Peggy Gou is launching her own label, Gudu Records, with her Moment EP, scheduled to land April 19.
Moment is a two-track release and her first new music of this year, coming after a busy 2018 that saw her second Phonica White EP, Travelling Without Arriving, plus high profile appearances on Ninja Tune. Once again, it sees the South Korean-born, Berlin-based artist layer her own vocals, in Korean and English, over the tracks. It features artwork from Jee-ook Choi, who will oversee the label’s artistic direction.
On the label, Gou said this to i-D Magazine: “I realised I wanted to be my own boss with my own music. At first I wanted to have just my music, but now I think people would like to know what kind of artists I support.”
The label name comes from the Korean word for shoes.
For more information on Peggy Gou, read our feature here.
Tracklisting
A. Starry Night
B. Han Pan
Moment lands April 19, with “Starry Night” streaming below.
Nui Blanc is the project of a reclusive Portuguese musician. He remains in the shadows crafting mysterious and multi-textured electronic sounds in the vein of Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca, and Blanck Mass, one which warps familiar electronic tropes into nebulous shapes.
New track “Nausea” is a brooding, glitchy number that has been picked up by BBC 6 Music. Undulating synth lines shimmer above a broken beat which serves as the track’s backbone; at first glance it is an unsettling world, but the melodies contained within add a beauty and sense of familiarity despite the oblique sounds.
The track lands ahead of Strata, a debut EP coming via Perth Records, and can be downloaded in full via the button below, or here for EU readers due to temporary GDPR restrictions.
Run by San Francisco DJs Solar and Galen, the Sunset Sound System events have been West Coast staples since the first party in Berkeley Marina 25 years ago. Over the years, the pair have hosted artists such as Prosumer, Jennifer Cardini, Mike Huckaby, Red Axes, Magda, Larry Heard, Derrick May, DJ Harvey, Avalon Emerson, John Talabot, Axel Boman, and Paranoid London, among many others.
Today, the pair announce a year of celebrations and a 10-event series of park and boat events, international festival stage takeovers, and details around their flagship three-day festival Sunset Campout, all of which can be found below.
2019 Sunset Sound System Event Schedule:
Sunday, April 7 – Permission to Land Season Kick-Off at The Midway Patio, San Francisco, with Maurice Fulton, Garth, Galen, Benjamin K
Sunday, April 28 – Sunset Silver Jubilee Celebration Park Party at Stafford Lake, Novato, with Galen, Solar, J-Bird
Sunday, May 19 – Sunset Sound System Spring Boat Party on The San Francisco Spirit with Dixon, Galen, Solar + more TBA
Sunday, June 9 – Meadows In The Mountains (Sunrise Stage) in Bulgaria, Sunset Sound System takeover with Eddie C, Qzen, Solar, Galen
Thursday, July 4 – Love International Festival (Olive Grove Stage) in Croatia, Sunset Sound System takeover with Joy Orbison, Galen, Solar, Mozhgan
July 25th – 29 – Sunset Campout, 10-Year Anniversary Celebration (Silver Jubilee) in Belden Town, California
Sunday, August 25 – Sunset Summer Boat Party on The San Francisco Spirit, San Francisco
Sunday, September 22 – Permission to Land with Sunset Sound System at The Midway Patio, San Francisco
Sunday, October 13 – Sunset Fall Jubilee Celebration Park Party at Stafford Lake, Novato
Sunday, October 27 – Sunset Halloween Costume Boat Party on The San Francisco Belle, San Francisco
At Ableton‘s latest Loop summit, Ableton Certified Trainer and a licensed attorney Abid Hussain gave an enlighting talk on the legalities of sampling.
In the video, Hussain details a range of copyright infringement cases and their ensuing rulings, before diving into what these rulings will mean for producers and the impact they will have on the way samples are used in the future.
On April 11, Liverpool-based event series Meine Nacht will launch its label arm with a new EP from Daniel Ruane.
Both Ruane and Meine Nacht label head Breakwave share a forward-thinking out-of-the-box mindset when it comes to music and the way it’s presented, an aesthetic that can be found in Ruane’s intellectual, sci-fi sound design and Meine Nacht’s inspired venue choices—Meine Nacht events have taken place in spaces such as an old supermarket, a bakery, art galleries, a factory canteen, and an old police station. Now, the pair join forces on Tengu, Meine Nacht’s inaugural EP.
