TUNETOURIST

Growing up (old?) with samples

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:38:00 +0000

I was listening to a track that samples Mobb Deep (those great voices, words and clean accapella skits) and I had pause to think about the effect of sampling. Not for the first time.

This time, it was a more personal reflection on the way that it keeps you connected to a vague notion of a musical culture, an underground culture, no matter how that culture twists and turns through time. Despite advancing years and the distractions and responsibilities they bring, my attachment to underground music is seemingly pretty much where it was at when I was a teenager. So I frequently have to ask myself what's wrong with me. As in, 'grow up; industrial strength techno is not an appropriate soundtrack for a man on his way to pick the kids up from school.'

But, honestly. I'm okay with it.

So, aside from a lingering concern that this might be the early gestation of a future mid-life crisis, I ponder this tendency with an entirely positive curiosity.

And, although I'm not much of a fan of the artist doing the sampling in this case (Bass producer, Mosca) it seemed to me that he and I were in a sort of dialogue. Both loving Mobb Deep irrelevant of whether that passion was sparked concurrent with the Queens hip-hop duo's reign in the mid-90s or, in the case of the much younger producer, it was a discovered legacy. That's art, right? It just doesn't really give a shit about time.

In the way he turned the sample I could hear the same reverence for their cadence, their swagger, the flow of the words and how those qualities are shot through the music that's been ground out around those samples of those voices from then to now. Time and timelessness, in order words.

But then I listened to The Martinez Brothers' H 2 Da Izzo, which takes Masters at Work's crude early garage anthem Deep Inside and twists its naive and bubbling synth melody into darker, more intense and druggy contemporary shapes. And I thought again that sampling can equally be a commentary on the passing of time and generational shifts. In this case a loss of innocence, erasing the bright eyed charm of the original in favour of a knowing appeal to the sensory experience of the contemporary club.

Finally, for about the hundredth time in the last year or so, I was locked in the raptures of Soundstream and his Dillaesque house interpretations of disco and soul edits listening to a track constructed entirely around a sample(s?) I had no knowledge of.

So here's what was happening: In a track that I've lived in I was hearing a producer turn and re-turn a moment they loved to make a track that (Dilla again) drags he listener right down to the molecular structure of that passion.

Three different thoughts about sampling, then. Each one making me reflect on sampling's incredibly complex relationship with time. One that few other musical techniques share.

And, as well, a little insight into how this music keeps playing in your head, regardless of time. And age.

The Wall of Sound

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Thrills. Something I worked on with my friends at Bounce got nominated for an Econsultancy Innovation Award in the category of Innovation in Social Media. As a project that perfectly lives out my current obsession with creating the tools for the audience to create the content (ironically, this looks likely to be exploited most effectively by Spotify with the new API enabling all manner of exciting content filters to be applied for music discovery) I'm very happy to have it recognised. Credit due to Chris Wilcox whose brilliant creative technologising really nailed the creative execution.

Below is a little more detail and overview of how things worked. You be the judge as to whether we're a worthy winner.

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The idea was to draw attention to Deezer with an activity that reinforced their critical differentiator from the music streaming competition – that this is a service by music lovers for music lovers with editorial, human recommendation and more than mere hardcore search-powered tech.

So, we developed a Facebook integrated analogue/digital (which may just be a fancy way of saying experiential/digital) experience encouraging people to share favourite songs and stories to be brought to life in real-time by illustrators working on an installation in London. Essentially, this creative concept brought the Deezer strapline promise – “Where Music Comes Alive” – to life with a perfectly physical, interactive expression of just that.

Built from hundreds of illustrated postcards, the Wall was experienced online through a gigapixel image in which you could zoom into each card and even play the relevant track.

It lives on and you play around with it right HERE.

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1. The real-world experience

Between 19 – 24th October a group of illustrators and a gigapan-operated camera were installed in the Old Truman Brewery, off Brick Lane in East London. Through a Facebook application, audiences shared their favourite songs and the stories behind them. Illustrators turned each of these stories into unique hand-illustrated postcards and added them to the wall. The wall itself grew into both a visual and literal expression of the brand.

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2. The digital interface

Users could view the progress of the wall through a regularly updating gigapixel image that allowed it to be browsed from afar and zoomed into in close-up. As individual cards were selected in close-up, details then loaded in allowing the associated track to be played via Deezer, the track title and user comment to be displayed, and that card to be shared through Facebook and Twitter.

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3. Sharing

With 1000 entries we were able to send Facebook and Twitter notifications when each user entered their track. But the real excitement kicked in when a user’s card was created and added to the wall. At this point we posted to their feed both a packshot and direct link that zoomed elegantly into the gigapixel image within the Facebook app to focus on that individual’s card. These then became the focus for further conversations within Facebook. This turned 1000 entries into hundreds of thousands of impressions across Facebook.

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Brand awareness was achieved both on the ground for a week with a living, breathing brand embodiment in high-footfall Brick Lane, through NME and Facebook advertising and, most effectively, through the sharing across Facebook and Twitter.

A new player was introduced to the busy UK music-streaming market with an exciting, engaging and truly social experience. Complex in behind-the-scenes execution, the user journey itself was beautifully simple and depended only on the demographic’s willingness to express their individuality through music. They were rewarded with a unique, creative and shareable memento which achieved the elusive but highly prized goal of all social marketing: social currency.

F8: Talking loud, saying something

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:36:00 +0000

Here's something I posted elsewhere as a first reaction to the Facebook F8 developments, no doubt it'll need a rethink as they roll out the new features and they come into focus. Meanwhile, I'm working on a project that will, in some part, use the timeline and the integration features of one of the third party partners announced at F8 at present, which I hope will be a really fun and creative exploitation, so more on that soon.

The below was originally posted on 23.9.2011:

For a Facebook sceptic, yesterday's F8 announcements were an eye-opener. There's a lot to take in but boiled to its essence, the big news is #1 the timeline and #2 integration with key third-party entertainment content brands. As with all things in Facebook's social graph stew, the two are intrinsically linked and it's these sort of tangential connections between all things in the ecosystem that makes the sum total of all yesterday's news hard to process - there's no neat beginning and end to the features.

The introduction of third party content seems like a pretty seismic development for a platform which, in the words of James Brown, often amplified the business of 'talking loud, saying nothing'. Now, integration of services like Spotify and Deezer allow realtime sharing of the music that you are listening to, the articles that you are reading - and with the integration of Netflix so far in Canada and Latin America - the TV and films you view. Crucially, this takes out that moment of consideration in the sharing process - the one where you think 'how will sharing this make me look to my friends' - instead replacing it with an unmediated stream of the audiences' actual media consumption. So, enjoy watching your most considered friends unmasked as avid Coronation Street viewers, lovers of REO Speedwagon and aficionados of the films of Kevin Bacon.

The Timeline is a much richer way of presenting the individual's story and answers the issue of what to do with The Wall, given that most people now only interact with the News Feed. We're big fans of the lovely Memolane start-up here and there's a similar richness to the Facebook timeline which was influenced by the personal infographics or 'scrapbooks' of designer Nicholas Felton (pictured).

