shigeto - what we held on to
Peter Kim at Create Digital Music has a really nice piece with Shigeto, which includes a great tip on a free ep, What We Held On To, currently available from Ghostly International.
In the name of delayed gratification, here’s the download itself. Grab this while you can - this is a very solid release over five tracks.
The lineup for Sonar Chicago was released this morning, with Oval, Martyn, and Nosaj Thing being the main draws for me.
Events during the day are free (and thanks to Nicole of humansafterall for that info) - here’s the agenda of events, which runs September 9th through 11th:
By the way, you can catch The Flashbulb this weekend in Kansas City at the afterparty for Bass Worship.
We made our way down to Czar Bar around 10:30, catching the last half of Blu Jemz‘ techier-than-expected set. I was a bit surprised by the amount of squiggly basslines and 4×4 beats he was playing, as most of my exposure to his music has been of the more hiphop-driven variety. The semi-smallish crowd seemed into it, but for what I was able to hear, it seemed as if there was no consistent groove until the last few tracks of his set.
Zombie Disco Squad was up next. DJ’ing as a duo, they kept on the tech-heavy house sound, littered with intermittent breakbeats. To my ears, the loss of musical texture brought on by both the over-extended soundsystem and jacked-up bpms transformed the set into something reminiscent of the minimal-leaning prog house sets from Roland on the back deck of the Hurricane, two-for-one Coronas in hand. While those were great nights, I’m not so sure how I felt about experiencing it again, at least musically, a decade later. A good portion of their set wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a pitched-up Hope b-side dub or something similar. There was quite a lot of effects abuse, and by the end of their set, there was very little I could call soulful or funky about what they played, although there were quite a few moments just begging to break through. The crowd seemed to be into it for the most part, although the constant breaks via phaser, flanger, beat repeat, and delay on just about every mix appeared to make things a little confusing for quite a few of them.
One-half of Nero, Joseph Ray, I believe, was in tonight for this gig, and as soon as the first drop hit at levels even higher than Zombie Disco Squad had been able to hit, most of the kids in the place came running to the front with their hands in the air. Mostly mid-range wobblers turned way up, the Czar Bar crowd ate it up, not surprisingly. While this is not my preferred style of the sound, it seems to hit a resonant chord with both the hesher and the hiphop crowd, which I guess is what Anthrax and Public Enemy intended oh so long ago. The few tracks we heard from Nero’s set were missing the genuine urban menace that seems to separate the men from the boys of the genre.
We headed out a few tracks into the set, so I’m not sure whether 12th Planet went on later or if he had already played prior to us arriving. For a free event, we came away feeling more or less indifferent. I can say I appreciate Scion’s attempts to bring bigger name acts to a smaller venue like the Czar Bar, but I have yet to walk away from one of their events excited about what I heard. There’s very little going on at the event beyond the RSVP-for-entry, a couple of banners, and a truck out front to signify the corporate interest. Sadly then, it is down to the music the selected acts choose to play, all of which seemed to have a commercial sheen to it that is hard to dismiss.
As the presence of the Red Bull Music Academy has risen over the years, so has the stock of artists who’ve participated in the sessions - both students and teachers. The RBMA has become a spot for enlightening, Actor’s Studio-esque interviews with some of the top names in the diverse world of electronic music, while at the same time providing a platform for acts like Flying Lotus and others to launch their careers.
This year sees another yearbook release in the form of a free 2-disc set of work from both newcomers and established names who’ve come through the Academy. Grab the 320k version below.
