Burial and Kode9 provided the guest mix on the long standing Radio 1 DJ's final show for the station.

A true house music icon, George Morel has long had a hand in virtually every aspect of the culture, from his origins throwing basement parties to his production work on classic hits like 2 in a Room's 'Wiggle It', to his role as an A&R at Strictly Rhythm in the label's prime. No wonder DJ Magazine once credited Morel as "the Quincy Jones of dance music". We caught up with Morel, who is now enjoying calling his own shots as the head of Groove On Records, and slamming away in the studio.

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Just in time for Halloween, we bring you the sixth issue of FILTER UNBOUND, featuring the all-mighty thrash gods…SLAYER!

"In the Blood: SLAYER Reigns Forever" features exclusive, never before seen video interviews and live footage of the band through the years. All four original members, as well as some of their celebrity fans and cohorts, give FILTER UNBOUND an inside look at the band's intense, legendary musical career.

With over 30 full pages of Slayer stories, videos, and interviews, this edition of FILTER UNBOUND is for all serious music fans in addition to anyone who ever scrawled SLAYER on their high school notebook.

So before you head out to catch Slayer on their upcoming US tour this fall, discover what makes them tick, courtesy of FILTER UNBOUND.

Check out "In The Blood: SLAYER Reigns Forever" right here.

Now is the time to pick up all of your hot summer music at an even hotter deal. Beatport has lowered the prices of over 1,000,000 tracks to $.99 / €.99 / £.79 each. For a limited time tracks from many releases, artist albums and compilations, normally priced at $2.49 / €2.49 / £1.99 at the beginning of 2010 summer season are reduced. Read on for more details and discover all of the music you can pick up for your next DJ set.

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The hilarious and often slightly offensive (in an adolescent brotherly way) cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is FILTER Magazine's latest cover stars. They are also set to release season five of their insanely funny show on DVD and Blu-ray on September 14th.

In honor of this, FILTER has three copies of the DVD to give away courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment!

You want a copy you say? Simply enter below!!

Season five of Always Sunny has 12 new episodes and includes deleted scenes, cast commentary, a blooper reel, featurettes and more! Did I mention a Kitten Mittens Endless Loop? Yea...awesome.

For those of you who don't win, you can buy your copy of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" Season Five on September 14th everywhere.
 

Enter at FILTERmagazine.com

This analog-modeling synthesizer has a 37-note Fatar keybed, illuminated pitch and modulation wheels, eight assignable touch-sensitive rotary encoders, a 144-character LCD and a large knob for fine control of parameters. Under the hood are an arpeggiator, vocoder and USB audio interface.

Christopher Tubbs chats with the man behind the long running London label's mastering and the city's 100% Dynamite parties.

Shimon, an adaptive, improvisational, percussion-playing robot, is getting smarter – and more famous, with appearances in places like the Stephen Colbert show. Now, humans have been known to get a big head under such circumstances. Shimon’s head has gotten “more social” – gestural intelligence helps the robot relate to fellow players and nod its head in time to the music.

I got a chance to talk more to project creator Dr. Gil Weinberg, director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. He’s also taken some of this technology and built it into mobile app ZOOZBeat which you can spot in one of the videos here alongside the (much more expensive, no you can’t have one) robot.

What might surprise you about the Shimon project is that it isn’t just about copying what humans can do with a robot. In fact, if anything, says its creator, it’s about human-robotic relations. “The project was always aimed at creating new and inspiring interactions between humans and robots, with the goals of creating new and exciting musical outcome that cannot be created otherwise,” says Weinberg. He emphasizes that, while the robot assimilates human listening, it has a musical style all its own.

And yes, if there’s any doubt that Georgia Tech students can kick our ass in smarts and drum chops, even the ones who aren’t advanced robots, that’s Caity in the new promo video at top, an architecture major with LEED certification and drum line experience right up to the pros (having drummed for the Atlanta Falcons). That’s their fight song at the end. In fact, the only thing Georgia Tech students can’t do, evidently, is sing. (Though, based on my undergrad alma mater, I really, really, really can’t make fun.)

Shimon on Colbert from Georgia Tech on Vimeo.

