Little music vacation in Cambridge.

So yeah, I am in Cambridge visiting my girlfriend and I am taking this opportunity to make loads and loads of music, since she is studying like crazy for her master anyways.
It's been quite productive so far: I was able to finish my remix of "Revival" from the Halo 4 OST and work on other beats I had left unfinished for way too long.
The remix for Halo 4 was done to enter the competition for best remix, which I do not count on winning since loads of very good and famous artists (such as Caspa, Gui Boratto, Sander Van Doorn etc.) are participating; but it was good to enter as a way of practicing on a cool sound package such as the "Revival" one.
I have to say I am quite happy with the final result and I think I'm going to use my own remix in my gigs maybe as an intro.

What's waiting for me back home.

Apart from the remix for Halo 4, I have been working with Consomateur on the tracks of our EP and it feels like endless work! We are often able to find things to improve or change in our tunes and we always get new ideas for the structure of the album itself. Up until now, we have focused on having a precise idea of what we wanted in terms of general sound of the album, but now we have to concentrate on the track-list, the mixing and especially the mastering of the tracks.
Moreover, I'll also have plenty of work to do once I'll be back in Brussels, since my friend Julian left all of his dj gear at my place. He is going away for a few weeks and doesn't want to leave his equipment unguarded for all those days with his not beloved housemates around. As I mentioned in a previous post, he is a drum n bass dj, so I will certainly have lots of fun mixing with his vinyls!
Hope my neighbors like drum n bass and dubstep!!!

My next post will be a review on the latest Flying Lotus album and his music project "Brainfeeder".
Personally, his last piece of work could be easily resumed in a word: perfection.
But, I'd still like to elaborate a bit more.
 

First Live with Machine? Check!

What a party last Saturday!
True, not too many people and basically none of them dancing, but it was good!
Well, Scott's Irish Bar is surely not known in Brussels for playing the kind of music we performed, so I guess that could be an explanation.

I have received some positive feedback from the people present, even if seeing them dancing would have been a much better form of appreciation!
I made a couple of mistakes during the set, just because I got confused with some pads, but apart from those two, I felt it going quite smoothly.
As I said in my previous post, I prepared a mix of hip-hop, trip-hop, some electronic music I have trouble categorize myself, future garage and dubstep.
And when I say dubstep, I do not mean Skrillex or similar sounds, but more like Burial or 2562.

Our set up for the night. MPD32 and Machine.

The tracks were pretty much all taken from Soundcloud users.
I have decided that until I'll have the chance to properly record the set and upload it on my Soundcloud, I'll just post the track-list of the set at the bottom of this post.
Because to be honest, I am more interested in promoting those artists and their beautiful tracks than my own set! Moreover, the attempted recordings I have done are of awful quality and with a few mistakes in it. That is not actually the only reason, in fact, me and Consomateur have decided to make our two sets in one sole set in which we try to recreate the actual events of the party.
Apart from the "gig", I have worked with Consomateur on a new track, which is coming out really great for the moment!
I think it could be a potential tune for our coming EP.

Anyways, enough said about this!
Hope you'll enjoy the tracks of my selection.


1. Simon SMTHNG - Humanoid Typhoon
2. Flying Lotus - Camel (Nosaj Thing Remix)
3. Cuthead - Dallisan
4. Matt Miller & Kilter - Gravel Pit (Flume Remix)
5. Flying Lotus - Melt!
6. Cuthead - The Poncho
7. Flume feat. Jezzabell Doran - Sleepless
8. Boogie Belgique - Stairway to USSR
9. Adjaman - Accusing the Radio of Hypnotism
10. Kofe - Bee
11. eLan - I Can't Breath
12. Siriusmo - Rockwurst
13. Stiver - Self Confessed
14. Coma - Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
15. Andrea - Work the Middle
16. Regal Safari - Lake

My first live with Machine is approaching! Scary...

This Saturday will be the b-party of Julian, aka J2N, a good friend of mine and also a very good "old-school" dj. He opened my horizons towards the different variations of drum n bass, his style of choice. 

A person like him wouldn't let a random person taking care of the music for such event, so my other good friend Thomas, aka Consomateur, myself and Jeroen (another dj who I haven't met yet) will be taking care of the music vibes that night. 

I have so decided to attempt my first live performance with Machine, since I'll be in a friendly environment and I won't worry too much about making mistakes.

But I figured, I have to learn how to play this way, so I better start ASAP! 

