I have blogged before about Kitsune both here and over at Soulreflector, where the minimix of Ponystep, the tenth compilation kicked off my current summer mix series. When Justin at rephlektor ink sent along something else related to the compilation, I knew I had to blog about it, and share. So I am. One of the tracks on “Ponystep” is “Call 911″ by Florrie,pictured above. She is an gifted, unsigned musician from the UK, getting her music out there online presence and through word of mouth in the blogosphere. “Call 911″ is a track written with Fred Falke, and on the compilation it gets the remix treatment by the French duo Beataucue. The version for download is one of four remixes from the remix EP (released today!). I’m also posting a video of Florrie on the drums with the download because she’s goooood.

Xavier Gassemann goes by the stage name Don Rimini. He’s an unlikely pairing for Florrie, but not by way of talent. Don’s recently released Nlarge Your Parties EP has had major DJs singing its praises for a while: Tiga, Brodinski, Teki Latex, Afrojack, Felix Cartal, Philip Sherburne, and many many others have all supported it. The lead single “All About” has been making the rounds. Behind the album’s clever raunchiness is a grab-bag of influences from the old school from Miami bass to techno, electro, and hip-hop. Don Rimini has a way of updating the sound into massive floor bangers that no matter the subject are built for dancing.

Don Rimini-All About
Don Rimini-Riminology

Florrie–Call 911 (Beataucue Remix-JBAG Edit)

See Florrie on drums

Working on a massive Chew Fu post just in time for your weekend! Here’s a lil sample of what’s on the way…

Dan Balan – Chica Bomb (Chew Fu Full Length Remix) video

Preview video for all yall on a Sunday night from Dan Clare – do you want more Dan Clare?

Dan Clare ft. Varski – Dirty Touch video

Jamaica is Antoine Hilaire and Flo Lyonnet. These guys are dropping new tracks with Justice’s Xavier de Rosnay and Daft Punk sound Engineer Peter Franco on the production. Their first single is “I Think I Like U 2″ and the download comes from Kitsuné Maison #9.

The Kitsuné Maison series is legendary for its many flavors of electro. Kitsuné Maison 9 is called “The Cotton Issue,” and drops on the 26th of April with Jamaica’s track “Short and Entertaining” on it.. . .And just to give a taste of all the deliciousness on the compilation I’ve got two bonuses for inside: 1) “Something Good Can Work” from Two Door Cinema Club remixed by the Brazilian duo The Twelves; 2) “Vox Populi” by Jupiter given the remix treatment by Lifelike.

Jamaica-I Think I Like U 2

Jamaica-Short and Entertaining

(from Kitsune 9)

Also from Kitsuné Maison 9

Two Door Cinema Club-Something Good Can Work (The Twelves Remix)

Jupiter-Vox Populi (Lifelike Treatment)

(BTW: This post is the first of three, bringing even more of the best of recent and upcoming music to NoVegans! More soon!)

So this is my first post for no vegans, and where to start but with a classic track made new. This one’s redux of Joey Beltram’s Energy Flash by NYC’s Vinyl Life. Fellow NYC native Joey Beltram is known for a lot — too many classics to name, plus inventing the Hoover Sound — but Energy Flash is still the original. I posted a wild mix from these guys to start my own blog, so now its NoVegan’s turn. Enjoy!

Vinyl Life vs. Joey Beltram – Energy Flash

Hey everyone, welcome back to Sunday Skool. Today I want to introduce you to a FREE site that I turn to quite often to learn a whole host of things. Here you can learn how to use an MPC-60, how to produce a remix, how to construct beats, how to properly take samples, and even a little bit about DJ etiquette. But more importantly, this database has over 240 video archives with interviews of some of the most influential artists, producers, Deejays, record label owners, etc. Of course I am talking about the Red Bull Music Academy in London.

