Futurists

I found the Shanghai 24/7 podcasts on iTunes a while back; I had been searching for drum ‘n bass mixes to listen to while working and found this one, a very good LTJ Bukem mix featuring some of his classics. Highly recommended.

after downloading this mix I checked out what else I could find on Shanghai 24/7′s collection of podcasts and found a reggae mix featuring all Chinese artists (available for free download as mp3 or Apple m4a). At first I didn’t realize it was created by all Chinese artists; I might not have downloaded it if I had. But I did, and when I listened to it in the car I was blown away by how strangely awesome it is – these are some very talented Chinese artists playing good reggae music, sometimes singing in English, sometimes in Chinese… one song, in fact, is by a Chinese group (Lions of Puxi) singing in French!

one interesting discovery – I studied Chinese as part of a Masters program and I was surprised that I was able to understand parts of some of the songs (and not just the songs in English, by the way!)… one song by Long Shen Dao, The Heart Guides the Way, was quite slow in tempo and featured some easy-to-understand phrases. So I would even recommend this mix to learners of the Chinese language.

be sure to check it out, and revel in the awesomeness that is Chinese reggae.

as evidenced by some of my previous posts, I’ve been on a bit of a retro kick lately, listening to a bunch of acid house and old skool music from back in the day – even going as far as to buy myself a x0xb0x to play around with the TB-303 sound. Yesterday I was idly browsing through the various podcasts available on iTunes and did a few searches for some acid music. And after a little bit of searching, I found some killer acid trance mixes!

Johan Nilsson, also known as DJ Irish, is a Swedish DJ who plays a lot of trance, hard trance and progressive. He also has a page of old skool mixes that are pretty incredible – these mixes are chock full of songs that take me back to the early 90s when I used to listen to a lot of this stuff. And they’re all available for free mp3 download.

featured on the page of old skool mixes are three Acid Trance Classix mixes, some Inspirations mixes with some old classics thrown in there (Union Jack, Sven Väth, etc), and also some mixes of Labworks and Hardfloor tunes. I haven’t listened to all of the mixes yet but looking the selection he’s mixed in they’re probably all pretty quality. I’ve really been getting into the Acid Trance Classix mixes – for some reason I especially like the third one.

I’ll definitely be checking Johan’s site now and again when I’m looking for that acid sound…

a few weeks ago I bought myself a x0xb0x synthesizer kit. The x0xb0x is a Roland TB-303 Bassline analog synthesizer replica that was reverse engineered by Limor Fried, the founder and engineer of Adafruit Industries, and a supposed unknown German engineer with an obsession for detail. The x0xb0x sources all of the original parts of the TB-303, including some very rare hard to find parts, and as such it is said to sound as close as you can get to an original Roland TB-303.

the way to get yourself a x0xb0x is to buy it as a kit of individual parts, including a case and faceplate, and then to solder the parts together. The kit is complete – all of the resistors, diodes, transistors, capacitors, LEDs, power supply, and rare parts that you need to create the synthesizer are included. From that point you’re on your own – albeit with help and advice from the helpful people on the x0xb0x forums.

in the spring of 2009 Adafruit stopped sourcing x0xb0x kits, but fortunately a fellow named James Wilsey, an American living in Taiwan, started sourcing the kits from his site Willzyx Music. It is from Willzyx Music that I purchased my own kit, which at this point is still packaged in its box. Before constructing the kit I’ve been practicing my soldering skills on some much cheaper electronics kits. This is something I recommend for anyone new to soldering electronic circuitry who is looking to tackle assembling their own synthesizer… I’d much rather fry a cheap hobby kit than to destroy some of the rare parts that come with the x0xb0x kit!

a few x0xlinks:

• x0xl0g, subatomicglue’s blog chronicling the step-by-step construction of a x0xb0x kit
• a video comparing the sound of the x0xb0x compared to an original 303
• a Willzyx x0xb0x playing Stakker Humanoid. Members of Stakker later went on to become one of my favorite groups, The Future Sound of London. And by the way, the fellow who created this video has some great kit.

