In case you somehow missed the front page, I’ve just finished a live-mashup-jam-bootleg-remixtape-thing called Do Not Disturb. It’s a live set built in a hotel room somewhere in Sweden basing on messing around with random hip hop and pop-music vocals combining them with bits and pieces of unreleased Recue material (do check out the front page if you really missed it).

In case you’re like me, you’re probably here for some tech details! The set is built around a fairly basic Ableton Live + NI Maschine setup with a Novation Launchpad and the awesome Liine Lemur running on an iPad controlling tons of stuff. I’ve been trying to hide the computer (from the audience yes, but mainly) from me lately in live situations so that I wouldn’t have the option to stare the screen to check what I’m doing. Hiding behind a laptop is what you see too often on EDM sets and I’m trying to avoid that. The controllers these days provide good amount of feedback on the set anyway. It doesn’t make me an instant rock star performer but it challenges me to trust the controllers more as instruments and not just remotes for software.

The set is played on a knee high night table and filmed using professional hollywood grade equipment like an ironing board and a night stand. Initially the whole thing was actually twice as long but to keep it consistent, the essential tracks were picked (and I don’t think my back would have really been able to cope with one hour of nodding in an over 90 degree angle). Do Not Disturb is completely free to download on its soundcloud page and if the 1000 free download limit is reached, I’ll be dazzled and stoked and throw in some extras from the outtakes. So if you appreciate what you hear/see, do consider sharing it (maybe with an orthopedist or a chiropractor to study).

Hollywood grade camera rig.

Also noted from the video besides the goofy swaying is that I do those typical “ouch that button was hot!”-pinches that look quite entertaining. Also.. what’s with the sticking pinkies again?!

You can get Foundations from Bandcamp, Beatport and Juno Download.

Two weeks ago I posted an upcoming remix on soundcloud without revealing any details on the artist or track. I left it for the listeners to figure that one out. After few subtle hints and nearly 200 listens the answer to the mystery has been found! The one solving the “riddle” and proving his knowledge on Scandinavian electronica was Christopher Hatton. He was able to draw the link to the remixed artist who is… the excellent Planet Boelex featuring the lush vocal work of Lisa’s Antenna. Planet Boelex is gathering an army of remixers for an upcoming release and this is my take on ‘Walk Ahead’ from 2008 Planet Boelex and Lisa’s Antenna collaboration album Little World. If you’re unfamiliar with Planet B, shame on you, as Chris puts it so well: “Pretty unmistakeable voice… Anyone unfamiliar, and wanting some soothing chillout for the quiet moments do well to check out their excellent (and free!) album.” and RIGHT NOW, I would add. For this awesome display of awesome awesomeness, Chris gets himself a copy of Leftover Love – Extended Collectors Edition. Congrats.

Meanwhile on the other side of the internet, visual artist Rosie Jane has created a short blipvert for Korento (All the Wrong Places, 2008). Looking really nice I’d say. Definitely wouldn’t mind seeing more of this.

Sorry about the bad rhyming on the riddle, I’m still practicing on my mad villain skills. Anyway, it happens to be so that I’ve just finished a remix for an excellent artist! More details and the future of the remix will be disclosed later on.. but here is the catch. Be the first one to recognize the artist and the track being remixed and win yourself a copy of Leftover Love Extended Edition! You’ll get an awesome c-cassette plus of course the lossless digital files (of your choice) for your mp3 player in case your walkman is busted. Submit the results of your investigation by adding a comment right here to this post or in the soundcloud page of the remix.

But here is the track. The beautiful mellow and melodic original mutated after a couple of studio sessions to this kind of dubby half stepped, even housey track, with a twist of d’n'b.

Go ahead give it a shot, it’s actually not that difficult once you give it a thought.

The cover designer clearly knows what's hot at the moment!

The bangin’ track taken from “Korean Folk Songs 2″ is called ”Peasant Music”. It’s a club anthem with a couple of clearly separated parts. Each part is accompanied with a nice squealing synth flute lead, each of them annoying in their own distinctive way. The track starts with this kind of Vangelis-ish analougue-ish intro…ish thing, picking up to an oddly shuffled chilled down beginning (you know, that trendy unquantized shuffle which you just don’t know when exactly you should nod your head with). I could really imagine this playing in the background at a local mall (or an elevator) in Pyongyang, if only there was one. Half way through the track they really pick it up with a slamming midi-drum solo! Hands in the air! The track gets a whole new tempo, like they’re on a hurry to end it so they can make it to the rice field. The end part is actually filled with these awesome drum fills to keep the groove going. Really makes me want to harvest my crop!

Ok, I promise that the next post will be Recue related (and I’ll try to make the content-goof-ratio a bit better). I’ll have something new for you to listen, but I just need to get one thing mastered for you first.

PS. Quite many have been asking what that little noise box thingy in the Tape Deck Saturation post was. Well it was this lovely little DIY synth called WSG by Music From Outer Space.

Let’s kick things off with some “sound-design” (always a nice pretentious term) studio wankery. At the moment there seems to be a craving for that lofi retro sound. Everyone is trying to get rid of the clean digital output of VST’s and digital synths by adding another VST’s to their fx-chains that simulate analog gear.. or by purchasing analog gear that costs an arm and a leg. Here is a trick that costs about 10,- euros and looks way cooler than any VST!

Some time ago we were laughing with my brother as we noticed that a gear manufacturer had released a rack unit that included a tape head and you could route audio through it to “add that analog warmth”. The cost of the unit was thousands of dollars and it didn’t even include an actual tape. I’ve always been under the impression that tape-compression is introduced by the tape itself and not the head.. so of course it had to be tested with a real tape player! The thing is, you don’t actually have to record the audio to a tape and bounce it back or anything like that. Just go and purchase one of those cheap tape-to-CD-adapters used for old car stereos and route the audio through that. It’s as simple as that! Naturally you also need a tape deck… We went and stole the old cool brushed aluminum tape deck with AWESOME VU-METERS lying in our parent’s basement which we played with as kids.

The results are actually surprisingly nice sounding (depends on what you’re after). Of course the character of the sound completely depends on the components of the tape deck you use; the condition of the tape heads, connectors, mic pre’s etc. The sound is far from hi-fi, so if you’re after that, just go purchase a real reel-to-reel unit. In the case of Hitachi D-230 I use, there are a couple of different options for obtaining a different sound. The audio can be just played back through the tape, but it can also be fed through the line-in’s, “recorded” to the tape capturing it’s output. Both of the methods give actually quite a different sound. With the former method you can get a moderate crunch with a rather clean sound. With the latter, you get loads of more noise, but also A LOT more distortion and a nice pumping compression when pushed. A third option is to use the mic pre’s and crank them up for some extreme clipping.. Ok, what am I babbling, let’s hear it in action!

The video uses the “playback” through the deck with the clean crunch, but with the more aggressive settings you can also get some interesting results:

Liking how the VU’s are smashed to max on this one! If someone for some weird reason wants to download the audio in better quality for these. Knock yourself out.

Oh, the video is titled “vol 1″ and that would imply there is more coming… f*ck!


PS. If you are like me and enjoy tapes that actually include some music, you can get one right over here (also a FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE OMG!)