Red Bull Music Academy video

This is the kind of stuff that I really wish would have been available to young bucks like me (in 1989+)! On the Red Bull Special Features page you will find a ton of quite useful production techniques and history about subjects such as:

SAMPLING
BEAT CONSTRUCTION
THE ART OF THE REMIX
DJ ETIQUETTE

Probably one of the most educational pages would be the Red Bull Lecture Series page with such influential speakers as:

THE ROOTS
AMP FIDDLER
BOB MOOG
CARL CRAIG
CHEZ DAMIER
CUT CHEMIST
CRAZE
GOLDIE
MIA

MIA at the Red Bull Music Academy video

A-TRAK

A-Trak from Red Bull Music Academy video

And over 230 more!

This site is just one of the immensely valuable resources now available on the web. There is simply no lack of info available to the new DJ, Producer, or Artist these days. The only problem a newbie might have is that there is too much information and it is difficult to sift through. However, for me… I would’ve loved to have that problem back in the ’80s & ’90s versus having ZERO instructional material available. Have fun.

Classic Track of The Week

Goldie – Inner City Life (RITM Short Attention Span Edit) [FFRR Records] (1996)

Sasha EM Live @ Amnesia 1996

AND NOW, YOU CAN CONSIDER YOURSELF SCHOOLED!

Pappy Andrews contact info:

Soundcloud
Twitter

The week after Halloween is a bitch ya’ll – they’re keeping me busy at the orifice and heads are about to roll.

Enjoy this Yeah Yeah Yeahs video. f you don’t have the Atrak remix mp3 (which I tweeted about last week) yet, then hit me up and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll video

Hey everyone, welcome back to Sunday Skool. Whew! what a long saturday night. First a Halloween Costume Party and then Tiesto until 3am.  As I’m sure you have gathered from many of my posts… Trance is not my favorite genre (I know, I know.. it’s the #1 selling EDM worldwide, etc, etc). It’s just that I didn’t hear much progression over about a 10yr period… so I stopped listening.

Needless to say, when my wife wanted tickets to see the Jesus poser guy for her birthday, I wasn’t too excited about the somewhat expensive ordeal ($46/ea. gen admission). But guess what? I didn’t hate the show very much at all. I was actually quite surprised in fact. Tiesto has diversified his show quite a bit since earlier this decade. At least one of his tracks was an amazing mixture of a sort of 80′s/90′s Electroclash Vocal and some heavy beats. Of course, I’m talking about ‘Feel It In My Bones (ft. Tegan & Sara)’ from the new album Kaliedoscope released just this month. I found this video from 25 SEP 09 at the Hammerstein Ballroom and it seems his road show is identical everywhere because it looked exactly like this.

Tiesto – Feel It In My Bones video

Now, I didn’t keep my eyes on him the whole night… but I didn’t even see a single Jesus pose…. and that’s a very good thing because I think we can all agree on one thing — The almighty posing business is absolutely annoying rubbish.

Editor’s Note: St. Louis, Missouri readers can catch Tiesto live in the burbs on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at Home Nightclub (St. Charles, MO).

UK Garage / Speed Garage

Last week we continued our tour of sub-genres and discussed BASSLINE HOUSE. Well, this week we are going a little further back to look at a genre that was huge in the England during the mid to late 1990′s — UK GARAGE. Believe it or not, Wikipedia actually has a somewhat detailed and accurate description:

UK garage (also known as UKG or simply garage) is an umbrella term that refers to several different varieties of modern electronic dance music generally connected to the evolution of house in the United Kingdom from early/mid-1990s. The evolution of house music in the UK in the mid 1990s led to the term, as previously coined by the Paradise Garage DJs, being applied to a new form of music also known as speed garage. In the late nineties the term UK garage was settled upon by the scene. The pronunciation of UK garage is (girrahge) versus the typical US pronunciation (guhrauhge), as this is the most common pronunciation of the word in the British Isles.

