Entered A Contest

I’ve entered a contest to remix Deepcentral’s "Is It Real", a progressive/eastern euro trance track.

I need your help - listen to the remix, let me know what you think, and vote & comment on the site!
Visit the label site to have a listen:
http://contest.e-motionsounds.com/index/userdetail/iduser/315

If you have trouble with their player or site, just head on over to the Cartoon Network DJs myspace, the track is the first one in the player. (and why not check out the other snippets while you’re there)
http://myspace.com/cartoonnetworkdjs
(and/or just complain bitterly to me about the inadequacy of trying to listen to music in shitty little flash/js custom web audio players).

My remix is a deep progressive chugger with a bassline that is a bit of a nod to early Dirty South. I’m quite pleased with it.

Please comment your comments here, at the contest site, or myspace or facebook or email.

Not quite all made with free software this one. More like made with all the software I've tried out recently - this is a 3 & 1/2 platform process.

There's a bit of a story so if you have the time I'll tell you all about it...

• chorded out on guitar


• prototyped in seq24 & general midi on an old Pentium II running linux/debian/64Studio


• "shit, perhaps these vocals I just randomly downloaded for this comp might work with these chords"


• re-prototyped in GarageBand and edited & combined with Deepcentral parts


• chugger bassline added in Reaper (demo) using Phadiz VST plus some bleeps with a VST theremin


• (and finally, the free-opensource part) mixed and more importantly low-end sidechain compressed (I have to do this to everything now) using SC3, jack, jack-rack, Ardour running in 64Studio of course (on my now quite senior Athlon64 desktop, needs RAM, needs RAM)


• and mastered in good ol' Audacity

Cheers, see you at Pop this saturday for some cocktails + banter + beats...

New podcast + playing this weekend

Well this post should be just enough to keep the blog ticking over?

I have received my new old CD player, a Denon 2000F Mk2, which is really from the dawn of the age of CD mixing but it works great (it seems to be temperamental on the odd CD but plays many scratched/burnt CDs). The buttons are rubber, which I dislike, but its instant start is instant, and making adjustments using pitch bend buttons (as opposed to a wheel, or touching the edge of a spinning record) seems to result in good mixes.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, here's the tracklist:

1. Nick Holder ft. Jemini - No More Dating DJs (John Ciafone vocal mix) [NRK Sound Division]
   
2. Freeform Five - Perspex Sex (Ewan Pearson's Hi-NRG remix) [Studio !K7]
   
3. Chuck Love - Still Funky (Acid Noodle remix) [Om]
   
4. Iz & Diz - Magnificent (Justin Martin's No Heart & Soul remix) [Om]
   
5. Ben Mono - Beatbox (Jesse Rose remix) [Compost Records]
   
6. Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler (Jesse Rose remix) [Wichita]
   
7. Dragonette - I Get Around (Van She vocal mix) [Mercury]

The mix can be downloaded directly from here or you can tune in/subscribe to get the past and present casts:
feed://www.gcast.com/u/haszari/main.xml

GCast are doing the hosting, and don't insert ads. Their interface is extremely rudimentary and it seemed to lose my tracklist/show description. Still, debatably better than silly ads and semi-social networking which is what you get at podshow.

Also I am playing this Friday and Saturday, at Bath St and Pop, so it's going to be a big weekend what with lots of people graduating.




Acknowledgements to mishtanegativity for collecting the Denon, fiddling with it and verifying its integrity for me, as well as storing it for a lil while.

King Unique sacrifices "song" for relevant electro

I heard the King Unique remix of Gabriel & Dresden's "Tracking Treasure Down" on the weekend while helping out with our local house music radio show, Energy Flash on Radio 1.

My reaction was: the original was a great crossover clubby trance pop song, with a very pop/song structure, and King Unique succeeded in using the vocal over a much more constant/monotonous (i.e. the chord changes are not there) electro track.

Which is fine and all, obviously that's more relevant, and that's what I tend to be into a lot of the time, but for me it had the effect of making the vocal fairly irrelevant.

If you want to hear the King Unique remix, listen to the energyflash podcast. If you want to hear the original, get in a time machine and go back to last year and listen to Pete Tong's Essential Selection thru early/mid 2006.