This is a really exciting development for people like us, whose ambition is to make rich social applications that enable audiences to connect in social media and celebrate passions and interests. Apps now feel so much more central to the experience and will have to be smarter, richer and more personalised for the most sophisticated users.

Content, of course, becomes ever-more the principle currency for brands looking to interact in these spaces and the announcement of verb-based 'actions' to add crucial nuance to the act of 'Liking' content, opens up a new seam of advertising potential through Facebook's Sponsored Stories product. Integration with the social graph is crucial to driving the potential of this data and the humble Facebook brand Page - always a thin proposition - now looks woefully insufficient.

The overall impact is a significant further stride towards Zuckerberg's ambition to channel your web experience through Facebook, building a sort of shopping mall of digital content (albeit with Deezer, The Guardian, Netflix and others boasting some pretty great shops). Perhaps there are those of us who will prefer to continue making trips to boutique high street shops but, unquestionably, these are huge advances for the world's favourite social network.

We stopped being ourselves without realising it

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:18:00 +0000

Back in January Laura Miller wrote an interesting piece in The Guardian about the faltering way in which the novel has slowly acknowledged the existence of the internet. The point being that literature tends to be reticent about subject matter that's likely to date the text; Miller points out that big names like Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx tend to stage their drama amongst the mountains and plains of ranchland America where laptops (let alone iPads) never threaten to puncture the mythical mise en scene.

It was this article that turned me on to Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit From The Goon Squad', which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. As Miller writes, this is a book that manages to address both the culture of social media and the cultural implications of this new world. The 'voice' that social media gives the individual is, she claims, presently only heard when it sings in harmony with enough others - providing enough data to tease out valuable analysis and quantifiable results - to become of note to the corporation. Or put another way - did you try getting most of your friends to communicate with you through any other platform than Facebook?

Egan's novel envisions a future in which a toddler demographic, just capable of operating simple mobile handsets is referred to by marketers as 'pointers'. For music mogul, Bennie Salazar, these mini consumers represent the 'reach' he needs to revive his ailing music empire, once founded on, you know, music. In this world, bloggers are 'parrots' and 50 such parrots are enough to create 'authentic word of mouth' for the live debut of a dismal musician. Operating this marketing infrastructure are young professionals whose "every bite of information" is "stored in the databases of multinationals who swore they would never, ever use it." As Egan puts it, this generation sold themselves "unthinkingly at the very point in [...] life when [they'd] felt most subversive."

So far, so much dystopian literary analysis of consumer culture. But can a vision like this really be considered dystopian at a time when we're learning that our media institutions consider news gathering to be the business of private detectives and hackers, when evidence in the murder of a child can be tampered with in the name of the communications industry? Perhaps it's not so far fetched.

What the book fails to acknowledge though, is the disruption and anarchy that we're seeing in digital channels right now. If you use Twitter, you can't possibly have failed to feel the impact of the News Of The World story and, certainly, News International has felt its impact as the advertisers have been (let's be honest) forced to withdraw, at least for a spell. In the brand world, other great examples abound. My favourite from recent months was that in which US fashion retailer Urban Outfitters was hung out to dry on Twitter after ripping off an independent designer's work - a practice that's long been rife in this industry but will surely now be reassessed by the major brands in the light of the damage it can do (we can do) to their reputation. Take a look at the story in full - it's a little bit heart-warming.

So, could it be that Egan's analysis is one of old world expectation applied to new world potential? Isn't there just a glimmer of hope here that, rather than turning us into drones to be co-opted into colouring the myth that propels the dismal musician to superstardom, we can in fact call out the emperor in his new clothes through these very channels. Unless we recognise the potential of the tools we have, there's a danger that we'll fail to notice as they're slowly taken away from us (Twitter users should keep a watchful eye on developments there over the coming months as they try to make good on their need to become a more effective channel for advertisers).

This isn't about some anarchic dismantling of the status quo but simply the emergence of a communications environment in which some truth and substance are returned to brand promises, where great products and businesses succeed by communicating their intrinsic values and their message is carried by their audience. Here's hoping that the novel is still just a little behind the people where digital communications are concerned, then.

Beck vs Burgundy

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Finally, a new pairing on drinkinmusic.net. If this gets popular, I may start taking requests.

Twitter and the death of Sufjan Stevens

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:53:00 +0000

Last night's Sufjan Stevens show - the first of two dates at the Royal Festival Hall for the US indie deity - was remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, it may just be the best show I've ever seen at this fantastic venue. Secondly, the excitement he managed to whip up in the room led to so much Twitter activity that some users seemingly considered the possibility he'd died.

Fascinating, because it highlights both the best and worst of Twitter. It's a fantastic thing that a digital outlet allows for the mass outpouring of collective enthusiasm in that way. It gives us a forum to ask: 'It wasn't just me right? That was amazing, wasn't it?' And despite a few churlish types (notably those most active on Twitter last night) the collective record they created conveyed at least something of the wonder of the show but also hinted at its flaws and contradictions.

However, the Twitter community deals in absolutes and what struck me halfway into the show was how challenging it would be to review, to do justice to its variety and vitality, to his creative imagination and its startling contrasts in light and dark, calm and chaos, simplicity and the utterly baroque. But on Twitter of course, it was either 'amazing' or 'ridiculous', in fact the most insightful commentary I've found in a single Tweet is this, from @kofisarfo: 'It was fantastic and absurd!'

David Cheal, writing for The Arts Desk, manages to clock up both the most Twitter mentions riding the trending wave and the only comprehensive review to be published less than 12 hours after the show. Huge respect on that count, given what a challenge it is to deliver a review of a show like this to such a tight deadline.

The downside to all this activity is that this is, so far, the only professional review that's been published. So, why aren't more publications rising to the challenge of editorial that can rival the instantaneity culture of the social web and deliver satisfyingly nuanced reportage? After all the Twitter stream itself is really just one long, crowdsourced review of sorts. The answers are complex and the diminishing value of editorial in our connected culture and suspicion of the singular author both play their part, not to mention the clear superiority of Twitter's business model over that of websites like The Arts Desk.

Wonderful gig though, and a great indication of what makes Twitter so compelling. It's a passion platform; a medium for those that intrinsically have something to say. So when will online journalism rise to its challenge.

Instagram analogue

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:42:00 +0000

There's plenty being written about Instagram at the moment as we lay bets on its continuing success, but amongst it all what I've learnt from the service is how primitive our requirements of technology remain. I mean this in the best possible sense: there is something reassuringly human and simple that is key to the service's success.

Compare it with Flickr which is great in its own way (although it seems to have been stalled for a good few years now) and the parred down basics of its success become clear. Flickr offers tonnes of functionality from mapping images to slideshows, multiple scaling options, privacy settings and uploader tools. Instagram has a few simple filters and the sharing infrastructure of Twitter, with simple options to extend beyond the network into your other social destinations on an image-by-image basis. So, ease of use and real time social sharing are the key to the success of a service that unlocks our intrinsic urge to share in a manner that avoids the clanging premeditation of the worst Tweets and status updates.

