7 Days of Funk—the joint project of Snoop Dogg and Stones Throw affiliate Dam-Funk—have offered up a pair of unreleased tracks to bring in 2015. According to an accompanying write-up, the duo (who we’ve previously featured as part of our Hi-Five series) has been in “phantom mode” for the past few months, but “want to say happy new year to the world with these brand new tracks.” The so-called digital 7″ single, N My System, follows from their eponymous debut album released by Stones Throw in 2013, and finds Snoop revisiting his G-funk roots once again, aided by Dam-Funk’s unmistakable West Coast production style.
N My System is available for download here via Stone’s Throw, and both tracks on offer (“N My System” and “It’s Not a Secret”) can be streamed in full below.
The start of each new year is a time to look ahead, and we here at XLR8R like to get into that spirit by stretching our Bubblin’ Up series across an entire week. Over the next five days, we’ll be showcasing a handful of artists that we think will be making a major impact in 2015.
Lena Willikens is at home in Cologne, seated in a room full of records, smoking. It’s late October, and she’s just returned from a trip to Lisbon, where she played at the city’s Lux nightclub. Better yet, she’s in good spirits, even as she admits to dealing with the final stages of a bout of Portuguese food poisoning. Lisbon was the latest in an increasingly diverse tour schedule for Willikens, who has seen her profile quickly rise alongside an association with Matias Aguayo’s Cómeme organization and a well received Resident Advisor podcast, not to mention the fact that she’s a strikingly unique DJ. While she isn’t down on her most recent show, she describes Lux as “quite posh, and quite hetero, so not 100% my style.” In fairness, her style is rather eclectic, ranging from tensely aggressive post-punk and no wave to quirky cosmic disco, with a smattering of interesting international music sandwiched in between, so it’s no surprise that this sort of mismatched booking has happened to her before. “Sometimes I don’t know if it’s about the eclectic style,” she explains. “Maybe it’s just me playing at the wrong time at the wrong club, standing before the wrong people who really don’t get what I’m doing. I really try not to be cool as a DJ. [My approach is not] ‘I’m just doing my stuff and you have to suffer!'”
Still, Willikens acknowledges that limitation is key to what she does, and while she can move with a crowd, she is very much a “journey” DJ. “I really try always [to see] how far can I go, and of course the farther I can go, the better,” she says. “I think more and more people also enjoy eclectic stuff, that’s just my feeling. There are a lot of people who are sick of sets which are two hours, with the same beat going on, and it’s just like, you know, clean Beatport mixes. It’s awful somehow.” Unsurprisingly, Willikens is a fairly adamant vinyl DJ, occasionally using an effects unit in supplement. “Some clubs are definitely not used to having that many vinyl DJs anymore,” she says. “Some friends of mine stopped playing vinyl—it’s too uncomfortable to carry all that heavy shit around. I like the challenge sometimes, when you are like, ‘Oh no, I packed totally the wrong vinyl and I’m playing peak time.’ I like not having a USB with everything on it. I don’t like to have the records with me where I know they work every time. I don’t want them to get boring for me.” If Willikens sounds exceptionally daring, consider a formative experience she had a few years ago: “I played at the same time as DJ Koze, like playing the small floor and he was playing next to me on the big floor. I played a track that was more or less a hit at that time—but a good one—a summer hit, a lot of DJs used to play it. I can’t remember [what it was] really. And at the break, I heard DJ Koze playing next to me the same track at the same time. Since then, I’ve never touched this record again.”
If a Willikens DJ set is based around spontaneous selections, then Sentimental Flashback, her monthly show that’s part of the Radio Cómeme podcast series, offers a more tempered view of her record collection. Over the past two years, she’s done episodes dedicated to Devo, cosmic disco, Japanese music, and African sounds, as well as a few freeform ones. (At the time of this interview, she was preparing one related to Poland’s Unsound festival, as she played at this year’s edition.) “I need about one day [to prepare each show],” she says. “The longest part is to sit down and really go through all the records, to sort them out and also find an order. It’s really emotional.”
Willikens first connected with the predominantly Latin American Cómeme crew through Christian S., whom she met when she moved to Cologne six or seven years ago. “We started to organize parties together, then I met Matias, and that’s how it came about that I played the first time on a Cómeme night—as a guest first, and then they asked me to do the radio show, and then I became part of the family. [Later on, I was] in Santiago de Chile hanging out with them for three weeks; we were partying together and also playing together at Cómeme nights.” This month, the relationship will bear fruit in the form of Phantom Delia, Willikens’ debut EP and a record that syphons the music she DJs into six stripped-down but serpentine rhythm tracks and creepy wave pieces. Its spare, considered approach differs wildly from Titanoboa, her other project, which will definitely not be releasing on Cómeme. A noise duo in which Willikens plays theremin alongside Melanie Wratil, Titanoboa is more of a live band project, with what she describes as “really intense and apocalyptic” shows. The pair is currently speaking with Ugandabar, a venue in Jerusalem, about a split release with an Israeli band, possibly a half-hour live recording.
