I am uploading some Beijing pics, but it will take awhile....

I am uploading some Beijing pics, but it will take awhile....

Between my pics and the pictures from the 11 other guys I worked with over there, I have well over 2200 shots to sort through.

I will post a few new ones every couple of days.

10:01 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Radio Science...err...Silence is over

The 5 most common questions I have been asked about where I have been and what has happened to me during the past 63 days (answers included):

1. I heard you were in southern Argentina studying unusual recurring urinary tract infections in the South American Donkey Face Moth - is this true?

That's preposterous. Everyone knows that the South American Donkey Face Moth has not been indigenous to Argentina since the Great Moth Evacuation of 1839. A little common sense people, please.

2. I think I saw you on Dateline: To Catch A Predator. Does this have anything to do with your 9 week disappearance?

My attorneys have advised me not to comment on any television shows I may or may not have appeared on, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

3. My sister said she heard that you had to spend 1 week in each school grade from Kindergarten through High School in order to prove to your father that you were capable of completing your schooling and therefore were competent enough to take over the family hotel business. Is this where you were?

Sorry. Your sister was watching Billy Madison.

4. Did you have some kind of cosmetic procedure and are choosing to lay low while the scars heal?

I learned my lesson after my elective elbow smoothing surgery and have sworn never to go voluntarily go under the knife again. My long sleeve shirts still don't fit quite right.

5. Hey Mike - have you been in the bath tub this entire time?

That's just crazy. Everyone knows I don't bathe except during Papal Conclaves.


Actually, I was in China. And it was bad ass.

12:21 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Greetings from China - I am alive -but I have ZERO internet access in Beijing

Hello all - greetings from sunny (LOL) Beijing. I have a million things to report, but sadly I have ZERO internet access. So if you send me a message, please be patient as I can only manage to get online once a week for a few minutes, sometimes less.

I will have tons of pictures and stories when I return.

Hope everyone is well!

4:16 PM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Kind of a big f*cking week: Cosmic bullying, "Crash & Burn", Tiesto on the plaza, etc

Kind of a big f*cking week: Cosmic bullying, "Crash & Burn", Tiesto on the plaza, etc

For the record: I AM TIRED. SO VERY TIRED. I can't even begin to summon the energy to write down all of the things that are happening in my life right this second. It's as if the universe has decided to summarily unleash the full brunt of it's cosmic devices to put every stress a human can possibly withstand in a tidy bundle and hurl it with unlimited force on to my unusually shaped head.

However, two really good things going on this week:

1. Nadia Ali "Crash & Burn" (Kered + Kiraly Mix) is finally getting released (yay!). It's part of a pretty stellar package which includes mixes by Sultan and Ned Shepard, Dean Coleman, Astro & Glyde, etc. Buy it, play it, love it, bake it a cake - you know the drill.

2. Sunday night: Tiesto, Dave Dresden, Second Sun, Kered + Kiraly, and Randy Boyer outdoors in downtown Hartford, CT. If you're a Tiesto fan, then this is a no-brainer. If you are not a Tiesto fan (stand up and be counted), then it should still be a no-brainer. Why? Because (A) a dance music event of this scale only happens once a year in the Hartford area and it should be supported even if the thought of trance music makes you want to kick puppies and drown kittens and (B) 3000+ people outdoors on Constitution Plaza is a fun party even if the music is provided by John Tesh backed by the Starland Vocal Band playing the greatest hits of the Windham Hill label catalog. Ok, to be fair, that was three references that anyone under the age of 35 might think are just a bunch of random jibberish words that I made up. What I mean to say is that a good party is a good party, even if the music isn't up to your exacting standards.

And will someone please come and mow my lawn? Thank you.

8:14 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The lung bone is connected to the pain bone, radio edits, and shameless pleas for your love

The lung bone is connected to the pain bone, radio edits, and shameless pleas for your love....

So I am a hot mess right now. I have been dealing with a severe bout of bronchitis since last Friday and it might actually be the thing that sends me over the edge (of sanity) for good. It's not the incessant painful coughing, of which there is a definite surplus. No, it's the lack of sleep that results from not being able to lie anywhere near horizontal without going apoplectic. But today I went to a new doc who gave me all sorts of great meds, including some cough syrup with extra codeine. Super delicious.

The Kered & Kiraly mix of the new Nadia Ali single (remember iiO "Rapture" anyone?) will be available in a few weeks and in preparation for it's release the label has asked us to turn in a radio edit. It feels weird going back to a track you wrapped up 6 months ago with the intention of cutting out half of it to make it acceptable for short attention span theatre. I mean, doesn't everyone want to listen to our carefully crafted 2 minute intro before the vocal kicks in? Of course the answer to that is no.

My remix of Holosound's "Nightly News" is out this week. Buy it. Love it. Share the joy with your friends and family. Click the image below to check it out on Beatport

5:21 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The most important dance record of my entire life....period.

The most important dance record of my entire life....period.

I've been DJing consistently for ....wait, counting.....oof...a long fucking time. Through all those years, there have been thousands of tracks that made an impression on me, hundreds that truly meant something special, dozens that drastically changed my artistic vision, but only a handful that defined me as a DJ.

