Electronic Dance Music Blog | Vacay Wave

The Best of the Internet Vol. 1 (Carte Blanche, Alex Metric, Steve Angello…)

dwayne — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:39:03 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is time for me to introduce you to a new feature. As I’m sure most of you do, well as you are doing now, I find most of my new music on the world wide web. So I thought, why not share with you the five best vitamins I find every week, plus one cool picture? It’s slightly different from what we normally do, where we like to focus on an artist or a genre for instance, but I think that approach sometimes leads to some real bangers slipping the net. With this in mind, I present to you the best of the internet!

Scissor Sisters & Carte Blanche Vitamin

Well I heard this without being familiar with Carte Blanche, but a little research led to me finding out is in fact an alias of DJ Medhi & Riton. So you can pretty much guarantee it’s gonna be good, and my God, it is! However, an mp3 has been pretty much impossible to track down, so I have to give much love to Mozart & Pollux for this one!

Scissor Sisters - Any Which Way (Carte Blanche Remix)

Kano & Hot Chip Vitamin

I love all things Hot Chip. I also happen to regard Kano as one of the best rappers in Britain. So this track was pretty close to perfect for me.

Kano - All + All Together (Feat. Hot Chip)

Nina Simone & MiM0SA Vitamin

Yes, just yes. A wonderful reinterpretation of the soul classic.

Nina Simone - I Put a Spell On U (MiM0SA Remix)

FutureCop! & Ooga Booga Vitamin

This superb electo remix of FutureCop’s Transformers comes from the mysterious Ooga Booga. He/She/It should really take some credit – this is a sweet remix.

FutureCop! - Transformers (Ooga Booga Remix)

Steve Angello & Alex Metric Vitamin

Well, Steve Angello’s pretty good. Alex Metric’s pretty good. They’ve made a track together and, surprisingly enough, it’s pretty good.

Steve Angello & Alex Metric - Open Your Eyes

REMIX CONTEST – THE WINNERS!

dwayne — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:54:55 +0000

As regular readers will know, we’ve been running a remix competition lately. I can now, finally, unveil the winners! We had a deluge of excellent entries, and in some cases were left in a position where we simply couldn’t limit ourselves to posting just one tracks, such was the brilliance of the other entries. Here are the winners, and be sure to check out the MySpace/Soundclouds of these guys because a lot of these are just one of many excellent tracks they’ve produced. I’d keep all these guys on your radar, we’re fully expecting a few of them to make it big real soon!

Also, to those of you who haven’t won this time around, don’t give up because there have been some truly exceptional tracks not included here. We are likely to be running similar posts to this in the future so please continue to enter! This hasn’t come out exactly how we expected so I’m just going to post all the one’s we liked rather than specific winners for each track.

Matt Fox Vitamin

Mika - Rain (Matt Fox Bootleg)

In this remix, Matt Fox takes dubstep to it’s filthiest extremities, in stark contrast to the high pitched vocals from Mika. If you like dubstep this will be right up your street, if you aren’t a particular fan it isn’t the best place to start.

Culture of Thieves Vitamins

XV - Mirrors Edge (Culture of Thieves Dubstep Mix)

This takes a slightly different tone from the track above, and may be better for new listeners. The wobble is more blended into the tune. I guess it comes down to personal preference and what the situation is as to which track you prefer.

Music Go Music - I Walk Alone (Culture of Thieves Remix)

Similar to the previous track as you would expect, the main difference is that this is a remix of a more conventional guitar based song than Mirrors Edge which uses keyboards.

Tagalog Vitamin

jj - Things Will Never Be The Same Again (Tagalog Tribal Drums Mix)

Tagalog seems to be something of a newbie, I literally know nothing about him/her and they didn’t provide us with a Myspace in their entry. Tagalog is the national language of the Philipines though, so maybe they’re from there? Anyway, enough of my speculation, this is a minimalist remix, with reworked drums giving the song a more tropical feel, while the instrumental parts are complimented by minimal wobble and the use of synthbass sequencing (I think.)

CityMuk Vitamins

The Notorious B.I.G. - Nasty Girl (CityMuk Mashup featuring MillionYoung)

The only mashup entry also happened to be one of the best, lending an intersting chillwave angle to the Biggy classic.

RA & PR1ME Vitamins

Marc Moulin - Balek (RA Remix)

My personal favorite entry is RA’s remix of Marc Moulin’s obscure 70′s Belgian track Moulin. It takes it from cool laid back jazz to something altoghether more club friendly, with a pulsating beat blasts away while the original tune is cleverly woven in behind.

This Adele track was one of the most popular with contestants, with entries coming from both RA & PR1ME. The RA remix is almost all instrumental, and adds in some excellent piano bits toward the end of the song. The PR1ME remix keeps the vocals but repeats them through the song interestingly, creating a totally new genre to me, somewhere between house, chillwave, and popstep.

