Posts in Music

[audioplayer post=30846]

Do you all remember Tom Croose? he just posted a beautiful remix up on his Soundcloud that I must have missed.

I found this Severed Heads cut on Resident Advisors Top Mixes of 2012. Its one of those perfect synth pop unearthed gems.

I put together a certain style of tech house for my DJ sets, so i’m careful with my selection because I want their to be that synth heavy end, bright driving rhythms and not a big build because i’m more into a break that bleeds into the “drop”, its more entrancing for the crowd. In this Falko track there’s the perfect example of that plus it has that unique drive to it that pushes it forward and not soo much upward.

Atmosphere is very overused in describing music but Function does a great job here, sound like there’s air added, everything vibrates in a cold bright space, takes me back to some early Detroit mornings.

Loscil – “Coyote”
Sketches from New Brighton (Kranky)

Clams Casino – “Leaf”
Instrumental 2 (Self Released)

Onuinu – “Happy Home”
Mirror Gazer (Bladen County Records)

Black Marble – “A Great Design”
A Different Arrangement (Hardly Art)

Silent Servant – “Temptation & Desire”
Negative Fascination (Hospital Productions)

To round up the album portion of the best of 2012 I wanted to add honorable mentions in no particular order. These artists didn’t just build around a single, they had quality albums for listening and kept true to the art.

January is already gearing up to be a huge release month, Ducktails has moved onto Domino Recordings, Toro Y Moi is still on Carpark and A$AP Rocky debuts on a major. Probably one of the most exciting January’s for releases in years for indie.

Also, I attached a rework I did of Slowdive. Happy New Year!

In other news Jay-Z is scoring the Great Gatsby, all the baby boomers are probably thinking… “well when I die, I won’t miss the earth as much as I thought I would.”

10. Actress – R.I.P. (Honest Jon’s Records)

9. CFCF – Exercises (Paper Bag Records)

8. Holy Other – Held (Tri Angle)

Hear the rest after the break (more…)

The guys over at Dream Chimney are the guys that you imagine when you think of a group that has the vinyl collection people only dream about. So who better to go to for a mix when everyone else is making mix? these gentleman.

via

Shigeto recently returned the favor of a remix swap that Sun Glitters did from him for Lineage. The turn out is a housey feel good early night jam.

Always dreamy not matter if he’s sonically speedy through a song or touching down in the airy end, a great one from Lone.

This probably the least dark Grouper song we’ve heard in a while, still hazy still true to her sound.

Melody’s Echo Chamber is honestly the closest thing we’ll have to Stereolab and Broadcast, this should be up there with Tame Impala for great psychedelia in 2012.

Artwork by Jonathan Marsh + B3PO

I recently travelled back to Santiago, Chile (where I grew up) for one of my best friends wedding, and while there I was amazed by how many good local bands I was exposed to and how good of a music scene that city has.

Amongst them was Zebra, a dream-wave trio formed by DJ/Producer Sebastian Roman (Roman/MKRNI),  Miguel Irarrazaval (Treboles) and Enrique Escala (Treboles), who with their first EP “AD Portas I” caught the attention of Picnic Kubun’s label Endemika Records. I was instantly blown away by the level of sophistication in their arrangements and catchy hooks, not to mention how virtuosos they are in regards to live instrumentation, so when they asked me to design an album cover for their upcoming release, I was honored (I’m also working on an official music video…more on that later).

Today, Zebra unveiled the title track of that release, which carries the name of “Summer Love” and is set to drop early March, 2013.

Toro Y Moi’s album drops next year and he’s been dropping singles and remixes as small tasters. Also, another artist that will have a big year is Ducktails, above is a preview of the live show for 2013. Monoton has a 12″ reissue and debuted his first ever NYC show last week and Peaking Lights go dub and weird and its pretty perfect.

One last mix for the year, this one is for Montreal boutique SSENSE, I tried to go a bit moody yet still build to some sort of drive. The mix contains a track from one of my favorites from Circlesquare and this years Shed LP, hope you enjoy.

POLISH-BORN BROOKLYN-BASED PRODUCER JAKUB ALEXANDER, BETTER KNOWN BY HIS STAGE NAME, HEATHERED PEARLS’ AMBIENT MIX OF PROGRESSIVE, STEADY RHYTHMS AND HYPNOTIC BASSLINES OPENS WITH A SYNTH-DRIVEN OFFERING FROM THE HYPERDUB-SIGNED NEW WAVE PROJECT, DARKSTAR, BEFORE ARTICULATING SMOOTHER SOUNDSCAPES, KICKLESS BEATS AND ETHEREAL VOCALS FROM THE LIKES OF CIRCLESQUARE, TROPIC OF CANCER AND PLANETARY ASSAULT SYSTEMS. SWEDISH PRODUCER MOKIRA’S EXPERIMENTAL SINGLE, TIME TRACK REMIXED BY SILENT SERVANT FILTERS IN A CONTEMPORARY TAKE ON AMBIENT ELECTRONIC FILLED WITH HAZY STATIC FOLLOWED BY TRACKS FROM FELLOW GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL-SIGNED DUO LUSINE + WINGO.

via SSENSE

My old buddy Nick Felton spends a lot of time tracking his every move. After years of hanging with him knowing at the end of the year my stats would also in some way be immortalized in that years annual report, I decided to make use of one of the tools he created to track all that data: Daytum. It might be old news now, considering he’s moved on from Daytum, but it’s taken a while for the type of data I’ve been tracking to reveal something, hence the late-to-the party post.

I started obsessively keeping track of all of my music purchases via Daytum mostly just to keep tabs on myself – to make sure I was in fact supporting artists like I claimed I was.

But most telling to me is how the formats break down. Having moved a few times recently with a pretty hefty record collection – and a slow shift to “digital djing” (cue the purists), my buying habits have have clearly shifted towards downloads.

It may be a hold over from the vinyl and cd days, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t commit to the Rdio’s and the Spotify’s out there. I need to have the thing, be it physical or digital. I need to know it’s with me here, preferably in lossless format, taking up space somewhere – even if it’s just bits on an external hard drive. Loads of them.

I’m excited to see the label roster over at Drip.fm grow – it’s the perfect subscription based, lossless downloads model in my opinion.