Poker Flat Preps Sixth Label Compilation

Poker Flat began incorporating a vague gambling theme into its label compilations with 2006’s Bets’n’Bluffs, and will continue the trend come March 3 with Dead Man’s Hand, the label’s sixth sampler that, according to a press release, is a “high stakes all-nighter… full of carefully judged mind games and more than a few winning surprises.”

Said surprises come in the form of house and techno bangers by the likes of Martin Landsky, Jeff Samuel, Märtini Brös, and, of course, Poker Flat boss Steve Bug, who has mixed the first disc of the compilation. Producer and DJ Clé, of Märtini Brös, steps in for the second disc, incorporating both past Poker Flat classics and new material ready and waiting to generate buzz in the dance music world. Both discs feature tracks made exclusively for Dead Man’s Hand.

Steve Bug will also be jetting to every corner of the globe this spring, for his standard European gigs as well as appearances in the U.S., Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Dead Man’s Hand Tracklisting
CD1
1. Steve Bug & Clé “Behind the Curtains”
2. Simon Flower “The Whisper Had It (Redshape’s Discodub)”
3. Jeff Samuel “Relapse”*
4. Martin Landsky “Man High”
5. Steve Bug “A World Without”
6. Matthias Heilbronn “Do it Right (Matty’s PFR Mix)”
7. Dan Berkson & James What “Indigo”*
8. Mark Loewen “Bright Night”
9. Martin Landsky “Let Me Dance (Sebo K Remix)”
10. Aril Brikha “Life Like”

CD2
1. Raudive “Needles (Steve Bug Remix)”
2. Guido Schneider & Florian Schirmacher “Organic”*
3. Martin Landsky “Cold Eyes (Version 2)”
4. Ryo Murakami “Nightmare”
5. Märtini Brös “From Buleaux”
6. Märtini Brös “Towards Buleaux”
7. Dan Berkson & James What “Reflections feat. Robert Owens”
8. Martin Landsky “Let Me Dance”
9. Steve Bug “Momwack”*
10. Clé “All Dried Out”*
11. Steve Bug & Clé “Hidden Pleasure”
12. Maik Loewen “Napping at the Switch”
13. Märtini Brös “Karawane”
14. Ryo Murakami “Her”*

* Exclusively produced for this compilation

Steve Bug Tour Dates
02/22 Sapporo, Japan: Precious Hall
02/23 Tokyo, Japan, Spacelab Yellow
02/29 Melbourne, Australia: Colonial Hotel
03/01 Sydney, Australia: Mad Racket
03/07 Auckland, New Zealand: Coherent
03/08 Sydney, Australia: Playground Weekender
03/15 Brussels, Belgium: Fuse
03/20 Montreal, QC: Parking
03/21 Chicago, IL: Spybar
03/22 Denver, CO: 2936 Larimer
03/23 Toronto, ON: Footwork
04/12 Berlin, Germany: Watergate
04/25 Lausanne, Switzerland: D! Club
04/26 Zurich, Switzerland: The Hive
05/17 Rome, Italy: Brancaleone

Photo of Steve Bug by Katja Ruge.

Major Soul Events Hit L.A. This Spring

New York may be known as “the city that never sleeps,” but it’s looking like Los Angeles is the city where art don’t sleep. This spring, Angelenos will have a whole lot of soul to stay awake for, as local collective Art Don’t Sleep has assembled some amazing music events in the coming months.

ADS’s five-part Soul Exploration live music and DJ series, held at The Crash Mansion in downtown Los Angeles, kicks off with a bang Saturday, February 16 with a live performance from Philly-born, New York-based singer Bilal (of the Soulquarians), featuring SA-RA Creative Partners. Also performing that night is nine-piece band Orgone, celebrating its new album, The Killion Floor, on Ubiquity Records, and DJs Coleman and Al Jackson.

Part two of the dynamic, independent soul showcase goes down March 1, with PPP (formerly Platinum Pied Pipers) performing live, London’s Spacek Sound System, heavy L.A. emcee/producer combo Blu and Exile along with San Francisco’s DJ Sake 1, and J-Boogie with L.A. DJs Coleman and Aski.

On March 8, Art Don’t Sleep switches it up with the Cali party series featuring The Lions’ Jungle Struttin album release party and live performance. The night will also feature live sets from Ubiquity artists Nino Moeshella, veteran soul singer Darondo, and L.A.’s Connie Price and the Keystones, with DJs Jeremy Sole, Shakespeare, and Aurelito (I&I Soundsystem). That’s an insane live line-up!

