Priced to compete with Native Instrument’s Maschine, the Arturia Spark (MSRP: $599) is also a hybrid software/hardware package designed particularly with beat production in mind. In the sound department, Arturia partners its considerable synthesis muscles with third parties like Sonic Reality and Uberschall to compile an impressive synthesized and sample-based instrument library. All told, Spark features no less than 480 instruments and 30 acoustic and electronic kits. Spark is housed in a slick white-and-grey aluminium case with a hefty bunch of knobs, pads, and buttons. Controller functions include eight velocity-sensitive MPC-style pads, an X/Y pad, a 16-track mixer, and something like 30 dedicated and assignable knobs. Direct access to shuffle and shift modes and a 16-key, 64-step sequencer all add up to a pretty impressive piece of gear and one more contender in what could someday become an MPC-killing genre.
UK’s post-dubstep darling Joy Orbison will be bringing his brand of forward-thinking bass music to this side of the Atlantic for the first time next month. Kicking off with two dates in NYC, Orbison will then be heading straight to the West Coast with performances scheduled in SF, LA, and an appearance on the final day of Coachella. Is he perhaps wary of states that can’t claim an ocean on its border, or just a busy man? We can’t really say, but those who find themselves fortunate enough to be in the chosen cities should make it a priority to see the UK wunderkind in action. You can check the handful of dates below.
Joy Orbison US Dates: 04/09, New York, NY, Mister Saturday Night (with Eamon Harkin & Justin Carter), 341 Scholes 04/11, New York, NY, Deep Space (with Francois K), Cielo 04/15, San Francisco, CA 1015 Folsom (with Kode9) 04/17, Coachella, CA, Coachella Music Festival 04/19, Los Angeles, CA, Roxy (with Ramadanman)
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You might remember Danish duo Taragana Pyjarama from this vibrant micro-techno track we offered near the beginning of the month. That tune comes from the outfit’s just-released self-titled EP, as does the buoyant dance production “Girls,” which is paired with the colorful video piece above. Director Emmanuel Beaudry edits together flickering visuals of two seasonal extremes—winter and summer—along with shapeshifting, kaleidoscopic patterns, to conjure the kind of nostalgia that tends to bubble up around both times of the year. Instead of a linear narrative to tell the story, Beaudry paints an unspecific picture with Nicolas Lachapelle’s handheld camera work that’s as lovely and romantic as Taragana Pyjarama’s song.
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One of our favorite songs from last year, which also just so happened to be on one of our favorite albums of 2010, Teengirl Fantasy‘s wonderful “Cheaters” tune recently received the official remix treatment from John Talabot and Beautiful Swimmers, and will be released by Spain’s Hivern Discs label next month. The limited-edition Cheaters Remixes 12″ (pictured above) will be pressed on green marble vinyl, and will feature the original song along with its two hotly tipped remixes, all of which you can listen to below.
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Win Win has got all the elements of a killer collective project—slick production from XXXchange and Chris Devlin, involvement from visual artist/producer Ghostdad, and guest mic spots from Spank Rock’s Naeem Juwan and Gang Gang’s Lizzi Bougatsos. So it’s beyond us why no one’s really making much of a deal about the electro-hip(ster)-hop super-group. In any event, they’ve added another “name” to their ranks, with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor crooning on the outfit’s new “Interleave” track, which was just coupled with the colorful images above. Scion A/V helped produce this super-flashy new music video for the tune, on which emotions fly high alongside Taylor’s poignant verses while digital renderings of the singer’s face pulse and flicker amongst an array of other colorful and flashy visual effects. Kudos to director Colin Devin Moore and co-visual artist Gil Amorin on such a rich and engaging piece.
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Arthur Cayzer isn’t unique among his producer peers for venerating Burial, declaring the influential artist’s Untrue to be one of the greatest things he’s heard in the last few years. “I’m probably pretty indebted to that album,” says the 22-year-old, now living in East London. “I would probably never use vocals in my production if it wasn’t for Burial.” On the other hand, he may stand out for being a huge fan of the Canadian hardcore act Cursed, which wrote the song that inspired Cayzer to go by the name Pariah when fashioning his own particular brand of melancholic, post-dubstep bass beats. “I love the whole hardcore scene as well. They do have this incredible emotion,” says Cayzer. “It might be different kinds of emotions, but it hits you just as hard. That’s something that I tried to hopefully replicate in a way, but just re-contextualize, with my music.”
