Side-chain compression left turned on

The technique of using the kick drum as a side-chain to trigger the compression on the bass-line or other tracks is as common in today’s dance music as McDonald’s in the US. But to leave the compression on while turning the kick drum off for the whole track is a bold and innovative move.

If you are wondering what I am babbling about, listen for yourself to the new No Beats Mix version of Stimming’s excellent Kleine Nachtmusik. I’ve been playing the original for some time now (and probably still will be), so I was eager to find out how does the No Beats Mix sound? Surprising for sure! The kick is not there but still it’s triggering the compression and making the listeners dizzy… I didn’t have a chance to listen to the mix, maybe it make sense while player over some beats, but as standalone track it sounds really strange.

The track has been released on Sunday (Oct 26th) as part Buzzin’ Fly’s Chaos Restored Mixed and Messed by Justin Martin compilation/mix cd.

Lovebirds non-stop

Wow, there is absolutely no stopping this man right now. If you don’t recognize the picture, I’m talking about Sebastian ‘Basti’ Döring AKA Lovebirds. Although this name has been becoming increasingly popular just recently, the Hamburg based producer has been in the game for well over 10 years now, releasing musing either solo (under Lovebirds and Superbird pseudonyms) or together with Thorsten “Toddie” Freese as the superstar Knee Deep duo.

This year alone, we could see two fine releases from Lovebirds featuring the vocals of Holly Backler In The Shadows and Love On My Hands on Winding Road. The former has been collecting excelent reviews from all over the world, which is no surprise to me. From personal experience I can tell that In The Shadows seems to be working on all kinds of audience. Also, The Beat Goes Boom was part of Buzzin Fly‘s 5th anniversary compilation, and we’re about to see many more.

So what’s more to come in 2008 and 2009 for him? An amazing EP on Freerange, another one on Winding Road and a couple of releases on co-owned Teardrop Music. Additionally, a remix of Ian Pooley‘s track made together with Vincenzo. To get into a little bit more details, here’s what I’ve been able to find out so far:

Ian Pooley – In Other Words Pt. 2 – [Pooled Music] – PLD 0186 – Release date: Oct 15th, 2008

1. My Kicks (Long Version)
2. Closer (Remix)
3. My Kicks (Vincenzo & Lovebirds Remix)
4. My Kicks (Bonus Beats)

Lovebirds – The Rat EP – [Freerange] – FR 113 – Release date: Oct 20th, 2008

1. The Rat
2. This Sound
3. The Rat (Kreon Remix)

The Rat hasn’t even come out yet and it’s already huge. I think it has been featured on every deep house podcast in the past few weeks. The Rat’s bassline sounds astonishing on a big system, trust me.

Lovebirds – Gentle EP – [Teardrop Music] – TD 001 – Release date: Nov 11th, 2008

1. Gentle
2. Tuesday
3. Juicy

You can find out more about this release from my article about Teardrop Music.

Lovebirds – Louder! EP – [Winding Road] – ROAD025

1. The Night
2. Louder!
3. It’s All Yours

I can’t wait for this to come out since the moment I first heard The Night on the Freerange Records Radio Show back in August. It says on the distributors’ site that it’s suppose to be available on Oct 24th.

Vincenzo & Lovebirds – M.U.S.I.C. EP – [Teardrop Music] – TD 003

1. M.U.S.I.C.
2. National

Lovebirds – Snary – [Teardrop Music] – TD 005

You can listen to a lot of these tracks on Lovebirds’ Unreleased Sessions on Beta Lounge.

Pezzner’s “Almost Here” is… almost here

Freerange Records is definitely one of the most respected names in deep house. Not long ago celebrating their 100th release, now Jamie Odell and his crew are looking baldly into the future.

If someone has any doubt about the last sentence, they should peel their ears for the next release stamped with a dripping cloud and a swallow. In a weeks time the new single from Pezzner will see the daylight (Oct 13th on vinyl, Oct 27th digital). It’s called Almost Here and it’s been doing rounds on various podcasts around the globe.

