Blissed out balearic dubstep? That's a new one in the world of ridiculous crossover sub-genres. But it's arrived, in the form of a remix from Deadmau5' (pronounced Deadmouse, pictured above) forthcoming EP. I Remember, in it's original format, is a cheesy commercial electro-house track with a breathy female vocal, sounds like it's from 2001 and is destined to appear on 'Best Summer Dance Anthems' compilations until the end of time.
However, throw Caspa into the mix and the track becomes an altogether different proposal. Retaining the summery feel, melodic backing and an acceptable snippet of the vocal, Caspa then chucks in some restrained dubstep beats and a whole load of warped bass in his traditional style. It's still very poppy, but will win over discerning dance music listeners as well as those just starting to get their heads around dubstep as a genre. What with the Skream remix of La Roux's In For The Kill getting several daytime plays on Radio 1 it seems we could be on the cusp of dubstep's explosion into the mainstream. And like it or not it's remixes like this that will lead the way.
When it comes to launching a new artist, remixes can often be key in gaining exposure. Working on the principal that a well-known remixer will get you exposure across more than just your traditional platforms (gigging / interviews / radio play within your genre), many new indie bands are keen to pursue this route. The Temper Trap, who hail from sunny Melbourne, are one such act. They're a fairly straightforward prospect, with a slightly electronic touch and sound that owes a little to U2 (in a good way) as well as 80's new-wave dancey beats. That's not to detract from these boys talents of course, as the music they're making is very good, with lovely catchy melodies and soaring vocals.
So it is they've roped in the talents of Herve and Mistabishi to run riot with their first major release, The Science Of Fear. Herve (AKA The Count of The Count and Sinden fame) starts his remix off with a fuzzy, distorted and rewound homage to the original, then brings in a little vocal before a huge drop into some sickening dubstep flavours. That gives way to a breakdown with a little more vocal and some trancey synths, before bringing back the bass, in bassline house form. The dubstep beats return (minus most of the bass) towards the end of the track to leave quite a subdued flavour as it fades. Throw in a few gun-cock sounds for good measure and quite frankly, you're well away. Probably not big and not clever, but brilliant nonetheless. No doubt this will get rinsed by ol' favourite Annie Mac in her sets which are currently straddling the line between dubstep and electro very nicely.
The second remix comes from Hospital Records' current wunder-kid Mistabshi. Having just dropped one of the best drum & bass albums of recent times (and best tracks ever in the form of the insane Printer Jam), things are looking good for him. His remix manages to keep the original vocal in tact, keeps the same melancholy feel to the song whilst simultaneously turning it into a melodic D&B monster. Quite how he has managed this I do not know. The beats owe a certain debt to old school jungle and he also layers on some lovely reverb-ey twinkly piano chords. Beautiful and banging, in equal measures.
Check out The Temper Trap on Myspace HERE, download the amazing Mistabishi for absolutely nowt over at London Elektricity's blog HERE and watch a very clever video for their track My Sun below.
As I write to you, it seems like my prayers have finally been answered. Amanda Blank, one of my favourite artists of all time, is back with new material! Blank, a close cohort of Baltimore electro hip-hop collective Spank Rock, is famed for her incredibly fast rapping abilities and filthy mouth. And might I add, she's utterly amazing.
Amanda rose to fame off the back of her Spank Rock ties, principally her album-stealing verse on their track Bump, which was without a doubt my favourite song of 2006. Since then she's been releasing sporadic material as well as guesting on a number of tracks and remixes. The best of these since the aformentioned Bump was Diplo's excellent remix of Santogold's I'm A Lady. One of the highlights of 2008, it saw Blank spitting the first verse and chorus of LL Cool J's I Need Love over a more electronic version of Santogold's subdued weepy number. She's also appeared on tracks by Britney, Pase Rock, N.A.S.A and Plastic Little.
Following the news that Blank's album I Love You (originally due last summer and postponed for mysterious reasons) is finally going to be released on the 14th of July, we've been given the long awaited gift of some new material. Might Like You Better contains everything people love about Amanda. Saucy lyrics delivered with panache, bad-ass electro beats and a wicked bassline. The track's been produced by Spank Rock's XXXChange which explains much of the excellent, crisp and tidy production.
