Super sick London grime producer Mr. Mitch just released his new EP, “The Last Stand” out now on his label Gobstopper. Mr. Mitch remixes some tracks by J-Sweet, and J Beatz. Have a listen on his Soundcloud, you will be stoked you did.
Also, there is this ill website for new artists called Beatfighter. Beat Kombat! Every week there are track battles. Blood will be spilt. People can vote on which beat they are feeling the most, and the one that wins, gets the track released.
A really dope freestyle session erupts while shuffling though Mali Boi’s stash of new beats. This went on for over twenty minutes and was nothing short of awesome as ST 2 Lettaz, Yung Clova, MUMMZ, and Boog Nice all traded social, ethical, and political views over some sweet production. Check out both the dope vids, and shouts to Geng-Grizzly and Note-D!
Str8 outta the virtual far side is the brand new mixtape Silica Gel from James FerraroAKA Bebetune$. It is being released under this new monikerBodyguardand it’s pretty dope, super bizarre and kinda unexplainable. It’s like he wants to just bend and shift things you have already heard into soundscapes or some shit. Craze amounts of auto tuning going on here. It’s sultry. Def some of his best work.
This mix tape is pretty out there. I will say that it’s a perfect after midnight mix, it you are coming down off something, or smoking in your room with the door locked. Maybe cuddling with your kitty. Really chill, and it just echos and gets more viscous the more you listen to it. It kinda gives you auditory hallucinations as it oozes all over your eardrums and makes a big mess. Check it out after the Jump!
Jokers of the Scene who you know from our Holiday Lookbook, their side project Blank Capsule (a collaboration with VitaminsForYou), and just generally being awesome, are futzing around finding a feline. What we have here is a dope new video for “Black Mountie” by JOTS. Hope your a cat person!
Written by Jokers of the Scene and Mike H, they spend their time driving a Mercedes around Los Angeles desperately looking for their lost cat. “Black Mountie” follows their journey as they wheat paste and nail up signs for their dear lost cat. They even put one up right out side our Mishka LA store! The ending is really tripped out, so make sure you keep watch till the end!
Everybody be sure to have their gag-balls at the ready this coming Saturday night, as matters are bound to take a turn way, way dark at St. Vitus in Brooklyn. Trouble and Bass OG, and friend to Мишка, Star Eyes will be DJing a set for the masses at some point throughout the course of the evening, which should prove every bit as riveting as the mixes she’s made for us in the past. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing the OV Curse mixtape she compiled in conjunction with Dust La Rock a little while back, I suggest you do so now. As if you’re in need of any more incentive to listen, it also happens to contain the best Grauzone tune having to do with Polar Bears…
Luncay is a strictly dark engagement with the DJs spinning Goth, EBM, Industrial, Death Rock and just really anything that make you feel miserable and dance all at once. For a taste of what to expect download Ov Curse above or Star Eyes older 7H3 H4x0R M1X. The evening will also feature sets by the plainly named DJ’s Omar and Albert, and promises the appearance of special guests. While I currently have no knowledge pertaining to the identity of these special guests, I’m assuming they’ll give you the urge to get out on the floor, and tear shit up just like Star Eyes herself. Plus, it only costs a mere 5 bucks to get into this shindig, so you really have no choice but to show up… So lace up those dancin’ shoes, and prepare for an evening that should, in my estimation, live up to its name in every respect.
Saturday June 23rd, 12-4am Saint Vitus
1120 Manhattan Ave
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
21+ | $5 Cover
So this is going viral as we speak but it is just too good to not post. Best Worst thing i’ve seen in awhile. Music Video version of the Room? Possibly. Some teen pop wannabe named Rebecca Black and her song called “Friday”. The song is great by itself but with the video it really reaches awhole new level.
Now for the bonus. I made a instrumental so you guys can make your own REMIXES. That’s right, let’s see what you got. My roommates and I have even started it all off for you. Instrumental and ACE OF BASS REMIX below.
It seems the ever-elusive white whale of the rap world has been spotted on the horizon yet again. Is it just me, or is this like the third or fourth “first single” for Dr. Dre‘s Detox that I’ve heard in as many years? It’s hard to keep getting pumped up for this CD, after all it has been slated for release for the better part of ten years. Maybe it’s just because I’m from southern California originally, but I just can’t help but believe Dre has one more great album in him. Unfortunately his recent antics haven’t done much to encourage me. Between becoming a headphones mogul and taking so many steroids that his head looks all weird and swollen like Brad Pitt in Troy, it’s been difficult to pick out the Dre of my youth.
Luckily “Kush” is much better than the last supposed single, the stunningly bad synth jam “Under Pressure” that featured probably the laziest Jay-Z verse ever. This one’s got classic Dre cronie Snoop Dogg and a back from the dead Akon (seriously, where the fuck has that dude been at?). It’s a weed song, ‘natch, and has those thunderously slow boom-baps and plinking pianos that the Dr. does so damn well. He even comes out of the box with a rock solid verse. Dude sounds hungrier than he has in a while. Color me (cautiously) excited.
