Chris Stack writes:

Jon Hassell just shared with me a very interesting and historic letter. Very timely too, with tomorrow being Bob Moog’s Birthday celebration…

16nov64
Letter to Jon Hassell
Electronic Music – The Early Years

I had a very interesting experience about one week ago. A gentleman, Mr. Robert Moog, who claims to know of you, visited Washington and demonstrated a compact electronic studio. He claims to be the only man in the country building and designing equipment solely for the creation of electronic music. He was tremendously impressed with your proposals. [For - among other things - applying the principles of electronic music manipulation to the video domain.]

He stated that he would be able to provide much of the equipment called for in those proposals at the same quality or better at considerably less cost. He also demonstrated equipment (in a crude state of development) which could provide great flexibility with extremely simple manipulation involved, almost to the point of being able to improvise an electronic composition – to be recorded or not.

He is going to send me descriptive material and quotations, copies of which I will either forward to you or hold for your interest and considerations.

Lloyd Ultan
Head, Music Department
American University
Washington D. C. 20016

From his home in LA to the global scene, John Tejada is a planet-navigating techno ambassador and one of our favorite electronic musicians. He’s one of a handful of artists successful today who has managed to cross eras, whose experience isn’t just of this moment but who has touched the evolution of that scene. We turn to guest writer Alex Brandmeyer, who interviews Mr. Tejada about his own work as well as where the music scene is headed. What I like about Alex’s interview is that he asks some really fundamental questions about the evolution of the international audience for this music and tools – and Mr. Tejada is just the sort of person whose answers are worth reading. -PK

John Tejada’s music has been raising the bar for more than fifteen years. Alongside an intense schedule of performances all across the world, he’s managed a steady stream of high-quality releases on dozens of labels, including his own baby (now fully-grown), Palette Recordings. Add to this some high-profile DJ mixes for outlets like Fabric, along with strong support for his music from top international DJs, and what you’ve got is one of the highest-calibre electronic artists around. Despite this success, he remains a very friendly, down-to-earth guy who’s instantly approachable, and whose love and enthusiasm for electronic music and performance immediately comes across. I caught up with him following one of his recent live shows at Studio 80 in Amsterdam.

One thing that interests me most about dance music, and about house and techno music in particular, is the fact that its appeal traverses national and geographic boundaries. What do you think the common thread is? Psychology? Biology? Culture? And what is it about four-on-the-floor electronic beats and sounds between 120-130 BPM that allows dance music to tap into these things?

I feel these days it has become such a global movement, with everyone around the world linked together through social media and other sources on the net. My experience in the early 90s, however, was much different. These avenues didn’t exist yet, and you had to grab magazines to find out about what was going on abroad and order new releases with your local shop. These days it is so instant. Most of my friends and I still can’t wrap our heads around it. Back then, it was such a treat to find the thing you were looking for or hear an artist you loved live, because you couldn’t just do an MP3 search and have it instantly or watch clips on YouTube from last night’s concert half way around the world. I see all these new developments as mostly a positive.

The sound seems to spread to all cultures at this point. Everyone likes to dance all over the world and many want that moment of hearing a new sound for the first time and wondering what it is. For these reasons, I don’t think it is all that unique that the music is loved the world over now. Many genres of music exist worldwide because people love music and keep all these scenes going.

Of course there are differences, too. As someone coming from California with strong connections to Europe, how do you feel about moving between these places, between the different audiences and cities? Does it matter in the sense that it pulls music and music communities in different directions over time? Or does the music itself make this type of question less important?

I still have a tie to Vienna with my father still being there, and being able to travel to Europe on a regular basis, so I feel connected to both places. I feel when it comes to audiences being different, it’s usually a case of a venue or the people you meet that can have a big impact on your opinion of that place. You may have a good or bad experience in a certain city and your whole experience might rely just on that one club night, when down the street at another club could have been potentially a completely different good or bad experience. It took me repeat visits to cities to realize this and to try not to make up my mind about a place just because of one night. I think the music will keep evolving, as it always does.

Every year, there are new pieces of gear, new bits of software, new labels, new clubs, and new ways of spreading music. Apart from the internet and social media culture you mentioned before, what have been the most important evolutions in your own music making over the years? Have there been specific ideas or techniques which really opened up new creative possibilities for you? 

I feel while technology comes along and makes many things easier and options pretty much limitless, it also turns the same solutions into problems. Music has become more of a “paint by numbers” type of process for many people, which has made lots of new music less interesting for myself. The difference between imposing limitations on one’s creative process and actually having limitations is a different thing. When we were all starting out, the creative process was different than it is now. We now basically have limitless options, which can keep you second-guessing your work. At the same time, sure, it’s great to have new tools working more the way they were intended, and the resurgence of analog has made quite an impact in my workflow and sound. Generally, computer programs have developed mostly in positive ways, making music creation a lot more straightforward.

Again on the subject of evolution… an interesting question is always where this is all headed. People predicted a lot of different outcomes of the digital revolution, but underground clubs, labels, and to some extent, vinyl, all still seem to be doing pretty well, hand-in-hand with the ‘new era’ of Beatport, laptop DJs ,and commercial dubstep. What are your feelings about where the underground dance music scene is headed? Do you have any hopes or fears for the music? Does history repeat itself?