Although she’s really only just begun to venture outside of her home country as an artist, Willikens clearly has a knack for forging international connections, and maybe it’s this global focus that helps to keep her sets so interestingly broad. She lists Japan, Belgrade’s Klub 20/44 (which is located on a boat), London’s recently shuttered Plastic People, and Amsterdam’s just-closed Trouw (“it’s a bit posh but it’s something else…”) among her favorite places to play, and she plans to return to Japan in 2015 to tour alongside Chee Shimizu and DJ Chida. She also plans to further expand her network—a Cómeme label tour of North America is also in the works.
[quote]”I like not having a USB with everything on it. I don’t like to have the records with me where I know they work every time. I don’t want them to get boring for me.”[/quote]However, despite all of these new opportunities to showcase her talents abroad, Willikens continues to hold down a DJ residency at Düsseldorf’s Salon Des Amateurs, the place where she began DJing in the first place. “Salon opened 10 years ago, and we were people from the arts academy with no clue about how to run a club or a bar or anything—it was just out of passion, just doing something really anarchic,” she remembers. “After some years, it started to be a bit more professional, but the vibe is still there. We’ve had amazing nights with Jamal Moss, also Theo Parrish, who was playing for less than half of his normal fee. In the beginning, when I was working as a bouncer there, I was influenced [by my surroundings] and I just started to DJ in the club. I’ve been collecting records since, I don’t know, [age] 13 or 14, but I never had the intention to be a DJ. I just started to bring my records in.” Her transition from music lover to DJ was a natural one, and perhaps that’s why her mixes have the special relaxed warmth of someone who’s just playing some of their favorite strange records. In Willikens’ case, it just so happens that she does it exceptionally, viscerally well.
Just before 2014 officially came to a close, Highland producer Cain turned in his second EP for the Fine Grains imprint, Savan. The seven-track record weaves a considerable amount of Indian music between its club-minded rhythmic structures, with “Vayu” serving as one result of the beatmaker’s hybrid approach. A rolling affair, the track slices an Indian vocal sample (and corresponding strings) atop a bevy of buzzing synth tones and ever-evolving percussion hits, many of which are tuned and arranged into additional melodic patterns. Serving as the second effort in a trilogy of releases which will lead up to Cain’s eventual debut LP, Savan is out now and can be streamed in full below, where a download of the burgeoning artist’s “Vayu” production can also be found.
Most years, we here at XLR8R take advantage of the lull in musical activity during the holiday season, happily stepping away from our computers for at least a few days. This year, however, a special event has kept us furiously tapping away right up to Christmas Day: the launch of a brand-new website.
In all honesty, this process was years in the making, but once we realized that it could be done in time for the holidays, we figured that there would be no better time to share it with the world. So please, take a look around. Obviously, we’ve made a lot of changes, both to things our readers can see and the under-the-hood technical stuff that they can’t, but our new site is designed to be cleaner, faster, easier, and just plain better than the old one. Most importantly, it’s now fully responsive and compatible with mobile devices, which thankfully means that everyone can now look at XLR8R on their smartphone or tablet without having to squint or endlessly zoom in and out.
In the weeks and months ahead, the site will continue to improve as we tweak things and make adjustments, and it would be great if our readers could assist us in that process; not by coding, of course, but by letting us know if they spot something that doesn’t work or doesn’t make sense. We’ve set up a new email, [email protected], where people can report bugs, ask questions, or simply let us know what they do and don’t like about the site. Don’t be shy! Our feelings won’t get hurt, and the faster we find out about any nagging issues, the faster we can optimizing the viewing experience for everyone.
Other than that, please take note that our regular posting regimen will resume on Monday, January 5. The new website has plenty of bells and whistles, and we can’t wait to really take it out for a proper spin in 2015. Thanks for visiting, and we hope that everyone has a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.
