Our good friend Dub Gabriel has been a busy man lately: djng globally, including a recent tour of China, creating tons of new music with new artists and some legends including this track from his brand new album featuring vocalist U-Roy.
Straight outta Kingston Jamaica via San Francisco and beyond, Luv ‘n Liv is the first single to drop from Dub Gabriel’s upcoming 4th studio album, The Cut Up. Featuring the mighty Dread in a Babylon, U-Roy (The Originator), Luv ‘n Liv lays testament to all that can be when you put a reggae legend in the same room as one of America’s leading producers of nu-dub.
With the original hook-up coming through none other than Scientist himself, U-Roy & Dub Gabriel went deep in Mark Pistel’s (Hercules & The Love Affair/Meat Beat Manifesto) Room 5 studio and emerged with Luv ‘n Liv. To round things out, DG enlisted David J of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets to hold down the bass, and Ysanne Spevack on strings who was fresh from her recent work with the Smashing Pumpkins. The outcome is pretty epic if we say so ourselves. Respect!
Rebel rockers Gogol Bordello are offering fans a free download of new single "Pala Tute" from their highly-anticipated fifth studio album, Trans-Continental Hustle, due out on American Recordings on April 27. the album is the result of an inspired, year-long collaboration with famed producer Rick Rubin.
Matthew B compiles a 13-track selection for the Shake It! blog which features both unreleased Martin Buttrich material and a picture of him wearing a rather fetching headband.
The R-05 compact digital recorder provides crystal-clear audio quality, enhanced recording and editing features, and an extended battery life of more than 16 hours of recording time per charge.
Korg has teamed up with cutting-edge creative artists from around the world to deliver fresh beats, patterns and Electribe SX (ESX-1) samples. Ninja Tune/Big Dada artists Emika and the Anti-pop Consortium are contributors, as well as UK MySpace artist Shrikednb (Tom Thorpe), plus YouTube stars Denkitribe and Scribej.
The MR-2 high-resolution mobile recorder records in the ultrahigh-fidelity DSD format using a 2.8MHz sampling rate. Using the included AudioGate software, this original datastream recording can be re-purposed into nearly any audio format with minimal fidelity loss.
Compact and portable, the microStation features Korg’s 61-key Natural Touch mini-keyboard, numerous effects, dual arpeggiators and 16 tracks of MIDI recording power. New features include an easily accessible Loop Recording and Visual Grid Sequencing.
Powered by two AAA alkaline batteries, the compact monotron can be held in one hand. The unique ribbon controller keyboard borrows from performing with Korg’s KAOSS products.
More than anything, Miami's annual Winter Music Conference is about hot new club music. You can bet that every DJ and record label owner in Miami this week is touting a bag full of promos, having spent most of the winter planning their release schedules and summer sets around WMC.
Whilst the conference's relevance as an industry b2b event has waned in recent years, as the focus has shifted towards a week of non stop partying, plenty of records are still dancefloor-tested and broken during WMC, giving Miami party goers the opportunity to hear dance hits before they go on to dominate the summer's festivals and club events.
Crystal ball in hand, we called up a number of DJs, both big names and up and comers, to find out which records they think will be big during this year's WMC. Then we also analysed Beatport's DJ chart data - specifically the top charted tracks of March 2010 - to seek out the tracks that are being charted and played the most by DJs currently.
We hope that the following list of soon-to-be-released cuts, top charted tracks, and DJ favourites gives some indication of how Miami's WMC will sound in 2010.
Arturia's renovated synthesizer anthology line is now available in a new reference pack: the V Collection 2. This bundle offers all the emulations of the Moog Modular, the Minimoog, the CS-80, the Prophet 5, the Prophet VS, the ARP 2600 and the Jupiter-8.
Looking for all the world like it was inspired by the Gakken SX-150 synth, but packed with Korg analog electronics, the monotron has to be one of the biggest surprise announcements from a major vendor in recent memory. The tiny has the filter from the classic KORG MS-10 and MS-20 and is called a “real analog” synth.
It’s also likely to be very hackable, though we’ll know more about that soon. I think we’ve found the stocking stuffer of 2010, and it’s only March.
Pricing: MSRP US$85 Availability: August 2010
(note: this is official information from KORG USA; for some reason some other dates and prices are floating around)
Specs:
A ribbon controller for vibrato, glide, and pitch
Circuitry: one voltage-controlled oscillator, one voltage-controlled filter, one low-frequency oscillator.
Controls: five knobs, one switch.
LED blinks with the LFO.
Same voltage-controlled filter circuitry as on the legendary KORG MS-10 and MS-20 semi-modulars – now, if we could only convince KORG to give us a monotron Pro with more of the MS in it.
Runs on two AAA’s
External audio input (updated) for filtering any external input – awesome. (Thanks, arne/styrofoammusic!)
Canadian indie-pop/rock collective, Stars, announce their US tour will start this June in Boston, and will serve as a special introduction to their new album, The Five Ghosts, available June 22 on the band's own label imprint, Soft Revolution Records.
I liked the SH-201 when released – the accessible front panel of that synth, which exposes synth parameters as physical knobs, made it fun to use, and sure enough, a lot of folks snapped them up. But likable as it was, the SH-201 somehow lost some of the spirit of the SH-101 its name suggested, partly because it’s so, well, big. It was neither as compact nor as logically laid out as the original.
Enter Roland’s new SH-01, and exhibit B that this year, Roland is listening. It’s a small but playable-looking, fun-packed little synth keyboard. And while the front panel on the SH-201 made some questionable decisions deviating from the wisdom of the SH-101, the Gaia SH-01 actually does take some of the best of its predecessor. The front panel it even organized the same way: from left to right, you control modulation, oscillators, and amplitude envelope. The SH-01 replaces the awkward controls to the left of the 101’s keyboard with a standard Roland pitch/mod paddle, and adds newer features like easy preset access, D-Beam, and an effects section.
The specs:
37 full-size keys (no tiny keys as on certain KORG models)
Three virtual-analog engines, each with dedicated oscillator, filter, amp, envelope, and LFO, plus 64 polyphonic voices. (Yep, this is a digital synth, not a retro analog offering.)
Multi-effects: reverb, distortion, fuzz, bit crash, flanger, phaser, pitch shifter, low boost, delay with panning, and tempo sync. Layer up to five simultaneously, which is about all you’d want. (I believe those are actually now the COSM effects, but I’m double checking.)
External audio input and USB connection for playback – but, really, you can’t run the external input through the effects section? It’s just for playing along?
Arpeggiator, phrase recorder and independent controller playback – taking a page from the success of the entry-level KORG gear, for sure.
Taken together, I think Roland has a worthy rival to some of KORG’s gear at around the same price point. And it looks like a no-brainer to choose this over the larger SH-201. I love the panel layout; I think it just comes down to sound. And it’s a little sad that they couldn’t nail the sub-$500 price that made the original microKORG such a big hit, even if that would have meant cutting some corner. The folks I know at Roland have had a blast playing with it. And yes, that means something – just because you work for a company doesn’t mean you always enjoy it. I do look forward to trying it out. Keyboards like this are very often what get people hooked on synthesis and electronic music, and you’ll also find one or two sneaking into some high-end, celebrity studios for their playability factor.
Last question: why is it called GAIA? I don’t know. (Makes me think of Paia.)
This new line of guitars is designed to deliver the feel of the finest boutique instruments and the optimal tonal performance of Line 6 guitar-modeling technology.