Things do seem to go in circles. I think we’re at the beginning of the next phase in the way music is being distributed. I have a strong belief that physical media will in some form make a comeback, wether it will be records or something else. I just can’t imagine a future where one’s music and book collection are only digital. It sort of misses the point of having a collection. Part of the fun of collecting is finding these physical objects that are tangible. While watching the new Comic-Con documentary, I had this thought that no one values PDFs of classic comic books, or JPEGs of hard-to-find baseball cards. The real physical item has great importance. This is why we love to collect records. I think people will start to miss that the more it disappears. 

The past year I’ve been lucky enough to catch a couple of your live shows, and have enjoyed seeing you perform some of the tracks which I’ve come to love over the years. I’ve also really enjoyed listening to some of your DJ mixes. What for you is the difference between playing out as a DJ and playing using your live setup? Do you have a preference for one or the other? What are the challenges in each type of performance?

DJing can be stressful in the way that I’m looking to make a playlist with the goal of being an entertainer. Sometimes I don’t want to bother with that, and just concentrate on my own art and being creative that way. Playing live limits me to my own ideas which is a little easier for me, but can also be stressful, because if the set isn’t going down well I’ve got nowhere to go, really. I may have the ability to change my set list and arrangements live, but for the most part, it’s just me. At the moment, I’ve been enjoying the live sets quite a bit more. I’d love to bring more gear, but I’m usually shoved in a DJ booth, so for now, it’s a small synth and computer mixer set up.

I think distinguishing between a DJ as entertainer and a live performer as artist taps into something interesting about the way in which electronic music is performed and consumed these days. How important is your connection to the audience when you perform? Do you notice a difference in this connection when you perform live as compared to when you DJ?

When DJing, I have a stronger connection to the audience, because I’m choosing songs based on what I perceive to be their reactions. When playing live, I am really involved making sure I am doing all the right things and controlling the right parameters; I hardly have time to take a look around. That can also be a good thing, as I’m less influenced by people’s reactions. I’m limited to my own compositions, so my main goal is to perform those pieces that as best as I can.

Do you notice differences in the types of crowds that will come to see a live PA as opposed to those who come out for a DJ set? 

The crowds can be different, more in the US I think. In the States you’ll have more “concert” shows, and that’s where people are more open to what a live performer will do. If I’m just shoved into a DJ booth in Europe and asked to make it work somehow, and the crowd is just a party crowd, then there is no difference there. I find in those spaces a DJ set is more appropriate.

You’ve been involved with electronic music for quite a while now. Do you have any particular achievements or peak moments that really pop out from the rest?

I’ve had some really unique opportunities including doing some shows here in LA at the Disney Hall which were really special. Checking out most of the planet has been quite great as well.

Could you tell me a bit more about the shows you did at the Disney Hall? How different is performing in a proper concert hall from performing in a club?

I got to play there twice. Once opening for The Orb at an all night event, where I played a hardware set and covered a table full of synths. The other time was when I got to play my piece “The End Of It All” with a 100 piece male chorus. The piece was reinterpreted by myself as well as adding all the vocal harmonies.

What was it like performing with a choir?

It was quite an experience to be able to do that, especially in that space. 

Did the acoustics kick ass?

The acoustics are really tailored for acoustic performances. It was designed for the LA Philharmonic. While they have a really high-end PA, it is not really geared towards electronic shows. However, the space below the hall, The Red Cat Theater, hosts a big variety of very cool synth shows and avant garde programs. I’ve seen tons of shows at both recently. Definitely LA’s best venue.

Can you amuse us with any anecdotes about bizzare/amusing/plain weird things that have happened to you so far during your career as an electronic musician? No need to name any names.

There’s just so much and of course nothing comes to mind immediately. It’s usually disasters that end up being a little bit funny later on, but at the time they are not amusing, unless someone just says something completely ridiculous at dinner like the Italian promoter who was repeatedly asking Arian (Leviste) and I “don’t you think my wife is beautiful?” I remember in Tokyo, a good friend from Germany was playing and asked if I could start immediately. I said “sure,” and he went off to a corner of the stage and huddled on the ground in fetal position and just stayed there, apparently a bit food poisoned. He was soon OK.

For the coming years, what are the things that keep you motivated to make new music? Do you have any projects or ideas that you’re really excited about? Are you still looking for the perfect beat?

I’m always striving for something, tweaking my technique, my mixdowns, quality of sounds, stripping things away, the list goes on and on. I’ve just completed work on a new full length. Hopefully details on that will be announced soon.

http://www.paletterecordings.com/

Musical history seems to happen when things collide, when things get mixed up – certainly in the twentieth, and now the twenty-first century. And so it is that one of the most important “Detroit techno” records ever released came out of Amsterdam.

If this were a new artist, the long string of endorsements from a who’s who of electronic music in the video here might seem like publicity fluff. But because Dutch artist Steve Jerome Rachmad, aka Sterac, has had such a deep influence on electronic music since his 1995 debut release, instead you can listen to a network of people in the dance music community, and how those influences form nodes in a neural net of musical creativity. Those networks cross national borders and backgrounds, speaking this musical genre as a common language. As the centerpiece of this docu-short, Rachmad himself is humble and quiet, a Zen-like presence on a sofa in the midst of bubbling techno celebrities, as he talks about how he clawed his way to getting anything released at all, on his first Atari 1040ST computer.

