Posts by Jakub

DOWNLOAD THE EP HERE FOR FREE

A handful of talented musicians were kind enough to do a last minute holiday cover song for all of us. Beautiful Bells might have won my heart over with probably the best experimental beat holiday song ever made. While Sun Hammer and Direwires duel it out over Silent Night, both takes will hold your patient ears with warming results. Toronto’s Warren Hildebrand aka Foxes In Fiction does an impeccable job of covering John Lennon and label mate Weed takes on the ever popular All I Want For Christmas and roughs it up perfectly with his notable garage sound. Last but not least the duo The Depot-Tones:

“Attached is a cleaned up, restored version of The Depot-Tones covering “Wonderful Christmas Time”. This was from a 7″ culled from the 45 dollar bin from Cousins Records during a recent digging expedition. The true identity of the Depot-Tones is shrouded in question, and every answer leads to five more questions. The best I’ve been able to figure out is the lead singer lived near Prospect Park and the rest of the band were all employees of the Chick-Inn drive in. This was a holiday promotional item sponsored by the Ypsilanti Chamber of Commerce and given away to customers. This is indeed excellence aged in cuban rum and virgin oak barrels and bottled in containers of crystal.”

I’ve been finding myself watching more fan made videos than the actual official videos I guess because I love all the found footage. Don’t get me wrong there are some quality directed videos out there but I just seemed to love both equally as much right now. Back in 2008 I shared my Top 5 favorite videos, the ones below i’ve recently enjoyed.

Stellar Om Source

Active Child

Memoryhouse

Small Sails

The Avalanches

NPR featured We’ll Never Stop Living This Way: A Ghostly Primer, you can listen to all these songs before the release on their site in 3 parts, it includes plenty of exclusives and some of the hit singles by the main crew of artists that have released on the label.

Tracklisting below:
1 GOLD PANDA – Peaky Caps
2 SHIGETO – Eternal Life
3 OUTPUTMESSAGE – Bernard’s Song
4 MATTHEW DEAR – Fleece On Brain
5 DABRYE – Jorgy (feat. Waajeed)
6 MOBIUS BAND – Multiply
7 TYCHO – Coastal Brake
8 DANIEL WANG – Berlin Sunrise (Diskjokke Version) [Unreleased]
9 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS – Half Asleep (Lusine Remix)
10 AEROC – My Love, The Wave Break
11 LAWRENCE – Five Leaves
12 CHOIR OF YOUNG BELIEVERS – Hollow Talk
13 TADD MULLINIX – Exchanging Modes
14 THE SIGHT BELOW – No Place For Us
15 LOSCIL – Union Dusk
16 BENOIT PIOULARD – Little A Strongly More Go I
17 PALE SKETCHER – Dummy (Bahnhoff Version)
18 CEPIA – Tape
19 MIDWEST PRODUCT – Clarity
20 OSBORNE – Outta Sight (Luke Vibert Remix)
21 LUSINE – Double Vision
22 SOLVENT – Loss For Words (Solvent’s CompuRhythm Mix)
23 JDSY – Horizon Line
24 DEASTRO – Tone Adventure #3
25 MICHNA – Redline Flights
26 THE REFLECTING SKIN – Traffickers
27 MUX MOOL – Crackers
28 KILN – Flycatcher
29 KATE SIMKO – The Creative Part
30 COM TRUISE – Cyanide Sisters [Unreleased]

Excuse this dark tone period i’ve been highly enjoying, it definitely has something to do with the winter and also wanting to listening to more than just drone, diggin deep for colorful and moody material. One of the less ambient pieces on this new A Setting Sun EP is this remix by Dial81, if you like it download it for free.

I fully support anything by Rafael Anton Irisarri but this one is an absolute gem, he needs to be scoring film on the highest level, he can grab sounds and articulate an emotion so well.

I don’t usually stream music like Swans on ISO50 but I can’t hold back on this one, too much passion behind their own sound, I can only share and sit back and be blown away.

The Soft Moon video for “Circles” premiered today, check it out:

Man, we haven’t had a good 70’s interior architecture photo in a while, had to let this one fly. Any info on the place or chair?

I was actually saving this song by Rainer Trueby as a secret weapon for a mix but it just needs to be out there, pure heat, one of the best deep house tracks I know about.

White Sea is the girl from M83, great producer that Benjamin Curtis turned me onto. I love the epic release of the backing vox(the ho’s and hums) they go off like bells.

One of the best video game commercial licensings of a song has to be this UNKLE usage for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, i’m not really into the song a ton but in the tv commercial its used almost as good as the Gears of War 2 usage of Devotchka. I know not a usual pick.

Some J Dilla for you.

