Jamie XX - Essential mix

Quick post as it's a bank holiday today and that means only one thing, getting drunk!


So i leave you with a fantastic essential mix from XX member and double mpc wielding badman, Jamie XX.


Enjoy!

Jamie xx Essential Mix by Young Turks

Jonwayne - Thanks, bro

Free beat tape here courtesy of Jonwayne. Not the actor, he dead son.


Jonwayne is a young producer/mc signed to the LA label, Alpha pup records. He released the instrumental album "Bowser" earlier this year and has recently offered up a beat tape of some older tracks for free download. His weapons of choice are no more than a laptop, an sp404 sampler and a grip of sample material (more notably videogame samples)


Here is an introduction to the mans music

FACT mix 277: Shlohmo

Hot on the heels of his recent album 'Bad Vibes' comes this new mix from Shlohmo. Opening with a chopped and screwed version of 'Tears for fears' it immediately asserts itself as no ordinary run of the mill selection.  Featuring tracks from Hiphop heavyweights like Nas & Three six mafia, fellow LA native Asura and Shlohmo himself.  Several other oddities are included such as 'Excerpt from a dub cassette i found in a shoebox with my friend on mission st. san francisco'  & 'audio rip from that adidas commercial from like 7 years ago or something' , that he has procured on his travels.


Audio quality isn't paramount here, rather the progression of the tracks and the journey Shlohmo is taking us on. The mix is a mire of pitched down beats, grooves and off kilter percussion, mirroring Shlohmo's own warped style that features heavily in his productions. 


The mix is available to download or stream for the next 3 weeks via soundcloud >>  Shlohmo Fact mix


No embedding on this unfortunately (will update if i find a link)


Also check Sub-Radar-Mike's sterling review of Bad Vibes here >> Shlohmo Bad Vibes

Express rising

Chances are you may not have heard of Dante Carfagna, he is a record collector / dealer / archivist from Chicago and owner of Memphix records. For comparison he's kinda like Dj Shadow in the sense he has an insane record collection that is worth more than most peoples houses. As an artist he has only released one album under the name Express rising, which itself has become a rarity. I first heard of Express rising on 'The peoples champion' compilation from the now defunct Big daddy magazine and i was very lucky to get a copy of this album back in 2003 shortly after it was released.

 There's nothing fancy here, no intricate sequencing or synthesis, just 13 instrumentals of chilled, hiphop inspired goodness that evoke a similar sense of nostalgia to Boards of Canada or Tycho. Normally i wouldn't promote pirating music but as a copy of the Lp would set you back $100 or more (the cd isn't much cheaper), i say download the shit out of it if you like what you hear.  Enjoy!

Scuba - Adrenalin

Paul Rose aka Scuba has recently announced his new e.p Adrenalin is to be released in September via his own Hotflush label. Since it's early beginnings Hotflush has been at the forefront of the Dubstep scene pushing it's boundaries and promoting some of the most talented and unique producers around. It is home to many artists i've featured on this blog such as Mount Kimbie, Sepalcure & Falty DL as well as Joy Orbison, Sigha & Boxcutter.

Scuba's own music can be described in a similar fashion, always fluid and unique productions pushing the envelope of Dubstep and it's various strains. This new e.p see's him opt for a more house/electro oriented style, complete with his trademark reverb drenched synths and filtered vocal samples. 

Below is the title track Adrenalin from the new e.p and three more classic Scuba tracks, enjoy!

Adrenalin released 26th September 2011 on Hotflush Recordings

Tracklisting:
A1. Adrenalin
B1. Never
B2. Everywhere

100 followers / Throwing snow

Yay 100 followers! Thanks to all who have followed and commented so far, you guys rock!


Don't let the title of this post fool you, i don't intend on throwing snow at my followers, summer isn't over yet anyway so there's no snow.

Throwing snow is actually Ross Tones from London. Since his debut release - Un vingt / Cronus, he's gone on to remix the likes of Cloud & Gold panda, all while working as an engineer / promoter for Hear No Evil. His sound is essentially a mix of the more modern side of Garage with intricate percussion, lush pads and manipulated vocal samples.


There's not a great deal of his work around yet, but below are a few of his best tracks and his featured mix on Young Echo radio. Enjoy & thanks again to all my followers.

Seekae

Post dubstep vibes on a Mount Kimbie tip here from Australian band Seekae. It's really refreshing when artists take influence from a certain sound and manage to put their own stamp on it rather than straight jumping on the bandwagon and rinsing the shit out of a genre.

Seekae were one of the first groups other than Mount Kimbie to take the ambient / dubstep influences onstage with an actual band, sharing duties between synths, samplers and laptops and they manage to execute it perfectly creating a unique and individual sound. Band members include Alex Cameron, George Nicholas & John hassell.

They have released two albums so far 'The sound of trees falling on people' and '+Dome'  Below are three of my favourite tracks from the latter followed by the track 'My sun' from their first album.

DERU

Today i'm just relaxing in preparation for the weekend, i decided to have a dig through my record collection for some chilled beats. Thats when i pulled out a record called 'Say goodbye to useless' from a guy named Deru (real name Benjamin Wynn).  


Deru is a criminally underrated beat maker from LA and has been around for a while releasing various records on the Ghostly swim, Mush & Merck labels from as early as 2003. His music is an elegantly crafted blend of Hiphop and Electronica with ambient soundscapes and chopped up breaks merged with carefully selected field recordings.