The best part of the video, though, is hearing Sterac’s musical process, often just playing directly from his head through a series of overdubs. I’m sure Rachmad was thrilled to power up his Atari ST for the first time; nowadays, a lot of us find a way to return to the immediacy of directly-recorded one-take overdubs. (It’s not so hard, of course. Just step away from your fancy editor.)

I’ve just listened to the re-release “Secret Life of Machines,” due out in June. It’s a fantastic, fresh-sounding release – unassuming and direct in the way Rachmad himself is in the interview. The dirty reality is, some 90s electronic music – even some that is considered a landmark today – really does sound dated today. These cuts simply don’t. There is this sense, as Richie Hawtin puts it in the video, of music that’s “melodic, funky, like Holland … but [is] rhythmic and beautiful like Detroit.”

I am, not very secretly, an optimist. I wonder what musical collisions may happen next – whether it’s club music or dance music or not, in electronic music as a medium. To me, the most fertile moments in music bloom when these kinds of connections and influences can form.

“Secret Life Of Machines” will arrive in phases, remastered and remixed, starting in June 2012, on CD and digital.

It’s a question so elemental in music, you might forget to ask it: what can you get out of a (music) jam?

Electronic music worldwide is dominated by the DJ, the dance party. That, in turn, often tends to the safe playback and mixing of produced records. So, what happens when you let all of that go, invite your audience to get up and make strange noises with you and not only dance at a safe distance? What happens when you just set yourself free and play?

Jam sessions are nothing new in and of themselves – but the beauty of them is, put unexpected combinations of musicians together in a room, and they can always be something new. Here, I’ve invited one set of guest reports authored by the Berlin-based collective Mindpirates. Their recent set of jam sessions was notable in its varied international artists, covering the gamut from gong artist Jens Zygar to electronic artists like Machinedrum and Kid 606. Since you probably didn’t get to attend, you can experience the results through plenty of photos and videos they’ve shared with us. Californian Lionel Williams, grandchild of film composer John Williams, provides the backdrop for all of this with otherworldy, psychedelic imagery. For that reason, perhaps, the Mindpirates get happily far-out in their reflections on what all of this means, and dub the series “an adventure into the supernatural power of the jam.”

Here’s what the Mindpirates’ Easton West, Owen Roberts and Pauline Doutreluingne, tell CDM about the event and what it’s meant to them:

In January, we opened our new project space, Mindpirates Projektraum, with “Let The Sun Shine In — The Berlin Sessions.” The event included an exhibition of the supernatural collage art from the young California-based artist and musician Lionel Williams. Knowing that Williams was also a talented musician, we decided to bless our new space with a week-long series of jams between Williams, special guests, and ourselves.

The guests included visual artist Manfred Kage, Jens Zygar, Raz Ohara and The Odd Orchestra, Annika Henderson & Nick Henderson (from Anika), Hermione Frank aka rRoxymore, Jochen Arbeit (from Einstürzende Neubauten), Brian Mitchell aka 785, Valerie Renay (from Noblesse Oblige), Travis Stewart aka Machinedrum, Miguel De Pedro aka Kid 606, Verity Susman (from Electrelane), Infinite Livez, Michel Morin aka Sneak-Thief, Antaeus Roy aka Lando Kal and more.

Williams comes from a very musical background. His great-grandfather Johnny Williams was a respected jazz drummer and percussionist who played from the 30s to the 50s for the CBS Radio Orchestra, Raymond Scott, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. His grandfather John Williams has written some of the most loved and recognized film music of all time. Ed.: Yep, that John Williams. Lionel’s father Mark Williams drummed with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Tina Turner, and Air Supply.

Given the Williams family’s cross-generational success, one would expect Lionel to follow suit in his own musical endeavours. But there’s something of a sunchild in Williams that directs his varied creations. A fascination with the supernatural comes across in his artwork — abstract, yet suggestive windows into a mind filled with cosmic, mystic, and utopian images. Listening to his ambient electronic rock band Vinyl Williams, it’s apparent that Williams inhabits a slightly different artistic realm to his predecessors.

Jamming has always been an indispensable part of music-making across generations and cultures. The immediate connection people make when they combine sounds — instant, unplanned, and unrepeatable — is an incomparable experience. It allows humans to communicate in a language outside of words. The jam creates an opportunity to explore individual sounds and their relationships to one another. While exploring the relationships of tones, we explore our relationships to one another and to our environment. Improvisation demands an amount of personal development and discipline to open up the channels of communication that allow a group to function as one.

From the frequency-drenched opening performance of gong master Jens Zygar and ground breaking visuals of microphotographer Manfred Kage, to the analog dance party rhythms of our friends Michel Morin aka Sneak Thief and Antaeus Roy aka Lando Kal, the week was wildly diverse with approaches to sound, pitch, rhythm, color and texture and from a wide variety of sources.

