Drawing inspiration from a vast collection of influences with his two previous studio albums, along with consistently blessing DJ booths at clubs and festivals around the world with his tropical-yet-heady style, Guy J has overwhelmingly proved that he has grown from the status of Nick Warren and Hernan Cattaneo‘s protege, into a well-versed track selector and international DJ.
Next up for the Israeli producer is a recently announced double album on John Digweed’s Bedrock records, titled The Trees, The Sea & The Sun. An intrinsic component of the Bedrock family, Guy J’s previous two LP’s, Esperanza and 1000 Words, were staples in the latest wave of progressive house producers to find their niche on the long-running label.
The 2 x CD and limited 12″ vinyl sampler are both available to pre-order now from the Bedrock store, and you can stream “Nirvana” right now on the Bedrock Soundcloud page or below.
Manchester collective meandyou. is plotting the cassette release of leftfield house and techno specialist Kassem Mosse‘s first live show in 2009. Set to arrive later this month, the hour-long Kassem Mosse Live at Bookbinders 10.04.2009 features material that would later be released on Mikrodisko and his own Ominira imprint. The idea behind the tape, according to a press release from meandyou., is simply to “materialize the recording of a special meeting that would go onto form the basis of a unique collaborative relationship between the Kleestadt and Schmalkaden-based Workshop label and our own collective.” While no teasers are available yet, the show warranted a rave review—and rare 5/5 rating–from Resident Advisor. (via Juno Plus)
The BeatStep Pro follows on the heels of last year’s BeatStep, a sequencer and controller that offered a straightforward way to control your synths and drum machines via both MIDI and control voltage. While it was well received, certain limitations eventually became obstacles: The desire of many to step away from the glow of their computer screen, in particular, was limited by the BeatStep’s ability to control just one device at a time. The BeatStep Pro adds a bunch of extra functionality to the original, designed to help liberate users from the clutches of their screens.
How It Looks With knobs aplenty, 16 sequencer keys, and 16 velocity-sensitive drum pads, the the BeatStep Pro remains a very portable device, and does loads more than the original, to boot—firstly by adding two additional sequencers to its party. This means you’re able to hook up, say, a drum machine and two synthesizers, and have all three sequences play simultaneously; you simply hit a button to arm the pads and controllers to the desired track, and you’re off and running. Importantly, the BeatStep Pro’s array of connectivity options is vast: Along with MIDI In and Out with DIN Sync, it has two dedicated sets of CV/Gate inputs and gate connections, and Clock In and Out, meaning that you’ll be able to connect to most any music machine built in the past several decades. If you’re connecting several devices via MIDI, you can change the channels each sequence transmits on by using the enclosed excellent MIDI Control Center software (though you might need to use an additional MIDI-thru device to do so). The color scheme is a nice change of pace, aesthetically, and practically helps segment the face of the device into its component functions.
How It Plays With its addition of buttons and LCD screens, the BeatStep Pro is easier than the original BeatStep to immediately jump into. Despite the limited real estate of its screens (precisely three digits apiece), creating sequences is straightforward, in either “real-time” (quantized) or step-sequencing mode; there are controls for randomness, swing and probability, each of which can be applied to the whole project or an individual sequence (you can also transpose your melodies individually, or all together). The device lets you save up to 16 projects, each of which can have 16 patterns of up to 64 steps in each of the three sequencers. You can switch between patterns on the fly, and control your devices without needing to store anything on a computer. There’s even a real-time looper/roller/note repeat touch strip, which is lots of fun.
The encoders also bring touch sensitivity to the table this time around, showing the current of a knob on the LCD display when you rest your finger on them. The display also rather conveniently shows note values when controlling pitch and ranges from positive to negative when controlling timing; it’s a huge boom for a hardware sequencer, when there’s no computer screen to immediately garner such bits of necessary info.
The Bottom Line We’ve been collectively experiencing the resurgence of synthesizer and drum machine hardware, and it’s generally been a rather wonderful thing. The BeatStep Pro is one of the strongest attempts yet to give those machines something to plug into. Though the workflow can’t quite claim the same depth and UI sophistication as something like Push or Maschine, it somewhat makes up for this in terms of its vast and simple inter-operability possibilities. Whether you want to sequence a modular synthesizer, a piece of retro hardware, or even Ableton Live—or all of the above, simultaneously—it’s an impressively versatile device for doing so.
Having to go through necessary transformations and incarnations is something that most bands have to deal with throughout their career, especially if they want to complete the process of recording multiple albums and survive over eight years of working together in the studio and touring around the world, yet, not all bands come out the other side as shiny and refined as Marbert Rocel. Founded in 2005 by roommates Malik and Panthera Krause in their Erfurt apartment, Marbert Rocel quickly grew into a band that was closely considered to be a jazzy German derivative of Sonic Youth when lead singer Antje Selfarth’s voice first broke onto the scene. Back in 2007, this mixture of smooth female vocals and post-electronica-pop arrangements quickly caught the attention of the legendary Munich-based independent label Compost Records. Now, with numerous tours under its belt and its fourth studio album In The Beginning currently set for release on October 9, we are happy to see Marbert Rocel on the other side of a rollercoaster that included multiple releases and remix packages for acts like Pentatones, Marek Hemmann and Clueso. The last time we featured Marbert Rocel, was in 2008 for the track “Tttictictac,” and now, the band is back with a new download offering from their latest album with the song “Unwillingly Close.” The break-bloop beginnings of the track create a buttery and direct path right to the warmth of Selfarth’s lyrics, while the rest of the track is reminiscent of the highly polished uptempo pop- jazz sound that we have come to love from the band.