On this release you’ll find 3 tracks and all of the are Dave Pezzner’s original creations (actually one in three different shapes). If you’re wondering why didn’t the label ask anyone to remix Almost Here, you really should listen to the music. I’m not even going to try to describe what it sounds like. Maybe I’ll just quote Shur-I-Kan, who said it’s a “brilliant piece of future looking production”. Exactly… future looking.

Pezzner – Almost Here – [Freerange Records]

1. Almost Here (Part 1)
2. Almost Here (Part 2)
3. Almost Here (Part 3)

Previews courtesy of Freerange Records.

For all those, for whom the name Pezzner doesn’t sound familiar, let me say that he’s a talented artist based in Seattle, where (aside from producing brilliant tracks for Freerange) he is creating music for computer games, TV shows and advertising. Together with Bob Hansen, he’s a member of Jacob London duo, which managed to release over a dozen of their own productions and remix even more music for people like: Johnny Fiasco, Justin Martin & Sammy D and Ben Mono.

Vincenzo & Lovebirds present Teardrop Music

I always thought it takes a huge budget for promotion for an artist’s to become recognizable by her/his first name only… When you hear Janet, Britney, Herbie… you don’t really need to hear the rest and you instantly know who’s the hero. It look that I was wrong. Vincenzo (Ragone) managed to achieve that level notoriety (at least in the electronic dance music community) with nothing more than his music.

Releasing music since 1995, the producer of the classic 1-800-Vincenzo album on Dessous has teamed up with another brilliant musician hailing from Hamburg, Sebastian Döring AKA Lovebirds (of Knee Deep fame). You can find out more about Basti in an upcoming article on this blog, but in the meantime let me focus on the latest project of these two producers.

It’s called Teardrop Music and it’s a new label destined to launch in about a month. The debut release will be coming from Lovebirds himself and it’s called Gentle EP (dropping Nov 11th on vinyl and Nov 24th digitally). It’s going to have 3 tracks on it: Gentle, Tuesday and Juicy. Here’s what the label says about them:

The main track GENTLE is been huge for a few months by jimpster, fred everything, ian pooley and the likes. ian also did a beautiful remix of this future classic which is included in this package. TUESDAY is the third track on this EP and its a beautiful, melancholic midtempo killer – simple but sooo effective. JUICY is a 80ies inspired downtempo rnb groove that features a slick mpc drum groove and some proper synthwork.

Sounds very promising, as well as future releases already scheduled on the imprint:

• Vincenzo – The Hangover
• Vincenzo & Lovebirds – M.U.S.I.C. EP
• Dana Berquist & Peder G – Guadeloupe
• Lovebirds – Snary

It’s worth to note a few things about this venture. First off, it’s not often these days that a label that hasn’t even been launched, already has 5 releases scheduled. Second, they’re planning to release vinyl along digital formats. That’s very rare in an era when even established labels decide to go digital only.

I can’t wait to see how this develops in terms of business and music. Both artists have been creating music in many different styles so it’s hard to tell what we’ll be their line as a label. Nevertheless, knowing how well Basti’s and Vincenzo’s earlier collaborations and solo projects sounded, I’m guessing Teardrop Music will be at least equally successful.

To find out more, you can visit Teardrop’s MySpace profile.

Luomo’s album promotion

This post may be hard to understand for readers outside Poland, but I’d try to explain. Onet.pl is the biggest web portal in Poland with visit statistics counted in millions.

So imagine my surprise, when bumped in to this article about Luomo‘s new album. I was thrilled because I’ve seen the man perform live in Wroclaw and he’s an outstanding musician. I’ll try to write about the man himself and the album (featuring Robert Owens), but for now this article is just to notice that an young and upcoming artists

Twist EP postponed

Following my previous announcement about Shur-I-Kan’s Twist EP release Urbantorque, I’d like to inform you all, that the release has been pushed back a week due to problems caused by Urbantorque’s distributor.

To quote Leigh Morgan, the Label/ A&R Manager:

It will now be released on this coming Monday on Beatport exclusively for 4 weeks.

I guess all the fans should now relax and mark Oct 6th in their calendars.

Motorcitysoul’s album coming soon, single out now

Wednesday (Sep 24th) saw the release of Motorcitysoul‘s new single on Simple Records. It’s a cross-atlantic collaboration of the Hamburg based production duo with a talented LA vocalist, Ovasoul7, who’s gained the well deserved acclaim after appearing on Deetron‘s I Cling last year.

