DMb | Dance Music blog & Podcast

Seems everyone is rushing to get their live shows announced with some creative way of doing a video show to hide the fact that a one-man band just physically cannot be playing all of the instruments in a song live. With a few exceptions there haven’t really been many Electronic Musicians that have put on good live shows, and the word “live” is generally used to indicate that the artist may be triggering patterns or muting and unmuting tracks on the fly but generally not actually playing any instruments live. Personally I have nothing against this, what else can really be expected of one person? One man standing in front a few pieces of equipment, generally with a laptop in tow, doing a “live” show seems to generate less excitement than a DJ behind a pair of decks playing other people’s music.

The Solution
Stand in front of some mysterious piece of gear with lots of really cool looking synchronized 3D graphics and flashing lights to distract and hypnotize the crowd while bobbing your head to the music and moving your hands around like a conductor pushing buttons and occasionally pointing to the space above the crowd.

Underworld has always been one of the top Electronic Dance Music acts to put on a great live show. They always had the visuals provided by Tomato and an energetic vocalist jumping around the stage with a guitar.

Daft Punk pretty much set the stage for the current formula being used by many artists in the Electronic Music world with their Pyramid of lights and visuals. They also didn’t really play an instruments live it was more like they were tour guides through a mash-up of their entire discography. Entertaining, no doubt.

Etienne de Crecy did in next with his Visual Cube, taking the same formula as Daft Punk and the anonymous equipment in front of him. Etienne recently released a compilation available on Dim Mak Records called Beats n’ Cubes which contains some of the music from his show.

Then came Amon Tobin with Isam and the bar was raised. Incorporating perfectly synced 3D visuals projected onto a stack of boxes, Amon and his team created a show that has left people with their jaws on the floor. He’s still touring if you (more…)

You read it right, Deadmau5 now has his own USB drives that you can order starting Feb 7th here.

He recently made history becoming the first ever artist of this genre to headline London’s legendary Earls Court, following in the footsteps of Oasis, Pink Floyd and Madonna.

This special edition deadmau5 USB has eyes that light up when being used. It features
exclusive footage from this recent Live show at Earls Court, recorded on December 18th
2010. Contents include…

• Exclusive film – Live From Earls Court shot in HD
• Behind the scenes footage
• Exclusive photo gallery
• Wallpapers

NOTE: This product is NOT available to territories in the American continent for some weird reason.

I’ve really grown tired of Apple telling me what I can and can’t do with my devices, what kind of software I’m allowed to run, what kind of hardware I’m allowed to use, and which computers I’m allowed to upload music to my phone from. The iPad is just more of the same crap in a pretty case. While I will admit the iPad has it’s uses and I love my I really do enjoy my [jailbroken] iPhone, I find it very hard to tolerate the hardcore limitations Apple places on the users of its mobile devices. I would love to see someone get OSX or even Linux running on the iPad and then we will truly see what something like the iPad could have been capable of.

Enter the HP Slate. This little baby not only looks to be packing some processing power but it is an “open” device. There are USB slots, video output, memory card slots, and it is running a proper full operating system so users can install whatever software they want. Which means we could see users running Ableton Live, FL Studio, Soundforge, ProTools, Serato, Traktor, and so much more. I can just imagine a DJ set using one of these or playing live with 2 of these machines and actually tweaking knobs on a virtual TB-303 with your fingers instead of a mouse. The possibilities are wide open and I can’t wait to see the Slate in action someday soon.

You may know the Utah Saints from their breakout single “Something Good” which took over the dancefloors of many raves and clubs in the early 90′s and again in 2008 when the single was re-released with new mixes from High Contrast and Van She. The track took a catchy vocal snippet from Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” and looped it until it became permanently embedded in your brain. Tim Utah and Jez Willis, which make up the group, have been doing some serious dancefloor destruction with their DJ sets as I’m sure you can tell by taking one look at the tracklisting below.

Utah Saints this week providing a live mix of Dirty Electro and Fidget House from a UK gig earlier this year.

Enjoy!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01:21 — 70.2MB)

Mix Info & Tracklisting (more…)

The Do-Lab crew know how to set a mood: trademark organic structures, well lit environment, indoor and outdoor stages, happy people doing things to help good causes, top-notch artwork in every direction you look… oh ya, and big name dance music acts pushing some serious sound. This year’s annual Lucent L’amour event in honor of Valentines Day, was a perfect example of this. If you weren’t outside taking in the live avante garde dance performances or live art, you were treated to this years headliners: N.A.S.A., Bassnectar and Stanton Warriors (in order of appearance) on the multi screened main stage inside. (more…)

DROOG is the DJ collective of Andrei Osyka, Brett Griffin and Justin Sloe. From their start 4 years ago, DROOG has steadily built a reputation as one the one of the leading purveyors of forward-thinking dance, in Los Angeles and beyond. For the past 3 years, Droog has held down a residency at Avalon Hollywood, one of the biggest clubs in the US. At Avalon, they have had the chance to play alongside influences such as Richie Hawtin, Lee Burridge, Steve Lawler, Damian Lazarus, Tiefschwarz, Mr. C, Booka Shade, MANDY, Matthew Dear and Steve Bug. Droog has began the exploration of a new frontier in launching an LA-based record label, Culprit, which has spawned successful releases from Matt Tolfrey, Inxec, Hot Natured, Lee Foss and Kenneth James Gibson aka [a]pendics.shuffle. As we begin 2010, Droog is about to embark on their first release, slated to hit the shops before the trio makes waves at WMC.

Culprit 15 Hollywood mix finds Droog dropping a Deeper Tech House set recorded live in 2010. Check out their MySpace page for more free mixes and Beatport for tracks from their label Culprit.

Enjoy!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:15:55 — 102.9MB)

Mix Info & Tracklisting (more…)

At the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) expo, Akai showed the APC40 MIDI control surface it has developed in conjunction with Ableton, making it the first such device to be ready to run out of the box with the Ableton Live music editing software. As there is no need to load drivers, users simply plug in their notebooks via a USB port and can begin mixing or otherwise modifying their music using Ableton Live. The APC40 is being touted as the simplest, most direct hardware interface with the popular software, yet still allows advanced users to assign the board’s 40 buttons, knobs and fader controls to any virtual controls in the software.

Each control on the APC40 lights up in a different color to give users an instant indication of clip state. Likewise, the 16 knobs are lined by a ring of LED rings that perform the same functions. Akai points out the APC40 makes controlling music at live events much quicker and easier, taking the connected source, most often a notebook or desktop PC or Mac, out of the equation.

I’m not sure how well this instrument would work with a DJ or Live set, but it would be interesting to see someone do it!

The iPhone Ocarina from Smule is the first instrumental application that turns the iPhone into a unique musical instrument. The traditional ocarina is a member of a very old family of musical instruments, dating back at least 12,000 years, in China and Mesoamerica. The Smule iPhone Ocarina brings this millenia-old musical tradition into the 21st century.

Here’s how it works. Once you’ve installed the application, hold the iPhone in such a way that you can conveniently press the four buttons while blowing into the microphone. That’s right; it’s a wind instrument.

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