Posted by: Jay

I came back last week from a month long trip in Korea & Japan to the nicest San Francisco Bay Area weather you could possibly imagine. It was so beautiful even oblivious, indifferent and inscrutable God passing through would be moved to shed a tear of joy. We couldn’t possible ask for better weather to star off the summer season.

And on that note, here are a few tracks that bottle up this fabulous summer vibe, to be enjoyed over the long hot days and warm nights to come.

Good vibes mash-up supreme from GRiZ:

GRiZ - “You Got To Change”

Speaking of mashups, I’ve gotta include this Fugees/Kool & The Gang jam by DJ Twister. I’ve been playing this almost every week since last year but haven’t shared it yet with you Beatery Faithful yet!

DJ Twister - “Feel-Good-La”

While we’re getting down on the old-school tip we’ve got to swing through the best MJ remix to drop in 2012:

Michael Jackson - “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” - Gigamesh Remix Dub Edit

Gigamesh also remixed James Curd earlier this year in a track that’s sure to end up on my follow-up set to indi-tronic.

James Curd - “Guide Me” - Gigamesh Remix

I don’t know much about “HÔHME” except that he’s from New York, lots of people comment on his tracks on soundcloud, and he blew my mind with this electro-progressive mashup: “Eagle Eyes”.

HÔHME - “Eagle Eyes” - Kaskade vs. Sander Van Doorn vs. Adrian Lux vs. Mindy Gledhill

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Posted by: Jay

I don’t think it’s gonna make quiiiite as much money as The Avengers, but there’s another movie out that throws together established superheros into some kind of ad-hoc collaboration, hoping that the sum of their parts will turn into something transcendent, something greater than any of them could have achieved on their own. In “Re:Generation”, a documentary brought to us by The Grammys and directed by Amir Bar-Lev*, our five superheros are Skrillix, DJ Premier, Pretty Lights, Mark Ronson, and The Crystal Method and their mission is to reinterpret five traditional genres of music with their on unique style and flair.

* I had no idea “The Grammys” presented anything besides The Grammys. And Bar-Lev also directed “My Kid Could Pint That” & “The Tillman Story”

As a big fan of genre bending in general I was all in when I heard about the project, and with one exception* all the tracks turned out great. As for the movie itself, it ranges from “well worth watching” to a “must see!”, depending on how much you follow these modern day musical superheros. As a super fan of all these guys it was thrilling watching them so far out of their element and really having their sound pushed to the limit.

*Crystal Method, I’m looking at you.

I appreciated all these tracks more after I watched the whole movie so really I hope you’ll make the time to do that, but let’s just take ‘em for a quick spin:

Skrillex vs. Rock (and featuring the living members of the Doors*) - “Breakn’ A Sweat”

Mark Ronson vs Jazz (featuring Erykah Badu, Trombone Shorty, Mos Def, Zigaboo Modeliste, and Members of The Dap Kings) - “A La Modeliste”

DJ Premier vs Classical (Nas and The Berklee Symphony Orchestra) - “Regeneration”

Pretty Light vs Country (featuring LeAnn Rimes and Dr. Ralph Stanley) - “Wayfaring Stranger”

To watch the movie and get all these tracks check the official website:

http://regenerationmusicproject.com/

Trailer and re-mixes from Bonobo and Zedd after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by: Derek

From the depths of the archive comes one of my favorite pieces of atmospheric melodic DnB.
I first heard this on a compilation called “Legally Stoned”, which I’d highly recommend if you can find it, though I think it’s out of print.

At once beautiful, exotic, and neuro-deep, this piece definitely shows where that comp got its name from. It’s 10am, and I feel high just listening to it. I seriously wish they made more jungle like this still…

Mmm…tasty….

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: Flicker

A year or so ago, a Half-Life 2 mod called “Neo Tokyo” was finally released after being in development since 2004, when it was to be an Unreal Tournament mod. I know that this isn’t a videogame blog but just deal with it. I also know that when most people hear the words “video game music,” they either think of MIDI chiptunes, or maybe some absolutely horrible J-pop theme song. Wait, that’s every J-pop song. But stop thinking about how appalling that Japanoise is! That’s not the point.

The point is that the score to Neo Tokyo is good. And I don’t mean it’s good for a video game. It’s actually an incredibly solid release.  I mean, I have music from Punchout, Excite Bike and Rygar on my computer, but I don’t actually listen to them. And while I could see myself running around Tokyo shooting soldiers to this music, I much more enjoy it as a backdrop to daydreaming on the train, which is where I come up with all of my brilliant ideas.

I couldn’t possibly categorize the music on this album accurately, as it is a hodgepodge of styles. There is everything from ambient to drum & bass. From trip hop to post-rock.

Which reminds me. Can the internet PLEASE get over the novelty of old Nintendo themes performed by kazoo or jug-band, or whatever. It’s not clever anymore. It’s every week with somebody getting praise for their cello and spoons rendition of the Kraid battle in Metroid. Granted, internet praise lasts for roughly three days before the next Tom and his giant floor piano Zelda theme, but that’s longer than they deserve.

Ed Harrison has only released this one album, which is frankly far higher quality than the mod that it was written for. The entire album is 26 songs in length, and all of them well done. Here are a few:

Tin Soldiers

Automata

Scrap_IO

Footprint

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You can listen to more or purchase the whole thing at Amazon or CD Baby.