The title track opens euphorically with a set of otherworldly bleeps and awe-inspiring atmospheres, before Ruane piles on his notoriously frenetic rhythms and alien sounds—it’s a track that constantly morphs and warps its way through seven head-spinning minutes. From there, things get even deeper and weirder with “IV (CF_BD),” a track that plays out like a score to a battle between two extraterrestrial beings.
Tengu can be ordered now on limited-edition dubplate or digitally from here, with the title track streaming in full below.
Alix Perez and Eprom have announced their new Shades EP, Black Heart Communion, scheduled to release March 29 with Deadbeats.
The release is the duo’s sixth collaborative EP, and comes after last year’s In Praise of Darkness LP, also via Deadbeats. “Two One Six,” the EP’s lead single, landed with the announcement, replete with the pair’s signature mixture of experimental bass, glitch, and hip-hop, blending a dark aesthetic of sound through stark transitions, charged overtones, and bold vocal samples.
In support of the release, Shades will tour through Europe and North America, including a performance at Lightning In A Bottle Music Festival in Bakersfield, CA.
Black Heart Communion EP lands March 29 with Deadbeats, with “Two One Six” streaming below and tracklisting coming soon.
Shades, 2019 Tour Dates
4/19 Toulouse, France—Le Bikini
4/21 Amsterdam, Netherlands—Melkweg
4/26 Groningen, Netherlands—De Oosterpoort
4/27 Berlin, Germany—Gretchen
5/10 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—Warehouse on Watts
5/11 Bakersfield, California—Lightning in a Bottle
Today, Novation will explore all the new features of the Bass Station II v2.5 firmware update on its latest Beats and Bytes livestream.
Released late last year, the new firmware update adds to the Bass Station some of the user community’s most requested features, including paraphonic mode, filter tracking, microtuning, envelope retriggering, oscillator error, and two new Soundpacks: Silver and Sinevibes.
Hyperdub will soon release four Kode9—real name Steve Goodman—remixes of tracks taken from Diggin in the Carts, a 2017 compilation put together by Nick Dwyer and Kode9 of pioneering Japanese video game music from the ’80s and ’90s.
Since this initial release, Kode9 has been touring a live A/V set in collaboration with visuals from animé legend Koji Morimoto, who also designed the artwork for the original compilation.
On this first Kode9 EP for several years, a handful of these remixes see the light of day. Koze 9 rivets his 80/160bpm rhythms onto these classic 8-bit and 16-bit melodies, re-animating the Steve Reichian arpeggios of Soshi Hosoi, the grime-like horn fanfares of Yuzo Koshiro, the sour pads of Koichi Ishaibashi, and pitching Tadahiro Nitta down into a slow building, frantic low-end grind.
The release comes sleeved in artwork by Konx-on-Pax, adapted from the visuals from the A/V performance.
Tracklisting
A1. Soshi Hosoi “Mister Diviner” (The Mahjong Touhaiden) Kode9 Remix
Complicated Truth is a pack of two versions of the same melodic-house track produced by Slovenia-based Evident. There’s very little known about the producer, barring that he’s called Blaž Peruš and has self-released an LP and several EPs via his own Soundhitectures. The release is out now, available here, with a download of Version 1 available via the WeTransfer button below, or here for EU readers due to temporary GDPR restrictions.
Setaoc Mass—real name Sam Coates—has already exhibited his DJing skills on XLR8R, turning in a head-spinning mix in December 2017, and now he returns to discuss his production.
Coates has been selecting and mixing records since the age of 16, growing up in Manchester, and began making music around the same time. Now based in Berlin, and with a rapidly expanding discography encompassing deep, dark, and percussive techno and atmospheric ambient, he’s establishing himself as a central figure in techno’s new-guard, taking the sounds of yesterday into tomorrow.
If you had to pinpoint a moment when it all changed, it’d likely be Coates’ 2015 four-tracker on Work Them Records, the opener of which saw big support from Jeff Mills. Soon thereafter, he featured on Figure and he’s since returned with two collaborations, with Matrixxman and Cleric, all the while keeping his SK_eleven label ticking over with a stream of solo outings.
It is via his own imprint that he recently dropped his most ambitious release yet, 53 Degrees North, a two-part EP that captures both sides of his production palette. While Part One focuses on four-to-the-floor club-centric music, Part Two sees Coates being more experimental, paying homage to past influences as he floats between ambient, IDM, and electro, all rife with emotion and passion. While so much about his life has has changed since he first started out, his setup has remained refreshingly similar, limited to the few pieces of gear that he feels he really needs. In support of the release, XLR8R caught up with Coates to learn more about the tools behind it.