Not too bad for Wikipedia huh? Here’s a good little blurb from a book I’m sure you’ve noticed I often quote a lot (Last Night A DJ Saved My Life):

Garage’ is one of the most mangled terms in dance music. The term derives from the Paradise Garage itself, but it has meant so many different things to so many different people that unless you’re talking about a specific time and place, it is virtually meaningless. Part of the reason for this confusion (aside from various journalistic misunderstandings and industry misappropriations) is that the range of music played at the garage was so broad. The music we now call ‘garage’ has evolved from only a small part of the club’s wildly eclectic soundtrack.

To understand UK Garage, you have to take a little trip back to the states to review US Garage first: The main key DJ involved with the evolution of this style of music was Larry Levan, the resident DJ at the Paradise Garage, who defined a unique style of mixing between dubs of disco records. Over time, the term “garage” in the US came to mainly describe the more soulful, gospel-inspired styles of disco and house music first made popular by Tony Humphries at club Zanzibar in Newark, NJ. In the 1990s, the New Jersey sound became distinctly different from the sound in New York. Although the Paradise Garage was a New York club, the label “Garage” came to be associated with the New Jersey sound over time as the bond between the Paradise Garage and club Zanzibar was strong. A rawer, “blacker” sound, as described above, became the signature style in North Jersey.

Meanwhile in 90s New York, a more Latin, tribal sound took over thanks to Junior Vasquez and his disciples at the Sound Factory. However, the garage tradition returned in force with Body & Soul, a collective formed by Francois K., Danny Krivit and Joaquin Joe Claussell, and its immensely popular Sunday sessions (now defunct). Louie Vega has continued to perform regularly on Wednesdays, although without the popularity he has in Europe or Japan. Timmy Regisford was another stalwart of the NYC house community with his Saturday night parties at legendary Club Shelter.

In the UK, where jungle was very popular at the time, garage was played in a second room at jungle events. DJs started to speed up garage tracks to make them more suitable for the jungle audience in the UK. The media started to call this tempo-altered type of garage music “speed garage.” DJs would usually play dub versions (arrangements without vocals) of garage tracks, because pitch-shifting vocals could sometimes render the music unrecognizable.

The absence of vocals left space in the music for MC’s who started rhyming to the records. Since then MCs have become one of the vital aspects of Speed and UK garage parties and records. During its initial phase, the speed garage scene was also known as “the Sunday scene,” as initially speed garage promoters could only hire venues on Sunday evenings (venue owners preferred to save Friday and Saturday nights for more popular musical styles).

– Frank Broughton/Bill Brewster in Last Night A DJ Saved My Life

Debate continues to rage over the first true UK Garage / Speed Garage record. Contenders include:

Definitely one of my favorites…

Professional Widow (Armand Van Helden’s Star Trunk Funkin Mix) video

Tori Amos “Professional Widow (Armand Van Helden’s Star Trunk Funkin Mix) (1996) // Atlantic

Double 99 – RIP Groove video

Double 99 “Ripgroove” (1997) // Satellite Records (UK)

MP3: Double 99 – RIP Groove

SoMore – I Refuse What You Want video

SoMore “I Refuse (Original Mix)” (1997) // XL Recordings

Ramsey and Fen – Love Bug video

Ramsey and Fen “Love Bug” (1997) // Bug Records

One thing to remember is that although most of the aforementioned tracks have different ‘official’ release dates, they were all out on promo vinyl at about the same time. Among those credited with honing the speed garage sound, Todd Edwards is often cited as a seminal influence on the UK garage sound. The producer from New Jersey introduced a new way of working with vocals. Instead of having full verses and choruses, he picked out vocal phrases and played them like an instrument, using sampling technology. Often, individual syllables were reversed or pitch-shifted. This type of vocal treatment is still a key characteristic of the UK garage style.

Classic Track(s) of The Week

MP3: Sneaker Pimps – Spin Spin Sugar (Armand’s Dark Garage Mix)

Sneaker Pimps – Spin Spin Sugar (Armands Dark Garage Mix) video

C.J. Bolland – Sugar Is Sweeter (Armand’s Drum and Bass Mix) video

AND NOW, YOU CAN CONSIDER YOURSELF SCHOOLED!

