– Bleep are now selling Traktor remix parts. Someone is going to solve the how-can-we-sell-parts problem soon, and it will make them rich.
– It’s grad recital season at the University of Victoria…and I have to congratulate the current crop of composers for their black-magic works. Alanna Ho, Stefan Maier, Jamie Hook, Lynne Penhale, Sara Page, Bob Hansler, and Ivana Jokic are the future of music.
– On the subject of composing, my friend Alex Jang sent me a gorgeous, shimmering new piece of his, which he spoke of as a slowing-down of his usually hyperdense music. So I did the same thing to a Brian Ferneyghouh string quartet.
Download here. Secret bonus old progressive house track is secret!
1: Gold Panda – Burnt Out Car in a Forest [Ghostly]
2: Pantha Du Prince – Welt am Draht [Rough Trade]
3: Minotaur – Saundersfoot (Gold Panda Remix) [Melodic]
4: Hauschka – Radar (Michael Mayer Remix) [Fat Cat]
5: Pantha Du Prince – A Nomad’s Retreat [Rough Trade]
6: Powerplant – Blame (Luke Chable Remix) [Release]
– I saw the opening night of Les Gestes on Wednesday – my most serious congratulations go out to Ian, Joe, Marlon, and the rest of the IDMIL / CIRMMT tech crew for making things work and work smoothly. If you’ve not gone, go tomorrow – it is a spectacle worth experiencing.
– I also saw Irvine Arditti play on Thursday night. The gentleman can shred. I’ve never seen dynamic control like that, nor heard heavy pieces be thrown off like they were nothing. I would have liked a little more variation on the program, rather than all ultra-complex works…but that’s what the man does, and he does it very well.
Download here. Let’s a talk about colonialism in music, and about how much fun it is to dance to.
1: Cos Ber – Zam Ne Noya (Daphni Remix) [Jiaolong]
2: KH – That Track… [Text]
3: Kevin McPhee – Do [WNCL]
4: Elkin ‘Billie’ Longton – My Woman [Tide Pool]
5: Armand Van Helden – Witch Doktor (L-Vis 1990 Edit) []
6: Afrika HiTech – Out In The Streets [Warp]
Saw Rustie, Oneman, and Jackmaster last night, at Le Belmont. A delightful experience.
Jackmaster was on opening duties, and did a great job: starting with house and garage-ish things, and moving to breaks, dubstep, and etc: I’d very much like to see him in a non-opening context. Oneman followed with much more post/dubstep, trap, hip-hop, and a ridiculous Doves Cry blend.
Then Rustie, who, musically, I had really mixed feelings about: the really vocal stuff was not for me, even though everyone ate it up. But the video-game tracks and the dubbier stuff, ahhhh. Ahhhh! Just insane. I’ve not raved as hard as I did to Hover Traps in a long while.
On the subject of rave, I need to say two words about the crowd. Maybe this was just Le Belmont on a Friday, but the crowd was a treat: a posse of EDM bros, some EDM kids who were high as kites at 11:45, a man dressed as Freddie Mercury, a coven of ultra-classy, ultra-goth lesbians, two gay dudes who spent all night staring at each other and thrusting their hips slowly and meaningfully, a trio of hip-hop nerds with their caps down doing something like Gangam Style vs. the Harlem Shake, and so on. I don’t know if that diversity is an ‘EDM’ thing or a post-dubstep thing or what, but I sure think it is great.
Download here. For all the lovely picture and highdesertsoundsystem-ness of the title, this is a pretty urban and Detroit / London sort of take on house.
1: Py – Lungs [PyMusic]
2: Maya Jane Coles – Easier To Hide [I Am Me]
3: MoveD – Got2b [Electric Minds]
4: Tuff City Kids – Begger [Underton]
5: Discreet Unit – Twilight [Prime Numbers]
6: George FitzGerald – Every Inch (Deetron Remix) [Hypercolor]
7: Galaxy 2 Galaxy – Hi Tech Jazz (L-Vis 1990 4 da Floor Edit) [UR / Night Slugs]
8: Four Tet – Pinnacles [Text]
I need to geek out about science fiction technology for a bit, sorry.
I am surprised at all the commentary about how people won’t want to use Google’s black-magic Glass because of fashion concerns and catty rants about nerds. The reasons to not use Glass and similar tech are panoptical reasons and privacy reasons, not anything about aesthetics. (And here’s the nice Verge article)
This tech will be built into contact lenses within a decade, tops. The processing power will be in something like a necklace, which will probably include a throat mic for subvocalizations. Gear like Myo will be built into clothing for gestural control. Then this gear will be built into your body, and then we’ll really have something amazing and/or scary. This is a thing that is going to happen: anyone who thinks otherwise will be in for a shock. What it will do to our society is another matter.
It’s March. Beware the Ides of March!
– I posted a whole lot of music. There’s the short, quasi-trap EP, there’s my friend Heather singing two voice + string quartet things I did, and there’s the halfway point of my mix series.
– I saw the McGill Orchestra do a really quite rad program: Vivier’s Orion, a new piece by a doctoral student composer, Reiko Yamada, Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin, and a mindboggling percussion concerto by Jennifer Higdon. Great work all ’round.
– I found Daphne Oram’s book, An Individual Note, at aMcGill library give-away. It is filled with the best possible kind of British 1970s madness about electronics, acoustics, philosophy, biology, and music. Highly recommend.
– Did you ever wonder what 100 copies of The White Album would sound like all at once? Well, we’ve solved that problem.
Download here. A sideways, psychotic love-letter to the city of Miami and its soundsystems and love for low-end.
1: Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe (Hrdvsion Bootleg) []
2: Rauden – Obsession [Get The Curse]
3: Nouveau Palais – Over You [RBMA]
4: Girl Unit – Ensemble (Club Mix) [Night Slugs]
5: Destiny’s Child – Nuclear (Math Rosen Remix) []
6: Kingdom – Stalker Ha [Night Slugs]
7: Fractal – Strictly Ballroom [Primal]
8: Hrdvision – Right And Tight [International DJ Gigolos]
Four of my favorite people are Richard Feynman, Hudson Mohawke, Paul Dirac, and Lunice.
So, I made some music that hopefully hits the Venn diagram of trap, theoretical physics, and the future. Check ’em out here and here, on the SoundClouds.
