Sunday 31 October 2010

Ollie Macfarlane

Ollie Macfarlane is a producer and "to some extent" a DJ from Bristol, UK.

He's an active member over on the Future Garage Forum who constantly uploads fresh and interesting productions.

His variation within his productions are what keep me interested in this guy!

He likes to call his music 'Bristol Garage'

Here are a few highlights from his current Soundcloud offerings....

'Every Time' with it's 'The Streets-Blinded By The Lights' synth sounds, great female pitched vocals and a switch between half and double time.

'Claustrophobic' with Ollie's signature pitched vocals, a beautiful delayed soft synth intro and a disgusting drop which comes from nowhere!


'Coma' takes an ambient experimental sound, with it's distant piano, rain drops and a haunting sax.


He also produced a bootleg of 'The Streets-Blinded BY The Lights' and you can download it HERE.

I expect to hear more from this talented 19 year old in the near future!

Benji

Friday 29 October 2010

Poivre

Poivre-Wobble In Paradise

This track is pure unadulterated party music! Enjoy it!


Roska and Untold

A little late but thought I'd share with you the latest collab from Roska and Untold.

You can hear Roska's signature Funky sounds rubbing shoulders with Untold's dirty bass sounds to create a perfectly hypnotic House/Funky/Garage/Grime crossover.

'Myth' with it's trumpet lead riff is backed up by it's percussive marimba sound which drives the song along before the obvious Untold influence kicks in with the dirty 'talking bass' sounds!



'Long Range' takes a more percussive but minimal approach with it's short organ stabs a teasing trumpet line, that never quite gets 'there' and a few layers of droning sounds that keep the hypnotic feel constant through the song.



I expect to hear more releases from these guys on the NMBRS label.

All links and more info for purchase etc are on the NMBRS site HERE


Deadboy-Haloween mix 2010

Deadboy-pioneer of all things 'Future Garage' recorded a mix for Haloween, this isn't his usual 'Sound' but it proves how diverse his song selections are....

Take a listen

Halloween mix 2010 by Deadboy

Sunday 17 October 2010

Long time no blog, Canblaster, Mista Men and some weird balooon sh%t!!

Hey all sorry for the lack of posts I've been away from a week to reflect on an amazingly busy year!

Due to the lack of posts I'll do one mega one with a couple of exclusive tracks.


Interview with Canblaster



I've recently had the pleasure to share a few words with Canblaster about Club Cheval, his views on UK music and a new and exciting label...

Here are a couple of Canblaster's productions for those of you who don't know what he's about.

The crunky-American vibes of 'Thunderdome Got Crunk'


And the electro dancefloor vibes of 'Chicken Run'



Here's a remix of a J-Wow song he's remixed. Click on the songs comments to download the song for free.


down to the interview.....

Cedric

Can you tell us about your past and what inspired you to start making beats?

Back in the day I was a heavy gamer, and was really obsessed by video game soundtracks. This obsession became even clearer when I discovered a whole bunch of games centred on music, like Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, Pop'n Music and so on. I ended up producing the music for these games. In Trocadero in London’s Piccadilly Circus there’s a gaming arcade with some old beats I did in college.

You have some new remixes waiting to be mastered and released. What are they?

Yeah, this summer has been so busy – I’ve spent it doing remixes! I missed Joker and Mohawke at Field Day because I had to finish my remixes for Rusko and Underworld – I was so mad! I’ve got remixes for Style of Eye & Slagsmalsklubben, O. Children, Johnny Moog and Drop The Lime. I’ve just finished remixing ‘Dinosaurs With Guns’ by Teki Latex too. Expect big things from Sound Pellegrino in the coming months – Teki and Orga are gonna surprise everyone. Right now I’m working on a remix for Klever and Jwow from Buraka, and finishing my 2nd EP for Nightshifters.

What are your plans to push these remixes out to the wider world?