Pappy Andrews contact info:
Soundcloud
Twitter

Hey everyone, welcome back to Sunday Skool. I hope you enjoyed learning a little about the sub-genre FIDGET. Today, I’m posting a great article from Factmagazine.co.uk. This article discusses what could be described as a ‘sister’ genre or possibly a pre-cursor to FIDGET that’s been blowing up in the U.K. for more than a minute. It is quite a varied genre and often FIDGET is simply considered BASSLINE.

Editor’s (Renaissance’s) Note: This should be interesting. As many of you know, bassline is my thang so I can’t wait to read Pappy’s take on the genre.

The more radio play tracks in the U.K. sound to me almost exactly like the 2-step genre of the 90′s [1 & 3 Kick with intricate snare & high hats on top (almost like a breakbeat) with R&B vocals on the top]. The big difference between a 2-Step track and the current BASSLINE track is the absence of the 2-Step beat, replaced by a 4/4 kick and a severely distorted bassline (often wobbly). Here is the first example that comes up when searching BASSLINE on youtube.

Wayne Scott-Fox – Freak Like Me (Bassline Remix) video

Here’s another not quite so cheezey track where you can definitely see a lot of similarities in the production of the Basslines.

Calvin Harris – I’m Not Alone (Herve’s See You At the Festivals remix) video

And just in case you forgot what UK Garage/2-Step was… Here’s an Artful Dodger mix (bassline) featuring Craig David (2-Step)

Artful Dodger featuring Craig David – Re-Rewind video

So here goes a great article discussing the origin of BASSLINE.

BASSLINE HOUSE AND THE RETURN OF ‘FEMININE PRESSURE’

After T2′s incursion into the charts, K-Punk welcomes bassline house as the Yin to grime and dubstep’s Yang; sensual, poppy, crazily euphoric, and cartoonishly abstract…

According to Simon Reynolds, bassline house is, “the drastic pendulum swing from yang to yin, testosterone to oestrogen, that I had always imagined would happen in reaction to grime, except it took so long to happen I gave up on it and just forgot.” It wasn’t only the dominance of grime that meant that the pendulum of the ‘hardcore continuum’ was stuck at the ultra-masculine pole. Dubstep, too, suffers from the same oestrogen-depletion, and both genres to some extent have their origins in a reaction – an over-reaction – to the ‘feminine pressure’ of late-’90s 2-step.

Both dubstep and grime have been shaped by their suspicion of the song, female voice and the kind of exuberance that was once the unique defining feature of the panoply of musics that developed out of British rave music. Dubstep and grime’s male moroseness corresponded not only to a deficiency of oestrogen, but also to a
drying up of serotonin. It was as if both genres had simulated the effects on the brain of long-term ecstasy use. Their affective state corresponds with that moment in a heavy Ecstasy-user’s life when the drug does not work any more, and continued caning of it produces clinical depression. The smiley face has become a screwface, and the drug correlate was no longer MDMA but the lassitude-producing skunk. Dubstep and grime’s moodiness seemed to assert a reality principle, functioning almost as a warning that collective exuberance is not sustainable. The moodiness of previous moments in the hardcore continuum – such as darkside jungle or techstep – was always mitigated by the hyper-kinetic propulsion of the beats and basslines. But, with with dubstep and grime, things seemed to have come to a dead stop, a skunked-out inertial black hole. The hardcore continuum had frozen into a permanent midwinter that appeared to be a terminal condition.

