To my few faithful readers, here it is… the official, final line-up for Coachella 2009 straight from the Coachella crew themselves… enjoy!

Just squeezing this one in under the wire for January. It’s actually been sitting on my desktop for a while but I’ve been on-site a lot this month (aka out of my studio doing covert work for mega-corporate clients) and did not have a chance to wrap up the loose ends.

This month we trade the nu-funk for some classic electronic dubby downtempo. Warm tones for these cold months for sure. The rest is traditional studio fare, lots of new piano and shoegaze composition work that I’ve been into as of late. Throw on your headphones and enjoy!

TRACKLIST (links coming soon):
As it Were - Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Tim Story
Two Sides - Mark Springer
Andover - Francesco Tristano
A Last Meeting - Bliss
Clementine - Pink Martini
Paper Smile - Fragile State
Arrival of the Birds - Cinematic Orchestra
Loaf - Sounds from the Ground
Leaving Babylon - Blutech
Contact - Telepath
Teardrop (Mad Professor Marazuni Vocal Mix) - Massive Attack
Things are Gonna Get Easier - Slow Motion Disco

 

 Sound Sketches - January 09: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Click here to download in full 320k glory

Urb.com asked me to pen out a “best of 2008″ list for the website and so here it is… The top 10 songs from 2007 that were still putting in work in 2008. This list is definitely dance-centric and I am sure a few of these tunes will still be getting a good spin in 2009. Anyway, here we go….

10. Shake it to the Ground - Rye Rye & Blaqstarr
Rye Rye hooked us in 2007 with some infectious lyrics and remixes by everyone from Claude VonStroke, Detboi, Switch and others kept this one moving right into 2008. My personal favorite came from Pistol Pete with a slow roller thats a bit electro and a bit Baltimore.

9. Hold On - Holy Ghost!
Ah cosmic disco, spacey disco, nu-disco… call it whatever you like but it was a hard pressed trend this year which - at least here in NYC - never really got any mainstream love. Holy Ghost! really kicked things off with this one last year and it’s still getting play with recent remixes by the UK’s Mock & Toof.

8. Ready For The Floor - Hot Chip
“Do it do it do it now…” so goes the followed smash to “over and over and over and over and over…” It seems the Hot Chip boys have found magic in the repetitive chorus. Ready for the Floor killed all year long keeping these electropop wonder-kids on the clubland radar for 3+ years straight.

7. Rihanna - Umbrella
A little top 40 in the countdown as Rihanna was a force to be reckoned with for the first half of 2008. This may be up there with one of the most covered tunes of 2008 as well with reworks popping up by Manic Street Preachers, Passenger, and even Mandy Moore.

6. Fancy Footwork / Tenderoni - Chromeo
Take you pick on this one. P-Thugg and Dave 1 were an unstoppable funk beast in 2008 bringing a solid groove to the world of electro.

5. Cross the Dancefloor - Treasure Fingers
In a year when everyone wanted to be Daft Punk (again), Treasure Fingers cured my filtered-house its with this bounce electro jam. But it was Laidback Luke’s remix that blew things up on an international level. This one still gets a great response every time I hear it.

4. Good Life / Stronger - Kanye West
As 2009 is ushered in by the whiny auto-tune of 808s and Heartbreak, I’m reminded of what a great album Graduation was. Both Good Life and Stronger are still mainstays on the weekends.

3. D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
Justice are an unstoppable force. So much so that they could release a CD/DVD this year of the same material as last year and the blogs will still go crazy for it. Must be those giant Marshall stacks they carry around with them to the shows…

2. Steve Angello & Laidback Luke - Be
Dancefloor killer from the midtown clubs to the Williamsburg bars and all points in between. Be reminded us just how good “Show Me Love” really was.

1. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
Just when you think this song is done, someone flips it, kills it, and it’s back again. Whether it was LAZRtag’s electro rework, Scottie B’s Baltimore Club version, or T.I.’s resampling for “Swagger Like Us”… Paper Planes was is everywhere and not ending any time soon.

Honorable Mention:
Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire
Claude Von Stroke - The Whistler
50 Cent - I Get Money

Hot on the heels of a killer bassline remix with Subzero, UK Grime princess Shystie is back with a vengeance on her new single New Style (or Nu Style depending on what website your on). Teaming up with break beat kingpin DJ Deekline, this track is is a refreshing slice of dirty pop goodness. And it drops just at the right time as blogs are being littered with entirely too many everyone trying to sound like Christina Aguilera trying to sound like Lady Gaga trying to sound like Santogold trying to sound like M.I.A. ripoffs. It’s one part UK grime, one part tearout breakbeat, and one party sweet pop sing-a-long. The Deekline and Ed Solo remix adds an extended killer breakdown and is not to be missed. Ignore the played out Nu-rave colors in the video and look for big things from this one in 2009.

