#90s euphoric trance | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randomvarious · 2 months

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Underworld - "Born Slippy" Essential Selection, Volume One by Fatboy Slim & Paul Oakenfold Song released in 1996. Mix released in 2000. Techno / Experimental

Plays: N/A on Spotify // 84.3K+ on YouTube

If you're someone who at least dabbles in electronic and dance music from time to time, then you absolutely *must* know the utterly strange and totally unique enigma that is Underworld's "Born Slippy." This is a tune that, against all odds, somehow managed to totally captivate the UK public in the mid-90s, reaching #2 on the country's singles chart, while also serving as the theme song to the Scotland-set Danny Boyle-directed film, Trainspotting. Plus, as what's likely to be the most popular techno song ever made, it's also probably the only piece of techno to ever so thoroughly penetrate the 'hip' and 'alternative' English-speaking music cognoscenti of the western hemisphere as well.

Now, there's a lot I could say about this provocative, mid-90s defining work of art, but I think the best way to describe it is thusly: essentially, there are two distinct, yin-and-yang modes to "Born Slippy." One is heaven, which consists of some iconically euphoric synth work and no drums, and the other is just pure fucking chaos, which chiefly contains hard and intense bouts of totally bugged-out and pummeling percussion 😵. And throughout both modes, Karl Hyde provides this mantric, barely sensical, partially improvised, and completely intoxicated stream-of-conscious narrative that seems to maybe be describing a very long and eventful night out. But a very important thing to remember with the studio version of this song in particular is that the two modes that are contained within it don't really overlap with one another; that is to say, outside of like, two small seconds, the synth melody that opens up the song and then returns somewhere in the middle doesn't touch any drums at all, and it's not until much, much later in the fullest version of this more than eleven-and-a-half-minute epic that you'll actually hear any sort of synth in a chaotic part, and those synths that do eventually manifest in one of those parts don't sound anything like the one that soothes in the beginning anyway.

But guess who went and totally fucked up this whole arrangement almost a full quarter-century ago? Fatboy Slim. Back in 2000, he and another piece of dance music's Mount Rushmore, Paul Oakenfold, put out a double-disc double-mix called Essential Selection, Volume One, and while Oakey's sublime trance set totally outshined Fatboy's less-than-stellar big beat and breaks sesh, there was still a three-song run nestled within Fatboy's set that was pretty damn killer, and it consisted of the following tunes, which were all pretty popular in the UK at the time:

Scanty Sandwich's "Because of You," a big beat banger that samples a young Michael Jackson and sounds like something that Fatboy Slim might've *cooked* up himself 😅;

"Born Slippy";

And my favorite downtempo track of all time, the Groove Armada classic, "At the River," which samples an old Patti Page tune and comes with some soul-piercing trombone on it too 😌.

So if you haven't clicked play at the top of this post, or you still haven't figured it out yet, what Fatboy Slim did with this section of his mix is he paired those heavenly synths from "Born Slippy" with the chugging snare-end of "Because of You," giving the opening part of this Underworld classic a great dimension of bounciness that it hadn't really had before. Fatboy raises the BPM on "Born Slippy" to make it match to those drums—and he's ticked those up a tad as well—and then after fading out of the Scanty Sandwich track and fucking around with the effects, he waits until a stacked-up drum part from "Born Slippy" arrives, in order to completely and effectively counterbalance it with the opening bars from the maximally relaxational "At the River," which had never had that level of percussion intermingle with it before either.

Fatboy Slim's probably not the greatest DJ in the world, but what he did with this mass-appealing trio of UK electronic tunes on this otherwise underwhelming mix of his from all the way back at the turn of the millennium definitely deserves more credit and attention than it's received over the years. Pretty nifty little section here, I think, with two great songs bleeding into and out of one of the most remarkable tracks of the entire 90s, "Born Slippy" 😋.

#techno #dance #dance music #electronic #electronic music #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music #Youtube

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 months

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CALVIN HARRIS FT. ELLIE GOULDING, "MIRACLE"

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Some of us believe in miracles, some of us don't...

[5.84]

Taylor Alatorre: This song made me check if my computer was Y2K compliant. This song made me surf the alt.politics newsgroup to find out the date of the next WTO conference. This song made me "borrow" my weird friend's Prima strategy guide for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. This song made me call up my local PBS station to see if it had any plans to air episodes of Serial Experiments Lain. This song made me print out and annotate the lyrics to my illegally downloaded copy of NOFX's The Decline EP. This song made me contemplate making an "Acceptable in the 90's" pun. This song re-taught me HTML.</br> [9]

Leah Isobel: I need Kingdom Hearts AMVs set to this song and I need them immediately. [8]

Jonathan Bradley: It's vintage trance rather than blockbuster eurodance, but Calvin Harris's '90s pastiche is more dead-on than anything found on the Planet of the Bass. Precisely, it's a dead-on recreation of "Children" by Robert Miles, though perhaps Ellie Goulding has been recruited to provide a point of differentiation. It took one-and-a-half listens to remind my that the odd warpings of her cellophane voice go from novel to vertiginous very quickly; they might be more welcome here if they were either less glassily pristine or more. The breakbeat at the end is its own work of miniature history: the years going on and club trends shifting to drum and bass. [6]

Edward Okulicz: When I first heard this song I was sure it must be a sped-up remix thing a la Robin Schulz/Oliver Tree's "Miss You". How could it not have been? It's just so much. I would suggest that if they want to squeeze any more virality out of this song, they might get some mileage by slowing it down. But then it might lose that tasty early 00s UK mainstream chart dance-pop energy it's channelling so well. [6]

Hannah Jocelyn: This gets a [6] because the way Ellie Goulding sings "Oh No" makes me think of Webcomic Name. But also because Goulding sounds the most like herself she has in years, after eras upon eras of producers wasting her fascinating vocal timbre. How many vocalists have a soprano voice that husky? How many have that weird vibrato? Goulding's voice already sounds sped-up before Harris even touches it, and if it is sped up, I need to hear the version of "oh no" that sounds like "MacArthur Park." [6]

Crystal Leww: Calvin Harris is like the cat with nine lives of EDM, having gotten his start during the days of freaking bloghouse, blowing up during peak girly-ass EDM, continuing to thrive through the UK pop-house era, and sliding and funk waving bouncing through the late-aughts. I thought that finally he would retire to hitting the play button on prerecorded headlining sets in Vegas and Ibiza, but alas, he's hopped on trance during a time when it's back, baby. Trance's grand return is something that's been building with a very specific set of underground dance nerds for a while, in a bunch of different formats (see: the hypertrance crew, the hard trance pop song edits, and the latest point of arrival for PC Music/-adjacent gang), and Calvin Harris takes it all the way to UK #1. "Miracle" joins him back up with Ellie Goulding, who was one of his best collaborators during the peak girly-ass EDM era (twice). Goulding's vocals have always felt like an intimate whisper - they're there and they emote, but they never overwhelm - perfect for a track that needs to speed and glide on the clouds. This may be a sanded down, corners smoothed out version of whatever is happening in the underground but damn if Calvin hasn't always been good at making a hook. [6]

Nortey Dowuona: Fuck Calvin Harris and anyone who wants him to make EDM. [3]

Scott Mildenhall: In lesser hands, this would be a facsimile, losing all joy in a vain search for an excuse to exist. In the hands of experts, it is joy afresh. "Miracle" is at one with its euphoric essence, granting it the space to diffuse and reveal itself not as pastiche, but as a reminder of the power of piano presets. Ellie Goulding in trance alien mode is the perfect fit: human, but not distractingly so. [8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I listened to this song twice this year, both times in the passenger seat of my middle aged uncle after not having seem him for years, stuck in traffic in Shanghai, singing along with broken English and appropriately and awkwardly bumping our heads. He thought it bumped. [6]

Ian Mathers: I can't remember if I've ever felt dismay when the beat comes in before, but on first listen that's exactly what happened. I'm not even sure why! It's not like I was much enjoying the song before that; maybe it just suddenly seemed clear this was going to be exactly what I'd expect from the combination of these two artists, neither of whom I love. It felt like I could have predicted the rest of the song from that point, and that's kind of how it played out. [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I love dumb dance pop -- My favorite Madonna song is "4 Minutes"! This is too dumb even for me. How do you even do that? [3]

