Do you remember when Zentropia played the Plug Global Headphone Festival in 2007? That was a fun time. I found a card from the event today that reminded me of it. It was the Plug 3rd Annual Global Headphone Festival. People hosted shows all around the world. The live audience at each event listened with headphones in a silent venue. I was a very cool idea and gave a totally different experience.
I had just finished recording the Zentropia album Space Throne on my Tascam 424 MKII. Yes, that is a 4 track cassette tape machine. This goes back to the roots of Zentropia and is my favorite way to mix music with lots of effects and knobs to turn. I, of course, copied my mixing style form King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry. This was a fun record to mix and was perfect for remixing during a live dub session at the Plug headphone festival.
The show was at the Lab on 16th St in San Francisco. There used to be some really cool experimental venues there that gave a lot of artists a great opportunity to be seen. This was a BYOH event, Bring Your Own Headphones, and was on October 13 and 14, 2007. I’m not sure what day I was there. Luckily someone recorded the whole thing and still has it on their YouTube page.
It doesn’t look like the festival is still around but I found an old web page with some info about it. Here is one from 48hill.org.
https://sfbgarchive.48hills.org/sfbgarchive/2007/10/12/plug-turn-and-feel-noise-headphone-fest/
The Lab is still active and working on projects. You can check them out here:
https://www.thelab.org
Thanks to Em The Alien on YouTube for recording the show.
I used the MPC2000XL on the latest Zentropia release, though I recorded it in Logic X Pro. The guitar and bass are both live mics on speakers. It has a heavy sound. You can check out Zentropia – Marching Through The Zipper of Interdimensional Reality here.
Enjoy!
Mark Bray
Cosmic Archeologist