I guess I'll just keep working a lot with Club Cheval, my French crew, along with Myd, Sam Tiba and Panteros666. Releasing the first EP on a UK label instead of a French one (Sound of Sumo, MelĂ©'s label) helped me to get my music accessible to people outside of France, at least on the DJ side of things. Sinden, Martelo, Nightslugs and Oneman have done a lot for me as well, introducing me to lots of people. Thanks to them I'm getting some UK support from people like Braiden, Greenmoney and Ben UFO. Having my 2nd EP signed on Nightshifters helped me to have lots of remixes too – DJDS and Jubilee are incredible.

All producers have their own method of making a song. What's yours, and what equipment/software/hardware are you using?

That's a good question! I try to work more and more with hardware, especially for the synths which are essential in most of my tracks. I got a Juno 106, a Korg Triton for acoustic sounds and an old Yamaha synth for the mystical side, Flutes and Detroit Choirs. As for software I use Ableton Live. Oh, and I play the talkbox too – I’ll be playing a bit of it for a remix next month.

I first came across you through a blog with your free track 'Funkstar Deluxe-Easy Rework'. I loved the swung beat and grimey, hard-hitting bass! You've carried this through onto a few of your productions – is it a conscious nod to UK underground music, or was it something you fell into?

Actually I’m a huge fan of most aspects of UK electronic music. When I was younger, I used to listen to a lot of big beat like Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers then I fell into old school rave beats. I always preferred playing around 140bpm than 130bpm and you guys in the UK are really good at that. When the double tempo/synth side of dubstep came in, with people like Joy Orbison, Untold and James Blake, I was like damn, music really went a step further. Even today I’m still fascinated by the production technique of the old Basement Jaxx records – the way they overproduce their tracks. They’ll always have a major influence on the way I approach making my music.

Can you describe your music and what makes you different from others out there?

I think it's just the influences that are different. I listen to a lot of 90s electro, in particular from Detroit – they have sick ideas. I have a weakness for early 90s R’n’B and New Jack Swing too – their chords are amazing. Other than that, tribal, ballroom, UK beats, juke and J-pop are big sources of inspiration these days.

What are your plans for DJing? Do you want to be a touring DJ, or is this something that comes hand in hand with producing?

I was producing way before DJing, but on the other hand all my productions are really dancefloor oriented. I really like DJing a lot, and my favourite part of it is probably the Back 2 Back events.

What producers should we all be aware of and what music do you enjoy playing in your DJ sets?

I think my sets go like this: Club Cheval stuff; UK beats (Nightslugs, Swindle, Sinden, Ramadanman, Purplestep, Terror Danjah, Grime and RinseFM stuff); ATL - TEXAS - LA connection (LOL Boys, Brenmar, Dubbel Dutch and Samosound Boy – quite a scene out there!); Ballroom (MikeQ and Qween Beats production); Juke (Nate and Elmoe); Tribal (Erick Rincon and DJ Mouse); and finally a few interesting French mates who managed to make something interesting out of afrobeat, like Douster, Jay Weed or the Young Gunz crew.

What’s your ultimate goal as a musician/DJ?

A live electro band of course. I’ll sort this out very soon!

And finally…can you tell us a secret?

Hmm… what about this? There’s this forthcoming label called Pelican Fly. I’ve heard a preview of the first tracks and they’re the most incredible thing I’ve heard all year. It’s Mystical Flute Juke stuff and it’s already caught the attention of a few big UK DJs. I’m not allowed to tell you anymore right now, but you should deffo write this name down somewhere.

Here is the track Canblaster kindly gave our blog and a few selected DJ's.
It's a bootleg of a Fis-T song hope you enjoy





Mista Men-Interview

Fellow Northerners Mista Men are Mella Dee, Woozee and Kid Kosy. They come from Doncaster and are three people with very different musical backgrounds but with a passion for art, film, video games and skating which brought them together back in 2007

Mista Men are one of those artists that keep popping up allover facebook/forums/remixes of artists I follow and decided it's about time I paid some attention to what's going on in their World!

