Once again Beatport makes its annual pilgrimage to Miami to bring you one of the most sought out events during the Winter Music Conference. "The Beatport Beach Party", presented by Beatport, Pioneer and Armani Exchange takes place at Gansevoort Hotel's beautiful private beach and will feature over 25 of the world's best DJs, with no cover. To ensure a memorable experience for all attendees Beatport has teamed up with Insomniac Events of Los Angeles and the Opium Group of Miami to showcase bigger and better production, visuals, and sound. This is the WMC event you don't want to miss.

Read more on Beatportal

The Compost Records man proffers an hour of funk and disco infused house cuts for the imprint's recent session at Munich's Harry Klein venue.

Traveler Installment 200 – “Peter Gabriel Edition”
Every Thursday we have been adding a classic edition of our Six Degrees Traveler radio show to the blog via Soundcloud. Soundcloud makes these shows easy to stream and share so please feel free to tell your friends, post on your blog etc. This week, in honor of the long awaited release of Peter Gabriel’s gorgeous new orchestral covers record, Scratch My Back, we are posting our special 200th episode, tribute to Peter Gabriel. As always, this show is chock full of super rare tracks, bootleg remixes and mash ups- enjoy.

For Tracklist click below.

ARTIST SONG ALBUM LABEL
Peter Gabriel Jetzt Kommt Die Flut Ein Deutsches Album Charisma
Peter Gabriel Across the River Music & Rhythm WOMAD
Peter Gabriel Digging in the Dirt (Richard Evans Remix) Digging in the Dirt EP Real World
Peter Gabriel Mercy Street (William Orbit Remix) Mercy Street EP Real World
Peter Gabriel vs. Coldplay vs. Pink Mercy for the Scientists (Bobby Martini Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Games Without Frontiers (Massive Attack Remix) Games Without Frontiers EP Real World
Peter Gabriel More Than This (Elbow Remix) More Than This EP Real World
Peter Gabriel Big Eyes (Flying White Dots Mix) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Games Without Frontiers (team9 Remix) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel vs. Nine Inch Nails Closer to Your Eyes (BRAT Mash Mix) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Taste of Lime X-Plore 1 CD Rom
Peter Gabriel vs. Lamb Big Sun (MadMix Mustang Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel vs. David Essex Rock the Monkey (Voicedude Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Shock the Monkey (Bombay Dub Orchestra Treatment) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel vs. Coldplay Raining Red Clocks (Bobby Martini Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel D.I.Y. (Sax Edit) 12″ Charisma
Peter Gabriel Steam (Hank Shocklee’s Oh Oh , Let Off Steam 12″ Mix) Steam EP Real World
Peter Gabriel vs. Martha Reeves Dancing in the Sledgehammer Streets (Bobby Martini Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel vs. Black Eyed Peas vs. Ludacris Big Girls Hump, Old Girls Time (Kai Mash Up) Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Shosholoza Biko 12″ Charisma
Peter Gabriel w/ Jools Holland Washing in the Water (Live Gospel Version) Live from Later w/ Jools Holland Promo Only
Peter Gabriel Ngankarrparni (Sky Blue Reprise) Long Walk Home : Music from the Rabbitt Proof Fence EMI
Peter Gabriel In Your Eyes (Bill Laswell’s Specail Extended Mix) 12″ Geffen

The latest creation from the studios of Engine Earz Experiment comes FACTION 2.

Forget the hierarchy and the pyramids of control, this is for the love, the music and for the people. REVOLUTION.

This is a free download so get your copy from: FACTION 2

Listen to:

Watch:

For those of you not lucky enough to be in the Los Angeles area for this Friday's the bird and the bee show, fear not!  The show will be broadcast on Livestream at 8pm PST/11pm EST. 

Don't miss songbird Inara George and multi-instrumental/producer Greg Kurstin, as they run through new material from their forthcoming record, Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall And John Oates, which drops March 23rd via EMI's Blue Note.

Mark those iCals and tune in!

LCD Soundsystem can rest easy. The band will release their highly-anticipated newest album May 18 in the U.S. on DFA/Virgin.

The album is as-yet-untitled, brief at nine tracks, and is the first new material from the band since the critical smash Sound of Silver. The band will make a stop at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival April 16, kicking off their world tour.