VARIOUS ASSETS – NOT FOR SALE: RBMA LONDON 2010 (FREE DOWNLOAD)
CD1
01. Flava D – Ragga Sun
02. Robin Hannibal & Jullian Gomes – I Need Your Love
03. J-Wow & Sui Zhen – River Song
04. Marco Passarani & Julian Gomes – Walking Down Tooley Street
05. 00Genesis feat. Oddisee – Jackin4beats Pt. 1
06. Hudson Mohawke, Robin Hannibal & Myele Manzana – Ain’t Nobody Like You
07. Lucrecia Dalt & Makes Pants – Too Much Light
08. Chester Lone Ranger
09. James Pant & Lucrecia Dalt – A Breezy Slide Into Hell
10. Ango feat. Katy B – Fireworks
11. Poirier feat. Hasan Hujariri – Loop 1
12. Space Dimension Controller – Hazeygalacticwonkafunk
13. 00Genesis feat. Tranqill – Jackin4beats Pt. 2
14. Andras Fox, Sui Zhen & James Pants – Touch-N-Talk
15. Osborne, Modeselektor, Ango, Akshin, Ad Bourke & Vlad Caia – Jacbob Has Arrived
16. TOKiMONSTA, Lunice & Swede:art – Alpenglow
17. A Lone Boy, An Oud, A Theremin & A Funky Dread – T M 2
18. Clinic & Sui Zhen – Tell Me Once
19. Bala – London Mantra
CD2
01. Kidkanevil feat. Oddisee – Jackin4beats Pt. 3
02. Kool Clap & Venice – Vitamine
03. Ross McHenry, Biel Nascimbeni,Myele Manzanza, Jakob Schneidewind, Katy B & Infestus – The Song
04. Jackmaster, Mau’lin, Markur & Tony Nwachukwu – UK Hunky
05. Lunice – Strahl
06. Master MP6-60 & Robim Hannibal – Rocking All Night
07. TOKiMONSTA feat. Andreya Triana & Oddisee – Jackin4beats Pt. 4
08. B. Bravo & Robin Hannibal – What’s It Gonna Be
09. Dam Funk – I Need 2 Know
10. Sergej Fresh, Tutu Sweeney, Andras Fox, DJ Klem & Sui Zhen – Told Me
11. Lucrecia Dalt & Hasan Hujairi – Mimbre
12. 00Genesis – Endless Ocean
13. Homeless Inc, Juan Son & Jakobn Schneidewind – Solo
14. 00Genesis feat. Tranqill – Jackin4beats Pt.5
15. Tony Nwachunkwu & Tutu Sweeny – Breathin’
16. Daisuke Tanabe feat. May Roosevelt – Cказка
17. Amenta & J-Wow – Like That
18. Dza feat. AD Bourke – Endless Wishes
19. Flava D – It’s So Hard
20. Biel Nascimbeni & Juan Son – Cucaracha Madness Mix
21. Minus – Calling Number
22. Hasan Hujairi & May Roosevelt – Improvisation No. 136253892
My friend Zach is a big BT fan, something about musicianship or something. With the full understanding of what we were getting ourselves into, with more than enough years of experience to handle whatever this party was going to throw at us, we made our way into the Midland around 9:30.
The only security was the Midland employee who took my ticket, and with that we walked in 2002.
I am going to break it down like this: all the ladies looked good, the guys were having a good time, and it appeared everything ran smoothly as far as the event was concerned.
We found three rooms outside of the main floor. The basement room had carpet, but hey whatever. Shin splints suck but dancing is dancing. I heard a few minutes of jungle down here.
The front bar attachment to the Midland also had a setup. We caught a little bit of Shadowrunner’s set.
The uppermost tier of the Midland was visually impressive, and the small area tucked away behind the large circular bar would be ideal for some deep house around 6AM. I thought I caught someone saying the Pitch weekly djs were in this room, but like every other room, there were no listed set times or anything.
Which, honestly didn’t matter, because outside of the jungle I mentioned, every room was essentially the exact same sound as the main room for about six hours straight. All of the side rooms were comfortable or full every time we went through, and the bars seemed to be consistently busy.
That being said, I wonder how a night like this stacks against REO Speedwagon for the staff of the Midland. The ravers of Global Dance Festival 2010 are not the ravers of high desert parties as far as concern for environmental impact goes, and I’m sure the site of a few hundred kids cuddle-puddling in the main lobby was not what most of them expected.
