This week Osama Bin Laden released a new spoken word album from his underground studio. Most intelligence officials are having a hard time locating the guy, on a hunt that has been going on for almost ten years. A little known secret: if you talk to him about audio, he'll welcome you into his home like a doting Danish grandma. On the heels of this latest release, we caught up with the acclaimed artist.

Mr. Tunes: So Osama, you have been releasing for a long time now. What kind of gear are you using?

Osama Bin Laden: Well I started out on a 2" reel to reel tape recorder back in the 90s. It was left behind by the Soviets from their occupation. After 9-11, my friend told me about this program called Pro Tools. I tried it once and haven't looked back since.

MRT: Interesting! Now i'm curious, if you are recording digitally, why do your releases sound so grimy and beat up?

OBL: Well i'm always trying to appeal to the common man, and I worry that if the sound quality is too high compared to my earliest recordings, people will think that i'm too good for them and not want to follow my plight. See some people think that it's all about the message, but it's really important to take more factors into consideration. Your sound, your image, the frequency of communication, these things can't be taken lightly or the whole thing comes to an end.

MRT: So what are you using to dirty up the sound?

OBL: Depends on how i'm feeling when I wake up. I have plugins by companies like Waves and Native Instruments. I think Guitar Rig can make your voice sound like fucking gold man! I just dial in my amp, and my voice is sounding like 1990s Al Jazeera in no time.

MRT: But aren't Waves Israeli?

OBL:  Look it. Ever since Barack Obama took office, the whole world is head over heels with the U.S. again. Even my best followers are losing interest in my message. I personally don't have a problem with Israel, but I need to maintain some story to keep people engaged. As America gets ready to pull out of Iraq, the Israel thing is the best tool I have. But yeah, realistically, if you can code a mean plugin and make me a killer schwarma at the same time, I don't really give two shits what country you're from. Besides, i'm a sucker for trance.

MRT: Ok well thanks very much for your time.

OBL: My pleasure. Oh by the way my mix tape is due out in the summer, don't sleep!

I’m here and i’m at it again. With an ambitious update to the website featuring the “Daily Creations” project, I am thrilled to be back in the saddle. Daily Creations is a way of using this blogging technology to help get me motivated to work on new music every week. For the moment it’s sitting on the homepage of the site, but i will provide updates here as the project advances.

This year i’m also interested in posting about more music technology. Up until now I was torn between posting that kind of stuff here and starting a separate blog for it (called Wobble Tech), but realistically I am one person and there is no need to have 100 websites. Another similar project is Mr. TO the Toronto event listing website which never really materialized, will also become a part of this site too.

Last topic of interest is i’m interested in discussing web development for musicians. I have a separete website for my portfolio, but same as the last two points in this paragraph, i’d prefer to update everything from one central location.

Ok enough talk!

Hi hope everyone's good. I'm a little swamped as usual :( but I just thought i'd give a quick update as to what's going on here. I have attempted to redesign this site about four times in the past year, and i'm getting ready to finally rip the bandaid off in time for 2010. The problem when you have a site that's been up for a few years is you are faced with the question of "do i want to start fresh?". I will probably move the old posts over and create an archive.

Also I am planning on ending Hustle Tech Radio after episode #25. When I started the podcast I had different goals than I do now. I am interested in doing two podcasts - one of my own music and one where other DJs do guest mixes all the time. Hustle Tech Radio was an experiment and I think it's pretty much over. It was fun though.

I am working on a plan for 2010 that will encourage me to make more music and keep things interesting. I am pretty much set on not selling digital downloads of my music any more. I want to make a club where the members get mailed CDs a few times a year, with maybe a printed newsletter. I think we rely on digital too much these days, and if the fanbase is as small as mine is, this might actually be feasable.

Oh and i'm working on a live performance that's not so much DJ style but something a bit more interactive and visual. Details on that to come.

Just to follow up on a topic I had written about last week, CBC News has posted that the Canada Music Fund (which trickles money down to FACTOR), has been renewed. It doesn't say how much it has been renewed for, but overall this is good news.

