Posts in Music

I haven’t done a mix since 2005’s Pink Rest At Low Levels which you can download here, its an ambient/IDM mix of my favorite music I’d listened to when I would fool around in Adobe Illustrator. This new mix called Goodnight Gracie is kind of an ode to a weekly I did for 3+ years with Matthew Dear, Ryan Elliott, and Scott Brandon at a lounge called Goodnight Gracie in Ann Arbor. Ryan Elliott and Matthew Dear now are big international DJ’s and Scott and I took the night over once they started touring. Ryan would let me open nearly every night and play ambient and deep melodic house before they went on so I could hear Broker/Dealer on decent speakers, I hope you can at least enjoy the end.

Markus Guentner – Untitled 3 – In Moll – Kompakt (2001)
Audion – I Am The Car – Unreleased – Spectral Sound (2009)
UND – Ambivalente – Maxfield – Defrag Sound Processing (2005)
Pleite – Pleite – Pleite – Trapez (2003)
The Librarian – The Hornet’s Nest (Teef Antihisatmine rmx) – ModeTwo – Moodgadget (2009)
Sten – Way To The Stars – The Essence – Dial (2008)
Omar S. – Oasis #1 – Oasis EP – FXHE (2005)
Pepe Bradock – Deep Burnt – Burning – Kif Recordings (1999)
Cobblestone Jazz – 5th Element – 5th Element EP – Itiswhatitis Recordings (2002)
Daso & Pawas – Det (Schatrax Beats Plus rmx) – Det – Spectral Sound (2008)
Pigon – Promises – Promises – Dial (2007)
Lusine – Excess – Push EP – Ghostly International (2003)
Slowdive – Good Day Sunshine – Souvlaki – SBK (1994)
M83 – I Guess I’m Floating – Before The Dawn Heals Us – Gooom (2005)

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Aarnio – Goodnight Gracie Mix

Prefuse 73 patches together a very strong 30 track LP called Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, The artwork looks like it was thought out nicely and so was the record. Mr. Herren has reached a great level in music making which is instead of selling out and going the Steve Aoki celebrity DJ route and writing ringtone rap like some other fading stars that i follow on twitter. Herren sounds like he got to a point where he could really push his sound past glitch hop and more into sampling live instruments in the studio which should be every musicians dream but it isn’t anymore. Now he probably will get to work with great musicians and if anything I hope to hear some more collaborations with him and other New York bands.

New Doom is finally out in stores, it features this amazing Raekwon track and he also MC’s over J Dilla’s Lightworks!

Sex Trothler better known under the name Seth Troxler releases again on another Brooklyn based label called Wolf+Lamb Music. The sound reminds of straight early to mid 90s Detroit Techno that was minimalist, melodic, raw, and forward thinking. The vocal is a definite plus, it sounds like a proud diva, something many other younger producers would never of had the courage to touch.

Prefuse 73 – Fingertip Trajectories

Prefuse 73 – Hairy Faces (Stress)

MF Doom – Yessir! feat Raekwon

Sex Trothler – Aphrika

Denmark not only has one of the best looking national flags but they also have one of the best looking and sounding bands called Choir of Young Believers and this group last night at Pianos gave me goosebumps 5 times. The couple remind me of if Band of Horses wrote more gentle songs that were less southern and more Scandinavian. If you live in New York come to The Delancey tonight, they’ll be playing there and the grand opening of a new bar in Brooklyn that is owned by the people that own the Cake Shop called Bruar Falls this Friday.

The new Clark record is out on Warp this month, I grabbed the ambient track to share with you all, i’m really loving how that color scheme worked out for that album cover.

I rave about this Studio band a ton here and posted about how D. Lissvik who is half of Studio did a solo album awhile back and now he is remixing and he did an amazing one for Fever Ray who is half of The Knife who is everywhere from in Nylon to the front page of Pitchfork recently. The remix is perfect Caribbean sounding slow disco and the vox fits perfectly, you can grab it up on XLR8R right now for free.

