This Week in Music Tech: Live 9 Update, Simian Mobile Disco’s Live Rig, DJ Q Remix Contest, Theo Parrish Workshop, and More

Another week has passed and, of course, another slew of announcements and news pertinent to the production community have made their way to the web. In this edition of our weekly gear-related round-up, we have news of Abelton Live 9’s latest update and FL Studio Mobile for Android, along with a video of Simian Mobile Disco’s live set-up, details of a new DJ Q remix contest, and Theo Parrish’s open workshop in London next month.

On Tuesday, XLR8R shared its review of Live 9 and Ableton‘s Push control surface, taking a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of the new products. Our full review can be read here.

Meanwhile, Ableton released an early update to its software version, Live 9.0.3, which addresses many bug issues and improves a number of features that the Ableton user community has expressed a want and need for. The update is free to all existing Live 9 owners, and the full list of improvements, updates, and bug fixes that come with 9.0.3 can be found here.

Following the release of its solid Live album this week, Simian Mobile Disco shared a glimpse into the gear and connections which make for its elaborate live set-up. The Creators Project-produced video catches up with the UK pair before a performance in Berlin as they discuss how exactly their live set-up is confgured and show off the various pieces of audio and MIDI equipment that facilitate the group’s renowned performances.

DJ Q, Local Action, and Juno teamed up to launch a remix contest this week, inviting budding producers to rework DJ Q’s “Trust Again” single from earlier this year. The month-long contest gives those who enter the complete stems from the track, and offers prizes like a Juno voucher, a SoundCloud Pro Account, the entire Local Action back catalog, and more for the winning rework. Submissions are due by May 26; the full deatils can be found here.

As part of a benefit for the Steve Reid Foundation (a charity made to honor the late jazz drummer and Four Tet collaborator by providing assistance for muscians suffering from an illness and unable to afford treatment), outspoken Detroit luminary Theo Parrish will participate in an open workshop during which 50 audience members will have the chance to watch the veteran DJ/producer build a track from scratch. Limited tickets for the event in London on May 7 can be purchased here, and anyone can suggest sample material for Parrish to use by tweeting @SteveReidFNDN with the hashtag “#SRF” between now and April 24. (via Dummy)

FL Studio Mobile, the phone- and tablet-friendly version of Image-Line’s FL Studio production software, is now fully availible for the Android platform (it has been availible as an iOS app for some time now). Many of FL Studio Mobile’s features can be seen in action in the video above, and the full details can be read up on here.

Lastly, this week Korg shared a new video in which Fumio Mieda and Hiroaki Nishijima—two of the designers behind the company’s legendary MS-20 synthesizer—sat down to discuss the MS-20’s original design and their collective work developing the company’s new MS-20 Mini analog synth.

A.M. Architect “Window”*Urbnet*

A.M. Architect is a Boston-based beat duo whose third record, Pattern Language, saw release via Toronto’s Urbnet back in February. Album highlight “Window” has just been offered up as a free download—along with a stuttering edit of the track, which can be nabbed here. The tune is notable for its microscopic attention to detail, with its lush piano lines and evocative vocal sample layered over broken, distorted beats. A.M. Architect also shared along with its tune a new mini-documentary from Studio Feed, which details the origins of the pair’s project, after the jump.

A.M. Architect – Window

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Pharaohs Replicant Moods

Replicant Moods doesn’t aim to surprise—not in a way that will register at first, anyway. Enough has been written about the 100% Silk label over the past few years for many readers to have an accurate picture of the LA band’s jammy, loose sprawl before pressing play. Having an aesthetic template turns out to be to Pharaohs’ advantage, though. The group consists, unusually for synth bands that are not Kraftwerk, of four members, although the line-up’s girth isn’t exactly notable on record. The mix never suggests that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and the participants’ sensibilities average out nicely; while the album’s title references LA anomie, the music itself offers pure outdoor-PA geniality without giving itself over to good-life So Cal clichés.

