Trevor Jackson‘s Playgroup recording project now has its entire back catalogue available digitally via Juno with an extensive list of remixes and versions of several tracks. Exclusive unreleased mixes and acappellas are up for sale including a track with Madlib that didn’t make the album and the ‘Hooked On U / Mad Love’ ‘release’ above. Trevor has also just designed the DJ Shadow compilation ‘Reconstructed’ with its lavish box set, seen here on the Creative Review blog.
Be very quick if you want one of these, The Herbaliser have their new LP (designed by yours truly) up for pre-order. If you want CD or download, you’ll be fine, but…
If you want vinyl you have two options: regular double LP with full printed inner sleeves in a screen printed sleeve – only 450 copies though.
Or there’s the super limited (50 copies) deluxe version which comes with hand stenciled covers by Snub23, a signed A2 poster, a T-shirt and a download card. More photos when I actually have a physical copy! Order here (red ‘shop’ tab on the top right) – actually I think you can only order the regular vinyl right now…
My god this is beautiful. Whilst we all wait for Boards of Canada to release another record there’s plenty to keep you going on this compilation. Made by members of the Twoism.org forum it’s vol.5 in an ongoing series of tracks inspired by the Scottish duo and the standard is very high. How I’ve missed these I don’t know but all 5 are available to hear and you can buy physical CD copies too. Look and Listen here.
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/44845805[/vimeo]
How can my interest not be piqued by this playful pun on Eno & Byrne‘s masterpiece when it’s coupled with Radiophonic tape manipulation and my friend Robin The Fog – BBC employee and sidekick to Jonny Trunk on the OST show?
“‘Ghosts Of Bush’ was created entirely using the natural acoustic sounds of Bush House, the iconic home for the past seven decades of the BBC World Service which will shortly be closing its doors for the last time. All of the sounds were captured in the small hours of the morning in empty offices, corridors, stairwells and other hidden corners by a Studio Manager working overnight. These recordings were then dubbed onto quarter-inch tape in the basement studio deep in the bowels of the South-East wing using two of the surviving reel-to-reel machines.”
You can read more about how it was put together as well as hear the whole album on Robin’s blog – The Fog Signals.
I’ve featured work by Jude Greenaway, before, his promo for Pendulum‘s ‘Coffin‘ last summer was fantastic. Long time associate of The Light Surgeons, owner of the Yellow Machines label and music maker under the name Scanone.
Now he’s put together a DVD of 13 unreleased experimental / cinematic audio tracks that have been worked on visually by 12 directors and collectives. The tracks span a 10 year period and this project has taken four years to put together overall. Catch a sample in the trailer below and pre-order the DVD here.
[quicktime width=”636″ height=”380″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/LRV-DVD-GREENAWAY-YM.mov[/quicktime]
Loving these graphics for Baltimore band The Flying Eyes, they were done by Kiryk although the posters may be by someone else.
Only just heard this and, as an unashamed fan of The Amorphous Androgynous, they continue to deliver. This wasn’t what I was expecting at all and the opening section was a shock. After the 5 minute mark however it takes flight and starts moving in all sorts of directions, passing through early 90’s ambient, late 80’s Italo house, 70’s disco (!) and their usual 60’s psyche stardust. If this and their earlier ‘Shoot A Hole In The Sun’ remix are anything to go by then their remix of Noel Gallagher’s album will be fantastic. Oh yeah, this is out Monday on the b-side of his ‘Everybody’s On The Run’ 12″, CD and download on his Sour Mash label.
Kid Koala‘s new album ’12-Bit Blues’ is due to drop on September 17th and a couple of tracks, ‘2-Bit Blues’ / ‘6-Bit Blues’ (can you see a pattern forming here?) are doing the rounds on promo. I discovered the film, ‘The Cameraman’s Revenge’, a few years back – a story of insect infidelity, animated in Russia a hundred years ago this year! I thought it was the perfect pairing with Koala’s music as he has a, as yet unreleased, project involving an insect band in the works, made entirely from 3D models.