Choir of Young Believers – Why Must It Always Be This Way

Clark – Farewell Mining Town

Fever Ray – When I Grow Up (Version by Lissvik)

Kelpe might have made of my favorite 1+ minute intros to a song with the beginning of Cut It Upwards. It has hints of Four Tet and early Manitoba(aka Caribou) to the point that I think he was almost trying to replicate their sound, either way the track came out great with quality samples.

Tom Croose comes out with his first remix of one of his own songs as Worst Friends, the song will be out today on an EP with additional remixes by Shigeto and Bostro Pasopeo. Tom will be djing in San Francisco this Tuesday, you should definitely swing by and say hello if you’re in the area.

I’m sure Der Zyklus gets plenty of comparisons to Kraftwerk, I swear i’ve heard this with an Erlend Oye acapella over it years ago but I could be dreaming that up. Such a gentle track, if Tron ever made a snow globe as a promo item this song should be the midi song that plays while neon and black glitter swirled around.

Fred Falke doesn’t do many remixes that aren’t nearly perfect for playing out on the weekend, this remix for Hot Chip could be one of the best remixes they will ever get.

Kelpe – Cut It Upwards

Worst Friends – AG (Tom Croose Innerspace Ski Boot Mix)

Der Zyklus – Mathematische modelle

Hot Chip – Colours (Remixed By Fred Falke)

You may see Alex/HeadUp once in a while commenting on the blog, he put together a wonderful ambient mix from various albums from the Moodgadget catalog. His Quiet Storm like narration complements the ambient electronic like a missing NPR show, it’s definitely a nice collection of songs to play in the background while you work or sleep, hope you enjoy it.

1 Entsounds – The Winding Sun (Arc Edit) – Growth EP
2 Praveen – Tour Around This House – Expanse At Low Levels
3 Shigeto – May – New Crossings
4 Calmer – Open Source – Past Is Present
5 A Setting Sun – Views From The Real World – No New Enemies Vol. 1
6 Viul – Wound Cotton Wound (Exerpt) – Summer’s Wet Work is Done
7 Tstewart – What’s This Color? – No New Enemies Vol. 1
8 A Setting Sun & Shigeto – Polaroid Romance – Table For Two
9 Kyle Bobby Dunn – Mobiles (There is No End) (Exerpt) – Fervency
10 Tokyo Bloodworm – Found Memories of Nature – The Rorschach Suite
11 Entsounds – Dormancy – The Growth EP

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Moodcast – Ambient Edition

A new Grizzly Bear track was leaked this week for their upcoming LP that is dropping in May, its no Deep Sea Diver or On a Neck, On a Spit but what is.

Bola – Glink could be one of the most impressive builds into pure enjoyment of IDM that hasn’t been used in a film, at 2:53 I dare anyone try to write anything higher quality sounding.

Grabbed this Tom Tyler track from a Idjut Boys mix that i’ll be posting more from, sounds to me like if Beck was commissioned to work on a track with Air in 2001-2002.

What is there not to say about Panda Bear’s Person Pitch LP? the style of song writing on this record couldn’t be more interesting to me. I still don’t get how he got to this sound, seems like experimenting with effect pedals we’re a big part of the creation.

Grizzly Bear – Cheerleader

Bola – Glink

Tom Tyler – Daylight Robbed Her

Panda Bear – I’m Not

In the world of audio engineering, the name Neve has become almost mythical. Rupert Neve was responsible for a very popular EQ and preamp circuit design that helped produce many a hit record over the years. I personally love the Neve sound and record everything through a set of four Neve clones. While clones are great and can approach the sound of the original, they’re still not truly a Neve. So to see an actual Neve Sidecar show up on Ebay was a surprise. Just seeing pictures of these is pretty intense, I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually use one. To me, the color and design inspire a sort of reverence, kind of like the Futura of the sound engineering world; classic, refined, and functional. At any rate, a $40k mixer is just a dream…but what a nice looking dream.

Our favorite Scandinavian pop star Erlend Oye is back with his band The Whitest Boy Alive, by the sound of it after skipping thru some of the songs on the LP I feel like we got a intimate recording of the band in the studio, each instrument is upfront in big bold letters. I’m really loving the key work on the whole LP, gonna take a walk and check out the whole thing now.

