...)

07/31/2022

It was lovely to be able to spin some tunes at Saturday's event from The Menagerie Oddities Market... It was my first time getting to experience one of their events. It was also the first time being inside that library venue. and the first time since before the ronapocalypse began that I had been around a flowing crowd of people of that size, so it was a little disorienting! I wish I could have stayed longer, but here's what I played for my early afternoon set:

Sneaker Pimps - "Half Life"
Lamb - "L***y"
Swoone - "Handcuffed Heart"
Sarah Cracknell - "I Am Not Your Enemy"
Anna Calvi - "First We Kiss"
Sun's Signature - "Golden Air"
Queen Adreena - "Yemaya"
the Bonecollectors - "Lucretia My Reflection"
Gallon Drunk - "Night Tide"
Tones on Tail - "Happiness"
Echo & the Bunnymen - "Way Out and Up We Go "
the Glove - "Mr Alphabet Says"
Solava - "Endless"

It was nice to see some famliar faces too! Hopefully some of you will stop by Club Séance this Friday evening...