The main floor was a professional exhibition - lasers, lcd screens, go-go dancers, and lights. The sound was surprisingly good for the most part, given that every performer sounded as if they were riding the reds as hard as they could. Every mix followed a pattern of digitally-queued beats generally off by a measure or two being played as loudly as possibly over the breakdown of the previous track. Generally, as this splinter of progressive hous/trance has done seemingly since its break from the likes of Platipus or Rising High oh so many years ago, there would be about a minute or so of red-line speaker-busting music, then another 30 seconds or more of extended breakdown, repeated again and again for about six hours.
BT, I am told, played some mix of Darude’s “Sandstorm” at the peak of his set. Everyone recognized it immediately - I thought I had spotted it as well, but it wasn’t Josh Wink’s “Are You There”, which I’m not sure would have been better, but definitely more unexpected.
Paul Van Dyk, in true rock show fashion, had his levels boosted even higher than Transeau’s within the first eight beats. There was a lot more fist-pumping and, ultimately, at the end of the night, I sort of wondered if someone was going to pass a plate around for donations.
If that front bar area would have had a deep house or techno dj, or even a good eclectic selector, that would have been the party of the night. If it would have been back in that top room, mmmmm.
We left around 1 or so I think, a few songs into Paul Van Dyk’s set. The same girl who took my ticket gave me a calendar flyer for the venue on my way out.
I tried to imagine a Contakt installation or a MWXMW event at the Midland. With the right team behind the event, I could definitely see it happening, though I think the logistics of the building might ultimately get in the way of the overall success of the night. If this many kids show up for Global Dance Festival 2010 Kansas City, I can only imagine what the turnout for current, relevant artists - and the effect it would have on the city - would be.
The Pitchfork RSS feed says it all:
09-30 Austin, TX - East Side Drive *
10-03 Las Vegas, NV - Matador 21
10-04 Los Angeles, CA - Wiltern *
10-05 San Francisco, CA - Warfield *
10-07 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom *
10-09 Seattle, WA - Showbox So Do *
10-12 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue *
10-13 Chicago, IL - The Vic *
10-15 Newport, KY - Southgate House
10-16 Columbus, OH - Outlands Live
10-21 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
10-22 Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle
10-23 Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theater
11-05 Boston, MA - Paradise ^
11-06 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero ^
11-07 New York, NY - Terminal 5 ^
* with Times New Viking
^ with Blitzen Trapper
i’m going to give mixcloud a shot to host mixes. here’s a test run:
Information Scientist - June 12 Mix by Informationscientist on Mixcloud
azuni - rotate (rotate ep)
ribn - sin & figs (light black ep)
reference - best night in detroit (aoenian ep)
pawel - curves (alexi delano mix) lines & curves ep)
jacek sienkiewicz - before x (x years later ep)
melchior & pronsato - we make it right (puerto rican girls ep)
oni ayhun - oar004-b (from OAR004)
moodymanc - bitz (extended dub) (gretsch ep)
soul clap - sex in the kitchen (r&b edits)
ed davenport - warmathene (dub mix) (warmathene ep)
dj qu - secret place (for the beneath ep)
chicago skyway - cp-1 (wolfgang hair ep)
What do Athens, Greece, Honolulu, Hawaii, Red Rocks Ampitheater in Colorado, and Kansas City have in common? If you guessed each location will host one of the four stops on the Global Dance Festival Tour 2010, then chances are you are wearing a shiny shirt and have, in the past 24 hours, administered spray-on tan.
While Kansas City’s stop is bringing Paul Van Dyk and BT, it could be worse. Athens has Armin Van Buuren, and Honolulu’s event is headlined by something called Shwayze featuring Cisco Adler . . . which somehow managed to push Bad Boy Bill to the #2 slot. From there, Rabbit in the Moon and Uberzone vs Bassbin Twins round out this homage to the very worst of American electronic music circa 1998.
Or, worst case scenario - you could stretch these travesties over two whole days, which is something the residents in the immediate vicinity of Red Rocks Ampitheater will have to deal with come mid-July.
