A small note based on Part 1: this is no history of dub – no need to create a list of dub forefathers in the comments! But if you’re interested in such things, definitely watch Bruno Natal’s Dub Echos, he talks to everyone under the sun, and it’s fascinating!)

A Quiet Bump [as seen in part 1] has their feet firmly planted in the heavy Rhythm and Sound aesthetic of half-time, head-nodding feel. The second modern dub label I’ve been impressed with over the years, Qunabu, is rooted a little more strongly in two other genres, the clicks and cuts and glitch of Mille Plateaux (which I’m probably more familiar with) and dub techno (to which I’m a relative n00b). The latter is a sound that’s captivated me over the last eighteen months or so, as I’ve gotten into old Chain Reaction, some of the Echospace / Deepchord projects, and everything on Echocord – but I’m absolutely no expert and I’m sure many readers have been following the genre stretching back well into the 90s.

Qunabu is more than just a netlabel; it actually arose as a twinned project of a design firm and netlabel, founded by Piotr Hatti Vatti and Mateusz Qunabu out of Gdansk, Poland. Mateusz and his brother Rafal sit well within a long Polish tradition of innovative visual design, and they offer a pretty stellar portfolio of all sorts of graphic and interactive design, photography, and video work. It’s all on displace, on the main site under the interactive section. I mention it because, unfortunately, right now the actual netlabel part of Qunabu has a placeholder page – it’s being redesigned and wasn’t ready quite in time for this piece. But it’s easy to get excited for how it will look, and in addition to their portfolio, the podcast series and the shop are up and running.

The amazing coincidence is that I was familiar with both Qunabu and Piotr’s work as Hatti Vatti, completely independently of each other. Hatti Vatti totally captivated me with his track “Different Music,” which came out on Indigo’s Mindset label a couple years ago – a song I still play in sets to this day. Fodder for a different article for sure, but I consider every track Hatti Vatti’s ever produced to be 100% awesome and probably be the finest example of what’s good and interesting about dubstep today – it’s the opposite of this. And in hindsight of course I can hear the connection between his brand of dubstep and the experimental and techno leanings of Qunabu.

The label has had an impressive output so far, and includes some ambient work from NN as well as a few pieces that call more on hip-hop and free jazz like The Strait of Anian’s This Wandering Winter release. But the majority of tracks lope along in the 115-125bpm range of slow techno, ranging in feel from fairly driving to almost muffled. Their two strongest releases so far have been the two volumes of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band”. These are the label’s showcase compilations, akin to the great Staedizism compilations from ~scape (and both put out long before Easy Star All Stars released and album with the same name!) They are both a pretty stunning collection of tracks from producers that haven’t seen many releases elsewhere.

Mateusz and Piotr answered a few of my questions by email below. Also, be sure to check out check out the captivating video of “You” that Qunabu created – showcasing the real love and affection they have for their city of Gdansk, a town that has produced Reza and his CX Digital label among others.

Hatti Vatti feat. Cian Finn – You (HD) from Andrei Matei on Vimeo.

Who is involved in Qunabu, and when did it start?
Mateusz Qunabu [MQ]: It started in 2006. It’s been me, Mateusz Qunabu and Piotr aka Hatti Vatti from the beginning. I’m responsible for the website and technical stuff as well as the first selection of received audio and organizing graphics, etc. Piotr is responsible for finalizing the music and further contact with artists.

If you had to describe your aesthetic to people who didn’t know the label, what would you say?
MQ: Dub Side of the Moon, recently the dub techno side

Hatti Vatti [HV]: We started with dub techno, but right now we are focused on any electronic and experimental minimalistic genre. But dub elements are always somewhere around. HQ open-minded music.

How do you choose which artists to release?
MQ: The first release was from Piotr’s friend from a Polish reggae forum. Then he started to meet people on myspace. It was a time when myspace was full of interesting stuff (2006-2007), so he gathered a collection of tracks for Sgt. Peppers #1. After that we were receiving emails from people around the world. We’ve met a few of them in person, some of them we know only by email. Stendek is the only local friends we have published – I think he is one of the greatest artist in our portfolio.

HV: There’s no rule. We asked a lot of people for EP, but ~50% of our releases are sent as demos… It’s an international netlabel but we are really happy if we will get something cool from our country or city (Gdansk). I’m really proud of our first compilation – it’s 100% polish. All told, Qunabu has released music from 15 countries and 4 continents .