Katherine St Asaph: This kind of pop-trance was already a massively guilty pleasure for me because of the accumulated secondhand disgust of trance purists. "Miracle" has an additional source of guilt in being a pop-trance track by Calvin Harris, who has been around long enough that his releasing a Robert Miles rip this hacky has to be either condescension or a bit. Clearly I have no standards. [9]

Alfred Soto: Give me more anonymous dance tracks like "Miracle," which it isn't but it will do. Jessie Ware would do well to cast off her pearls before the swine who helped perpetuate her approximation of failed euphoria. [7]

Aaron Bergstrom: We have DJ Sammy at home. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: What the hell... this literally ends right as I'm starting to believe how good it is? [4]

Brad Shoup: Feels like I should be rating the progressive-trance remix in my head, one that's 12 minutes long, shamelessly milks the piano decay and pushes Goulding to match the urgency of the BPM. She's as centered as ever, despite Harris's breakneck rave tempo: nearing the end, he tosses out some breakbeat like an anchor. But in my head, it's still going. [6]

Thomas Inskeep: I know I should be accustomed to it in 2023, but when I come across someone such as Harris who clearly has zero musical integrity, who'll do anything for hits -- well, it still catches me off-guard. And no one hops from one dance/pop trend to another faster than Harris. (Allow me to remind you that his 2007 album I Created Disco was pretty good!) Which is all to say that I shouldn't be surprised to hear "Miracle" hopping on the '90s trance revival bandwagon. He's got the ability to make it sound right, but by no means does that make this good. I disliked '90s trance at the time, and find it even more loathsome now as a big-budget no-ideas Hollywood sequel. Goulding could literally be any other female singer, as generic and over-processed as her vocals are here - and she's never been the most (ahem) distinctive singer to begin with. Truly, almost impressively awful. [1]

Will Adams: In our 2022 Amnesty post-mortem, I wrote about Romy's "Strong" and how trance music had been bubbling up in the pop landscape. Fast forward a year, and now we have mainstream acts -- Tove Lo, Icona Pop, David fucking Guetta -- all dialing up the tempos and the sawtooth synths. I should've known Calvin Harris -- who has contorted himself to align with the electronic genre du jour for over fifteen years -- would hop on the train, but "Miracle" still came as a welcome surprise. I spent better part of my tenure at the Jukebox yelling about how much I love trance, and this is no different. In the tradition of euro-trance classics, there are, at most, two key elements at play: the Robert Miles piano; the lyric "are you too cynical to believe in a miracle?" The rest is routine: the accelerated heartbeat BPM, a feather-light vocal from Goulding, reverb galore, all in service of creating that dream-like state on the dancefloor, when you close your eyes but still feel the strobe lights on you. [7]

Jackie Powell: I'll preface this by saying "Miracle" was my top song this year. When Spotify wrapped told me what I predicted was true, I wasn't surprised. "Miracle" was a song that stuck with me throughout the good and the bad in 2023. It was with me when I couldn't get out of bed, when I was driving or walking to my destination, when I was exercising, when I was transcribing an interview, and even when I was writing. I'm not the only one who proclaimed that the third Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding collaboration was an addictive listen. It's an earworm. It's meant to be looped. Calvin Harris knows how and when to introduce new sounds, something that happens from the first verse right into the second chorus. Those introductions stimulate the brain and since I've listened to the track so many times, I can anticipate each dynamic shift and new sound that arrives. I feel like a conductor when I know exactly when the "boots and cats" percussion finally hits. The lyrics aren't really groundbreaking on this track and they aren't supposed to be. To enjoy "Miracle" at its fullest, the appreciation comes in the diverse sounds, and its velocity. Hat tip to Chromatica producer BURNS who provides the listener with a similar type of movement and constant tempo changes following the drop in "Rain on Me." But that is to say, the most stunning part of the "Miracle" experience isn't what makes it the most addicting. It's Goulding's vocals. Not only does the melody written in give her the freedom to use her voice at its most natural, but this is a song that not many other pop artists could pull off convincingly. You want to know what her voice is going to do next because it's so unpredictable. This is a track that is exemplary of the fact that Goulding is a generational talent, her unique timbres and range aren't contained but rather are given a space to play. And if you can't hear that alongside techno and Eurodance beats, have no fear: Harris and Goulding put out a "Church version" of Miracle, stripping back until this version is truly all about Goulding. There's a euphoric sound when she's harmonizing with herself during the second verse. It's so satisfying and soothing. It's so stupefying and even a bit moving. [10]

#calvin harris #ellie goulding #music #pop music #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #Youtube

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biglisbonnews · 1 year

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Sound Off: 10 New Songs You Need to Hear Now It's impossible to be across all the new music out each Friday. Luckily, PAPER is here to help you out: each week, we round up 10 of our favorite new songs from artists — emerging and established — to soundtrack your life. From the surreal to the sublime, these songs cover every corner of the music world. The only criteria: they all have to absolutely rip.RAYE — "Ice Cream Man." RAYE turns a traumatic experience into a bold statement of self-empowerment and self-worth on "Ice Cream Man," celebrating the strength of womanhood with flair and verve. GloRilla — "Internet Trolls" GloRilla takes aim at her haters on this righteous stomper, a gleeful follow-up to her Anyways, Life's Great... EP that's surprisingly inspirational. "Fake it 'til you make it," she growls.PinkPantheress and Ice Spice — "Boy's a liar Pt. 2" Ice Spice shows off the breadth of her range on this zippy remix of PinkPantheress' viral hit. The young stars are a surprisingly perfect match — here's hoping for another team-up sometime soon.TYGAPAW — "MYSM" Hypnotic industrial techno from TYGAPAW, who turns a classic '90s-style beat into something alien and fresh. Peach PRC — "Perfect For You" Peach PRC interpolates Paris Hilton's immortal "Stars Are Blind" on this sun-dazed, head-over-heels love song, which builds to a euphoric and totally undeniable climax. Related | Paris Hilton's Pop Career Is BackEllie Goulding — "Like A Saviour" Ellie Goulding channels classic '80s anthems on "Like A Saviour," which rides a catchy flute riff into skyward-soaring ecstasy.Rauw Alejandro and Daddy Yankee — "PANTIES Y BRASIERES" A rising reggaeton star links with a bonafide legend on this swish, braggadocious dembow track, a spectacularly fun turn-up.Caroline Polachek — "Blood and Butter" Caroline Polachek experiences ecstatic desire on "Blood and Butter," an exploratory and understated song that ends with an unexpected (but not unwelcome) bagpipe solo.yunè pinku — "Night Light" Yunè pinku dips into sleek trance on this stylish, deadpan dance-pop track, which is animated by a twinkling, glasslike beat.daine — "portal" This is a fun-as-hell DnB pop-punk rager, the kind of absurdist but brilliant genre fusion that only someone like daine could pull off.Photo by Callum Walker Hutchinson https://www.papermag.com/sound-off-raye-2659369591.html

#Shaad d'souza #Sound off #Glorilla #Ice spice #Pinkpantheress #Peach prc #Ellie goulding #Caroline polachek #Daine #Yune pinku #Daddy yankee #Rauw alejandro #Raye #Shaad D'Souza #PAPER

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offbeatmusicuk · 1 year

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Albums Of 2022: 50-26

Welcome to another year, another countdown. My music listening time has shrunk once again, but there’s still plenty of great releases that have got multiple listens.

I’ve noticed a trend that releases are getting shorter, and people are still calling them albums when they are an EP or mini-album. So my criteria is this. If it is 9 or more tracks, it is an album. If it is 8 tracks or less and 30 mins or longer, it is an album. Any less than that, it is an EP or a mini-album and not eligible for this list.

Honourable mentions to some artists whose albums very nearly made the list but just missed out:

Eye Of Melian, Andy Gardner of Plump DJs, The Birthday Massacre, Chase & Status, Let’s Eat Grandma, Mall Grab, xPropaganda, Riya Sawayama, Yumi & The Weather, HALIENE, The Hunna, White Lung, Witch Fever, Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, The Anix and Röyksopp with the second volume of their “Profound Mysteries” trilogy.

Let the countdown begin.

50.

The Barnum Meserve "Designs"

3rd album of cinematic alt-rock from the Nottingham band, mellow songs building to string laden crescendos.

49.

Nova Twins "Supernova"

The self described 'Urban punk' duo, of whom Tom Morello is a big fan, deliver their 2nd album, and it's a blend of punk, hip-hop and electronics mixed up to deliver a huge amount of energy.

48.

Volturian "Red Dragon"

The Italians deliver another album of symphonic, melodic and easily accessible metal. Though there are other genres too, "Torn Asunder", for example, is completely electronic, inspired by trance and house.

47.

Tinlicker "In Another Lifetime"

A blend of deep house, progressive house and trance, on the 2nd album from the Utrecht based duo, which is hypnotic and a times beautiful.

46.

Bis "Systems Music For Home Defence"

The Glasgow indie-popsters return, with cheeky lyrics, catchy hooks and danceable beats. It's not quite up to their "Social Dancing" - "Return To Central" peak, but it's a big improvement on everything else released since then.

45.

Confidence Man "Tilt"

90s dance influenced pop bangers are the order of the day here, with tongue firmly in cheek but with a clear love for the era and the tunes from it. As a comment on one of their videos on YouTube (written by an Andy Brennan) put it "They ride that line between sincerity and parody SO WELL".

44.

Silversun Pickups "Physical Thrills"

6th album from the LA alt-rockers. Always reliably good, this might be a more varied and inventive collection than normal, and it works a treat.

43.

Sick Joy "We're All Gonna F***ing Die"

I like the band's own bio... "Cutting together malign heaviness with acidic melody then tying into place with the reigns of contagious pop." It's a good description, for this band that mix a bit of grunge, a bit of punk and a whole lot of hooks, that wouldn't have felt entirely out of place in the 90s, without being a retro throwback.

42.

Ciaran McAuley "Permission To Exhale"

Debut album from this rising star of the trance scene. The first half is a bit more mellow, seemingly taking inspiration from Solarstone's pure trance sound, the second half a bit more euphoric and club leaning (but only slightly). A few excellent guest vocalists on here too, such as Audrey Gallagher and Lisa Gerrard.

41.

Fonzerelli "Silent Dreams & Misguided Stories"

Lovely mid-tempo trance and house (and a splash of breaks), beautiful synths and pianos and some great guest vocals.

40.

Bloods "Together, Baby!"

3rd album from Sydney's Bloods who are on fine form with their punk-pop-meets-riot-grrrl tunes. Big melodies, bouncy riffy fun.

39.

Cold Kingdom "Life // Love"

Powerful, big chorused hard rock from the Minneapolis band. Fans of strong female vocals mixed with big riffs should check them out.

38.

Daxson "Face The Future"

Trance producer and DJ Dan Dobson releases his debut artist album. And it suffers from the same thing a lot of modern trance artist albums suffer from... too many tracks which are consequently too short (in order to fit them on the equivalent of a single CD). This means the tracks don't get to breathe, and some just get lost while you are listening. But regardless, there is some quality uplifting trance on here, so it's well worth an effort.

37.

Röyksopp "Profound Mysteries III"

Their third album release of the year and the final part of their Profound Mysteries trilogy, they finish the project strong. Some cracking tunes on here.

36.

Pale Waves "Unwanted"

Starting off as a goth-synth-indie-pop-rock band (is that a thing?), they changed their sound for album 2 and became an average Avril Lavigne soundalike. Tweaking that slightly here for album 3, they are now a very good Avril Lavigne soundalike. Songs filled with big choruses, singalong hooks, some joyous, some heartfelt, every track worth your time.

35.

Kasabian "The Alchemist's Euphoria"

Kasabian's first album with Serge Pizzorno stepping up to the frontman role, and it is an interesting beast. He does a good job as vocalist, and musically the album has influences of rock, hip-hop, dance, even Pink Floyd-esque moments.

34.

Bush "The Art Of Survival"

Only Gavin Rossdale remains from the original line up, but the rebooted Bush has been putting out passable albums since 2011. Their last album, 2020's 'The Kingdom' was suprisingly good, and this one is even better. Full of big choruses and chunky riffs, and though it doesn't sound exactly like 90s Bush, it feels like listening to Bush of the old days.

33.

The Crystal Method "The Trip Out"

Kicking off with an electro-rock stomper, you'd wonder if TCM have radically changed direction, but don't worry, there are plenty of breakbeat and electro stompers with various guest vocalists on this short but varied album.

32.

Muse "Will Of The People"

Ah, Muse. I loved Muse. 4 brilliant albums, one of the best live bands on the planet... then it started going a bit pear-shaped. Yes, there was still the occasional great song, but they started veering into either being too bland, or far too theatrical Queen pastiche. And then came the entirely misjudged 'Simulation Theory', essentially an electro pop album, still with the Queen influences. It was lacking in punch, credibility and tunes. So, while flawed, 'Will Of The People' is a very pleasant surprise. Yes, it still contains some strong glam rock and Queen influences, giving it a sense of spoof, but it also has some of the best songs they've done in years. 'Won't Stand Down' and 'Kill Or Be Killed' are monsters that will go down very well live, 'Ghosts' and 'Verona' are actually rather pretty, overall it's the strongest Muse album since 'Black Holes & Revelations', so there's some hope for another classic yet.

31.

Mass Sky Raid "Calm In Chaos"

Epic, melodic alt-rock from this Aussie band. Rock enough to not be middle of the road, mellow and radio friendly enough to be huge if given the right exposure.

30.

Blood Command "Praise Armageddonism"

Blood Command's 4th album and first with vocalist Nikki Brumen. There are less electronic influences this time round, but still huge energy, chunky riffs, powerhouse drumming, screams and almost poppy melodic hooks.

29.

Charlotte Wessels "Tales From Six Feet Under Vol. II"

The former Delain singer continues her solo career, full of all sorts of styles, from the symphonic metal she's known for, to rock to art-pop. This collection might not be quite as strong as Vol 1, but it still further proves we have a very special artist here.

28.

Subjective "The Start Of No Regret"

Goldie & James Davidson bring us their 2nd Subjective album, and it's a winner. Beats that range from drum & bass to trip hop via breakbeat and house, deep bass and soulful vocals, it's a fabulous listen and is arguably Goldie's best album output since 'Timeless'.

27.

Avril Lavigne "Love Sux"

Avril goes pop-punk for her best album in over a decade. Punchy, upbeat, and catchy as hell. I don't know whether it would necessarily win any pop-punk fans over if they weren't Avril fans to begin with, but it should work a treat on people like me who were Avril fans but were unimpressed by the last couple of albums.

26.

Giuseppe Ottaviani "Horizons (Part 1)"

The trance legend releases a 2 part (well, 3 if you count the remixes) album for 2022, and this first part is full of lush, mid-tempo trance that mixes in elements of deep house and almost Jean-Michel Jarre like synths. It's warm, it's uplifting, you could certainly dance to it but it also feels perfect for chilling to on the beach or by a pool on a sunny day.

--------------------------------------------------

For the first time, Tumblr didn't allow me to add everything I wanted to to a single post (by refusing to save my changes) so this year's list is split in two.

Part 2 (numbers 25-1) including links to Spotify and YouTube playlists for the Top 50 is here:

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thesunlounge · 5 years

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Mårble - Cut.5 [Paradise] (from Club Cuts, echotourist 2019)

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isobelcannonfmpyr2 · 3 years

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PSYCHADELIA AND FANTASY

I chose to research this from my mind map as I think it has good content for what I want to delve into throughout my project. Psychedelia links well to the idea of festivals which I can then link back to fashion. The fluorescent patterns and prints can be used in fashion and it would be really cool to create some garment visuals or do a photoshoot linked to this. It also links well to the music industry as a whole as it is very influenced by the use of drugs. I want to take this further and maybe research into how millennials are influenced by psychadelics. I love the idea of escaping reality and entering a totally new dimension. I think this can strongly be reflected in fashion and the euphoric trend I have chosen. When I think of fantasy and psychedelia I think of rave and 90s rave in particular. I think there was a lot of this shown on rave flyers, posters and even in their fashion. This has been explored through music and even films, for example, Human Traffic.

Psychedelia refers to the psychedelic subculture and the psychedelic experience from the 1960s. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic musicand style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline (found in peyote) and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted, surreal visuals, bright colours and full spectrums and animation (including cartoons) to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience. Psychedelic music uses distorted electric guitar, Indian music elements such as the sitar, tabla, electronic effects, sound effects and reverberation, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another. A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Psychedelic states are an array of experiences including changes of perception such as hallucinations, synesthesia, altered states of awareness or focused consciousness, variation in thought patterns, trance or hypnotic states, mystical states, and other mind alterations. These processes can lead some people to experience changes in mental operation defining their self-identity (whether in momentary acuity or chronic development) different enough from their previous normal state that it can excite feelings of newly formed understanding such as revelation, enlightenment, confusion, and psychosis. The fashion for psychedelic drugs gave its name to the style of psychedelia, a term describing a category of rock music known as psychedelic rock, as well as visual art, fashion, and culture that is associated originally with the high 1960s, hippies, and the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco, California. It often used new recording techniques and effects while drawing on Eastern sources such as the ragas and drones of Indian music.One of the first uses of the word in the music scene of this time was in the 1964 recording of "Hesitation Blues" by folk group the Holy Modal Rounders. The term was introduced to rock music and popularised by the 13th Floor Elevators 1966 album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. Psychedelia truly took off in 1967 with the Summer of Love and, although associated with San Francisco, the style soon spread across the US, and worldwide. The counterculture of the 1960s had a strong influence on the popular culture of the early 1970s. It later became linked to a style of electronic dance music known as psychedelic trance.

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memoryboxparty · 4 years

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So this has been quite a strange feeling for me. I only feel like I am properly getting going now in my music career. I guess I’m what you call a late bloomer 🙂. Since the early 90’s though I have had an addiction to listening and buying new electronic music to play in my DJ sets. I am not really one for looking back unless for a particular project but now feels like the right time to go back through my dj mix tapes. It seems like 1993 was when I started becoming a fully formed DJ and started to find my style so I'm going to upload some mixes I did from 93 through to 97. This is not going to be about obvious classics, maybe more about hearing some prototypes or changes in the music and looking back at someone honing their craft in the 90’s. The reason this MIGHT be interesting for you is because although the mixes will be mainly house and techno, I have never liked to stick to one style within those genres. For example I will be posting up 3 mixes from 1993: One tough deep acid house, another quite euphoric techno and the other a fast and banging acid set with what is maybe even some early trance. I am pleasantly surprised so far but there is a chance those three will also be the last mixes I think are worth it and this will all be over 🙂. More soon. Xx https://www.instagram.com/p/CBwAPMug-t7/?igshid=tqprxy8dlmqb

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atcostmag · 4 years

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At Cost Magazine 2019 in Review - Top Singles

Kristina Gerasimova of Luna

Words of the year coming to an end repeat like an age-old adage, and it only feels right to repeat these sentiments over the year's highlights with of a sprawling list. Although it may be tempting to highlight the entire end of the decade as a whole, we instead stuck to the year itself, as we felt 2019 gave us more than enough material. It's a bit of a ridiculous concept to rate how one song ranks against another, with even criteria like depth of composition and strength of lyrical content varying wildly in the opinion of one person to the next. Rather, we just stuck to what we liked, eschewing metrics and cultural impact but rather what just felt right for me, Peter Quincy Ng, your humble blogger at At Cost Magazine / Swede + Sour. Here are the year’s best tracks in order of importance.

Here’s to music and a happy 2020 :)

Luna - Love in Every Golden Petal (Золотые лепестки) (literal translation "Golden Petals")

The artistic personification of Kristina Gerasimova, Ukraine's provocative yet eternally sad protagonist finds herself wedged between two worlds. In the precarious footing of Ukraine's reinvigorated national identity, which struggles to absolve itself from Soviet memory, Luna saturates her image through a subversive prose. Her latest record, "Trance" which we find the respective "Love in Every Golden Petal" is no exception. Merging socialist nostalgia and Perestroika-era grit to the psyche of the Post-Soviet 90's chaos, her latest single meshes a burgeoning synth construction and a sultry tristesse that seems only fitting of her cultural zeitgeist. Defined by its articulate emotion with soft, angelic vocals to break the thundering relentlessness of its rave leads, the track works on a punishing aggression of euphoric loops and vocal anacruses to magnify a transcendental intensity.

Of course, just don't take our word for it, Kristina was so convinced of her single that she put out not one but two videos. Surely, being the iconclast she is, Luna delves into the "female trip" of her hallucinogenic yet feminist vision which blurs the lines erotism and esoterism, and her blockbuster-format gangster flick of her other that is a combination of sex, drugs and all things Luna.

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While its videos are certainly an exercise in hedonistic excess with rather clumsy translations, we still hold the top spot for "Love in Every Golden Petal" because we love the hot mess that is Kristina Gerasimova.

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Kllo - Back to You

Denoting the strain of distance in a relationship, Kllo's "Back to You" builds on looping pick-ups to draw in the percussive yet contradictory soft of its purring vocal silk as its dislodging emotion is viewed through the lens of a nostalgic daydream.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

SA Zeiner - Could You Be Good to Me?

The debut track from fledging Norwegian songstress SA Zeiner, “Could You Be Good to Me?” is a spellbinding thrill of scaling synths complimented by the impossible beauty from Zeiner’s vocal choir.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

Melis - Waves

A ballad from a conflicted heart, the simple yet visual lyricism of Melis' "Waves" plays over a cascade of muted break beats as the track’s slow and solemn piano is paired to the heart-shattering falsetto of her melancholic whimper:

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

Musia Totibadze - Boy (мальчик)

An anachronistic revival of Soviet disco sounds, the Moscow-born singer of Georgian descent with her golden timbre yields to infectious funky bass lines and the pure, unadulterated joy of children in-choir on "Boy".

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Tessa Dixson - Hiding

Carried forth by the beckon of Tessa Dixson’s captivating voice, "Hiding" works over a bassy buildup of undulating synths climaxing over the hypnotic sound of its rolling sitar strings and meditative beats.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

Dominique Tey - Every Part

Written about the type of love you'd die for, the soft and honeyed delivery of Dominique Tey's vocals on "Every Part" erupts into swooning emotion bringing the track into a dreamy disillusion.

Read our previously written review of the track HERE

Liyolei - Beasts (Звери)

On "Beasts", the creatures of Liyolei's imagination come alive as they crawl out from the mundane framework of Soviet-era tower blocks in Liya Safina's vision of a new-wave, new-age funk.

LAS AVES - Change of Heart

The brutish beats and lolita-esque notions in the sugar-sweet vocals of Las Aves' "Change of Heart" are vividly illustrated in their alluding video delving into a Hong Kong pop-music fantasy.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

#10

Selma Judith - Colder

Crumbling impermanence and fragmented emotion are held in suspension with the sustaining force of Danish vocal powerhouse Selma Judith's stellar vocals and erupting sentiment.

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#11

NURSE - Eternal Lovers

Easing over billowy dreamscapes as the slow percolation of frosted chimes glimmer to her vocals, NURSE's "Eternal Lovers" is a glowing tribute to the loss of a loved one.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

#12

Claire Laffut - Nudes (feat. Yseult)

Easy, breezy Claire Laffut fans the heat in this refreshing, thirst-quenching single that oozes of the Belgian songstress' oozing vocal sensuality.

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#13

Malena Zavala - En la noche

A dreamy sweep of Rio Platense cumbia is revived in this rustic crack of dream-laden textures, Malena Zavela embraces her Argentinian heritage in track “En la noche”.

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Read our previously written review of the track HERE

#14

CRONICLE - Fools

Cutting words and the chafing sustain of grinding guitars converge in the dreamy dystopia and blurring vision of the UK-based Swede's break-beat marvel.

Read our previously written review of the track HERE

#15

LeyeT - Drip Drop (Spanish Version)

Saturating in the track's intensifying emotion, the Spanglish fusion of the track not only walks between linguistic boundaries but between the ethereal as well.

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randomvarious · 3 years

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Today’s mix:

Breakdown: The Very Best of Euphoric Dance by Dave Turner 2001 Trance / Progressive Trance / Euphoric Trance / Progressive House

You know what was super weird about this whole UK series that was originally started by Telstar TV in '99? Almost every installment had the same exact name. There was no volume number or year appended at the end to help differentiate between each release; up until the summer of 2008, every album was just called The Very Best of Euphoric Dance Breakdown. Why??? Eight albums in the series had the same title! So unnecessary!

