Your Niece / Bassnectar, The Collysilium, Secret Garden Party, UK
The Collysilium and the Bearded Kitten scaled up big time at this year's Secret Garden Party. The hay bale amphitheatre was about twice as big as last year. During the day it played host to mud wrestling and all manner of silliness, then at night it turned into the best dancefloor on site. Headlining the Saturday night was none other than US bass music pioneer Bassnectar himself, his first UK festival appearance in 5 years. On just before him was Your Niece, who's been pioneering West Coast crunk on these shores since before everyone else cottoned on, up for his biggest support set to date. He certainly didn't disappoint. Together they delivered well over two hours off unadulterated bass pleasure while the Collysilium went completely nuts. Amazing.
marymissfairy at Winter Wonderland, Paris, 19 March 2011
We took Mary to Paris as a last minute stand in and the French burner community had no idea what hit them. By far the best set of the night. She never disappoints. One night in paris by MaryMissFairy
Lee Burridge, Dawn at the Robot Heart, Black Rock City, USA, 3 September
I could have chosen Mim0Sa's set at Fractal Nation, Stephan Jacobs at Dub Scouts, or any number of afternoons dancing at Distrikt. Purely because it was one of those beautiful moments where so much comes together, though, my favourite set at Burning Man 2011 has to be Lee Burridge on the Robot Heart at dawn on Saturday morning. Beautiful, minimal blissed out, groovy music in a truly amazing place with truly wonderful people.
After yearning to to check out the West Coast bass music scene since 2007, this year, with clearance from work and a willingness to plunder my savings, I finally made it to Burning Man with D-ra.The theme was Rites of Passage and this certainly was a pilgrimage for me.
Burning Man takes planning. This is a desert festival based on radical self reliance in a currency free environment, not an English country garden with overpriced food stalls and potable water on tap. For more details check out the survival guide.
Getting to Black Rock City is all part of the experience. Stories of broken down RVs and hours spent waiting for a lift from Reno are common. We flew out to San Francisco and found an eco-bus traveling from Santa Rosa (using this brilliant new ride-share site) so had a fairly easy ride of it - until at about 10pm Sunday night we hit the most epic queue of tail lights you've ever seen. Even so, were one of the earliest to arrive on site and it was quite an experience to feel the city fill up around us.
Our base for the week was with the Pink Heart at the prima-playa real estate of 9.30 Esplanade. We couldn't have chosen a nicer camp to stay in or a better way to connect with others on the playa. As well as providing shelter from the sun and pink fluffy sofas for tired limbs, we were giving out Coconut Bliss ice cream and ice cold cucumber water to all who came.
Black Rock City (click on map above) is vast and full of distractions. The best analogy I can think of in terms of size is Glastonbury Festival, where it takes hours to get between stages. It's nothing like the muddy crush of densely packed bodies bogged down in drizzle though. With a vast open space between the two sides of the city and day-time temperatures of up to 50 C, it's the complete opposite.
The best piece of advice anyone gave me before we went is to get a bike. Without one you're either gonna spend your days trekking epic distances on foot or remain slave to the whims of mutant vehicle drivers as they meander across the playa at random. We had ours actually delivered to the Playa by the guys at Re-Cycle.
The other way to travel in style is to catch rides on mutant vehicles. These DIY art projects bring the mad max flavour to the festival and for me were one of the real creative highlights of the week Many take nautical or animal themes, but there's all kinds of craziness out there. You often only glimpse them emerging from dust clouds or far in the distance, somewhere out there on the borders of mirage and reality. At night they're lit up with EL wire and fairy lights, as are all the bikes and people (you don't wanna be a dark-wad and get run over).
After a day of settling in, we kicked off the party on Tutu Tuesday at Distrikt with M.A.N.D.Y. and Lee Combs. It's all about Distrikt for the daytime party. Set deep in the suburbs of 9 and Funeral, the system fires up at about 11am when it's got too hot for anyone in a tent to sleep anyway. This is the Ibiza beach party of the playa, albeit with a more steampunk disco feel. It reminds me of the daytime Origin Stage at Glade or Funky Beach at Boom - good time vibes, beautiful, semi-clothed people and pumping progressive house building into tech funk as the dusk draws in.
My favourite moment came later in the week when a group of Santas and their elves started to infiltrate the crowd around the rig. Before we knew it the dance-floor was being pelted with snowballs.