Which project are you most proud of – or was the most difficult?
HV: Making “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Dub Band Vol. 1″ was hard work. We were a bit unknown as a netlabel at the time… I think it’s my favorite release because of the big response and the feeling that we had done something really special in many ways. But I like every single EP and LP… “Sgt Peppers… Vol. 2″ was our biggest project, but it was much so easier after “Vol. 1″. I think almost 100% Qunabu stuff is still “actual”, fresh and very interesting. Also, QNB004 (77′s Schlummerlieds EP) and QNB005 (Misk’s Pathos EP) both came out in the same moment (2007) – now it seems like a kind of prophecy of dubstep and dubtechno crossover…

What upcoming releases are planned?
HV: Avant jazz experiments meets dub techno EP + “Sgt Peppers…” Vol 3.

http://www.qunabu.com/

Previously: CREATED: Digital Dub for 2012, Part 1 – A Quiet Bump, A Conversation with Peak

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music. Tune in regularly for his CREATED series on new and undiscovered music, including what to hear, and talks with artists.
http://kidkameleon.com

The link between dub music and technology is as old as the genre itself – you could even argue that dub is THE purest example of a technology expressed through music. At its best, it’s like magic – when I first saw Scientist run the board for Mikey Dread live, it truly was like watching a magician at work. He had a way of flicking faders so fast but so subtly that they seemed to move with a will of their own.

Although there are some core sonic elements of Dub that have been with it since its inception – echo, reverb, tape effects, etc – it’s also been a genre/ethos that’s quick to embrace new methods and new applications in its 40-year lifespan. One particular thread from Dub’s inception to now goes something like this:

The 70s – the warm round sound of King Tubby and his contemporaries.
The 80s – dub in the digital era, with Prince Jammy and others messing around with 8-bit sounds and new drum machines on seminal recordings like Computerized Dub.
The 90s – dub techniques flourish in every possibly form of dance music, including the icy germanic sounds of the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction labels and artists.
The 00s – that sound expands in new directions with records from Rhythm and Sound, Deadbeat, Pole and the entire long running ~scape label.

(As I said, just one thread through the history – for a much more fleshed-out telling of the story, see Bruno Natal’s Dub Echos or read Michael Veal’s book on the subject. Or if you want to become a dub producer yourself in an instant, you’ve got to check out Infinite Wheel, still as fun now as the day it was released.)

In 2012, two net labels – who so far have given every single one of their releases away entirely for free (!!!) – are unquestionably the proud inheritors of the legacy that runs from Tubby to Scientist to Rhythm & Sound to Deadbeat & Pole. They are A Quiet Bump, from Italy, and Qunabu, from Poland. I’ll cover A Quiet Bump below and follow up on Qunabu in a few days.

A QUIET BUMP

A Quiet Bump is a dub and digital roots label from Italy that’s currently 28 releases deep. They’ve just recently completely redone their website (which is beautiful) and even invented a new double mountain logo for themselves. Founded by Paolo Picone and Carmine Minichiello, the label is home to some of the most innovative dub music on the planet today – following in the vein of their german forefathers but infusing a kind of good-natured Italian warmth that makes the music truly unique and special. They label has been a labor of love since its foundation in 2005 – as Picone puts it “We are very proud in general of A Quiet Bump. We come from Irpinia, a small rural region of midland of Southern Italy… the biggest village only has 15,000 people, so developing an electronic/dub label between the mountains was not easy. A big challenge. Without the label we probably would have stopped playing music many years ago… it’s a survival project, and we are really proud of it.”

To celebrate the relaunch of their website, they’ve released their first CD compilation – UNO, the first thing you can actually buy from the label (as I said, EVERYTHING beforehand from these guys has been given away for free). It’s brilliant, and features many label regulars, the label’s brightest rising star DaDub (who’s gone on to release on Stroboscopic Artefacts) and some new high-profile collaborators like Stewart Walker. Paolo Picone, who records under the name Peak and has recently moved to Berlin, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the label. His responses are best read to a soundtrack of his own music, a captivating sample of which is below.

When and how did A Quiet Bump (AQBMP) start, and how did you chose the name?
The label was founded by me (Peak) and Camine “Gamino” Minichiello (Jambassa) in 2005. It started as just a name and logo to put on the cover of our band MOU’s first CD, a fake label, just to have a greater chance of getting reviewed as an official CD and not just as a demo… a trick! We picked the name to evoke the idea of something without a big clamor, a silent and shy label, a record company for implosive releases … But by the time we’d gotten to our fourth release, we decided just to run it as a label.

Who is part of AQBMP now, and do they have other roles beyond their music work?
Paolo Picone (Mou, Peak, Pantazm) with the contribution of my booking and events agency Soundabbast.
Carmine Minichiello (Mou, Jambassa) with the contribution of his Q-Zone Recording Studio
Giovanni Roma (Black Era, Pantazm, Lich, Voodoo Tapes) with his Blackchannel Mastering Studio
Raffaele Gargiulo “Papa Lele” (Jambassa/Wiseman Dub) the graphic designer of AQBMP
Leo Giso (Mou) the man behind shop, orders and shipping…
Web site design and programming by Nico Vece – the secret sixth man of AQBMP – with his THIN studio.

