– Went to a great space called CFC to hear the first all-skwee set of my life, care of the Ancient Robot crew. Was interesting. Also heard a group called Master Choice play, who will be great if they can figure out that dance music doesn’t need every track to have a long, slow, tear-down outro.
– The Ninja Tune guys have outdone themselves with Beat Delete. Is this the future of vinyl? I really do suspect so.
– The Harlem Shake. I’ve seen some people talking about the ‘obscuring of culture’ around the original Harlem Shake vs. the Baauer-based meme. These are true and good comments. I feel the need to add that this has always happened with dance music, with music, and with culture in general – and it has especially happened with marginalized cultures: black, gay, latino, any sort of underground, etc. In terms of my entrance to dance music, trance came from high energy which came from disco…and if you had told any of the trance bunnies of the late 90s that they were actually dancing to music from the 70s, they would have looked at you like you were insane.
To tangent a bit, A gent named Alan Kay, who invented a very important programming language called Smalltalk made the comment that “pop culture holds a disdain for history”. This is deeply important in dance music. I don’t know if this requisite disdain for history has to go hat in hand with cultural appropriation, but they certainly reinforce one another.
Download here. Not so much a future garage set as a future set. Let’s call it xenon, not neon.
1: L-Vis – Lost In Love [Night Slugs]
2: Nouveau Palais – Drama [RBMA]
3: SecondCity – You Feel []
4: Citizen – Members Only [MadTech]
5: Cardopusher – So What U Want Me 2 Do [Classic Works]
6: L-Vis – Not Mad [Night Slugs]
7: Floyd Campbell – Drifted [Body High]
8: xxyy – Ordinary Things [Ten Thousand Yen]
9: onefourfiveone – D [Tide Pool]
Not much happened, in terms of things worth blogging about: saw lots of friends, kept my nose to the grindstone on some other things.
One of those things I have to mention here though: The Echo Nest Remix.js testbed is live.
If you ever wanted to, in your browser, write code to re-order the beats of a song based on timbre, I’m delighted to say that you can now do that. More where that came from soon.
Download here. Two 4.4 sets in a row – I’m getting soft, but the techno remains hard and heavy.
1: Bhoo – Elastik Phone [Underbelly]
2: Noah Pred – Monotasking (Brendon Moeller Digital Resketch) [Thoughtless]
3: Nautilis – Zero Gravity [3024]
4: Don Froth – REflex (Anthony Shake Shakir Remix) [UNO]
5: Reese & Santonio – How To Play Our Music [KMS]
6: Blawan – What You Do With What You Have [R&S]
7: Kommune1 – Helios [Magic Wire]
8: Jeremy Greenspan & Laurie Spiegel – Drums&Drums&Drums [Jiaolong]
– I went to the coldest rave I’ve ever been to – IglooFest, featuring Ben UFO. I can tell you that a windy -18 is very cold for a dance party, but not too cold. That fact that Ben UFO has amazing taste in music doesn’t hurt either. In 2013, he sounds like nothing so much as a total distillation of British dance music – house, disco, afrobeat, dubstep, nuskool, techno, and so on. He mixes like Juan Atkins, a sort of casual, make-it-look easy flow between tracks that is actually very hard to do. Highly, highly recommended.
– I somehow went to see the various Oscar-nominated shorts, and I can tell you that Asad is great, as is Head Over Heels.
– Night Slugs Allstars 2 is out. But you’ve already got it, I’m sure.
– Bless the CIRMMT concert series. I saw a great hyperguitar performance by Guillaume Barrette, and then an utterly mad jam by Preston Beebe, performed by Zachary Hale, on Ian Hattwick’s magic surface. Said surface listens to vibrations on it (in this case marbles spinning in bowls), and then plays things backed based on the frequency content of the vibrations. This sounds strange, but it makes instant sense when you see it.
Download here. Indulging in some bigger-room house music, by way of some spacier, heavier things. Look out for the chords in Seaweed, and the dueling vocal samples in the opening two tracks.
1: Lianne La Havas – Forget (Laurel Halo Remix) []
2: Four Tet – Pyramids [Text]
3: Nick Hoeppner – Seaweed [Ostgut Ton]
4: Rye & Frank Wiedemann – Howling (Ame Remix) [Innervisions]
5: Tennis – Make It Good [Life & Death]
6: Evy Jane – Ohso (Max Ulis Remix) [King]
7: Destiny’s Child – Say My Name (Cyril Hahn remix) []
You’ll notice that I cunningly skipped week 37, due to the McGill Music Hack Day, so we are now at Week 38. Onward!
– I saw McGill Opera do Volpone on Wednesday, with vigour, wit, and skill. It’s an opera that rewards youth and vivacity, which the cast had in spades. The score was not, perhaps as bleeding edge as an opera written in 2004 could be, but it was lots of fun just the same.
– I finished the second of my two explorations into what could maybe be called ‘trap’, but I’m going to just call ‘my continued attempt to be Hudson Mohawke’. They’re trolling among people I trust for feedback now, but I’ll post ’em up soon.
– I collected my discography since I did The World Outside, and I was pretty surprised by its scope: five EPs, seven remixes, and six singles. Will there be another megamix soon? We’ll see.
Download here. This one is pretty much a straight line up, up, and then more up. Starts with my own remix of Victoria’s Fossil, and then has one of his tunes with Vic / Calgary songstress Amy Wood.
1: Fossil – Alkalosis (Fractal Remix) []
2: Fossil – Shadows in the Underground feat. Amy Wood []
3: Appleblim – Vansan [Punch Drunk]
4: TNGHT – Top Floor [LuckyMe x Warp]
5: Amon Tobin – Piece of Paper [Warp]
6: Borealis – Silkworm []
7: Rustie – Glass Swords [Warp]
Twelve hours of hacks, punctuated by delicious burritos, a fire alarm, and the ventilation failing; Montreal, you sure know how to do things right. You can see all the pictures here, and the video is here.
Deep thanks to Ryan, Julian, and Hackon for organizing with me. We’ll do it again in the fall, I am sure.
Download here. Post-dubstep through a footwork/electro/all pads all the time sort of lens; includes heat from Victoria’s own Monolithium.
1: Helipad [LuckyMe]
// Rustie – City Star (Intro) [Warp]
2: Monolithium – Bounce 4 Life [Error Broadcast]
3: Roy Ayes – Everybody Loves The Sunshine (Machinedrum Remix) [LuckyMe]
4: Flying Lotus – Putty Boy Strut [Brainfeed]
5: Limbo – FFFFfffffUUUUuuuuu [Sushi]
6: Seams – Punch [Full Time Hobby]
7: Rustie – Surph [Warp]
