Jon Hopkins album Immunity is dark and layered with wonderful textures that are open for Remixing and Abandon Window (Previously a TOTW track) has been given this honour by Moderat.
Keeping the Original stripped down sound Moderat manage to create something that manages to stay faithful whilst adding a more rhythmic club aesthetic from the get go:
This week measures the halfway point for the year and the last track in my Spring collection which will be up on bandcamp as an album for downloading soon. The aim for the spring collection was to release a track each week that contained at least one instrument with a coiled spring as its sauce (namely Guitar or Piano) and I achieved it.
Signing off was a way to send off things with a more ambient sound something of a pallet cleanser before the summer collection which will roll on next week. Have a listen bellow:
My Love for the FEZ soundtrack has been mentioned many times on this blog and it deserves to.
Disasterpeace managed to create a soundtrack that both suits the game perfectly but also stands the test of time for its own with instrumentation and melodies that manage to excel for remixing.
Solar Fields did this as part of Side F of the Fez Remix album for the track Puzzle and turned an uplifting and bouncy track into something slower and allot darker. I really like the sence of power throughout this track as it slowly ebbs and flows to its conclusion:
During this week I got hooked on the repetitive dark bass line that opens this track. Yet again teenage engineering OP1 provided the background to most of the synth noises and an electric guitar crashes into the track halfway through turning the whole thing into something new.
Yet again I’ve been forgetting to post my weekly beats music on my blog, Although I have still been making it so during this week I will add what i have been doing for the past few weeks.
This track was made with guitar and my OP1:
The Go! Teams debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike is still a joyous melting pot of different genres of music nine years after its release.
The Blending of Hiphop with Indie/Garage rock creates something infectiously joyous and a perfect accompaniment to the warm weather were currently having in the uk.
Listen to Ladyflash Below:
The opening track from Royksopp & Robyn’s mini EP is an absolute stunner. A masterclass in restraint, you get a track over 9 minutes long that teases but never follows the traditions of a floor filling lead synths. Instead we get a brooding soundscape with great stereo extension of vocals mixed with woodwind instruments and a pulsating bass line that drives the track along:
Röyksopp & Robyn – Monument from It’s Forever Kids on Vimeo.
This week was a bit of a struggle. I almost came to the completion of a track by Wednesday but didn’t like where it had gone. However instead of scrapping the whole thing I stripped down and sampled all the individual instruments to the core elements I liked.
I then added these fundamental samples to a collection of drum racks in ableton live and by triggering the samples with ableton push created a new track from the core ideas of the original one. The majority of sounds are from the OP1 with a sampled 909 for the drums and guitar played by myself and then chopped up for the new track:
I have sung the praises of the John Talabot album fin several times on this site. But two years on It’s still a staple of my collection. If you like electronica with a slightly alternative bent then you owe it to yourself to get the album and hopefully you will get as much from it as I do.
Oro Y Sangre demonstrates this blend of alternative and mainstream with its inovative use of sampling mixed with the clean edges and mathematical beats of dance music.
After several weeks of a more structured fare I decided to go back to something more repetitive and hypnotic. The basis of this track was made using several of the sequencers of Teenage Engineerings OP-1 but sending the midi information out over usb to some synths in Reaktor.
Tombola was a key sequencing element from the OP1 which gave me little control as to the rhythm of allot of the instrumentation giving the track a rather woozy feel. Once the randomized base of the track was there I then added guitar and bass instrumentation, trying to follow the timing of the piece before finally adding drums to a fixed tempo. The aim was to create something that is quite hard to pick up on as the instruments drift in and out of each other and give a mixed feeling of Loss, hopelessness and tiredness: