16.13 Listen to Excision

I'm a couple weeks late with this but Excision did a mix for Rob and its a mind-blower. Heavy, nasty dubstep, the kind thats seemingly being phased out for the Burial style stuff. A move the Disk is firmly opposed to.

16.12 Broken Note on Electronic Explorations

Been looking forward to this for a couple of weeks and it rules. Broken Note on Electronic Explorations. Heavy as fuck. For those not fucking with electronic music, now is a good time to start.

Electronic Explorations has become a staple for me over the last 2 months, and Rob's pre-mix selection is especially good here. Keeping a running tab of tracks that I need to cop from Gunjack, Bass Nectar, Somatic Response, Akira Kateshi, Stormfield, Ohmwork, and a non-jungle take on Buju Banton’s “Champion” from Kidnappa.

Listen here: http://electronicexplorations.org/the-show/051-broken-note/

16.11 Flying Lotus Drops Technical

Flying Lotus in Mexico City. Image via Dotmotion @ Flickr.

New HD fave, LA beat mangler Flying Lotus comes through with an amazing mix for BBC Radio 1's Essential Mix. Listen to that shit now.

http://www.newmixes.com/flying_lotus-essential_mix-sat-11-29-2008.html

FlyLo recently showed up on Rinse FM as a guest of the almighty N-Type. Unfortunately, I can't find the link anymore. I think it was at the Dubstep Forum, but I had no luck. Definitely track it down though.

Here's an interview to read whilst you enjoy the mix.

16.10 Truth & Justice by Aaron Spectre

For its 47th week (!), the excellent Electronic Explorations drops an exclusive Drumcorps mix “Truth & Justice”. Aaron Spectre is in top form, peep the playlist:

01 - Drumcorps - No Escape - [Unreleased]
02 - Nine Inch Nails - The Mark Has Been Made - [Nothing]
03 - Rotten sound - The Effects - [Spinefarm]
04 - Converge - Year Of The Swine / Conduit - [Equal Vision]
05 - Broken Note - war In The Making - [Ruff)
06 - Animosity - Terrorstorm - [Blackmarket)
07 - Animosity & Drumcorps - Mobs Over, Rob Me - [Manalive]
08 - Genghis Tron - The Feast (Drumcorps Remix) - [Unreleased test]
09 - Genghis Tron - Relief (Drumcorps remix) - [Relapse]
10 - This Will Destroy You - A Three-Legged Workhorse - [Magic Bullet]
11 - Nine Inch Nails - 2 Ghosts 1 - [The Null Corporation]

Host Rob Booth holds it down as well with jams from Bong-Ra, Converge, Botch (sounding like Unbroken meets June of '44 here), an amazing Nine Inch Nails song, Starkey and HD faves Soundmurderer & SK1.

Cop it here.

16.09 Cages CD's out now

The Cages “1” CD and “2/3” 2xCDs are out now and available at HD 017.

The kid, Zach Richter, was kind enough to help me screen-print the “2/3” package a month or so ago, but I had only to gotten to print the “1” package more recently. I just wrapped up burning the black-bottom CD’s so we’re certified.

Cages is a project of mine using non-audio digital files and ripping them through MP3 encoders to create music with them. For a period of time, I was grabbing anything I could to see if something interesting could be created from it. The highlights made it onto these releases (and some future ones).


2' 51" from Cages “2/3”

The design stemmed from the desire to make something neutral and cold. Noise releases are so often wrapped up in all kinds of angst and emotion that I’m more interested in visuals that plumb other depths. Furthermore, I liked the idea of this minimalist direction for sounds that have minimal human involvement. The image of the laptop noise-dude hitting play and then checking his e-mail becomes the laptop dude that doesn’t even bother to hit play. The Cages songs are a kind of audio ready-made; I pick a source, play the game and decide whether to keep the results. Of course, the frustrating things is that when it works I couldn’t imagine being able to conjure these sounds on purpose.

You can buy the limited-edition CD releases now in a package deal, both for $12 with a free copy of the HD 019 poster, or download the jams at Cages’ Virb page.

16.08 Lost at sea

Lest you thought, we was dead. We ain’t.

Things are bubbling to the surface. HD019 is printed up (as seen above) in a fine edition of 300 1-color prints, HD 014 is available here.

I'm sorry for the delays. This thing has been interrupting.

More missives shortly.

16.07 Ghost Call: cheap paper + tape version

As most anyone who has worked with me can testify, I am not very detail-oriented. Not ideal for a designer. When I worked at Intermedia Arts, I would often skip making full-size mock-ups of the wall graphics for exhibitions, and then be horrified at huge letter-spacing gaps in words or monstrous leading between lines. None of which is noticeable on the surface to most people, but its definately something you can feel. In an effort to turn over a new leaf, I've been making mock-ups of my projects and the results have been much better. The SMS series that I screen-printed with Dan Black was one of the first projects I've done, where when it was finished there were no instances of finding some easy-to-overlook mistake and thinking “Oh, well, that’s not a big deal”. Its fairly disturbing to look over the last 5 years worth of work and feel like none of it is truly done. (Now, every artist and designer I know will say “No one’s ever 100% percent happy with their work,” to which I reply “True, but my batting average is like 60%, so 85 would be awesome.”)
But, I mocked-up the new Ghost Call sleeve on Friday and I’m psyched on the results. The new version has a fold-over flap to give it some more weight.
The interior has a full-inside print of one of Kim’s MonoWood images. Its great to finally be using her images on projects. I feel like these landscape images sync up perfectly with the vibe of “Ghost Call.” We were just discussing whether to use the image additionally for a t-shirt.
The thing I’m most excited about for this package is that it will have an actual spine. I’m aware of the fact that pretty much every 12" on the planet has a printed spine on the jacket, but when you are making things by hand, this more or less doubles (or triples) the production time on the record. Every fold on the jacket is done using a tool that looks like a guillotine or a paper cutter, and is done one at a time. So, on the first pressing, it was a simple fold-over for 300 covers. Therefore, 300 folds. This one has 2 spines, so each cover is hand-creased 4 times. So, 62 records will be 248 folds. I am a dumb ass. On the other hand, I feel like this really adds something intangible to the overall essence of the project. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me to do this, but I was helping Dan print the vinyl version of these and said “Wait, did you print a spine on these?”. This also speaks to the absurd lengths Dan Black will go for quality. Hopefully that is starting to rub off on me and me days of glossing over the fine print are behind me.

Also, if you want to listen to the Ghost Call record in its entirety visit our Virb page. The 3rd track gets a little too compressed but overall it sounds great.

Just got back from visiting an Apple Orchard in Jordan MN to stand around in 23° weather for an hour-and-a-half. Go here to find out why.