LCD Soundsystem Tracklist
Dance Yrself Clean
Drunk Girls
One Touch
All I Want
Change
Hit
Pow Pow
Somebody's Calling Me
What You Need

LCD Soundsystem can rest easy. The band will release their highly-anticipated newest album May 18 in the U.S. on DFA/Virgin.

The album is as-yet-untitled, brief at nine tracks, and is the first new material from the band since the crticial smash Sound of Silver. The band will make a stop at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival April 16, kicking off their world tour.

LCD Soundsystem Tracklist
Dance Yrself Clean
Drunk Girls
One Touch
All I Want
Change
Hit
Pow Pow
Somebody's Calling Me
What You Need

Thomas Schmitt gets to work on the brainy video for Riley Reinhold's track "I Remember."

T-Mobile INmusic festival will be celebrating its fifth anniversary in its customary party site; the beautiful Lake Jarun in Zagreb, Croatia. Boasting six different stages, the music ranges from techno to indie rock. This year InMusic will take a more dance music theme.

Having previously hosted big names such as Kraftwerk and Hot Chip, this years festival promises LCD Soundsystem, Massive Attack, !!! (Chk Chk Chk) and Broken Social Scene. So get ready for LCD Soundsystem to showcase songs from the upcoming album while Massive Attack brings Heligoland stage wise.

What makes this year’s festival more appealing is the opening of a new camping section. Open between 19 and 25 of June, campers will have access to city tours, a wide variety of sporting activities, and basic living facilities. Camping tickets are an affordable 35 euros.

Get your festival tickets sooner rather than later as ticket prices will rise.

Richie Hawtin's Minus label goes under the microscope with Making Contakt, a 90-minute documentary following the crew across 2008's Contakt tour. Celebrating the label's first 10 years of existence, the tour represented Minus' most ambitious undertaking to date, a dazzling (and daunting) fusion of minimal techno and state-of-the-art multimedia technology. Hitting Detroit, Amsterdam, Rome, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and more, the effort also proved an unprecedented challenge, and Making Contakt, directed by Ali Demirel and edited by Niamh Guckian, captures it all, from the high anxiety of the pre-show hurdles to the high spirits of the crowds as it all comes together. Out this week, the soundtrack to Making Contakt spans lithe, housey grooves, peak-time grinders, and everything in between, featuring cuts and remixes from Heartthrob, Cybersonic, JPLS, Marc Houle, Bryan Zentz, Click Box, Monkey B, Fabrizio Maurizi, Barem, Marco Carola, the Selph, Alex Under, and Hawtin himself. Check out a preview of the film, and get the soundtrack from the Beatport player below.

Read more on Beatportal

Émilie Simon is a fantastically-talented artist with a unique background: her work now falls clearly into pop territory, but her lineage is just as much experimental and classical. Conservatory training gave way to time at the avant garde nerve center of Paris, IRCAM. IRCAM’s Director, Cyrille Brissot, still plays alongside her – more on his wild invention in a moment. Simon has been a big hit in France; you may know her composition from the soundtrack to March of the Penguins. But now, she’s a New Yorker, which brings us to the topic of the headline. The singer-pianist-artist released a new record last fall, The Big Machine. I do miss some of the quirkier style on her older records, and I rather liked the singing in French (I’m sure NYC has its share of Francophones). The new record tends in a Kate Bush-influenced direction which has divided some fans. They are just as well-crafted, however, and Simon’s writing and performance is inventive as always. It’s a new direction, but it’s worth giving it some time. I think you’ll like the results, and it shows Simon’s continued versatility and artistry. One thing with which you really can’t argue is Simon’s exceptional musicianship. I love her new series, which has her releasing studio sessions shot in her Bedford Avenue apartment. In the edition at top, the work begins with the expected ballad form, but takes a very different direction. Commanding sounds and effects from a militaristic, future-punk controller on her arm, Simon adds electronic textures, aided by a Yamaha Tenori-On and Doepfer Dark Energy synth. The wrist-strapped controller is Cyrille Brissot’s invention, aptly named “The Brissot.” Somewhere, Thomas Dolby is very jealous, indeed. (They would match his goggles.) Episode two, released yesterday, is after the jump. Few of us would do a multi-cam rig in our apartment (I’d better make some friends), and I could do without the faux-film effects, but there’s still a terrific intimacy of the sessions, and her stage presence shines through. It’s a reminder that adding technology doesn’t have to mean removing that sense of a live performance – quite the opposite, in fact, as a solo act wouldn’t be able to do this much of this on the spot. Electronics are, as I keep saying, the ultimate renaissance of the one-man- (or one-woman-) band. So, if you think you can do better – heck, even if not – let us know if you release a similar session. And Cyrille, Émilie, if you’re out there, I’d love to catch up on your work for CDM.