For us, the main interest in the improvisations was a constantly-evolving relationship between acoustic instruments and digital music technology. This tension was really visible watching the performances. Williams spent a large part of the week hunched over a dizzying collection of guitar pedals while, next to him, he gathered an even more dizzying collection of musical and percussive instruments, effects and processors. Mindpirates became a melting pot of sound, color, movement, and voices, as seen in our film documentation.

Behind everything lay the real pool of inspiration, the seemingly-infinite timbral, rhythmic, and textural possibilities from a relatively small group of attuned musicians. The representation of the supernatural in The Berlin Sessions was achieved by both the organic and digital and the aural and visual. Never was it discernible where a sound began, where it was processed or the nature of that processing. All is One — a beautiful and mystical message realized through the jams.

Archival website on the project:
http://www.mindpirates.org/theberlinsessions/

Session 1: Lionel Williams, Jens Zygar, Manfred Kage & special guests

Session 2: Lionel Williams & Raz O’Hara and The Odd Orchestra

Session 3: Lionel Williams, Hermione Frank aka rRoxymore & Annika Henderson and Nick Henderson (from Anika)

Session 4: Lionel Williams, Jochen Arbeit (from Einstürzende Neubauten), Valerie Renay (from Noblesse Oblige) & Brian Mitchell aka 785

Session 5: Lionel Williams, Travis Stewart aka Machinedrum & Miguel De Pedro aka Kid 606

Session 6: Lionel Williams, Infinite Livez & Verity Susman (from Electrelane)

Session 7: Lionel Williams, Michel Morin aka Sneak-Thief, Antaeus Roy aka Lando Kal, Mindpirates & good friends

We welcome other event reports like this from around the world, particularly as I’m human and can’t be in all places at once. If you can document it, and tell us a bit about what happened, we’d love to hear from you. And we’d love to hear what has made successful – or unsuccessful – jam sessions in your musical experience.

Out of the noise of the Internet, don’t be surprised if some of the music being made is – unexpectedly – wonderful. So it is with a compilation curated by Chris Randall from the Analog Industries community. Unsuspected Sounds is unexpected. It’s proof that those people writing all those comments really do have time to make music.

It’s nice seeing this come from Chris and the community he’s assembled. For his part, Chris doesn’t fit the stereotype of a blogger; he’s got industry experience as an engineer as an artist, is known to many as a veteran of Sister Machine Gun, and now leads dual lives as music maker and plug-in and mobile developer. (See: Audio Damage.) The guy has craft, across technology and art, such that one can see a dividing line between the two. So, fittingly, Chris pulls from his readers people whose music is evidence of the same.

All of this goes to a good cause, as well. It’s the sort of thing so many of us hope online communities will be. It’s nice when, at times, they actually are.

The sounds themselves fit into the amorphous but, for me, delightful category of “ambient/IDM,” into some catch-all of smart, doesn’t-quite-fit-in music made with electronics, inflected with beats without being slave to genre. (Please, someone, if you can rename that zone of music, you’d do all of us a favor. I know it’s my job as a journalist or whatever. But I’ll be your friend for life.) Thoughtfully constructed sounds, venturing into sometimes-moody, quirky, but personal and passionate realms, this is music that makes you feel intimate with its creators and what moves them when they’re being themselves. That’s perfect for a music compilation that itself represents a community that has gathered around common interests online.

I’ll let Chris explain the rest to CDM:

The story is pretty simple: what I did is have Analog Industries readers submit an exclusive track; I got 92 submissions, and curated the 10 on the album (well, 9 plus mine) out of those. 100% of the net proceeds (that is to say everything after production costs are covered) go to charity, specifically the Breast Assured Foundation.

The cover art was done with a Processing sketch created by Stefan Goodchild. [The sketch code is on GitHub.] The sketch does an FFT on an audio waveform and spits out a circular motif; top is left channel, bottom is right channel. I made a single audio file that was the entire album, and created the image from that. (As an aside: Stefan does audio-reactive visuals in Processing for several big acts, notably Peter Gabriel and Blur, and he did the Varese, Schaeffer, and Derbyshire T-Shirts that I sold on AI a while back.)

Chris also has some nice reflections in what he wrote for the release:

“I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.”

-Edgard Varèse (Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music)

“unsuspected sounds” is a collection of electronic music curated from the Analog Industries community, with 100% of the net proceeds of the sales donated to the Breast Assured Foundation, an organization that provides early breast cancer detection services for underprivileged women via a sophisticated mobile screening lab. Featuring ten tracks of all-new music, “unsuspected sounds” is a genre-spanning collection that provides a perfect soundtrack to modern living.

Available now at Bandcamp as both a DRM-free digital download and as a download + 12″ vinyl combo.

Side A:
1. Goldbaby – Ten OP
2. Bitmud – All The Beauty Is Gone
3. Chris Randall – Abstract Sixteen
4. Sabama – Doublethink
5. Pauk – Here She Comes

Side B:
1. Ancient Young – Silica Resonance
2. Russian Corvette – Pattern Recognition
3. Anodize – Bismuth
4. Milkfish – Just Once My Day Blows Yours Away
5. Jukebox – Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Pay-what-you-want, minimum $5 for the digital download only, $15 for the vinyl + download. Get some new music, and help out a good cause!

http://analogindustries.bandcamp.com

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

What happens as music peers through the gauze of memory? Our contributor Matt Earp asks that question with the second installment of the new series, CREATED, a column that examines new and undiscovered music and feeds our headphones through the week.

