SBTRKT ESSENTIAL MIX by sbtrkt

I tuned into today’s (tuesday, 19/02/2011) show to listen into the Black Acre session with @bluedaisytwit, @FM_Fox and @Hyetalmusic. To sum it up: Interesting new sounds, I especially liked the Fantastic Mr Fox, cool to watch the musicians editing plus I really got this live feeling: seeing some people dancing in the background, watching the musicians, with a twitter stream, facebook and ustream chat boxes all around the video and people constantly writing stuff.

Mostly people write that they are there watching it, but sometimes also commenting the music, sharing links, tweeting to the bands. Who, and this makes the concept interesting, are mostly also on Twitter and get linked to by the boomboxtv account or by one of the founders and organizers Thristian Richards. But while most performers have accounts, only a few of them would check the discussion while doing music, I assume.

To be honest, there was no real discussion it was more the feeling to be watching the same stuff at the same time that made the experience interesting. And of course, the intimacy of being somehow at a living room party, like you can see in this video, Hudson Mohawke playing a 90ies classics Hip Hop set.

In a Time Out magazine article, Blaise Bellville, the other cofounder, talks about up to 25k viewers when James Blake was on, in this video interview Thristian Richards talks about the concept behind it. Richards is also a dj and Belville used to run “Platform”, a web magazine. It’s offline now, pointing to a new project called Leisure only but I found a nice readplatform.com snapshot from the Wayback machine.

The club is now located at Corsica studios, a small venue inside of railway arches near Elephant & Castle, maybe on their Facebook there is a chance to be invited to the actual performances.

I know, it’s just a funny video, but it so needs to be on the Stylewalker blog. Thanks @herm for putting it on my wall.

found via drumnbass.de

A somewhat more temporary way of producing this kind of feel is maybe this song
Cruel Intentions by Simian Mobile Disco (Joker Remix)
Download audio file ()

found via Pluggednotthugged, one really great blog about bass music.

To end this post, I have to admit that it would be stupid not to download this great resident advisor podcast by Pete, found via Monday Edition

So sieht es aus wenn aus einem schönen leeren 50er Jahre Zimmer eine durchgerockte Partybude wird. Sehr schön gemachtes, aufwendiges Stop-Motion Musikvideo für Comfort Fit’s Bit by Bit.

Nach dem Klick gibt’s noch mehr, u.a. ein Klasse Mixtape!
Comfort Fit ist Boris Mezga und stand schon mit 12 hinter den Plattentellern. Anschließend machte er sich einen Namen in Kölns Musikszene, vor allem in der Creative Commons Landschaft und als einer der herausragendsten Künstler auf Tokyo Dawn Records, die seit 1997 extrem gute Musik frei im Netz veröffentlichen.

Cologne Commons beschreibt seinen Stil sehr gut:

Ursprünglich inspiriert durch minimalen Detroit-Techno, Ninja Tune, Nujazz und Hiphop, feilte er schon damals an seinem sehr intelligenten, vielfältigen, aber immer klar erkennbaren ganz eigenen Stilmix zwischen cinematischen Soundlandschaften, schlurfenden Hiphop-Beats mit stolpernden Bässen gepaart mit Samples und akkustischen Instrumenten und teilweise Gesang namhafter Künstler wie z.B. den Blaktronics oder Mercury Waters, die seinen Stücken eine musikalische Hörspiel-Note verleihen.

Sein neues Album heißt “Polyshufflez“, auf der u.a. Blaktronics und der legendäre Howards Marks aka Mr Nice mitgewirkt haben, und erscheint ebenfalls als Download auf Tokyo Dawn Records, dazu gibt es eine sehr schön designte limitierte CD-Version.

Wirklich unglaublich deepes, cooles, verschwurbeltes, hoppiges, steppiges, verrauchtes Zeug!
Hier ein Snippettape des lohnenswerten Albums, weiter unten dann noch ein tolles Mixtape von Comfort Fit. Die LP “Forget and remember” ist noch unter Creative Commons erschienen und als freier Download erhältlich.

comfort fit – polyshufflez lp teaser by tokyodawnrecords

Now, it has gotten some very mentionable mentions from Japan and Italy, good feedback from Timo Maas and Laurent Garnier and, amongst others, charted by Ryan Elliot.

You can listen to Squalid and download it at whatpeopleplay or order it as good old vinyl at Juno

Here is Patrick’s latest mixtape!

You can book Patrick at Confidance booking or just follow him on MySpace or Soundcloud.

Filmed by Ben Dowden, I found it via Echolot, Stylespion has more videos.

1. Lulu Rouge – Sweeter Than Sweet (Feat. Alice Carreri Pardeilhan)
found via Palms Out Sounds
A very hypnotic and deep tune with a brilliant voice and clear sound which could also be the opener of a club set.