Below is a track from "Say goodbye to useless' and two of my other favourite Deru joints, 'Hello' and 'I want'.

 Not only is Deru a dope musician, he works as a sound designer as part of The Track Team, notable works include sound design for The last Airbender (the series, not that shitty movie) and his company earned an MPSE Golden Reel award nomination for their work on the soundtrack.


Last but not least, the video below is a snippet from upcoming project 'Outliers' which is based around a trip to Iceland with fellow musicians and visual artists that will culminate with the release of a film, soundtrack & photobook. It's in the early stages at the moment but has promise to be something really unique.  
More details can be found here > http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scenic/outliers-vol-i-iceland

Outliers, Vol I: Iceland from effixx on Vimeo.

Tom Watson

Apologies for the absence of yesterdays post, computer decided to die on me, full reinstall the lot...

Anyway, following on from my last post, todays beats come from Tom Watson. A somewhat underrated and overlooked producer hailing from Nottingham, Watson was one the first to embrace the (at the time) upcoming LA beat scene and it's influence. He first came to my attention when, under his Keaver & Brause moniker, he released his debut album 'The Middle way'.  The album encapsulated the hazy and nostalgic detuned synths reminiscent of Boards of Canada, that his label mate Lone also came to be known for, although in my opinion he shows a more creative approach to percussion and sample manipulation on this album than Lone's earlier work.


Following on from the minor success of The middle way , Watson formed a collaboration with Lone in the form of Kona triangle. Releasing the 13 track album Sing a new sapling into existence in 2009, it received heavy plays from the likes of Teebs and Dublab.com. The album seemed to focus more on composition and atmosphere rather than just purely hiphop beats, some tracks having little or no percussion at all.

Which brings us to his latest effort that sees him creating a cleaner, more uptempo & percussion heavy sound  for the 3rd release on Lone's Magic Wire imprint ,under the name 'Neon Jung'  Still with the same hazy & shimmering synths  but with a more cohesive and dance floor oriented sound, taking influences from house and grime. Personally i'm really feeling this new direction he is going in and hopefully he will be releasing a lot more in the future.

Lastly, it's pissing down with rain here, hope you're all experiencing better weather, peace.

Lone - Feral remix

Matt cutler aka Lone, started off his music career as one half of the shortlived Nottingham duo Kids in tracksuits. 

His second solo effort 'Lemurian' gained him widespread attention, heavily influenced by the LA beat scene, Boards of canada and artists like J Dilla and Madlib. Around the time of Lemurian he also began a side project/collab with friend Tom Keaver called Kona Triangle.

Since then he has developed a more dancefloor oriented style, switching out the contorted boom-bap beats for a straight 4/4 groove. Still maintaing his BOC influenced synths and lo-fi samples, his music has attracted attention from well respected labels such R&S as well as Alex Ridha's Boys Noize records.

His latest effort sees him taking on remixing duties of Radioheads 'Feral' alongside versions of 'Morning Mr magpie' & 'Separator' from heavyweights Pearson sound and Fourtet. 

So that concludes my brief history of Lone. It's definitely worth mentioning his Magic wire label, which is mostly an outlet for his own material but has just signed artist & collaborator Neon Jung (Keaver & Brause / Kona Triangle)

Bonus vid

Plaid - 35 summers / Scintilli

Long time Warp recording artists and IDM stalwarts Plaid have just announced their new album 'Scintilli' is to be released in September and have uploaded one of the forthcoming tracks '35 summers'  


Plaid, are in my opinion, responsible for one of the best and most original soundtracks of last decade for the Anime TekkonKinkreet. My favourite tracks from the film linked below, also included is their contribution to the Renaissance Soundtrack 'Chasend'

 

And below is the video for '35 summers', more details can found via http://scintilli.com/

This would have been a longer and more detailed post but it's Saturday so enjoy the music and have a good weekend!

Thundercat - Shenanigans pt.1 - Mixed by Flying Lotus

New mixtape from Flying Lotus consisting of tracks that have featured the Brainfeeder artist Thundercat.

Mix available > here <

 If you don't know Thundercat, he is somewhat of a bass virtuoso who has come into his own recently, he was the bass player for LA thrash group Suicidal tendencies and more recently he was signed to Flying lotus' Brainfeeder label. Since then he has gone on to collaborate with Mr Lotus on his Cosmogramma L.P, most notably on the track 'MmmHmm' and in a few weeks (Aug 29th) his debut solo album 'Golden age of the Apocalypse' drops on wax and digital release.  Linked below are two of the tracks from his forthcoming Lp 'for love i come' & 'Daylight'.

New Fourtet single - Locked

Last month details emerged of Kieran Hebden's forthcoming FabricLive CD which features a mixture of old and new tracks plus exclusive Fourtet productions made specifically for this release intertwined with field recordings taken from nights at Fabric.

The track 'Locked', which is featured on the mix, is now available for streaming via his soundcloud page and is a slow breakbeat laced groove with shuffling percussion and melancholic synth lines. Coming in at over 8 minutes long it's definitely a slow burner but gives a good taste of whats to come on the full mix.
  Locked (TEXT011) by Four Tet


Fabriclive 59 details and clips here , due out in September.


Sidenote: His Future music interview and producer masterclass is also well worth checking out and proves there are some good producers that use Pro tools, jokes.