Well, we finally made it. After 12 months of filling our website with news, features, streams, videos, downloads, podcasts, and more, it’s once again time for XLR8R to take a little break. Given that the music industry has essentially ground to a halt for the holidays, we’ve elected to follow suit and lay off the daily onslaught of new content for the next couple of weeks. Although we may pop in with the occasional post here and there (especially if something important happens), our regular schedule won’t resume until Monday, January 5. In the meantime though, we’d like to encourage our audience to take a look back at the Best of 2014 series, which includes all of our attempts to sum up the year gone by, not to mention a whole lot of lists. (To make things easier, we’ve posted links after the jump.) Aside from that, we hope that everyone has a great holiday season and a happy new year. And of course, thanks for reading.
Ascendant Brooklyn DJ/producer Galcher Lustwerk has shared five bootleg edits for free download. Appearing on his SoundCloud earlier today, the new set of edits finds Lustwerk applying his propensity for low-key house grooves—a talent which landed his “216” production as one of our top 50 tracks of 2014—to a handful of hip-hop cuts, as well as Lumidee’s “Never Leave You (Uh Oh).” All five new Galcher Lustwerk edits can be streamed and (for now) downloaded in full below.
As 2014 draws to a close, we have teamed up with the good folks at online music retailer Bleep to launch the 100 Tracks Mix Competition, for which we are soliciting mixes from our readers that cover their favorite tracks of the past year.
Here at XLR8R, we’ve spent much of December detailing our favorite releases, tracks, labels, new artists, and more during the course of our Best of 2014 series, and Bleep plans to do much of the same, gathering its favorite 100 tracks of the year for its sixth-annual 100 Tracks compilation, which will see an official release on December 25. Now, it’s our readers’ turn to highlight their favorite music of 2014.
For the 100 Tracks Mix Competition, we ask that the budding selectors in our audience piece together a mix which incorporates their favorite music from the past year and upload it to Mixcloud for a chance to win an array of prizes, including AIAIAI TMA-1 DJ headphones, a Mixcloud Pro account for life, vinyl from a variety of labels, and—of course—one’s own copy of Bleep’s 100 Tracks compilation. The full details and directions for entry into the competition can be found here (please pay attention, as using the correct tags and artwork is important). Mixes need to be sent in by January 12, after which the best mix will be hand-selected by Bleep, and its maker will be awarded with the prize pack listed below; the winning mix will also be included in Bleep’s official podcast series and posted on the pages of XLR8R.
AIAIAI TMA-1 DJ Headphones 100 Tracks Gift Card Mixcloud Pro Account for life Warp + Bleep Merch Technology Will Save Us Kit White labels from Ninja Tune + more TBA Test Pressings from Night Slugs + more TBA The forthcoming Nozinja x Tessela 12″ on Bleep All Saints + InFiné Vinyl Bundle of stickers, merchandise, vinyl and CDs from the artists and labels included in The Top 100 Tracks of 2014
Joey Anderson has uploaded a new mix for streaming via SoundCloud. The roughly 70-minute session caps off a strong year for the New Jersey DJ/producer, who turned out a debut full-length—entitled After Forever—for Dekmantel and an EP on John Osborn’s Tanstaafl Planets label (not to mention an exclusive XLR8Rpodcast). In typical style, Anderson’s latest mix moves between deep, New York house cuts to more leftfield, psychedelic techno, and can be heard in full after the jump.
XLR8R‘s Best of 2014 series kicked off exactly three weeks ago, and since then, we’ve toured through quite the collection of year-end rundowns. Today, we’ve arrived at the final chapter, which wraps up both the Odds and Ends category and the Best of 2014 series as a whole. For those who missed the first half (which debuted yesterday), Odds and Ends is essentially a collection of our random thoughts, opinions, and observations from the year gone by. These items may not have fit squarely into a countdown-style list, but we’ve included some things we loved… and some things we didn’t; more importantly though, everything in here left a mark on 2014, and merited one last bit of attention before the calendar flipped to 2015.