Later that evening the city came to life. With sound the main sound camps still pretty muted, we decided to jump on the first art car that came our way and ended up all the way out on Liminal at the edges of the city for a game of glo-frisbee. A few more cars took us via a few artworks to the Man, the Temple - a most beautiful, peaceful building that would look quite at home in the Alhambra - and eventually across to the purple geodesic shapes of Disorient at 2 o'clock and Esplanade.
I'd been told that one of the best places to see the sun come up is the legendary Robot Heart, a colossal mobile rig on the back of a truck, which we found somewhere out past the temple playing deep house and funky progressive techno.
By Wednesday I'd managed to find someone with a music line-up (thanks to the RockStarLibrarian) to scour for set times. One of the first must sees on my list was Stephan Jacobs, who I caught at Dub Scouts that night. It was like heaven to finally be submersed in some proper interesting bass and his set was right on point. Stephan is by far one of my favourite producers at the moment and has just dropped this sweet new EP on Simplify.
Next up was Sugarpill at Basscamp's Temple of Boom, on the corner of 10 and Esplanade, surrounded by glowing mutant vehicles an open to lasers stretching across the playa from other stages. I've been aware Sugarpill via our blogs for about 3 years, watching him progress to become a very exciting producer, so it was a great pleasure to see him play such a good set.
Sugarpill was followed by another of my 'must sees', local lads Love and Light from Reno. Alongside Opiuo these guys have been behind a funkier, squelchier bouncing glitch-hop in the last two years and their set really carried that energy, with girls and guys that had previously been lost in their own bassheads dancing together with the funk.
ill.gates kept the tempo up, bringing in some more ragga stylings and varied beats. Going for some kinda playa record, this animal played over 30 times throughout the week, visiting just about every sound camp, so I dipped in and out quite a few of his sets which between them covered just about every kind of bass music. A true innovator, he's just dropped his first full length album since 2008, The ill.Methodology.
I was woken up by some friends Thursday afternoon and headed back to Distrikt via a mojito bar built above an old school bus. On the way back we found the notorious snack food glory hole and thankfully avoided any complimentary cock.
Thursday night was Muti Music showcase at The Do Lab'sFractal Nation Village over at 2 and Graduation. The combination of Muti Music's Clipping Paths compilation and Fractal Nation's art dome coming to Boom and Glade in 2007/2008 are what led me towards a love of the West Coast bass scene in the first place. Now I was finally here!
After the Burning Man regional effigies around the man were burnt I headed over via a Beats Antique DJ set at HookahDome (more on them later), arriving in time to catch Heyoka perfectly setting the scene with some squelchy psychedila, whilst I caught up with my fire dancer friends at the back.
It was Mimosa that I was really itching to see though and I made my way to the front. He's been a favourite for a long time and his 2009 Burning Man mix had a hell of a lot to live up to. Thankfully he delivered. The set co-incided with a pyronaughts fire-show on The Do Lab stage, which really picked up the atmosphere, even if the people standing gawping with their mouths open did kinda dampened the dancing. It was going off on front of the DJ booth as Tigran played a set that spanned more club style hip hop remixes, classic Mimosa, some amazing tune with steel drums, and the newer d'n'b dubstep of the likes of Block Party. I got totally lost in it.
Tigran was followed by label boss Dov who played another wicked set through the full Muti Music repertoire of glitch-hop, dubstep and drumstep. We left while Freq Nasty was blowing the roof off with his own flavour of energetic dubstep.
Friday night a giant Trojan horse was dragged out into the middle of the playa by volunteer slaves. Gradually all the art cars parked up around it, sound systems blasting, jetting fire and spilling people to create the atmosphere of a mad max cruise cum space age carnival
It seemed like most of the crowd joined me in heading to the Fractal Nation Village again to see Beats Antique playing their full live set. This is quite the playa event. The place was so packed that I decided to hang out behind the mixing desk where there was space to dance with all the sound quality afforded to the legendary Monkey King at the controls. As a result I didn't see much of Zoe Jakes bellydancing, but the tunes were good and we had a loads fun.
Not interested in David Starfire ("he was just a wanker anyway", reports our Musical Mana correspondent) we split over to the Hookahdome to catch the end of Dulce Vita's dubstep set and to see Knowa Knowone, another target on the list. Due to some kinda tech issue that prevented clean switch-overs the crowd had completely disappeared by the start of Knowa's set. As he eased us into his glitched out percussive beats more and more people drifted toward the torchlight patch of dust, until by the end a very happy crowd were popping and swaying to Knowa's conscious sounds. Someone very kindly lent me some fire poi for my only voluntary spin of the week, finishing just as the technical hitch kicked in again. I went to have a chat to Knowa afterwards and he's a real lovely guy. Did you know he was at Secret Garden Party last year? Neither did I, but I hope he comes back!