You can pre-order the new Marbert Rocel album In The Beginning right now on iTunes, and you can download the track “Unwillingly Close” right here on XLR8R by clicking on the media player below.
You can also check out a teaser video for the album by here:
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Donato Dozzy’s new LP, recorded along the shores of the Mediterranean, is called The Loud Silence—a most appropriate title considering that it’s an vaguely uncomfortable, anxiety-filled story laid out within a 38-minute run-time. These eight tracks creative a vast, forest-like memory palace, projecting a psychedelic yet introspective story on throughout its dark corners. And while it’s engaging, tantalizing and consistently interesting, it tests the listener by wading through a foliage of field recordings and mouth harps to get to its core, requiring an effort which can potentially get wearying at times.
Thankfully, the most tiring bits start at the beginning of the record. Opener “Personal Rock” leads with more auditory questions than answer; it all shows off the producer’s bag of tricks way too easily. There’s a notable sense of isolation that is paramount to the album’s identity, specifically in tracks that take the sounds of a mouth harp surrounded by the sounds of nature. But later cuts, like “The Loud Silence,” “The Net,” and “For Arnaud,” take the approach and create a natural comfort for the listener to accept their environment and blend in with nature—breathe it, hear it, see it and taste all at once.
The last third of the album has its flourishes—with “Downhill to the Sea,” the increasing tempo, along with its peculiar frequencies, may find the listener hoping for a lighthouse near their trip downwards. However, the cut ends just as business picks up and leads to a relief period of sorts. The innocuous penultimate track, “Concert for Snails,” acts as time to catch breath— water drips between the ears, and the creaking of doors signifies that the time has come to enter the memory palace one last time. Finally, “Exit The Acropolis” builds marvelously within its four minutes; evocative of a house crumbling with no one around to see it in a forest—the listener might leave wondering, “Who was there to experience it?” The answer that Dozzy gives us is clearly a personal one, which leaves the listener to choose if they want to pursue getting into his frame of mind or not. Either way, the silence from the end of the record will remain resonant, with each listening finding their own true way to gauge what this record can offer.
Today, Minimal Effort, the Los Angeles-based event promoters who earlier this year threw an absolutely insane event at Park Plaza in Downtown LA with names like UNER, Butch, and Matador, have released the final names for their upcoming event on Halloween at The Belasco Theater. The lineup includes Mobilee records boss, Anja Schneider, and Kompakt label heavyweight, Agoria. Minimal Effort have also called on a few fixtures in the global dance music community to host each of their four stages, including Mixmag, Jukely, Deep House Amsterdam, Rollingtuff, and Far Away Records. The event takes place on October 31, and you can purchase pre-sale ticket to this event by clicking here. To find out more information and to join the community of people going to this event, check out the official Facebook event.
Recently released on the Future Classic 2015 Sampler (download here), Australian producer Charles Murdoch has blessed us with his latest track, “Frogs,” after a two year hiatus relentlessly working on his debut LP, Point, the release date of which is yet to be announced. “Frogs” is a four way collaboration between Murdoch, vocalist Wafia, NYC-based MC Hak, and fellow Australian beat guru Ta-Ku, whose contribution to the track includes his first ever vocal debut.
The track is a whimsical duet that swells and sways in a calming and leisurely pace, eventually breaking off into a ghostly, filtered hip-hop groove with Hak delivering a brief but striking verse that eventually lends its way back into a bright and fluttering sound that is equally uplifting as it is neck-breaking.
In addition to having a debut LP drop sometime in the near future, Charles Murdoch will be making his US live debut in late October, hitting NYC, San Fransisco, and Los Angeles. Check out his tour dates and the track “Frogs” below, as well as more music from Murdoch by going here.
U.S. Tour Dates: 22nd October – 1015 Folsom – San Francisco 23rd October – Belasco Theatre – Los Angeles 24th October – Good Room – New York
The group known as Private Agenda—which consists of techno producer Nicolas Bougaieff, composer Martin Rowe, and singer Sean Phillips—is an emerging German disco/balearic beat group that has crafted a unique and positive musical vibe with smooth saxophone solos, rich soundscapes, and a profusion of warm latin percussion.
Premiering its debut single, “Deja Vu,” in March of this year (which received a great deal of praise), the trio has been hard at work to put out its follow up release, “Paralyzed,” which was released on International Feel on September 18. XLR8R is pleased to bring you an exclusive video premiere of Private Agenda’s performance of one of its latests tracks “Little Bird.”
Watch the dreamy and fresh disco performance below and be sure to check out more of Private Agenda’s music by going here.
Novation has just announced its latest design for portable and efficient production, Circuit. This battery powered, standalone piece of equipment is compact and brimming with an assortment of impressive features.
Circuit is a two-part analogue-modelled synth and four-part drum machine box, complete with step-sequencer, realtime recording capability, and velocity sensitive pads that can help you build ideas quickly and comfortably. With a 4×8 grid, eight macro-controls and no need to hook up to a laptop or speakers, Circuit is perfect for those on-the-go producers who wish to combine “simplicity and experimentation.”
You can watch the promo video for the Novation Circuit below and grab more information about this astounding piece of gear by visiting Novation’s website here.
Ahead of Kenny Glasgow‘s new album on No. 19, Circus Tales, which is slated to arrive in 2016, the former Art Department member has dropped a new track on No. 19’s Soundcloud. The deep and dark “Thinking To Myself” is typically Glasgow; twisted vocals and a repeated, morphing synth line form the basis of the track, backed by running drums and soaring pads, for a dark ride into the depths of clubland.
“Thinking To Myself” is being offered as a free download via the Soundcloud player below, with more information on Circus Tales set to arrive soon.