.. but not in this case because the following is

2. Blitzentrapper – Gold for bread
Pure guitar pop with some edges from this Portland band coming out on Subpop.

Check Blitzentrapper.net for more downloads.

3. White Denim – Let’s talk about it
This is strange but in a very likeable way. Just take a look at the video. Sounds like very hobby, but I reckon it’s not. Found via Passion of the Weiss.


4. Lily Allen – Womanizer
via Stereogum
Download audio file (Lily%20Allen%20-%20Womanizer.mp3)

Pop times pop equals pop

5. The P Brothers – Digital B-Boy
Very clubby, fat beats


6. GZA/Genius – Pencil (featuring Masta Killa & RZA)
Wu Tang Style is timeless.

7. MGMT – Electric Feel (Justice Rmx)
Two übergroups meet. Can’t go wrong.

8. Cut Copy – Lights n Music (Boys Noize Happy Birthday Remix)
Disco House is back..

9. Hot Chip – Hold on
.. even Hot Chip are on it..

10. Curses! – The Deep End (ft. Nancy ‘LCD Soundsystem’ & Juan Maclean) (Holy Ghost! Day School Dub)
.. and it really works on the dancefloor.

11. Hercules and Love Affair – Blind
Probably together with MGTM THE consensus group of this year. Everybody likes them.

12. Sam Sparro – Black and Gold

13. TV on the radio – DLZ
They have so many good songs, finally I can put one on a mixtape!

14. Malajube – Ursuline
Malajube are a great live band especially – here is a whole Malajube concert

15.Air France – Collapsing at your doorstep
..reminds me of Röyksopp..

16. Dave Gahan – Saw Something (Skream remix)
and last but not least some Dubstep!

This year, Goldie again was part of a legendary show: Skream, Lowqui and the godfather of DnB rocked the Dubstep floor massively on saturday. Watch Skream crowdsurfing in a video below. And with this year sunday being the last day of the festival, the big honour to close Melt 08 laid in the hands of Berlin Battery who had several last records until finally the gates had to close and everybody had to go home, to sleep, or to rock on at the Sleepless floor outside. Despite all the criticism coming down to Melt! this year, with such a frenetic finishing, it cannot have been such a bad festival..

And here, we have A LOT of music: ALL BBC One Essential mixes. It’s also a little sad. How can you EVER enjoy so much music? My favourite essential mixes are the ones done by Skream and Lindström with Prins Thomas.

And Soundcloud is intriguing, not least because so many professional musicians from the electronic scene already are members and share their songs before they come out to a selected network of contacts: Richie Hawtin, Tanith, the whole Compost crew to only name a few. One nice feature is the comment function where people can put a comment into the timeline of a track and thus precisely give feedback, e.g. ask for songnames in dj mixes. Here is an amazingly fresh yet powerful dubstepmix by Tanith.

Another feature is the dropbox, so here you can drop songs for me I should e.g. consider playing in dj sets or promote via stylewalker.net:

Send me your track

I have one 19 invites (thanks, Alex!) for Soundcloud left, so leave a comment if you’re interested.

Tomorrow, Alexander organizes a likemind meeting, 9 AM (!), so come around, have a coffee at Oberholz, Berlin.

by Jesus Presley

It has been the biggest Melt! festival so far with more than 20 000 visitors and three days of packed stages from rock to techno from bands to Djs. And things that grow hurt sometimes. It’s not easy to maintain the magic of a small festival with special bands if more and more people want to come and see it. It’s a big tease and a big challenge to let it grow, organize three days instead of two and produce a big show like the one Björk did on the last day, sunday.

by Jesus PresleyAnd it is a big responsibility not to spoil it over the ambition. So, many people were dissapointed by the organization, by the fact of having to wait so long to finally get in, to miss bands because venues were full or because schedules were changed or bands cancelled their gigs. And the heavy rain on the first day did not help at all either. But, there were so many great concerts! Like the dubstep parties with Caspah, Skream and, yes, Goldie (see picture above..), like cool and beautiful gigs by GusGus and Björk or the Battles (such crude music and such a warm audience) and over all to see so many beautiful and nice people from all over Europe having so much fun together.

So, before I want to tell my own story, here are some links so you can read for yourself what people blogged about the festival:
Mainstage , Rrrauschenlauschen: melt-2008-samstag-190708-fazit, Mocca-couture: Melt-2008, Fortschritt TV: Melt 2008 Review, Extrablau: Drei Tage krwach – wir feiern, Indiestreber: melt-2008-tut-mir-leid-wenn-ich-sage-fruher-war-alles-besser-aber-fruher-war-alles-besser/, Direkteingabe: Melt Erfahrungsbericht, Xdev: Melt 08 Festival, Plaiboi Melt Rückblick, Sonett 77, Sander S: Melt in Retrospect, Topfives: Besser schmelzen, Torsun: Die Stirn, Jetzt.de: Wir wollten unser letztes Melt.., Parkplatz Rave aufm Melt.