The original film is 11 minutes long so I had to speed it up dramatically to fit it to the music but the original was silent and it invokes those early examples of film where they set the speeds too fast. I must stress, this isn’t the official video or anything, just something I made for my DJ sets. You can pre-order the album here, which comes with a bonus flexi disc and DIY cardboard turntable that will play the disc.
The Soundsci LP is finally out today! Ex-Dynamic Syncopation producer Jonny Cuba and current part-Herbaliser DJ Ollie Teeba – alongside ex-Mass Influence MC Audessey, U-George and Oxygen. The deluxe bundle I posted about a few weeks back sold out in a day but the regular vinyl and digital is out now. Here’s a little snippets mix by Ollie Teeba to wet the taste buds…
[youtube width=”640″ height=”479″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKP0rmBUMp8&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
and an even longer version on Soundcloud…
[youtube width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT4ciAuKn34&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
I have to listen to this several times a day at the moment, the video makes it even better.
I’m lucky enough to have heard most of this album and it’s excellent, another step on and up for Eric. Set for release on September 18th, a limited version will come with a DIY card turntable and flexi disc plus interior drawings and paintings of kid koala’s studio, of which I contributed one piece.
Very much looking forward to this, available August 6th from ZTT
CD1: Frankie Goes To Hollywood in The Pleasuredome, a Zang Tuum Tumb singlette in five parts: Happy Hi! (All in the Body), The Soundtrack from Bernard Rose’s Video of the Welcome to the Pleasuredome single, Get It On, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (How to Remake the World), Happy Hi! (All in the Mind); Relax (International); The Power of Love (I’ll Protect You From The Holocaust) can be read in various ways but, for the sake of CD indexing, has six distinct sections: The Power of Love (extended, singlette – as opposed to 12” – version), The World is My Oyster (Trapped), Holier Than Thou (FGTH’s Christmas message), The World is My Oyster (Scrapped), Holier Than Thou (further festive messaging), The Power of Love (instrumental, singlette version); The World is My Oyster (at its full length); Don’t Lose What’s Left, Rage Hard + ++ *.
CD2: Extracts from Relax, From Soft to Hard, Dry to Moist: Relax (Sex Mix), Later On (from One September Monday), Ferry Cross The Mersey (…and here I’ll stay); Music from and inspired by Two Tribes (Keep The Peace): Two Tribes (singlette extracts), One February Friday (singlette extracts), War (somewhere between Hidden and Hiding); Further elements from The Liverpool Look: Warriors of the Wasteland (Compacted), Do You Think I’m Sexy?, Watching the Wildlife (Voiceless).
It’s fast becoming a vintage year for great album releases and today, another is finally unleashed into the world. I’ve said more than enough about Aaron Thomason over the past years, aside from actually collaborating with him on the multi-track ‘Magpie Music’ on my last album as well as getting him to remix ‘The Illectrik Hoax’, and his second album release lives up to, and expands, on the first. I think I have about three different versions of this record on my hard drive from the last 18 months at least, each one has built upon the preceding version and got better and better. There is no filler on this record and it’s attracting some very favourable reviews, check out the lush gatefold vinyl and CD too!
You can finally buy it today after being on pre-order for a while, particularly from the Equinox online store, but if you order via the HHV.DE site then you have a chance to get a limited edition bundle CD with the album preview mini mix I did alongside vinyl or CD album plus a poster too.
Out today, on Catskillz, lots of remixes, the Husky Rescue one actually holds a candle to the original (no mean feat)
Catmerch: http://tinyurl.com/bsj2qxx
iTunes – http://bit.ly/Lthm3I
Amazon – http://amzn.to/Ji3yY8
Play – http://bit.ly/KqUbSZ
Spotify – http://spoti.fi/Krxsnu
7 Digital – http://bit.ly/MzzKr7
HMV – http://bit.ly/Ji9qR7
Nokia – http://bit.ly/KKQ5F0
Deezer – http://bit.ly/MadRvP
Juno – http://bit.ly/LtrWrz
DJ Download – http://bit.ly/JxTeeY
This is lovely, perfect Sunday afternoon viewing and listening. A compilation of Boards of Canada‘s loops posted on their websites.
Video footage taken from BoC’s 2002 website, by James Tindall.