Finally, March 15, Soul Exploration part three takes place, featuring a live performance by the legendary group RAMP (sampled by Tribe Called Quest and others), with all five original members. Also playing live are The Rebirth and Boogaloo Assassins with DJs Coleman and Soul People’s Cid Hernandez. To put this night in perspective, the DC-based RAMP (pictured above) has been largely ignored in the U.S. since the ’70s, playing mainly European gigs in recent years. But the popularity in recent decades of its Roy Ayers-produced classics “Daylight” and “Everyone Loves The Sunshine” has brought the group wider acclaim.

The Crash Mansion is located at 1024 S Grand Ave. at Olympic, downtown Los Angeles. Shows start at 9 p.m., are 21 with ID and covers vary.

Cline/Giffoni/Licht/Ranaldo Nothing Makes Any Sense

If you know the guitarists Nels Cline, Lee Ranaldo, and Alan Licht at all, or are familiar with analog tweaker Carlos Giffoni, then you already know they played a show in NYC and birthed this experimental exercise in axe drone. Nearly an hour of sonic exploration, Nothing Makes Any Sense might make those who don’t like post-everything or guitars want to destroy the speakers with jackhammers, but they’d be in good company with Ranaldo, Cline, et. al. These esteemed sound-fuckers from the orbit of Sonic Youth, Wilco, and others are cool with deconstruction: They know it’s just construction in reverse. Their zero-track orchestral opus is filled with static storms, dialed-in feedback, and amps that sound as though they might turn into super-massive black holes at any moment. For experienced travelers only.

Phylum Sinter “Beside You Through The Wires, Forever”

Though a release date has yet to be named for Unity and Segmentation, Christopher Todd’s latest album under his Phylum Sinter guise, he is making sure fans have plenty to satiate their appetites in the meantime. The album’s mini-site will feature news, progress, thoughts related to the release, pictures, and more. And of course, download this track for a preview of what’s to come.

Phylum Sinter – Beside You

Heralds of Change: Finding a Place

Mike Slott and Hudson Mohawke of Heralds of Change hail from Dublin, Ireland, and Glasgow, Scotland, respectively, but geography is an irrelevant ingredient in the pair’s surrealist hip-hop stew. Since linking in Scotland in 2005 (Slott lived there at the time but returned to Ireland soon after), Slott and Mohawke–whose hometowns aren’t exactly hip-hop hotbeds–have built their beats together over the ‘net. And while the Heralds’ left-of-leftfield tracks are often instrumental, the verses on the four EPs they’ve released through Dublin’s All City label are delivered by undiscovered U.S. rappers like Unknown and Trek Life.

“It’s fucked up, but the only way I really know is the digital way,” says the 21-year-old Mohawke (a.k.a. Ross Birchard, a DMC finalist at age 15) during our Instant Messager interview. “I’ve never really been a big collaborator with people locally. It’s only in the last six months that people in Glasgow actually know what I do.”

But with internet-music overload leading even open-minded listeners to segregate their tastes along genre lines, how have two previously unknown lads plying a sound with no name been able to gain such traction? Dutch label Rush Hour helped. With last year’s Beat Dimensions Vol. 1 compilation, the label revealed an international community of inventive instrumental hip-hop producers with a love for disjointed Dilla beats and beautifully broken-down sounds. Heralds of Change did not appear on the disc, but Mohawke’s solo contribution, “Trace,” was one of its most praised tracks.

“A lot of us have been locked up for years making shit with no real idea what it is [or] where it belongs,” Mohawke says of the producer community spotlighted on the comp. “[Beat Dimensions] made it official. Because it’s now quantified as a ‘scene,’ people are less wary of booking the shit, so it allowed us to spend the latter half of 2007 traveling ’round, giving people the full-on assault in the club.”

Fresh off their latest and most revelatory EP release, Secrets–“Bop Gunn,” featuring occasional HOC stage frontman Oliver-Day Soul, is a funkadelic freak-out worthy of OutKast–Slott and Mohawke are currently wrapping up their debut LP, due out in February. The as-yet-untitled collection will split equally between instrumentals and collaborations with Steve Spacek, Oddisee, and Jneiro Jarel, among others.

