Suddenly changes occured, almost simultaneously. We hit our 20s, MP3 encoding became popular, old-fashioned tracker applications were replaced with midi sequencers and with the emergance of broadband internet the PC/Amiga music scene died and was reborn in the form of netlabels. I’ve never spoken to him anymore and only rarely did his name pop up on the net. People fade away, thus is life and it’s quite possible he’s forgotten all about me and the other online guys. But I have something better than pictures to remember him by: I’ve got his music.

As he and I once did over a decade ago, I now share music with you on this blog. And it doesn’t seem more than fair that I share his music with you. This is Vae a.k.a. Aleksi Virta with “Meets Torsti At The Space Lounge”.

Now Vae wasn’t revered for his skillz in a tracker as much as he was praised for his ability to put just the correct samples and grooves together in any DAW to create something incredible, a fact which is evident on this little 35 minute album which was released through Monotonik.

The ‘Outer Edge Intro’ immediately sets the tone for the album. Spaced out dubby fx, percussion and groovy drums are accompanied with a freaked-out cinematic vocal bit. ‘Nebulae Herb’ continues on the same tip, doing it’s name justice by adding a badass Hammond-like groove and a 60s space-age synth solo. If you listen closely you can hear how a wild cut-up ‘Next Level remix‘ by Show & A.G. forms the basis for this track. Crazy!

Exiting the Nebulae we find ourselves on a beach reminiscent of the Caribbean, apart from the fact that we’re on Mars. Imagine a band playing their organs and Hohners in the red sands to a Southern-American groove. When you’re done slowly swaying your hips, the ‘Gavrila Nebula’ interlude prepares you for the insane jazzyness of ‘The Giant Catch 22′. Easily a candidate for Mark Farina’s “Mushroom Jazz” compilations, this hardcore 90s instrumental hiphop track has it all: walking basslines, jazzy rides, thick beats and harsh piano hits.

After this we’re up for some serious dub (without the stepping) on “Whirlwind Pistols Dub”. Grab your dreadlock-wig from the top shelf and toke up, it’s 4:20. More instrumentalism and short solo’s on this bass-heavy track. Irie! Irie Daily! But it isn’t until Vae goes total latin on “O Tema De Viagem Especial” that he presents his grandeur. Shakers, guitars, horns, organs, drumfills, flute, xylophone, everything is just there. When you’re just getting fired up he throws in a massive funk drumbreak to totally break you loose.

With the ‘Art Of Far’ interlude Aleksi exits the party and ventures back into space, showing off some drum programming that the stutter-boys that are now hype would be jealous of. It’s just a little taste to get us in the mood for the final track, but we’re not there yet. First ‘Dragons’ must be slain on a bombastic breakbeat track which would be in A. Skillz’s top 10 if he ever heard it. If there’s another remake of Shaft, this will be the soundtrack to a heavy fighting scene.

Being almost near the end of the space journey, Vae goes DJ Krush on ‘True Dwelling Place’. Raw beats, heavy bassline and abstract pads are key. Add a little sound fx here and there and it’s done. ‘Princess Melodiae’ sounds like the title reads: beautiful but dangerous. Starting off with moody melodics the track suddenly transforms into a beat and sample mash-up that could fit perfectly in a Flying Lotus set. At the moment you’re comfortably set in that groove, the beast is unleashed and out comes a dark hard synthy breakbeat ending. Going out with a bang was never so true.

You can get the separate tracks at archive.org or download everything in the pack I’ve uploaded at MegaUpload (link updated) or zShare.

As added bonus you can check out an interview with Vae at Imaginary Planet and listen to/download a rework I did of his 2000 track ‘Beige Amme’ below.

Vae – Beige Amme (What’s That In My Sink remix)

The first EP (”19/76″) that Crookram released on Budabeats back in 2008 was met with open arms in the downtempo scene because of the perfect in-style feel and melancholic atmosphere. Two year later he returns with 19 tracks to show us downtempo isn’t only not dead, it’s actually in damn good shape! Let’s do some quick highlights here of the album that came out on Budabeats as well as Bankrupt Recordings.

The album starts off with an oldschool ‘who am I and what do I do’ intro. A dope beath with a bunch of rap vocals scratched on it. Da Crook still brags and boasts and follows with ‘Crookrilla’, one of his sample-laden breakbeat tracks that Wax Tailor would be proud of.
Next up on the menu are ‘Breakadawn’ and ‘Missione Pericolosa’, two steady 90bpm groove tracks. Dope cinematic vibes with straight drums is the recipe. ‘Bij De Rest’ also features these ingredients but because of the dusty Dutch sample (nice find bro!) it has kind of an early Spinvis vibe.