Instrumental tracks, such as the title cut, wander enough to showcase how casually frayed edges—like the song’s prismatic spurts of piano roll—and an easygoing sense of fun have their place in dance music. Seen against the backdrop of the label’s catalog, too, the members of Pharaohs aren’t pushing themselves to sound edgy: they simply make up the self-effacing supergroup LA didn’t know it needed. With Maria Minerva’s guest spot on “Miraculous Feet,” Pharaohs puts a finger on its low-pressure appeal. Minerva’s act, as always, is based on her particular way of performing the sublime in the stupid and vice versa. Transplanted from her own melty production aesthetic into Pharaohs’ dimensional, dubby disco backing, those modulations sound decisive and directed, far from her usual pomo hall of mirrors. It’s an emblematic track for an album whose obvious choices, structure-wise, are also its best ones. That kind of range is nothing to sniff at; it’s necessarily harder to do something established well than to emphasize the points of difference. So while “Everything” doesn’t stand out for its originality either—its rousing vocal sample laid over rolling piano house is a well-established combination—the pieces fall together in a way that conveys a natural sense of camaraderie that’s as hard to resist as the dead-simple Reese bassline that powers it forward.

The remainder of Replicant Moods is less driven than those two standouts, content to settle into funky, robotic nu-disco grooves that have been liberally seasoned with the additional ebb and flow of taut, busy synthwork. While the sounds Pharaohs favors tend to evoke familiar musical vocabularies, from satiny Italo to the clunky hustle of electro, what we ultimately hear are the imperfections that hold it together. Structurally, then, there’s a hint of Frak’s provisional, on-edge style in Replicant Moods. This is “jamming” as a deliberate balancing act rather than carte blanche to noodle. Only a handful of Replicant Moods‘ tracks make a lasting impression, but this foursome still consistently gets the entropy-to-pattern ratio just right.

Hreno “Over My Head”*Meander*

Originally from Montreal, the Berlin-based producer Hreno is set to release The Frank Barns EP only a few months after his first solo release, the Country to Country EP for Sound Architecture. Taken from his forthcoming record, “Over My Head” is a dubby house cut which unfurls slowly over its nearly eight-minute runtime, rewarding the listener with lush disco loops before closing out with the reverie-like gospel sample from which the track derives its name. Hreno’s latest tune is accompanied by a fairly disturbing music video—an edited version of a classic scene from ?u?awski’s cult horror film Possession—which can be viewed before the Meander imprint drops The Frank Barns EP on May 13, after the jump.

Over My Head

ADR Chunky Monkey

New York’s Aaron David Ross used to be easier to pin down. He first emerged as half of Gatekeeper, a duo that originally melded ’80s horror soundtracks with pulsing dancefloor muscle. In 2011, he released his first solo LP, Solitary Pursuits, which came across as a languid, stargazing adjunct to Gatekeeper. Somewhere around the time he joined hypothetical boy band HD Boyz, however, Ross’s retro-futurism took a turn for the bizarre. This might have something to do with his shift from 1980s motifs to 1990s ones. Gatekeeper’s acid-focused Exo, released last year, filtered industrial rave and Ron Fricke film soundtracks through immersive modern sound design, resulting in an intense, if gaudy, update of the group’s signature combination. Chunky Monkey, then, is that record’s Solitary Pursuits, its more low-key complement.

In spite of their various reference points, most of Ross’s projects have been fairly unique, albeit in an uncannily familiar way. Chunky Monkey, on the other hand, is the closest he has come to historical facsimile. The record takes on a variety of bygone genres, most of them breakbeat led, and pairs them with an array of garish, largely unfashionable elements. “Slush Fund” melds scatting and wailing woodwinds, while “Stray Dog Strut” does a kind of cod-digi-reggae laced with a perky lead and an inexplicable variety of elements, ranging from banjos to what sounds like a rooster. There’s more scatting on the pseudo-jungle throwback “Big Daddy,” but its glistening atmospherics are clearly of our time. The bleepy melody on the trip-hop-ish “What It Takes” is also somewhat modern, but its coy, exaggeratedly dusky vocals beg one to wonder where he found such a singer.

The problem with Chunky Monkey is not that it’s a throwback—practically every contemporary record contains a glance backwards. It’s more that its examination of lounge culture is more arch than affecting. Although plenty of similar examinations will surely follow, perhaps with better success, this preset-laden side of 1990s electronic music simply lacks the immediate leverage of Solitary Pursuits‘ analog (or at least analog-esque) library music. As largely instrumental, home-listening music, it quickly becomes tiresome. A better recent interpretation can be found in Plvs Vltra’s Parthenon, which combined this kitschy excess with bubblegum pop, providing hooks beyond simple audio memories.