More gorgeous artwork from Mr Krum for the new DJ Format 10″ single featuring Edan & Mr Lif – available now from Slice of Spice but be quick! Lots of limited versions available, black vinyl, clear with black swirls, a postcard remix of an exclusive remix, test pressing versions of the album ‘Statement of Intent’. These are two of the best Hip Hop cuts I’ve heard in a long time and instrumentals are included too.
Here’s something I did last month in conjunction with Carling Zest, a new drink being promoted this summer. The idea was to take three producers, myself, DJ Yoda and Jaguar Skills, and give everyone sights and sounds of summer to incorporate into a track that had the feeling of summer to it. I called mine ‘Sunspot’, after one of my favourite Vaughn Bodé strips, and used some of my home made phenakistoscopes as elements for the video in conjunction with the footage Carling supplied.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”375″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8Nx1TmC1o&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
I was left to my own devices and incorporated a lot of my own melodies into the track, using their bee sounds and lots of percussive elements to form the basic beat of the piece. Making a track that evokes a ‘summer’ feeling is a lot harder than making something dark and moody, especially without stepping into cheesy territory but I’m really pleased with the outcome.
During the process I was filmed going through samples in my studio and generally talking about records I thought bought out the summer feeling in me. This quickly degenerated into what seemed like a massive advert for Boards of Canada‘s back catalogue 
with other shouts to the Orb (Little Fluffy Clouds) and The The (This Is The Day). The film crew, who were great fun to work with, shot for a whole day and then crammed it all into 2 minutes, so, if the editing seems a little fragmented here and there, you’ll know why. Big thank you to Ash for getting the shots and Tom for doing a great job on helping me with the last touches on the video edit.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”375″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQFCJtD7S1w&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
Wish they hadn’t put that ice cream bit in Spot the ‘Rave Wars’ 7″s and 3A robots everywhere There’ll be an online competition to remix this track and win tickets to the V festival and other goodies coming up on May 23rd so I’ll post about that when it’s online.
May I present for your delectation: a personally mixed, sliced and diced preview of 2econd Class Citizen‘s forthcoming album – ‘The Small Minority’.
I’ve been lucky enough to hear it in progress over the last 2 years and it’s changed and developed to a point where it really all holds together as a complete album rather than a collection of separate tracks.
This is definitely up there alongside DJ Format and Pepe Deluxé as one of my albums of 2012 already. It will get compared to DJ Shadow‘s older work but the folk stylings and Aaron’s violin playing set it apart. If you enjoyed 2009’s ‘A World Without’ album – available to listen to in full here – then this is the logical progression.
This mix is available to download from Bandcamp but it’s only streaming via Soundcloud at the moment. It was a real labour of love and I think I managed to get elements from all the tracks in there at some point including a remix of the single ‘Outside Your Doorway’ – see if you can untangle it all when you listen to the LP.
The full album is available on Equinox Records on May 25th, on CD and double vinyl with a gatefold sleeve plus digital download (Juno will have it a week early). The artwork you can see below is by label boss Gunter Stoppel, the man responsible for the overall look of the label as well as the day to day running of it.
I heartily recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of recording. No, no, don’t all run away, it’s actually very good and I say this as someone who literally falls asleep reading any sort of manual.
Starting with the Big Bang and progressing through Edison’s cylinders and tone tests Greg Milner knows his stuff and the stuff he doesn’t he’s gone out and researched. Histories of the birth of vinyl, cassettes, laser discs, synclaviers and fairlights, the New York radio amplification battles and the loudness wars are all covered.
The uneasy birth of the CD and the industries’ initial refusal to accept the medium features along with a step by step guide to what the air particles where doing when John Bonham hit his drums in a stairwell for ‘The Crunge’.
The analogue vs digital debate is also covered but with an even hand rather than the usual ‘vinyl is warmer’ stance adopted by most.
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”370″]http://vimeo.com/38646066[/vimeo]
Lone – Galaxy Garden album on double LP (also includes CD inside) and limited edition art print. The art print is printed full colour on 265gsm pro photo gloss paper, and signed and numbered by Konx-om-Pax.
Out Monday on R&S Records