If you had to choose a word or phrase for your aesthetic for people who didn’t know the label, what would you say?
Digital roots? Contemporary roots? Or maybe in a better way: NON-Conservative Dub … Something connected with ’60/’70 Jamaican roots music and our contemporary culture… just in terms of space and time – places, society, and technologies. What King Tubby would have played now in the XXI century.

How do you choose which artists to release? Are they all friends or from all around the world?
We have no specific method… although usually we personally know the artists before producing them, so the majority of AQBMP artists come from our region of Italy … all friends. But it’s not a rule, everything depends by the music … the artist’s coherence as a producer and his sound are important for us.

Why did you decide to do Uno as a CD?
The main reason was to have a more professional approach to the promotion, and also to give the people a different approach of AQBMP. UNO in Italian means ONE, a number, the first number, just like a new starting point for us… we decide to change and renovate everything.

Plus we were very tired being classified as a “Net Label” – too many times and for more and more people in the net audio scene, the word “net” has become more important than the word “label”… In recent years I think the net audio world has become a fenced-in space – yes, with a lot of nice people, nice networks, situations, and nice ideas – but cut off from the music outside, or at least with a marginal position. The container became more important than the content.

Who are some artists that you might want to work with for the label but haven’t yet?
I don’t know… They don’t yet have names! We don’t have a well-defined idea of the AQBMP sound: we are 5 people with completely different ideas about “sound”. We listen to everything from Dub Specialist to Sonic Youth, from Slayer to Moritz Von Oswald, from David Sylvian to Fela Kuti, etc… Just as some examples! So now we prefer to explore our commonalities based on low bass frequencies and downbeat… and when possible support the idea of research on modern roots.

What upcoming releases are planned?
A new release from PARA as well as VOODOO TAPES (a new dubby project by Gianni Roma/Black Era, the man behind the mastering of AQBMP)… both as digital releases and digital distribution.

To be continued…

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music. Tune in regularly for his CREATED series on new and undiscovered music, including what to hear, and talks with artists.
http://kidkameleon.com

To take us into the weekend, here are some favorite online music releases this week to download, stream, and enjoy. Be sure to click over to the site if you’re on RSS for the included players if they’re not appearing.

The big buzz this week was the surprise emergence of Squarepusher on a project with Ed Banger Records – a surprise because Squarepusher has long been synonymous with Warp. I’ll leave the music blogs to concern themselves with the label. (Resident Advisor goes understated, whereas exclaim.ca offers, snarkily, “Either Ed Banger Records has moved on from the French touch explosion of 2007 or IDM legend Squarepusher has dropped the wacky time signatures for some four-on-the-floor filter-house.”)

Mostly, Squarepusher fans have been having a good time with a funky, fun track and remix that’s free on Soundcloud (the one “label” we all find ourselves on these days):
Squarepusher – Cryptic Motion Edits by Hypetrak

In the ambient realm, I’ve been enjoying the music of aptly-named artist Ambienteer, whom we visited in June. There’s a new, pay-what-you-will EP up on Bandcamp if you want more:

Ambienteer: Bright Collection of Strange Victories

Ghostly artist Shigeto has an absolutely gorgeous track out this week, mixing the work of vocalist/harpist Ana Caravelle. It’s unmistakably a Shigeto track, but with lots of, well, vocal and harp-y goodness. (If you missed it last month, be sure to check out Shigeto’s free EP from last month.) XLR8R has a nice write-up of the release.
Ana Caravelle – Blackcanyon ( Shigeto’s as i inhale mix ) by SHIGETO

For something more experimental, Makunouchi Bento’s Swimé is a delightful, fanciful soundscape that rattles its way through musical fragments, noises, and cinematic landscapes, sometimes recalling John Cage (particularly when the piano dances over a repeated, asymmetrical motive of some sort). I very much like that it’s free, not so much as a judgment on the commercial potential of the record (which I’ll admit is relatively limited), but because it allows you to encounter the music freely. Like wandering the free day at the art gallery, it may open you up to experience the work. And it’s worth putting on your best cans and listening to a higher-quality format, to explore this musical imaginarium.

If it’s a mix you’re looking for, German artist Martin Juhls aka krill.minima (on Kompakt, among many others) has a rich, extended “ambient dub” mix up on Mixcloud this week.