What has become clearer since Instagram released its API and the fans and entrepreneurs (or likely, both combined in the best cases) have gone to work is the irresistible pull towards the analogue world that these modest social time capsules inspire. The filters may be a re-presentation of the analogue effect but there's a very tangible physical allure that has manifested great service initiatives like Instaprint - a location based photo booth that prints out Instagram images based on hashtags relevant to localised activity - and Stickygram - which promises to deliver your Instagram images as fridge magnets. There's also Instagoodies which creates sticker books from your Instagram pics, Teenytile that makes 2" ceramic tiles from your feed and all manner of other services for printing, framing and displaying pictures in realworld settings.

Somehow this flurry of 'analogue' (I know its not strictly correct) activity somehow embodies the appeal of the service perfectly. Of course, I could be missing the point and the API extension that really nails the Instagram phenomenon might just be this.

PS. Special mention to Postagram which I just came across after hitting 'Publish' - postcards of your Instagram pics, of course.

Artisan for artisan's sake

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:42:00 +0000

Sticking with wine, a bottle dispatched over the weekend got me to thinking about the industry's relationship to marketing and branding.

It's hugely diverse from the modern corporate processes that inform brands like those within the Constellation group - Hardy's, Banrock Station, Kumala - to the luxury language of the champagne houses and Bordeaux chateau. But in between these, at least at a certain quality level, wine remains an artisan product made by independent producers and sold largely on the strength of what is in the bottle; a refreshing antidote to the fetishisation of goods with little to differentiate them beside the myth making of the marketing industry.

The apotheosis of this kind of anti commoditisation is found in Burgundy where the wines are so unique, the levels of production so small and the industry itself enshrined in family production for so many generations that marketing is scarcely necessary. There was a time when it seemed to be hard to tell the wines of different producers apart in Burgundy as one calligraphy adorned bottle looked so similar to the next, as remains the case with this pair for example:

But it was a bottle of wine from Spain, where there seems to be a huge effort of modernisation in the styles and visual languages in which wine is sold to the wider market these days, that got me to thinking about the issue. Not a dusty old Rioja carefully stamped with its certification of "Reserva' or 'Gran Reserva', but this wine from neighbouring Navarra:

It's nice isn't it? A kind of retro styling with great use of type and not a single part of the experience up to the point of pouring the wine untouched by brand - from label to foil and cork all beautifully presented. Apparently this is selling like hot cakes at my local wine merchant, understandably, in a style conscious corner of east London where it looks great on the table. The wine itself is good, a slightly confused blend of varietals which is at present dominated by slightly dry tannin and the coffee and bramble character of the Grenache (here's Jancis Robinson's note). Not bad, but I doubt its charm is what's helping to shift it so quickly in E9, there are better wines at this price.

The recent troubles at Oddbins have been well documented and the most insightful commentary I've seen on their current strategy came from a commentator who observed that they were hardly likely to succeed with shelves full of wines that no one had heard of. A shame, because the selection seemed to have improved considerably under its recent management. But it's true that at Oddbins' price point it is no longer possible to 'break' new wines (in the 90s I tried my first bottles from now cult wineries like Ridge and some of the blockbuster producers of Brunello from their shelves).

But have any of the shoppers at my local heard of Emilio Vallerio? A few perhaps, but it's unlikely they are in the majority. This - like the first bottle of Ridge I spied in Oddbins years ago - appeals because its bottle promises a wine with attention to detail, all the best assets of modern technique, the cult of artisan craft and because it's going to look really nice on my table, damn it.

So, 'artisan' is marketable and marketed (except perhaps in Burgundy where a label as shonky as that of Sylvain Cathiard can yeild one of the most incredible things you ever tasted) and is that a problem? Well, in the final judgement that really will depend on the impact it has on the quality of what we drink. Naked Wines, has established a smart business by providing the model and infrastructure that those unrecognised, unglamorous but great wines need to find a market. Oddbins, however, might need to pursue the paradoxical 'commodified artisan' category to regain its foothold on the middle class high street.

What Warren G has in common with red Bordeaux

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:12:00 +0000

Well you might ask.

The answer, of course, is only to be found at my Drinkin' Music blog - here.

Drinkin' Music eschews traditional wine parings, like food, and instead aims to find the classic album that shares its qualities with the wine in question.

Not quite as eccentric as it sounds, there is considerable evidence to suggest that music can influence our sensation of taste. Words are pretty flawed when it comes to describing sensory stuff - surely the only way to get closer to the experience then, is to find a sensory metaphor.

One day, wines will be available on YouTube. Or something.

Albums as tall stories

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:11:00 +0000

My favourite release from a batch of LPs just reviewed for Uncut is this oddity from The Endless House Foundation.

Not necessarily because the content is any more accomplished or exciting than anything else from the current pile – although there’s some beautiful music here that will strike the right note for lovers of early 70s kosmische – but because of its brilliantly audacious proposition.

At a time when albums need desperately to be more than anonymous files at the end of a pipe, Endless House offers a scenario in which they take on a fictional existence, inviting listeners into the imaginative landscape in which they were conceived. It sets out a Ballardian tale of a futuristic club in the Bialowieska Forest where Europe’s avant-garde gathered for six weeks in 1973 and compiles the work of these imagined characters, presenting it as if it were an archive discovery of a lost musical history.

In the velco-sealed envelope in which it arrives (like a file from the worst kind of East German library) there are a number of postcards each depicting the album’s fictional auteurs – from Bauhaus drop-out Klaus Pinter to club-founder Jiri Kantor whose ill-fated vision was to create a space that would act as “the cradle of a new European sonic community... a multimedia discotheque.”

Of course, this sort of thing has been done before and it has been done on the scale of Gorillaz. But scale is what makes this project most endearing. The music here couldn’t possibly hope to appeal beyond its already well-defined sub-audience of electronica and kosmische lovers. But its creator (creators?) has lavished such attention to the stories behind the music that it becomes something to cherish.

The story doesn’t end here. There is even an interview with club survivor, Walter Schnaffs and a mix by Jiri Kantor himself.

Ad Mix015 - Jiri Kantor [Endless House] by Armchair Dancefloor on Mixcloud

A lovely project that is knowing enough about the plight of the album to find a solution but sufficiently heartfelt to avoid cold marketing theory.

Cut-up technique for the digital age

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:31:00 +0000

YouTube's 'Life In A Day' project, a 90 minute film made up of thousands of clips filmed by users on one day last July was premiered in Berlin this month and has seemingly been well-received. Judging from the few clips available on the YouTube page, it has plenty of the raw material to make it a fascinating human document. My question though - and it's easier to ask before seeing and becoming emotionally invested in the film - is whether this latest frontier in film actually points to new structural possibilities for the form or will remain a glorious experiment, utterly of its time and seldom to be repeated.

Not a typical documentary, the film sets out to make concrete the human histories of one single day in 2010, splicing together cultures to find revelations in the humdrum routines that comprise a day. These become a string of multiple additions revealing what it is to be Moroccan, to be Argentinian, British, Japanese...

It also records the random pattern with which that one day becomes momentous for some of the film's subjects as they give birth, find themselves diagnosed with cancer, get caught up in the tragic events at German music festival Love Parade on 24th July, where 21 people died in a crush.

