Ground zero Bristol

Back in 2006, Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 1's champion of underground/experimental music, hosted Dubstep Warz and declared dubstep as one of the UK's most important musical movements since punk. Warz showcased the best dj's, producers and MC's in the scene at the time, most of them coming out of South London. Above is the so-called "Harlem Jazz" photo of dubstep in 2006, Mary Anne Hobbs at the center of the universe.

Now, two years later, after South London hit critical mass, the fall out has spread across the UK, Europe and made some ground here in the US. A second city has sprung up in dubstep and is taking the sound to new, exciting places. This past week, Ms. Hobbs hosted "Bristol: Rise Up", putting Bristol back on the map. Not since the days of trip hop and drum n' bass has the city stood out from the rest. 12 producers got 9 and a half minutes each to showcase their sound and no one disappointed. 

Ms. Hobbs also made a short video of Bristol featuring many of the artists from the show.

Earlier this year, Skull Disco head and Bristol local, Appleblim, had the honor of mixing Dubstep Allstars 06, an odd mix in the series but now standing out as the beginning of a new era in dubstep. His incredible mixes on podcasts for Resident Advisor and RinseFM (dubstep's flagship station) drew my interest, as well as many others.

The Bristol sound is less about the wobble and draws from so many influences, including Bristol's rich history of trip hop (Portishead, Massive Attack, Smith & Mighty) and drum n' bass (Roni Size, DJ Krust), but also techno, garage and reggae. The drawing from different influences into the dubstep template is what makes this sound so appealing, many of these producers and DJs are going to be better known soon enough, 2009 will be a big year for Bristol.

Every mix in the show is unique and cops its own style, Joker, Appleblim (pictured above), Gemmy, Komonazmuk and Headhunter being 5 of the standouts for me, but there's definitely something for everyone.

Check it here

Hopefully many more of these guys will grace the decks at Dub War, Headhunter's set in October was fantastic.

"our next act of retaliation will be to destroy London"

My new favorite VST

Another really good synth VST from Togu audio that I'd put up thee with Automat and Crystal Synth. Its a decent replication of the Roland Sh-101 (hey you can't beat the price), which is definitely one of my favorite sounding/most fun to play synths. Togu also makes a great juno sounding synth and a really nice dub delay, so check out their other (free) plugins.

Togu Audio TAL-Bassline

Specs:
Band-limited oscillators (saw, pulse).
Sub-oscillator: square -1 oct., square -2 oct., pulse -1 oct, pulse -2 oct.
-18 dB/octave low-pass filter (resonant/self-oscillating).
LFO (frequency: 0,1 .. 30 Hz, waveforms: sin, tri, saw, rec, noise).
Very fast nonlinear envelope (A: 1.5ms..4s, D: 2ms..10s, S: 0..100%, R: 2ms..10s).
Simple Arpeggiator (up, down, one octave mode).
2x Unisono Mode.
Panic button.
MIDI automation for all sliders and pots.
Precise fader control while holding down the "Shift" button.
Supports all sample-rates.
2x oversampling.
23 presets.
Tutorial PDF.
~2.5% CPU (Intel Core 2 CPU 6700, 44.1KHz, 24Bit, buffer-size 1024 Samples).

Blip Festival Trailer

Found this on Boing Boing yesterday, a trailer for a documentary on the Blip Festival, musicians that make music using gameboys/hacked NES and other 80s/90s era video game technology.

I've got gameboy with a Nanoloop cart myself. Its pretty satisfying the noises you can make with one. I've been meaning to buy an older gameboy because it has a louder output and richer sound.... apparently....

(trailer below, picture is of Baseck from Sonic Death Rabbit)


BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET trailer from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

A humorous history of Midwestern American Breakcore

As a continuation of the Doormouse live set I posted earlier, I stumbled upon a couple of recent radio interviews conducted by Meatsock on 91.7 WHUS FM out of Connecticut.

The first one is with Doormouse (Dan Martin) and its about an hour long. He tells the story of Meat, a short lived hardcore/electronic/noisecore/throwingmeatataudiencecore band that somehow got into playing raves in the mid 90s in the midwest. The band was pretty much a bunch of guys getting drunk on stage, throwing meat at ravers, cutting themselves on stage and pissing into cups and drinking it.



He also talks about his independent label Addict Records and his upcoming project with Otto Von Schirach "Pimp Queetoe".

Interview With Doormouse by Meatsock

The next interview (also by Meatsock) is with fellow Meat member and vastly underrated breakcore artist Stunt Rock (William Flegal), whose entire career has pretty much been an experiment in regret and self destruction. His album "This Is Stunt Rock Volume 3" was one of my favorite releases of 2005... loaded with mediocre breakbeats, kick ass guitar riffs and hilarious movie/tv samples. He uses no sequencer, pretty much just Sound Edit pro on a Mac running OS9.. just samples other artists or from his VCR. Take THAT Burial!