and, a couple of my favorite acid songs:

• The Trill Acid Theme by Hardfloor (with dancing North Korean kids)
• That’s The Way Love Is by Ten City (Steve “Silk” Hurley’s Acieed Mix)
• Jingle Bells by Mike Ink (one of the pioneers of acid music)
• Psyk by Plastikman (Richie Hawtin is a legend)
• Da Funk by Daft Punk (gritty, plus there’s that crazy dog guy)
• Humanoid by Stakker (the original video – better audio can be found in this one).

I’ll be moving overseas at the end of this month, and I’m bringing my x0xb0x kit and my soldering equipment with me. I’ll likely be posting some updates as I progress with the work.

for a time during college I was a DJ at a radio station in Waterloo, Ontario. Something we were advised to do from time to time during our sets, aside from play a certain percentage of Canadian-made music (referred to up north as CanCon, short for Canadian Content) was play a short recorded clip of our radio station ID that broadcasted our callsign in between or overtop of songs. I did as I was told and added these “drops” to my mixes, but I didn’t like to do it – I felt like I was there to spin music for people, not to advertise our radio station. The fact that the listeners were there and already listening made it seem to me to mean that they didn’t need constant reminders telling them what station they were tuned into!

I listen to a lot of techno mixes, mixtapes, trance music podcasts, etc, and I notice that there seem to be a lot of drops included in today’s mixes. Some of them are tastefully done; others are not. I like listening to DJ mixes by Ferry Corsten, for example, but I find his drops to be annoying – after you’ve listened to a few Corsten’s Countdown podcasts you come to recognize the highly repetitive drops, and they really seem to pull me away from the music. Not to mention they’re way cheesy.

I used to like listening to the mixes of Steve Helstrip, aka The Thrillseekers, and I gave some props to his podcasts on this site some time ago, here. Since then, however, Steve has taken to adding numerous “shout-outs” to his podcasts – poor quality recordings of people calling into an answering machine, saying stuff like, hi Steve, I’m from East London, your music rocks, this goes out to my girlfriend, and so on and so forth – to the point that I can’t listen to his mixes anymore. I’ll be listening to a great groove, and suddenly, poof – the mood is gone, and in its place is some answering machine message. I don’t see the appeal of it.

my recommendation is to do what Andy Moor does in his Moor Music podcasts – give a short drop at the beginning of the mix, a short drop at the end of the mix, and otherwise, let the music play. It makes for much better listening and replayability. A few short words put in here and there about what songs you’ve been playing and who they’re by, and maybe a bit about what you’ve been up to and where you’re going to be spinning live sets in the future isn’t so bad, but as a listener I prefer this sort of thing to be kept to a minimum. I’m there for the tunes, not the chatter.

maybe that’s just me – but I thought it was worth bringing up in a post!

a while back I was listening to the Area channel (now called Electric Area – personally I preferred the name Area) on SIRIUS|XM radio. A segment called the Yoshitoshi Show came on by a DJ named Sharam that I had never heard of… and I was pretty much blown away by how much this guy’s style matches with my own tastes in electronic music! Turns out I shouldn’t have been surprised, as Sharam is Sharam Tayebi, half of the DJ duo Deep Dish, and Deep Dish I was quite familiar with (though obviously not familiar enough to recognize the name Sharam when I first saw it), because they are awesome!

Sharam’s mixes are available for free online at SHARAM, his official website. They are all quite deep, featuring tunes with some excellent drum machine work and catchy vibes. Two of my favorites are Wildcast 23 and Wildcast 21. Wildcast 23 is the podcast I first heard in my car, and what an intro to Sharam’s mixes – some great progressive house tunes capped off by Chemical Brothers and Underworld! Meanwhile, Wildcast 21 features a mix of grooves by a variety of artists who, for the most part, I have never heard of, but together they form a great mix.

definitely worth a subscribe!

