Download audio file (2011-03-05-DJSet.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2011-03-05-DJSet.mp3

A little different than the last few sets I’ve done, as I brought the computer; I just didn’t have enough fresh vinyl for a show. It’s a combination of things that have been on mind, some for months, some as recent as this week. The Darkstar album North has been haunting me since it came out last year. Incredibly moody, emotional music.

Of course, for some of us, Radiohead’s new album King Of Limbs has been a recent obsession. It’s without hit singles, per se, but it does have something of what the Darkstar album has — inventive sound design & production as a way to make emotional connections. The When Saints Go Machine song “Fail Forever” is a recommendation from my son Lucas, who is music director at the Earlham College Radio Station. I never was into Radiohead before Lucas fell hard for them when he was 11; I got him to listen to Arthur Russell, so he knew I’d like anything that had some of that AR magic to it. I’m not sure When Saints Go Machine are Arthur Russell heads, but “Fail Forever” is haunted by him.

And then there’s Anika, who I was turned onto by Peter Kirn’s interview with her. The eponymous Anika is produced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and has the sort of dark, noisy, rough production values that make the Jamaican work by Lee Perry and Clement Dodd so compelling. Two of the songs I played appealed to the hippy pacifist in me, Dylan’s “Masters of War” and Greta Ann’s “Sadness Hides The Sun.” Odd, but not that odd, that 60s era protest folks songs are so relevant still. Same assholes killing brown people then as now.

And there are 3 of my tracks, for better or worse. The Pete tracks are meant to get some additional instrumentation added when I can get Pete Balestrieri captured to put down some saxaphone, but I kind of like Music Minus One sounding stuff. Then there’s my shoutout to Muammar Gadaffi, “Hallucinogens in the Nescafe” which I wrote about earlier. He really is an epically evil motherfucker, and sometimes I think he says the hilarious things he does to soften the blow of his unrelenting, remorseless cruelty. He’s not Charlie Sheen, and of course, Charlie Sheen is another real-time tragedy whose humorous aspects can’t be denied.

But I couldn’t resist last night during my show when I tweeted “Thom Yorke doesn’t have tiger blood, innit? Tabby blood maybe.”

On a technical note, this mix is a cleaned up in a few places from the on-air performance — I was warping tracks in a mad rush yesterday and a couple of things were fucked up, resulting in dead air, tracks falling out of time, and one track getting played twice as fast as it ought to have been. There was one hilarious moment when somehow the tempo was following mouse movements when I wasn’t initially aware, so one track swung up and down between 120 and 200 bpm for a few seconds. But I photoshopped that out.

2562 (aka Dave Huismans) is one of my ‘buy on sight’ artists. Between the dubstep he does as 2562 and his more techno-esque stuff as A Made Up Sound exhibit an adventurous spirit backed by a great feel for structure and dynamics.

But what struck me about “Love In Outer Space” is the choice of percussion and synth sounds, which are all from the classic Roland gear favored by Acid House and Techno artists going back 25 years, when Huismans would have been in diapers. This track is a mutated update on the sound pioneered by Larry Heard, as if Larry Heard was born 25 years later in South London. I don’t think he should go for old school sounds on every track but on this one it really works.

Download audio file (2562-LoveInOuterSpace.mp3)

Yet another DJ mix, because there aren’t enough in the world.

http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-PerusingTheTrendMongersFaireMix.mp3
Download audio file (Chaircrusher-PerusingTheTrendMongersFaireMix.mp3)

NOTE: All of these tracks are in one of three categories: 1) I bought them 2) They’re Creative Commons & Freely available on the Internet or 3) They were given to me directly by the artist. I won’t say that I’ve never downloaded anything and not paid for it. But when it comes to music I put in mixes or play out, I think it’s important to pay for it if you play it.  Otherwise you’re just another punk ass motherfucker trying to get something for nothing.

TRACKLIST:

1. Flying Lotus “Parisian Goldfish”
2. Burial & Four Tet “Moth”
3. Kaupo “Detroit Kutsub”
4. FBK & Shawn Rudiman “As the Ocean …” (Unreleased)
5. Pogo “Expialidocious”
6. Osborne “DownTown”
7. Kate Simko “Gamelan”
8. Terrence Parker “The Rosa Resolution”
9. Luke Hess “Self Control”
10. Yasushi Miura “Something Warm”
11. Karizma “Groove A K’Ordingly”
12. Dirty Sole “Let It All Hang Out”
13. Headhunter “Birk’s Range”
14. Rich Devine “Punk Motherfucker”
15. Pinch “Qawwali”
16. Ital Tek “Strange Love”
17. Likhan “Redlight”
18. Spatial “90113″
19. Monolake “Titan”
20. Pinch “Dr Calson”

The man who invented the term Trendmonger

If you have any affection for the dubstep, this mix is super-sweet. I can’t wait for the Kryptic Minds album based on the strength of these tracks…
Blackdown’s Interview with Loefah and Kryptic Minds
And I’ve put the mix MP3 up on my site, for direct play or download, cuz I hate those commercial ‘free’ download sites. If anyone objects, I can take them down…
Download audio file (Kryptic_Minds_Studio_Mix_11_5_09.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/Kryptic_Minds_Studio_Mix_11_5_09.mp3

Leon Switch & Kryptic Minds

Clanky's Noom

At any rate I’ve given some time to exploring what I can over the past week or so. I spent my time at the gym with The Roots of El-B. I ordered the CD from the UK because Burial rated him highly in interviews, and my listening is shaped by his comments. I can get lost contemplating the way El-B pushes the sequencer swing and makes it work. Anyone who’s made beats and tried going down that path knows you can go mad trying to achieve that perfect groove. El-B kills it, so much so that anyone else sounds fake by comparison. And Burial’s template is present in near-complete form in the El-B track “Buck N Bury”: Download audio file (El-BFeat.Juiceman-BuckNBury.mp3)

And then there’s Seiji, a member of Bugz In The Attic, who’s putting up free tracks and mixes on his blog. I rate “Raving A” very high — it’s got everything — Breakbeats, chunky Detroit Pianos, 303, even a guest appearance by the might Hoover bass. Download audio file (Seiji-RavingA.mp3)

At the other end of the spectrum… well, I’m always a little baffled by what constitutes a hit in the UK and the EU. On the one hand, they’ll go crazy for stuff that would be way too weird for American radio. On the other hand, they’ve never met a track too cheesy or disposable. This track (“Head Shoulders Knees And Toes”) is apparently big, and annoying as fuck. Nursery Rhyme Hook? Check! Cheap Baile Funk beat? Check! I can see how this could be fun — for about 30 seconds.

Blackdown breaks down the ‘Nuum’

Several things about this post are kinda crazy. First, there was something like an academic conference about the genres loosely under the breakbeat umbrella, but apparently with as many magazine critics and actual practitioners than academics involved. Second, what is ideally and often in fact music to go out and rave to, has people passionately arguing about it in terms completely removed from the music itself.

I’m not criticizing, I’m just fascinated. There has been the odd dance music panel from time to time — they do that at WMC for example. And I know there are Ethnomusicologists and Communications Theorists who are doing academic work on techno. But this sort of conference/panel/talk what have you seems to be a matter of genres critiquing themselves in real time as they mutate.

Out of work today with a cold, so I lashed up the mix I’d been collecting tracks for.  The theme, again, is dub techno & dubstep, with some detours into other genres.  The track selection basically came out of listing my ITunes library in the order of most recently added, and picking tracks that I liked.

Ordering was mostly by tempo so I could gradually accelerate — from 105 to 140bpm.  I find that there are tracks that are linked by mood but disjoint in tempo, and I hate playing stuff more than Technics standard plus or minus eight percent. Hence the gradual windup.  And I’m never again going to try and link to every fucking track in my track listing. It takes a long time!

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-AprilOfTwoMinds-DJMix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-AprilOfTwoMinds-DJMix.mp3

1. Wilkin’s Mop – Explode
2. Murmer – Mesh
3. Deadbeat – Night Stepping
4. Stinkworx – Amira
5. Kerri Chandler – So Let The Wind Come
6. Nu era – A Third Of The Third
7. Bill Van Loo – A Detroit Sound
8. Sygaire & Defcon – Yigitler
9. Nu Era — Ringstone Round
10. Beat Pharmacy – Ghostship
11. Soul Phiction Reminisce All Over You
12. Laurent Garnier – Gnamankoudki
13. Kode 9 – Too Far Gone
14. Perverelist – Infinity Is Now
15. Joe – Rut
16. Breakage Instra_Mental – Late Night
17. Pangaea - Bear Witness
18. Vex’d – Fire

I don’t claim to be an expert on Dubstep. I’m not British for one thing, and my taste runs to stuff that really isn’t in the clubbing Dubstep comfort zone. What I like about Dubstep is its heritage twice or thrice removed from Jamaican Dub, its re-purposing of the 2 step shuffle from UK Garage, the deep bass, and most of all, the way certain producers go their own way when the big bucks are in cranking up with the next wobbly bass stepper.

Most of these are tracks I’ve acquired (by paying for them, funnily enough) along with a few oddities, like the Random Trio track, which turned up in odd corners of the internet. I’m sure I’m doing it all wrong, with respect to real Dubstep DJs, and I’m sure my track choice is probably way too obvious to some. But it’s something I enjoyed spending a few hours lashing together, and it’s meant to be an example of the form for an article I’m planning to write…

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-4000MilesWestOfLondon.mp3)
Direct Link For Download

RECORDING TECHNIQUE: Ableton Live, sequenced live with a MIDI controller. 43 minutes 33 seconds. I did edit the last mix after I was done, but everything else is just fingers in motion.

Track Listing

1. Martin – Vancouver (2562s Pour Natuur Mix)
2. Random Trio – Marachi Kinky
3. Scuba – Twista
4. Plastician – Unhappy Shopper
5. Vex’d – Ghost
6. Mark One – Doomed
7. Skream – Bahl Fwd
8. 2562 – Greyscale
9. Burial – U Hurt Me
10. Scuba – Timba
11. Kode 9 & Space Ape – 9 Samurai
12. Burial – Archangel
13. Martyn – Virgo