It offers a coming together of the personal and the social, the local and the global, the banal and the significant into a patchwork narrative of existential investigation which is made possible by our participative media culture. And it reconfigures the filmmaking process to make the editor the skipper, taking ultimate creative control, previously the domain of the director. (If nothing else, it certainly blows the auteur theory out of the water.)

So what does it mean for film? Clearly, this can be done again and filmed to coincide with major global events - imagine watching the impact of the announcement of war unfold across cultures or charting the effect of a major medical breakthrough on the lives of people across the world. But is there an opportunity for fictionalised narratives here? Could we crowd source an adaptation of Wuthering Heights?

I'm reminded of Penguin's attempt to crowd source a novel, generally considered to be an exciting experiment in form, rather than a satisfying creative product. In a user-generated environment in which endless contribution often leads to a relativistic tangle, we still need filters to tell a story or to make a film. Even to give an objective opinion on a hotel, if Tripadvisor is anything to go on.

'A Day In The Life' depends upon the work of its editor/director filters to conjure sense and narrative from the chaos of plurality - step up Ridley Scott and brother Tony, with their director ('director/editor'?), Kevin Macdonald. But could they make a decent story out of crowd footage if the brief were something like, 'shoot a film about a pair of doomed lovers on the run from the police'? You can't rule it out can you? There are analogue precedents in everything from the literary cut-ups of William Burroughs through to some of the filmic techniques of Godard.

What's certain is the raw material doesn't look like it'll be in short supply - it just remains to be seen what the editors can do with it.

A Mix, eight months in the thinking about doing...

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:05:00 +0000

The infrequency of these mixes could be taken as a sign of either perfectionism or plain idleness. But time lets the selections settle a little and the more permanent tracks of the last year rise to the surface.

This one is a little more analogue in places, with less 'functional' stuff - except for that Boris Horel thing which I couldn't resist after hearing it out a few weeks back.

There's even half-an-hour of Berghain-shaped trouble at the end.

On the off chance that a couple of people failed to clear out their RSS feeds, here it is:

At Home With The Hoodies Mix 2

Tracklisting

Avon Sparkle - Newworldaquarium
A Crippled Left Wing Soars With The Right (DJ Sprinkles' Steal This Record Remix) - Terre Thaemlitz
Long Drive - Andy Stott
Pause (Isolee Mix) - Will Saul
Workshop - Move D
Red Cloud (Minilogue Remix) - Sian
Workshop - Evan Tuell
Foly feat. Sibiri Samake - dOP
Close To Me - Boris Horel
I Want Your Love (Todd Terje Re-Edit) - Chic
Workshop - Benjamin Brun
Wax 10 - Shed
Double Trouble - Pied Plat
Subzero - Ben Klock
X - Claro Intelecto
Vacuum Stance - LoSoul

The tunetourist podcast, back from the dead

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:39:00 +0000

It's not the same as the original Tunetourist podcast series but with the dulcet tones of Messers Gilbert and Poletti long since a footnote in the history of digital music, this is the 'all music no bored-sounding blokes talking shit' version.

Precisely 90 minutes of the finest electronic shizzle, including a few recent gems from John Tejada, Luciano and DJ Koze. Use the sendspace link below to download.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0k4p59

Tracklisting - At Home With The Hoodies 01

Turning Point - John Tejada
Jive - Pikaya
Ribbons - Four Tet
Crazy Circus (Guido Schneider mix) - Matthias Tanzmann
Break Free - Michael Ho, Lil Dirty
Floppy - Alex Picone
Crazy Place (Luciano mix) - Dave Aju
Radar - HOSH & Stimming
Boiling Point Returns - FYM
Naked (DJ Koze mix) - Sid Le Rock
Pink Boots - Thomas Schumacher
Falling Stars - Smith N Hack
Nebula - Delta Funktionen
I Want To Sleep - DJ Koze
Acid In My Fridge - Dinky
Akustik - Par Grindvik
K-Maze - Radioslave

Six months off: some reviews

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:46:00 +0000

Well, obviously, tunetourist has been on holiday. We had a nice tropical break but now we're back to the coalface in London.

So, whilst you can expect a few more Brazilian tips it's largely musical business as usual here. We'll try and resume some sort of service in the coming weeks and months - starting with a few reviews yet to be published by Uncut magazine.

The Luciano mix has rarely been off the stereo since I saw him play outside in the morning at Sunday Adventure Club in Berlin; a really nice balance of house and techno with lovely organic patterns and groove. Dettmann's Berghain mix is as staunchly techno as you'd expect and a few 'difficult' transitions creep in but that's kind of the point. No Ableton and a refusal to conform to the monotone unanimity of many mixed comps. All power to him.

Luciano, meanwhile, probably grew-up listening to Gilberto Gil and Tamba Trio; "Frevo Rasgado" may just get called 'the Brazilian Sgt Pepper' with as much lazy (and condescending) regularity as Caetano Veloso gets called 'the Brazilian Bob Dylan'. A wicked intro to Tropicalia anyway and, as I allude to in the review, one less obviously sanctioned by Beck, Stereolab et al than the oiginal 'Tropicalia' LP.

VARIOUS - Fabric 41: Luciano (FABRIC)
4/5
Mustachioed Chilean electronic figurehead in the mix
Emerging as one of the key expat Chileans behind the thriving European dance scene, Luciano has long shared billing with Ricardo Villalobos. It’s a misleading association as the Cadenza label boss’ sound is neither as proggy nor ‘difficult’. In recent years, Luciano has worked more and more Latin groove into his pristine sound and this restrained mix proves one of Fabric’s most rewarding recent offerings. A clear personal aesthetic colours the selection which flows as if time were no object through highlights like Galluzzi and Schneider’s unavoidable “Albertino” and Johnny D’s “Orbitalife”. A perfect soundtrack to Easy Jet Sundays in European sunshine.

VARIOUS - Berghain 02: Marcel Dettmann (OSTGUT)
4/5
Whilst the average DJ at London’s Fabric club is lucky to exceed two hours, Marcel Dettmann starts work at six AM and plays for 12 at Berghain. It’s a commitment to a borderline purist notion of the techno aesthetic that finds its ultimate expression on this Berlin dancefloor. This refreshingly rough-hewn mix manages to capture a little of the magic.

GILBERTO GIL - Frevo Rasgado / Cérebro Eletrônico (EL RECORDS)
4/5
Hipsters head straight for the Tropicalia LP and Os Mutantes’ debut but the second from Brazil’s culture minister, released in 1969, is as perfect a summation of the scene’s seamless blend of pop, politics and unhinged experimentation as you’ll find. Created by the dream team of Gil, Mutantes and Tropicalia’s resident arranger, Rogerio Duprat, this ranks amongst 60s Brazil’s finest.

TAMBA TRIO - The Miraculous Tamba Trio (EL RECORDS)
3/5
A selection culled from four releases by this early 60s bossa trio famed for their version of Jorge Ben’s “Mas Que Nada”, this is Brazil as painted on innumerable chill out albums. Later efforts prove they could play hard enough to clear a hotel lobby - “Consolacion” in particular is an astonishing reconfiguration of the possibilities of the trio format.