Some of these defining tracks are shared moments - meaning their significance in my world is no more or less important than in the worlds of a thousand other DJ's. As much as I would love to lay claim to singlehandledly discovering the brilliance of "Blue Monday" or "Strings of Life", records like that become part of dance music consciousness and therefore you begin to lose your personal attachment to them. I mean, if everyone says "I Feel Love" changed their life, or "Numbers" was the reason they love electronic dance music, then doesn't that in some small way detract from your sense of personal attachment.

At it's best, a song can touch you in a way that makes you believe that no one else could possibly relate to it as you do. You'll even foolishly believe that the writer / composer / producer doesn't understand the song as well as you do. It's a fallacy of course, but we love to lie to ourselves don't we? But if everyone feels that way....well then....

I could probably talk all day about the records that have helped defined me as a DJ over the years. Meat Beat Manifesto's "Helter Skelter", Thrill Kill Kult's "Cuz It's Hot", New Order "Bizarre Love Triangle", Sasha's mix of Hysterix "Talk To Me", Red Seal "Upturn", a half dozen Marc Picchiotti remixes from the mid-nineties, pitched down Funk Function tracks (Empress IV in particular), Violet "Burn the Elastic", Lil Mo Yin Yang, Gobstopper Soundclash, etc, etc, etc. I could go on.

But if I think about it, there is only one track that has always felt like me. Well, at least how I always thought I sounded in my head. The Frank De Wulf remix of Model 500's "The Flow" (R&S, 1995).

I can remember the first time I heard it. Some nameless DJ dropped it at around 6am at some rave I was booked at in upstate New York. Some of the details escape me (the venue, the promoter, what kinds of drugs I was on) but I remember standing on a near empty dancefloor, not particularly impressed with the sounds I was hearing, and then all of the sudden....

It was the idealized version of everything I wanted to hear in a track. It was genre bending - it's character was equal parts house and techno. Due to the vocal, it was soulful and whimsical, but it was tough and driving. It had a jacking, driving force behind it, but it also bounced with some funk. It was easily digestible and yet hard to wrap your head around all at the same time.

Honestly, it really fucked with my head. It was the first record I had ever heard that actually appealed to every single one of my dance music sensibilities, and I never thought that was possible. I had always been a little bit schizophrenic in my DJing, an affliction I posess even today. And this was the first time that all of my dance music personalities got together in one room and agreed on something.

Of course, sourcing a record back in 1995 was not nearly as easy as it is today. There was no internet. No mp3 clips. No sharing of tracks. I couldn't rip someone else's copy. I would have to drive to New York or Boston and hope to god there was a copy buried in the stacks. Thank god it was on R&S, still a relatively successful label at the time, and therefore pretty easy to acquire.

Once it was in my gig box, it didn't leave for years. I think I played it at every gig for 3 or 4 years straight. I never got tired of it, even when it started to sink in that the New England rave and club crowds were not nearly into this track as much as I was. I didn't care. To me, it was perfect and as long as there was at least one person willing to dance to it, I was going to play it.

In the later 90's when my style started to lean towards the progressive end of the spectrum, The Flow started to make it into my sets with less frequency. But it never was far from reach. It remained in my record box, and when I did finally take it out, it was never far from one of my turntables at home. To this day, I still put it on fairly regularly to remind myself what it's like when all of my personalities are in total agreement.

2 follow up thoughts:

First - I still look at this record as the model for a perfect record. Although it sounds a tad dated (it's held up a lot better than most!), I can somehow hear it within a modern context, as if the sounds have been slightly modified to reflect current trends. Ironically, as I became a producer I would try numerous times to re-create the vibe of that track in my own work, only to be wildly unsuccessful.

Second - As I mentioned, it was never a crowd favorite. Who knows, maybe I programmed it wrong, or maybe I was just blind to it's lack of appeal on the dancefloor. But one day several years later I was confronted in a men's room in a mall by a large, slightly awkward looking gentleman. He blocked my exit and looked down at me for a second. He looked unsure of himself but ultimately asked "Is your name Mike Kiraly?". I nodded slowly while I tried to figure out where this was headed. He smiled and simply said "Cool." The he stepped out of my path and headed for the stall. As I got to the door, I heard him start singing the vocal hook of The Flow -"I'm with the flow, with the flow, with the flow, I'm going with the flow, with the flow, with the flow-o-o-o-o". I smiled from ear to ear.

Oh yeah, shameless plug: Holosound "Nightly News" (Kiraly's Radio Science Mix) is out today on Citric Recordings. It can be found at Beatport, DJ Download, Juno, iTunes, etc etc. I will be trading favors to people who purchase it. More to follow on that in a blog later this week :)

7:22 PM - 9 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The weekend wrap-up...

The weekend wrap-up...


Last Friday I had the honor of handling the opening duties for Hector Romero, a DJ whose career I've admired from afar for some time. And after this event, my admiration has only grown. Seriously, I might be heading into some kind of dangerous fan-boy / stalker type of territory. Not only did he play killer music, he was quite possibly the nicest man ever to step into the booth at Room 960. A true professional through and through - even when the club's sound system struggled with some overheating issues, he just smiled and bounced along to the music. For those who are interested, there are pictures from the night in my photos section.