Who would have thought I’d end up at the same up at the same uni as this music producer, though at the time I had no idea who he was especially because we were studying very different subjects! It was only a couple of years after graduating did I hear about him when my friend Vib sent me his link on Facebook.

Shammi Pithia, a humble London based composer and producer who made a debut release in 2008 with his EP ‘Cinema for the Ears’. This was quite literally a test for him, to understand and learn about the industry he was about to enter.

Cinema for the Ears is a majestic EP serving as an introduction into the mind of Shammi. Consisting of five tracks each quiet different but with one similarity, looking at the way music can move and soulfully touch an individual, a concept which sits at the heart of Shammi’s music philosophy.

Tracks featured on this EP such as “Poem without words” displaying an array of emotions all expressed audibly, like compassion and tenderness giving them a beautiful cinematic soundscapes feel. ‘The Dream’ on the EP has its base rooted in Hindu Philosophy, expressing Karma and the circle of Reincarnation through the more ‘human’ experience of a night’s dream.

You’ll hear a Bansuri (Indian Flute) being played in Cinema for the Ears, that is Shammi. Again teaching himself to play the flute by listening to flute recordings, analyzing them and then by trying to play them, thus developing an understanding of the instrument.

So what does the future hold? … Well, April 9th 2010 sees the release of Shammi’s first album – Audio Descriptive, out on all digital stores and CD’s from his website. Joining Shammi are an assortment of great musicians, names like Japjit Kaur, Unnati Dasgupta, Jatanil Banerjee, Michael Goodey, Suroj Sureshbabu, Preetha Narayanan and Dilpreet Bhatia, Sameer Rao (flutist) to name a few!!

Audio Descriptive is a 16 track album, with a running time of approximately 66 minutes that promises to take the ideas and themes from the E.P. “Cinema for the Ears’ a lot further in a much bigger and more expressive way!

EXCLUSIVE preview of “Stillness” featured on Audio Descriptive

Shammi reminds me of a young Nitin Sawhney, his work is well thought out, structured and with meaning, combined with a splash of elegance and grace. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Shammi scoring for films, T.V. and theatre later on!

Music plays a spiritual and philosophical role in Shammi’s work, the detail and attention given to the composition is quite something, as they say, God is in the detail.

Audio Descriptive Facebook Group | Shammi Pithia Myspace

 Poem without words

The Dream

Shammi also featuring on two tracks by Phealeh:

Dark Clouds | Thirten

The fabric blog keeps the company of the Dutch producer to talk about his work with Rush Hour and Perlon, and all that's good in the Dam right now.

Next Generation DJ, the global DJ talent search, has announced its first-place winner: the sister duo Maya Vanya. The Croatian-born, New Zealand-based pair beat out over 3500 competitors for the top slot in the contest, an initiative by Pioneer DJ, Beatport and DJ Mag, and hosted on the music and social networking platform Letsmix.com. With more than 350,000 votes cast by over 190,000 people, the NGDJ jury—Deadmau5 manager Dean Wilson, Ultra Records' David Waxman, Sebastian Ingrosso, Beatport founder Jonas Tempel, DJ Mag editor in chief Ben Murphy, and Pioneer DJ's Mark Grotefeld—had their work cut out for them when it came to whittling down the finalists. But the sister act handily rose to the forefront thanks to a mixture of sultry Caribbean rhythms, punchy 4/4 grooves, and the DJs' own exclusive edits.

Read more on Beatportal

Saw Recordings' boss Satoshi Tomiie has contributed to house music in many ways, but without a doubt, it was his groundbreaking releases such as 'Love In Traffic', 'Tears', and 'Solar Wind' that made him an American house music hero. It is Satoshi's commitment and consistency to the darker side of house music, that has earned him a ever-growing army of fans. His recent

mix of Mes 'Back To Basics' is a prime example of the kind of deep electronic house he has made and played since the 1990s. But he isn't stuck in the past either, as this group of future leaning Weekend Weapons prove.

Read more on Beatportal