Electronica

The Weight, the latest album by Dutch duo Weval, is a surprising record. Although released on Kompakt, a label famous for interesting elaborations on the microhouse and minimal techno dance genres, it seems only intermittently interested in maintaining a DJ-friendly attitude. While “Heaven, Listen” builds to a readily danceable rhythm, slower tracks like “False State of Mind” feel more like meta-dance.[MORE] They invoke different subgenres of electronic dance music, without fully committing to any of them. (More…)

When I first heard Park Hye Jin’s I Don’t Care, I was intrigued. I’d been listening distractedly on my new Bluetooth headphones as I performed household chores. I like sampling new music that way. Most tracks don’t interest me enough to pull my phone from my pocket. But this one made me think. (More…)

Few dub imprints make an aesthetic difference like ZamZam. Reconstituting the reggae-derived idiom in its own image, Raz Mesinai’s Underground Producers Alliance blog spoke to the Portland label about keeping the genre alive and on schedule. (More…)

Raz Mesinai garnered international attention in the early ‘90s as half of the duo Sub Dub, in the context of Brooklyn’s so-called “Illbient” scene. But by that time, the Jerusalem-born composer and audio libertine already had over a decade behind him as a bedroom producer, at first busting out b-boy beats for break-dancers before starting to cross more experimental circuits. (More…)

Probably 80% of DJs/producers use SoundCloud, and have enjoyed using it. I understand the beauty of being able to share your music, but the fact is that it is not regulated fairly for copyright owners. Piracy went from being uncool and illegal to becoming the norm in how we treat the work of rights holders. (More…)

Fuck this. If I wasn’t writing on this tablet, the ink on these letters would be bleeding down the page from my tears, which right now are seeping underneath the keyboard, no doubt causing a malfunction in the circuit board, certain to kill this piece of shit by tomorrow. But whatever (More…)

A decade after they announced the shutdown of their Portland-based dubwise label BSI Records, Ezra Ereckson and his visual-artist wife Tracy Harrison are back in the record game, having just put out “Freedom Fighter” by the Disciples, the tenth release on their recently activated artisan-dub label ZamZam Sounds. (More…)

Ableton Live is a loop based program created for live performance and improvising with electronic music. This is a paradox, musically and ethically. A loop is a continuous sound that, when it reaches its end, starts at the beginning again. It’s an exact replica, a copy of itself, repeating over and over, and a live performance is duplicated after the fact. (More…)

October saw the American dub-reggae-based sound-system scene get its profile raised with the launch party for Dub-Stuy Records, the Brooklyn label launched by Quoc “Q-Mastah” Pham’s Sound Liberation Front crew. But as Vice tech-site Motherboard notes, the party was really centered around the debut of the deluxe 15,000-watt sound system that SLF has spent the past year building and tweaking. (More…)

“Drum and bass, dub, roots and culture.” To anyone used to shopping in Brixton Market, the loop is as familiar as a Jamaican patty. Recited for hours on end by a street rep equivalent for London’s University of Dub, the promoter has a lock on the genres the locals prefer, not to mention a rotating cast of first class artists to pitch. (More…)

Jamaican dancehall began rushing Germany’s charts in the early ‘90s, at around the same time that Berlin’s Basic Channel label starting releasing its uniquely stark brand of dub-influenced techno that’s influenced countless artists in the city and around the globe. (More…)

Alongside the Olympics, London is currently bursting with activity celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence. The all-star mega-big Respect Jamaica 50th Festival enters its second week at the nearby Indigo2, sporting a roster that includes everyone from Jimmy Cliff and U-Roy to Maxi Priest and Shaggy. (More…)