He sets the record straight on Meat as being part of the "anti-rave scene", then talks about his very unsuccessful career as Stunt Rock, doing stand up at his shows, his method of creating his music, continuously being ripped off as a musician and his sample library which originates from a collection of over 900 Betamax tapes. His latest release "Regret Volume 3" comes as a CD and 10", a book, stickers, buttons etc... SO DON'T BE AN ASSOLE AND BUY IT

Interview with Stuntrock by Meatsock

Addict Records (Home of Doormouse and Stunt Rock)
Stunt Rock

Mileece Makes Music... From Plants

From wired's listening post blog:
"Mileece, a London-based artist who makes excellent experimental ambient music under her own name for labels like Fat Cat, managed to coax plant life into producing some really beautiful sounds...."

She's got a tune on Planet-Mu's "Sacred Symbols of Mu Compilation" and some ambient stuff on Bleep under Lo Records. Read the article... short but interesting...

Hacking around obsolete technology

So I've always been lusting after an MC202 just because the sequencer fascinates me. Its a monosynth that has a synth engine pretty much identical to that in an SH101. The one major drawback of both synths being they were manufactured just before MIDI was designed. The MC202 does have a tape sync in and out for backing up sequences to tape.


Well some guy, about 10 years ago found a way to convert midi information into the tones used for the tape sync backup using Java 1.0 and has remained relatively unmodified other than OS updates.


This means you can have the MC202 be played by midi sequences on the computer...yes this does take away from the draw of the MC202's interesting/frustrating sequencer but this guy is working on programming a reverse method. The program is still available for a small fee and has been updated to OSX.


202 Hack - A Better Way to Program Your Roland MC 202


And yes there's plenty of DIN Sync to midi convertors out there (one from Kenton I believe). If you aren't looking to spend any cash... someone in the Ableton forums also created a live set with tempo sync tones for the MC202, but it only works at specific tempos (and there's not much room for shifting within those tempos).

John is Faster's Ableton Sync Solution

Live full Doormouse set

I've got to say I'll always have a special place in my heart for Doormouse. His music is hard, insane, hilarious and stupid. I mean that all in the best possible way.

One day I'd love to see him at a show like this...an outdoor field of ravers trying to keep up with an onslaught of breakcore dropped on them by a dude chugging beer behind a laptop. I think about 10 minutes in everyone gives up and is just confused as to what to do. It's like a metal show exploded inside a rave. This is a guy who has a track called "Six Million More (Every Single Rave Is The Same, I'm Just There For The Money)" and stops his set toward the end to play his tracks at 666 beats per minute. Mental.

Doormouse: Live @ Shawnee Cave in Murphysborough, IL 07-07-07

Live Richard Devine Acid

Nothing better than one of electronic music's greatest minds jamming on a a 303 and a 606 at an audio convention. This is my equivalent to watching Jake E. Lee guitar shred videos on youtube, I guess.



I saw Devine in 2005 at the Little Temple Club in LA. It was the sonic equivalent of being hit in the face with a baseball bat. Truly hard. Truly intense.

Cool Monolake article

Right, well if you haven't heard of Robert Henke or Monolake you've got an immense catalog of music to start wadihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifng through. Ultra digital minimal techno with plenty of experimental and dub influences. The duo also helped to design Ableton live.

Anyway, Monolake seems to consist of solely Henke now and here's a write up about him at Window: Scene, talking about his live international jam sessions and his latest project.


Robert Henke/Monolake @ Window: Scene)

(from Window: Scene): Monolake describes his music thus: “I create music people can dance to, music people want to experience also with their bodies, massive rhythmical structures, temporary sonic architecture with carefully choosen textures, shimmering details, constantly breathing and pulsating objects in time. …Music in which is nothing is static and which wants to exist as a state rather then a story, music which is the result of an intense occupation with detail and which still leaves enough room for interpretation. Music which improves if played loud over giant speaker stacks. Those works are released under the project name Monolake and usually labelled techno, minimal, electro or dub.” He has performed as Monolake a number of times at various prestigious festivals such as Mutek in Montreal (www.mutek.ca) and Transmediale (www.transmediale.de).

Mario Theme. Played by tesla coils. Yep.

Yeah we've seen the Mario theme covered numerous times in millions of different ways. Apparently, the guys in this video do many different numbers with these dueling coils. Sure its pretty much just electricity synced to music... I don't know how this is done but its fun to watch.