Chunky Monkey conjures music which might never have existed previously, but which nonetheless sounds familiar, and not in a good way. If it’s taken as Ghost Box and UK hauntology re-imagined for the children of big beat and ’90s MTV, perhaps it can be viewed as a commendable effort. Ross is as committed a conceptualist as his peer James Ferraro, and the record is at least cohesively goofy, even down to its cheeky, Plastikman-esque logo. It’s just a pity that the actual music is so superfluous—though this is probably the point.

xxxy “Progression” b/w “Thinkin Bout”

xxxy‘s last outing—the house-leaning Got Me So for Rinse—left us a little cold. The title track was a solid enough tune, but amidst the current climate of UK dancefloors, its blend of house and garage influences simply didn’t jump out from the crowd in the same way that the London-based producer’s best moments had in the past. Thankfully, this follow-up single for Welsh imprint Ten Thousand Yen—the label that’s played home to a considerable number of his best tracks to date—is a return to what xxxy does best.

Most notably, both tracks here are livelier and full of Taylor’s distinct personality. Each tune is born of the point where the grittiness of warehouse techno meets the playful bounce of vintage rave music, resulting in a pair of very likeable tracks that makes an instant impression. “Progression,” on the a-side, is based around a relentless synth arpeggio and is certainly the most upfront thing we’ve heard from xxxy in a while. It’s fairly simplistic in its composition, consisting of little more than the drive of that aggressive synth line and a propulsive beat built around quick hats and taught snare hits. But there are plenty of little touches in there to keep things interesting; xxxy peppers the background with minimal synth lines that gently shift the feel of the track as it progresses, and throws in the occasional inversion of the lead line for good measure.

B-side “Thinkin Bout,” meanwhile, comes a little closer to retreading territory xxxy has covered in the past, though it still packs plenty of vintage charm. He revives the quick-cut, detuned vocals that have almost become a trademark of his work and fixes them around a rattling rhythm of rapid-fire drum-machine hits. As the song progresses, a couple of fantastically on-point percussive synths cut right through the center of the tune, giving the whole thing a bouncy, old-school energy. As with the a-side, it’s hardly reinventing the wheel, but both tracks combine spirited energy with genuinely catchy rhythms—which is exactly what xxxy does best.

Peverelist and Hodge Ready Collaborative 12″ for Punch Drunk; Preview It Now

Following this year’s XLR8R Pick’d “Raw Code” b/w “Junked”, Bristol bass-music mainstay Peverelist is readying another collaborative 12″, this time working with fellow Bristolian and low-end aficionado Hodge on a couple of tracks for his Punch Drunk label. The record will feature two versions of a moody track called “Bells” (which appeared earlier this year in a mix by Kowton) and is slated for release on May 13. Before then, previews of the “Bells (System Mix)” and “Bells (Dream Sequence)” can be heard below. (via Juno Plus)

Natasha Kmeto Announces New LP, Shares First Single

Portland-based artist Natasha Kmeto has announced that she’ll return to hometown label Dropping Gems to release her sophomore album, sharing its details and new track “Take Out.” Called Crisis, the 10-track record follows Kmeto’s Dirty Mind Melt EP (the title track from which you can grab for free, here) from February, and—if its first leak is any indication—seems to delve further into the producer’s work with sparse beats and tweaked vocals. Before Dropping Gems releases Crisis on June 18, its artwork, tracklist, and lead single can be found below.

1. Crisis
2. Idiot Proof
3. Brushstrokes
4. Last Time
5. Morning Sex
6. Take Out

7. Vodka Diet
8. Buried
9. Deeply
10. Prideless

Move D Announces New 12″; Preview It Now

Following this week’s announcement of his forthcoming single, deep-house maestro Move D has delivered news that more music is on the way. London outpost Electric Minds will drop Move D’s “To The Disco ’77” tune as a vinyl-only single—pairing it with remixes of Move D’s “Got 2 Be” and “Useless” tracks by the likes of Endian, Jay Shepheard, and Duff Disco. The whole record can be previewed in the player before it’s released on May 13, below.

Watch Simian Mobile Disco Show Off Live Gear

Just in time for the recent release of its aptly titled Live album, Simian Mobile Disco has shared a glimpse into the gear that makes up its impressive live arsenal. The brief video, produced by The Creators Project, catches up with the UK pair before a performance in Berlin as they discuss how their live set-up works and show off the pieces which help build its tracks on stage (an event we were lucky enough to catch recently during Coachella’s first weekend). Simian Mobile Disco’s video can watched in the player below.

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