Check out my chart on Stompy for the month of February! It’s got a lot of your jazz-house stuff and then an interesting selection from Jin Choi on Archipel. Also that Parov Stelar track called Hotel Axos is purely epic. Expect it on one of the next episodes of Hustle Tech Radio.

 My friends know me as a staunch PC user. In recent years I have been toying with the idea of getting a Mac Mini or something to see what all the hype is about. But overall i'm seen as the Mac Anti-Christ. I'm pretty much the heavy set guy in the Mac vs. PC commercials. 

Well in Firefox, sometimes the icons next to the bookmarks get jumbled up. Today it set the icon for this very site to the Apple logo!

Anyways this isn't very interesting, but i'm pleased to announce that Hustle Tech Radio is now available on iTunes. You might be thinking, who cares? But it actually took me quite a bit of work, and I still have more to go with perfecting my feed.

I'm curious to know what this means for iPhone users. Can you get the episodes downloaded directly on to the phone now? I sure hope so! 

If you lose the link, you can find the podcast by searching in ITMS, or you can see it on the footer of the site now. Oh yeah, the site's been redesigned btw.

It all started with a phone call from Pike. “What’s good tonight Mr. Tunes”? We went over the listings and I found an event for him to go to.

It was at that point I realized that I can be the next Moviephone! I looked in to starting my own hotline, but I couldn’t find any answers. So I thought of something better.

Mr. TO is a new site that’s in beta as of today. It allows mobile phone users in Toronto to log in on any particular day, and find out what’s funky in the clubs. But just for that one day.

At 2 am, the system flips over and a fresh deck of cards are presented. I am working on a sister site that has full listings, but by outputting on a day-by-day basis I believe this is a highly functional program.

It is important to note that these DJ and concert listings are highly selective. They have to pass a strict funk criteria in order to make the cut. Typically weekends are the best time to log in but you can try any given day.

There’s also a venue directory that has direct links for you to call the bar and find out what’s going on if you’re on-the-go and can’t get to the listings.

The site has been optimized to be less than a few kilobytes per page, but check with your cellphone provider to find out what your data plan is.

For example, my Fido plan bills me at 5 cents per kilobyte. If I go to the main page and the venue page, I could be billed upwards of 20 cents, but a Blackberry user would likely be billed nothing.

So what are you waiting for? Direct your mobile to mrto.mobi and bookmark that sucker!

*Styles include: House, Funk, Hip-Hop, Jamband, Jazz, World

Hustle Tech Presents: Spring Boogie is a continuous mix aimed to elevate the mind and body during exercise. 80% of proceeds go towards the Ride to Conquer Cancer in conjunction with the Princess Margaret Hospital. Specifically I am supporting my friend Mark Cooper’s campaign.

Click here to purchase the MP3 Continuous Mix
or click here to purchase the FLAC + MP3 Powerpack

After completing the transaction, a link will be emailed where you can pick up your music.

As you can see by the dates on the blog, we reached our first birthday this past week. The site itself is probably around five years old, but last year I decided to make a drastic shift in how the site works. And I can easily say it was a good move since i’ve been able to offer more timely updates and other things since switching formats. But not as timely as i’d like, so I will be stepping up my post frequency this year.

A lot of people still don’t know what blogging means, and they are also confused about other things on this site such as the podcast. So, soon I will make a little video that will explain how you can subscribe to the site, as well as other blogs around town.

Looking at my statistics every week, this website is still a speckle of dust in the rather large landscape of crap out there today. But i’m fine with this as it’s nice to keep a low profile. The people who come to this site make routine visits cause they like what they see, and that’s all I really set out to do.

So, just a quick thanks to everyone who has been supporting the new format and here’s to another year at mrtunes.ca!

So i’m here frantically trying to pack up all my gear to head home to Toronto, and can’t help but reflect a little on my year before I pack this computer into the box. Most listeners of this site probably didn’t even know I was living in Vancouver or why I came out here, but i’ve moved between the two cities quite a bit in the past few years. Some people ask if it’s because I get myself into trouble in each city and then have to move cause I burned all my bridges but that’s not the case. I just like moving around a lot it seems. I guess i’m sort of young and antsy?