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2007: sets of the year

December 13, 2007 · by · in

This was all kinds of tough this year – there was rather a lot of good, free music available on the internet this year. Without further ado, the winners are:

Best Heads-Down Dancefloor Rampage: JOHN DIGWEED – Live @ Inox, 05-13-07.

For me, Digweed had been kinda sloppy of late. There were some forgettable singles, some unexciting mix CDs, the Bedrock label had been spotty and sporadic, and so on. Then, this MONSTER of a live set started doing the rounds on the interwebs. The mixing is impeccable, the music goes smoothly and subtly from place to place, and the vibe is evil and sexy and dirty and driving and totally wonderful. It is, in short, a stellar and intimidating return to form.

Best “Ahhhhhhh”: HABERSHAM – Warm Art 5 Year Anniversary Mix

Warm Art is one of the longer running shows on Proton Radio, and they conjured up Georgia’s finest to weave together this lovely downtempo / chillout / experimental collection. It is tricky and heartfelt, and awfully smooth, considering the range of music. It’s a cliche that you can “hear the love” that goes into mixes, but in this one, you really can.

Best Reminder Of What DJing Is All About: SKREAM – Funk Special 2007

Holy shit, Skream’s white. Live and learn. Anyways, in addition to being a dubstep prodigal, the man has amazing, amazing taste in old funk and disco records…and enough of a sense of humour to drop two hours of them on his radioshow on Rinse.fm . The mixing is sloppy, he talks too much, and none of it matters, because the music is just perfect.

Honorable Mentions and much love to: Calibre, Steinski, Betamax Warriors, Chloe & Cul, “Slow Music From West Africa”, Tundra & Qbical, Mike Pickering, Cobblestone Jazz, Michael Fakesch, Diplo, Rennie Foster, and Condition Red.

all the noise that’s fit to print

December 9, 2007 · by · in ,

Vancouver’s Terry Fairfield comes correct with his second EP on Tide Pool. If you like Warp or Boards Of Canada, give this one a listen.

I also finished a miniset last week:

It’s about twenty minutes of me playing around with odd looping. That is to say, what happens if you loop a 4/4 techno track every 3 beats? Or 7 beats? Or if you play one looping at 3 on top of one looping at 5? You can hear the result here.

Tracklist:

1: Chris Barratt – Pink [Jesus Loves You]
2: Minilogue – Elephant [Wagon Repair]
3: Avus – SPNKR [Border Community]
4: Perc & Fractal – Up [Perc Mix]
5: Rob Babicz – Sin (Gui Boratto Remix) [Systematic]

Finally, Tide Pool Mix #10 is by nu-rave legend AntiGuru. Look out for crunk acapellas over snappy maximalism and token 80’s tunes.

2007: single of the year

December 8, 2007 · by · in ,

Misstress Barbara – Barcelona.  (buy it here)

This record continues to blindside me whenever I play it out. It’s a wonderfully beautiful track, the bassline just soars, and it has never failed to get feet moving, despite the fact that, really, it’s a weird neo-battletech record. The fact that you get two of James Holden’s legendary tools, AND an equally good B-Side is just gravy. Border Community just keeps putting out amazing music.

(A quick mention must be given to D.A.N.C.E., by Justice, for being the best pop / crossover track singe 1999.)

In unrelated news, Karlhienz Stockhausen died, at age 79, after totally and radically altering music before he was 40. I don’t know if I can say that I’ll miss him, but it is no understatement to say that I wouldn’t be me without his influence on music.

2007: album of the year

December 6, 2007 · by · in ,

And, you know, I feel really guilty about this one.  I don’t want to go over this ground again, I dont’t want to look like a bandwagon jumper.  And this album isn’t as good as the last one.  But, it is still so so so good.

Album of the year, 2007:  Burial – Untrue  (buy it here)

Knocking at the door, in no particular order:  Justice, Radiohead, LSG’s unreleased 2002 album, The Field, Caribou, MIA, and Battles.

strandbeests

December 3, 2007 · by · in

(edit:  there’s some garbage in the dj sets page from hosting issues – just ignore it, do.  should be fixed tomorrow.)