Cayzer doesn’t exactly have a long production history; after fiddling with Logic on a friend’s computer as a teen, he got a MacBook in late 2008 and self-released his first single, the dusty and gritty “Detroit Falls,” shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, there is certainly a sense of urgency with both Cayzer’s music—from “Detroit Falls” to the superlative work on his eclectic and polished Safehouse EP, which dropped in October on the venerable R&S label—and his career. Part of it comes from his self-described loose and spontaneous production style and his use of vocals, a mixture of Motown samples and ’90s R&B (he won’t tell us the exact sources) that’s been a stylistic fixture as he finds his own voice. “The little phrases mean a lot to me, but I don’t think it’s the most important thing,” he says. “People can interpret it themselves. It creates an extra melody and something more human. Electronic music can be very cold sometimes.”
Cayzer checks off many of the standard electronic music influences, like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Brian Eno, and also feels a nostalgia for jungle and its golden age, though he was too young to experience it firsthand, instead having to cycle through singles like Doc Scott’s “It’s Yours” and old radio sets after the fact. He’s also been DJing recently, which has made him focus more on tight, dancefloor-focused arrangements, like “Orpheus,” the b-side of “Detroit Falls,” which is a dubbed-out thumper that references Burial’s style in a few ways, not least of which is the vocal sample, taken from Thelma Houston’s disco classic “Don’t Leave Me This Way.”
His own style is of course taking root, and Cayzer plans to work on a full-length album soon. “I’m going to try and take it away from the dancefloor while still having roots in dance music,” he offers, but not before he finishes his studies at Queen Mary in East London first. The proposed topic of his thesis is religious tensions as reflected in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the tragedy, at least for dance fans, is the wait.
The Huntleys & Palmers party began in 2007 in Glasgow as a boutique hub for forward-thinking dance music, and now, after years of energizing dancefloors—not to mention a move to London—the H&P crew is expanding its operations and launching a proper record label. The first release comes from Auntie Flo, another Glaswegian, albeit one who’s originally from Goa, India. His Goan Highlife EP (artwork pictured above) includes two slices of percussion-heavy house music with an upbeat, almost tribal feel. Although “Highlife” doesn’t bear many traces of the distinctive guitar melodies that define the African genre of the same name, the tune’s incessant drums and occasional bursts of swirling synths still combine to form an infectious listen, which is probably why people like Villalobos and Optimo have been featuring the song in their sets. The song also features an equally fun, dance-filled video, which we’ve posted below, and folks in London can celebrate its release in person at the Huntleys & Palmers label launch party at Plastic People on April 9. Auntie Flo will be spinning alongside T. Williams and others, while Mim Suleiman will be performing live. Check the flyer with all the details after the jump.
Berlin-based audio troublemaker Jason Forrest (a.k.a. DJ Donna Summer, Nightshifters label co-owner) just announced that he’ll be releasing his first full-length album under his given name in six years on May 3. Called The Everything, the 11-track record follows his recent Utopia EP (from which we shared this track) for the Deathbomb Arc imprint, and will be released by German label Staatsakt. Describing Forrest’s forthcoming LP, its press release says, “There are elements of almost every genre one can think of—from rockabilly to dubstep to electro-acoustics. It’s an album that takes the listener on an audio tour through Forrest’s musical world. In short: It’s everything.” The first single from The Everything, called “Raunchy,” is out now with remixes from Jokers of the Scene and two others (listen to that here). You can also watch the video for that track, and check out the forthcoming record’s artwork and tracklist, below.
01. New Religion 02. The Everything 03. Italian Lessons 04. Raunchy 05. Potential 06. The Exquisite Organs 07. Roger Dean Landscape 08. Keys To The Door 09. Crime Of The Century 10. Archive 11. Isolation, Too
Stockholm-based producer/singer Niva just released his debut EP, Feverish Dreams (pictured above), via UK label Something in Construction, and here we have one of those six preciously simplistic synth-pop tunes. The clean-cut production features a straightforward electro-house beat, a few lo-bit synth tones, a slightly funky bassline, and some quietly cooed and slightly warbled vocal hooks—basically, the go-to recipe for upbeat electronic pop music these days. Despite its predictability, Niva’s “Boy From the Sun” displays an earnestness from its creator, as the artist crams all of those genre hallmarks into a quick, well-crafted two and a half minutes that never feels a moment too short or the least bit half baked. There’s a pretty little music video for the song to boot, which you can check out after the jump.
Swiss techno OG Philippe Quenum (a.k.a. Quenum) is perhaps known best for his and Luciano’s Cadenza Records imprint. However, on April 25, Quenum will have his first outing for London’s Crosstown Rebels. The Bubble Gum EP will feature the title track, “Woman Talk About Woman” (which apparently features a monologue that celebrates the “multi-faceted nature of women”), and the digital-only bonus “My Baby Face.” Peep the sleeve after the jump, and then get familiar with Quenum and Luciano’s classic “Orange Mistake.”