The track is called Change You and it’s a very rhythmic and energetic deep house production topped with Ovasoul7′s mellow vocals mixed well into the music thanks to a lot of reverbs and echoes. Shur-I-Kan’s remix is more concentrated around the middle section and although the instrumentation is more busy and complex than the original, the remix creates less tension and a more relaxed atmosphere. It seems more like a dub version as Tom decided to use only little portions of the vocal.

Motorcitysoul – Change You – [Simple Records]

 

1. Original

2. Shur-I-Kan Remix

Audio samples from Simple Records

 

Change You is the first single from MCS’s forthcoming album Technique, which is due to be released on Oct 13th. It will be a second studio album for Matthias and Christian, the first one entitled Did You Expect That? came out in 2004 on a German label INFRACom!. Apart from Change You, the album will feature two other productions released earlier as singles on another label run by Will Soul, Aus Music. Lucky for those, who have already bought Kazan and/or Space Kätzle, their versions on the album will differ from the original productions. Two other cuts from the album (Solar and Hatohay) are planned to be released in November this year with remixes from Move D and Manuel Tur & DPlay.

Motorcitysoul – Technique – [Simple Records]

1. The Start feat. Ernesto
2. Deliver Me feat. Ernesto
3. Space Kätzle
4. Solar (Album Version)
5. Change You feat. Ovasoul 7
6. Kazan (707 Edit)
7. The City
8. Hermelin
9. Hatohay
10. Movement & Motion feat. Marlene Johnson
11. XYZ 

To listen to the album please visit Simple Records.

The Twist is coming

I am very much looking forward to Monday (Sep 29th) as it’s the scheduled release date for Shur-I-Kan’s new EP on Urbantorque Recordings. It’s called The Twist and you can find 3 tracks on it. Other than the magnificent title track, there are two versions of a tune called Gripper (Original Mix and Reprise).

As Tom said on his podcast in September,  The Twist (track not the EP) had been finished a couple of months back, but could not be released earlier. Well, I’m glad it’s finally coming out, as it’s simply beautiful. You’ll find a lot of shaky percussion, little stabs, glissandos and a vocal sample. This combination makes the tune seem very alive and just makes you dance.

Gripper (Original Mix) is a different story. The beats are more on time (besides this thing that sounds like footsteps of  someone on high heels) and the track is building up with all the instruments playing almost the same thing with occasional synth stabs and little EQed vocal samples. I love what Shur-I-Kan did with the strings. They’re bold yet do not stand out and don’t sound too epic. Just sort of nicely bled in… Great job!

Shur-I-Kan’s Reprise version of Gripper is a bit surprising if one is expecting an intro kind of thing with no beats in the beginning, etc. It’s basically a new full version of the track just exploring some different sections of the mix. The lower-mid part focuses around on some nice arpeggios and in the higher part, the vocal sample is repeated more often. 

Be sure to check out Urbantorque’s site for more info about this release and to listen to the tracks (over here or over there)…

Shur-I-Kan – Twist EP – [Urbantorque Recordings]

1. Gripper (Original Mix)

2. The Twist

3. Gripper (Shur-I-Kan’s Reprise)

Audio samples provided by Urbantorque

Milton Jackson launches Dark Energy Recordings

If you’re (like me) a big fan of Milton Jackson‘s music, you’ll be thrilled to learn that the Glasgow based producer started his own label.

The new imprint was set up for “releasing some serious bizness dark energetic stuff” as the artist writes on his  blog. I wonder if this is just for his own productions or does he plan on releasing other people’s music also.

The first release came out yesterday and it’s an EP called the same as the label: Dark Energy. It features 3 tracks: Never Be Wrong, Never Be Right and a beats edit of the latter. Judging from the reactions coming from people like Laurent Garnier, Satoshi Tomiie or Jay Tripwire, the debut release is a success. Never Be Wrong seems to be the favorite of many and I can’t blame them. The dubby chords are very very cathy. Never Be Right is a more laid-back kind of thing, but still offers a lot of energy. The Beats Edit seems like a great DJ tool featuring some interesting drums and vox samples. Listen for yourself.