Here are a couple of highlights from their Soundcloud page:-

Sure Footed reminds me of some of the Zinc stuff from his recent Crack House sounds...

Mista Men - Sure footed (soundcloud) by Mista Men

And the UK Funky vibes of 'Gully' are something I'd expect to hear on Rinse.fm! Love it!!


Here are a few words from Mista Men.

Hey there can you tell us about your past and what inspired you to start making beats?

(WooZee) well we all started out mixing vinyl, Ryan started first with hip hop then me n Joel started about a year later when we all got massively into drum and bass. about a year into learning how to mix a local dj called Simon Elliot gave us his Reason cds and we've been messing about with sounds ever since
(Mella Dee) Although I was into drum and bass, I quickly got turned onto dubstep, and the natural thing of going back to it's roots spurred me on to re find Garage which I was into as a little kid, then obviously that switched into the house/garage sound we have now, and eventually, we all got onto making that sound together.

What's your plans to push your music out to the wider world?

(Mella Dee) Just to keep pushing our sound out there & getting more releases obviously,
we have a few lined up at the moment and want to keep the momentum going.
Hopefully if we keep making good music people will keep wanting to release it.

All producers have 'their' method of making a song, what's yours and what equipment/software/hardware are you using?

Generally one of us will start an idea then someone else will have a stab then pass it back or just run with it and finnish it on our own.
We all use Ableton live with plugins like Massive, Vanguard, and Predator with a computer keyboard and mouse,
we really want to get some analog synths on the go soon.

What's your opinions on the future of music distribution and the way people will acquire it?

(WooZee) music will never die, how people aquire it will always change. one day people will be banging on about a new type of internet that goes
directly to your brain and worrying about how they'll be able to make money without downloads.

(Mella Dee) For me vinyl releases these days can be a bit more of a sign of quality, like if a label actually goes to the effort and cost of putting out vinyl there you can generally say it's more likely going to be a quality track.
And personally as someone who collects vinyl I hope it never dies!

Can you describe your music and what makes it different from others out there?

(WooZee) i dont think you can really put a stamp on our 'sound' i guess if anything would set us apart
from some others is that we try not to stick to the same routine. We just go at it making what we feel like really.

What's your plans for DJing, do you wan't to be a touring DJ or is this something that comes hand in hand with the producing?

(Mella Dee) Obviously the logical route from making tunes is to play them out,
we plan to hopefully get some bookings as a collective as aposed to the ones we get as separate dj's now.
Hopefully spread the Mista Men sound world wide, good and proper.

What producers should we all be aware of and what music do you enjoy playing out?

(Mella Dee) There's so much good stuff coming at moment, few names for me have to be C.R.S.T, Braiden, Breach, Jamie George,Didz, Jamie Grind and Deep Teknolgi, Loads more as well, it's stuff from producers like these and also garage classics that really get me hypoe in a set.

(WooZee) yeah the C.R.S.T guys are smacking it, really capturing the oldschool vibe but revamping it. I'm really loving Kyle Halls tracks at the moment. its all about Detroit techno for me. playing out I love playing Julio Bashmore, Deadboy, Para, C.R.S.T and our stuff.
I'm still finding my groove with the djing side of things though.

Whats your ultimate goal as a Musician/DJ?

(Mella Dee) Just to keep doing what we're doing basically, enjoying making music, and also enjoying the fact people like what were doing and have taken to our sound as producers. Dj wise it's always just gonna be keep on playing on, experiencing more places and different crowds, you can't beat making a rammed out room bounce!

(WooZee) Yeah it would be good to drop one of our tracks to a couple of hundred thousand people and everyone going mental


I hope to see Mista Men DJing as a collective soon because their differences in musical background, it would make a really interesting set!


They've kindly given away a track for our blog

Mista Men-Sell My Soul


Finally I returned from my holiday today and I've been working through the blogs I follow and found this interesting video on the Squeegie blog, just watch it....


I was expecting something comical at the end but it seems it's genuine!


Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.


Thanks for reading Benji.