Felix Hot Chip picks the tunes

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:58:00 +0000

Here's a selection of 10 fine and widely available shots of sunshine - courtesy of Hot Chip's techno guru Felix who was kind enough to share some faves with Tunetourist recently:

Controversy – Prince

I think we should start with this one because Prince is quite a big Hot Chip influence, obviously. I’ve always really liked this track; it’s got a really kind of immediate groove to it that’s really good. A real classic, funky song.

Gotta Serve Somebody - Bob Dylan

One of his Christian era songs, it was a real hit at the time and I like the idea of this critically unpopular period of 'Bob Music' actually getting somewhere in the charts. A really great song.

In My Secret Life – Leonard Cohen

On his quite recent album “Ten New Songs”, it’s latterday Leonard Cohen with quite corny electronic music in the background and I really love it. I think it’s very deep.

The Fat Lady Of Limbourg - Brian Eno

It’s on “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy” and it’s kind of a short and very surreal song that tells a kind of story that I used to get endless joy listening to when I was a stoned teenager. And I still get joy listening to it now.

Put A Straw Under Baby – Brian Eno

This features Robert Wyatt doing backing vocals and it's got one of those melodies that’s been stuck in my head for the last 20 years or so… So, there must be something pretty amazing about it.

Dominik Eulberg & Gabriel Ananda – Harzer Roller

It got a very kind of organic feel to it, it feels like two musicians experimenting together in a kind of live way but in the context of a minimal techno dance track. From that point of view I think it’s quite close to some of Hot Chip’s music although some people might not see the connection, there’s a very live music feel to it I think.

Noze – Love Affair

This was on our DJ Kicks compilation; a very poppy, quite immediate song with a good groove to it in a slightly unhinged… very unhinged way, in fact.

Apples And Oranges – Pink Floyd

A psychedelic number from when they still had a good Syd Barrett kind of influence, before they went depressing and prog rock. This one’s got completely demented vocal refrains in it and it’s just very odd sounding, quite frightening to listen to. I like the fact that it got to number three in the UK charts.

Whip It – Devo

Just because the way that they used synthesiser sounds is really brilliant, I think. Particularly on this one. They use a kind of percussive synth sound, just the right side of being a bit nerdy and experimental with computers and synthesisers but making something really immediate and funky.

Neon Lights – Kraftwerk

Just a very beautiful piece of electronic music which - when I used to listen to it - it made you think that you could do things with electronic music that you didn’t necessarily think you could do before. It’s very gentle and light but at the same time it’s got this kind of propulsion to it.

Will Ashon picks the tunes

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:23:00 +0000

Here's Big Dada label boss and acclaimed novelist Will Ashon picking the tunes, both from his own label and general faves. Lots of great stuff some of which we asked Will to tie up with reference to the Big Dada ethos, some of which was just buzzing around his head. It's a good insight into the mindset of a great British label, one that turned 10-years-old last year.

Roots Manuva – Witness

Probably our biggest club record and the biggest single we’ve ever had. I think it’s one of the all-time great basslines and some superb wonky drum programming from Mr Manuva. When he plays it live he says bands always have trouble ‘cause they try to be in time and the whole point is that it’s out of time. It’s a nice summary of the Big Dada label ethos really: it’s the wrongness that makes it right.

Bjork - Earth Intruders (XXXchange Remix)

It’s a fantastic remix. I think that Alex Epton – the guy who produced the Spank Rock album – is an amazing producer and this is one of the best remixes I’ve heard for a while. He’s turned it into a really low-slung, quite baggy remix which is quite bizarre for an American to have come up with.

Fiery Furnaces – Duplexes Of The Dead

From their latest album Widow City, this is just a killer, short psych pop song. What I like about them is that they’ve always done their own thing, whether it’s sensible commercially or not – down to making an album with their Grandmother singing the whole thing (which I bought and I can tell you is completely unlistenable). I kind of like that spirit, when musicians do exactly what they want to without any fear of the consequences.

Company Flow – Simple

The New York underground scene in the mid-nineties was a big influence on setting up Big Dada and I think that of those groups, Company Flow was probably the most cutting-edge and exciting. I remember picking up their first EP in a shop in New York and getting home and playing it and being amazed that anyone was doing anything like it.

Wu-Tang Clan – Proteck Ya Neck

Really the whole first album, just a huge record and out of step with everything else that was going on at the time and very exciting. Tough and stripped back compared with all the bloated stuff that was going on in the mainstream at the time. I was never a really big fan of the west coast, Snoop Dogg stuff…

The Specials - I Can’t Stand It

From their brilliant second album which, in a way, is a good reference point for Big Dada: where a British group very influenced by Jamaican music stepped out of that and made something which could only be made in the UK. Big Dada is an album label really and I think this is a great album in that it runs from start to finish and works as an album.

Bromhead’s Jacket - What Ifs And Maybes

I think they’re a really good, young guitar group – we actually tried to do something with them but in the end they decided to stay where they were. That would have been a departure for us, except for the fact that the lyricist in his teen years listened to hip hop and it shows in his style. I just think it’s a really good little tune.

Freestyle Fellowship – Seventh Seal

Once again, anything off the first album would do just as well. They were part of the whole Los Angeles underground scene of the early nineties that started around a café called The Good Life. They had freestyle sessions there and, along with the New York underground scene of the same time, this was one of the things that made me want to start a label. Amazing lyrically and an amazing group that never really got the props that they deserve.

Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U

An amazing record, I remember hearing about it and getting it on white label and I was staggered by it, really excited. Then I got all the Wiley stuff and Kano’s first thing and it was a really exciting time. It was something we really wanted to get involved in but due to the speed at which things move from underground to overground we missed that limited window where we’d have been able to afford to sign anyone and we had to wait a long time for it to settle down again. It was good to do Wiley’s record this year.

Slimm Calhoun – It’s Okay

It’s got Andre 3000 from Outkast on it and it’s a really good example of what makes him special. The track is an extended misogynistic rant about groupies but then Andre 3000 comes in and manages to do his verse from the point of view of the groupie. It’s one of those moments when you think, “Jesus, this man is clever.” It’s an incredible verse, brilliantly done. He’s a genius.

TTC – Dans Le Club

For a label that’s probably more known for its albums than its singles, this is probably Big Dada’s other big club record. An amazing beat from Para One: hugely pummelling and powerful. And then TTC do their French, nasal weirdness all over the top to beautiful effect.

Infinite Livez – Worcestershire Sauce

This is on the Well Deep compilation: a track about eating crisps… only it isn’t. Infinite is the archetypal Big Dada artist in that he just does what he wants to do regardless of whether people think he’s a mad pervert or whatever.

New Flesh – Stick And Move

Stick And Move, although it’s a bit slower, in terms of the sound and the vocals is kind of proto-Grime in a way. They’re another group that I think have consistently produced cutting-edge black British music and have largely been ignored for it. As a collective they’re one of the most important acts we’ve had on the label.

John Coltrane – Spiritual

From Live At The Village Vanguard which I was lucky enough to snaffle off my Dad… it’s just them playing their arses off really. I like a lot of jazz and Coltrane isn’t necessarily my favourite but that particular session is amazing.