Whatever. This edition from 2001 is pretty good. The mixing's not great, but this wasn't really supposed to showcase the mixing skills of Dave Turner anyway, who is more known for being an engineer in the first place. This double-disc just cuts to the chase to give you the goods and it does a pretty nice job of supplying a steady stream of euphoric dance music that came out between the mid-90s and early aughts, although I would argue that not all of it sounds that euphoric.

The two sets are mostly trance, but the first third or so of disc 2 wavers from that entirely and goes in more of a progressive house direction with songs that have acidically fuzzy and annoyingly simple big room melodies, like "Kernkraft 400," and because of that detour from the rest of the program, disc 1 is far superior. And guess what? I only have a link for the first disc anyway! Enjoy!

Listen to CD1 here.

Highlights:

CD1:

Faithless - "Drifting Away (Paradiso mix)" Lustral - "Everytime (Mike Koglin remix)" Rui da Silva - "Touch Me (original 12" mix)" Aurora feat. Naimee Coleman -" Ordinary World" Chicane - "Saltwater (The Thrillseekers remix)" Moby - "Natural Blues (Katcha remix)" Marc et Claude - "I Need Your Lovin' (Like the Sunshine) (Dark Moon vocal remix)" Delerium feat. Sarah McLachlan - "Silence (Airscape remix)" Joshua Ryan - "Pistolwhip (original mix)" Element Four - "Big Brother Theme" Afterburn - "Northpole" Liquid - "Orlando Dawn (Space Brothers mix)" Sash! - "Stay (original 12" mix)" Hurley & Todd - "Flyaway (extended mix)" Planet Perfecto - "Bullet in the Gun 2000 (Rob Searle remix)" Sasha & Emerson - "Scorchio (full length version)" Azzido da Bass - "Dooms Night Remix (Timo Maas remix)" Fatboy Slim - "Sunset (Bird of Prey)"

CD2:

Modjo - "Lady (Hear Me Tonight) (original mix)" Santos - "Camels (original mix)" Darude - "Feel the Beat (original mix)" Alice DeeJay - "The Lonely One (XXL)" Ascension - "For a Life Time" Emmie - "I Thought It Was You (Lucid club mix)" Xstasia - "Sweetness (Michael Woods remix)" Lost Tribe - "Gamemaster (Signum remix)" Plasma feat. Berri - "Do U Believe (Angelic remix)" Faithless - "God Is a DJ" Universal State of Mind - "All Because of You (original mix)"

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 months

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KYLE GORDON FT. DJ CRAZY TIMES AND MS. BILJANA ELECTRONICA - "PLANET OF THE BASS"

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Time to find out once and for all who hates fun!

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Crystal Leww: A fun weird thing that happened this year is that Kyle Gordon premiered "Planet of the Bass" at the party that I book called hulaHOOP, which is a trance, Eurodance, and euphoric dance music party that I started this year with two of my best friends. He was a last-minute add to our lineup, which was filled with friends and artists that we admire from around the world who are not white, not straight, and not dudes. I have nothing bad to say about Kyle Gordon, a guy who genuinely seems to love Aqua and Vengaboys, treated our team and the club staff with nothing but respect, and willingly took a ten minute slot that we gave him. But it was very weird to see "Planet of the Bass" become the center of conversation for a Eurodance and trance revival well underway that had been for a while spearheaded by mostly not white dudes. None of this stuff should be taken that seriously -- I'm on Team Dance Music Should Be Fun -- but it's kinda sad that something as goofy as the Eurodance revival still gets dominated by bros who are not even that good at the music part of it. The day before our party, Boiler Room dropped sets from La Darude, the collective from Paris that is really spearheading a lot of this stuff. Suggest you listen to those instead to embrace the goofy, euphoric whimsy from people who are really, really in it. [4]

Kat Stevens: I don't mind people taking the piss if it's banging, but this is just spiteful. [1]

Oliver Maier: If you are here reading this website you probably don't need me to explain all the ways that this isn't particularly spot-on as Eurodance pastiche. Maybe someone else will do it for me. Fortunately, "Planet of the Bass" gets the most important thing right, which is to have fun. It's pretty funny (throwaway 30 Rock joke/10) and pretty catchy (memorable, but not an earworm/10). Try though I might, I simply have no strong feelings about "Planet of the Bass"! Takes, I'm wanting more. [5]

Jonathan Bradley: Taken beyond meme length, "Planet of the Bass" seems increasingly dubious: are silly accents and ESL phrases actually hilarious, or is this tired American condescension? Forgive me for imposing some level of scrutiny on that lowest from of entertainer -- the internet comedian -- but the DJ Crazy Times project fails for its sloppiness about the details. Purportedly a parody of '90s Eurodance, it sounds more like it belongs to the 2000s than alongside "Rhythm is a Dancer," "Another Night," or "The Rhythm of the Night." It also posits its performers as central European or Balkan, while the big hits from the time it seeks to parody came from nations that hadn't just emerged from behind the Iron Curtain: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands. Maybe Slavs are supposed to be inherently more ridiculous than western Europeans? But the weakest quality of "Planet of the Bass" -- what makes it fail as a song rather than a gag -- is that it isn't interested in what the Eurodance acts of the '90s were doing with their big boshing beats and unusual syntax: adopting simple English phrases that could be understood in a club across the continent, regardless of which of the dozens of Europeans languages might be spoken there, yet still communicating a sense of dancefloor yearning that plays anywhere from Copenhagen to Cordoba. [2]

Will Adams: Like most viral memes today, "Planet of the Bass" was pummeled into oblivion in a matter of weeks. The life cycle of a joke landing to the jokester re-telling the joke (keep 'em laughing!) to the resentment of the joke to discourse about the joke to, finally, the chatter fizzling out... this isn't new. That's not the issue. The song is fine. The chorus is quite good; I trust that Kyle Gordon knows his Eurodance references -- I'm getting equal parts the goofy dude rap of Aqua and Toy-Box and the emotive female vocal of Matrix's "Can You Feel It" and Vengaboys' "Superfly Slick Dick." The issue is that the core joke belongs to the genre of "ESL? LOL!" comedy (hi Brian Jordan Alvarez!) that generally has a short shelf life. [5]

David Moore: I only recognize one TikTok meme as a legitimate 2023 banger, and it is "Sitting" by T.J. Mack, the alter ego of comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez. (The Paul F. Tompkins big band version is great, too.) [1]

Rachel Saywitz: Sometimes what goes viral on TikTok should stay viral on TikTok. [0]

Katherine St Asaph: Kyle Gordon appears to be a bit of an asshole, but an asshole with some genuine appreciation for the genre and for Y2K visual aesthetics. But regardless of how much Eurodance he's heard, he does not seem to realize that their English lyrics were almost never this bad -- and that deliberately bad English is both rarely funny and never emotionally charged like the real songs were. Should have stayed a meme reel on Croatia Roosevelt Island. [4]

Hannah Jocelyn: This doesn't understand what makes those songs great beyond the most obvious signifiers of broken English -- even shit like "The Fox" had a euphoric EDM outro that made at least one person in my life say "wait, is this actually good?" (No.) "Planet of the Bass" aims for that transcendence, but the production does the bare minimum, and nothing in the song is as beautifully unhinged as "I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer." But "Planet of the Bass" brought me as much joy as anything else this year: a loved one and I constantly quote the spoken-word bridge, itself lifted from a deep cut that shows Kyle Gordon knows his shit. If that knowledge was translated to a stronger arrangement, we would have an all-timer parody song on our hands. But we'll always have the immortal affirmation "women are my favorite guy." [6]

Tara Hillegeist: As Gordons getting their five minutes of fame out of the way off a techno-type beat and meme-ready lyrics go, I'd genuinely much rather be listening to "Gordon Kill the Thomas". Peanuts-kun at least extends their socmed-ready pisstake with some wild, one might even say creative, decisions; "Planet of the Bass", by contrast, can't even get its feet motivated enough to reach the dancefloor. I would be lying if I said the bonehead genius of pastiche lyrics like "women are my favorite guy" inspired utterly no joy in me, of course, but as a full song, this misses the Vengabus. [3]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Disney Channel Original Trance Song [5]