Bobby Previte - The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers
Sunken Foal - Cash Poor
Sth National - Yawn, Yawn, Yawn
Lulu Rouge - Bless You (MKLSMPSN Mix)
Jay-Jay Johanson - Autumn Winger Spring
Lisbeth Scott & Nathan Barr - Take Me Home (yes, from HBO’s True Blood)
Karin Tatoyan - Well Beyond a Grave
ICASOL - Ongou (Idjut Boys Brown Thumb Mix)
Stars - Sleep Tonight (Junior Boys Remix)
Lisa Hannigan - Ocean and a Rock
Reverend Gary Davis - Lord I Wish I Could See
Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Matt Sweeney - My Home is the Sea
John Fahey - March! for Martin Luther King
Alice Russell - Got the Hunger
Pimps of Joytime - Bonita (DJ Vadim Remix)
Aldo Vanucci & Featurecast - Blue Grassed Devil
Chase and Status featuring Kano - Against All Odds
Milow - Ayo Technology

Click here to download (256kps)

 

 Sound Sketches December - Defined by Media: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Open source software mavens Mozilla (makers of the wonderful Firefox browser amongst other things) launched the first official release of their free music player, Songbird, today to mixed reactions. It seems that the media is touting Songbird as some sort of open source iTunes killer. Doug DeLong writes for Macworld.com today:

It’s here to free us from our evil iTunes overlords or something. The biggest selling points seem to be that it’s open-source and that it’s not the established players.

But while, yes, Songbird will handle all your at home audio goodness, it also does something much more valuable. Songbird makes web media - specifically audio - really friendly and accessible. Armed with a fantastic built in web browser (take that iTunes), Songbird quickly scans every website you visit for available audio and builds a nice, neat playlist for you. You no longer have to search countless page links for song references, open them in new windows or use pop-up media players. In fact, you can listen to an entire webpage seemlessly without having to click from song to song. And downloading is a breeze with the built-in… er… downloader that queues all your selections and limits your simultaneous download for added efficiency. It’s also pretty handy with ZShare and some of the other file sharing sites.

So is Songbird going to make me throw iTunes in the virtual trashcan ? Not at all. It’s still a bit clunky of a program with a really long startup and less-than-instantaneous reaction times. But there’s a lot going on under the hood and this is only an initial release. What Songbird may do, however, is make your multimedia web experience a little more enjoyable.

Click here to download Songbird for free.

Here it is, the second edition of my Sound Sketches series (the first one went very under the radar so don’t be upset if you missed out.)

Since I listen to something ridiculous like 300 hours of music every month, I started putting these studio mixtapes together to showcase the softer sounds that play around here during the day… basically stuff that I am really into right now that doesn’t get DJ’ed at night under the Kestar moniker. As with the last one, the tape starts out with modern classical and post rock before going into some reggae, dubstep, funk, and assorted other oddities. Click here to listen and here’s the track list:

Peter Broderick - A Glacier
Julia Kent - Intro > Gardermoen
Max Richter - Circles from the Rue Simon-Crubellier
Aranis - Questosteron
The American Dollar - Transcendence
Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - My Good Luck
Little Jinder - Eat My Fear (Drop the Lime Remix)
Flying Lotus - Tea Leaf Dancers
AMB - Urchin
U9lift - I Dream of Sleep
Heyoka - Big Bud Barney
Charlie P - It’s So Crazy feat. Karma
Beat Pharmacy - Kings Highway feat. Judah Fyah
Jugoe - Collienation
Dancepig - Beneath Me (Reggae Do Morro remix by Plastique De Reve)
The Haggis Horns - Hot Damn!
TM Juke and the Jack Baker Trio - Heads High(er)
The Gossip - Listen Up (Black Ghosts Remix)
The Herbaliser - You’re Not All That
Mr. Scruff - Hold On
Towa Tei - A.O.R. feat. Lina Ohta
Kidkanevil - When I Dig feat. Kissey Asplund & Blu
Way Out West - Spaceman
truth® - Smaller Babies (Z-Trip’s Banjo Breaks Remix)

As I’ve been getting so many requests for a more “portable” verison of the mix, next month I’ll be putting a more traditional mix together rather than using Opentape. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

The Mantisounds blog out of Boston posted this video with the boys from Soulwax the other day and I thought it deserved a place over here. These boys need no introduction. They’ve been pioneering the rave-rock remix and the mash-up for over a decade now and their initial 2ManyDJs mixtape is still as fresh as ever and light years ahead of its time. The one chance I had to catch their 2ManyDJs set was a Coachella a few years back an it blew me away.

What’s most interesting to me in this video is the way the boys touch on adding that human element to their sounds, and how it’s this hand-crafted, non-mechanical aspect that really moves people. It reminds me of this quote from Branford Marsalis:

“Humans are imperfect. That’s one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble.
We’re on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right.
Man, every note is not right in life.”

And also this one from Mahatma Ghandi:

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes
and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.”

In fact, it seems that throughout the histories of music, thought, art, and even religion there is always this need for both the perfect and the imperfect. Within that imperfect, I suppose, is where the humanity of the thing resides. Now, whether that means that man’s destiny to fail is - in fact - that which makes him human is an argument I’ll leave alone at the moment but I will say that it does make things way more interesting on the day to day.