Talking Machine Music

CDM: You talk in the NPR interview about not wanting the robot to play just like a human. So, I wonder – would you think of the robot as an expression of the musical taste and instincts of its designers? In some ways, it does sound different from a human; could we think of Shimon as having its own style, or being interesting because of its non-humanness?

Weinberg: Our motto is “listen like a human, play like a machine”. The idea behind it is that in order to connect with humans, Shimon has to understand music the way we humans do. For this purpose we developed perceptual modules based on music perception research for concepts such as tension and release, stability, similarly, etc. When Shimons responds, however, we want him to be surprising and inspiring, introducing new ideas that humans are not likely to use, whether by using mathematical processes that humans cannot process in real time or just through mechanical abilities. For this purpose we developed algorithms that utilize concepts such as genetic algorithms, fractals, morphing of HMM-based improvisation, etc. So for example, Shimon can respond by morphing the styles of Monk, Coltrane and his human co-player, in a way that humans probably will never use. In that sense he has its own musical style. For each different piece, though, Shimon may have a different style or “taste” based on the algorithm we use. I assume that one could say that his “taste” is a combination of all of his styles, which are inspired by the designers’ input.

How has the robot’s algorithm evolved since we first talked about it? What sorts of modifications have you found useful?

An important recent addition to the project is Shimon’s social head, developed with the help of my former post doc – Guy Hoffman. In order to create the connection with humans, we explored ideas of embodiment and gestures, as instrumental aspects of expressive musical group play. Currently Shimon can detect to the beat and nod his head accordingly, which helps humans get into the groove. He would look at what he finds interesting (if one player is playing something different than before, or different than the other players, Shimon would look at her rather than the other players). If Shimon plays something sophisticated, he is more likely to look at his own arms etc. We are also working on anticipating and coordination. We installed a camera in his head, and are currently working on letting Shimon use the visual input to anticipate and coordinate his playing with humans, along with the auditory information it currently processes.

Did the Colbert Bump go to Shimon’s head?

First Shimon was somewhat insulted, for himself and for the idiom of Jazz in general. Then he realized that they spelled his name correctly, so he started bragging about it. He also started to play in other styles to distance himself from the genre :)

But seriously, I am wiring a new piece for Shimon in an African Marimba Band Play style, which will help show its versatility in genres. (And here is an old clip where he plays an Indian Raga.)

Any other work we should know about, or other research growing out of the Shimon project?

To validate the importance of visual cues in music group play (i.e, validating the importance of Shimon’s embodiment and physically of the robot in comparison to interacting with computer generated music) we conducted this research: Visual Cues:
The Effect of the Visual Modality on Musical Ensemble Synchronization

Also, check out this paper, which won the Best Cognitive Paper in ICRA 2010. [That's the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, for those of you not in the know. And IEEE originated as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Whew. -Ed.]
“Gesture-Based Human-Robot Jazz Improvisation” by Guy Hoffman and Gil Weinberg [PDF link]

Shimon in Videos

Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Next up in our Focus on France is Paul Ritch, a rising producer whose unerring techno touch has landed him everywhere from Get Physical Music to SCI+TEC Digital Audio to Drumcode to Bpitch Control. His own label Quartz Rec, meanwhile, offers a vein thick with rough diamonds—not to mention tracks from Nic Fanciulli, Dubfire, Carlo Lio, and Slam, alongside French producers like Okain. Don't forget to check out our "Focus On France" compilation featuring free music downloads from Cassius, dOP, Martin Solveig and more. Our latest track addition features Handycraft's "La Folle Du 6" courtesy of Paul Ritch's Quartz Records.

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HiYa – Karate chop! On Friday, September 24th Ninja Tune plans on raiding two very Berlin centric clubs. Astra and Icon are the musical targets and people have been bubbling for the two-day event. The UK imprint will celebrate their 20th birthday beside their forthcoming compilation, Ninja Tune XX.

Celebrating in style, the compilation box set is a sweet package which includes six CDs, six 7-inches and an illustrated hardcover book - woah. Friedrichshain’s Astra club will premier the two-day extravaganza with some top acts are already planned The Cinematic Orchestra will headline and will be joined by compatriot Simon Green, AKA Bonobo. Electronic Beat favourite Andreya Triana will also be there and will accompany Fink onstage.

