What could be better than watching the seasons change in shop windows and that taking it back to school feeling of cramming it all in? Rockstar jet-setter DJ Wool of The Glass fame (who has been running shop out of Germany lately) dropped several tracks this weekend that almost had me wishing I could follow him out there. Oh, who am I kidding, I couldn't leave you NYC! As a New Yorker, it's all about the long nights, so if you want some tracks that'll make you feel like a rockstar even when you're just pounding beers getting ready in your wonder woman underoos then check these out. I guarantee you'll be asking to hear them later that night at the club.
There are very few bands that have had more of an impact on dance music than Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Both groups have been sampled and resampled and have given us prototypes of what danceable grooves should sound like. A good band needs to be based around a good drummer. With example, Chris Frantz, co-founder and one half of the rhythm section in both of these monumental bands is certainly an important guy. He along with his wife Tina Waymouth helped to form Talking Heads back in art school with David Byrne and later went on to create Tom Tom Club, a band who's dedication to music for music sake becomes more apparent with every listen. Mike Dextro, limited to five questions, chats with Frantz about where he's been, where hes going, and what he finds exciting about music.
New Ways to Play Better at video games than piano? It could be your ticket to a career in music.
By Miles Raymer
April 17, 2008
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Local electronic musician Protman, aka Joe Hahn, might not be making music at all if he hadn’t moved past traditional instruments. “Most computer musicians I know employ a piano-based MIDI controller, which also employs a few knobs, pads, sliders, et cetera,” he explains via e-mail. “I’ve probably gone through a couple thousand dollars’ worth of these trying to find something that encourages me to use it and make more music with it, but they always wind up collecting dust.”
What Hahn does instead is adapt controllers from video-game consoles—Nintendo NES, Xbox 360—so that they can interact with composition software. For him, it’s a matter of ergonomics. The problem with piano-style controllers, he says, is that “you can maybe control two or three parameters simultaneously depending on the interface, and they often require such exaggerated, sloppy motions to get anything interesting done with them. Game controllers are designed to maximize ergonomics and perform with great immediacy. Punch now! Kick now! Tweak now! Transpose now! Throw that snare drum into the delay chain now! Swap between your choice of random toy-instrument samples now!”
Hahn acknowledges that the community of game-modding musicians attracts lots of people who are just looking for kitschy kicks, and his own act is powerful nerd bait—he often works a Dance Dance Revolution mat with his feet and a video-game controller with his hands. But for Hahn the important thing about modding is the chance to transfer a highly refined skill set from the reactive task of gameplay to the creative work of making music. “I spent easily a thousand, if not several thousand times the amount of time improving my video-game skills than practicing the Casio piano my family bought me when I decided to take piano lessons,” he says....
Marc-Alan Gray is faking waves. He recently deejayed with Justice of Ed Banger records, and is a major player in the Friday night series Robot Rock at Le Royale NYC. He has been kind enough to share his most recent remix work in collaboration w/ Vasali Gavre, under the moniker HeartMe!. MAG will be in Chicago next month playing the new Electro/Indie series Modern Love at Liars Club, as well as some raw underground party appearances. Get ready.
Mike to Fakebeat is a sound from the eye of the storm of what has been and what will be in pop and underground – his DJing, production, and current journalism in New York City. His music, much like his bio, is a map of sonic cause and effect. Even Russian glam-metal, ordained to reign supreme but of stillborn fame as its western counterparts perished before the fall of the Iron Curtain, is fulfilling this destiny through none other than Mike Dextro. His father is the drummer of eastern rock legend Kruiz. The culmination of the analog of the very nature of reality that are Dextro's degrees of separation from everything everywhere is the music itself. Mike is finshing his mp3 album in 2008 and joins Alexander Bassett and Protman bringing New York and Chicago nu-skoolers closer together, with spare time to kiss kittens.
Tracklisting:
1.The Sky Was Pink (Icelandic Version) Nathan Fake
2.Friday Night (Titts Bonus Beat) Just Blaze
3.Throw Some D’s (ESTAW fix) Rich Boy
4.Good (Original Mix) John Acquaviva & Olivier Giacomotto
5.Heart Of The City (Stuffa Remix) The Touch
6.Is You (Les Petits Pilous Remix) D.I.M.
