Posted by: Derek

Right along the 246 highway that connects half of western Tokyo together, there’s a little area called Mishuku. It’s a super cute residential neighborhood that’s at once quiet and easily liveable, and also retains some spunk with some killer restaurants and bars.

Though in Mishuku, almost none of the bars are ground level - you either go upstairs, even for music venues, or down into the depths under the street — which feels more natural for vampires like us.

So in tribute to the place I’ve been living for most of my recent sojourns to Japan - here’s some prog flow that’s both comfortably rockin, but got some tech bite and edginess around the sides.

Derek Ryan - Sake Flight 7 - Mishuku (right click and save-as to download)

Tracklist after the break!

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Posted by: Cor

Who doesn’t love a new Krafty Kuts set? This latest one Krafty laid down for UK dance music site Data Transmission, and I’m shamelessly pilfering it for all of you. Head over to the original site for a short interview with the man himself about the set… or just give it a listen below, that’ll work too. Tracklisting after the break.

Krafty Kuts - Data Transmission 180

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Posted by: Flicker

Cor’s post made me want to post this one song, as it is in the same realm of  ”swing samples in electronic music.”  It’s Moonglow by Venetian Snares.  I wish that he would do a whole jazz-sampled album, but no.

Moonglow

Posted by: Cor

For the last couple years I’ve been quite keen on a subgenre of electronic music that gets it character by incorporating samples of old 30s-era swing music. The genre’s still too small to have an official name, but I’ll go ahead and dub it electro-swing. Just recently I discovered that several of the tracks in my electro-swing collection all sample the same 1939 Billie Holliday song “Swing Brother Swing.” It’s pretty cool to hear how different artists have chopped up and repurposed the same source material. Have a listen to the original recording in the youtube clip above, and then check out how it was sampled below.

Bonobo - Sugar Rhyme
This isn’t the first time I’ve posted this sexy downtempo classic. It’s the first Bonobo track to ever grace my ears and it’s still one of my favorites. Not much sampled from the original other than Billie’s voice.

Parov Stelar - Wanna Get
The undisputed king of electro-swing ignored the original vocal and instead grabbed bits of the saxophone and piano instrumentation as the basis of this chill house number.

Dirty Dubsters - Swing It Brother
And lastly we have a much more straight-forward breaks remix of the track form the Dirty Dubsters. They take the original track and layer on the requisite thick bass and breakbeats.

What do you think of electro-swing? I’ve been laying low on the DJing for a while now, but you’ll be hearing more of this stuff from me, as I attempt to carve out a new sound for myself. I’ll get a podcast of electro-swing out soon.

Posted by: Jay

Summer is winding down for us here in the Northern Hemisphere, but we still have a bit more juice left in our long-ish days and nice-ish weather. To help you get the most out what’s left of your summer here are two fantastic, recently released funky mixes that will hopefully inspire you to have one last BBQ, go to one last beach or catch on last ball game.

Enjoy it while you can!

Fort Knox Five - “Endless Summer”

This is an awesome mid-temp funky set that *gasp* actually lets all the great songs play instead of mixing out after 30 seconds! This has become my favorite Fort Knox mix of all time and has to be a top five of 2011.
Endless Summer Mix by fortknoxfive

DJ Dan - “Stereo Damage Ep. 14″

The incomparable Funky/Electro House master is back with fantastic of blend of new grooves and fun, bouncy tracks. Now why ohhhhh why did he not play a set like this at Burning Man this year?? For those who didn’t witness it his Friday night Opulent Temple set was uninspired techy nonsense.
DJ Dan Presents Stereo Damage - Episode 14 (Live @ King King) by djdanmusic