Futurists – FwL1 (September 5, 2010) (download here).

I mentioned a few posts back that after a few years of using Ableton Live 8 for PC, I’ve started to move toward using Logic Pro 9 on the Mac as my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of choice. This is not to say that I’m switching over – Ableton Live has tons of great features, is awesomely tailored toward performing live sets and DJ mixes, and has a great selection of sounds and audio samples in its own right. However, as I’m more interested in the sequencing and recording of electronic music, I think Logic will be more suited toward my tastes.

for fun and for education, my son (who is seven) and I have been going through the Apple Pro Training Series: Logic Pro 9 and Logic Express 9 textbook. It’s a book geared toward earning Apple’s Logic Pro 9 Level 1 certification, but more than that it seems to be the best resource out there to help you learn Logic Pro or Logic Express 9 – it’s jam-packed with tips, tricks and tutorials.

in the very first tutorial (yes, we haven’t gone very far yet) the guide takes you through creating your own trip hop song by using a selection of sampled loops. For fun, my son and I used the guide, but instead of the instruments (bass, electric guitar, drum loops, etc) that the book suggested we use, we found our own. And in fact, it wasn’t me who found them, but my son – I simply let him pick out whatever sounds he liked the most. After the first little bit of tutorial was done my son and I took over and got to work customizing the song, placing samples where we thought they sounded best, and so on. And in the end we had our own Logic tutorial-inspired trip hop song!

I think the tune turned out half-decent, especially considering just how random these samples we’re using were, and considering the majority of it was conceived by a seven-year old. There was really no rhyme or reason to the sounds we put together, but in the end the song turned out pretty neat. There’s not much I can do with it of course – after all it’s a song composed entirely of Logic Pro 9 sampled loops – there’s not a lick of my own sounds in there. But still, it’s pretty trippy (and hoppy) and might work well as background music for someone’s YouTube video – and it’s copyright free!

MFT- Ahhhh (soundlord remix) (July 20, 2001) (download here).

MFT- Ahhhh Mix (2001) (download here).

back in 2001 a friend of mine, Michael MacBride, had a one-man electronica band called MFT. He produced some pretty inspired songs in those days, and the two of us did a pretty good job of inspiring each other to create techno music in our free time (which, back then, we had quite a bit more of).

one of the things we did back in those days was remix each others songs; he created a remix of Mindwipe, long since lost… and I made a remix of his Ahhhh Mix, a 12 minute ambient tune featuring some chunky beats.

here I have included my remix (the top link – I went by the moniker soundlord back then), and below that, the original Ahhhh Mix. By listening to them both you can tell that the remix is not a whole lot like the original; it was fun remixing the song using my own style (which, even back in 2001, veered toward melodic trance), with sounds from my principal synth at the time, my E-mu E-Synth sampler and synthesizer.

an interesting piece of trivia is that this remix was created using Cubase VST on a Windows machine. Currently the songs I have been creating have been produced using Ableton Live 8 on a newer Windows machine; however, just Friday I received in the mail my new machine – an Apple Macbook Pro. I also received the latest version of Logic Studio in the mail, so I’m going to be experimenting with that. Cubase, then Ableton, then Logic – by the time I’m done I’ll have completed a pretty thorough tour of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software.

a while back I posted a link to some old skool house mixes from the late 80s. These were pretty good, but in reality they were a bit too soulful even for me – I’m not as into the vocal, soulful, almost gospel style of house music from those days – I personally prefer the more hardcore acid house that also surfaced during that time.

naturally I started looking around the web for some good mixes, and by searching for “acid house podcasts” I managed to find the page of DJ JuJu, a British DJ from South London (now living in Norfolk).

I’ve never heard of him myself, but this fellow has a pretty good grasp of the acid. His site has a series of free downloads of mixes ranging from acid to vocal to hip house, and I’ve linked to them below.