Speaking about nice finds, ‘Please Get Out Of The New One If You Can’t Blend The Ancient’ is a beautiful and funny interlude. It almost seems like a message to all the young kids out there making hip beats without researching their predecessors (my words, not Crookram’s!). The title track ‘Through Windows’ and ‘Two Seven Three Eleven’ continue the downtempo stream that’s ideal for a sunsplashed sunday morning. It’s the perfect build-up to ‘Good Morning Good Days’, an interlude which welcomes you to the more uptempo track ‘Makedonija’.

After this happy segment it’s back to cinematic moodyness with ‘Your Eyes Are Full Of Hate’, ‘Bodies’ and ‘Badalamenti’, an eastern Europe influenced track in which Crookram shows us he’s capable of more than simple breaks and boom-bap drums. ‘A Man Named Ivan’ continues the exotic sample-trip before getting back to straight funk on ‘Business Is Business’ and ‘Eugène Et Le Cerceau’, which are more minimalistic and reminds me of the Belgian loop-cutters 40 Winks.

Ending the album in style, the last 3 tracks take us back to the Crookram we know from “19/76″. Dragging movie styled sampled accompanied by robust beats. A perfect goodbye and ’till next time that makes you lunge for the repeat button before the final track is over.

On “Through Windows” Crookram not only shows us his growth as a producer, but also that regular downtempo music isn’t dead and the pile of old records to sample from is still not depleted. As much as I love our new erratic stuttering synthy counterpart, I’m filing this release as a classic without a single doubt.

Check out the intro track below and download the album at Budabeats or Bankrupt Recordings (direct links).

crookram-back to school by budabeats

update: The Dutchies can check an interview with Crookram at 3voor12. And here’s a video of the track ‘Through Windows’

When I tried to describe the album to a friend last week, I couldn’t come up with anything else than ‘emotionally beautiful’. Now that I’ve had some time to let it sink in I’d say it sounds like Ugress meets Glitch Mob with the moodyness of Aphilas.

“Passing By Behind Your Eyes” is a very consistant album and it represents all aspects of modern music production: synthwork, sampling, drum programming and extensive composition. In stead of taking the more minimalistic approach, as a lot of hip producers do nowadays, Pretty Lights takes the complete opposite route and delivers a very layered and cinematic sound while still keeping a raw and fast-paced dancefloor edge. Don’t expect no 2-minute looped beats either, every track has a strong build-up and varied composition.

Throughout the album the workflow seems pretty straight-forward. There are groovy tight drums with a layer of nice and moody samples, which forms the froundwork for the melodic synths that are placed on top. Since the sampling isn’t the main focus but an equally important part as the rest of the composition, even the most purist sample-heads can’t front on the usage of a couple of well-known tracks (I just love how he flipped “Stretch – Why Did You Do It” on the 8th track “Let Em Know It’s Time To Go”).

Next to offering a load of releases online for free Pretty Lights also play live in a 2-man combination. Check out the video below (which is of the track with the Stretch sample)

Tokyo Dawn signed yet another hot up and coming artist to their roster: Swede:art. Already known on the web for his Mondayjazz and Soundcloud sessions, the neck-breaking German electronic musician Joachim Prügl has dropped his debut album “Emotional Colors“.

If you’ve bought the last two TDR releases you know exactly what to expect: head-nodding beats, piercing synths, thoughtful raps and soulful vocalism. For some this is a reason to blindly buy Emotional Colors, for others it may be the reason to ’skip it, because I already have enough of this style’.
If you’re one of the latter persons, you need to read on. Where Comfort Fit’s “Polyshufflez” took your head all over the place with his crazy electronic bouncing beats, and Portformat’s “The Repeat Factor” brought you back to the floor with a more soulful boom-bap sound, Swede:art slides neatly in between and adds some real electro-funk in the mix.

The album has an overall chilled-out feel and the emphasis lies more on the space between the drums than on the beats itself. This space is smoothly filled with funky and thick basslines, small sample excerpts and s-s-s-s-sweeeeping synths. Next to the usual TDR suspects Blaktroniks, Caits Meissner and Comfort Fit, Swede also recruits beat-funkateers Duktus (featured on the latest Brownswood Bubblers) and Pursuit Grooves (why haven’t we done an article on her yet?).

From the staggering opening track “Black Mining” to the soulful “Linguistics” (feat. Stray) and ending with the broken beat’ish  “On My Way” (feat. Note & Duktus), Emotional Colors is a versatile release for every beat-lover.
As an added bonus you can listen to Swede:art mixing up old, new and coming TDR tracks at Mixcloud before you buy the album.

Now don’t you dare to judge this album in comparison with Polyshufflez. Although the 2 producers are friends and work closely, Portformat has really developed his own style. If you thought hip hop was dead and neo-soul long buried, in comes PF to prove you wrong. “The Repeat Factor” is pure electronic soul for our generation. Thick basslines over head-nodding drums, melodic raps accompanied with swaying chorus-vocalism and smooth pads laying the ground for raw synths.