Even better, it's free! Download it from the essential RCRDLBL site HERE. In case you're unfamiliar with the site, RCRDLBL hosts hundreds of officially endorsed free MP3's as well as information about new and independent artists. This is all in the name of finding some equality in the murky legality surrounding music sharing on the web, whilst also aiming to promote the sales of the artists it features. Watch a video for the amazing Santogold remix below, as well as a live performance of the timeless Bump. All of that should wet your appetite nicely for the album, which I for one, can barely contain my excitement about. Amanda Blank, I love you.
Baile funk. Are you familiar with it? Perhaps not. A brief intro. A genre emanating from the favelas of Brazil, principally Rio, incorporating miami bass, electro, tribal Brazalian rhythms and Portugese hip-hop vocals (Portugese being the principal language of Brazil of course). Championed initally by Diplo, then various other DJs including Sinden in the UK. Reached the cusp of going mainstream with the poppiest and brightest representatives of the scene, in the form ofBonde Do Role. Never quite happened....
Despite this Baile funk has been bubbling under nicely in the dance music underground and continues to do so. Germany's Man Recordings has been the principal label pushing it on this side of the Atlantic, and has continued with a stream of regular releases for nearly five years now. One of the highlights of this has been the 'Funk Mundial' series, marrying European electro, house and techno producers with Baile funk MCs and rhythms.
After reaching 9 volumes, Daniel Haaksman, head of Man Recordings has now released a compilation of the best of the series so far. It features many highly talented and influential artists, including Italy's Crookers with their bass driven electro, wonky-fidget-tech head Jesse Rose and techno producer Oliver S representing Berlin, San Fransiscan tech-house kid Riva Starr, French electro wizard Feadz and the UK's very own old school garage revivalists The Count and Sinden.
With nearly every track of a supremely high caliber, this is definitely one worth investing in. Included in the collection too are three Cumbia tracks, the latest world genre threatening to go global. Essentially grounded in folk music, it's main components are fairly slow percussive beats, accordions, brass instruments and chanty vocals, and it's not a million miles away from Reggaeton. No wait, come back! It's actually quite good. The new breed is known as 'digital Cumbia' as it's largely produced electronically. Only time will tell if this does any real damage to the musical landscape.
Available on iTunes in pretty shiny 256kb quality, as well as from Beatport, DjDownload and Juno in even shinier 320kb, make sure you get your hands on it. Check the Man Recorder blog HERE for fairly regular postings, news and download links for obscure Baile funk tracks. Download a copy of the newest track by Feadz from the Ants In My Trance blog HERE. And as if that wasn't enough, watch a short and incredibly interesting documentary about the genre below, featuring one of it's biggest stars Deize Tigrona.
A fairly quick update today, but one to inform you about someone quite brilliant. A1 Bassline is another young upstart (although not quite as fresh-faced as Louis La Roche) riding a wave of approval for his massively popular productions and remixes.
He takes the pop and old school garage sentiments of bassline house, mashes them with harder electro and produces an overall sound that has the fun of more commercial bassline with the dirty grooves of electro. Also now branching out into some dubstep tunes, expect big things from this young lad during the summer including a speight of European festival appearances. It's also worth checking out his Girl Thing EP, which whilst released quite early on into his career and veering towards the cheesier side of bassline (H two O, T2) shows real promise.
A1 has already remixed Yo! Majesty, Frankmusik, Kid Cudi, The Qemists, Cadence Weapon and unleashed upon the world a cheeky bassline bootleg of Daft Punk's Harder Better Faster Stronger (knowingly titled the 'It's been done a million times but never like this remix').
Check him out on myspace HERE, see a list of tracks and remixes (with links to download) on the Hype Machine HERE, and finally, watch a video of him smashing Brick Lane's 93 Feet East with JME & Tempa T below.
Disco. It's great, isn't it. Even if you're not the most discerning music fan, you can't fail to enjoy the classics. Boney M, Chic, Giorgio Moroder, Sister Sledge. All amazing artists that still sound fresh and joyous today.