Waldorf Blofeld
Coming from a background of only using plug-ins for most of my production career, the Blofeld was the first proper synth I bought a fair few years back, because its cheap and extremely versatile. The menu diving on this is amazing; the amount of routings that you can use to manipulate sounds really is endless. My main use of this now is for atmospheric sounds, sounds that can sit in a track and really blend it altogether. It always delivers quality tones and textures that can be well sculpted into the thought you have in your head.
When I say it is good for the atmospheric sounds, it’s also amazing for bleepy sequences. This was used as a layered part in “Evidence” where I ran the Blofeld into the MIDI sequencer Max for Live ML185. This works perfectly with a sequencer, having the notes continually playing while you play around with the envelope and filter controls. And then this paired up with Rob Papen’s Blue-II to finalise the sine wave noises in “Evidence.”
Tascam DR-07
The ease of use of a field recorder is so incredible. This one is small and light enough to travel to most places with me—it’s just so simple to step outside and record something, and I think this is all part of being an artist, discovering sounds where ever you go. I try to do longer recordings with this so as to capture some sort of atmosphere or feeling which can be used as an underlying layer in my productions as well. Mostly I use this for my experimental stuff—and I have whole banks on my computer now with various recordings from places I’ve been. And if you don’t have one of these field recorders then even iPhones can record a decent quality sound.
I can’t figure out exactly which sounds were directly used in 53 DegreesNorth as there are so many and I try to disguise the sound as much as possible; it should only be used to fill out the spectrum and not for an exact main part. I think on some of the experimental tracks I did chop up some transients from some hits I made with this to layer alongside the snares and kicks prominent in Part Two—this adds sound that is more organic and has more feeling than just standard 808/909 samples.
Strymon Blue Sky
As recently stated in Avalon Emerson’s Resident Advisorfeature, this is the the “techno bro’s reverb,” and she couldn’t be more right. Straight forward five knobs, six template settings—I find this machine better for longer reverbs rather than short ones, and I think I’d like more settings when using reverb for shorter hits and would aim for something like the Big Sky or Eventide in the next months. It’s great to use on a return channel as it can be pretty strong and muddy when used on individual channels. This made its way into most of the tracks on the latest double EP; I always run a few sounds through this and record the reverbs while I’m messing around with some settings. It’s great for using a little bit in a live context, so the reverb doesn’t get to static sounding.
I also use this every time I DJ. For me, using it for DJing adds a whole other dimension to the music, building drops and generally smoothing out transitions. It’s great for the warm up sets, too.
Prophet REV2
Next up is the Prophet REV2, my baby and the centrepiece of the studio. To be honest, I am not a gear junkie so when I was looking for an analog synth then it had to be capable of a lot of things. And this machine is more than worthy of that. When I produce I always use keys to find melodies and pitches. I can’t sit there and draw things into a piano roll on Ableton—and I never have been able to do that. I’ve always just saw down with a MIDI keyboard in front of me so I had to get this with its beautiful 61 keys. I saved up a lot to be able to afford this. The machine has a beautiful sound and is capable of almost everything with endless possibilities for routing LFOs or adding in internal FX which, as expected, are very high end. Normally my setup would be more “in the box,” as I said earlier, but since I bought this I haven’t even opened a plug-in.
“Don’t Go to Bed Angry,” the B2 on the second part of 53 Degrees North, was made pretty much entirely on this, late on a Friday night where I felt music had to come out of me. Mainly it was recording a whole bunch of audio, maybe around 15/20 different sounds and melodies, all played by hand and then chopped up and layered and the best sounding ones were taken and used to build this track. Also, the main pads were played over this live when I had the main structure down.
Elektron Analog Heat mk2
And finally a new addition to the studio: my first Elektron piece, the Analog Heat. When I’m only using certain hardwares I wanted to expand my sound, and the next step was to add character to my productions inside Ableton. The Elektron Analog heat does this very well—it has so many capabilities, especially with the “Overbridge” software. You can do so much with this machine to really push productions to new sonic levels and the user bank to save pre-built patches can really craft your own niche sounds. I’m looking forward to checking out more Elektron stuff in the future. (This machine was bought a little later so I’ve only used it on my latest tracks that will be coming out later in the year).
