…are up at tide-pool.ca/theworldoutside. The second movement is called Desolation Jones, and may or may not feature spine-tingling ambient, giant spider crabs, and deep sea dubstep.
THE WORLD OUTSIDE
It’s ready. It’s been year and a half of my life. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s one hour, three minutes and six seconds of my music. Meet THE WORLD OUTSIDE – releasing in September on Tide Pool.
VEMF 2k9: 150,000 kickdrums
(image care of Davin Greenwell)
Another year, another Victoria Electronic Music Festival, another two days and three nights of exceptional thump-tss thump-tss music. Highlights includeded:
Stefan Alan, Spoon, Wesbeanz, and the Hush DJ Challenge Finals: I was in the unenviable position of judging this edition of the finals, along with Matt What, and I am delighted to say that everyone both played great and played great music.
Big Reds: Bassface! Our local dubstep mafia started things off on Saturday aftenoon in fine style.
Tedder: There is no time like a sunny afternoon when it comes to smooth, smooooth drum & bass.
Mykee & Carson: I didn’t catch all of their respective sets, but what I did catch was dancey, individual, and classy.
Longwalkshortdock: Legend. The best live show since Orbital blew the place up.
Uberzone: I was leery about what a nuskool breaks legend would play, 10 years after nuskool. However! His set covered NYC techno, big breaks, modern electro, and everything in between…including dropping Black Widow, which made my night.
AFK: My yearly award for ‘best melodies’ goes, again, to Davin ‘AFK’ Greenwell, and his cavalcade of stars, including a violinist and a guitarist. Serious business indeed.
Condition Red: Insane, insane 90’s jungle. I wish I had been more awake.
Kenzie Clarke: No one plays crazy dance music (or sleek techno, for that matter) quite like Kenzie. And no one gets the crowd singing along to ‘We Are Your Friends’ either.
And, as always, thanks to the VEMF masterminds: Bruce, Jason, John, Chelsie, and everyone else. You do great work, and we love you for it.
tdpl28: Elkin ‘Billie’ Longton – My Woman / My Man
We found these two tracks on a beat-up old 78, in a junkyard just outside of Chastang, Alabama. After some serious restoration and investigation into the mysterious Mr. Longton, we decided to put them out as-is. It’s the sound of the south, like you’ve never heard it before. One mad dubstep joint, one deeeep tech roller. Check it out here. Oh, and both tracks are free – as in free, because Tide Pool loves you.
all my friends like to dance: done
Hold on, huuuge image here. Seriously, it’s big.
Phew. Told you. This ridiculous mixtape clocks in at about twenty seconds under two hours, covers everything from ragtime piano to brutally hard techno, and is pretty sublime in spite of it. You can download it here. Tracklisting and credits follow. Thank you to everyone who sent me music – you’re all wonderful people.
0: Intro
1: The Dreadnoughts – Samovar
2: DK8 – Murder Was The Bass
3: Anamanaguchi – Blackout City
4: Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now
5: Apollo 440 – Can’t Stop The Rock
6: Men Without Hats – Saftey Dance
7: Uri Caine – Rimmon
8: The Go! Team – Bottle Rocket
9: The Ting Tings – Shut Up And Let Me Go
10: The Hood Internet – No Reasons To Like You Better (Amanda Blank vs VEGA)
11: The Hood Internet – I’m A Flirt (Shoreline)
12: Wave Machines – I Go I Go I Go
13: Phoenix – Lisztomania
14: The Jimmy Swift Band – Turnaround
15: Delta Spirit – People C’mon
16: The John Socfield Band – Freakin’ Disco
17: Eubie Blake – Charleston Rag
18: Tom Waits – Top Of The Hill
19: MIA – Hussel (feat. Afrikan Boy)
20: Little Boots – New In Town
21: Yelle – A Cause Des Garçons (Riot In Belgium Remix)
22: Little Boots – Stuck On Repeat (Extended Mix)
23: Digital Witchcraft – Brindavan (Ambient Mix)
24: Gotan Project – Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)
25: The Chemical Brothers – Das Spiegel
26: Solar Stone – Seven Cities (Solar Stone’s Atlantis Mix)
27: Phil Collins – The Gorillas
28: La Bottine Souriante and The Chioains – Le Lys Vert
Music selected by:
Alex Richards, Alia Yeates, Andrew Clark, Cassandra Miller, Charlie Van Kirk, Chelsie Kadgien, Chris Reiche, Colin Moller, Eric Buchanan, Gerald Deo, Hilary Dawson, Hollas Longton, Jennifer Mitchell, Jessy Reynolds, Jordie Yow, Justin Holmes, Kathleen Genge, Kira Hall, Kyle Smith, Marielle Kho, Nadia Pona, Nathan Friedman, Oriane Fort, Ryan Noakes, Shima Takeda, Thomas Del Motte, Vanessa Yaremchuk, Walter Moar.
(Bonus points will be awarded to anyone who can match songs and people.)
das affekt
I posted ages ago about a music interface built on lego…and I ended up doing it for school last year, using duplo:
As you can hopefully see, each block gets a chord symbol. Other blocks include repeat signs, instruments, keys, note values, etc. There are no rules defining what it does: putting a I next to a V might mean one thing to one composer, and a different thing to another.