Some days, you just don’t feel as bright as some of the supernovas that masquerade as people around here. Meet Theo Jansen and his Strandbeests:

These are…sculptures that move. They’re also a kind of mechanical artificial intelligence. They’re also utterly beautiful. Vidoes can be found here and here, and really must be seen to be believed.

notation hate future

December 2, 2007 · by · in , ,

I would like to invite each and every one of you to the UVic Music 105 concert on December 6th.   It is at 4:30 PM, in the Philip T. Young Recital Hall, in the Music wing.  There will be something like 30 pieces being played, including one of mine.  If you thought I made weird music, you ain’t heard nothing yet.  It is also free.  Can’t really say no to that, can you?
Also, I posted some new clips, including the Rent edit, and the first of hopefully many Castles In The Sky tunes.  Why am I making so many breaks things these days?

interface friday

November 30, 2007 · by · in


I’ve kind of had a crush on the Monome for a while, for good reason: It’s totally sick. I had the idea to load each button with a sound, or a MIDI pattern, or a tempo change paramter, or an effect parameter, and so on, with some random organization and some random set of things. The performance would then be this drunkard’s-walk style game of discovering what sort of things are in the interface, then how they’re organized, and then how to make a pleasing sound with them. One could then add proximity based rules and really make shit interesting.

I also had a flash of mad genius when I should have been studying math, and instead watched Hollas play some air violin for a bit. This, obviously, ended with three or four of us sketching out the controls for Violin Hero using the Wii remote and nunchuck, including microtonality, bow position, pizzicato, glissando, and vibrato. But, as you can see, we were (kind of) beaten to the punch. Betcha can’t play Ligetti on that though.

Tide Pool Interviews: The Sky Patrol

November 24, 2007 · by · in

Our man in Memphis talks about genres, DJing, and production.  Give it a read here.  You can find The Sky Patrol’s Tide Pool catalog here.

just kindling, folks

November 21, 2007 · by · in ,

As you may have heard, Amazon just dropped Kindle: a wireless e-book, e-paper, and blog reading device.  I, obviously, have never used one, and I am loath to disagree with luminaries like Mr. Gaiman when he says it’s wonderful…but I certainly won’t be using one when they cost $400, are ass-end ugly, and aren’t solar powered.

Kindle is a nice idea, and is probably a good implementation of that idea.  (Again:  it could not be ugly and it really must be solar-powered.)  But it’s an idea that has not yet arrived, and that won’t arrive until books are traded like music was before the iPod hit.  Napster peaked in February 2001 – the iPod launched in October of that same year.  Until e-books are that ubiquitous, Kindle is so much kindling.

There’s also the classic argument about why books will never stop being made, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Unrelated:  a great post from Test Industries about Amato going out of business.  Ah,vinyl.  I’ll miss you.

future past, future future

November 19, 2007 · by · in , ,

Firstly:  This Thursday, Hush, mad techno and dance music.  Come.  Yes.
Secondly:  The Laptop Club is, amazingly, a collection of 7 to 9 year old kids who draw out designs for laptops.  These are astonishing.  I am twenty-five of your earth years old, and I parse The Intertubes in a totally different way from these kids.  Absolutely worth looking at.

Thirdly:  Burial – ‘Untrue’.  This is a fantastic album.  I don’t know if it’s as good as his first one, but it’s very close to that high bar, and it’s far easier to listen to:  lots of vocals, lots of lush pads, lots of pretty / melancholy depth.  Really, “melancholy” is the word I’d use for this one.  ‘Untrue’ comes from a sad, sad place.  It kind of has to.  After all, it’s been 15 years since hardcore, and all the drugs have finally started to take their toll on the ravers who are suddenly staring at the wrong end of 30.  Buy the ticket, take the ride.  With that said, even if you didn’t take that particular ride at that particular time, ‘Untrue’ is still very much worth listening to, as a memory of whenever Things Were Like That, for you.