Obviously both of these entries are similar to the previous ones, taking the song in different directions. I won’t repeat myself, just play the damned song already!

BONUS Dime & Dogs Vitamin

These guys misread the original piece and sent me a remix they’d done of Cities In The Dust by Junkie XL. However it seemed a shame to leave it out, because it’s pretty good. So here it is

Junkie XL - Cities In The Dust (Dime & Dogs Remix)

I hope our competition has enabled you to find some new artists/tracks who you wouldn’t have otherwise heard – it certainly has for me. We will be looking to run similar things in the future so keep your eyes peeled, and your ears open.

Boys Noize – 1010 & Yeah (Electro – Berlin)

T3RR0R — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:16:14 +0000

To celebrate their (BNR) 50th release (thats 50 since 2005), Boys Noize will be gracing us with some raw vitamins. Boys Noize Records (BNR) will be releasing a double single. The first being 1010, an acid-house monster… this vitamin is so RAW that upon ingestion it will cause you a great deal of internal pain (imagine swallowing a pill covered by shards of glass). This is where the second vitamin comes into play. Yeah, a groovy-feel-good house vitamin, will ease the pain and help you heal the wound that 1010 left.

Boys Noize Vitamins

Vital Vitamins You’ve Been Missing Out On

dwayne — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:01:15 +0000

This is a collection of odds and ends, of those vitamins you need in your diet but can’t find anywhere else or simply haven’t come across before. Here they are!

First up is the title track of the eagerly anticipated Salem album, King Night. Dark and majestic, this will test the bass on your speakers to the best, creating a sinister atmosphere, that whets the appetite for the rest of the album, which is due to drop on September 28.

Salem - King Night

The next track you probably will have heard, in truth we’re a couple of weeks late on this one, but I’ve been away and so I haven’t been able to bring it to your attention. Well, as they say, better late than never, it’s the Basement Jaxx remix of Vampire Weekend, a match made in heaven if I ever heard one. This mix keeps all the best parts of White Sky while giving it a more clubby/danceable aspect at the same time.

Vampire Weekend - White Sky (Basement Jaxx Remix)

A track which I feel has potential to go absolutely massive is Barbara Streisand by Duck Sauce. There aren’t any mp3′s available which are worth listening to so insted I’ll share this tidy remix from SAUR with you.

Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand (SAUR's Down Wit U Remix)

Now my next track is a little known vitamin from 1985, but is an Italo-Disco classic. The Galactica remix of Mike Mareen‘s Dancing In The Dark has only just come to my attention and probably won’t be familiar to many of you either, but I suggest you familiarise yourselves with it as a matter of urgency.

Mike Mareen - Dancing In The Dark (Galactica Remix)

Hailing from London, Safari are one of my tips to become one of the next big British indie bands. This track, Break On, has a good tune with a really good yet simple riff in the chorus, which helps to carry the song. Check this one out and keep them on your radar.

Safari - Break On

Also on the poppy edge of dubstep is the new Cassius track, I Love You So. Hardly any wobble and not really dubstep drums, some people are still insistent on classifying it as that anyway. It’s hard to pin down to one genre but I can see this one getting alot of radio play, it’s a nice little song.

Cassius - I Love You So

Now here’s a real rarity, a Diplo track that hasn’t got hype from every electro blog out there and been played to death by just about every DJ on the scene. Saying that, it doesn’t sound very conventionally Diplo. Nonetheless, it sounds good, and there’s not a whole lot more I can say than that, it’s kinda jazzy/old school stuff.

Marlena Shaw - California Soul (Diplo Remix)

Bang Bang Bang by Mark Ronson has been remixed to great effect by a couple of artists already, but I think this may be the best of the bunch, from U-Tern. This rework is smooth and flowing and pretty much guaranteed to fill the floor of any club. It’s an 80′s disco take on the track but while it does this sound excellently it also manages to sound totally fresh and new.

Mark Ronson & The Business INTL - Bang Bang Bang (U-Tern's Disco Dub)

I’m something of a sucker for long extended relaxing remixes, St. Etienne’s remix of The Drums is among my favorite tracks of any genre this year, so it’s not entirely surprising that I’m pretty keen on the Cosmodelica Holiday Drama Mix version of Detachments track Holiday Romance. This is blissful, so stick it on the stereo sit back and chill in the last of the summer sun, with a nice glass of Pimms for refreshment, life doesn’t get much better.

Detachments - Holiday Romance (Cosmodelica Holiday Drama Mix)

If you don’t know who Bloodshy & Avant are you need to really be questioning your musical knowledge right now. As well as being 2/3 of the fantastic Miike Snow, they’re responsible for writing some of the most popular songs of the last decade, including Toxic by Britney Spears. Anyway, they’ve done this nice little remix of perennial next-big-thing Clare Maguire‘s debut single The Strangest Thing.