Mux Mool’s new EP dropped today exclusively on iTunes, you may know him from the Ghostly Swim compilation or the intro song for the engadget podcast called gdgt run by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. The synth bass in this song is as warm as butter and the melody sounds like its straight from a soundtrack for an ending of a 80’s tropical action film, too good to miss.

Digged up an old Casino Versus Japan 10″ that was released on Wobblyhead years back, made me really miss Erik’s work. If your reading this Erik email me i’ll put out your album! damn you’re good at melody my friend.

MF Doom hrrrmm I mean Doom just never fails me, the instrumental here just guns down any imitators, the intro horns remind me of a fuzzy memory of watching an A-Team & Airwolf marathon on the USA Network in 1989.

The Whitest Boy Alive – 1517

Mux Mool – Teal Trim

Casino Versus Japan – Via Rouge

MF Doom – Kon Queso

Our very own Alex Cornell designed this poster for the live 2 hour solo acoustic set he’ll be playing this Thursday at the California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Be there! His set is part of the Nightlife series featuring a lecture by WIRED magazine.

Edit: Unfortunately, it looks like it’s sold out.

Edit #2: Apparently there are tickets to be had at the door. Just make sure to show up a bit early…

Track Listing:
School Of Seven Bells – Half Asleep
Gang Gang Dance – Egowar
Mahogany – One Plus One Equals Three Or M
Empire Of The Sun – Walking On A Dream
The Whitest Boy Alive vs Mylo vs Cut Copy – Otto’s Golden Journey (Andy Webb’s Dreamy Blend)
Phoenix – 1901
Air France – No Excuses
College – The Energy Story
Christ. – Cordate
Flying Lotus – Auntie’s lock/Infinitum (featuring Laura Darlington)
Flying Lotus – Roberta Flack (Mike Slott’s Other Mix)
The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Cornelius Remix)
Super Furry Animals – Some Things Come from Nothing
Engineers – Let’s Just See
Sigur Rós – Gobbledigook
French Kicks – Abandon
Blind Man’s Colour – Brother Sport (Animal Collective Cover)
Beirut – The Concubine
The Kooks – Kids (MGMT Cover)
Benoit Pioulard – Ash in the Sky
Bibio – Bewley In Grey
Daedelus – Experience

Unless you’re an RSS subscriber (if you are, click here to view player), you’ve probably noticed the new audio player at the top of the page. I’ve been wanting to add a flash based player for a long time because while the small single track player we have been using (and will continue to use) for music posts is good, it’s not something you can just turn on and let it play while you work. This new player is based on the JW Player framework and supports XML playlists and all the good stuff. It was a total pain to develop though, the documentation was a little thin in the skinning department so it’s been a very protracted process to say the least. I ironed out the last kinks over the past week so here it is…finally: the ISO50 Playlist. We’ll be refreshing the playlist often, usually with 16 or so song mixes probably every couple weeks or so.

The initial mix I put in tonight is just a collection of some of my favorites from the blog over the past year or so, nothing too specific or themed. Every song in the player (now and in the future) will be songs that we’ve previously posted on, so if you’re looking for more information on the song or artist just type it in the search box below (also new…well the design at least) and the relevant post(s) should come up. This is definitely a beta so give me the heads up in the comments if you run into any issues with the player as only a few people have tested it so far. On a related note, I’ve added a “featured posts” column in the hopes that it will make older posts a little more discoverable. I’ll also be adding a “featured categories” section next week as well in which I’ll try to compile some nice groupings of related articles on various subjects. As the blog gets on in years and the posts pile up, most of these additions are aimed squarely at highlighting older content, music and otherwise.

All of these changes and additions may get you thinking about the redesign I had discussed a while back. I haven’t given up on that plan, but it’s definitely taken a back seat as the process of finishing up my next album has sort of consumed me. I decided to make some incremental upgrades (like those mentioned above) using the current theme and then treat the redesign as it’s own phase a little later. Still contemplating that light background…

At any rate, the Playlist is here and I hope you enjoy! As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.