With bassline house, green shoots have begun to peep through the permafrost. Bassline is a long overdue efflorescence of everything that grime and dubstep have excluded: in short, pop. Grime had a will-to-power but an ingrained hostility to pop; even though it evolved by a very different route, grime was continually dogged by the bling-toting spectre of US hip-hop. Dubstep, meanwhile, is a genre from which practically all of the elements of pop have been ruthlessly bred out. But, listen to a Bassline House mix and you find yourself seduced and infected by intoxicating songs. After the bitter asceticism of grime and dubstep, bassline seems like a fabulous sweet shop, full of delicious sugar rushes. Like its predecessor, 2-step, bassline is ‘sweet like chocolate’, but the obvious difference from the of 2-step is bassline’s beat: 4/4 as opposed to 2-step’s itchy, stratchy skitter. Also, 2-step was informed by an r&b-inspired sophistication absent from bassline, which recalls the barrel organ, freaky fairground quality of very early rave.

However, bassline is not simply a recapitulation or a ‘cut and shunt’ of previous Rave components. As Simon Reynolds argues, bassline house takes ‘bass science’ to a new level ‘with the ridiculously intricate sculpting of the b-lines and its interweaving of multiple basslines–the result resembling a writhing pit of snakes.’ Far from being some conservative concession to the established protocols of pop, bassline is what mainstream pop has so conspicuously lacked for the past half decade or so – a new pop mutation. Bassline is less a sweetshop than a Willy Wonka-style chocolate factory in which industrial production – this music is churned out at a delirious rate – combines with weirdness. Bassline is cartoonishly abstract, full of funhouse angles and bizarre geometries.

Screama and Zoe’s ‘Freak Me’ brings together all of the key properties of the genre – a catchy tune, and an assertion of feminine jouissance and a seething cakewalk of squelching bass. ‘Freak Me’, a bid for ‘boys not to be hasty’, takes the old r&b euphemism – ‘freak’ meaning sex – literally. Zoe says that she is being ‘made wet’ but the secretions in question have little in common with the slickness of r&b. In terms of its rendition of libido, bassline’s precursor is less r&b than Funkadelia, which similarly envisaged desire as a delirious, absurd mutation, a deviation from the proprieties of dignity and poise. ‘Freak Me’ transforms the tiresome cliché of love as an ‘emotional rollercoaster’ into a thrilling amusement park ride. Much like 2-step before it but in many ways more emphatically, the ‘feminine pressure’ of bassline is reminiscent of feminist theoretician Luce Irigaray’s claim that women have sex organs ‘just about everywhere’. The cartoon body implied by bassline is contour-less and polymorphous, lacking in specific erogenous zones because entirely given over to a diffuse eroticism.

Part of bassline’s appeal resides in the tension between the crazed euphoria of the sound and the often plaintive quality of the songs. Bassline’s biggest hit to date, T2 and Jodie Aysha’s [pictured left] ‘Heartbroken’, perfectly exemplifies this duality. But you can also hear it in two of Zoe’s tunes – the masochistic ‘Why Does Love Hurt
Me’, in which the subdued singer contemplates the pleasure-in-pain of love, and the deeply addictive ‘Lately’, where she falls victim to love as deranging and debilitating pathology (“lately I just ain’t been right, lately I cannot sleep at night”). ‘Lately’ could almost be Lily Allen if she weren’t a spoilt public schoolgirl gone mockney, and if she was using an updated, rather than trad, version of reggae as a backing. What is beguiling about Zoe’s vocals is that, in common with many of the singers on bassline tracks, they are ‘weak’, lacking in all the acrobatic, vibrato-trilling stridency that is standard in X-Factor Britain. These weak – or desire – incapicitated – vocals express sadness and longing in a way that empty demonstrations of vocal technique can never hope to. Bassline is what the British overground and underground have both been waiting for.

Good stuff. Since the article brought up UK Garage, check back next week when we discuss all things UKG: UK Garage, Speed Garage, 2-Step, etc.

Classic Track of The Week:

JACO – Show Some Love (Rhythm Invention Remix) [Warp Records] (1992)

JACO – Show Some Love (Rhythm Invention Remix) video

AND NOW, YOU CAN CONSIDER YOURSELF SCHOOLED!