The sweat box otherwise known as Icon club, will follow the next evening as The Bug busts out some tunes. Bonobo and Delfonic will follow playing with DJ Food and King Cannibal.

You know you're a superstar when you've got Diddy as your hype man. Erick Morillo is generally credited as the dude who introduced Diddy to house music, for which, you know, thank him or curse him, depending upon your perspective. But there's no denying Morillo's stature as one of house music's mega-DJs, even for casual clubbers. In his Weekend Weapons selection, Morillo breaks down the tunes that are ruling Subliminal Sessions at Pacha this summer. Read on...

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James Holden, Tensnake, Ewan Pearson and Paul Mogg reflect on how they learnt to match beats, their current favourite selectors and their preferred tools of the trade for We Love.

We're not sure many people are aware of this, but we were deeply shocked and saddened to hear that one of Berlin’s great cultural institutions the C/O Berlin gallery is closing down.

The C/O Berlin gallery has been one of the epicenter's of photography in Berlin for over ten years, housing some of Europe's finest exhibitions. Formerly the site of the Royal Post Office, it was founded in 2000 by photographers Stephan Erfurt, designer Marc Naroska and the famed architect Ingo Pott.

In the summer of this year, the site where the C/O Berlin stands was sold, the gallery was served an eviction notice; "C/O Berlin must vacate the premises by March 2011."

An Israeli investment group called Elad, bought up the site and in the future intends to put up hotels and shopping malls on the already very touristy strip.

Exhibitions like the insanely packed Annie Leibovitz exhibition last year had 120,000 people come through its doors,whilst other showings from heavyweights like Leonard Freed, Parr, Thomas Hoepker, James Nachtwey, Anton Corbijn and Weegee have all proven just how important this place is.

This 2,000 square meter hub has given legends like Daniel Libeskind, Rene Burri, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Wall, Karl Lagerfeld and Juergen Teller all platforms to discuss their art here.

We are strangely surprised that more people aren't aware of this brilliant intuitions demise. Google pretty much turns out no results relating to this news and we surely hope that C/O Berlin's luck changes soon or that something can be worked out, as the growing gentrification of Berlin's rich cultural landscape is getting worse and worse.

On a more personal note, I have seen some of the finest exhibitions in my life here, the Giorgio Fiorio exhibition was absolutely mind-blowing. If any of you feel as strongly about it as I do, then send C/O an email at their website below.

Really, a very sad day for all photography and culture fiends out there!

The XX have taken home this years esteemed Mercury Prize at an awards ceremony in London last night (07.09), ahead of eleven other shortlisted artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Paul Weller.

It's been an incredible year for the trio, with the London trio finally cracking the UK's top ten. Almost obscure when they first started, the three piece have climbed mountains that were thought unattainable to many skeptics in the industry.

The band's music to date has been featured heavily across all entertainment mediums including US TV shows like Cold Case, Grey's Anatomy and even had their song "Intro" used in an AT&T commercial.

The band is managed by the young XL Recording A+R Caius Pawson who alongside XL has converted the band's simple aesthetic and word of mouth fortune , into considerbale chart and critical success.

With most majors experienccing serious financial turmoil and confusion, indie labels like Merge (with Arcade Fire's recent #1 on the US charts) and XL Recordings immense success have really shown the way, their relatively smaller budgets and more intelligent marketing approach has proven to be more successful. The bands slow burning success is a testament to the labels organic nurturing backing and honest support.

The XX's album originally debuted at #36 on the UK charts on the 28th August, 2009, moving below 100 it eventually climbd back into the top 10, and has now being certified gold which is 100,000 sales in the UK.

When asked what they would do with their prize money of taking home £20,000, the band responded, "We made this album in a converted garage the size of a bathroom.So a new studio might be in order"

Long known to European and North American clubbers as a preferred place to catch-big name DJs while escaping the northern winter, South America is rapidly coming into its own as an exporter of new musical talent. Uruguay's DJ PP is indicative of the shift, riding the increased exposure brought by the internet all the way to #2 on Beatport's Top 100 with his track 'Miami Vice'. We caught up with the Montevideo-based músico to take the temperature of the local scene.

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