While touring the U.S. this month, BBC Radio One’s Mary Anne Hobbs will be supplying us with a fully detailed rundown of her trip. Check back every few days for more updates and videocasts, and see her in action in your town soon (if you haven’t already).

Sept. 9

– I’m at Heathrow Airport in London… flying to Chicago for my first ever U.S. tour… so excited at the notion that i am now living like Nikki Sixx (without the heroin, of course).

– Transvestites make superb service-industry employees… they are so serene. Can you imagine amount of crap they must have gone through to get to a point at which they are not just wearing any old dress, but an America Airlines hostess uniform in public? Complaints from demented passengers about the small diameter of the rice cracker snacks(!) must barely register on the Richter scale of ‘life’s hells’…

– Chicago is stunning… so is the legendary Gramaphone Records store… could’ve spent a week up in the place learning about the city’s house music history. Delighted to find that the boss, Michael, checks my BBC Radio1 show and is now stocking U.K. dubstep!!

Sept. 10

– Playing Smart Bar tonight… first show of the U.S. tour. I am absolutely buzzing and so is the room… the IL massive are hungry and warm… and I’m truly honoured to have MC Zulu hosting my set 🙂

– My agent Sara is a goddess. She wears purple suede boots with seven-inch heels to the show. She can dance for eight hours in them. She falls spectacularly and skims off an entire shocking-pink pedicure (which she was bored with) in less than two seconds… if only I’d only been fast enough to capture it on film for YouTube, we’d get a million hits and she’d be cast as the next Bond girl.

Sept. 11

– Two hours sleep.. wwwwwuuuhhhhhhhh jet-lag!!! Feel like I’ve been clubbed around the head with a baseball bat.

– My body clock has bust a spring… ate WWF-wrestler-size roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings at 11:30 a.m… and now I travel back another two hours in time to San Francisco… no idea how dem Heroes time travelers continue any tenable relationship with their digestive system…

– Flew over the Rockies from Chicago to San Francisco… breathtaking view of the mountain range. Took a moment to contemplate the miracles of nature, which is a healthy diversion when you spend most of your life contemplating the miracles of Brainfeeder, Hyperdub, Applepips, DMZ, et al…

– Fascinating to meet the Burners who’ve just returned to San Fran like the cast of some 21st-century Mad Max movie after Burning Man, up at Ant-Ten-Nae’s Afterburn party at 103 Harriet…

– Nosaj Thing tore up the joint… Lando Kal from Lazer Sword was talking about launching a new club night with Mike Slott and Jimmy Edgar in NYC (wow!!)… and i shook the hands Akira Kiteshi, EPROM, and Marty Party for the very first time.

– My room is rammed and wild… so many people who saw me play at Harriet in January came back and brought all their friends 🙂 … Exciting to see posters on the wall for autumn shows with Joker, Benga, Martyn, and so many of my people… I’m happy and sweaty and only slightly concerned that I must smell like a dog that jumped in the canal…

@wushUdoin posted on Twitter: @maryannehobbs absolutely destroyyyed my brainANDface.. Thank you <3 Agenda please prepare yourself….

Sept. 12

– Running out of knickers!!

– I’m so hungry I could eat the furniture… but it’s only 6:30 a.m… and there’s no ketchup! Must refrain from forming vulgar (if comforting) eating habits.

– Like most things in life, touring is much harder than it looks… many bands go on the road for two years at a time… I’m only approaching day three and I am already developing whole new levels of empathy. If most of touring artists seem dazed and confused, it’s because they are…the jet-lag-induced thousand-yard stare and cold-weak-shivery feeling is overwhelmed by a massive adrenaline rush on stage. So even at 4-5-6 a.m., when you finally lay your ass down, you absolutely cannot and do not sleep.

– Rollin’ up to Dub U’s party at Agenda in San Jose with my agent Miro from Surefire, his beautiful girl Jasmin, and Bristol’s Gemmy, who is building a new tune for tonight’s set in the car.

– DJ G is playing “My Tune” as we cross the threshold, his Coalition of the Killing remix that I love, and I race up the staircase to catch it on the system. He glides through some beautiful deep textures… very, very chic set. Gemmy, to the astonishment of many, finishes the last tune he’ll play in his set tonight on his laptop at the bar! And he absolutely tore it up here too…

Incredible vibes up at Agenda… people drove for hours to be there and many came up from the S.F. show last night for a second dose… i couldn’t deny my uncontrollable impulse to dive into this frenzied crowd and shock-out with ‘em!!

@directrix posted on Twitter: seriously @maryannehobbs killed SJ last night.hands down class act,so nice too.everyone make sure to follow her, both on twitter and music.

Sept. 13

– Why do hotel cleaners always sound they are auditioning for Slayer or Cradle of Filth?? ‘BAM BAM BAM BAMMMMM… HOUSEKEEEEEEEPING!!!”

– On the freeway back to S.F… drove past the hangar in which they made the Zeppelin airships back in the day. It’s so vast it actually has its own weather systems inside! Must take a detour and check that out some day soon.

– We also roll by the Yahoo and eBay buildings. It seems incredible that they actually have office spaces. In the U.K. we perceive them as entirely automated systems with which it’s impossible to make any kind of human contact!

