Archive for March, 2013

Soo many beautiful announcements happened for Jacob and Thomas from Beacon, first off they just announced the preorder of their debut LP along with a sugar based sculpted record holder limited to only 20 pieces. Before that they shared a new mix and some spring tour dates, all of it is here in one place along with the process video of the making of the art edition record frame.

About the artist:

Fernando Mastrangelo has exhibited nationally and internationally for the last decade. Mastrangelo uses materials such as sugar, coffee, corn, gunpowder, human cremated ash, and other more controversial substances. He often addresses social, cultural, and political issues with unconventional timely works. His works are included in numerous private collections around the world, as well as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where you can currently see his 2008 sculpture “Avarice,” a rendition of the Aztec calendar cast entirely from White Mexican Corn.

Order Art edition (ltd to 20)
Pre-release Vinyl/CD

Deluxe Art Edition Details:
Edition of 20 + 3 APs
Includes signed and numbered certificate
Dimensions: 13″ x 13″ x 2″
Weight: 10 lbs
Materials: Sugar, Epoxy
Limited dusty rose vinyl + download card included

Lukid – Snow Theme
Tornado Wallace – Always Twirling
Bambounou – Challenger
Tiger & Woods – T&W Lab File #07
Unknown Artist – What You Need (Coat of Arms Remix)
Marcus Mixx – Special Creme (Rub It Mixx)
S.K.A.M. – Outside The Box (Homework Perspective)
Shams – Wasted

Many have already bought it but I felt like it was still necessary to stream the Bonobo LP, I’d love YOUR thoughts on this one.

UK producer Simon Green, who works under the moniker of Bonobo, is an artist tailor-made for KCRW. He is a master of downtempo, silky-smooth trip-hop, a sound that the station has savored for decades. He’s a bassist who knows the value of a solidly built spine to drape his smart electronic touches upon. And he’s a savvy judge of talent, having recently helped singer/songwriter Andreya Triana with her debut album and featuring her on his own records.

With The North Borders, his 5th full-length album, Bonobo demonstrates all of these skills in one nicely rewarding package. Effortlessly groovy, but just as much elegant and sweeping, the album features a series of talented vocal guests, including the incomparable Erykah Badu on one of the album’s highlights, “Heaven for the Sinner,” as well as some fairly recent UK newcomers Grey Reverend & Szjerdene, not to forget hotly-tipped Swedish songstress Cornelia. It’s a seductive package that has already been a Top 10 charting record, proving that over ten years since his debut Green still hasn’t lost his touch.

Track List
1. First Fires (Featuring Grey Reverend)
2. Emkay
3. Cirrus
4. Heaven For The Sinner (Featuring Erykah Badu)
5. Sapphire
6. Jets
7. Towers (Featuring Szjerdene)
8. Don’t Wait
9. Know You
10. Antenna
11. Ten Tigers
12. Transits (Featuring Szjerdene)
13. Pieces

via KCRW

Mount Kimbie has always made an effort to make weird attractive to the ear, with their new single Made To Stray off their upcoming LP. They invert the pop angle by slow pairing odd hisses and filters in the intro to getting to the soft hooky vocal at the end.

Cascine have done a great job finding remixers for their artists and this one for Wildarms’ Clear Eyes EP is no exception. Octo Octa carries out a intricate and warm dub rework that hints at the sounds that made labels like Dial what they are today.

There was only 75 made copies of this vinyl and I had 2 in my shopping cart, i’m talking about this new single from The Juan MacLean, for some reason I didn’t press buy quick enough and waited too long, still kicking myself for that one.

The smooth and catchy beauty is coming back to Kompakt and I couldn’t be happier, they led the way of making techno attractive back in the day, so glad Coma is getting the love they deserve for this new single.

Found myself swooning over this guy’s work – a combination of photography, acrylic, and eight-bit amazingness. From his site:

Dealing with themes of memory and change, Thornton uses family photos, pop culture, world events, and outdated media to illustrate the modern relevance of these past objects and events. In acrylic paintings, pigment transfers, and marker drawings, the use of erasure and fragmentation represent memory’s imperfections.