Thanks to Shayne, Chris, Monica, and Hector for such a great event.

8:44 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

5 Reasons why you’re coming to Room 960 tonight:

5 Reasons why you're coming to Room 960 tonight:

1. Because your home was built on top of an ancient pagan burial ground. And each year on the 16th day of the 5th month from 9pm to 2am, the spirits rise from the ground and go poltergeist all over your neighborhood. Mind you, it's a relatively harmless poltergeist - mostly, the ghosts just look for Skittles - they love Skittles in the afterlife. Can't get enough of them. But still, it's unsettling to witness and wouldn't you rather be out of the house enjoying some fine music instead of witnessing this gruesome candy scavenging?

2. Because I heard that the real estate agent who sold you your house (which is built on the ancient pagan burial ground) will be in attendance. And since he never told you that vital piece of information, you totally deserve to knee him in the junk. Won't that make you feel better?

3. Because Hector Romero is an amazing DJ with an impressive resume that makes even your mother say "daaaayyyummmn". That's a two-syllable damn. Honestly, the guy just pushes power out of the woofers. You should experience it at least once in your life.

4. Because...well....*ahem*....Butterfly Girls will be there. I mean, I personally would never be able to get up the nerve to talk to one without stammering incessantly and spouting such nonsense as "umm, I ... uhhh....think that.....ummm....you're way prettier than....what I meant to say was....uhhh....do you like Star Wars?". It's actually pretty funny to watch. I can't even really look at them directly without the aid of sunglasses or tinted safety goggles. But I am sure you don't have that problem, right?

5. Two words: drunken llama.

Tonight: HECTOR ROMERO (Pacha Ibiza Resident) with opening set by Mike Kiraly @ Room 960

10:42 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

My forks and your socks are out kicking puppies and robbing banks.

My forks and your socks are out kicking puppies and robbing banks.

My eating utensils are dissapearing. Not unlike the lost sock in the dryer phenomenon, my spoons enter the dishwasher, never to return to this world as we know it.

At one point in the past few years I did own a complete set of utensils. I can't remember precisely, but I think it contained 8 of each of the following: fork, salad fork, spoon, soup spoon, and butter knife. That's....wait, counting....40 implements of culinary delivery.

I am now down to 5 forks, 2 salad forks, 6 spoons, 5 soup spoons, and 7 butter knives. WTF?

Let me say this: my untensils never leave my house. I don't eat outside. I almost never have company over. And my kitchen is clean and uncluttered.

So, where the fuck is my flatware? I can only assume they are up to no good (hence the kicking puppies and robbing banks). Please feel free to post your hypotheses here.

Random notes:

1. Friday night: Hartford, CT: Hector Romero and myself @ Room 960
2. Iron Man was a cool comic book movie. Go see it if you're one of the 6 people who haven't.
3. Listening to James Brown's "In the Jungle Groove" will put hair on your chest. Provided you're interested in that sort of thing.

10:31 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The inevitability of tomorrow, 5 hour crack bottle, and pros and cons of drinking on the job

The inevitability of tomorrow, 5 hour crack, and the pros and cons of drinking on the job.

So Friday night, Kered and I journeyed north to Boston to throw down at RISE once again. For those of you keeping score, this was the third installment of our semi-regular series of appearances and as always I cannot say enough good things about the club, the dj booth, the staff, or the owners and management. The hospitality on display is second-to-none and everyone involved with RISE should be extremely proud of what they continue to accomplish weekly.

In attendance were some of my favorite people: Bang Lee and Ann K (who are constant source of support and inspiration), Sarah (my darling), Timmy Gibb (probably the nicest person anyone could ever hope to meet), Eli Wilkie (you were full on crazy!), Mike Swells (enjoying his new life), Joe Mama (thanks for not punching you-know-who in the nuts), and a few others that escape my tattered recollection of the night.

For the trainspotters: In my opinion, track of the night goes to Patrick M & DJ Wady's "Hulk". Oof. That thing just kills 105% of the time.

Now, onto some personal revelations:

1. I hate coming out of a club into the sunlight. In fact, it gets me so mad I want to punch the sun right upside it's shiny happy skull. Probably impossible, but if anyone is destined to figure out how to punch the sun square in the face, why can't it be me? My ninja friend tells me that I am angry because I am reminded instantly of the inevitability of tomorrow.

2. When confronted with any beverage that promises 5 hours of energy, and it comes in a bottle the size of a shot glass, and it costs $5 for 2 fluid ounces, and it says something to the effect of "These claims have not been validated by the FDA", well then, my recommendation is.....buy it and suck it down. Duh.

3. Drinking on the job is completely frowned upon in every corner of our society. EXCEPTION: if you're a DJ. And like almost anything in this world, there are pros and cons to this exception. Would anyone like to weigh in on what these pros and cons are? If so, please leave a comment...a full discussion to follow.

9:10 PM - 8 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment