July 1st, 2010 by niwa | posted in albums, beats, downtempo, electronic, release | 2 comments »

We’re back from the hiatus! To give a short ‘n simple explanation for our break: I wanted to release some tracks.. didn’t happen. We wanted a new layout for the site.. didn’t happen! In the meanwhile the new releases, old gems, free plugins and good parties.. did happen! So let’s just shove the past aside and get on with the music.

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.

December 16th, 2009 by niwa | posted in .nl, beats, download, electronic, free music, hiphop | no comments »

“It’s life Jim, but not as we know it”.  After psych-rock, funk, italo, electro and.. well practically every genre in music that’s been around after the 70’s, you can now see a new artificial musical constellation in the skies. The upcoming example has been launched from somewhere in Amsterdam, and consists of raw electronic beats and some funky dubstep. Get your oxygen-tanks, strap on your anti-gravity boots and get ready for the last timewarp from 2009.

“Your favorite’s favorites of 2009″ is what Cinnaman, Shady, Brutuzz, Giographic and O.Boogie call this collection of 5 small mixes to celebrate the upcoming New Year’s eve.

Cinnaman launches off with some boom-clap beats, bleeps  and distorted arps. Fresh styles as we’re used from him, so ’nuff said. After dumping the initial boosters, Shady takes us smoothly out of orbit and into the dark void of space. From there on he slowly takes us into the dubstep nebula, where it’s time for Brutuzz to take over.

It seems Brutuzz has had enough of the endless darkness that surrounds the nebula. Ditching impulse speed he goes straight to warp 6, heading for a beautiful supernova with some blissfull 80’s electrofunk influenced stepping. While the rest of the crew is tightly strapped in, the passengers are now wiggin’ out.
After the supernova has died out Giographic relieves Brutuzz and, to make up for lost time, kicks it to warp 9 with harsh synths, steady drums and a lot of LFO’ing. Getting pushed back in your seat, the stars off the port-bow suddenly go from little white dots to bright long stripes.

Quickly entering the new constellation, it’s time for O. Boogie to explore for a suitable planet to descend to. Conducting surveys of each planet within the star system, Boogie encounters and debriefs us on everything that we’ve already heard and seen on the journey to this corner of the galaxy. Then, out of nowhere, appears a red dwarf of the likes we’ve never seen: That’s where we need to go. Setting down the spacecraft with a nostalgic tune, excitement buzzes through the ship. Everyone suits up and gets ready to depart…

…and that’s where the transmissions ended. I guess we’ll have to wait ’till next year to see what was on the planet’s surface.

Get the mix through soundcloud (MP3), mediafire (full package containing covers and flyers), or listen below.

December 5th, 2009 by niwa | posted in beats, compilation, download, downtempo, electronic, free music, jazz, soul | no comments »

While the albums of the Swedish collective known as Little Dragon aren’t really fitting our cozy niche of beat-related music, the other projects of lead-singer Yukimi  Nagano are much to our taste. She has sung for Koop, works with José González and appears as vocalist on releases by Swell Session, Hird and Ge-Ology. In honour of her works (and a live performance in his hometown), Supa Kool DJ Uncle Q has made a tribute mix for the online magazine ‘The Couch Sessions‘.

The mix consists of the more(up) tempo oriented tracks on which Nagano is featured, making it a nice and smooth jazzy 55mins, with some touches of electronica. With all the tracks from different sources packed together it’s easy to observe how versatile Yukimi’s vocal talents are. Whether it’s trip-hop, poppy electronica or straight-up (nu-)jazz, she seems to get into the perfect vibe with ease, adjusting her way of singing perfectly to the style.

Uncle Q does a great job blending all these different tracks together into a great mix which is easy to listen and enjoy.

Tracklist:
01. Koop – Whenever There Is You
02. Ge-ology – Blues Alley
03. Little Dragon – No Love
04. Quartermaine – Mystic Qool Breeze
05. Little Dragon – After The Rain
06. Little Dragon – Feather
07. Shuya Okino – Pieces of You
08. Little Dragon – Forever
09. Koop – Summer Sun
10. Little Dragon – Thunder Love
11. Hird – Love You My Hope (Do Right Remix)
12. Swell Session – The Music in Her Eyes
13. Koop – I See A Different You
14. Jafrosax – Drawn 2 U
15. Little Dragon – Never Never

Get it here (on z-share through thecouchsessions.com)

December 3rd, 2009 by niwa | posted in albums, beats, downtempo, electronic, hiphop, triphop | 1 comment »

Last year Tokyo Dawn announced that they would re-start their label and, although it took a bit longer than planned, they kept their word. After Comfort Fit’s 2nd album (check the previous post) it’s time for Portformat to drop his debut today: “The Repeat Factor”.

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

December 1st, 2009 by niwa | posted in albums, beats, downtempo, electronic, triphop | 1 comment »

The German beat-wizard known as Comfort Fit has returned after 5 years to drop his sophmore album called ‘Polyshufflez‘ on Tokyo Dawn Records. And what a return it is. Whereas his 2005 (free) release consisted mostly of sample-based material, Polyshufflez blends in seemlessly with todays’ electronic groovyness and maybe even gets on top of it for a while. Let’s take a quick look at the album, before moving on to the oncoming remix LP!

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)

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

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