Especially in the Melt-Forum you can read a wide discussion about what went wrong and what should change next year. The nice thing about it is that many fans utter their discontent very openly but that the discussion never gets out of hands. If criticism is too harsh or exaggerated, there will instantly be discussion members who would soften things up to a serious level.

by Jesus PresleySo, getting to my own story: Actually, one of the dissapointments I could have prevented myself: Hercules and Love Affair were present on the festival, only the crew was still on their way from Berlin and would not have made it in time. But none of us had the idea to let the band play accoustic or in any other way to with the help of th festival crew! Why? I don’t know. And things got so hectic that I did not get on stage to tell the audience that Alter Ego were going to play instead. Afterwards I did, but that was definitely too late. Bugger. I had not expected this and was not sharpminded enough to make the right decisions. Apart from that, “my” stage, the Gemini stage was great. Mr Oizo rocked, distorted massively but he and the crowd had a good time. Feadz lost a Flat Eric toy but got it back, thanks to the note we printed out which you can see here. the whole Get physical crew (Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y.) did a good job and people danced on the wooden floor. That thing, by the way was tricky: If you just stood still, it swung so hard, it made you dance automatically!

Sunday I was also responsible for the Gemini stage which organized itself more or less: Berlin Battery rocked several hours and did a great closing show for this years Melt! I’ll post a video later in which you can see that despite all the justified criticism this year’s Melt cannot have been so bad!

So, I’ll be there next year, too, with more whit and preparation and so will everybody else who organizes this, in my eyes, still Germany’s greatest festival.

Substance at Berghain was amazing – we waited for almost two hours to get in but it was worth every minute (Anyway, I like standing in line, it kind of hypes up the whole atmosphere and everybody is happy, once they are in).

Already in the ground floor, before walking up the stairs of Berghain, the walls where shaking. We literally jumped up the steps and minutes later stood right next to the DJ. The crowd was shaking from the soundscapes and booming basslines and especially when compared to Panorama bar’s (Kompakt crew played the typical club sound) ever-so-familiar bom-bom-bom one realized what a revolutionary concept in club music dubstep really is.

Directly, I looked for more dj mixes and found an excellent dark and complex-drummy banger by Scuba, dj and founder of London based label Hotflush recordings via Real Vinylz -
Scuba N16 mix:
Download audio file (Scuba%20N16%20Mix%20Jun07.mp3)

Download
More downloads from Hotflush.

Berghain, Berlin’s most famous techno temple and house of the Panorama Bar, will open it’s gates on a friday night for the first time (usually it’s only Panorama Bar on fridays) to host probably the biggest Dubstep party on the European continent so far: Shackleton, Scuba, Appleblim, Skull disco, Mala, DJ Distance – find more about the artists, links and music at Grimetime.

Moreover, you have the chance to enjoy Berhain’s new sound system: Funktion One. Paulie at Dubstepforum says about it: “It’s got the best sound I’ve ever heard in a big club. Funktion 1 rigs all the way round… ”

There’s a great mix by Applebim in the series of Resident Advisor’s podcasts: “Housestep? Dubhouse? Whatever you want to call it, Appleblim’s got it on this edition of the RA podcast”

Videoakt
Videoakt is a video art festival hosted by the organization GlogauAIR, a non profit organization founded with the intention of creating a meeting point between different artistic disciplines, important is their Artist in Residence Programme, lots of international artists, e.g. from South America live and work there.

Me, Stylewalker, have the big honour to create a musical scape for the video art, together with Steve (remember the House party, almost three years ago?) and VJ Hitektrash from 11pm, at Glogauer 16.

Mediaspree

This is what it might look like along the river in Berlin, where you find now so many great places like Yaam, Bar 25 or Kiki Blofeld, if the plans of Mediaspree become reality:

Pretty boring, huh? Xbergers and Fhainers, go vote, to prevent this! I’ve written about Mediaspree versenken before, and you can read the whole text about what Berlin really needs, why it is unique and why we love living here so much at Sounds of Sirens: Auf zu neuen Ufern.

At Cookies Phonique plays some records so at least the music will be ok. The people will be especially ok at PartyArty in 103 (creative, unconventional, entertaining), Zementgarten will be open tonight, for free, but the best party I guess will be beneath Schlossplatz across from Palast der Republik, between Karl-Liebknechtstr. and Rathausstr: PALACE RESISTANCE vs. FREAK CAMP @ Katakomben Schlossfreiheit.
View map