Nortey Dowuona: Half of this is BASS. The other part is a barely-there repeat of circa-'05 pop dance I'd hear in Torino. [3]

Tim de Reuse: Reviewing musical comedy is hard because you have to ask whether it's funny. And then when the answer is "the first time, I guess," you have to ask whether the music is good. And then when the answer is "it's unremarkable," you've run out of things to talk about. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: No one who is actually funny will take a joke and try to milk it for all he can. That's just disrespectful to the craft. Even if this were initially amusing, the moment that Kyle Gordon dropped the full song is when he went from comedian to content creator. [0]

Will Rivitz: TSJ in 2014: collectively unable to parse that a Eurotrash genre sendup could be sublime. TSJ in 2016: collectively unable to parse that a Eurotrash genre sendup (except for at least one of us!) could be sublime. TSJ in 2023: admittedly, this song is no QT or Charli, but it rips regardless. I hope we've learned our lesson. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: All jokes aside, that's genuinely an all-time great dance-pop hook. It's a shame about the other 2 minutes of the song, though! [5]

Aaron Bergstrom: This could have been a clever tweet (I'll admit that I chuckled at "women are my favorite guy" the first time), but instead it's a three and a half minute song that overstays its welcome by at least two. By the end he's basically just doing Borat. [3]

Taylor Alatorre: Those European people to the east of the Rhine -- they don't speak the English too good, do they? And they sure do love their bass-thumping, fist-pumping club music, right? Well, at least in the '90s they did. Now it's a different decade, and they like some different kinds of electronic music than that. But still, we could make pretend like we're back in the '90s and excavate a harmless, beloved, frozen-in-amber genre for the purpose of mocking I mean "celebrating" it, and have our YouTube TikTok comedian guy say some sex-obsessed and politically naïve phrases that probably sounded funnier as a recurring bit on Twitter than they do when spoken aloud. That's something, right? Ylvis still appears in Uber One ads, right? [3]

Brad Shoup: It rocks that he made a Eurodance track for locals and when the locals finally heard it, they had no idea what to do with it. The structure and timbre are dead on--I particularly enjoyed the electro freestyle ostinato--but the deep-fried Continental English stopped being funny real fast. There's just something really beautiful about European dance-pop: the way that shamelessness and fun can carry idiosyncratics like Hit'n'Hide or Rednex over the border. "Planet of the Bass" gets at a little of both, but it mostly feels like a joke about Slavic hustle. I guess I'll wait for the third-wave ska parody. [4]

Ian Mathers: Brevity is the soul of wit. Chorus is still pretty good, though! [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#kyle gordon #planet of the bass #music #music writing #music reviews #the singles jukebox #Youtube

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its-called-synesthesia-blog · 7 years

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Excessive buffering on a song is the auditory equivalent of a strobe light

#seriously #We were playing music at work it and the song started buffering every second #and all I could see in my head was flashing wtf #I don't usually have sound-vision reactions but sometimes #and this was one of those times #seriously strobe lights are my enemy 90% of the time #They make me so sick #The other times they make me euphoric or put me in a trance and make me sleepy #synesthesia

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martinagunson89-blog · 5 years

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Understanding Music Heard By way of Cochlear Implants

Pop music of the 90s was enjoyable. The most usually cited examine into the question of music's impact on the thoughts entails the so-referred to as Mozart impact , which suggests that listening to certain sorts of musicвЂ"Amadeus Wolfgang's classical works, in particularвЂ"impacts and boosts one's spatial-temporal reasoning , or the flexibility to assume out long-term, more abstract solutions to logical issues that arise. The Mozart impact has been overblown and over-promised, and even outright refuted as having "bupkiss" effect , maggiesharpe91369.wordpress.com however that doesn't imply a terrific thoughts-juicing playlist can't be created. This is also hardly Gann's first foray into the world of the participant piano (as it was referred to as in a unique age). His 2005 Nude Rolling Down an Escalator album comprises a few of his etudes for this computer controlled instrument which is the modern equivalent of the participant piano. And along with his fascination with alternate tunings and www.magicaudiotools.com scales it must be famous that Gann can also be considerably of an professional as regards the participant piano itself. Gann authored one of many finest books on that composer's music, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow" (1995). So it appears intuitive that he would write a magnum opus for the modern equal of the player piano, the disklavier, a pc controlled piano. Charli XCX is a genius at producing infectious glittering pop music. She has the power to show off each nagging thought behind your head and simply transport you to some euphoric late night celebration. "No Angel" exists as some kind of membership identification disaster, where Charli comes to phrases with a few of her more occasion girl behavior. She's no angel, Charli admits, but she will learn. Hey, acceptance is step one. Though let's hope Charli would not relax any time too soon, as a result of we'd like her to gasoline these 4 a.m. nights.

As the 80s arrived, Germany's obsession with electronic music advanced, and techno started to make its way from Detroit and Chicago to Berlin and Frankfurt. At first, techno was very a lot underground, and when the DJ Dr. Motte founded the Love Parade in 1989, it was a small, grassroots musical motion meant to have a good time music and peace. Through the years, it grew in both measurement and popularity, as did the spread of techno itself. Musicians like Sven Väth and Paul van Dyk turned key players in the trance scene, while brothers Paul and Fritz Kalkbrenner established themselves within the minimal scene. The Beatles are among the most influential popular music artists of modern instances, initially affecting the culture of Britain and the U.S. , the postwar child boom era, and then of the rest of the world, especially through the 1960s and early Nineteen Seventies Definitely they are essentially the most successful, with global gross sales exceeding 1.3 billion albums. Their influences on common tradition prolonged far past their roles as recording artists, as they branched out into film and even semi-willingly became spokesmen for his or her era. The members of the group were John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), all from Liverpool in England The impact of the Beatles on Western culture (and by extension on the remainder of the world) has been immeasurable.

9. The bands from America which made the brand new scene of pop rock as we all know it right now with bands being male fronted with the iconistic model and considerably infantile nature of partying. Blink 182, foo fighters, crimson sizzling chilli peppers and inexperienced day being on the horizon in this era. This style echoed across the us and uk. The type was a mixture of punk rhythms with a mixture of catchy popular culture which seemed to talk to the masses. Even teams may mix grunge with pop to make submit grunge below the pop rock banner In the type of nirvana. The early fan bases of rock stars like Elvis Presley and The Beatles have been heavily female. However, rock stars themselves have been largely male. Feminine rocker Janis Joplin felt that she had to turn out to be one of many boys to achieve rock. Joan Jett also had a really masculine image. Like rap music at this time, rock was often criticized for having misogynistic lyrics and was thought of an aggressive expression of male sexuality. Regardless of this, ladies made up a big portion of the fan bases of rock bands. Some folks can dig up nice music like magic, or have associates contained in the business who hold them up to date. Some people are contented with their weekly Spotify Discover playlist. However in case you need extra ways to find music, listed here are 50 ideas, taken from Twitter customers, my colleagues at LifehackerвЂs publisher Gizmodo Media Group, and a few of my own habits. Some are apparent, some weird, some embarrassing, however theyвЂve all helped people discover their new favourite music, and even their favorite band. In an analogous approach, our present culture is one stuffed with tons of content and entertainment. Folks get bored quicker, which implies that songs are usually shorter to be able to retain the listener's attention. Folks additionally get pleasure from familiar structure songs due to the mere-publicity impact , which is a big reason why hottest music more formulaic. The current construction of a pair verses and chorus followed by a bridge makes for songs round 3-four minutes in length.

New Jersey's Jack Antonoff has been an expert musician for 15 years, starting with the band Steel Train after which moving on to the pop trio Fun. (yes, with a period) and his solo mission, Bleachers. Following the breakout success of Enjoyable.'s "We Are Younger" in 2011, Antonoff was lured into the songwriter-for-rent game, collaborating on tracks with Carly Rae Jepsen and Tegan and Sara. The latter duo launched him to Sara Bareilles, with whom he penned the track that really put him on folks's radar as a go-to writing accomplice: "Brave," a 2013 hit that additionally turned an LGBTQ enpowerment anthem. He is labored steadily ever since with artists ranging from Rachel Platten to Sia to Fifth Concord, however 2017 has really been his breakout year, as his manufacturing and songwriting efforts with Lorde ("Green Gentle"), Taylor Swift ("Look What You Made Me Do") and St. Vincent (most of her new album, Masseduction) have been among the yr's most talked-about songs.