The release is nicely split, putting a 100% Portformat solo instrumental between every couple of featurings. The list of people who bless the tracks with their vocalism includes Bless1, Shaunise, Caits Meissner, Joe Kickass, ofcourse Blaktroniks and US residents Dudley Perkins & Georgia-Anne Muldrow!

Whether it’s hiphop, neo-soul or spaced out beats, Germany’s Portformat is your man.

You can check out the album and buy it at the TDR website

Comfort Fit – Polyshifflez LP

It would be a little too easy to just label Polyshufflez as yet another electronic-beat album/tape as we’ve seen pop up over the last couple of years. Although minimalism is key, CF proves that you can keep that vibe without making tracks that only contain the bare minimum of sounds. Next to his trademark punchy thick kick-and-snare sound the album is layered with deep basses, atmospheric pads/drones, simple but beautiful melodies and quirky beeps and sound fx. All these ingrediënts are used to make slow jams, party bangers and the occasional abstract ambientesque beat.

To top things off the shufflemeister has collaborated with old and new friends on the 71min disc, including Dyno, Howard Marks, Mishoo The Drumkit, Blaktroniks, Caitlin Meissner and ofcourse friend and labelmate Portformat (whose album will drop December 3rd, but we’ll get back to you on that).

There’s also a video for the track ‘Bit By Bit’. Below the video is a player in which you can check out clips of the whole album and buy it at your fav. online store:

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Comfort Fit – Polyshufflez Remix LP

As announced on the EPK, on December 17th the remix version of Polyshufflez will be released. After taking a glance at the artist roster it quickly becomes clear what CF has been up to the last couple of years, next to shaping his style: laying new and impressive contacts all over the globe. Next to genre-peers like Portformat, fLako and Swede:art some high rollers are present too! Atjazz, Domu and Jay Scarlett are real nice surprises, but Laurent Garnier came as quite a pleasant shock.

Tracklist:
01. Next Incarnation feat. Caits Meissner (Boom Clap Bachelors Remix) 03.10 min
02. Seen Not Heard feat. NOTE (Jay Scarlett remix) 04.02 min
03. Yer Daddy feat. Wallis Bird (Domu remix) 05.11 min
04. Peter Pan (Portformat remix) 02.12 min
05. Exabyte (Singing Statues remix) 03.39 min
06. Exabyte (fLako remix) 03.14 min
07. Fired up! feat. Blaktroniks (Opolopo remix) 04.27 min
08. Ask The Devil feat. Howard Marks (Atjazz Deeper remix) 05.34 min
09. Seen not heard feat. NOTE (Tim Turbo remix) 05.16 min
10. Wicked Game (Swede:art remix) 06.46 min
11. Fired up! feat. Blaktroniks (Robot Koch remix) 03.30 min
12. Superposition (Comfort Fit remix) 07.43 min
13. Snare Wars (Jacob Korn remix) 05.57 min
14. Ask The Devil feat. Howard Marks (Laurent Garnier remix) 11.24 min

For the next 2 weeks until the album drops, you can enjoy these 2 tracks that TDR has supplied bloggers around the globe with:

Next Incarnation feat. Caitlin Meissner (Boom Clap Bachelors remix)

Seen, Not Heard feat. Note (Tim Turbo remix)

Just before dropping his new album with John Robinson (aka Lil’ Sci of Scienz Of Life) called “Jay Are – The 1960’s Jazz Revolution Again”, Rawls pops out  this collection of beats in conjunction with Mighty Healthy NYC.

Although I honestly can’t say this is a superb product from beginning to end (some beats are a bit.. easy or unworked), it still just what you expect from J.: minimal, soulful and funky smooth-jazz on dope beats. Thankfully the few ‘misses’ on the tape are quickly forgotten after hearing the masterpieces like ‘Equinox’, ‘Stand Down’ and ‘4 A.M.’

Also included is a track from the Jay Are album, ‘The Lee Morgan Story’ and a joint featuring L.E. called ‘American Idol’.

Get Hotel Beats vol 1. here (zshare)

In itself this may be not such an eye-opening fact, but it seems the .pl beat-lovers don’t limit themselves to established artists. They have a tendency to dig a bit deeper and appreciate artists that are not so prominent on the radar. This realisation triggered my memory to pull out an album that was handed to me by longtime friend DJ Proces (of Polish origin, former DJ and producer of Next Item): Noon – Bleak Output.

Released in 2000 on dDrecords, Bleak Output is a timeless minimalistic downtempo album which focus relies mainly on mood. The 12 tracks are not mixed together, but float into each other. This makes it possible to listen to separate tracks alone while keeping a sense of wholeness when you listen to it from beginning to end.

