Though we tend to neglect many flash-in-the-pan genres here at XLR8R, there are certainly some fad-friendly tunes we can get behind. One such track comes from Atlanta-based DJ/producer Manikan, whose brand-new On the Grind EP features an array of so-called “future-trap” beats. “S.L.A.M.” is the only collaborative track on the record, however, produced with the help of longtime Philadelphia producer and Secluasiasis boss Dev 79. Though it contains the ubiquitous, thuggish vocal samples that have become all too familiar lately, Manikan’s tune sets itself apart with refreshing, sparkling pads, fluttering percussion, and a juke-leaning break. Stream the full EP after the jump.
After impressing us earlier this year with his excellent Time Team LP, Slugabed had been a little too quiet for our tastes over the past few months. But now, the UK producer has announced the launch of his own imprint, Activia Benz, set to drop its first EP—the debut outing from a Belarusian beatsmith known as Deech—next month. Aside form Deech’s Urnite EP, Slugabed and label partner Jake Slee have shared plans for future releases from the likes of 813, Arm Wtchs Fngrs, Eloq, and more. For now, you can stream a preview of Deech’s forthcoming record—which features a remix from Slugabed himself—as well as peep the accompanying artwork and tracklist for the Urnite EP, below.
Los Angeles’ Don Froth has steadily made a name for himself over the years as a capable dance music adventurer across a handful of releases for West Norwood Casette Library, Phonica, and his own Froth’n imprint. Now, the SoCal producer is planning to make his debut on NYC’s UNO label later this month with the five-track REflex EP (artwork above). Among the four originals Froth’s forthcoming EP has to offer, the record is also set to feature one of Detroit’s finest, Anthony “Shake” Shakir, who has been enlisted to remix the effort’s title track. And, best yet, that resulting acid-tinged workout has been offered up for free download before the REflex EP sees an official release November 27.
The array of sights and sounds we have for you in today’s Press Play installment is kind of amazing. Seriously, a whole lot of great tunes from top-notch artists appeared on the internet this week—including remixes, originals, exclusive premieres, and more from the likes of Com Truise, Dinamo Azari of Azari & III, Jerome LOL, Jimmy Edgar, Lindstrøm, Mmoths, members of The Miracles Club, and plenty of others. There’s a whole lot to take in here, so make sure you’re up to date on all of the new tunes after the jump.
Sally Shapiro is releasing her “What Can I Do” single next week, but today, we’ve got this remix of the bubbly synth-pop tune from the ’80s-obsessed New Jersey beatmaker Com Truise.
Half of Azari & III, Dinamo Azari drops a stripped-down version of the latest house jam to surface from NY DJ/producer/vocalist Kim Ann Foxman, “Return It.”
Berlin-based artist Jimmy Edgar does his dirty electro-techno hybrid thing to the title track from London band Get People’s upcoming Back to Dust EP.
Distal’s Embassy label is about to drop a two-track release from London up-and-comer Thefft, and has given us the exclusive preview of both drum-heavy tracks in their entirety.
This buoyant dancefloor jam is a vocal edit of “V?s-S?k?-Rv,” a lively cut from Lindstrøm’s recently released Smalhans album.
Here’s a slow-grooving version of Tomas Barfod’s excellent “November Skies” track from his Salton Sea LP for Friends of Friends, a remix by ex-LOL Boys producer Jerome LOL.
If you didn’t know, The Miracles Club’s Rafael Fauria has a side project with Avalon Kalin of Finesse, making similarly classic and deep house cuts under the name Emotion II Emotion; the duo just dropped its first EP via Skylax Records, which you can stream in the player above.
Young Irish producer Mmoths unveils the tender first leak from his upcoming Diaries EP, featuring a vocal turn from R&B upstart Young & Sick.
This ominous and punishing cut of electronic madness arrives courtesy of the two Raster-Noton label heads that make up Diamond Version, a duo which will release its second in a series of five EPs on November 27 via Mute.
Because we’re pretty sture you guys can’t get enough of Kid Smpl, here’s another leak from his brand-new Skylight LP, the spacious and emotive “Nearing.”
The Lefse-signed producer Mister Lies announced the imminent arrival of his first LP, Mowgli, with this stream of its first single, the acid-tinged and beat-driven “Align.”