For a while now, things have been bubbling under in the land of disco. A few years back, assorted producers, often people making techno primarily, started fiddling around with more disco-laden sounds. Revivalists seemed to grow in number significantly. Indie bands also started pushing things forward into disco-punk, the breakout moment being The Rapture's Echoes. In the five years since that album entered music fans collections, we've seen an explosion in punk funk and full-on disco productions. From Scandinavians like Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje, to bands like !!!, LCD Soundsystem (the doorway to the whole DFA label, a megalith in the scene) and Out Hud and finally to the nu-Italo (electronic disco) trailblazers like Heartbreak, Little Boots and The Juan Maclean.
On this basis, say hello to Den Haan. A duo, Creme De Menthe and Gardi (not their real names one assumes) come from Glasgow, are signed to Optimo and produce dark pumping electronic disco. It's the kind of music that sounds like the soundtrack to a sleazy leather club, that smells like amyl nitrate, that's incredibly moody but is undeniably funky. Their sound is characterised by low growling vocals, chants, retro synths, string crescendos, vocoders and arpeggios. Some of their material is also a little more new-wave, like the New Order sounding Looking For Love, as well as some other tracks which are more glam-rock. This is the kind of disco that's both retro sounding and forward thinking. Not particularly pop, but very accessible it's also the kind of disco that's a good starting point for those with a grounding in the genre but who want to begin looking deeper.
Download the Release The Beast EP (featuring three tracks, Release The Beast, Metamorphosis and Looking For Love) in shiny delicious 320kb quality from Boomkat HERE. Investigate their myspace HERE where there are a number of tracks to listen to. Lastly, download a copy of Release The Beast from the ridiculously good Waves At Night blog HERE, also an excellent place to start idulging yourself in nu-disco. Turn the lights down, the bass up and let yourself go.....
Looking at images of Tiga I often feel a little disturbed by his appearance, but my, his music does excite my ears. After a brief mention of his Essential Mix for Radio One a couple of posts ago, here is a more in depth look at the magnificent beast itself.
This is a mix which seems to be aiming to achieve two main things. Firstly, to act as a sampler for Tiga's forthcoming Ciao! and also to act as a showcase for his label, Turbo Recordings (very soon to be the ripe old age of ten). That's not to say there isn't a variety of other record labels and artists featured within the two hours, in fact there's lots of that lovely stuff too.
There's four quite defined 'acts' in this mix, going roughly in half hour segments. The mix starts with some pretty four by four techno, but unsurprisingly of the more leftfield genre, perfectly handled and blended by Tiga. This continues into harder-edged electro, which then segues gradually into a more restrained section quite heavy on vocals. The final section winds down perfectly into some nu-disco, which very pleasingly is heavy on the cowbell.
A number of tracks in this mix are exclusives, not hard to tell as nearly every blogger hosting a download link has been hit by a stern notice from the ever ominous 'Web Sherriff'. Highlights amongst these exclusives are the Mr. Oizo remix of Tiga's Shoes, a track off the new Peaches album called Lose You (As remixed by Turbo's UK representative Matt Walsh), and a stunning and previously unheard Tiga track named Overtime, to be featured on his new album. The latter is the highlight of the mix in my opinion, managing to combine electro, techno and disco seamlessy in one track. Situated slap bang in the middle of the mix, it also seems to hint at what we can expect overall from the new Tiga release.
A few slightly older songs feature in the mix too, including The Proxy's excellent remix of Moby's I love To Move In Here, Yo Majesty's Club Action, LCD Soundsystem's minimal percussive masterpiece Too Much Love and the utterly amazing, warm and generally lovely Prince Language remix of MGMT's Electric Feel, arguably the finest bit of nu-disco from 2008. Quite impressively and controversially, he even includes the Uffie featuring Steroids by Mr. Oizo, and succeeds in making her extremely tired sounding vocals fresh again.
A brilliant mix all round, many of it's finest moments lurking within it's more secretive and underground moments. Certainly one of the best Essential Mixes in recent times, and showing the new players to the game (Herve, Marc Romboy and all the others, I'm talking to you) just how to do it. Well done Tiga.
No longer available on the iPlayer, you'll have to track it down yourself. Worry not however, the mix is lurking down the back of many metaphorical internet sofas. Check the tracklist HERE.