Pappy Andrews contact info:
Soundcloud
Twitter

Hey everyone, welcome back to Sunday Skool. I hope you enjoyed last week’s tutorial showing you exactly how a sound or tone is made to FIDGET. So, what is the ‘genre’ FIDGET and what’s included? Well, after much research it seems that the original name FIDGET was coined by Jesse Rose and Switch.

Here’s what Jesse Rose said about FIDGET during an interview with DJ Mag in late ’06/’07:

What is Fidget House?

We came up with ‘fidget house’ as a joke, which has now gone a little too far. Switch, Trevor Loveys, Herve and myself all make and play ‘fidget house’, and although we all have different influences we are influenced by music that isn’t straight-up house, like hyphy and bali funk.

I’ve also run across a not-so-flattering explanation of FIDGET from the UK’s “Guardian” newspaper music blog.

It’s a scene that doesn’t really exist beyond the internet, and the term seems to be used so that bloggers know what to put in the genre field in iTunes before uploading songs.

Switch is recognized as the first producer to begin making fidget and his Dubsided Label has been central in releasing the scene’s music. His productions are subtle, but subsequent producers, such as Trevor Loveys, Herve, Fake Blood, and Jack Beats, have exaggerated the initial elements of fidget.

The sound is defined by snatched vocal snippets, pitch-bent basslines and rave-style synth stabs over glitchy 4/4 beats. Fidget producers like to think of themselves as global music connoisseurs, hand-picking bits from genres such as Chicago house, rave, UK Garage, US Hip Hop, Baltimore club, Kudoro and other authentic world music genres. In reality, at its worst, the genre is basically and updated, ever-so-slightly less cheesy take
on Big Beat – with its annoying rap vocal loops and ridiculous Fatboy Slim-style builds. The more annoying songs sound like the theme to Fun House if there were a new series…

…Its not all bad though, The Crookers remix of Day and Night is a genuinely great club song, and its popularity is rightly deserved. What I find slightly ironic, though, is that it’s essentially an appropriated bassline song made to appeal to people outside this scene. But it seems to be the bassline and UK garage fans that have latched on to it the most. Crookers have done such a good job at “pinching” the best bits from bassline that they’ve managed to win over many of the scene’s fans.

Well, everyone’s got their own opinion don’t they? Either way, I have to agree that the popularity and success of the Crookers remix of Kid Cudi’s Day ‘N’ Nite is definitely a culmination of all the genres that have evolved over the years… including FIDGET. No matter how tired you are of hearing the track, it is without question a really great track. In the article you heard a few of the many terms used regarding the creation and history of FIDGET such as; UK Garage, Speed Garage, Dubstep, 2-Step, Bassline, and Grime — that we will have to get into next week as we trace back the heritage of this genre/non-genre.

It’s easy to think that the Herve, Sinden, Switch, Jesse Rose ‘genre’ is a more all-encompassing title “Bass Heavy Club Music.” However, as much as everyone hates them, there are reasons for sub-genres. Here are four examples of “Bass Heavy Club Music” that could confuse the heck out of someone trying to pick a show to attend:

Piratenpartei Propaganda video

Switched Sources – Satisfied video

Fake Blood – Mars (Herve Refix) video

Chromeo – Fancy Footwork (Crookers Remix) video

So, even though the genres of sub-genres of sub-genres can get pretty annoying… you can see how sometimes they can be helpful. A pure dubstep, bassline, or grime DJ is going to be quite a bit different than a more fidgety bass-heavy club DJ. Check back next week when we go deeper into who did what – when – and how.

Classic Track of The Week
This week is a double feature, because I just received the second good remix of this 1992 Aly-Us track.

Aly-Us – Follow Me
(Original Mix) [Strictly Rhythm] (1992)

Aly-Us – Follow Me
(Fred Everything_Oliver Desmet SF Mix) [Strictly Rhythm] (2009)

Aly-Us – Follow Me video

Aly-Us – Follow Me 2009 Remix video

AND NOW, YOU CAN CONSIDER YOURSELF SCHOOLED!
Pappy Andrews contact info:
Soundcloud
Twitter