After riding and dancing on a few art cars that were cruising up and down the strip at 2, we set off on foot into the deep playa for sunrise. Halfway across we found a Hawain hog roast BBQ going on!
I made it to Robot Heart just after sun-up to find a load of our mates for a magical morning in the hands of Lee Burridge. Sunshine out grooves, beautiful smiling people, girls in cages dangling off a crane, crazy art cars, amazing outfits and plenty of booty shakin'.
After dancing our fill we retired to the bar at Nexus, where Treavor Moontribe was playing some funky and floaty Opiuo laden glitch-hop. I think I reached the point where I was to drunk to stand, or climb the dome, around the time Nanda came on.
We didn't wake till Sat eve - just in time to rock the conclave with the Fireworks Collective before the man burnt. Hungover and drained, we went back to bed straight after, not waking up till just before dawn to see the sun come up from the temple. After exploring some art as far out as we could walk, we went back to pack up camp before watching the temple burn.
This review doesn't even come close to capturing the crazy scale of everything that happens at Burning Man. If you've not been yet, just do it and don't worry too much about catching all the DJ's you wanna see (I never got to see Opiuo, Samples, Sub Swara, Guttstar, Gladkill, Chris B, Mikhal and many more). Just go with the flow and don't get stuck on the sound camps. Make sure you make the time to explore all the art properly and to bimble through the weird and wonderful world of the suburbs - that's where the experience really lies.
So this weekend Polo-la-ra invited me, Peachi and the rest of the Musical Mana / Ra Family over to Paris for a French Burners party at La Machine de Moulin Rouge. I was asked to DJ alongside OshJ, Burning Max and other Nowhere/burner/French DJs, while the girls were lined up to hoop onstage. Then, at the last minute, we needed a stand in for Seanan who got blocked by passport control... booo.... but step in MaryMissMary!
Although we never doubted them, it turns out that Polo and the other French Burners know how to throw THE BEST PARTY EVER! The art was incredible, from vacuum packed humans to lush VJing and all the DJs and stage performers totally rocked it, Mary in particular blowing quite a few socks off. It was literally awesome.
If you didn't make it, no worries; just get dressed up like a nutter, invite loads of cool people over and blast out these mixes at full volume while grinning like La Vache qui Rit!
"(Mary) melted ALL the available brains on the dancefloor. People were extatic. (Her Burning Night) set is in my top 3 sets of all times. And I have been listening to electronic music for over 20 years. She deserves every single bit of applause she got on stage... pure magical aural delight. It was a precious moment for everyone present. Pure hot awesomesauce!"
Big love to all who organised, performed, helped out and had fun x
In Mary's words:
The bestest weekend ever!!!! Paris was amazing!! Awesome journey with awesome people to meet more awesome people and play at the most awesome party ever to the most awesome crowd ever!! My cheeks hurt from smiling! Burner nights rock! Paris rocks! Team awesome rocks!! he he ♥ (MaryMissFairy)
Peachi here - Well it is with much aural pleasure that I present to you a link or two to a veritable plethora of deliciously dirty and driving dubstep DeehJay mixes - by none other than the man himself Josh. This is the gent that melted my brain at Nowhere Festival several times and had me blowing synapses all over the place. He also worked his arse off and put together the 'Jungle is Massive' Ubertown camp that was the centre of several of my top moments of Nowhere (great name for a camp too!). See previous post about the Badicals for edivence... Thanks Josh!
Nowhere Festival is the European Regional Burning Man gathering and he also DJ's at the associated London Decompression Parties (an indoor winter Burning Man'esque ra-union party) and he regularly makes socks dissapear there too ;)
So I'm just gonna give you the link to his soundcloud page where there are 9 mixes to choose from: 5 dubstep, 2 glitch, 1 drum & bass and one electro. I have to say the Electro Mix included above is my favourite, although there are moments in the other dubstep mixes that got me drooling. As hoped for, Josh remembered to press record and added two more mixes from playing out last weekend (15-16th Jan 2011), which I am still working my way through. So the mixes at the top of the page on his soundcloud page are fresh out the packet ladies and gents... mmmmm!
