After his slow techno collaborative mix with Speedy J last year, the producer goes it alone with tracks from Stars of the Lid, Kate Bush, Brian Eno and Fennesz.
Wristbands for the entire festival are priced at a mere $20. These wristbands are good for the whole event from October 7-10.
Confirmed acts include Black Lips, Klaxons, Monotonix, Casiokids, Phantogram, The Besnard Lakes, The Boxer Rebellion, VoxhaulBroadcast, Suuns, Land of Talk, We Barbarians, and Amusement Parks on Fire, with dozens more to be announced!
There are a limited number of wristbands available so get them now! Tickets will also be available at each venue on the night of the show (subject to capacity limitations).
The annual New Music Seminar has announced their music conference schedule and speaker line-up for July 19-21.
This year's music conference will be taking place in New York City at The NMS Revolution Hall at Webster Hall and includes five focused discussions over two days, eight NMS Intensives from key industry leaders, 22 mentoring sessions, nightly musical performances, and many networking opportunities. This year’s conference will be hosted by comedians Margaret Cho and Rob Cantrell, and will have appearances by DJ Rana Sobhany, Naughty by Nature, Matt White, and more to be announced.
Registration for this year’s NMS as well as performance line-ups and speaker schedules, please go HERE.
Opening Night Kick-Off at Webster Hall New York City July 19th.
I hope you liked music while it lasted, because me and a bunch of nerds are about to replace it with … this. Photo (CC-BYJoão Trindade
Music celebrities have given CDM words to live by over the years — strange, yet strangely poetic, reflections on the evils of modern technology. Sure, they’re trying to make some point about MP3 compression or the potential distractions of the Internet or … something. Yet, taken out of context, they form a kind of beat poetry for our time.
2006, Bob Dylan: “New records … have sound all over them.
… CDs are small. There’s no stature to it.”
2007, Elton John: “Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet…
There’s too much technology available.”
Elton John’s words led us to create the verb “to Elton John,” meaning to disconnect from the Internet in order to get some actual music making done.
And now, in 2010, we have Prince.
“The Internet’s completely over.”
Yeah, completely. Okay, he did have some … I don’t want to say “explanation,” which would usually denote “a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts.” He had what I will describe as “further words.”
“I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”
Really? Retailers, not publishers, pay advances? Anyway, let’s not get stuck on these minor details. Elton John tearing down the Internet was much more interesting than the Internet being “over.” The true profundity of Prince comes in regards to digital devices:
“They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
And just like that, Create Digital Music got its new motto.
And remember, look out. We’re using maths to destroy your brain.
Matthew Adell uses the example of Swedish House Mafia's Beatport smash "One" to give a comprehensive and honest ("most releases suck") guide to marketing your way to success.
A day of total bass driven reckoning is upon us! Gaudi’s single Bad Boy Bass get’s flipped by Liquid Stranger, Bandish Projekt, Alexis K, Bert on Beats, Piyush Bhatnagar. Follow the rasta’s chant down the rabbit hole into an entire new world of bass! We are super excited to check out the reaction to this digital release on dancefloors everywhere, it truly was a Global coming together to put this record out. Props to all the remixers and to DJ UMB from Generation Bass blog for making this a great collaboration.
The bassist and backing vocalist of Medina Lake has been hospitalized due to injuries he suffered for intervening with a man beating his wife/girlfriend.
Matthew Leone witnessed a man beating his wife/girlfriend on the street and tried to stop him. The man beat Matthew mercilessly splitting his skull and breaking his jaw. Suffering from hematoma, he has no health insurance and is in need of a second cranium surgery to re-assemble his skull.
There has been a donation fund set up to help this poor guy in need.
There will also be a benefit show in August at the Hard Rock in Chicago along with a silent auction. More information on that can be found here.
To donate to Matthew's medical bill funds, please click here.
You can also donate by click the widget below. Anything will help.
Australian noise-niks PVT (formerly Pivot) are giving away their new single 'Window' as a free download ahead of the launch of their third album, Church With No Magic, later this summer. The single will be released officially at the beginning of August on Warp, but you can grab a download by visiting PVT's website here.
Accompanying the single is a nausea inducing video directed by Clemens Habicht that captures the band in full flow at Abbey Road studios which you can check out below:
Formed by brothers Chris & Lawrence Pike, PVT are one of the most exciting bands to emerge from Australia in recent years. Their unique way of fusing guitars and synths with machine and real drums is utterly mesmerizing.
A few weeks ago, Jonas Tempel (Beatport Founder/CEO) and I (Beatport COO Matthew Adell) were asked to speak at the International Music Summit in Ibiza, Spain, presented and organized by Ben Turner and Pete Tong. Ben Turner asked that we speak to the evolving trends we see in the world of retail music for DJs.
We decided to use the opportunity to share our view of the digital music space today, explaining what aspiring artists and DJs can do to stand out, and what steps our most successful artists have taken to make it happen.
We want to share the knowledge that we've learned over the years, talk about how we see trends developing, and explain in detail how artists are improving their success on Beatport by taking advantage of new opportunities across the internet.
We've built a case study that shows actual data on some marketing strategies that were deployed recently on one particularly successful track. The outfit responsible is a relatively big brand, but the tools they used are largely free and available to everyone. Contrary to what many people believe, hitting #1 doesn't just come down to being featured in a slide on Beatport. We get between 7,000 and 15,000 new releases a week, and we only have about 32 slots to feature content. Now, I'm not knocking Beatport, because we rock, but getting a slide featured on our homepage actually pales in comparison to what you can do for yourself.
What I am about to say below is a follow-up of that presentation. I will cover the same information, and I've included a link to the video below for the full effect.