Sizzla – Grow You Locks

A lot of the British stuff we’ve done on Big Dada sits between two influences: hip hop from America and reggae, dancehall and dub from the Caribbean which is where a lot of our black British artists’ families come from. It’s just nice to have something on there that reflects the Caribbean tradition as well.

Cadence Weapon – Sharks

A good mix-up of someone who is fascinated by electronic music and also hip hop. He combines the two really well, especially on this track: it’s got a really harsh electronic sound but, in terms of the way he raps, he still sounds like he’s from that tradition that I was talking about that goes back beyond Company Flow. People who put too many syllables in their rhymes, basically…

Flying Lotus – Reset EP

From a hip hop background, as a piece of instrumental music it’s the thing that has grabbed me most in the last six months. I think instrumental music is as much about creating a mood as anything and this has got a real feel to it, it doesn’t just feel like a retread of Mo Wax. I think his stuff is going to be great.

Os Mutantes – A Minha Menina

Just a fantastic pop tune. Good in that it came out at a time when no one expected fantastic pop records to come out of Brazil. One of the distinct things about Big Dada compared to other hip hop labels is that I think we’ve always taken a very international view of the music so it’s good to have a bit of an international flavour to my playlist.

2007 in 100 tunes

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:18:00 +0000

Absolutely the last of the end-of-year lists. Promise. But we thought that an iMix would be the best way of presenting this mammoth selection of the tunes on heaviest rotation chez Tunetourist throughout 2007.

Boys love lists, we know this, but these things are a justifiable endeavour if only to remind yourself of just how much incredible music comes out in any given year. The industry itself may sailing off with nary a paddle to its name but it doesn’t seem to be making the slightest bit of difference to the quality of the music. So we may be out of work soon but we’ll never be sonically undernourished.

Click through to the iMix and you can check out 30-second samples of all of 100 tracks here. They’re belters.

Pete Rock, NY's Finest

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:13:00 +0000

Perhaps if Kanye, Just Blaze, Mos Def and Swizz Beats say the kids ought to check out Uncle Pete Rock, then the kids will be duly schooled. Certainly, the sight of Kanye putting aside his ego to shower praise on this archetypal New York producer should shock a few people into paying attention - although his contention that Pete Rock invented the remix is a little spurious.

The really worrying thing here is the prevalence of R&B acts in the studio clips, let’s hope Pete hasn’t made an album’s worth of the weak half of "Soul Survivor" without any “Tru Master” business.

Tunetourist's 2007 with beats

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:42:00 +0000

Resident Advisor kindly solicited Tunetourist for some end-of-year charts last week and so we narrowed the focus and concentrated on the beats (as we have been doing for most of the year, if we're honest). All in order, we have 20 tracks, five remixes, five artist albums, five producers and five DJs.

On the DJs front, we don't get out to this stuff as much as we'd like to but most of those in our top 5 have manned the decks on some great nights out - Ben Klock is the sound of Berghain, Weatherall played a great set at the SFA afterparty last month, Anja Schneider upstairs at Weekend in Berlin, Hot Chip playing to the street on Broadway Market... Efdemin we selected merely on the strength of a couple of great mixes found online. He plays a Sud Electronique party at a warehouse in Dlaston on 15th December, so we may finally get chance to check him out.

Top 20 Tracks (including remixes)

DJ Koze - Maripossa (Kompakt)
Good To Be Alive - Matthew Dear (Ghostly)
Rainbow Delta - Len Faki (Ostgut Ton)
Confessions Of An English Opium Eater - Danton Eeprom (Infine)
Atlas - Battles (DJ Koze Remix) (Warp)
Clt - Monomachine (Paradigma)
Falling Stars - Smith N Hack (Smith N Hack)
Black Beauty - Dapayk & Padberg (Mo's Ferry)
Ribcage - Dubfire (Desolat)
Papercup - Sleeparchive (Sleeparchive)
Elementary Lover (DJ Koze Remix) - Matthew Dear
Night - Benga & Coki (Tempa)
Reflection Nebula 056n - Tadeo (Apnea)
Bell Clap Dance - Radioslave (Rekids)
Khes - Dapayk & Padberg (Mo's Ferry)
Endorphin - Burial (Hyperdub)
Der Kammblaser - Ruede Hagelstein (Lebensfreude Records)
Low Profile (2000 And One Remix) - Lazy Fat People
Acid Bells - Efdemin (Curle)
Juror No. 9 - Adultnapper (Audiomatique)

Top Five Remixes

Battles - Atlas (DJ Koze Remix) (Warp)
Elementary Lover (DJ Koze Remix) - Matthew Dear
Low Profile (2000 And One Remix) - Lazy Fat People
Do It Again (Audion Remix) - The Chemical Brothers (Virgin)
Blood On My Hands - Shakleton (Villalobos Remix) (Skull Disco)

Top Five Artist Albums

Matthew Dear - Asa Breed (Ghostly)
Sound Of Silver - LCD Soundsystem (DFA)
Untrue - Burial (Hyperdub)
Kala - M.I.A. (XL)
Happy Birthday - Modeselektor (B Pitch)

Top Five Producers

Matthew Dear
DJ Koze
James Murphy
Danton Eeprom
Efdemin

Top Five DJs

Ben Klock
Andy Weatherall
Anja Schneider
Hot Chip
Efdemin

Radiohead's "In Rainbows"

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:06:00 +0000

Tunetourist joined the queue this morning to put hand in pocket and shell out for the new Radiohead album, “In Rainbows”. It was easy; we’re listening to it right now. There was some speculation from friends more heavily involved in the business of selling music online than we are that the mighty agitators of modern music had bitten off more than they could chew trying to birth their creation to all those eager fans at 7am. Servers would crash; Radiohead would suffer the same public relations disaster as befell the formerly sainted Michael Eavis. But then, people whose livelihoods depend on selling digital music would say that wouldn’t they?

We’re still not crystal clear what they’re trying to achieve by allowing us to choose our own price for the record. Mostly, it seems that the band who broke the US with the help of a nascent, illegal Napster (rather than the numbing slog of the tour bus) are again courting the more controversial elements of the zeitgeist for massive publicity. (Surely it’s a mark of how brilliantly Radiohead have managed public opinion that it strikes an almost vulgar chord putting the words ‘Radiohead’ and ‘publicity’ in the same sentence.)

You wonder how much this morning’s most punctual critics – Paul Morley on the Guardian blog and John Mulvey on his Uncut blog have both written impressively hasty appraisals – managed to pay for the record being so accustomed to the legitimate ‘free music’ that still arrives on writers’ doormats in Jiffy bags. We paid £3… well, £3.45 once you factor in the card-handling fee. It seems a fair price; we’ll certainly buy the CD next year, if not the extravagantly priced £40 box set.

So what of the music? Paul Morley’s smart but typically discursive review applies a caveat to every statement which goes something like this: “I’m writing a live review of the record as I listen to it therefore I must not fall into the trap of thinking this about it before I’ve really had chance to consider it: insert heavily qualified observation.” Not so much a cop out as a necessary reservation, to really cast judgement on a Radiohead album at this stage would be daft.