Check out his portfolio site, or follow his ever flowing photostream on Flickr.

The Los Angeles Times recently revisited their ‘L.A. 2013’ cover story from April 3, 1988 by making a PDF of the story available for download.

One of the ‘futurists and experts’ they spoke to for the story was the legendary Syd Mead, whose drawings accompanied the piece.

Lots of bold predictions of course, like your usual 200 story ‘mega rises’ and a sports utility vehicle that can adapt from a 2 seat sports car into a beach buggy via a ‘plug-in module.’

But the one that stuck with me gets dropped right in the first paragraph: “about a third of the residents have already headed out to their jobs, as required by Los Angeles County’s mandatory staggered work plan.”

YES PLEASE.

As an LA resident who had a horrible run-in with the 405 yesterday, I’m all for it. Make it so.

Side note: Tesla’s Elon Musk suggests we double deck the 405… thoughts?

Tomorrow night 1015 Folsom/DJ Dials Present GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASE

FRIDAY MARCH 22nd, 2013
10P-3A
21+ ONLY

COM TRUISE
ADULT.
SHIGETO
MUX MOOL
DAUWD (DJ Set)
HEATHERED PEARLS (DJ Set)

Come say hello, i’ll probably be DJing early and you know the rest of the roster is worth it. I’ll try to be giving out some of the new Ghostly stickers on this beautiful half satin matte finish. Sadly I don’t think Scott will be able to make it, maybe he’ll drop in, here’s hoping.

TICKETS HERE

I’m late to the Octo Octa game, i’ve been digging up what I can find and this gem has my ear, I like that its pretty true to the originators of this sound.

Marius Vareid never fails to nail that dreamy end of daytime disco, sometimes it steps out from the dancefloor reaches to rejuvenating some untouched 80’s sound.

Some people might hear Cocteau Twins instrumentally to compare No Joy but its too rushed and the drums definitely are recorded differently, its hard to love someone trying to make this sound because the influencers wrote too personal of songs. Either way its still worth hearing and hoping for some commitments to this sound from the band and it not just being fashionably a good choice to make this music.

Rustie might be beyond anything that I can appreciate by now, I really loved him but now its getting too Euro ringtone for me meets a Japanese Sega game theme song that never reached the States in 1995.

I wish wobbly wasn’t ruined by Dubstep as an adjective to describe something in music. This Essay track has some solid relisten potential, also like a Com Truise track striped down and in a higher octave.

What great beginnings for the new Mister Saturday Night label, the clips for their new signing Dark Sky have really stuck with me definitely picking this one up, tracks 1 and 4 are favorites.

Some New Age dark vibes coming from Xander Harris, soo happy this music is getting bigger, its a genre thats really explores soft synths and i’m hoping that actually gets some of these guys out of their bedrooms and booked in venues for shows.

Sort of an older one from Tomas Barfod but it popped up and I had to share it, it could have been a dancefloor dub with one more edit but it might have too much downtime, still in love.

Scott’s PAST IS PROLOGUE poster gets some good real estate within this Vitsoe system featured on the Things Organized Neatly blog.

Scott and I did a mix for Herschel Supply’s Selected Sounds series. The tracks came together pretty naturally, some of our favorite artists to just tracks that help slow you down and enjoy the some tunes. Also, I did a short interview answer on how I find all the music I post on the blog here.

TRACKLIST

Seahawks – Crystal Beach
Toro Y Moi – Rose Quartz
Session Victim – Dark Sienna
The Holydrug Couple – Paisley
Onra & Quetzal – C’est Pour Toi
Eliot Lipp – The Rabbit
Nitemoves – Veaquis
High Places – Papaya Year
Youth Lagoon – Dropla
Ame – Erkki (Hannes Bieger remix)
Ashra – Midnight On Mars
Bullion – Synth Grub

via Herschel Supply