If I was gonna give some constructive feedback, I'd say that dubstep gets a bad name for sometimes just putting some womp bass behind a well known track without really meshing it in well or making it into something new and improved (it can get a bit samey and formulaic). Which is why I think I tend to veer towards dubstep producers who mainly create original tracks rather than just remixes (e.g. Mimosa, NitGrit). That said, some remixes are better than others and there are some less good selections in the Josh mixes in my opinion. But that's just my opinion - different peeps will probably like different ones, so I guess it's hard to predict what's gonna work as a supasta DeehJay. The main thing is that most of the time they are just full power inspiringly PHAT tracks!! Enjoy!
Best Sunrise Eva - Nowhere 2010
TRACK LISTINGS
Josh has a unique way of tagging his tracks on Soundcloud as comments within the track soundwave. Which I find really useful cause then you know exactly which track is which. Nice work Josh! Lets hope it catches on ;)
My favourites:
Feed me - The Spell
I'm Not Your Boyfriend (Please Don't Touch Me) [Original Mix]
Nneka - Heartbeat (Chase & Status remix)
For comedy samples:
Birdy - Gay on Toast
Penny for the DJ - Ninjas (Ninja Man Raga Party)
but this is my favouritest:
Feed Me - Mordez Moi (Original) - WOW!
I'll be avin those on download thankyou very much ;)
Finally you may notice some new names appearing and posting on the blog. Very much looking forward to reading those blogs from fresh ears and I welcome my fellow muzik lovers to the MM blog!
For me, NastyNasty's Priceless was one of the stand out tracks on this year's Acid Crunk compilation from An-Ten-Nae. It's a mournful vocal repeated over sleepy dubstep with creeping electric lazer noises is a pretty good introduction to his sound, which takes that sad but beautiful element of dubstep and makes it something so much more....
Hailing from Okland, CA, NastyNasty first came to my attention on Soundcloud through a joint remix of Rn'b classic Say My Name with NiT GRiT. Unbelievably it still hasn't reached it's download limit despite it's hair raising combination of classic dubstep, NiT GRiT's earth shaking lazer bass and NastyNasty's off kilter swirling lazer synth - so grab it while it's still hot!
Both artists share a sense of meoldy, but while NiT GRiT goes for all out lister submission through the power of his bass, immersion in NastyNasty's sound is a more subtle process. His beats are more broken, his melodies layered in more comples patterns and his overall palette more eclectic - more along the lines of Slugabed or Nosaj Thing. Check out Western Slang below for a good example. Western Slang by NastyNasty
More recently he's dropped a free VIP remix of No Name which lets the bass bubble as much as wobble as the arpegiating high end weaves in and out of an achingly wistful vocal. Perhaps the best this he's produced to date: No Names VIP by NastyNasty
Meanwile this wicked remix of Justice's New Jack seems to pull him out of his dubsteppy roots into a funkier mid-tempo crunk disco vibe: Justice - New Jack (NastyNasty Remix) by NastyNasty
If you download just one thing though, most of these tunes and more are showcased in the beautiful Lazer Soul mixtape he uploaded a few months back: Lazer Soul by NastyNasty
Shilo from DANCEFEVER5000 recently sent me this info about Lucent L’amour, a Valentine's Day music and art festival on February 13 at the Shrine Expo Hall in downtown LA. It looks sick so I've offered to post here since so many hits seem to come from stateside and I'm jealous...
MUSIC: The festival is presented by The Do LaB, one of the premier Burner tribes in Los Angeles, known for throwing fat parties with eclectic lineups and colossal bass. This year’s Lucent L’amour festival has two stages and a keen selection of beautiful beats on the lineup. Both big names and critically acclaimed artists will provide a rousing night of fresh beats for the crowd: Bassnectar, N.A.S.A, Stanton Warriors, Yard Dogs Road Show, Lucent Dossier Experience, Beats Antique, Lazer Sword, Lynx & Janover and Patricio.
ART: Visual arts go hand in hand with music at Lucent L’amour, and you will find a stimulating feast for your eyes all throughout the festival. In addition to a huge art gallery curated by Mike Russek and Deborah Vogt featuring the work of dozens and dozens of artists, we will have a live mural painting by The Mac and Retna as well as a silent art auction, with proceeds going towards the purchase of music and art supplies for under-funded schools. Capping it off is the avant-garde electroart of Andrew Jones, whose inspired creations resonate with the West Coast electronic music community like beats rolling out of a bass bin.
