So you like Flying Lotus, Take, Nosaj Thing, Floating Points, Dorian Concept, Daedelus, Gaslamp Killer, etc etc etc? Then you probably have already seen them live. Ofcourse that’s a blast, but wouldn’t some new names spice up the line-up of your favourite festival? Then enjoy the video’s below, download “Forget And Remember” and buy “Polyshufflez” plus the remix album. When you’re done with that, show CF some love and hassle your (local) organisers to book this guy. Madness!

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)

This time the belgians were superior again as Jack took the title (again!) of King of the hill 2009. More on the battles in a later post, first I want to talk about the showcases.

Two world class pro’s were chillin’ in Utrecht to rock a couple of showcases: DJ Nelson, representing france, and DJ Taiji, hailing from japan. Thursday Nelson arrived and DJ Mseize (the engine behind Wax and the City) took him to the Hague to give a masterclass there.

Taiji also just arrived and needed a place to practice his set, which he was going to showcase the next evening. Luckily this place turned out to be my own crib.

Check Taiji’s practice in the video below:

DJ Taiji rockin @ my crib, full session from skidz on Vimeo.

Besides talkin’ with his hands a lot on the decks, Taiji turned out to be great company. We (me, niwa and qualitee) discussed a lot of things with him, from music to japanese customs and traditions. After a lot of drinkin’ and talking and giving him a couple of record store addresses, the evening came to an end. Hopefully we can see the proper set he did during Wax and the City online soon.

skidz, taiji, qualitee and niwa

Check Taiji’s myspace.

Taiji’s accomplishments:
‘98 TEENS DJ CHAMPIONSHIPS CHAMPION
‘98 DMC JAPAN FINAL 5th PLACE (KANSAI BLOCK 2nd PLACE)
‘99 OFFICE GM DJ BATTLE CHAMPION
‘99 DMC JAPAN FINAL 3rd PLACE
‘99 B-BOY PARK DJ BATTLE CHAMPION
‘00 DMC JAPAN FINALIST (KANSAI BLOCK CHAMPION)
‘00 VESTAX EXTRAVAGANZA TEAM CATEGORY CHAMPION
‘01 OSAKA ROCK THE HOUSE DJ BATTLE CHAMPION
‘01 DMC JAPAN FINAL 3rd PLACE (KANSAI BLOCK CHAMPION)
‘02 VESTAX EXTRAVAGANZA ASIA CHAMPION&WORLD 2nd PLACE
‘04 DMC JAPAN CHAMPION (KANSAI BLOCK CHAMPION)

Credits to Yuri Linthout for cleaning up and editing the video material.

Also, a short written piece about their label Beatsbroke, on 3voor12XL.

Since you don’t want to download (and we don’t want to offer it either) lots of megabytes, I did some re-encoding of the video for multiple platforms: PC and Mac, iPhone (or any other portable with good storage) and normal mobile phones that can handle video. I’m pretty amazed at the results myself since the smallest version is of even better quality than youtube.

Actual size screenshots (click to enlarge):

mobile

portable

pc/mac

Get them here (right-click -> “save as” if you’ve got a browser player like Quicktime installed):

our friend DJ Diabastard pointed out that the DivX version didn’t work on his iPhone, so we’ve replaced it with the more allround MP4-format.

You can get the XviD codec for Windows or Linux here, and the codecs and instructions for Mac are located here.

Enjoy, and remember where you got this first =)

First off, Keynote Speakerz released their video for the track “Say What!” featuring King Jule, Avi and DJ DNS (of ShitIsBangin). It’s a basic and solid fastpaced partytrack and the video reminisces of the mid-90s when when rappers didn’t have big cars, jewels and.. well let’s say scarcely clothed women. For those paying attention, you can see flashes of Skidz ‘n me on this 8mm black and white film production.

Funny enough the Dutch producer duo Armyfatique also dropped some new tracks recently, holding on to the true hiphop vibe in a 2k jacket. Krylon and Lostsun have been busy with some overseas work including productions for Trife, Dom Pachino (Killarmy), Vordul Mega, Bekay and Maylay Sparks.

With their album dropping soon (guys, August is over, where it’s at??) in October and boasting featurings of the names above and more heavy hitters like Q-Unique, C-Rayz Walz and Access Immortal, it’s been a pretty damn good year for the Dutch beatmasters. To keep you heated until you can cop the album here’s the video of Armyfatique ft. Maylay Sparks – Haze.