All week long, we’ve been posting features and lists detailing our favorite labels—if you’ve missed any of that, catch up with them all here—but for this year’s edition of Labels We Love, we wanted to do something a little different. Last week, we put out the call for our readers to vote for their favorite imprints, and although it took a while to tabulate the thousands of votes we received from around the globe, we’ve come up with a list of the Top 20 labels, as voted by the XLR8R faithful. Looking at results, one thing is immediately clear: our readers have pretty damn good taste.
It’s been a busy week in the world of music production technology; between the slew of new products announced, shipped, and updated, there has certainly been a lot to keep up with. Fortunately, we’ve gathered up the most important bits in one convenient place yet again, so read up and grab some free drum sample packs while you’re at it.
Some shiny new toys from Elektron and Pioneer:
– After teasing its existence with an apocalyptic promo video (seriously), Elektron finally revealed the details of its latest product, the Analog Four. This four-voice analog synthesizer is set to hit stores next month, but you can read up on its finer details now, here.
– And just yesterday, Pioneer revealed a new mixer, the DJM-2000nexus, which appears to be a cross between the recent CDJ-2000nexus CD player and the existing DJM-2000 mixer in terms of features and functionality. You can read our full article on the new unit here and catch it in action via the demo video below (if you can ignore the abhorrent music, that is).
Barker & Baumecker have a lot of cool gear:
– Earlier this week, Resident Advisor offered an in-depth look into the studio and equipment utilized by Berlin producers Barker & Baumecker. RA’s drool-worthy array of pictures and insightful interview can be read in full here.
A new iPad multi-touch sampler, Nuendo and Cubase updates, and Apogee’s Quartet ships:
– A new multi-touch sampler app for the iPad, simply called Samplr, hit the iTunes store this week. Check out the video below for a better idea of what Samplr is capable of, and head over here for more details and videos.
– Steinberg has unveiled new versions of its long-running DAWs Nuendo and Cubase. Now on its seventh version, Cubase 7 focuses on music production while Nuendo 6 aims to be a platform for the entire audio production world, with a focus on sound design for film and video.
– Renowned designers of high-end digital audio converters Apogee began shipping its latest product, a four-input, eight-output interface aimed at project and mobile studios and cleverly referred to as the Quartet.
And lastly, Dublab and Ableton want you to have some custom drum packs:
– As part of its current fundraising Proton Drive, Dublab had a day dedicated to Ableton users, and in the process gave away custom drum packs from Sweatson Klank (a.k.a. Take), Butchy Fuego, D33J, and the Contact Field Orchestra. You can download a ZIP of those drum packs here and head over to Dublab to peep all the cool stuff they’re selling off to help raise funds.
On November 21, London-based DJ/producer Radioactive Man will drop the vinyl version of his latest LP, Waits and Measures, which comes complete with 12 remixes of its tracks (you can pre-order the double-LP here). One of the producers enlisted for remix duty is Detroit techno verteran DJ Stingray, who recently announced his forthcoming F.T.N.W.O. LP and helmed an XLR8R podcast. His mix of “Incoming!” maintains a fiery pulse while the elements at the forefront shift between diverse percussion, airy synths, and fat techno bass.
By no stretch would it be accurate to call Ohio-born musician Steve Hauschildt an innovator. Both as one third of Emeralds and as a solo artist, the Midwestern synth guru predominantly relies on vintage analog hardware and uses the sounds those machines create to harken back to the warm and relatively simplistic arrangements explored by iconic artists like Giorgio Moroder, Harald Grosskopf, and Tangerine Dream. However, listening to the cosmic synth tapestries on last year’s excellent Tragedy & Geometry album never inspired any obvious comparisons or kitsch-induced grimaces; even though Hauschildt was never changing the musical landscape with his twinkling kosmiche compositions, his music bursted with austere beauty and unique character. Those qualities pervade much of Hauschildt’s latest LP, Sequitur, though they’re juxtaposed with a handful of forays into the realm of synth-pop, which are seldom as beautiful or unique.
It’s entirely understandable why Hauschildt was curious to apply his skills on the keyboard to a pop-leaning format. Not only is he deft with composition and tone, the man is an outright genius when it comes to writing memorably touching melodies, and practically all of his work bears testament to the fact. But why tracks like “Constant Reminders” and “Accelerated Yearning” fall flat is less related to the songwriting and more about the sound selection. Hauschildt leans toward an almost dopey kind of playfulness during these moments, often times sounding something like a Muzak version of Daft Punk or Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark making lounge music. The vocoded lyrics on “Constant Reminders” (“We’re all connected, can’t you see that it’s true?”) come off a bit chincy and cliché. “Mixed Messages”—despite easily being the best of this ilk—uses what could very well be a preset demo from a Casio SK-1 as its central melody. None of which is the least bit terrible in and of itself, but when set alongside Sequitur‘s more immersive and transcendent tunes, the contrast in character and style is too stark to ignore.