Thankfully the Kansas City date is the same weekend as the Colorado one, which means hopefully a decent chunk of those who would go to something like this will choose the western weekend option and our fair city can be left off the list of venues next year.
Ten years ago I was tired of seeing acts like this tromped through town under the pretense of a quality event. When you step back and look at all of the talent this world has seen come through the dance music genre in the past fifteen years, ask yourself, “How many have made it to Kansas City?” Do promoters view the area’s glut of bored white kids with expendable income and easily-led tastes as little more than JNCO-wearing ATM’s?
I’ll elaborate: Paul Van Dyk is a marketing tool. He has not had a relevant release since the mid-90’s. His last album release was 2007, and since then he’s had one physical release comprised of new material amid a slough of re-releases, one-off compilations, and digital-only eps.
Despite his early influential releases, he has exceedingly punched his ticket on the dreck brought to popularity by hacks like Tiesto, Van Buuren, and ATB.
Look, I have “Words” and “For an Angel” on vinyl - the Curve remix on the former and the Way out West remix on the latter made the $3 i spent on each worth it. But the world has moved on. This sound is being held over because of its marketability, not because of any musical or cultural importance.
BT - Brian Transeau - is also scheduled to play this thing, and further enhances Kansas City’s reputation as one of very few places in the world where former Moonshine artists and their ilk can still get a gig.
That’s not to say BT’s always been a joke. Take a listen to Deep Dish’s Penetrate Deeper label showcase/mix from the mid 90’s. Fully HALF of the mix’s 14 songs credit Brian Transeau in one way or another. Ima was an early highlight in the attempt to expose more Americans to electronic music, and introduced Sasha via the second disc’s 45-minute album mix. I’ll even give credit to “Mercury and Solace”, which, thanks largely to Jan Johnston’s haunting vocals, remains one of the more usable tracks from the entire “progressive house” fiasco which it seemed we’d never escape from.
The years since then have not been kind to Transeau. This event is largely to promote his first album in four years, with just a handful of singles in the interim. What he has released since his heyday in the middle of the 90’s have largely been trend-hopping concoctions devoid of soul or innovation as he’s become more comfortable within the category of “club” music. In the end, he succeeded in becoming Moby’s understudy as the posterboy for American electronica: a talented individual who chose the compromises of commercial success at the expense of creativity, ultimately ending up as a parody of not only himself, but of a movement.
Taking the disappointment a step further, Rusko - who has sadly devolved into what I consider the lowest common denominator of dubstep with all the bro-step mid-range wobblers he’s churned out in the last year - is playing the “pre-party” at Mosaic and will supposedly be playing an “afterparty” at the Jones Pool on top of Cosentino’s downtown. Nevermind he’s scheduled to play the Colorado date I mentioned earlier - I’m sure he’ll jump on a private charter and make it back to KC in time.
My point here is this: this city could have better. We’ve set through the annual Donald Glaude-Charles Feelgood-Dave Aude-etc nonsense for over a decade now. DJ Dan at Lucky Strike a couple of weeks ago is another great example. I get the fact that most people in this city don’t know or care enough to find out what’s going in their ears. All they know is they paid $20-$40 a ticket and $8 for a beer, so they must be doing something right.
Kansas City - please understand - there is a whole wide world out there who has disowned these artists. There are agents, promoters, marketeers out there whose sole jobs are to find these guys gigs in the most culturally backwards, backwater, uninformed places in the world.
Do we really want to continually be on that list? There are those who will make the argument that without events like this, we will never show the world that we can support the truly cutting edge artists - the ones that will give the shiny shirts a party the likes of which they can’t even conceive of. But it’s been ten-plus years of this already, and still nothing.
Granted, this thing is being billed as a festival. There are other stages and acts, although Shadowrunner and FSTZ are the only two names I recognize on the listing. I’m sure those who end up attending this will be convinced they had a great time, if for no other reason than the damage done to their credit cards. Undoubtedly, there’ll be those who finally got to see Van Dyk and/or BT and will be fully comfortable ignoring the fact that it is only due to each artist’s diminishing rate of return that this is possible.
