Throughout the week, a whole lot of material gets posted here on XLR8R. And while we know—and love—that some hardcore readers will eagerly pour over every single news story, interview, podcast, video, and MP3 download that appears on the site, we also realize that for most people, it’s impossible to see everything, which means that some quality XLR8R content is likely to get missed in the hustle and bustle of everyone’s daily lives. In the interest of making it easier for everyone to catch up, every Friday we present The Lowdown, a weekly wrap-up of the best tidbits from our site.
– Four Tet dropped an incredible new album, Pink, which we loved, and then gave us an overview of his storied career in the latest installment of our Rewind series.
– Grime upstart Royal-T turned in a high-energy mix for this week’s XLR8R podcast.
– We inaugurated our new Welcome to… series by taking an in-depth look at Russia’s burgeoning beats and bass scene. A couple of days later, a free compilation featuring many of the artists from the article was sent our way.
– Zodiac, former producer for The Weeknd, posted the first taste of his forthcoming EP for Jacques Greene’s Vase label.
– Our new advice columnist Nick Hook still needs your questions before Hi, Doctor Nick! debuts in September.
– Separate mini-documentaries about Flying Lotus and Mala surfaced on the same day.
– This week’s contest offered up the chance to win some boomSTREAM wireless speakers. Enter now, while you still can.
An expanded version of the The Lowdown is also available via a weekly email newsletter. Those interested in an even more in-depth round-up of XLR8R content, including a complete listing of all the free downloads we’ve offered in the past seven days, should sign up by entering their email address below.
Zulu, the 18-year-old producer from London, has been gradually garnering attention with past releases on Toddla T‘s and Raf Daddy‘s Girls Music, as well as Monki‘s Zoo Music. The most recent EP from the young producer will be dropping on September 3 courtesy of Buraka Som Sistema‘s Lisbon-based Enchufada label. “Kwame” is lifted from that record, and represents the kind of heavily percussive, tribal house tunes Zulu is wont to create. Boasting a toxic groove and a large helping of wavy synths, the tune’s techno underpinnings shine through and make for a harmonic blend of multiple dancefloor-friendly sounds.
Three acts from across the realm of UK electronic music, Geiom (pictured above), The Black Dog, and Visionist, have each just dropped some quality mixes—courtesy of Svetlana Industries, Berghain, and Dummy, respectively. Geiom, who is due to release an album later this year, stays true to his Nottingham roots, blending grime, dubstep, and other streetwise rhythms into a searing 26-minute mix. In its mix, veteran outfit The Black Dog fits right in at Berghain; the trio takes listeners on a long and winding voyage through the kinds of cavernous techno sounds the Berlin club and its regulars have become world-renowned for. Visionist’s mix, on the other hand, consists solely of his own original tracks, and shows off the wide spectrum of bass-heavy dubstep, grime, and funky-influenced tracks that the Lost Codes label head and 92 Points co-owner has been able to consistently churn out. You can stream the mixes from Geiom and The Black Dog below, and check out Visionist’s mix on Dummy, here.
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Detroit’s Luke Hess will soon be releasing his second album, Keep On, via Omar-S‘s FXHE label. The techno DJ/producer and DeepLabs label head will follow three EPs for FXHE—not to mention loads of other records—with the CD version of his 12-track offering sometime next month, though fans who would like the vinyl release will have to wait until October. You can check out the artwork and tracklist for Hess’ forthcoming LP after the jump. (via Resident Advisor)
01 Awareness (Reflections Revisited) 02 Briefing the Defenders 03 Humility (Renew Your Mind) feat. Papa Smurf 04 Restored 05 Deep to Deep 06 Small Electronic Break 07 Incorruptible 08 Overcome feat. Jeff Hess (mixed by Omar S) 09 Direction 10 Break Through 11 Redemption 12 Inheritance
Back in 1999, Unspecified Enemies proved to the world of electronic music that you didn’t need to be from Detroit to produce hard-edged techno. The crunchy rhythms of “Multi Ordinal Tracking Unit” propelled the duo of CiM and Louis Digital to underground popularity on both sides of the Atlantic (especially in the Motor City), and now, the Glasgow-based Numbers label plans to re-issue the limited-edition 12″ for old-school fans and a new generation of listeners. The re-release, which drops on September 24, includes a remastered version of “Multi Ordinal Tracking Unit” as well as a remix produced by Louis Digital himself, both of which you can stream below. Fans who opt for the digital version will also get two never-before-released tracks: “Bellona: I Do Mind Dying” and “Insurgency Soul.”
Mexican techno sensation Daniel Maloso is preparing to drop his debut full-length, the 10-song In and Out LP, on October 22 via Matias Aguayo’s Cómeme imprint. Our first taste of that forthcoming record is lead cut “Shera,” a bass-driven tune rife with bouncing rhythms, resonating chords, and ’80s Italo influence. Maloso’s new production is outrightly dark and ominous from the start, but nonetheless manages to keep things light with a funky groove that will undoubtedly beckon listeners to join the party wherever it’s played. After getting your fill of the track, make sure to check out the artwork and tracklist for In and Out, after the jump.
