Roberdo – Hedonistic Freelancer

A surfing odyssey from Casablanca to Cape Town: Two Australian surfers travel thirty thousand kilometres through west Africa on a year-long adventure in search of undiscovered waves. Makes me wanna move again…

Beat constructor and notoric MPC-2000 lover People In The Audience released a new album a few weeks ago. I really liked the laid-back groove of his melodic Donut Jazz stuff, but this one means great leap forward: More variation, more composition, less loop character. True to the album name Beats Won’t Let Me Chill the rhythmic bandwidth reaches from smokey dope beats to punchy instrumental Hip Hop to some funky Break Beats and even Drum’n'Bass quotes. The work is available both as a free download and a nice, lovely designed collector CD.

A wonderfully laid-back and sunshiney mix by soulTec from Oxford, mixing Jazz sounds with DNB rhythms. Presented by Kmag together with an artist interview.

Musikvideo: Adobe Flash Player (Version 9 oder höher) wird benötigt um dieses Musikvideo abzuspielen. Die aktuellste Version steht hier zum herunterladen bereit. Außerdem muss JavaScript in Ihrem Browser aktiviert sein.

download link

More free quality music: This time a really danceable tune from Guts, who needs no further introduction for readers of this blog. He just published a nice tribute to Fat Boy Slim he created 10 years ago: “In 1998, I was very impressed by the Fatboy Slim album ‘You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby’. The work about the samples’s choice , the arrangements , the sound’ Mix et the Energy were crazy! So in 2002 , i made a beat in the same style of Norman Cook, but just for the fun! No one knows this amazing ghost track!”

A massive Dubstep tune by Goth-Trad, available for free download. XLR8R comments: “If this tune didn’t make it on Goth-Trad’s new album, we can only imagine the caliber of the ones that did.” Word!

Musikvideo: Adobe Flash Player (Version 9 oder höher) wird benötigt um dieses Musikvideo abzuspielen. Die aktuellste Version steht hier zum herunterladen bereit. Außerdem muss JavaScript in Ihrem Browser aktiviert sein.

download link

Douglas Rushkoff gave some great interviews for London Street-Art Design Magazine recently. In issue 7, the psychedelically experienced social media expert talks about instant counter cultures, why Facebook and the internet in general might keep down an actual revolution and intelligent fascism vs. angry mob fascism.

English version below

So wie sich die Fische in verschiedenen Gründen tummeln, so bewegen sich auch die akustischen Geschichten von The Micronaut in ganz unterschiedlichen Stimmungsregionen: Mal warm, mal frisch – mal ruhig stehend, mal lebhaft fließend. Und so wie die Fische letztendlich doch alle durch das sie umgebende Wasser verbunden sind, so besitzt auch dieses Werk sein verbindendes Element: Einen sehr individuellen und eigenständigen Groove.

Dieser Groove watet mit vielen Überraschungen auf. Etwa wenn sich ein Gitarrenakkord aus der akustischen Band-Atmosphäre von „Gründling“ plötzlich in einem Loop verheddert und so die unerwartete und doch stimmige Wende in Richtung gebrochener, elektronischer Beats einleitet. Oder wenn sich zu den emotionalen World Music-Elementen von „Schleie“ mitreißende Halfstep-Rhythmen gesellen.

Ausgetüftelte Arrangements, ungewöhnliche Instrumentierungen und intensive Emotionen- dies sind die Hauptattribute von „Friedfisch“. Obwohl das Werk in seiner experimentellen Art nicht unbedingt auf die Tanzfläche zielt, gelingt ihm dennoch der Anschluss zu diesem Ort. In Form zweier gefühlvoller Remixes von Mollono.Bass nämlich, die den Auftakt für eine exklusiv auf Vinyl erscheinende Reihe bilden. Veröffentlicht auf Acker Records.

 

 
English version

Recently I wrote a little text about a very good remix EP for Douglas Greed‘s album KRL, coming soon on Acker Records. On this occasion I realized that I obviously overlooked this great piece of music when it was released last year. It includes barely any 4-4 stuff but rather experimental beat structures and very deep, melancholic soundscapes. Now I discovered this DJ Mix by Douglas for the French tsugi mag which picks up the sophisticated vibe of the album. Basically 4-4 rhythms but rather intelligent ones, again and again opening towards music far beyond the genre border.

Musikvideo: Adobe Flash Player (Version 9 oder höher) wird benötigt um dieses Musikvideo abzuspielen. Die aktuellste Version steht hier zum herunterladen bereit. Außerdem muss JavaScript in Ihrem Browser aktiviert sein.

download link
 
Tracklist after the *CLICK*

Same but different… a project by Argentinian photographer Irina Werning.

All photographs © Irina Werning

 
  More photographic timetravel after the *CLICK*…

Some shots I took during my trip to Málaga around NYE.

[Mit PicLens anzeigen]

The last part of my musical end-of-year review comes from Andy from Retina Funk. As the name of this Dusseldorf-based project implies, it’s all about visual stimulation: On the one hand, there are experimental VJ performances with multiple projection screens, live cameras and an armada of haptic controllers on stage. On the other hand, there is web development in all its forms. For instance, Andy is responsible for the programming of the marvellous Boom websites since many years. However, I know him to be a heavy music junky, a fun-loving and very open-minded one, with a high quality standard. When I asked him for his personal Top 10, he returned even two lists, albums plus single tracks. My pleasure to publish both of them here, since they represent a really great bandwidth of music from different genres.

 
Top 10 albums
 
1. Martyn – Ghost People
 

 
  …GROOVE ON AFTER THE CLICK…