As the rest of the world moves into festival season, as lineups are announced, as long-lost acts are re-united and hot young djs, producers, and genres are breaking out to audiences open and intelligent enough to welcome them, we here are again branded as a podunk hick town and, instead of resisting, we choose to stay ignorant, pay an extra $20 for bottle service, and continue doing whatever the glossy pages in the lifestyle mags tell us to.
Kansas City - we deserve better than this.
Get your fill of mid-range wobblers Thursday, July 15th with bro-step man of the moment Rusko. He’ll be playing Mosaic, 1331 Walnut, July 15th alongside KC locals.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, Scion’s involvement with the American electronic and hiphop music scene is a little bit of a dubious one. On one hand, they are a freaking car company. They make cars. Vroom vroom four wheels, etc etc.
On the other hand, for the last year or so, the company has sponsored a wide range of online radio stations hosted by some of the bigger names across many different genres, from UK Garage to hiphop to metal. Additionally, they’ve brought names like Roy Davis Jr, Dj Craze, and Blu Jemz to Kansas City.
While the company has released several compilations intended to promote these shows, they’ve also recently moved into publishing more cohesive releases along the lines of the Dub Police label sampler, a Pelican ep, the Ghostface Killah remix project, or last year’s remix package for Japanese noise-metal trio Boris that featured Nosaj Thing, Optimo, and New Jersey’s long-standing garridge master, Todd Edwards.
The label looks to Edwards for its latest release with the I Might Be ep. The original take on “I Might Be” is pretty much what you’d expect from Todd Edwards at this point - skippy 2-step beats, cut up synths, and an uplifting vocal that is unfortunately just too sugary for its own good. The guy has been doing more or less this same sound to great effect for well over a decade now, and admittedly by now it’s something most listeners are either going to love or hate. There’s no questioning the man’s influence on dance music, especially in the UK.
We might have Scion’s corporate backing to thank for introducing more American listeners to Joy Orbison, who here autotunes the vocals to decent effect, straightens up Edward’s 2-step gallop a fair amount, and makes the whole thing a little more luscious-sounding thanks to a stripped-down approach to the arrangement. The bassline somehow manages to sound both smooth and chunky at the same time, and while this might not be the young producer’s most imaginative work to date, it does show that even his more vanilla offerings are going to be worth taking note of.
The label cash comes through with another winner, this time with the resurging MJ Cole. Cole has a history that stretches back almost as far as Todd Edwards’, and is undoubtedly among the vanguard of the UK Garage/2-Step movement that owed so much of its initial formation to Edwards’ early releases. Because their sounds come from such similar palettes, it’s quite easy to hold both the original and Cole’s mix up to the same light and see the shared genetics - again, the snared third beat (albeit less skippy), chopped up synths, and infectious energy are all present. Cole manages to upstage Edwards here though by using the vocal as a multi-pitched sample layered in over a more atmospheric approach to the synths that more mirrors Joy Orbison’s mix than the original.
The package is rounded out with two more versions. First up is a mix from “dance band” My Dear Disco that is more suited for the dance tent at Wakarusa or some other Birkenstock-sponsored nonsense aimed at the incidental, inconsiderate listener who probably doesn’t care too much about what’s going in their ears. Lastly is a mix from FEADZ, who is yet another artist associated with the Ed Banger crowd that I wish I could have avoided hearing - it’s the sort of thing that defines the lowest common denominator in dance music and sounds like the tripe generally played in the shiny-shirt clubs around town where people still care about things like Winter Music Conference or not being able to count to four. Neither of these mixes works for several reasons, but the most glaring is the attachment to the original vocal.
I’m cautious about encouraging Scion on these things, but so far the signal to noise ratio has been surprisingly decent. It seems that the label only has two speeds - quality and crap - and it would be nice to see a little more of the previous and a whole lot less of the latter. The encouraging aspect is the possibility of the artists the label features, such as Todd Edwards or MJ Cole or be-still-my-beating-heart Joy Orbison, making a sponsored tour stop in Kansas City.
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