Is it scary? Hell yeah! 

I'm used to mix with cdjs or turntables, which allow you to control the tempo of the tracks in the mix to make sure they're on beat. On Machine this is not possible! 

The good thing is that with such instruments, you can literally chop the tracks in multiple parts giving you a little bit more control on the tunes playing. 

Although, you do need a lot of memory to remember which sample is where and when to start it. 

My decision of playing with Machine was not rushed at all. I firstly tried to synchronize my device with Ableton Live instead that with its own software. But it turns out that my trial version of Ableton Live doesn't allow me to do so. So I have attempted to learn how to use Thomas' MPD (the device he'll be mixing with), but I just found it so difficult to get used to! 

The sensitivity of the pads is completely different and the device itself obviously works differently too.

So I thought: "If I'm going to play live, I may as well do it with my own instrument!"

I have been trying some stuff mixes lately and it works just great! 

I've decided that I'll mostly play stuff from artists I found on Soundcloud (Cuthead, Ta-ku, Flume, Stiver, Sorrow etc.). I'll start with some instrumental hip-hop and electronica, go through funky beats in the middle and then finish with future garage and dark-dubstep (so Thomas can start with his own mix - which kicks asses by the way! -). 

If I manage to record the mix, I will definitely share it on my Soundcloud.

It'll be a fun night! 

A gift from the sun.

I was trying to organize my thoughts to give priority to one artist in particular, so I asked myself: "Which musician has lately had a big impact on my music making and listening?".
The answer to this question was: Sun Glitters.

Now, I don't really have a lot of information about the artist himself, apart from the fact that he is from Luxembourg and his name is Victor Ferreira.
However, he is definitely not unknown to the post-dubstep and electronic music scene.
BBC Music has in fact reviewed what maybe is his main and most famous piece of work: "Everything could be fine".
Several tracks of this album have quickly become symptomatic of the genre."Too much to lose" and "Everything could be fine"are certainly two of those. I personally found myself listening to these tracks over and over for several days without being able to listen to anything else!
His music truly has the power to take you some place else due to its dreamy atmospheres, relaxing vocals and loud reverbs. Sun Glitters is a very active Soundcloud member; his page is updated quite often with new mixtapes (all download free), tracks and remixes (also for free in many cases).
Sun Glitters is carrying out a very important activity of collaboration within the artists that in a way or another happen to be very close to his style.
I believe this is very important in order to constantly promote innovative sounds and up and coming artists. Thank to Sun Glitters and his work, I got introduced to others musicians such as Regal Safari, Twin Empire and Space Ghost, to name a few.
Regal Safari caught my attention with his own remix of "Too much to lose", which after several listenings has probably become my favorite remix of a Sun Glitter track. I guess the reason is because it gives a completely different twist to the original version, which I really did not expect.
Twin Empire with the track "All" by Blackbird Blackbird, probably my favorite post-dubstep track ever, opens one of the most variegated mixtapes that you can find on Sun Glitters' Soundcloud. Twin Empire was recently interviewed on the BBC Radio where he also performed an astonishing dj-set.
Last but not least, Space Ghost, probably the most unrelated artist compared to the others I mentioned, but still quite similar in many aspects. This musician is able to adapt his sound to purely hip-hop rhythms to electronic or even minimal tunes without compromising his own music identity, which is not easy to do.

Getting in touch with Sun Glitters' sound and with all these artists, deeply changed my way of making music in terms of inspiration and technique.
I still use their tracks as one of my main source of ideas for new productions and demos.
So get on those Soundcloud pages and download some free, inspirational and great music!

I'm back!

Hello everybody!
I know, I know I have been away for a long while!

Like all new things, I got really excited with my blog at the beginning and then I got carried away by other things and stopped posting my "Music Issues".
From now on, I shall be posting more regularly.

Busy time with exams, work and music.
Although, I have lots and lots of things to catch up and that I wanna talk about.
I have been using Soundcloud a lot for my new music discoveries and my personal uploads, so I will definitely post something about my favorite artists I have found out about in the past months.
Then I will also speak about my own music experiments and my hopefully soon coming EP I have been working on with some friends. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to say about concerts and festivals because I have been quite unlucky on that side. This summer there were loads of good events and festivals I could have attended, but for one reason or the other I never managed to go to any!
Although, I am now planning to go to the I Love Techno 2012 and to another event in Berlin hosted by two of my favorites music labels (Monkeytown and 50Weapons).
On my behalf, I can already say that the I Love Techno's line-up this year is not the best, but I would like to attend just to see Flying Lotus live, especially since his new album is coming out (a review on him and his new album will definitely be made!).
So, I really hope I'll be able to write something about at least one of those.