There’s a production technique in a lot of today’s post-FlyLo, beat-driven instrumental hip-hop that’s pretty darn pervasive when you start listening out for it. It’s that woozy, wobbling 80s synth sound – both pads and arpeggios – that once were clear and pristine but have been softened and weathered by time. It’s not just straight recreations of Vangelis or Tiffany, but those sounds as we hear them today – warped, foggy, distorted, heard on tape that’s been physically stretched – the 80s seen through the lens of time. It’s not your Madonna or Michael Jackson cassette as it was when you first bought it (that is, you readers over 30), but that tape as it sounds now, having sat through 25+ summers in the glove compartment of your IROC-Z, pulled out and played again in all its warped glory. It’s the sound of countless TV shows and commercials dubbed and redubbed from VHS to VHS, traded between friends, losing fidelity but gaining character at each interval. Personalized. Distorted with memory. Decaying but well-loved.

This style doesn’t have a name that I’m aware of and it doesn’t really have a progenitor, although Boards of Canada get name-checked by producers I’ve talked to more than anyone. But BOC call more on 70s-era memories (the era of their youth) – filmstrips, 8 tracks, The Electric Company and Richard Nixon. This stuff is firmly rooted in the 80s and early 90s – VHS, cassettes, 3-2-1 Contact and Margaret Thatcher. And TONS of people are doing it. Oneohtrix Point Never (and his dozen other guises). Com Truise. Salem. Kyle Hall. Lone. Space Dimension Controller. Toro y Moi. A lot of those bands are also associated with Chillwave. But Chillwave is a little more crisp and singer-songwriter-y. This style is more instrumental, hip-hop driven, and has intentionally-warped sound elements and heavy muffling envelopes added to the lo-fi synths. When it’s done well, it’s one of the more exciting sounds of today’s electronic music, and I’ll take a stab at coining a new phrase for it – VHSwave. That plants it firmly in the 80s, evokes the sense of the stretched tape, and touches on the fact lots of these artists are also make videos for their creations, usually out of a warped pastiche of strange 80s visual flotsam and jetsam.

For a TON of this stuff, check out Outlier Recordings, especially their voluminous Outsourced compilations. For even weirder sounds and concepts, look to New Dreams Limited, which seems to have some connection to Oneohtrix — but who can say? Fat Dudes is the pictorial companion of VHSwave, and is run by Astro Nautico‘s Paul Jones. And for a far more thought-out investigation into all things retro, check Simon Reynold’s book Retromania.

JACOB 2-2

Jacob 2-2 is a Brooklyn-based sound and video artist who takes his name from an obscure, late-70s movie about a fearless kid investigator. “It’s probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen,” says the producer, whose first name is David but who prefers not to give his last name. It makes total sense when you listen to his music: there’s a kid-like wonder to it, crossed with a dose of playful humor and an bunch of weird 80s synths. It’s a lot like Look Around You condensed into musical form.

David’s prized possession is an old Roland Juno 6. That particular Juno has no presets at all, so every time he gets something he likes he has to record it immediately. “I always think to myself, ‘I’d better record it now or else I’ll never be able to recreate it.’” Its warm sound in turn drives his beats and effects, filled with pings and blips that could be straight from any 80s video game. Sometimes his beats are muffled, while at other times they shine through clearly.

So far, David has put out three EPs, two self-released through his Bandcamp: (The Gifted Child and Cabazon). His most recent EP, Fantasiarexia, was picked up by Jakub Alexander of Moodgadget. He’s also had a couple compilation releases and a handful of remixes for Aleph, Starfawn, Macka and others. (You can listen to all of them on his SoundCloud page.) A motion graphic designer by trade, David also makes his own videos for his live show, performing against a background of material loosely cut together to his music and full of weird and wonderful nostalgia and color.

“There’s a difference between nostalgia and kitch” David says, “And with my stuff it’s not about recreating what we had or were when we were children, it’s more about the idea of being a kid.” But he might take issue with my labeling his work VHSwave – born as he was in the late 70s, “my family had a huge Betamax collection when I was growing up.” So perhaps for Jacob 2-2 it’s actually BetaWave.

STEPHEN FARRIS

Flash forward a dozen years, and you arrive at the birth of today’s other subject, the prolific Stephen Farris. Half a generation younger than Jacob 2-2, Farris has arrived at a similar sound more by general osmosis of nostalgia through the Internet than by actual memories of the 80s, of which he has none.

A lot of his stuff, though not all, is more influenced by traditional hip-hop than Jacob 2-2 – including its more mellow and jazzy side. It’s not really surprising, though, since he’s from Houston – a city that’s been known for a melted and laid-back approach to hip-hop for two decades. Farris’s stuff is a little bit more upbeat than a lot of Screwed stuff, but he’s also influenced by the Chopped aspect of Houston hip-hop, integrating that genre’s effect of messing with and repeating vocals and samples. Strange cut-ups pop up all through his work and create some of its funnest moments.