1. Shera 2. Body Music 3. Boney 4. They Came at Night 5. Punk Reggae Disco 6. Cafe Obscuro 7. Mamihlapinatapai 8. Control y Voltage 9. Right Kind 10. Steady Rolling (All My Life)
London-based house duo Bicep will soon inaugurate its new label, called Feel My Bicep, with its own three-track record. The forthcoming Vision of Love EP will feature the title track and two b-sides, “Keep Keep” and “Getcha’ Boi,” and will drop as a limited-edition vinyl release on September 24. Before then, Bicep has shared a trailer for the release, featuring clips of each track on Vision of Love accompanied by loads of old-school dance moves. You can check it out below. (via Resident Advisor)
The pursuit for a reliable means of digitally recreating realistic acoustic sounds has been around since the inception of digital audio. In 2003, the Austrian cellist/composer Herb Tucmandl completed a massive undertaking to this end, and created the Vienna Symphonic Library (or VSL)—an intensive collection of samples culled over years spent painstakingly recording each possible note and expression of virtually every orchestral instrument available. Upon its release, the VSL quickly became the industry standard for computer-generated orchestral reproduction in professional-grade TV and film studios, and received high praise for its attention to detail and depth of recordings. Since then, Tucmandl’s company has continually made attempts to open this resource to more musicians, finding ways to chip away at the original price tag (even now the VSL Vienna Super Package will still run you well over $6000). The Vienna Instruments Special Edition packages are the company’s latest effort to that end, aimed at getting its technology to home users and studios by enabling access to a truncated version of its library via a VST/AU/RTAS plug-in.
Special Edition Vol. 1 features what the company refers to as the “Essential Orchestra” instruments—including an array of strings, horns, woodwinds, keyboards, and percussion sound sources. The Vienna Instruments software that comes with the package is, for the most part, relatively easy to use, especially after viewing one of the product’s well-made and informative tutorial videos. Fortunately, the software (which can be used both as a plug-in and a stand-alone program) allows for different layers of complexity. This makes it so users can get sounds up and running quickly using the “Basic” view—adjusting simple settings like Reverb and Expression—while still being able to access the more subtle and sophisticated features of the instruments—such as the Velocity Curve, ADSR Envelope, and more—in the “Advanced” view.
The virtual instruments are built using sample components that can be assembled inside of a matrix. Essentially, the different components of an acoustic performance—staccato, legato, portamento, sustain, sforzato, etc.—can be assigned along the matrix and toggled between in order to theoretically yield a realistic performance. This, however, is where things can get a little tricky and where a base knowledge of classical theory seems to be necessary to really understand how to put these matrices together. Still, VSL provides varying ways to approach this. If the user wants to build their instruments from scratch, they can, or they can utilize the fully built factory presets and matrix set-ups as a jumping point. (For a more in-depth explanation of the matrix and other inner workings of the VSL Instruments software, check the video below)
But the real question here is that of sound quality. Considering that this program comes from a classical music background, the instruments sound remarkably clean and crisp. The key- and percussion-based samples sound the most realistic off the bat—the xylophone, celesta, vibraphone, and harp are rewarding from the first touch. Furthermore, the strings, horns, and woodwinds are some of the most realistic sounding samples available on the market at this price point. Still, it should be noted that these sounds are meant to be a baseline from which to create larger and more expansive audio, and while they are exceptionally detailed and nuanced, they are—by design—a bit plain and dry. While this may not be the most inspiring place to start for many producers, it does give plenty of room for molding and shaping the sounds to one’s own taste, which does provide the user with more freedom—albeit at the cost of speed.
In the end, the VSL Special Edition Vol. 1 (there are up to four volumes now) is unarguably a high-quality tool for reproducing acoustic tones. However, it is also a program that requires a good amount of time and attention to detail (particularly in the performance aspect) in order to prodcue the most realistic and satisfying results. Unless one’s production aesthetic relies immensely on recreating distinctly “real”-sounding tones, most home-studio electronic producers would be better off finding a program that loses the immense amount of performance options and does a bit more of the thinking for them.
Following a handful of exceptional12″s for Ramp sub-label Fourth Wave, camera-shy UK DJ/producer Gerry Read has announced the imminent arrival of yet another single, which will soon be followed by a full-length album. The lead tune, “Evidence,” will drop on September 16, and precedes the October release of the young artist’s Jummy LP. The press release describes the forthcoming album as “a colourful collage, sounding akin to a house-music Avalanches,” and goes on to say that the whole thing was recorded in Gerry Read’s bedroom in the “sleepy market town of Bury St Edmunds.” Before either of those records are released, you can listen to the bewitching “Evidence,” below.
It’s a wild mix of sounds and styles in today’s edition of Press Play, with heavyweights like Four Tet and Wolfgang Voigt dropping frequencies alongside younger talents such as Suzanne Kraft, Michna, Total Freedom, Jonwayne, and Robot Koch, among plenty of others. Give it all a spin after the jump.
A burly reworking of a standout tune from Four Tet‘s brand-new Pink LP from up-and-coming tunesmith Happa.
Kompakt boss Wolfgang Voigt shares his “HardTranceAtlanticXSMix” of a track he produced with Jörg Burger as Mohn.
LA beatmaker Jonwayne claims to be “getting the funk out” on his latest tune to surface online, and we wholeheartedly agree.
Here’s another leak from Michna‘s forthcoming EP for Ghostly, the airy and bright “Through the City on the Edge of Forever.”
The latest signee on New York’s UNO label, Aquarian evokes the soul of Drexciyan electro and techno on “Motherisk,” the hard-edged first leak from his forthcoming record.
Suzanne Kraft‘s buoyant “Horoscope” tune is lifted from the DJ/producer’s forthcoming EP for Young Adults.
LA DJ/producer and Fade to Mind cohort Total Freedom nabs Kelela’s vocal from Teengirl Fantasy’s new “EFX” single, and makes his own slow-bouncing tune with her soulful melodies.
The artist formely known as Beacon, Lorenz System follows up his recent freebie, “2K,” with “2K4O,” a punchy and glistening cut that further exhibits the producer’s budding love for freestyle beats.