7.Chicken (Original Mix) WTF?
8.Big Time (Linus Loves Remix) Dada Life
9.Plantage (Brabe Remix) Under Byen
10.H-Bomb (Fistfight Edit) Style Of Eye
11.Flesh Python (Stop Die Resuscitate Remix) Vitamins For You
12.Evil Dub (nt89 re-work) Trentemoller Featuring Jim Morrison
13.Black Betty vs. Get Up Off Thing Ram Jam vs. James Brown
14.Bathroom Gurgle - Tronik Youth Mix Late Of The Pier
15.For Sale (Henrik B & Plec Remix) Buy Now
16.Lip Gloss Remix Krazyfiesta
17.The Feeling Dead Radar
18.Gangsters (Mike B SkaMore Edit) The Specials
19.Nympho (Mowgli RMX) [Bombaman re-edot] Speculum
A programmer going by the handle "Dr Petter" has recently created one of my favorite software synthesizers. It's functionality is fairly simple, and the sounds it creates are often a bit cheesy and low-fidelity, but like the majority of Tweakbench VST plug-ins, it has the entirely redeeming "RANDOMIZE" button. Since I've downloaded it, the first thing I've been doing each morning is generating a couple dozen sounds, previewing through several hundred randomizations. It also has a "Mutate" button which allows one to randomly nudge all the parameters from their current state until they settle to a more favorable place. It's like Darwinism for bouncy stabbing bass and doomsday laser blasts. Convert some of the results to mp3 and make yourself the most aggravating cellphone theme on the block.
What I present here is, if you will, an MS Paint for sound effects… or something along those lines. It’s meant to make it dead easy for anyone to whip up a few simple sound effects and save them as .WAV files.
Basic usage involves clicking the left-most buttons to automatically generate random sounds loosely targeted at certain categories. For more advanced users it's possible to spend some additional time to manually create fairly varied and interesting sound effects.
The interface is based entirely around sliders for controlling sound parameters, along with a few buttons. Even if you don’t want to spend time learning about all the sliders you can still have some fun just hammering away at them and listening to the various sounds that come out.
Hopefully this will mean that there's no longer any valid excuse for anyone to get N/A in sound!
Hilary Rawk gets talked about a lot in Chicago. If there is somebody who can guarantee a party with max attendees its Hilary. Looking for a good underground party with some sophisticated hipster boys and girls? That's her too. You can also count on a lineup that traces what the upper crust of the party scene is about in Chicago. Originally not from the Midwest, we talk to Hilary about her party roots and how she came to know what this city needed next.
Imagine yourself at a warehouse party. Maybe Detroit, Chicago, New York. Some place dirty, the kind of building that makes you wonder how you got there...and more importantly how you're going to get home at 6am when the dancing is done. The crowd is thick with young people, many probably not even 21 years old, basking in their own piece of 2008 disco history with their hands held high. So many people that its hard to make out who the DJ is, regardless you need to know. The sound is infectious, a rare moment where hundreds of people seem to just lose themselves to the music.
MarvelKind is a band that has been around a long time, approaching ten years, with a history together that goes back years before anybody ever heard of them. Chicagoans who know their music count them as one of their favorite bands. There is no mistake that they are one of the most unique pop rock groups to come out of the late nineties indie rock boom in Chicago. As that scene evaporated approaching the new millennium, it seemed to take MarvelKind with it. Ben Hughes moved to L.A. to pursue acting and solo possibilities in early 2002, leaving the rest of the band to their own projects. Electro rock band Assassins was born during this period after Aaron Miller and Dave Golitko joined forces with Irish singer/songwriter Joe Cassidy, Merritt Lear, and bass player Alex Kemp. Even with the success of their new projects there still lingered a question... Whats the MarvelKind going to do next, and when?
I am of the belief that one's home should always have sound and music playing in it, 24/7/365. It can be music meant for direct listening, music for getting the dishes done or cleaning your toilet, music to listen to while you're making other music, or any sort of ambient or noise-masking sound designed to break the silence and occupy the mind's-ear in an effort to block out the voices of the neighbors, or even the voices in your head telling you what you ought to do to the neighbors. In any event, it should always be there. It's education. It's exercise. It helps circulate the air.