“I got into making music my freshman year of high-school, when I got a copy of Fruity Loops 5 and this book Circuit Bending: Build your own Alien Instruments,” he says. From there, Farris started going to Goodwill stores and poking around online to find old Casio keyboards he could hack into new forms, though he does count a Juno 106 among his possessions (seems like the Juno is the synth of choice for VHSwave). For a while he was making music with an MC in a group called Ghost Mountain, but for the past couple years he’s mostly been a solo producer. Almost all of his music is available from his Bandcamp page – and apart from a few remixes and compilation appearances, he’s entirely self-released. He name-checks a lot of fellow producers that he either admires or has plans to collaborate with, like ntropy, Sound Founder, Brock Berrigan and VHS Head, but he is also a bit of a lone wolf. “I don’t really collaborate well,” Farris laughs. “If you ask me to do something or if you want a certain part to sound a certain way, that’s probably not what you’re going to end up with.”

Farris ends up playing in Austin quite a bit with fellow beat-heads in the Exploded Drawing collective. He’s also reached the final round of the Applied Pressure producers’ battle that will be held the first night of SXSW. He’ll be battling Lo Phi at a show that also includes beat-meisters Elliot Lipp, Robot Koch, and B. Bravo. Farris also does the videos for his own works, cutting together elements from his huge library of clips with Adobe Premier. And just so you know he’s no joke in the world of VHSwave sound, if you order it Farris will actually make you a copy on, on VHS, of his Cosmic Sound II album and send it out to you along with your download. “It’s pretty trippy though, I’m not sure I could watch it all the way through” he says. The first 5 minutes are below, and Farris reckons he’s made about 80 so far.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

Writing about the meeting place of technology and music, we cover potential: what’s possible, what might be in the future. So as he launches a new music column, our new contributor Kid Kameleon has coined a cheeky title: “created.” This isn’t just what you could create with digital music, but what has been made, as he discovers and reviews new sounds. And while words like “genre-defying” get overused, producer/DJ/journalist Kid Kameleon – aka Matt Earp – really is on a quest for music that pushes out from the boundaries drawn around it. Over this and future installments, Matt will help widen our own listening to the up-and-coming and unexpected. So let’s get started, by peering through the window of one label and one artist. -PK

TESTTOON & OUBYS

Testtoon and Oubys are separate but symbiotic (for now). Testtoon is a very new label run by Michael Severi from Antwerp, Belgium, in collaboration with his brother Rafael. Michael’s girlfriend Eva D’haenens creates the label’s art and graphics as part of Testbeeld, the label’s visual twin. Testtoon is only two releases into its existence so far, but according to Severi, its agenda is to “promote creative and original electronic music” with vinyl-only releases of ”only local or more unknown producers we like.” Severi’s current aesthetic for his own DJ sets as well as the label is “ambient, field recordings, and experimental,” and Testtoon couldn’t have found a better or more captivating artist for their launch releases than Oubys, from Brussels.

Oubys is the stage name for Wannes Kolf. From his succinct bio: “Kolf’s music is made with live improvisations, electronic treatment and field recordings. Influenced by early legends Faust, Heldon, Can and ambient guru Brian Eno, this music has a nice sense of subterranean depth and a pulsating progression.” Oubys has had two previous releases on the CDr label U-Cover (also out of Belgium), and his music has is perfect blend of textured soundscape, low thrumming bass and steady washes of atmospheric synths that combine in perfect proportion to yield richly immersing musical experiences. This world can be a space where it’s hard to sound original or interesting, but Kolf weaves just enough of a pulsing through many of his creations to give them the skeleton ambient music so often lacks. His first release for Testtoon was Terra Incognita in 2011, which falls somewhere between an EP and an album in length. It’s full of rich complexity reminiscent of Monolake and Chain Reaction, and it ends with the almost epic Blackland 2 (below). But it also takes in more collage-like sounds along the way, in tracks like “Hidden Base” and “Mitlt”.

The label’s second release is the Positronium EP, which heads in a slightly darker direction, more buzzing electricity than soothing sound beds. It contains an early version of the album track Positronium II, a remix by Oubys, and truly special restructuring by Substance of Hardwax, Berlin, a scion of German dub techno reaching back almost 20 years. A tantalizing snippet of it can be heard here:

That EP will be out by the end of February. For now Testtoon is doing the distribution themselves, so it can only be found in vinyl shops in Belgium and by mail order through a couple of internet outlets. But Severi is hoping to secure distribution soon, so untill then keep your ears on both Oubys and Testtoon’s SoundCloud pages for samples of new material. And give them both props for doing such small run and tangible releases in the age of digital music!

TEAL & BEASTIE RESPOND

Not terribly far from Testtoon’s sample-based ambience, a similar label/producer symbiotic relationship is going on, but for a different genre of music. The label is Teal Recordings, run by Simon Olsson, and the producer is Beastie Respond aka Tobias Pedersen. Both of them are in Copenhagen, Denmark, and both have associations with the Dunkle Bar there.

Teal is 4 releases deep so far, available both as 12″ records as well as digital, and much of its sound has been focus on that particular hybrid of house, dubstep, UK Funky and techno that doesn’t have a name yet but is currently saturating lots of clubs in London and beyond. Producers like Blawan, West Norwood Cassette Library, Hypno, and Kowton have all given some of their finest productions or remixes to the label – a favorite in this vein is the smokey jazz-club sampling shuffle-skip of Hypno’s Koko, a true gem.