Secret MVP: Jordan GCZ Granted, for those who have already perused the rest of our Best of 2014 selections, this award won’t be much of a surprise, because Jordan GCZ (a.k.a. Jordan Czamanski) made a lot of appearances on our various year-end lists. For many years, he’s been best known for his work as one half of Juju & Jordash, and the Amsterdam-based duo continued to make an impact in 2014, dropping a widely acclaimed new LP, Clean-Cut, via the Dekmantel label. Yet Czamanski didn’t stop there; after kicking off his own label, Off Minor, with a solo 12″ last year, he continued to build on both of those endeavors. His latest solo outing was the Digitalis EP, which arrived on the Future Times imprint, while Off Minor significantly expanded its output by issuing records from Move D, Stump Valley, and Zsa Gang (a collaboration between Czamanski and Maxmillion Dunbar), along with a 12″ from the Magic Mountain High project, which brings together Juju & Jordash and Move D. In a way, Czamanski was everywhere this year, and yet he managed to do so while largely staying beneath most people’s radar. It’s an impressive feat, and while he likely won’t be able to operate with as much anonymity in the years ahead, we anxiously look forward to his future campaigns. Shawn Reynaldo
Too Many Cooks: SBTRKT’s Wonder Where We Land “I started this in London with an idea I recorded on an upright piano, took this to Los Angeles (set up at Flea’s The Boat Studio in Silver Lake) collaborating further with Stella (drums) and Emily (vocals) from Warpaint. [I] took this back to London to work more arrangement ideas to it and finally, a couple months later, took that to New York (Downtown, where The Roots were in the studio next door!) and collaborated with A$AP Ferg.” This is how SBTRKT himself described the creation process of “Voices in My Head,” the closing cut from his sophomore LP. It is also indicative of where the record likely went wrong—there are just too many ideas on Wonder Where We Land to make sense of. One can’t help but wonder if the many doors SBTRKT opened with his wildly successful debut album ultimately opened up too many possibilities for the second, and the UK producer simply couldn’t manage to say “no” to enough of them. After all, piecing together a coherent effort while featuring Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koeing, Charlift’s Caroline Polachek, Denai Moore, A$AP Ferg, and Raury would have been a difficult task for anyone, and SBTRKT also had to find room for more familiar previous collaborators like Sampha and Jessie Ware. Combined with the LP’s piecemeal production methodology, this jumbled approach resulted in an album that tried to involve too many places, people, and things at once; it’s no surprise that Wonder Where We Land struggled to find any real source of identity across its 15-track run. Glenn Jackson
Going out on Top: Trouw We love Trouw. That won’t shock anyone who’s read our gushing reviews of the Amsterdam nightspot over the years, but it’s a sentiment we feel compelled to repeat again and again, especially in the face of the club’s imminent closure. From the beginning, Trouw’s founders knew that they only had a limited timeframe to work with, but that doesn’t make the venue’s demise any easier to stomach. Simply put, it’s one of the best clubs on the planet, and its forthcoming absence will leave a gaping hole that extends well beyond the Amsterdam music scene. It would have been easy for the Trouw team to rest on its laurels and blithely cruise into the sunset, but the club’s organizers have spent the past several months largely doing what they always do: putting on incredible, forward-thinking events. Sure, there have been some nostalgic asides—a retrospective book, a tribute compilation LP, an official goodbye video, etc.—but none of these efforts have come across as overwrought or overly self-indulgent. After all, there will be plenty of time to mourn Trouw once it’s gone. In the meantime, there’s still partying to be done, including a marathon final event during the first weekend of January. Shawn Reynaldo
Most Suspect Intersection of Music and Technology: Kuvo Back in October, Pioneer announced the launch of Kuvo, a cloud-based app and social platform that not only enables DJs to broadcast a tracklist of what they’re playing, but also encourages users to follow along, either in real time or after the fact. Launched amidst a sizable amount of fanfare and under the guise of both sharing information and helping to get artists paid (the idea being that these tracklists will assist in the royalty collection process), Pioneer seemed to think it was bringing something revolutionary to the market. That notion hasn’t been realized just yet, although efforts are presumably being made to gradually spread Kuvo’s use to more artists and clubs around the globe. For our part, we couldn’t help but notice that the application and platform were rife with potential pitfalls, which we attempted to address in an interview with a Pioneer product rep at this year’s Amsterdam Dance Event. In our mind, Kuvo seems like something geared toward people in the industry who are looking to maximize profits, rather than create the best possible club experience. (More simply, it’s hard to support anything that encourages folks to spend more time staring at their phones on the dancefloor.) Only time will tell what kind of real impact—if any—Kuvo will eventually have on nightlife, but for now, we’re still looking at it with a healthy dose of skepticism. Shawn Reynaldo
Best Web Video Series: Music Nation and Digging in the Carts Throughout the year, we try to share some of the best, most informative pieces of content we come across on the web, and quality video series often prove to be especially rewarding. Of those, there were two that truly deserve a proper revisit: Channel 4‘s and Dazed‘s Music Nation documentary series and Red Bull Music Academy‘s Diggin’ in the Carts. The former profiled the rise of various essential British musical movements (jungle, grime, bassline, UKG, and more), while the latter delved deep into the history of videogame music, enlisting commentary from the likes of Flying Lotus, Kode9, Fatima Al Qadiri, J-Rocc, and others, including the actual Japanese music makers themselves. In both series, the videos came with a combination of in-depth commentary and quality filmmaking that landed them right in the cross section of nerdy entertainment and musical education. Our favorite episode from each has been included below, but the entire Music Nation series can be found here, while all six episodes of Diggin’ in the Carts can be watched here. Glenn Jackson
Music Nation – Brandy & Coke
Diggin’ in the Carts – Episode Five: The Role of Role Play
Album That Sounded Nice, but Also Sounded Like a Really Long Car Commercial: Tycho’s Awake There was maybe no record as unwaveringly pleasant in 2014 as Awake, Tycho‘s guitar-soaked return to the Ghostly fold. Each of the record’s eight tracks came lined with an air of comforting optimism, their propulsive rhythms and soaring melodies seeming to indicate that no matter what has happened to the listener before, one can always take life into their own hands and change whatever comes next. The music is not bad, per se—it’s even somewhat enjoyable as background music—but it is exactly the sort of thing one would expect to hear in a vaguely uplifting car commercial.