In the meantime, stay tuned for some articles about music you may not know but that is worth knowing about.


Cheers.

Dubstep with an 80's fever!

Well well well..let's talk about some electronic music this time, and I have decided to review an album that has been on my iPod since the day I bought it; "Fever". Dave Huismans, in art 2562 is in my opinion one of the european pioneers of Dubstep. When talking about Dubstep on the european scene, people normally think of British artists, but Dutch 2562 demonstrates there is much more in Europe than just UK representatives of this genre. The reason why I bought this album was because of the previous album by this artist; "Unbalance". I find a lot of similarities between these two albums as well as differences; the structure of the tracks itself and the atmosphere it creates are very alike but also full of contrasts. However, "Fever" goes much more into Techno the more we go towards the end of the cd and it finishes with the homonymous track (whilst in "Unbalance" it was placed in the half-way in the track selection), which sounds like the perfect ending of such album.
An interesting curiosity is that all the tracks of this album were realized using 80's synths exclusively and I believe "Winamp Melodrama" it's an intro that immediately takes the listener to this kind of like "old fashioned" dimension. Although, it is a bit too long in my opinion and still does not compare to "Unbalance-Intro", which very smoothly goes into the second track "Flashback". Whilst "Unbalance" goes for a more lounge approach at the beginning, "Fever" kicks your right in the catchy beat of "Cheater", personally one of my favorites since the beginning, probably because of its position in the track selection right after the intro. "Juxstaposed", track number three, is another interesting production. I like very much the way it builds up sound after sound, but I have to admit that it took me a while to get used to this very irregular beat. Let's say that with this album, at the beginning the listener will have the impression to like only a few tracks, but listening to it over and over definitely will help to get into the right mindset and concept of the album. It is in fact quite hard for me to only pick only three songs to review, as I believe all of them need some reflection upon.
So last but not least track I review is "Intermission", placed pretty much halfway in the album. I find several similarities between this track and the homonymous from the previous album "Unbalance", as they both have a very long intro, like giving an idea of separation between what listened before and what you are about to listen. "Intermission" is in my opinion the most dynamic track of the album and no matter what I am doing, it always makes me want to dance or even just bouncing my head.
As I said, other tracks would need a review (like "This is Hardcore" or "Aquatic Family Affair"), but I do not want to make this too long.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest everybody who like Dubstep, or electronic music in general, to at least give a listen to all 2562 productions. I have mentioned only two albums here, but also the ones previous to "Unbalance" ("Embrace" and "Aerial") are worth to be listened.


Grade: 8.5/10

Best Christmas wishes ever from Michael Buble'!

Well, Christmas just passed by, so I figured it would have been nice to review a Christmas compilation. I am not a big fan of Michael Buble', but I got the album for my mum as Christmas gift and she loved it! We listened to it in the car all together during our family drives around to visit relatives and friends and I have to say; well done Michael! The selection of songs is truly amazing and they are all well interpreted by the singer. Not that I have ever discussed Mr. Buble's talent, which he indubitably has, but once an artist decides to make such an album reinterpreting classics like "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas", "Jingle Bells", "All I want for Christmas is you" etc., which are songs that are perfect within themselves already, I was curious to see the final result.
I have to say my first impression was not the best one. In fact, the album starts with the song "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas", a song that reminds me of my Christmassy childhoods watching the movie "Home Alone 2". So for me that song is by Johnny Mathis, that's it! It just sounded a bit wierd to me to hear another voice on those notes singing those words. If I have to make another personal critic, it would be about the song "Ave Maria". I like the personal touch Michael gave to it with its amazing voice, but I am still of the idea that song should be lyrical like the original version is. Although my favorite version of it is by Geoff Zanelli and is in the "Hitman" O.S.T.
Apart from these two very personal critics, I believe Michael Buble' did an amazing job on this album. "Jingle Bells" reinterpreted in pure jazz style, is genuinely inspiring and really gives you the feeling of Christmas, despite the big differences with the original version.
So, if you are a Michael Buble's fan or you just like Christmas music, I really suggest you to add this album to your collection for your next Christmas!

Grade: 9/10