But the label’s breakout sound has surely been the beguiling Syncope by Beastie Respond. A beautiful piece of uncanny music that draws equally from Drum and Bass, Dub, Dancehall and Chilled Out Hip-Hop, it’s one of the best examples of the current trend of DnB producers using increasingly tricky rhythms to give the illusion of both 85 bpm hip-hop (or in this case, with a 4×4 beat, almost slow disco) and the frenetic poly rhythms of Jungle. It is a sound that’s most closely associated with the producer dBridge, his label Exit Recordings, and what’s been termed the “Autonomic sound” of this particular strain of modern Drum and Bass – a sound hugely influenced by the “is it head nod or dance music?” slippery-ness that is Dubstep’s most impressive achievement to date. And frankly it’s an amazing breath of fresh air to the genre of Drum and Bass, reviving many veteran’s interest in a sound that’s accesible enough for a new generation of listeners who till now only knew DnB as classic ragga, harsh tear outs, or cheesy over-the-top atmospherics.

Now, not to pigeonhole Pedersen into only this one sound – he’s got musical skills that stand out on some darker and more straight-ahead productions, as well, geared to a more traditional DnB audience. But his syncopations are at their most impressive in this rhythmic netherland, so it’s not surprising that Teal is releasing a second single from him in March. This one, the label’s 5th, is 2 tracks, “Be Quiet” and “No More”, and once again, “No More” is just killer, full of crisp clean sounds that tumble over each other, constantly pinging back and forth between a head nod and a skank.

Beastie Respond says he has some other tracks and remixes coming soon. If both record labels and producers the world over can embrace this sort of tricky, intelligent music that works both on the dancefloor and in headphones, then the future of electronic dance music is bright indeed.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

Don’t miss Matt’s write-up of selections from 2011′s musical landscape – complete with a couple of recent choices from his more than 100 mixes:
The Music of 2011: Kid Kameleon Picks, Om Unit Mix, Techno Mix

Make a New Year’s Resolution you can keep: listen to great music every day. After all, providing creative input to yourself is a big part of your role as an artist.

Now, as many of us return to the work grind, it’s a chance to give our ears some fresh inspiration.

2011 Albums

Shigeto – Full Circle Remixes (Ghostly)
Stellar remixes from the best of the best of the beats.

They Live – Cancel Standard (Exit)
Spooky abstract drumstep from Consequence and Joe Seven. Best DnB album in years.

LV feat. Joshua Idehen – Routes (Keysound)
The master thinkers of dubstep with the voice of the streets of London.

Long Arm – The Branches (Project: Mooncircle)
DJ Cam for 2011 – Russian prodigy blending jazz and beats.

Africa HiTech – 93 Million Miles (Warp)
Juke from Outaspace – Mark Pritchard and Steve Spacek shine together.

fLako – Mesektet (Project: Mooncircle)
Best beat tape of the year – Germany’s soul producer hits just right.

Com Truise – Galactic Melt (Ghostly)
Melting VHS tapes, 80s fuzz and big snares from Ghostly’s other prodigy.

Baobinga – Joint Venture (Build)
Best dance album of the year in the UK funky vein – each track is a collab with the best of the best in the UK Funky world.

Alva Noto – Univrs (Raster Noton)
The master raster blaster.

Bytone – Symeta (Raster Noton)
The other master raster blaster.

Surreal Estate Compilation (Frite Nite)
Best comp of the year — Paul Salva collects 17 stellar tracks from the West Coast and beyond. Proud this came out of California.

EPs

Indigo – Zero Point (On The Edge)
Pure liquid bliss at all tempos from Manchester’s genius.

Easy & Center of the Universe – Pythagoras Falafel Calamity (Harmonia)
Squeee gets lost in Turkey. Ed.: My album title of the year, easy.

Moa Pillar – The Moon and Thunder Dance (G5)
Over-the-top beats from Russia.

Eloq – Galactic Neckbreaks (Hobby Industries)
Rubbery, silly and crackin’, from Denmark.

Sines – Hater Blockas (B.Yrslf Division)
Sines is the most creative dance music producer in dubstep/footwork at the moment.

Walton – Aggy EP (Hyperdub)
Marrying UK Funky with 90′s Sheffield Bleep techno.

Christopher Bissonnette – The Banal and the Profound (Chat Blanc)
Pure ambient bliss. His best release yet.

Hatti Vatti – You (New Moon)
Like Indigo, but Polish – pure genius. Soul-touching.

Rain Dog – See Hear (Cut)
Best release from DFRNT’s Cut label. Lush beats for the ears.

Randomer – Obstuse (Super)
Best of many superb EPs from the man with a golden ear for drums.

Nguzunguzu – Timesup (Fade To Mind)
The weirdos at their best and most minimal and synthy – first release on Kingdom’s label.

Fedbymachines – Undertow (Broken Bubble)
Beautiful release from a stellar dutch musician – one to watch.

Kuhn – Slime Beach (Civil)
A madman prankster from NYC taking both sidechaining and beats to a new level.

1000names – Machine City (Svetlana Industries)
Svetlana’s AND 1000names’ best release yet – complex, thoughtful beats.