Clare Maguire - The Strangest Thing (Bloodshy & Avant Remix)

It seems a shame for one of my favorite bands, Jamaica to release their debut album and me not to include one track on the blog, but in all honesty it’s hard to choose one because they’re all so good! In the end I’ve settled on By The Numbers, which has all the ingredients of other good Jamaica tracks, namely it’s uber-catchy and has those sexy French electro guitar riffs and a good sing-along chorus. What more could you ask for?

Jamaica - By The Numbers

Next is an awesome High Contrast track which has had little attention. Dating back to 2002, his remix of The Streets track Has It Come to This? came to my attention in a Jack Wills store. I have to say I think this is more appropriate for playtime at a filthy rave than soundtracking the shopping of upper-middle class England.

The Streets - Has It Come To This? (High Contrast's It's Come To This Remix)

Miami Horror’s debut album Illumination has just dropped, and most people are paying attention to the originals, especially Holiday. However, I think the best of the bunch is the Punks Jump Up remix of Moon Theory. Check it out at the bottom.

Miami Horror - Moon Theory (Punks Jump Up Mix)

I have got a very exciting new artist to introduce readers to right now. eMDeeeMA is pretty new, the oldest track on his Soundcloud is a month old, but he sounds like a real veteran. DickNasty! recently ran a remix competition on Peep My Ascot, I don’t know how well eMDeeeMA got on but his entry is certainly a good track, it’s pulsating electro with a clever little tune worked into the background. I think this would make a great driving track. Before I talk about his next track I have to say it comes with some sad news, the singer of Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Charles Haddon tragically took his own life at the Pukelpop festival in Belgium. Our condolences go out to all his friends and family and it is such a shame for the world to lose such a talented person. Anyhow, eMDeeeMA has remixed the bands best know track Dance The Way I Feel in great style, the style is similar to the DickNasty! track. Finally I have his remix of The Bloody Beetroots Dimmakmmunication which he has sent over especially for Vacay Vitamins readers. So enjoy this exclusive, it’s one of my favorite electro remixes this year – that’s how good it is. I’m pretty certain this Michigan producer is going to be absolutely massive, so remember where you heard his name first!

Now this is something I got linked to a while ago and quite frankly forgot about. However I re-stumbled across the Dareni remix of Martin Skills track Sweetness, and I’m glad I did. At the very edges of dubstep this is more atmosphere than filth, just the way I like it.

Martin Skills - Sweetness (Dareni Remix)

Shake Aletti are an act I’m excited to bring to your attention. They produce pop/funk which has potential to go a really long way. It’s a nice mix of electro and pop but not in the traditional ‘electropop’ way. I’m told it’s very much Sheffield music in terms of the instruments it uses. Well, I have a bleeping, buzzing and wobbling remix from Sheffield’s finest, Toddla T, so you can get your teeth stuck into that one if you want something a bit more club centred.

To conclude this post, I have to cover one of the most important events this year musically. The debut Hurts album Happiness has arrived! Ever since January when I first heard the demo version of Wonderful Life I have been waiting for this album with baited breath. Well it’s finally here and it does not let down, all the songs live up to the majestic precedent set by Wonderful Life and the other leaks we’ve heard between. I’ve decided to feature Evelyn, a track which I’d never heard before. If you like Hurts you’ll love this, it’s true to their formula of the dark moody verse followed by the soaring uplifting chorus. I could quite easily post the whole album to be honest, but that would be totally against the purpose of blogging and counterproductive. What I will say is that this fits the same bracket as Jamaica’s No Problem – if you like the band you’ll love it, if you don’t you’ll hate it, because all the tracks stick to the specific sound.

Hurts - Evelyn

That’s all from me folks, get your ears stuck into that. The results of the remix competition we’ve been running should be up pretty soon, so that’s something definitely to look forward to. Also, producers/fans can add me on Facebook & Soundcloud if you want to get in touch or share some music with me, my ears are always open.

R.I.P. Charles Haddon

Big Boi – Shutterbug (Jack Beats Remix)

T3RR0R — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:53:18 +0000

Rarely do I come across such a vitamin as this. Jack Beats took on the daunting task of remixing Big Boi’s Shutterbug, which was produced by Scotty Storch, and churned out the filthiest dance floor BOMB. Take a peak at the build-up, halfway through the track, and let me know what you think. I don’t want to ruin the surprise but let me just say its not what you expect…

Jack Beats Shutterbug Vitamin

Big Boi - Shutterbug (Jack Beats Remix) (Preview)

Bonus Jack Beats Vitamins

Kelis – Scream & Shout (AL-P & LA Riots Remixes)

T3RR0R — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:14:12 +0000

Ayo vacay nation, I’ve got two very nutritious vitamins, both of which are a solid late night anthem. The original, Scream & Shout, was produced by David Guetta and came out on Kelis’ fifth studio album Flesh Tone, which featured production from David Guetta, Boys Noize, Jean Baptiste and Benny Benassi amongst others. Between the production on the originals and the millions of remixes, there’s a star studded cast of production value backing her voice. My personal favorite happens to be a remix by DC’s very own, Nadastrom, which you can download here.