Two things I want to look into in my computer science classes this year are encryption and networking. Encryption should help my idea of digital music that you can play only once. This is, on the one hand, pure DRM, which sucks. On the other hand, it might restore some of the lack of perceived value that has been caused by the digitization of music. And it might be a neat project. Is it possible to write zeros over a file that you’re reading? It must be.
Networking will hopefully teach me how to make my automatic, underground BitTorrent network (a good thing no one reads this blog, or I might be giving something away, hurr hurr hurr). It’s going to be called BROADCAST, and it will slowly download music to your music folder, in a “Where did this Bach come from?” sort of way.
what the haps are
I am playing at the VEMF, on Sunday, August 3rd. Specifically, I am playing pretty breaks, ambient, and mellow-ish things at Billy’s Bistro, between 4 and 5 pm. You should come and hear me! You should also come and hear the rest of the show, which runs from noon to 10 pm on both Saturday and Sunday, in Centennial Square.
I’m also working on a project called SCULPT, which is hip-hop / downtempo / ambient stuff, using only samples from old, orchestrla vinyl and old drum machines. The result bed tracks are then going to be improvised over by my shockingly talented friends at the UVic school of music. I will then re-edit those improvisations and beds into finished tracks. You can hear some of the beds here and here.
The other thing in the works is a an improv jam with the all-powerful Patience Automate. He plays on his laptop, and I rock out on my two Nintendo DS. No sync, no pre-planning, no midi. We’re called Iterate – I’ll have some samples of our jams up soon.
zap pow thwak
Things that amaze me:
VAMP (from MIT, natch) is maybe the best and most expressive ‘digital extend technique’. It involves a glove, a vocalist, a laptop, and a gesture-based control system that doesn’t make the user look ridiculous. Serious business.
World Wants To Know is a list of almost-real-time searches from rural areas of the world. How often do you google goat disease and banana farming?
Music From A Tree is exactly what it sounds like.
Cubie and Overbug are two delightful interfaces for roughly loop-based. One is like Tetris, one is like…well, a series of semi-concentric circles with bugs moving around them, triggering sounds. A bad simile there, sorry.
Finally, The Rock Band Network, care of the serious people at Harmonix, is mind-boggling, and will launch at least one band’s career. Bet on it.
incoming
Lots to talk about – things might get rapid fire over the next few days. To start – MUSIC!
A new set that goes places, much to my surprise:
1: Alex Rize – Beyond The Dome [Proton]
2: Garcia & Caro – Dead Souls (Radio Slave Remix) [Buzzin’ Fly]
3: Ane Brun – Headphone Silence (Dixon Edit of Henrik Schwarz Remix) [Objektivity]
4: Fractal – Oceanography (Rennie Foster Remix) [Pacific Front]
5: Ficta – Eli [Globa Underground]
6: James Zabiela – Perserverence [Renaissance]
…and a bunch of just-purchased tunes:
Harry Gregson-Williams – Evacuating London (Hybrid’s Beatless Dub) []
Nathan Fake – The Turtle [Border Community]
Nathan Fake – Basic Mountain [Border Community]
Nathan Fake – Castle Rising [Border Community]
Nathan Fake – The Curfew [Border Community]
Nathan Fake – Narrier [Border Community]
Nathan Fake – Fentiger [Border Community]
Two Fingers – Keman Rhythm [Paper Bag]
Two Fingers – Moth Rhythm [Paper Bag]
Fever Ray – Triangle Walks (Rex The Dog Remix) [Rabid]
Hrdvsion – The Mohana [Wagon Repair]
Luke Chable – Pressure [Neon]
Mathew Jonson – When Love Feels Like Crying [Wagon Repair]
Nick Stoynoff – A Night In Vienna (Caleb Fox Remix) [Elefant]
Shur-I-Kan – Illuminate [54]
Vince Watson – My Desire [Planet E]
all my friends like to dance!
(cross-post from my email…)
“Hello! I’m looking for a quick bit of help with a music project…
Last year, I did a mixtape with music contributed by all my non-DJ friends, and I wanted to do it again this summer. With a twist, however – this summer’s mix is, as the title suggests, about dance music.
If you’re interested, you should send me or link me to:
– A piece of music that you really, really like to dance to* that is under 10 minutes. (If you need me to edit a bit out of a longer work, I can do that.)
– A picture of yourself. I’ll be making a mosaic of everyone’s picture and giving everyone credit, though I won’t be matching names to music. If you don’t send me a picture, I’ll track down one of you looking silly.
* Some of you will say that “you don’t dance”. You’re lying. You all tap your toes, nod you head, dance when no one is watching, dress up in folk outfits and caper about, etc. All complaints will be referred to the following.
I will take everyone’s input and mix / edit them together in a hopefully fairly coherent order. The end result will go up on this website and be distributed to the internets at large.
Let me know if you’re interested, or just send me music & images (djfractal at gmail.com, please), or harass me with any questions.”