Northern Norway, the Arctic Circle, where seasons are marked by Midnight Sun and Polar Night, where Northern Lights kaleidoscope across the sky as a matter of course; that, right there, is where you’ll find Tromso. Norwegian techno doesn’t exist only here—Bergen, Oslo, so many places brim with beat—but this glacier of a city gives it different, more atmospheric breath. Warmth nuzzled inside the chill. Anneli Drecker started here, Mental Overdrive, Royksopp. Erlend Oye’s from Bergen, but you’ll hear some Tromso in his production; the big sky of it, the space.
But Tromso’s biggest and most continual claim to fame is the Insomnia Festival: this behemoth of a Euro techno get-together piling into the city every October for a week-plus. So in honor of this year’s fest (that I desperately wish I were attending someonebuymeaplaneticketplease) and Royksopp’s latest release (which is a real Tromso homage), let’s take Beats Way Sick on a shivery and totally not definitive stroll through the city’s techno lineage.
From the just-released Senior. Maybe not Tromso proper, but it spins with that characteristic tone: heavenly space and minor chords shifting, shifting, to find their major.
Originally a quartet featuring both members of Royksopp, this jam comes from 1999’s Cargo Cult: the album Gaute Barlindhaug (a.k.a. Kolar Goi) recorded solo under the same name.
From 2004‘s 083. Arguably one of the most influential Tromso artists—especially on Norwegian techno as a whole—Per Martinsen dodges back and forth between this sort of floaty ambiance and over-the-top floor stompers. Both are pretty flawless.
Per Martinsen’s collab project with Aggie Peterson. The more sassy and pop-laden of the Tromso bunch, this one’s from 2007’s Love! Revolution–though their debut Bedsit Theories (when Aggie was paired up with DJ Rune Lindbaek and Per was only an occasional collaborator) is totally worth hunting down.
Solo work from Geir Jennsen, of Tromso’s 90s ethereal Bel Canto (also featuring Anneli Drecker, a frequent Royksopp collaborator). From the 1994 release of the same name, “Patashnik” hints at the purely ambient material Biosphere would eventually create, most notably the epic Substrata on Brian Eno’s All Saints label.
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Drum Island – La Danse Electrique
Trio featuring Royksopp’s Torbjorn Brundtland, early Frost’s Rune Lindbaek and frequent contributions from Aedena Cycle’s Gaute Barlindhaug. 1997’s Drum Island is their only release, but it’s among the most dynamic and addictive tech-chill albums you’ll hear.
From 2001’s Trobbel, released on Bergen powerhouse Telle Records. Born in Tromso but relocated to Bergen, Torske rides the line between the two cities’ relatively distinctive scenes. Still, you hear a lot of Torske in Norway’s Tromso-influenced upcomers—check out Boska. You’ll see.
Won’t lie: This month’s column was, initially, doomed to be phoned in. Jams just weren’t hitting me. All these arguably important releases flew lazily round my head, and what did I do? Spin 90s rave and commercial house. Exclusively. And let me tell you, once you’ve spent 30 days holed up with Technotronic and loads of jungle, it becomes markedly more difficult to get stoked about Conrad Schnitzler on the new m=minimal. I mean, you get stoked, it’s seriously good. I just wasn’t in that place.
But then a fire-shock of lightning. Tell me: how do these things happen? I stumble onto Redlight—way later, months later, than I should have—and here we are. This Bristol producer, formerly known as Clipz, is working with some of the raddest girls around, dropping grime and dubstep and jungle and 90s rhythms whatever other mish-mash in the most neon-sick and irresistible way.
I can’t remember the last time I was so unequivocally excited about a bunch of songs; they defy description. Words just sully them. Check it.
Things that sound like bad drugs, dirty hallucinogens: welcome to my summer. It’s been a season of sonic nightmares, beats that hypnotize and swarm, jams conjuring sex and psychosis and so much lava-blood pouring down the walls—and listen, I’m barely even referencing Witch House here.
Some seriously intense sound designers have been working in the creepshow realm too, combining minimal and horror, ambient with gore, and the whole thing comes off subtle and dangerous, like quiet satanism. Acid without the acid, you know, or with the acid if you need authenticity. But some of these jams are so circular and maddening, I’m not sure you will.
Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld collaborates with sound manipulator Carsten Nicolai (a.k.a. Alva Noto) on a project that feels destined for a padded room. The rest of the Ret Marut Handshake EP isn’t quite this insane—skip the cover of “One” altogether—but it’s worth it for the screaming, bent-saw backing vocals alone.
Tibetan spiritualism. Forest covens. Ouija boards. Demdike Stare combines all manner of creepy touch-points into albums that sprawl and come at you, like hell bubbling up from beneath the earth. This one’s from Forest of Evil, the first album in their 2010 trilogy; second installment Liberation Through Hearing drops next week, and it’s even more intense.
Fairmont’s a subtle one. This B-side to the All Dreams Are Nightmares single pulses with this restrained, trance-inducing texture—sort of schizophrenic in all its weird background warbling—but it takes awhile to get at you. Listen to it in a dark room, alone, on repeat.
Everything hollow and echoing, snares like crunching bones; Caulfield hasn’t been this simple in years, and “Hush”—from Dumb Unit’s 10 Year Tango compilation EP—is a thousand times better for it. Such a dark, sexy murder of a song.
Ambient composer Frost creates a languorous, terrifying track (from recent pseudo-masterpiece By The Throat) that sometimes feels like a lost interlude from The Fragile—except even more gorgeous, expansive and nightmarish. Sorry, Trent.