Arcade Ambiance has recently been added to my collection of about twelve hours of sound and music I play when I simply want to stop the silence without necessarily distracting myself. It's the "Russian Ark" of video game noise music.
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There are very few bands that have had more of an impact on dance music than Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. Both groups have been sampled and resampled and have given us prototypes of what danceable grooves should sound like. A good band needs to be based around a good drummer. With example, Chris Frantz, co-founder and one half of the rhythm section in both of these monumental bands is certainly an important guy. He along with his wife Tina Waymouth helped to form Talking Heads back in art school with David Byrne and later went on to create Tom Tom Club, a band who's dedication to music for music sake becomes more apparent with every listen. Mike Dextro, limited to five questions, chats with Frantz about where he's been, where hes going, and what he finds exciting about music..png)
Marc-Alan Gray is faking waves. He recently deejayed with Justice of Ed Banger records, and is a major player in the Friday night series Robot Rock at Le Royale NYC. He has been kind enough to share his most recent remix work in collaboration w/ Vasali Gavre, under the moniker HeartMe!. MAG will be in Chicago next month playing the new Electro/Indie series Modern Love at Liars Club, as well as some raw underground party appearances. Get ready.
Mike to Fakebeat is a sound from the eye of the storm of what has been and what will be in pop and underground – his DJing, production, and current journalism in New York City. His music, much like his bio, is a map of sonic cause and effect. Even Russian glam-metal, ordained to reign supreme but of stillborn fame as its western counterparts perished before the fall of the Iron Curtain, is fulfilling this destiny through none other than Mike Dextro. His father is the drummer of eastern rock legend Kruiz. The culmination of the analog of the very nature of reality that are Dextro's degrees of separation from everything everywhere is the music itself. Mike is finshing his mp3 album in 2008 and joins Alexander Bassett and Protman bringing New York and Chicago nu-skoolers closer together, with spare time to kiss kittens.
A programmer going by the handle "
Hilary Rawk gets talked about a lot in Chicago. If there is somebody who can guarantee a party with max attendees its Hilary. Looking for a good underground party with some sophisticated hipster boys and girls? That's her too. You can also count on a lineup that traces what the upper crust of the party scene is about in Chicago. Originally not from the Midwest, we talk to Hilary about her party roots and how she came to know what this city needed next. .jpg)
Imagine yourself at a warehouse party. Maybe Detroit, Chicago, New York. Some place dirty, the kind of building that makes you wonder how you got there...and more importantly how you're going to get home at 6am when the dancing is done. The crowd is thick with young people, many probably not even 21 years old, basking in their own piece of 2008 disco history with their hands held high. So many people that its hard to make out who the DJ is, regardless you need to know. The sound is infectious, a rare moment where hundreds of people seem to just lose themselves to the music.
MarvelKind is a band that has been around a long time, approaching ten years, with a history together that goes back years before anybody ever heard of them. Chicagoans who know their music count them as one of their favorite bands. There is no mistake that they are one of the most unique pop rock groups to come out of the late nineties indie rock boom in Chicago. As that scene evaporated approaching the new millennium, it seemed to take MarvelKind with it. Ben Hughes moved to L.A. to pursue acting and solo possibilities in early 2002, leaving the rest of the band to their own projects. Electro rock band Assassins was born during this period after Aaron Miller and Dave Golitko joined forces with Irish singer/songwriter Joe Cassidy, Merritt Lear, and bass player Alex Kemp. Even with the success of their new projects there still lingered a question... Whats the MarvelKind going to do next, and when? 
I am of the belief that one's home should always have sound and music playing in it, 24/7/365. It can be music meant for direct listening, music for getting the dishes done or cleaning your toilet, music to listen to while you're making other music, or any sort of ambient or noise-masking sound designed to break the silence and occupy the mind's-ear in an effort to block out the voices of the neighbors, or even the voices in your head telling you what you ought to do to the neighbors. In any event, it should always be there. It's education. It's exercise. It helps circulate the air.