Update! Remember, the entry submission for the competition closes on July 15th—that means that all aspiring entrants have nine days left to finish up their tracks, and secure a future as a Toolroom co-producer! So get cracking...
Here's a big opportunity for you aspiring producers: Mark Knight and Toolroom Records have teamed up with Beatport to launch a fresh and exciting co-production competition.
This competition aims to give up-and-coming producers the chance to work with one of the industry’s leading artists, launch their music career with the world’s premier dance label, and be financially rewarded for their work, receiving 50% of publishing and an equal share of artist sales royalties.
The basics of the competition are simple. Mark Knight will upload an eight-bar loop to Beatport (available as of June 10th) and one MIDI part (the bassline, but do with it what you will!) to the Toolroom online store. Entrants must finish the production, give it a name, and upload it to Beatport's SoundCloud Dropbox for the competition by July 15th. Please note: Upon submitting your entry to the Soundcloud group for the Mark Knight Co-production competition please ensure the 'Downloadable' box is unchecked
The winning track, as chosen by Mark Knight, will be announced on July 19th and released in physical format as an ‘exclusive track’ on Mark Knight’s forthcoming Toolroom Knights CD (out Oct 2010), as well as made available on Beatport.
For more information, read below, and check out Mark Knight's explanatory video for the contest on Vimeo (worldwide) or YouTube (U.S. only).
Hardly a day goes by, it seems, that someone isn’t talking about the death of the album, replaced by singles. When they say “album,” however, they tend to mean “pop album,” using as their primary metric sales of the very top end of the spectrum. In electronic music, the album has never been about sales. For one, singles have long ruled the dance floor, long before iTunes began peddling online downloads of a la carte tracks. But more than that, albums are a unit of time, a packaged statement of aesthetic thought. They’re a story. And after an explosion of flash-pot diversity, labels today begin to be valued for their longevity and endurance. Albums once justified the label. Now, labels are a reason for albums to exist.
Of course, actually figuring out how to do that is as challenging – in business and cuisine – as running a restaurant. You need enough diversity to keep people coming back, but without becoming chaotic or losing the plot. You need a quantity / quality list.
Ghostly International is to me one of the superstar musical chefs that’s done it right. This summer, they’ve reached the milestone of 100 album releases. That may sound like a lot, but Ghostly has had just over a decade in operation, meaning they’re averaging just around ten releases a year.
I’m not personally shelling out for one of the 50 in this series, but I really admire its design. It embodies Ghostly’s philosophy – and it’s also a symbolic milestone. With its beautiful, organic design, it’s a physical manifestation of the new, enduring album, the album that survives even in the age of torrent sites and iTunes singles and enormous hard drives and music as commodity. As Ghostly puts it:
The Ghostly Bento was inspired by Japan and its tradition of quality, service, and design—values that Ghostly has always cherished. “Manzoku” is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “satisfaction.” Thus, the Bento is an intimate celebration of satisfaction in multiple forms—tactile, visual, aural—packaged in a handcrafted wooden box, stained and etched with a stunning image by LA artist Dosa Kim.
Putting out pretty wooden boxes isn’t going to justify any label, but Ghostly is busy, as always, this month.
Here in New York at digital tech research hub Eyebeam, a handful of artists will gather to collaborate with the label on visualization of music, under the tutelage of digital artists Aaron Myers and Aaron Koblin, as covered previously on CDMotion: Matching Visuals to Music: Round-up of Inspiration
I hope to be there covering what happens, and coding myself.
This Friday July 9 in San Francisco and Saturday July 10 in Los Angeles, Ghostly will celebrate its 100 discs with live events, featuring favored artists like Tycho, Shigeto, The Sight Below, and Mux Mool. (If anyone from CDM’s readership would like to go cover, we’d be much obliged!) XLR8R.com, SF event, LA showcase
And if you want to include records other than just Ghostly’s in your listening queue, check out their lovely look back at the past decade at the end of last year – plenty of agreement in my own music library here. Ghostly’s 110: Our Favorite Albums of the Decade
Meanwhile, if you want a look behind the scenes with a Ghostly artist, here’s what Christopher Willits is up to with Livid Instruments’ Block (see last week’s round-up) and Ableton Live with Max for Live, for our friends at XLR8R.
We have a winner! You've spun your picks, we've named our editorial favorites, and out of 20 finalists, Kaskade and Ultra Records have selected the winning remix of Kaskade's 'Dynasty'.
The honors go to Alex Rich of Brisbane, Australia, who turns Kaskade's song into a tight tech-house anthem. Interestingly, Alex's remix only had one spin, but it managed to catch the ears of Beatport's editors, who passed it along as one of the top 20 finalists, at which point it captivated Kaskade.
Voodoo-bass master Drums of Death is set to release his debut album, Generation Hexed, later this year. Featuring Gonzales on piano, released via Greco-Roman (read our extended feature here), a label and party crew that has more than a passing connection with Hot Chip,Generation Hexed will see the Scottish producer bring us one of this year's most anticipated releases.
Just 18 months ago, the skeleton faced party starter was a relative unknown. Now, having graced the cover of iDJ, toured with Hot Chip and Peaches and remixed everyone form Franz Ferdinand to Tricky, the excitement for his debut long player is palpable.
The album will also be accompanied by a live tour and a series of dancefloor-orientated 'Dubs Of Death' that show his darker side. 'Lonely Days' and the accompanying 'Lonely Dub' are both available to download from the official website.
American visual artist KAWS - best known for his pop-culture influenced work that includes altered photographs, colorful prints and moulded figurines - and Highsnobiety have released a video of his latest exhibition in Connecticut. Taking place at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum the exhibition runs until January 2011!
Check out the video below where you can see older pieces nestle up to newer pieces such as giant figures and his latest project with Medicom - a figure based on Pinocchio. More pictures on hypebeast.