“In Rainbows” throws up a few interesting questions though. Most of these for us concern the issues of progress and maturity: what constitutes the endless forward motion that we desperately require from Radiohead? Over at Tunetourist, the band really began delivering on their massive reputation when “Kid A” came out in 2000. Remember this was a time when the Beta Band represented the pinnacle of the machine-human interface in popular rock music. “Everything In Its Right Place” sang out of our speakers back then like a prayer answered; the innovations of three decades of electronic music finding song amongst the texturally detailed and rhythmically urgent grace of what has always been reductively summarised as ‘dance music’. ‘Electronica’ if you prefer to remain a snob. This record – despite the false step of opening track “15 Step” which brings both Radiohead regulars Autechre and Thom’s buddies Modeselektor to mind in its opening bars – prefers ‘organic’ instrumentation to machines.

Nonetheless, there’s progress here from the last record. “Hail To The Thief”, as good as it obviously is, felt like a band returning for one last waltz with the sound so beloved of those fans who noisily complained throughout the “Kid A”/“Amnesiac” exercise. “In Rainbows” doesn’t, at first glance, feel like a compromise. Rather, it perhaps finds Radiohead in a similar place to the Wilco that recorded “Sky Blue Sky”, in working process at least. Satisfied that their experiments have opened new micro-vistas within their essentially traditional song writing process they're ready to enjoy themselves as musicians once again. The playing approaches a folksy warmth on some songs that’s most un-Radiohead, even if Thom’s clichéd anomie and the band’s default grandeur suggest a band, as Paul Morley puts it, “looking at themselves in the mirror… rocking and wailing somewhere between mystically and apocalyptically.”

Honestly, though, we’ve listened to it twice and it sounds great, particularly “15 Step”, “Nude”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, “Faust Arp”, “House Of Cards”, the much discussed “Videotape”. The album is bathed in wonderful strings – the arrangements on “Faust Arp” specifically recall Nick Drake’s “River Man” – and Yorke seems finally to be emerging as a coherent voice rather than a chatter of refracted paranoiac slogans. “In Rainbows”, we’re tempted to suggest, is progress and maturity of the best kind.

Not another Acid House compilation

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:03:00 +0000

Don't ask why but everything has gone Acid House at Tunetourist HQ today. Maybe it's got something to do with the UK's Guardian newspaper catching on that the spirit of the movement is now firmly resident in post-Wall Berlin (sample quote: "Hedonistic freedom will always hold special significance for those who have known the absolute lack of any freedom"). But, in a brief break from our usual fwd>> agenda, we're going back to its earliest incarnations for inspiration.

Seldom though has the sound of 1988 - 90 as we recall it been captured adequately on a compilation album; even Soul Jazz's "Acid" comp beat a well well-worn and geographically focussed path through jackin' Chicago house. So, we hereby launch our manifesto for the first truly as yet un-compiled history of a certain strain of the movement we're happy to call Acid House.

Manuel Gottsching - "E2 - E4" (Disk Union reissue)

Let's kick off with the daddy of them all, Manuel Gottsching's majestic "E2 - E4"; 23 minutes of otherworldly inspiration that hit this member of Krautrock act Ash Ra Temple like a thunderbolt, sometime in 1981. Yes, 1981. If you don't recognise this minimal exercise in modal groove in its original form, you may recall it from the endlessly re-issued 'Balearic' dance classic "Sueno Latino" which first landed in 1989 and which rips off Gottsching's vision wholesale. Here, you can listen to 25 years of electronic music being mapped out in gently undulating grooves with an insistence and restraint that dance music has only had the courage to return to in recent years.

Neal Howard – “Indulge” (Network)

Some Derrick May track or other, usually the sublime "Strings Of Life" or bleeps 'n' bass-defining "Nude Photo" ought really to crop up at this point but instead we've opted for lesser-known Detroit-producer Neal Howard and a track called "Indulge". It was licensed to Network Records - a key UK distributor of the Detroit sound in the UK throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Usually the internet yields something on most artists, however minor. Here though, we have little supporting information for you. Nonetheless, this feels more like an unofficial follow-up to "Strings Of Life" than anything Derrick May released and points the way to the lusher techno soundscapes of second-wave Detroit producers like Carl Craig. Originally recorded in 1988 it still sounds wonderfully fresh.

Ron Trent - "Altered States" (Warehouse)

Sadly, Ron Trent is now probably better-known for meandering cod-spiritual house music of the kind proffered by Joe Clausell et al but once upon a time he was capable of delivering this aircraft hanger-proportioned epic techno belter. Later, he'd go on to more or less single-handedly define 'deep house' through the early nineties output of his Prescription label and seminal releases with Chez Damier, like "The Foot Therapy EP".

Suburban Knight - "The Art Of Stalking" (Transmat)

Another in our admittedly Detroit-centric take on the Acid House story which hails from the Motor City. This 1990 release from James Pennington is our only track from a foot solider of the legendary Underground Resistance. Included here because it neatly prefigures the 'dark side' sounds that would invade the euphoria rush of rave in '91.

Soft House Company - "What You Need" (Irma Casa Di Primordine)
Sha-Lor - "I'm In Love" (Gentie)

The Italo influence that soundtracked the sweaty joy of Nude nights at the Hacienda throughout '89 and '90 is summarised as well by "What You Need" as any other track. Don't ask us to tell you any more about it... Same goes for this '88 classic from Sha-Lor which was reissued by Mike Pickering's Deconstruction label in '89 and is one of the Hac's most enduring vocal house moments; one of the few that's still an absolute pleasure to hear. Beautifully dubby and restrained, it’s hard imagining such an elegant record rubbing shoulders with Black Box on Manchester's most hallowed dancefloor.

Nightmares On Wax - Aftermath [LFO Remix] (Warp)
Ital Rockers - "Ital's Anthem" (Bassic)
Renegade Soundwave - Thunder (Mute)

The Northern bleep moment is rightly remembered for LFO's eponymous earth-quaking debut and Nightmares On Wax's double-headed assault, "Aftermath/I'm For Real". On our alternative guide we leave both of those to other comps and opt instead for LFO's sublime remix of Nightmares On Wax. See what we did there. "Ital's Anthem" was one of the heaviest tracks to force its way inside our young ears back in 1990. Released by the Leeds label that ran parallel to Sheffield's Warp for a while, it is techno as understood by kids more accustomed to reggae 'blues parties' than 'Balearic' beats. Can you see rave coming yet? Finally, 80s industrialists Renegade Soundwave were uncommonly inspired on their 1990 release "Renegade Soundwave In Dub" which yielded "Thunder", another proto-rave anthem that, oddly enough, used to get mixed into Jimmy Somerville at the Hacienda.

Rum & Black – “Slaves” (Shut Up & Dance)

Finally, one that clearly points us off in the direction of jungle, when the East London kids got involved. Here's where things began to fracture and, arguably, Acid House span off in different dirctions. The London 'summer of '88' lot were already sneering about sweaty 'Acid Teds' but the break with 4/4 beats and increasing importance of breakbeats really seems like a good place to leave it.

Better than "Old School Euphoria", we hope.