It’s almost uncanny how Noon manages to make each track unique and yet keeps the overall atmosphere of the release 100% the same. Although the use of similar vocal cuts (of movies? radio-plays? I have no idea actually) throughout the album aids in keeping the vibe, they are merely a small piece of of the artwork. Let’s say they are the screws or nails you’d use to hang a beautiful painting on the wall with.

The drums are, ofcourse, obviously present in most tracks and are nicely sequenced to accompany the melancholic samples and mostly staccato basslines. In all elements it’s clear that it’s sampled material because no effort has been made to cover up the cracks and pops made by old and overused vinyl, and we should be thankful for that.

I could do a track-by-track review of this album but I’m certain my words can’t capture the beauty of this heavily chilled piece of art. I used to think about empty, hollow and uninhabited spaces when I would read the word ‘bleak’, but after this album I found it to represent a place that offers contemplation, introspection and rest.

link to rapidshare

German MPC/Microkorg handler Hubert Daviz was the man for the freely downloadable volume one, laying down some chilled and spaced out beats.

Daviz focuses on more full-length tracks in stead of 1-minute-something beats, which is complimentary to his style. Short intro-pieces introduce you to the basic atmosphere of his tracks whereafter a nice steady beat usually drops in. Although loop-based, the tracks on the compilation offer enough breaks and variations to stay exciting.

Hard upfront basses and spacious pads are key to HD’s tracks, and the beats are mostly pretty steady but nonetheless interesting since the focus lies more on creating a groove than a rolling drumset.

Although we may have missed it when it came out, when I see the sun through my windows I can’t help thinking that this sunny spring is the perfect time to ‘revive’ this free release.

Get it here

Although the album is classified as drum & bass (’intelligent‘ if you want to put it in a corner), it’s way more than that. When put next to the regular dnb album of that time, ‘Colours’ stands out by taking every aspect of composition and arrangement 2 steps higher. Whereas most tracks back then were just beats accompanied by some pads and a little bit of melody, Adam F goes all out on his debut album by serving us extensive arrangementns where the breakbeat is only a pillar on which the music is built and not the entire foundation.

This becomes instantly clear at the intro track which is a 70’s chase-scene funk fueled short with fast hihats and a wah-wah guitar. Before starting off the first full-length track on the album, the intro seamlessly blends into a breakbeat-driven prelude which includes a little live trumpet solo.

After showing off his talents with the 2 short intro tracks Adam brings us an angsty futuristic dnb track that’s based around a single drumloop, a constant pad and a bombastic orchestral hit. By adding other drum excerpts, effects and a filthy heavy bassline, ‘Metropolis’ becomes more and more interesting while maintaining it’s subtle composure.

For a cooling down, the next track offers sweet pads and chords, jazzy guitars and is topped with a crispy vocoder. ‘Music In My Mind’ is a perfect example of how to match dance music with the structure of smooth-jazz composition.  The guitar, trumpets and lead-synth are the main features here, while a thick short bass-hit keeps punching through to keep the pace up.

It’s back to the Metropolis vibe after that, with ‘Jaxx’ being another heavy but atmospheric dark track.

Having shown that he’s capable of doing hard dnb party-tracks, F goes on to show that he’s more than just a dance producer. Starting with ‘Mother Earth’ he explores extensive drum-programming and general atmosphere before going on to the more melodic ‘The Tree Knows Everything’, which is a dnb driven ballad with vocals by Tracey Horn (of Everything But The Girl). The lyrics take you back to childhood times and the accompanying piano and synths compliment that feeling well.

Centre of the release is the commercially viable hit ‘Circles’. Upbeat drums and sunny pads drift alongside a steady and really present bassline.

The only thing drum & bass about ‘Dirty Harry’ are the choice in drums. Apart from those it’s just a straight 70’s blaxploitation funk track, reminiscing of scores Isaac Hayes did. Hard but liquid basslines are key to this track and they’re accompanied by flutes and, ofcourse, the wah-wah guitar again.

‘F-Jam’ featuring MC Conrad (THE dnb MC at the time) goes back to straight intelligent: simple beats, chilled pads, trumpet solo’s and the deep full voice of Conrad.

The not-so-unusual-but-still-surprising guest star Ronny Jordan drops in for ‘Colours’. Adam easily adapts his style to Ronny’s guitar solo’s while maintaining his own sound which became so apparent in the previous track. This track is just straight-up smooth jazz: guitar, rhodes, saxophone and recurring themes. An unexpected but real nice twist at the end of a dnb album.

Finishing off with another ‘intelligent’ track, Aromatherapy is a perfect outro track for this release.

Although we’re more than 10 years down the road since the release of Adam F’s debut, it’s a timeless classic that still sounds fresh now. It’s also clear that this album pushed the limits and upped the bar for regular drum and bass producers.

Enjoy!