bongs and gongs

Proot Records Contest- for the beat boyz

well, it is kinda for the beat boyz. Proot Records is ran (at least in part) by Thiaz Itch, one of the Cloud Control artists. They do fun stuff, and this may be of interest. They are doing Video Game Cover songs unplugged. I know, it is totally against everything BFC and the beatologist society we are invovled with is about. Except, video games, so we can partake.

Rules- http://prootrecords.free.fr/index.php?post/PRTJCT_VGU#VGU_rules

The rules are very simple, but also very strict :

• cover a composition from ANY console or PC game
• use (or even better : play !) only acoustic intruments or voice, all audio sources MUST come from a microphone (no electric guitar, organ, synthesizer, ..etc..)
• the only effects that can be used : equalizer, compressor (limiter,..), delay, reverb
  and eventually : pitcher (less than +/-0,5st)
• the composition MUST sound acoustic !

PRACTICAL DETAILS

• Please write a comment if you know what track you intend to cover, so that not too many people have the idea to chose the same track (we'll sum it up in the submissions).
• Once your track finished, please send it in .ogg or .mp3 at prootrecords [at] gmail [dot] com, with your artist name, the name of your cover and the original composition details (brand, platform, game, stage,...)
• As it's a project and not a classic release, it's like a neverending release, there's no deadline, you can suggest your track whenever you want (as long as there is someone to manage the label).

DIFFUSION

• once your track validated, it will appear in this post with a single-track-player
• once there will be enough tracks for a nice album, the release will appear on the "Releases" part of Proot rec. website

Get your game on, don't hate the player, hate the game. Fuck that, don't even hate the game. Love it, gently, with your acoustic instruments. I am going to do one with slide guitar and sitar.

A nice Soundmurderer set from '06

The mix on this page has a little bit of everything. Classic Ganja Kru, Splash, Squarepusher, Aphex, Bogdan, Paradox, etc. He even throws in a few diva vocals and a really old J Majik tune to remind you of the good ol' days.

punk size

if the scatman can do it, so can you.

this guy was a professional jazz pianist for a lot of years. this made him famous.

the scatman

Warp20 NYC Sept 5 - Rave Until the Orange Julius Closes

So last weekend I went to the second night of Warp20 in New York. The show was in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, which is sort of a bizarre place to see a show, because it's basically the atrium of a kind-of-crappy mall at the ground floor of all the WFC offices.

The show was billed as:

Jimmy Edgar

Hudson Mohawke

Clark

Warp DJs

Jimmy Edgar cancelled at the last minute, and the Warp DJs turned out to be one DJ who played first and played way too long. The only thing more boring than watching some guy DJ in the middle of the mall when the sun is still up is if this same DJ looks completely disinterested the whole time he played. I guess he was just there to fill time, especially since Jimmy Edgar cancelled, but he played probably for about 2 hours: way longer than either of the main acts.

Then Hudson Mohawke played, and I have to say I just don't get it. I mean he makes decent beats, but I'm just not feeling his whole aesthetic. A lot of the elements in his tracks just sound kind of half-assed to me. Whatever, dude is decent, I just don't see what the big fuss is.

Chris Clark (fine, Clark, whatever) played last, of course, and just slayed for about an hour. The whole time he was just rocking two chunky MPCs and a DJ mixer. His set was a mix of crowd-pleasers (Ted, Diesel Raven, Growls Garden, etc.) and unreleased tracks aimed squarely at the dance floor. Most of the unreleased tracks seemed like his personal take on a particular genre (breakcore/jungle, hard trance, and even a dubstep-ish track that was fucking massive) sort of like the drum and bass track on Throttle Furniture. Clark is clearly still one of the best producers on Warp, and I don't understand why they didn't put him on the bill of one of the bigger nights .

Uh oh

Before I buck lead, and make a lot of blood shed
Turn your tux red, I'm far from broke, got enough bread
And mad hoes, ask Beavis I get nuttin Butt-head

'pkjsdf'p

listening notes

Stuff I've been checking out:

The first Moderat EP - Auf Kosten Der Gesundheit. It ain't revolutionary or anything, but you gotta admit the pads on "Russian Courier" make you wanna...

After listening to that, I started checking out the other bpitch control stuff, which ain't all that bad - being a fan of jizzmaster pads, I like Apparat a good bit (when there's no singing). iirc Alex, you went to one of this label's shows ...? This whole label is pretty much new to me. I'm sure this is old news to everyone else, but I'm a few years behind. Shut up.

I work with a guy who's way into Warp stuff, but he listens to more of the fringe-ish stuff in that family (think Plone or Leafcutter John) instead of the Big Ass Motherfuckers We All Listen To. He recommended I check out Foma by Lukid, which is OK, I guess. I think it's more background music to my taste, but there are a couple decent tracks on there. This to me sounds more like my mental vision of what dubstep is, though I have no idea what constitutes dubstep because

a) the only thing I can point to and say "that's dubstep" is that Boxcutter record everyone bought (Oneiric), and that's only because that's what the critics said about it

b) my experience with dub is generally the old-motherfucking Trojan Records / Lee Perry shit

c) I wouldn't know what two-step is outside of the "line dancing" context.

I get the whole "there's some shit from other records or made-up stuff, maybe vocals, maybe beats, and there's lots of delay or spring reverb so springy it might as well be delay or assloads of chorus and phaser on it" connection to dub, but... the lack of shitty improvised effects kinda ruins it for me. Maybe I need to listen to some Mad Professor, or something (?), but I always loved dub the most when it sounded like total ass and you could tell some dude made it in like 2 hours. There's a great place in Portland to go for beer, grease, and irony called Dot's, and every week or so they'll have a night where all they play in the restaurant are really old motherfucking dub / reggae records. I have no idea who most of the artists are, but the shit is golden, even taking into account the feel-good sentiment jammed into some of it.

Also, apparently there's some whole genre out there called Skweee, which is like dubstep, but more electro, with some kind of tenuous connection to RnB and funk...? I dunno. You can listen to shit at KlickTrack, though. I haven't really listened to much of this yet but figured I'd throw it out for discussion, because frankly that name is retarded (in both a good way, and a bad way).

and, yeah, even though I've resisted using pretty much every so-called "legitimate" digital music service out there with a vengeance, and wouldn't crack iTunes if it weren't for That Fucking Phone which I have, I have to say Lala is actually pretty decent. The music uploader thing is pretty buggy but just the prospect of not having to lug around a giant hard drive whenever I want access to my music library is ... enticing.

Private Lazer

DJ Spacecamp has this on his phone and it's pretty rad. It has a sequencer, drum machine and all that jazz so you can remix "hold the line" while pooping or riding in a car. I think it's a really neat idea. Can't wait for the droves of imixes to start flooding the hype machine. New producers have the funniest names.

Your buddy,
the spirit o' 93

I was in the Kansas version of Mountain Xpress

http://www.lawrence.com/news/2009/sep/05/arkestral-maneuvers-dark/