“We’re continuing what we’ve been doing with the 12-inches,” Slott says, “to make the music that we would like to hear and collaborate with people we would ideally like to have on our records.”

Terrorfakt The Fine Art of Killing Yourself

NYC wrecking crew Terrorfakt drops its latest payload of quasi-hardcore rhythms, this time joined by a cadre of like-minded militants handling remix operations on a second disc. The original material is as rewardingly brutal as ever, hardwiring distortion-charred sequences and neurotic samples into a framework of combat-ready beats and industrially crafted percussion. Tracks like “Animal” and “Do Unto Others” are reminiscent of older Industrial Strength singles, minus a few dozen bpms, while “Rhythm & Hate” and “M15” take on a young, pissed-off Aphex Twin quality. Disciples of late-’80s industrial, techno, and EBM will get a kick out of the remix array, compliments of Cervello Electronico, Antigen Shift, Manufactura, and more, but Disc One is where the evil is.

The Lions Jungle Struttin’

You might not expect solid, Jamaican-inspired music from L.A.’s plastic culture. But the results are tasteful when members of great bands–Connie Price and The Keystones, Rhythm Roots All-Stars, and Breakestra to name a few–collaborate to make music in a style that inspired their own works. The title track, along with “Hot No Ho,” has smooth horns and sharp arrangements that are fused with nice harmonies. The 11 tracks are dub- and ska-influenced, but also nod directly to jazz, soul, and funk. The album is cohesive, rhythmic, and cinematic–hardly cheesy modern reggae, and definitely worth a listen.

Loading… New Rock Band Content, Guitar Hero DS, PlayStation Comes Home

New Rock Band Content in March

And the rock don’t stop…

It seems we write about this every week, but important news is important news!

Once again, a bunch of new tunes, to be released in March, were unveiled today for Rock Band via Official Xbox Magazine, and once again, metal is taking center stage, for better or for worse…

Thrash Pack – 3/4/08
Evile “Thrashes”
At the Gates “Blinded By Fear”
The Haunted “Shadow World”

Sounds…great? Weves. OK next!

Classic Rock Pack – 3/11/08
The Police “Message in a Bottle”
Bad Company “Shooting Star”
Lynyrd Skynyrd “Simple Man”

At least “Message in the Bottle” should be fun…

Nine Inch Nails Pack – 3/18/08
“March of the Pigs”
“The Perfect Drug”
“The Collector”

Fair enough…

Metal Pack – 3/25/08
Metallica “Fuel” (Really? This is the best they could do? Christ!)
Black Sabbath “Supernaut”
Iron Maiden “Wrathchild”

Except for fucking “Fuel”, this sounds decent to us…

Guitar Hero DS This Summer?

‘Tis no secret that Activision seeks to slather the entire land in creamy Guitar Hero goodness and, according to last year’s financial statements, the company seems to have done a fairly good job to the tune of billions.

However, one little money-making corner of gaming it has yet to conquer has been the handheld market, or more specifically, the Nintendo DS market, which would no doubt rake in countless more dollars in which to bathe with hookers.

While the rumors of a DS Guitar Hero have been swirling for some time, since founder Charles Huang made a comment that they were “exploring” the possibility of a portable Guitar Hero last summer, it seems that a recent trademark all but confirms such a thing is in the works and would come packaged with some sort of peripheral to get your portable rock on.

On January 19, 2008, a trademark was filed by Activision for something called Guitar Hero: On Tour with a French website, claiming knowledge that it would indeed for the DS and would release in June of this year.

Tiny, awkward, dual-screen rocking, here we come!

PlayStation Comes Home This Spring
The much bally-hooed, oft-delayed PlayStation Home, a Second Life-esque application for the PlayStation 3, has been undergoing some changes to due to responses from its Beta tests and is currently set as a free download for PlayStation 3 owners sometime in the spring, which could be anytime between now and June.

First unveiled in late 2006, Home allows gamers to create an avatar in a virtual world and customize their own “apartment” with all manner of gaming and non-gamming related hoo-ha, in addition to being able to see movies, trailers, play demos, bowl, and otherwise loaf around.

The new changes appear to be on the superficial side–the movie theater was moved from an upstairs area to a downstairs area, more styles of apartment will be available (they will also be larger), more scenic vistas will be available for viewing, the bowling alley will be much more identifiable, etc etc.

Nothing more groundbreaking than the application itself but in case you were keeping track, there ya go.

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