– Two days in S.F. to build a diary and a film for my favourite magazine, XLR8R. Folks seem to think it’s a good thing that I have a couple of days out, as I “may damage my radio voice with all the shouting in clubs” haha!! I’m not unduly concerned about this eventuality… more worried about whether I have one pair of clean socks left for tomorrow. To be continued…

Newly minted U.S. resident and accidental dubstep technician Martyn has hit gold again with his remix of Fever Ray‘s “Seven,” which is getting an official single release on September 29. The pensive original is transformed into a dubstep jammer, sure to make crowds go absolutely insane—a furious bassline is pumped up, deep kicks pummel the ears, and Karin Dreijer Andersson’s vocals continue to soar ethereally above it all. Check out the remix stream below, an exclusive to XLR8R courtesy of Mute.

Fever Ray – Seven (Martyn’s Seventh Mix) by MuteUSA

It’s contest time again folks, and Diplo and Switch, of the Major Lazer squad, have got quite the trophy prize polished up for the victor. The two are offering their fans the opportunity to remix some of that off-the-hook, tropical, lazer bass insanity that they’ve been shelling out as of late on their latest, Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do, with one lucky winner snagging a grand prize of $500, a Serato SL2 system, and way more. In addition, contest entrants can also design their own album cover artwork using Major Lazer and his friends, so if your remix skills aren’t up to par these days, make sure you gear up for some that cut-and-paste action. Complete contest details can be found here.

Ghostly International and Christopher Willits‘ Overlap imprint are ganging together for their first collaborative release, a lovely slice of ambient music from Michigan/Ontario-based artist Chris McNamara. Vague Cities is a five-track album that recalls Brian Eno, bvdub’s more ambient moments, and even a bit of the Chain Reaction catalog. In keeping with Overlap‘s experimental mission, the record has been described as a sonic evocation of “snowy Detroit winters or watching a person’s daily experience with public transportation slowed down to a more manageable pace,” and this description certainly fits. With a long resume behind him, including exhibitions in Rotterdam, London, and elsewhere, McNamara’s status will be heightened even more with Vague Cities.

Vague Cities comes out on October 6.

Tracklisting:

01 Trimalchio
02 oooohdear
03 Sleeping Car/Shunting Yard
04 et puis
05 Subsandtaxis (Markus Guentner rmx)

The temperature circulating around the XLR8R offices was quite stifling throughout the month of August, and luckily we had quite a collection of MP3s to cool us off during its hottest moments. The big bass and dubbed-out soul-shockers from the likes of Hudson Mohowke and the Jubilee and Udachi combo definitely came in handy, while The Bloody Beetroots and The Cool Kids mash of Italo rave and hip-hop turned out to be all the rage. Elsewhere, Ethernet and Pollination checked in to melt our minds with some scorched, desert psychedelia while All Tiny Creatures peeled up the Krautrock Autobahn with its motorik gears set on overdrive. And as always, Underworld are still kings of the dancefloor.

Keep up to date with XLR8R‘s daily MP3s by subscribing to our MP3 RSS Feed, or bookmark our MP3 page.

Behold, the most downloaded 20 MP3s of August on XLR8R.com:

20 All Tiny Creatures – “To All Tiny Creatures”
19 Chrissy Murderbot – “Where’s My Footworkin’? (TC Remix)”
18 Teengirl Fantasy – “Azz Klapz”
17 Har Mar Superstar – “Tall Boy”
16 Ethernet – “Kansai”
15 Bernard Fevre (a.k.a Black Devil Disco Club – “Mestophiles (XLR8R exclusive)
14 Bruno Gauthier pour Magda Zagba – “It’s Love (Rob Mello’s No Ears Dub”
13 Daniel Wang – “Like Some Dream”
12 Dub Pistols – “I’m In Love (Foamo Remix)”
11 Phosho Feat. Cerebral Vortex – “Control Dub”
10 Matias Aguayo – “Bo Jack (Vocal) Feat. Lady Bumbox”
9 Etienne Jaumet – “Entropy”
8 Zomby – “Helter Skelter”
7 L-Vis 1990 – “Murder”
6 Udachi and Jubilee – “Paypur”
5 Underworld “Born Slippy (Live)”
4 Pollination – “Some Sun (Yppah Remix)”
3 Pollyn – “Gave It Up (Peter Visti Remix)”
2 The Bloody Beatroots – “Awesome Feat. The Cool Kids”
1 Hudson Mohowke – “Rising 5”

pictured: The Cool Kids

Richie Hawtin just keeps adding new artistic elements to the Minus roster, and with the Minus-Embed project, he’s invited outside talent into the mix. The principle is that Hawtin “will invite creative individuals to become an ‘embedded’ participant on a weekend excursion with him in order to catalogue, document, and respond to the event using their specific artistic talents.” The results will be posted on the Minus site, and as an open-ended project, there are no deadlines or limits as to what can be created. Simply email Minus with a small portfolio of your work and a proposal, and you might just get the chance to document a label outing soon! In the meantime, check out the first Minus-Embed project, architectural-reflex, on the initiative’s website.