SELF-EXPRESSION: Lucent L’amour promises to create a collision of music, art and creative self-expression. The festival is not a series of performances or a show, but rather an interactive art event where everyone becomes part of the experience, immersed together in one fantastic night of revelry. Come as you are, or deck yourself out in colorful and romantic attire: petticoats, corsets, zoot suits, ruffled parasols, purple polka dot knickers, feathered top hats, green corduroys, striped stockings, and sequined boots- or all of the above.
Having experienced Burning Man vicariously this year, through my girl D and our other friends that went out, on Saturday I joined them at the London Decompression party – a re-union for UK based burners to reconnect and reminisce over the seven days at Black Rock City, run by a group of playa vetrans Euro-burners .
Like Burning Man itself, it’s all about participation - all the performers, DJs and crew are volunteers who have bought tickets - so ahead of the event I sent a dubstep and glitch-hop demo over to Justin aka VJ Meno who was curating the sound and visuals for the night. I didn't expect to be selected, so it was a nice surprise when I checked my emails on Thursday to find out I was on first... followed by a mild panic.
The plan was to bring some of that West Coast, playa dust coated, bass flavour to East London and warm up the room with some heavy dubstep, reggae and glitch-hop. In the end my set got cut short due to a late start, but you can listen to it here in it's entirety:
Edit - Ants Freeland - Do You (Pantyraid rmx) Don G - Mrs U (Zeno Goddess Rmx) Liondub ft. Jah Dan & Sotto Bless - Heartbroken Spystep - Portomental Eskmo - San Francisco (The Rhythm) Larytta - You Got Nothing (Lazer Sword Rmx) Ooah - Tuesday Again Good Buddha - Part Preserve (Tipper rmx) Vibesquad - Snagglespuss Knowa Knowonet feat. Seasunz, Firewater, Wiseproof & New Eon - Free Energy Subvert - Size Matters Alborosie - Kingston Town X-Clan feat. Damian Marley - Culture United Oaah - Heat up the night Defcon - Knock Knock Beats Antique - Roustabout (Bassnectar rmx) Me & You - Last Night (Bassnectar rmx) ediT - The Game Is Not Over Matty G - West Coast Rocks (The Glitch Mob rmx) Nalepa - Monday (The Glitch Mob rmx)
Also playing on the night was Jurassik (Ben Child - above) who runs London breaks night and record label Supatronix and the awesome resource that is ThisIsBreaks.com. He was really enjoying himself, pumping the dancefloor with funky party breaks and, when we met later on, he turned out to be a really nice guy as well. You can check out the mix below and have a listen to his own tunes on Soundloud.
Si Begg – The Bleeps [Unique 3 mix] (Mutate Records) Shut Up and Dance – Cream (Shut Up and Dance) Refracture – Energy Flow (Noobish Records) Breakzhead – Goin’ On [Jurassik mix] (Dusted Breaks) The Prodigy – Warriors’ Dance [Future Funk Squad's Rave Soldier mix] (Take Me to the Hospital) Flack.Su – T-Break [Aeron Aether remix] (Glack Audio) Robosapiens – Infected [LuQas mix] (Dead Famous) Digital Bass – White Lines [Robosapiens mix] (Dead Famous) Rennie Pilgrem – Rich Rule Us [BSD remix] (TCR) Future Funk Squad ft Mojo – Blow (En:Vision) BSD – Intoxicated (iBreaks) Jurassik – How to Pick Up Chicks (Supatronix) 9BO – Antilightbulb (Glack Audio)
Toby Lyons was up after Ben. A bit of a wizard at the controls, he was mashing up some bad boy electro and breaks before pulling out into party style d’n’b, much to the joy of the crowd. Have a look at Toby's Myspace for mini-mixes.
Mana - A supernatural force believed to dwell in a person or sacred object.
Since December 2008, Musical Mana has been serving up fresh mixtapes and tunes for your enjoyment. It's all about sampling new music for free, so that you find the tunes, DJs, producers and nights for your future.
Tastes are predominantly underground electronica with heavy bass, funked up grooves and interesting sounds - glitch-hop, dubstep, future bass, breaks, electro, IDM, progressive trance, tech funk, wonky techno and soothing down tempo grooves.
Please get in touch if you've got something that you want to share -> chrisduballstar at google mail dot com
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