Yesterday I sat down and started with something I should have done a long time ago, I copied some old tracks from CD to mp3. The plan is to post the better ones on here and I’ll kick things of with these two tracks which were released in 2002 on the now defunct, or at least in indefinite hiatus, french record label called We Rock Music. Romain Séo’s (aka Raw Man from The Buffalo Bunch) ran the label and is also the man behind these two brilliant filtered house tracks.
Of the two I prefer the slower Time Limited, but the tempo makes it a bit difficult to drop in a house set. Not impossible of course so you’ll just have to try harder! Body Angel is the type of track I’d love to play an edit of. It’s a great little number but it gets its point across in the first four minutes and could do with a quick mix out or a shorter version.
I’ve been listening to all the low quality mp3s I could find for a while now but the debut album from N.A.S.A (aka Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon) was finally released yesterday. It’s full of crazy collaborations such as ‘Gifted’ with Lykke Li, Santogold and Kanye West. Both the debut single ‘Spacious Thought’ and the video for Money has been all over the internet for a while now, but in case you’ve missed them here they are again.
This is a remix of Fat Freddy Drops – Del Fuego from 2006 by an old friend of mine, Carl Borg. He just uploaded it to SoundCloud and I hadn’t actually heard it until today. It’s a very calm and fluffy little piece with some soft late night-ish vocals Exactly what I needed to hear at the end of a long work day. You can buy both the original and Carl’s remix on Sonar Kollektiv’s website.
Check out the audio app towards the end of the video. I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with the Kaossilator but there would be so many more possibilities with the Siftables.
Update: Video of the music sequencer without the other stuff.
It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie: mathematicians, having discovered a secret formula behind all good music, are able to produce powerful dancefloor destroyers using only mathematical calculations.
According to beatport.com Mat Cooper is using some clever mathematical formula to create the all the melodies on his EP called ‘Harmonisch Serie’, named after the mathematical modelling research projet he is involved in.
Usually I love this kind of stuff and I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s a mathematical formula behind the music, I just don’t understand why he decided to use the melodies his math project came up with to create techno? Why not “fluffy piano trance”? Or just a midi “piano”? When it comes to electronic music it is all about the sound and not the melodies, and if I understand this correctly, his math formula doesn’t choose drum samples for him. I doubt it picks compressors, effects or the EQ settings either. What I mean is, once you’ve come up with a melody for your track, you still have the other 90% left until it’s finished.
I’m not sure Mat Cooper is completely to blame though, he might just want to make electronic music and thought it would be fun doing it using the research he’s involved with. It could just be the first paragraph in the article on beatport which pisses me off.