Abjo – Sankofa (Self-Released)
West Coast soul soldier at his most creative.

Kouta – Orinda (Self-Released)
Bay Area local who I know little about, but sounds as close to Agraph as anyone I’ve heard.

El Kid – Hypnonis (Left Blank)
Complex and beguiling, an artist very much on his own tip.

DJ Rum – Mountains (2nd Drop)
Mysterious artist with a super solid grasp of dub for 2011.

Baconhead – Astrosludge (eat Concrete)
More pranksters with four stellar beat/dance tracks. The world will know their name.

Wheez-ie – Keep Yer Chin Up (Embassy)
Stellar year for Wheezie – non-chicago-ians taking Footwork in all sorts of awesome directions

Singles

Orphan101 – Propa / Dissemble
(Decarhythm)
Superb cross of techno and dubstep on one of the year’s best labels.

Brokenchord – A Girl of 13 Summers / Orion (Team Acre)
Lithuanian beat wonderkid who caught Radiohead’s ears.

Objekt – The Goose That got Away / Tinderbox (White)
The mysterious king of the techno/dubstep crossover’s debut.

Appleblim & October – Ny Fizzzzzz / Fountains of Paradise (Schmorgasboard)
New label debut for Bristol stalwarts – dubby dance-y goodness.

Addison Groove – This is It / Make Um Bounce (Tectonic)
808s and electro kicks from Headhunter’s alterego.

Presk – And Cut / Mold (Punch Drunk)
Another great debut crossing UK Funky and dubstep – solid and inexorable.

Om Unit vs. Kromestar – Solar Cycle /
Merkabah (Cosmic Bridge)
Favorite Om Unit release of the year, ranks with his best.

Kahn – Illy / Tehran (Punch Drunk)
Mysterious, rich, thick dance music — both tracks awesome.

Dub Phizix & Skeptical – Marka / Rags (Exit)
The drumstep anthem of the end of the year.

Arkist – Fill Your Coffee / Rendezvous (Applepips)
Impossible not to love these tracks for their gorgeous switch-ups.

Instra:Mental / dBridge – From The Start / Detuned Heart (Autonomic)
Set the tone for the best of the year in drumstep – floating, haunting, unique.

Bonus: Om Unit Mix

Matt also includes a special mix, exclusively composed of the work of Om Unit, whom he describes as “one of my favorite producers of 2011.” That makes this the perfect addition to the selections above. -Ed.

Om Unit 2011 Mix by kidkameleon

Om Unit’s been one of my favorite producers for the last couple years running. I thought I’d take a bunch of his tracks from this year and string them together as a sort of end of year thing. Hope you enjoy the result! Much respect to the master – let’s get him to the US in 2012!

01. Om Unit – Naiad
02. Om Unit vs. Kromestar – Merkabah
03. Krampfhaft – I Needed You (Om Unit Remix)
04. Om Unit – Fibonnaci 10
05. Comma – Mezcal Hologram (Om Unit Remix)
06. Om Unit – An Eternal Way
07. Silent Dust – The Giant (Om Unit Remix)
08. Ital Tek – War of the Ants (Om Unit Remix)
09. Arp 101 And Om Unit – Dr Funkenstein
10. Om Unit – Cold World
11. Starkey – Lost in Space (feat. Charli XCX) (Om Unit Remix)
12. Take – Juniper (Om Unit Remix)
13. Pixelord – Cybernator (Om Unit Remix)
14. Om Unit – Prawn Cocktail
15. Om Unit – The Timps (Alternative Version)
16. Om Unit x Lorn – Obsidian

Bonus! Bonus! Decarhythm Mix

Kid Kameleon this week released a terrific playlist on the Decarhythm Podcast series. It’s not strictly about 2011, but it’s good listening, so let’s keep the playlists going right through the weekend. -Ed.

Decarhythm Podcast 7 = Me! [kidkameleon.com]

In Case You Missed It:

As part of our exclusive coverage of 2011′s music exclusively by guys who are named Matt, CDM’s Matt Ganucheau also offered up a mix of music for CDM looking back at last year.

2011 Mix by ganucheau

Rediscovering 2011′s Music: Ganucheau’s 2011 CDM Mix, SoundCloud-able, from the California Coast

About the Author

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music who has over 100 mixes floating around the net. His love of beats basically knows no bounds.
http://www.kidkameleon.com

If you can find a spot in the rotation with your Mannheim Steamroller collection for something a bit different, CDM reader Leigh Walsh of Cork, Ireland sends in her work. She describes it as “punky gothy electronic … for Christmas,” with any proceeds benefiting Autism research. The single sounds crazy, but for me, things get good with the game world-like, shimmering “Secret Inside the Ice Level” and “Melody for the Sewn Princess” tracks.

I can find myself mentally wandering an 8-bit ice cave level right now…

Loving her work, hoping to here more, hoping not to get folks’ genders wrong next time… oops.

Heck, let’s take this playlist a little further out.

One darned trippy Christmas: HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF! By London-based artist Affie Yusuf, via SoundCloud:

HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF by AFFIE YUSUF

Thanks, Laila!

If that doesn’t cleanse your palette after hearing too many of the Christmas standards on repeat, I just can’t help you.

Now, go and use this to freak out your families and friends.