Take the single “See” for instance; its initial indie-meets-disco beat, light guitar strums, and sprinkling of uplifting melodies could soundtrack the beginning of any adventure-driven car commercial. Maybe we see a young couple packing up its things, loading them into the car, and launching down the wide-open road. Then, the breakdown hits, acoustic guitar floats in underneath, and we cue a slow-motion montage of an unforgettable road trip: camping, visiting new places, and exploring the great outdoors. The snare sneaks back in, building back towards the tune’s driving current just as it sinks in: all this could be yours if you just… buy a Camry. Glenn Jackson
Surprise Backlash of the Year: When We Said That Drum & Bass Had Spent “Nearly a Decade in Dance Music Purgatory.” In July, Fracture (pictured above) turned in an excellent mix for the XLR8R podcast series, and much of our write-up in the post was devoted to how the UK producer was part of a wave of artists revitalizing drum & bass through hybridization and experimentation. And while that notion didn’t seem to ruffle many feathers, the article began with the phrase “After nearly a decade in dance music purgatory, drum & bass and jungle have gradually worked their way back into the spotlight,” which sent the drum & bass scene into something of a tizzy. Admittedly, things that get posted on XLR8R occasionally get people riled up—oddly enough, the drum & bass crowd often seems to be particularly sensitive—but we were honestly not prepared for the small firestorm that erupted in the wake of this podcast. dBridge himself weighed in, penning a lengthy essay that passionately defended drum & bass and called us “bloody daft” in the process.
Now, it’s never fun to be raked over the coals by a veteran artist, especially one whose work we wholeheartedly support. (For what it’s worth, we had dBridge himself do a podcast for us in 2013.) But it’s worse when the whole thing happened because of what seems to be a misunderstanding of what we said. After all, “purgatory” doesn’t mean “dead.” In retrospect, it wasn’t the best word choice, but we simply meant that the drum & bass scene had spent several years in a state where it was less popular and received less attention than it once had at its height. Obviously, interesting music from the genre had been made during that time, but it seems indisputable that the music’s influence had waned somewhat outside of the music’s core fans, artists, and labels.
Regardless, the real point is that we were (and still are) excited about what’s been happening with drum & bass and jungle in recent years. More producers are experimenting with the genre than ever before, many of them coming from scenes and backgrounds well outside of the music’s traditional fanbase. For a long time, it felt like drum & bass was operating in its own orbit, and now it’s mixing with footwork, grime, hip-hop, and more. This sort of creativity is something we support, and plan to keep documenting in the months and years ahead. Shawn Reynaldo
XLR8R’s Best of 2014 coverage concludes this week, so keeping checking back for our final year-end round-ups. In the meantime, don’t forget to take a look at the other Best of 2014 pieces we’ve posted already:
A recording of the latest installment from Willie Burns‘ (pictured above) weekly WTBS show for Newton Radio has surfaced, finding the NYC DJ/producer and L.I.E.S. label head Ron Morelli sharing some of their favorite music from the past year. Compiling just over two hours of music, the two selectors go back and forth highlighting a number of tracks that worked for them on the dancefloor throughout 2014, while also diving into some more home listening-appropriate fare along the way.
Though no tracklist has been shared, Burns (who, it should be noted, helms the radio show under his DJ Speculator alias) and Morelli do introduce each song, pointing out the artist, title, and label for each selection, along with some occasional commentary. The pair’s full radio show (which was broadcast yesterday) can be heard via the player below; Willie Burns’ 2014 XLR8R podcast can also be streamed and downloaded here.