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elviamcclure3-blog · 5 years

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Music Kits

Large Room House is the ‘pop music' of our era. One of the greatest questions within the music world is what's the greatest genre of music? For a lot of, this may be the supply of heated arguments as everyone has their own opinion and tastes of what's good and what isn't. Immediately's music genres are extra broken down and deeper than ever, which might trigger multiple arguments for or in opposition to a unique subgenre within a specific style. For example, fans of different rock and indie rock may argue the merits of 1 specific brand of rock versus the opposite. These are each below the rock umbrella, however alas, they're separate genres. Jayda G, meanwhile, reminded us that there's loads of cheap gems to be discovered. Her units introduced us really feel-good choices and the dance strikes to go along with them, blowing away the scene's sometimes stuffy cobwebs. Whereas many fuss about taking part in obscure privately pressed data, she plays disco cuts from major labels or '90s pop. It is simple to neglect, amid the clamour for rare music, that major label disco songs are sometimes performed by better musicians and recorded in studios with higher production standards. Typically one of the best tunes are hiding in plain sight. Starting in 1936, Billboard journal began organizing its reporting on the gross sales and airplay of specific data in keeping with charts organized by musical genre This was a affirmation and a continuation of a follow that had been happening for years beforehand. It goes without saying that the music industries in other nations of the world, www.audio-transcoder.Com whereever they'd radio stations and document companies, followed the marketing strategies being developed within the USA and tailored them to their very own explicit markets. The same thing is occurring in nation music. There were never many minority singers however lots of ladies. Previously few years bro-country has largely pushed girls off country radio and labels aren't providing a lot help to women. Female artists are becoming pissed off and it won't be to stunning if many can be girls nation singers switch to different genres. Bro-nation is more common with males so country may start to lose women as both listeners and artists if the labels and nation stations do not make an effort to encourage variety.

I really feel that today New Age" has a much less flattering connotation than ever before, whereas Ambient" has expanded from the textural and very loosely structured compositions into various electronic and electroacoustic directions, which make it appealing for a wider viewers than earlier than, yet its philosophy and complexity keep it niche enough" to prevent it from the harmful commercialization New Age went by way of. In 1981, I might have gladly announced myself as somebody working in either genres, however, at the moment I quite introduce myself as a composer of ambient digital music, to avoid any preconceived concepts.

However that led to a second downside: How do you define electronic music? Is it the use of digital and digital mediums? In that case, is not all music at the moment electronic" to some degree? Like jazz, it has been unimaginable for me to pinpoint a definitive characteristic of all electronic music. It is too numerous. Just have a look at the number of electronic sub-genres on this listing ! So to make it simpler, I'm taking a look at artists who name themselves digital musicians, and specifically, at the ones who I think are pushing the perimeters of the genre immediately — experimental electronic artists. You'll notice that a lot of these artists do not fit easily into a single style — they blend many alternative ones, which is what makes them so fascinating.

The problem with the idea of "genres" is that it caught the general public's creativeness. The public, along with the music critics in the press, seemed to benefit from the thought of "I am a rustic music fan" or "I am an R&B fan" and defining themselves thusly. I keep in mind within the 1970s when country music followers would wear T-shirts that mentioned, "If it ain't country, you'll be able to kiss my ass", which means that they'd only take heed to music which the radio stations and report labels, and by extension the advertisers, outlined as "country". For many a long time, individuals turned accustomed to solely being willing to take heed to music which was marketed throughout the specific "genre" that the followers had identified because the one they preferred. Undergraduate university degrees in music, including the Bachelor of Music , the Bachelor of Music Education, and the Bachelor of Arts (with a significant in music) usually take about 4 years to complete. These levels present college students with a grounding in music principle and music history, and lots of college students additionally study an instrument or different types of music genres learn singing approach as a part of their program. Graduates of undergraduate music programs can search employment or go on to additional examine in music graduate applications. Bachelor's diploma graduates are additionally eligible to use to some graduate programs and skilled schools exterior of music (e.g., public administration , enterprise administration , library science , and, in some jurisdictions, trainer's faculty , regulation faculty or medical faculty ).However like all musical kinds, emo is due for a 20-year resurrection this decade. Proper on cue, a new wave of bands has emerged to let their meek flags fly within the age of the selfie. The motion isn't precisely nascent; key players like Algernon Cadwallader and My Coronary heart To Pleasure have already come and gone, and a dense network of teams prospers on Bandcamp, replete with its personal emasculating lexicon ( Twinkle Daddies ???). It is nonetheless a distinctly underground phenomenon too. None of those bands appeared primed to cross over on this pop local weather with no Fall Out Boy-type digital makeover, and the bands that influenced them in the first place had been by no means greater than cult favorites anyhow.Trance is a genre that evolved out of home and techno, mainly in Germany within the '90s. Like many electronic music genres, trance has a 4-on-the-floor beat, though it's often faster, and has a lot much less emphasis on further percussion. Trance is a style to get lost in - its repeating, thumping phrases have the notorious capability to steal souls (at least for a few hours). It does this with dramatic buildups, beautiful vocals, and euphoric drops. However like every other genre, it has a myriad of subgenres. Psytrance, as an illustration, ensnares the listener in a dark hypnosis with its rapid, pounding bass lines.

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thesunlounge · 3 years

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Reviews 378: Fareed / Bunzinelli

I first visited the esoteric world of Chambre Noire back in 2019, when the radio show and mix series made the transition to record label with the release of Puma & the Dolphin’s Primitive EP (see my review here). Following this, the label turned its sights on the work of VЯOMB, a cult artist who has been operating for decades in Quebec’s experimental underground. Though I regretfully didn’t find time to review the Origami 12” last year, I’ll take space here to mention that across the release, VЯOMB mangles and mutates textures of warehouse rave and acid techno into expanses of alien industrial madness, and twists, bends, and contorts an array of sci-fi sound structures into ever-evolving displays of electro-acoustic intensity. As for Chambre Noire’s third outing CN003—which is the focus of this piece—the label changed its approach toward limited intimacy by dropping a small-press lathe cut 10”. The A-side of this release is given over to Fareed (aka Benoit Legrain), who whips up a fried and frenzied slab of techno tribalism, wherein sub-bass pressure waves and stuttering club drums anchor hip-house vocal cut ups and layers of polyrhythmic madness. And splitting the release with Fareed is Peter Bunzinelli, the person behind Chambre Noire and a name readers of this blog should be well familiar with, for I’ve also discussed his work in the context of the amazing _Montreal Pleiades _mini-comp on Cosmic Tones, and his La Foresta Segreta b/w The Five Tibetans 7”. Here on the B-side of CN003, Bunzinelli throws down a slab of breakbeat rave sorcery, though rather than employ euphoric melodies, trance-like atmospherics, or liquid acid lines, he instead shrouds the rhythms in unintelligible radio transmissions and layers of demented noise, dissonant distortion, and caustic drone.

Fareed / Bunzinelli - CN003 (Chambre Noire, 2020) Fareed’s “Nord” begins with hypnotizing feminine vocal cut ups and industrial beats rolling through static. A massive kick drum enters—as do hand drums and energetic cymbal phrases—and the whole thing beings taking on the feel of a tribal dancefloor stomp. Beats momentarily pull away as a panorama of metals moves across the spectrum, and as we barrel back down into the groove, stormfronts of pounding sub bass beat against the body while the lysergic hip hop vocal samples are further cut-up and pushed towards abstraction. Entrancing displays of metallic percussion move in and out of the mix and hand drums work through ever-evolving polyrhythms while double-time cymbal patterns pulse at lightspeed. At some point the whole spectrum filters through a white noise wormhole before slamming back towards rainforest techno ceremonialism, and as bursts of computronic noise pan side-to-side, the rolling polyrhythms grow ever more manic and intense. Whooshing engines rev up and down in pitch before the mix reduces to metalloid clatter, and as the ritualized rhythm storms return—bringing with it subsonic basslines that threaten to cave in the chest—an infinitude of drum rolls spreads out in every direction…as if crazed shamanic beings in uncountable numbers are beating forest drums and sheets of steel at inhuman speeds. It all comes together as a strange merging of hip house modernism and militant techno tribalism, wherein chopped hip hop vocal flows are repurposed as ecstatic chants amidst an ever-morphing ritual of sub bass physicality and hyperkinetic drum psychedelia. And as the track comes to a close, everything cuts way, leaving rusted scraps, corroded wind chimes, and hollowed stones to blow in a gentle wind.