Classic House Part 1: Vocal house and garage from ’88 to ’90. Some big tunes in here (like Tribal House’s Motherland and Sweat by Jay Williams at the end of the mix), though as I have mentioned I wasn’t as big into the vocal house as I was the other stuff.

Classic House Part 2: More classic vocal house. Listen for Chanelle’s One Man and the Steve Hurley mix of Ten City’s That’s the Way Love Is.

Classic House Part 3: Deep classic house from ’88 to ’90. The instrumental version of ESP’s It’s You is one of my favorite house tracks of all time (and so much better than the vocal version), and Can U Dance by Kenny ‘Jammin’ Jason & Fast Eddie is guaranteed to bring it back.

Classic House Part 4: An awesome mix of acid house and Detroit techno, some of my favorite genres. Reese & Santonio’s The Sound is a true classic, (love that 808 drum line), plus there’s Ride the Rhythm’s This Ain’t Chicago for a killer acid line and the jammin’ Work It to the Bone by LNR.

Classic House Part 6 (there is no part 5): Some hip house classics. Yet another of my favorite genres of classic music! I recommend you skip the first part of the mix and start at minute 25:00. From there you’ve got the 1997 remake of Doug Lazy’s Let It Roll called Rollin’ On, the club mix of Mr. Lee’s Get Busy, Musto & Bones’ Dangerous on the Dance Floor, I’ll House You by the Jungle Brothers, Fast Eddie’s Yo Yo Get Funky and the white label Planet E. Seriously, this stuff is tremendous. If you don’t like this stuff you may in fact have no soul.

and this next mix isn’t a classic house mix, but…

JuJu 4 Hour Radio Show 19th April 2009: A mix of classic techno and rave music, for the most part. This is a massive four hour mix, containing three of my favorite classic techno tracks, Tronik House’s Up Tempo and Altern8′s Infiltrate 202 followed by Comin’ On Strong by Rhythm Section. If you want to listen to what I think is the sweet spot of this mix, start at about 2:25:00.

DJ JuJu has plenty of other mixes on his site (the last one uploaded on February 18th, 2010) so I recommend you visit his site and check it out! I’ll be heading back there on occasion to see if he’s put out any more compilations of some of my favorite classic tracks.

Deadmau5 is huge on the progressive house scene. There are plenty of songs and remixes out there that were either produced by Deadmau5 (and he has a bunch of them) or by someone trying to sound like him.

a while back Deadmau5 released Project 56, a series of 56 ideas, melodies, clips and grooves that he originally created as a compilation project for people with short attention spans. In the end he decided to stick the whole series online so that people could download them for free and to, as he indicates, “exploit these tracks in any way your evil heart desires”. His only request is that if you do use them in a production, give him some credit for doing so.

so… why not! 56 clips of interesting ideas by one of the biggest names in the business, available for free download. Is at least worth checking out.

last year I posted something about how I first got into electronic music; one of the songs I mentioned was this one, Information Society’s Running (Instrumental Version). I thought I’d elaborate on that post here, simply because I feel Information Society’s instrumental version of Running was a truly groundbreaking song. I still remember hearing this song in Toronto during the 80s and being quite blown away by it – there was nothing much like it at the time. I also remember subsequently hearing the “true” version of the song (with lyrics) and being horribly underwhelmed. To my young mind, the magic of the song was lost once they started singing overtop of it.

I’m wondering if Information Society (or someone else) were to make a version of this today, how well it would perform in the clubs. It would need a better drum kit – a deeper kick, some better compression, and some cymbal sweeps – and a more thorough bass sound, but with a little work I think this song could bring people to the floor in clubs today. Heck, it probably could right now, as it stands.

this may of course be one of those cases that my own sentimental value of this song outweighs its true value – I’d appreciate any feedback on that! And speaking of nostalgia… what the heck is with the clothes Information Society is wearing on their album cover? If we bring back classic dance tunes from the 80s, let’s not bring that part back as well…