Kelis, Scream & Shout Vitamins

Wolfgang Gartner & Deadmau5? (Animal Rights | Illmerica | More)

T3RR0R — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:07:10 +0000

Hey…. don’t tell anyone but I think this is it. Just pop this vitamin and you’ll know what I mean.

Wolfgang Gartner + Deadmau5 – Animal Rights (Preview)

Exactly. (Drop a comment, let me know what you think)

I’ve been looking for this frickin vitamin forever and ever. I first heard these two tracks down in miami during WMC week and have been on the lookout ever since. Well, I’ve got two top nootch previews for your audible enjoyment. Keep a tight eye on Wolfgang Gartner cuz I have a feeling the full version of these tracks will be released very shortly.

Dear Wolfgang,

I know you have a stockpile of vitamins so please release some man, the kids need their vitamins.

Love,
Vacay Crew

Wolfgang Gartner Vitamin Previews

Here are some bonus wolfgang vitamins to hold you over.
Bonus Wolfgang Gartner Remix Vitamins

AC Slater – Calm Down Trilogy (Trouble & Bass – Brooklyn)

T3RR0R — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:43:10 +0000

This frickin guy… where do I even start with this guy? I mean every time I see AC Slater, he uses his bassy-tomfoolery-magic to lull me into such a deep state of vacay that I never remember leaving but have all his chunes stuck in my head for months. He is a true vacay magician and I have found one of his potions. I had this chune stuck in my head for months post WMC 2010 (from that one night when he threw down at White Room). Beware, you may not be able to get this outa your head…. ACCC SLAAAATTA

AC Slater Magic Vitamin

Crookers Ft. Yelle - Cooler Couleur (AC Slater Remix)

The heavy bass champions of the world (Trouble & Bass) have just released an EP of epic bass proportions. Part 2 of the Calm Down Trilogy is just simply MASSIVE. Get a taste of this vitamin, and it might be your last as it will cause your existing taste buds to rupture allowing you to only taste bass for the rest of your life. Head on over to beatport to get the delicious 320 of these tracks.

AC Slater – Calm Down EP Trilogy

Calm Down Part 1 : A Lion’s Pride
Calm Down Part 2 : Two Brother’s Divided Over a Sandwich
Calm Down Part 3 : A New Beginning feat. Drop The Lime
Calm Down feat. DJ Craze (Club Mix)

AC Slater Bonus Vitamin

AutoErotique - Gladiator (AC Slater Remix)

Tim Berg – Alcoholic + Remixes (Dada Life | John Dahlback | Avicii | More)

T3RR0R — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:54:14 +0000

Whose Tim Berg? Timothy Berg, aka “Avicii” is a prodigy 20 year old swedish rageholic and producer of silky clean vitamins. His latest creation, Alcoholic, comes with a slurry of remixes. These vitamins range from progressive to electro house (including girls grunting). Both part 1 and part 2 are on sale on Beatport. Remember to thank Dr. Berg & Associates for these performance enhancing vitamins.

P.s. If you can’t tell by the picture, Im a depository for tequila. If your in DC this weekend, come meet my alter ego Tequila Man at One Lounge in Adams Morgan this saturday, the 28th.

Tim Berg Vitamin

Tim Berg - Alcoholic

Alcoholic Vitamins

The Knocks (Indie Electro | Electro-Pop – New York)

Brozart — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:02:39 +0000

I find myself mesmerized once again by a Neon Gold Beat Company artist (Passion Pit, DOM, Marina & the Diamonds, Yes Giantess, Ellie Goulding, Penguin Prison, et al.). I did in my defense however see The Knocks play before they released a vinyl with Neon Gold and it’s not my fault they’re really good at discovering talent. I saw them at school back in May/June (its a bit hard to remember details from my last quarter of college) and they played a pretty gnarly DJ set at my fraternity. Since then they have released a 7” vinyl highlighting their new single “Make It Better” and have continued to churn out awesome beats while other artists can’t seem to restrain themselves from having a go at their tracks. There’s a pretty high likelihood that I make the drive back to my alma mater in late September to see them again and hopefully my (still in college) girlfriend doesn’t read this b/c I’ll be telling her its purely to see her…

The Knocks Vitamins:

Bonus Vitamin

The Knocks - Make It Better (Monsieur Adi Remix)