I can’t find the right words for this stunning song by Kangding Ray, I haven’t been this excited about a singers voice in a song since I heard The Rip by Portishead. She comes in perfectly after 2/3rd’s of the song is done and she does minimal amounts but its an awesome marriage when it comes together, so subtle and you get off easy with only a slim 4 minutes.

This is one of the many reasons why Mark McGuire was on my Top 10 albums of 2010 twice.

Madlib drops off a remix for one of the best producers to live: J Dilla

David Lynch talking to The Guardian UK about his debut music release.

I’m a big fan of Alan Braxe when he does something right, he took this Pacifc! remix and set the pace perfectly in an epic way.

An OLD Kruder & Dorfmeister edit of Depeche Mode, classic downtempo.

Found this compilation that Mokira was on, I think the whole idea behind it was songs sampling birds, super lush and gentle, I recommend the track by Tape too.

If you work in music then should always peek in and see what Rastor Noton is doing right, they have been classy since the beginning, makes you feel like you running everything in your life like a lemonade stand, check out this sleek piece by Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto.

I found this series by Rob from The Queen City Studio pretty impressive, its an ode to his hometown of Buffalo, NY, I think a project like this is perfect for a graphic designer that needs a subject to show off his ideas and skills.

In the early 2000s I was pretty much a downtempo DJ full time playing Wine Bars, Salons, etc weekly, doing my best to warm people up to electronic music beyond the general stuff like Thievery Corporation, Atjazz, Gotan Project and Kruder & Dorfmeister, that stuff was good but forgettable and wasn’t helping the electronic world grow. I liked the challenge of playing to a diverse older crowd that you knew if you played Boards Of Canada it would be too experimental and odd, if it was glitchy or 4/4 it would be no good and they wouldn’t get it, it if was ambient people would complain about falling asleep. Playing something like The Smiths, Air, or stuff like Nike Drake would just be too easy, hell you might as well just stream chill online radio. I did my best playing a lot of stuff that sounded like Yoshinori Sunahara, I can’t explain the sound that was happening at the time that sounded like this, it was the soundtrack to my early short lived graphic design career attempt. The backbone was Broker/Dealer and other stuff on Traumschallplatten and if you dug more into it this whole world opened up that sounded like 50s Scandinavian design meets instructoart in slow motion, thats how the Moodgadget logo was born actually, this Yoshinori Sunahara track takes my imagination back when Royksopp was good and helped me creatively make flyers, logos, etc. man I miss those days.

Moving right along to finding attraction in some darkness, this Holy Other song has me in vice grip, I can’t let go, the goth tone sits perfectly with me, I can only imagine scenes of pure despair but shot beautifully. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Keep Shelly in Athens has had my ear all year long, this is the first remix i’ve heard by them and i’m really impressed by the clarity and drive. For some reason people are rocking saxophones right now and i’m not complaining…………yet.

I think this Christopher Rau represents all of what house and techno should sound like in the winter time. If you only listen to house and its daytime and your just comfortable in your apartment then this what i’ve prefer to hear.

Who am I to say: “Hey, these are the best albums of 2010” or “yo buddy, listen to me, best records right here, check it out” I don’t even play a damn instrument, so I just can’t do that this year(check out my snobby 2008 or 2009 lists though). My final year end list is full of artists and friends that I work with and signed so I had to switch it up a bit here and include musicians that aren’t really in the ISO50/Moodgadget/Ghostly International bubble…yet.

I put together this list of albums that makes me feel good about digging for music everyday, its a job that ISO50 and Ghostly International let me do and i’m very grateful. These albums simply make me as happy as can be, sure there are going to be critics that fill their lists out with artists that sell out arenas but thats not the point here, this list is purely for a unique listening session. I numbered them as a fun activity for myself to do while I sat at a coffee shop making the small banners, I think the order came out pretty well and it hasn’t changed since I sat down and made it last week which is a relief.

I want to thank WordPress for making this playlist way easier to make then I thought it would be but it wouldn’t let me put it in the order I wanted it in *curses the sky*. I linked all the music to purchase, I know I hardly ever do that on the day to day because I find half the fun in hearing new music is the hunt for more of it. Look for my favorite 50 songs of 2010, hopefully i’ll be able to post those early December.

Four Tet – There Is Love In You (Domino)

Mark McGuire – Living With Yourself (Editions Mego)

Salem – King Night (IAMSOUND)

Toro Y Moi – Causers Of This (Carpark)

Loscil – Endless Falls (Kranky)

Caribou – Swim (Merge)

Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here? (Editions Mego)

The Soft Moon – The Soft Moon (Captured Tracks)

Tame Impala – Innerspeaker (Modular)

Com Truise – Cyanide Sisters (Self Released)

Honorable Mention:
Bvdub – The Art Of Dying Alone (Glacial Movements)

Forgotten 2009 albums that I listened to in the most 2010:

The Mary Onettes – Islands (Labrador)
Ducktails – Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)