Thankfully, most of Hauschildt’s eight-track LP further explores the sounds and themes that made Tragedy & Geometry the brilliant record it is. “Interconnected” opens the proceedings in a particularly lush fashion, boasting a synthetic choir pad, plinking arpeggiations, a warming bassline, and one hell of a poignant lead melody at its core. Frankly, the music is as comforting as it is downright beautiful. Things get a bit more mysterious and hypnotic down the tracklist, as “Sequitur,” “Vegas Mode,” and “Kept” put the listener into a kind of lucid suspended animation with their twinkling atmospheres and interwoven sequences. Sequitur ends with “Steep Decline,” the album’s longest song at five and a half minutes. (By comparison, the lengthiest tune on Tragedy was 11 minutes.) Hauschildt is unusually understated in his closing piece, maintaining a quiet hum of lulling tones and synths that never quite manage to swell to capacity. As the arrangement—carried by a softly thumping drum machine—continues growing in size and intensity, the moment of cathartic release seems just beyond the horizon, but is never reached. The restraint exhibited in “Steep Decline” can be refreshing, not to mention the difference between a gaudy or indulgent song and something more palatable and refined. Maybe it’s something that Sequitur could’ve used a little more of.
The Chilean producer Alejandro Paz dropped the two-track Callejero EP earlier this week, for which the bouncy “Cumbia A Lo Lejos” serves as the b-side. While the song’s title is a bit self-explanatory—essentially translating to “Distant Cumbia” (although our Spanish is admittedly a little rusty)—what Paz offers here is a little less bombastic than what one might expect from the South American brand of digital cumbia, as it folds loads of, well, distant synth pads and some sprightly melodic leads into the proceeding. After giving “Cumbia A Lo Lejos” a spin below, you can check out the EP’s title track and accompanying video after the jump.
In retrospect, the most intriguing aspect of Nina Kraviz‘s self-titled debut was its loose and raw-edged production aesthetic. The whole thing contrasted sharply with larger trends in dance music towards formulaic organization, compression, and quantization. Lead single “Ghetto Kraviz” was such a hit with dancefloors because it took a uniquely sparse angle with its weird vocals and tom-heavy drumwork. Yet for all the track had going for it, its short, four-minute duration held it back unnecessarily—it was the kind of song that begged to be re-arranged. Naturally, this already resulted in one single’s worth of re-edits, with two club-friendly versions by Amine Edge and Akid released on an EP for Rekids’ Rek’d sub-label earlier this year. Now, the label is back with a new remix release that combines two new takes on the track by Steve Rachmad with a KiNK remix of previously untouched album cut “Love or Go.”
Appreciation of this EP really depends on context. Whereas Kraviz’s original LP was better experienced at home, the remixes are aimed squarely at a big-room dancefloor. This is immediately apparent on the first track, as Steve Rachmad’s “Jack Mix” introduces a big kick drum with militant snares clapping away on every beat. At a full eight minutes, the remix fulfills its duty of making the track club ready, but in the process, it sucks out a lot of what made the original so appealing—it’s rigid to a fault, with synths and vocals fluttering noticeably as they’re time stretched to fit the grid. If that’s not intense enough, his “Scorp Interpretation” takes the same rhythmic direction and adds an almost dissonant nouveau-acid synthesizer assault. Here, Kraviz’s vocals are used like white-noise risers, rolling up and exploding out of speakers for intense euphoric effect. It’s not experimental—it’s actually a little tedious—but at least it’s functional in the way it uses Kraviz to provide something to grab onto in what would otherwise be just another banger.
The best mix on the record is KiNK’s rework of “Love or Go,” Kraviz’s atmospheric vocal cut. Like “Ghetto Kraviz,” the original is characterized by a loose arrangement, something that isn’t entirely lost in this new translation. KiNK turns in a modern-day dub remix with short snippets of Kraviz’s voice flying around a creeping bassline that ultimately bubbles up into intense waves of acid abrasion. It’s a successful effort, mostly because it keeps the original in mind while pushing things in a significantly more trippy direction with creative usage of delay and reverb. However, as good as it is, it doesn’t do much to change the fact that the three cuts on this EP will likely only appeal to Kraviz completists and DJs looking to reference her material in a set without having to resort to playing her more difficult-to-mix original work.