By the way, here’s one tool to add to the music releases. If you’re using Google Chrome or the open source variant Chromium, ExtensionFM is a brilliant extension that automatically pulls streaming and download links from pages you’re surfing, then allows you to navigate them as if they were in your local library. I have to admit, I was fairly resistant to the idea at first – until I actually tried it, that is. ExtensionFM is polished, lightweight, and elegant, and far from distracting from focused music listening, I found that the ability to assemble tracks and play them in a complete session has helped me to listen more closely to tracks available online. Anyone who’s ever fiddled with the ill-fated, chronically-unstable, and now discontinued-for-Linux application Songbird will recognize the concept. ExtensionFM is what Songbird should have been, period.

http://www.extension.fm/

It’s been particularly nice when navigating SoundCloud. My new workflow – assemble the stuff I want to hear, spend extended breaks listening to tracks, as well as “browsing” music as you would on the radio by loading tracks in the background while working in the browser, then go out and buy or download the best stuff to add to my permanent library. (These days, that means Banshee for me.)

I was never this impressed with similar offerings on Firefox, but if you have a favorite tool, let us know.

Also, turns out these guys are here in downtown Manhattan, so, ExtensionFM guys, if you’re reading, say hello.

We talk about tools a lot, but it’s really learning how to make tools expressive in your productions and performances that matters. DubSpot, the music tech production and DJ educational center here in New York, brings its multi-city Ableton Live Sessions tour to its hometown for several days of parties and workshops. If you’re in NYC and on a budget, we have a discount on the paid events and also some free events you can check out. If you’re not in NYC, we’re working on bringing free video coverage to the global CDM community shortly after the event.

This really isn’t a pitch for Live, either – part of why I’m excited to be able to hang out for the weekend is that I expect to learn quite a lot from some of the world’s most skilled Live users and producers.

Headlining the event is none other than global techno star Richie Hawtin – the Minus impresario some of our readers love to love and others love to hate. I hope we get to hear more about his unique Plastikman live rig – see the controller at top, with more details from our friends at visualist corps Derivative, whose TouchDesigner live visual tool powers 3D imagery in those sets. Hawtin will join in a conversation with Ambivalent about what the Minus musical process is about. Hawtin and friends will also play a real gem of New York’s club scene, Love on MacDougal Street – it’s a fantastic space that lives up to its name.

On the dub side, Scientist aka Overton Brown, one of the world’s real stars of dub, a King Tubby protégé out of Jamaica, will return us to the roots of electronic dance music and show off his own take on the use of this technology. Scientist and Dub is a Weapon play Le Poisson Rouge and Scientist will close out the Live Sessions with a dub battle versus Badawi.

KJ Sawka – Hell, Yes, Chops

Before we get into the lineup, here’s just an example of how cool the faculty of this event is – KJ Sawka. Sawka is, of course, what we dream of in live laptop music. His musicianship is fantastic unplugged (see a rooftop set video, apparently sponsored by PBR), so the laptop becomes simply an extension of that.

KJ Sawka will have a full Drums workshop on Saturday as part of the paid program. If you’re new to Live, though, he’s doing a free intro on Thursday evening.

Here’s what to see and how to get the exclusive CDM discount.

By the way, if you’re in Los Angeles, that’s the next stop on this tour; stay tuned for details.

Schedule, Free Events, and Discounts

Thursday

7-9p, FREE KJ Sawka Live 8 clinic, 675 Bar
9p Funk Aid for Africa benefit release party, 675 Bar

Friday: Richie Hawtin @ Love

Saturday

11-6: Ableton Live and Production Sessions: The first day focuses on moving a project through the production process, with KJ Sawka talking live recording of drums, DJ Kiva and Jon Margulies on developing and finishing materials, and veteran engineer Daniel Wyatt on mixing and mastering. The day finishes up with a chat with Richie Hawtin and Ambivalent.

6:30-9p FREE CDM Live Lounge party Saturday evening, we meet up at former sex club / former horse stables (really) turned chilled-out Meatpacking District lounge 675 Bar. We’ll have some surprise unusual Live controller rigs and music.

Sunday

11-6: Performing with Live, Live Onstage: The second day of workshops focuses on live performance, with Jon Margulies, DJ Rupture, and myself talking about working with performance-ready live sets, controllers, and Akai’s APC40. (With Jon covering the APC, I’ll focus instead on alternative and unusual controllers.) Barry Cole of Blue Mountain Publishing will go a different direction entirely – how to understand licensing and distribution and actually make money on your tracks.

7-9p: Scientist will talk about miking and live setup with Dub is a Weapon – and will mix them live.

9p: DubSpot Sessions party, Le Poisson Rouge, with live and DJ performances from Scientist, Dub is a Weapon, Badawi, Kiva, Rupture, etc.

CDM DISCOUNT: Enter promo code ‘CDM’ for $25 off the tour, or follow this link:
http://www.dubspot.com/pages/abletontour.jsp?aff_ref=CDM

The weekend is US$225 for both days ($200 after our discount); $125 for one day.

Here’s a wrap of what happened in San Francisco:

And if you’re there, do come say hi! It’s always nice to meet readers.