Let’s go back, way back…

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:23:00 +0000

The soundtrack to the original hip hop movie Wild Style gets a re-release for its 25th anniversary next month. Not the first document of hip hop culture, the 1982 film and soundtrack nonetheless seems as good a place to start as anywhere. Hugely influential in every respect, the tracks here from the likes of Cold Crush Brothers, Busy Bee, Rammellzee, Double Trouble and DJs Grand Wizard Theodore and Fab Five Freddy seem to blueprint most of the music that followed from the Beastie Boys to A Tribe Called Quest. Musically, Wild Style still finds hip hop stuck in the disco instrumentals phase of the Sugar Hill Gang era and the backing tracks - produced by Blondie’s Chris Stein - are largely indistinguishable.

The film also gets the deluxe repackage treatment with Rhino releasing a version with remastered audiovisuals and extras including interviews with the film’s stars, the aforementioned MCs and DJs themselves, and footage from the 20th anniversary reunion concert.

If that isn’t enough to satiate your hunger for back-in-the-day hip hop goodness, the 'rhyme inspector' Percee P releases his long-awaited official album debut this month on one of our favourite labels, Stones Throw. We say ‘long-awaited’ but, really, most people gave up waiting 10 years ago. Percee is frequently described these days a ‘fast rap’ legend, known for a style that recalls the mighty Big Daddy Kane for his Vesuvial way with the adjectives. It’s a long story but somehow Percee managed to play his part in both the late 80s and mid-90s hip hop boom periods and this album, appropriately titled “Perseverance”, manages to summarise much of the best of both. Stones Throw’s special weapon, Madlib, steps up to produce and sounds great delivering a more straight-up set than his recent jazz and beatstrumental excursions, making this one of the strongest artist albums the label has released in a while.

Kompakt action

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:53:00 +0000

This time of year is always busy for techno’s renaissance label, Kompakt, the Cologne-based Empire founded by Michael Mayer, Jürgen Paape and Wolfgang Voigt. It’s around this time that they unleash the latest in their mammoth double CD “Total” compilation series – this year its “Total 8” – and throw a big bash at Popkomm and the C/o Pop event in Cologne. This year they follow it all up with a secondary strike from two of the label’s biggest artists, working under the combined moniker of Superpitcher, Michael Mayer and Superpitcher release “Save The World” next week, but more of that later.

“Total 8” has been the subject of some critical griping amongst the indie community and admittedly it’s a somewhat hit and miss affair. But there are plenty of reasons here to seek out the best of it. Jürgen Paape brings classic stalking and stabbing Cologne techno restraint to "Nord", while Robert Babicz’ remix of label star Gui Boratto’s "Mr Decay" bounces with the kind of irrepressibly groovy micro-twitches you’d expect from Spanish producers like Alex Under.

There’s nothing from indie darling The Field but the label’s acclaimed shift into gently sombre emotional terrain is represented instead by The Rice Twins. "Can I Say" already pegs them as potential crossover darlings with its elegant rethink of trance’s cruder emotional touch points. Amongst the record’s less inspiring moments, Aril Brikha’s overrated tribute to Berlin’s great techno shrine "Berghain" is wheeled out, but a more fitting tribute to the drama and dynamics of that legendary dancefloor comes from DJ Koze’s wonderful "Mariposa". Building through quietly intense swathes of noise that merge the functional drone of machines with the unexpected melodies they might sing as they work, it comes on like a symphony of engines learning to take their first graceful flight. Hear it in Berghain and you might fall over.

Supermayer’s “Save The World” is a step into new terrain for the label, Mayer and Superpitcher shaking off the confines of the Cologne sound to stretch out into more organic textures, live instruments and groovier disco territory, all whilst maintaining the label’s trademarked restraint. Superpitcher brings club dynamics to Mayer’s deft control of texture and the pair of them may be just the men to graft new, more organic sounds onto the over-familiar minimal framework and find something new within. They still find time for a few straight-up Kompakt-style bangers – “Saturndays” is as good as any club 12” released so far this year and “Planet Of The Sick” and “Two Of Us” won’t upset the purists. Elsewhere though, there are a few surprises, foremost amongst them the “Billy Jean” reconfigurations of “The Art Of Letting Go”.

Klaxons win Mercury Music Prize

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:47:00 +0000

Congratulations to Tunetourist favourites the Klaxons who won last night’s 2007 Mercury Music Prize. We won’t mask slight disappointment that it didn’t go to Bat For Lashes who, along with Amy Winehouse, gave the performance of the night but no doubt the prize’s mandate to award innovation is as well served by the Klaxons as anyone.

It was a clear surprise, though, to both band and the assembled industry throng, the room letting out a gasp as Jules Holland announced the winner. Jamie Reynolds – with sutured and strapped foot from his recent stage dive misadventures - James Righton, Simon Taylor-Davis and Steffan Halpern were by turns endearingly touched, shocked and awed, pathetically gurning and aimlessly posturing, as they collected the award. It was as if midway through their natural response the amphetamines kicked back in and they remembered an earlier pact not to ‘do a Gwyneth’ if they won, but completely forgot how they'd planned to make a rock’n’roll impression in the first place.

"I think they have rewarded forward thinking music," Jamie Reynolds said after the event. “We have made the most forward thinking record since I don't know how long.” Somehow we failed to feel quite the same thrill as when Dizzee Rascal surprised the event in 2003, winning with his genuinely radical “Boy In Da Corner”.

Bon Anniversaire Big Dada

noreply@blogger.com (tunetourist) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:54:00 +0000

Ten years have passed since music journalist Will Ashon established the UK’s finest hip hop label in conjunction with Ninja Tune and presented the country’s rap CV on ’97 compilation “Black Whole Styles”. Few of us knew who Roots Manuva or New Flesh were back then, some of us had yet to discover Saul Williams and Lewis Parker who also featured heavily on that seminal double LP. Ten years later and we’re still learning. How many people had come across Spank Rock – arguably the most original and instinctively fresh sound to emerge from the genre in the last couple of years – before Big Dada unleashed their album “YoYoYoYoYo” last year? And this year has seen Rollie Pemberton aka Cadence Weapon find an audience for his reinvigorated take on leftfield hip hop on British shores thanks to a licensing deal with the label.

Then there are those acts that you can’t imagine anywhere else. Juice Aleem has contributed to his share of the label’s better moments either as part of New Flesh or Gamma, the latter’s ace “Killer Apps” still a bonafide party classic. Infinite Livez is the situationist nutter in residence, if you haven’t seen “The Adventures Of The Lactating Man” video, well, you’ve, er, missed out on one of the promo art’s most idiosyncratic moments.

From Paris (TTC), via the Bay Area (cLOUDDEAD) and onto the Bronx (Mike Ladd/Infesticons), the label has managed to avoid becoming that most endangered of species, the UK Hip Hop Label. In fact, latest UK signing Wiley confirms the wide berth with which Ashon’s office has regarded the purist backpacker mentality.

To celebrate their decade, Big Dada have a double CD/DVD for us which they claim covers just about every artist album they’ve released to date. “Well Deep: Ten Years Of Big Dada Recordings” arrives in early October with some essential hip hop units for those still in need of schooling. And, honestly, it can't be easy work trying to make money out of an independent hip hop label these days. We should be grateful for their perseverance, especially if there'sanother 10 years of this quality in them.