Bunzinelli’s “Metagryne Bicolumnata” comes to life on a vintage breakbeat bounce, with granular filtering and old skool artifacts obscuring the decade of origin. A mutating rave bassline enters…this incredible subsonic slide the gets the body jacking…and after a hard hitting snare pattern drops, further layers of mesmeric percussive detritus flow into the stereo field. While the breaks continue slamming, Bunzinelli conjures up strange alien soundscapes—as mutating clouds of metallic ether obscure garbled satellite broadcasts and decaying radiowave transmissions—and later, as the kick drops away, tribal-tinged snare and cymbal pyrotechnics work the mind while the body continues vibing on that hypno-slide bass groove. When the bass drum returns, masculine vocal samples are cut up into trance-like tracers, though any sense of euphoria is soon blasted away by demonic clouds of scraping distortion…the effect like some sort of deranged noise rock guitar performance crashing against a b-boy breakdance rhythm track. Percussive elements continue adding and subtracting to the mix while morphing and mutating, wavefronts of sonic terrorism merge together with chemical clouds of screaming drone, and as the song progresses, the vibes of throwback 90s revivalism are increasingly subverted, so that what began as a body-popping break track instead reveals itself as something quite experimental. Towards the end, stretches are given over to rhythmic ecstasy, with beats accented by chopping vocal sequences and psychosomatic dub fx growing ever more fried and freaky. And as quick as the song began, it all cuts away in a flash.

(images from my personal copy)

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boredkids · 6 years

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A Tribute to Chuck Person’s Eccojams

By E. Schoop

The age of pop detritus has been upon us for quite some time. Not so embedded in the virtual age, but rather, the analog era of which preceded this revolution was full of bargain-bin pop. And so, the cultural zeitgeist overflowed with works briefly shining and flaming out like the proverbial comet, falling into obscurity. For the critical eye, it has been trained and tested to disfavor kitschy novelties, “corniness” being an operative phrase to describe this phenomenon. Beneath the sewers of disregarded music lay a dormant beast of melody and sensation. Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, set a path that has become a full-blown movement. If one is to take influence as the sole arbiter of taste, then Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 is surely the most important avant-garde album of the decade.

Simplicity is key, but simple does not mean easy. Slowing down music and warping it to great effect had been a concept since the days of DJ Screw had Houston mesmerized with chopped and screwed and Lopatin realized the possibilities of a genre that was reductive ad infinitum, curation by rearrangement and a keen ear for the rhythmic structure of a song. Previously, he’d flirted with these ideas through his sunsetcorp Youtube channel, allowing for a less structured aesthetic to appear, floating bits and pieces of his new ideas into the public. The earliest snapshot on the Internet Wayback Machine has “nobody here” at 51,000+ views, which, while numerous, show the lack of virality Lopatin was yet to cultivate. Even so, comments like “The sole reason Youtube should exist” and “They should play this at Chris De Burgh’s funeral” were indicative of the allure that “eccojams” held in the populace’s imagination.

Through the aptly-named Curatorial Club, Lopatin released a mixtape under his Games alias, further creating a world only distinguished by 80s R&B samples and remnants of an HBO afterlife. Spend The Night With might be a supplement to the ethos Lopatin was defining himself by in this era, but it stood as a little beside to the plunderphonics he would come to create in both Eccojams and his next Oneohtrix release, Replica. There seemed to be an effortlessness insofar as grafting samples for songs, with the likes of Janet Jackson, Toto, and Fleetwood Mac all being used as maestros with which Lopatin could craft his singular vision.

“A1” is a sublime way to begin the album. Before all the “Africa” memes, before the Toto-Weezer bizarro crossover, Lopatin predicted the future with this slice of heaven, a cosmic entity that forces the listener into bliss, whether consciously or unconsciously. It’s a perfect primer for the Chuck Person galaxy, assaulting the senses in a barrage of track splitting and cutting that would make John Oswald blush. The signature technique of pulling a single phrase from a song is unveiled here, wherein Toto frontman Joseph Williams sings “Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you”, it’s chopped into a beautiful repetition that buoys the entire song to euphoria. Chuck Person draws an incredible conclusion from the pop tradition of ephemera -- only a few seconds matter.

sunsetcorp again rears its prescient head with “A2”, adapted from “angel” off of Memory Vague. Hauntological pop was nothing new at the time, with Ariel Pink and Leyland Kirby dabbling in the genre, but Lopatin took it to a whole new level with the track. “Angel please don’t go” provides a goosebumps-inducing refrain, Christine McVie’s vocals warped and looped like a psilocybin nightmare. The use of vocals is incredible, affecting mind and body and transporting the listener into different worlds and states of being. Lopatin’s re-appropriation tactics came to define the concept of vaporwave itself, as choral focus of pop magnified at-large. Never before was the human voice so acutely presented, its power in the abstract realized by the curious power of Ableton.

The three-piece of “A1”, “A2”, and “A3” may be one of the most potent 3-track sequences on any album. “A3” is the most widely-known song off Eccojams, and for good reason. It’s a massive piece, a song that could fill stadiums given its euphoric propensity. Fantastical images abound, bringing JoJo’s “Be real, it doesn’t matter anyway / You know it’s a little too late” from pristine into dazed iconography, a collusion of sounds and senses. What’s even more fascinating is that Lopatin then turns around and samples “Castles in the Sky” by Belgian trance project Ian Van Dahl, finding an ornate balance between the polished pop of JoJo and the kineticism of Eurodance in an ambient interlude.

There are more sunsetcorp deep cuts on here repurposed as a cohesive unit, such as “demerol” as “A4” and “nobody here” as “B4”, but the true stars are the previously unreleased jams that Lopatin cooked up in his laboratory. In his Reddit AMA he alluded to “cryogenically unfreezing” them, and it’s an apt metaphor for such otherworldly music. “A6” features Janet Jackson trapped in the A&R purgatory of pop, glamorizing the dissonance until Lopatin cranks up the chopping, until Janet is no more. “A8” is absolutely fascinating, and listening back to Marvin Gaye’s “My Love Is Waiting”, it’s wondrous that the sensual elegance of Gaye could become such a deformed product, a tangled mess of misshapen R&B that is utterly majestic at the same time.

The second half is much more akin to noise, finding a home in cacophony rather than keep relying on the scrambling of hits. While there are straightforward samples like “Me Against The World” by Tupac on “B5” or “These Dreams” by Heart on “B6”, Lopatin opts to go for a manic approach in his quest boil pop down to its essence. In an interview with Simon Reynolds, he explains this process saying “Noise can be sculpted down to become pop; pop can be sculpted down into noise.” Eccojams plays with these assertions constantly, erasing any sort of dichotomy present beforehand. “B1” is a sensory overload, with all the energy of a panicked anxiety attack, until its outro calms the mind and body. After, “B2” packs radio static together and unravels it, syncopation drowning out any coherent thoughts. It’s as if Lopatin cut and pastes memory until nothing familiar is left.

Vaporwave’s influence has been abundant through modern culture, from the hyperreal facets of music videos by Drake and Tame Impala to our endless obsession with 80s and 90s culture being rebranded and sold to us, there isn’t an online soul who can say they haven’t stumbled across some form of this phenomenon. Yet beneath all the memes and bastardization lies a cultural statement of hybridity and ephemera, and Chuck Person stands in-between all of this. It’s more philosophically meaningful and spiritually fulfilling than any other release in the microgenre, artistically brilliant and packed to the brim with matchless ideas undeterred by the limits of audio software and the human brain. Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol.1 is the emotions we’ve never felt and memories we don’t have, sealed deep into the shared consciousness of us all. And to think, Lopatin intended all this as a joke.

#chuck person #eccojams #vaporwave #daniel lopatin #oneohtrix point never

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