not another best-of-2011 list

updated: that list i made that one time of producers/djs/labels who have tumblair ›

…It would be wrong to subtract araabMUZIK’s own considerable talent from the equation: even when dealing with other people’s material as on Electronic Dream, his ear pummeling hip-hop beats that nevertheless place as much emphasis on melody is rare in his world, and his emergence is well-timed, taking advantage of a mainstream rap scene obsessed with the shittiest of lowest common denominator music. Electronic Dream is merely a way to take this obsession to the extreme, literalizing the hints at trance that so many prominent producers, rappers, and singer succumb to now.

It really just comes from when Travis and I had to come up with a name pretty quickly, when it turned out the first songs we were working on, just for fun, were going to be released. The project actually started while my girlfriend, [designer and illustrator] Sougwen Chung, was abroad. There was a lot of stress in the relationship—we’ll just leave it at that. A lot of our early songs were in response to that. Sepalcure was actually the name of a piece she had done just before she left for Europe. We just thought it fit—it has that tomb reference [sepulchre: a tomb/burial chamber], and then there’s sepal, which refers to plant petals, and cure. It just all seemed to fit in with this idea we have of music being a healing force.

Anonymous asked: i love your blog! where do you find all your music? specifically, how would you download these?

thank you so so much !!! for real. 

i rely on a few methods when looking for new music, i just check up on all of them regularly/in rotation to see if there’s anything new/exciting:

• i subscribe to youtube channels (you can click through each of these to see who i subscribe to) (~~givin away mi seekritz 2 u guyth~~)
• i read twitter religiously, i follow many of my favourite producers/writers/managers/bloggers/label people/etc there. there’s a lot of information to take in so when i see something i want to come back to later (even if it’s just a “man this new ______ EP is great”), i ‘star’ it as a favourite and listen when i have the time.
• my soundcloud dash is also awesome because not only can i see new uploads from the artists i follow, i can also see what they’re favouriting and what they’re commenting on.
•  of course there’s also tumblr - but like twitter, tumblr is hard to keep track of. so for the blogs i really care about listening to, i follow them in my google reader. this way their posts are all listed there and i can mark them as ‘read’ as i get through them. now i don’t have to worry about listening to everything in my tumblr dash immediately when i come across it! (but on the other hand, this means sometimes posts end up piling up because i insist on making it through everything eventually.)
• in my google reader i follow some of the bigger music blogs and magazines like FACT, xlr8r, pitchfork, resident advisor, truants, hush house, etc. i’m also finding more musicians having their own blogs/tumblrs lately (oneman, deadboy, mele, loefah, ango, objekt…)
• i listen to boilerroom, rinsefm, percussionlab and sheer sounds. i also subscribe to podcasts (like sound pellegrino, electronic explorations, littlewhiteearbuds) and download mixes (i.e. from FACT, xlr8r, resident advisor, etcetctettecttec. there are mixes EVERYWHERE). the people who mix on BR and rinse have access to tons of music before it’s even announced as a forthcoming release, and if you’re listening carefully enough they often will say “here’s some new _______, forthcoming on ___________.” or if you read the boilerroom chat (ugh) people ID a lot of the tracks so you can make note of them for later.
• aaand most recently, facebook has turned into a solid method of hearing news from the artists you choose to ‘like.’

as far as downloading goes, you can always click through the posts originating from soundcloud to see if the track is available as a free download. usually if it’s downloadable i’ll indicate that somewhere, either in the body of the post or in the tags. if there’s no source it means i’ve uploaded it from my computer or am direct linking to somewhere, so there won’t be a download for that. if there’s something on youtube that you really like, you can rip it off youtube and have it in your itunes thanks to zamzar. zamzar is my best friend because even though youtube videos are usually not great quality, zamzar doesn’t make them any worse during the conversion process.

i think that’s all i had lined up to say. anyway. i hope this was helpful!

tl;dr - i have no life

~*~educational post~*~

jackmaster’s top 10 chicago tracks

G’DAY Y’ALL (yes angus i did just indeed say gday yall)

today i am going to do more than write “msafdjlksasdf” or “word” to caption a post (promo post!! i know, i hardly believe it either)

if you follow me on twitter (or here) you might notice that sometimes i’d go on a little jaunt to toronto to chill with my friends while they put on a webcast called ‘sheer sounds.’ now that i’m in montreal i can’t as easily participate BUT it’s been really nice to get to watch and listen every thursday night (9pm EST). 

essentially the idea behind it is/was that in canada we’re always tuning in to boiler room in the middle of the afternoon (i admit to having missed class to watch that stream), and now we have percussionlab not too far away in NYC (with a boss ass crew making it all happen on mondays). but what is there in toronto? NOTHING. nooooothing. i mean, a few bar nights with great music - futura, galapagos, and happy endings come immediately to mind - but that’s only great if you’re in toronto and can go. there’s nothing with that kind of interactive, far-reaching community thang that comes with a stream. so.. they’ve been working on getting this going, slowly but surely. 

big credit has to be given to ian schober, who has been pushing it to grow to where it is now (still a baby, but it exists and is picking up motion, which is huge). with his guidance, sheer sounds has been focussing on bringing together more of the understated toronto/montreal bass scene with the inclusion of sibian & faun (+ solo acts here & here), kevin mcphee, chris scott, and introducing ian’s own production with the track ‘ink’ included in the mix below. 

last week they had their first ‘guest’ set from toronto’s alex brooks (aka the world’s nicest dude), it was really fun and really quite good. it doesn’t really get much better than a bunch of friends doing what they love to do, which is i guess why i’m trying to share this with you now ‘cause i care and stuff. (plus next time i hope some of you might join me in the chat room, which i just figured out how to use. now i pretend it’s boiler room by going “ID???? ID? ID/????” but it’s not as fun when you’re by yourself y’know)

sooOoOOoOooO that’s it from me - here is a stacked, first-ever mix from sheer sounds, SM01 

tracklisting:

Woodbine (Women)
Fens (Klaus)
I’m Sorry (Sibian & Faun)
It’s Killing Me (Framework)
Could it Be (Dauwd)
Fill My Coffee (Arkist)
Family Affair (Hugo Frederick)
Maneuver (Lando Kal)
Close (Hackman)
Be Myself (Dark Sky)
Maje (The Chain)
Ink (Ian Schober)
Can’t Sleep (Scuba Remix) (Kryptic Minds Ft. Alys By)
Lumps - Technological (A1 Bassline)
Aquatic Family Affair (2562)
Untitled #002/2 (EQD)
CLK Recovery (Objekt)
Younger (Darling Farah)
Coast (Chris Scott)
Alicia (Mala)
Get In With You (Kevin McPhee)
Movin’ On (Xavier Leon)
Stone Cold (Groove Chronicles)

and, again, THURSDAYS. 9PM EST. SHEERSOUNDS.ORG 

luv u guys xooxoxoxoxoxxoxxxooooxoxoxoxoo

do the editors have any idea how tedious it is to read reviews and articles which take annoyingly broad swipes at the state of contemporary ‘dance’ music in an online publication that is one of the world’s eminent champions of contemporary dance music

Rubadub: Blawan & Pariah launch new label... ›

night slugs: a guide to the night slugs visual universe by bok bok ›

imagineallthegirls:

now we know where james blake has his album cover from.

pahahhahahahha

just to make this easier:

(via imagineallthegirls-deactivated2)

D&E: we need to talk about Blando...(scattered speculations on why the d&e soufflé ain't rising in 2011) ›