The first time I ran into Madelyn Grant’s name was on Odesza’s Sun Models. I had recently uploaded the track to SoundCloud and she had contacted me about including her name in the title. The only reason I hadn’t in the first place was because they really chopped and skewed her vocals, making her voice barely recognizable. But she was real nice about it and it seemed more than fair.
About two months later and I see Madelyn Grant on FKJ’s Waiting. I didn’t remember she was on Odesza’s track at first, but once I did I was all the more in love. Madelyn has a breathtaking voice, but even better she knows how to use it – a much bigger problem with most vocalists.
Since then Madelyn has collaborated with a favorite of mine, Emancipator. I asked her how she got to collaborate with all these legitimate producers and she said, I sent them my demos.
That’s it. In Odesza’s case they were requesting female vocalists, but the other two she just sent them a sample. That’s all it took. How the fuck does that happen? Oh wait, that doesn’t. Minus with Madelyn.
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I’ve put together a playlist of my favorite songs of her’s as well as another list for producers she should also send her music to. Although, this time I think they should be doing the reaching out.
A great live show needs two things. The right friends and and the right music. And Friday at Folsom might just top any other show I’ve ever been to. Not only is Snakehips headlining, but FKJ is playing his debut live set!
I’ve only ever written about a show once before solely to get more people to go. This is my second attempt. And I’m MUCH more excited about this one.
Only a few people I go to the club with regularly would know how much I love to dance. But only if the right friends and music are there and the two usually don’t come together often.
Many great producers are not as great live. It’s a whole different game. Something I know FKJ excels at and I’m pretty damn confident Snakehips will too. Both are making the best dance music today, and I don’t say that lightly.
Just see for yourself.
– Make sure to dance
– Even if it’s on your seat
I’ve listened to way too much music this year, probably around 12,000 new tracks (I tried calculating it). Most of the music was.. unfinished, to say the least, but we found a lot more songs worth keeping than any year before it.
A lot of new music emerged or reemerged over the year. Deep house was the big thing, but many discredit it because of the hype. It had its bad with its good. Our favorite new style goes to what doesn’t seem to have an official name yet. I’ve heard many call it kawaii, but I prefer vapor – this naming shit is more important than you’d think.
We’ve got 30 songs to show off, 11 artists and 20 playlists for you, but if that’s not enough… wait ’til next year.
I’ve gone to a handful of EDM shows & festivals over the last year and I just don’t get how people can dance to most of the popular shit these days (says the hipster music blogger). At least not when you’ve got such better music to dance to (also hipster). So obviously we had to put a list together (very hipster).
Our Dance Party mix for 2014 is geared more towards the club or house party rather than the rave. I guess that’s where we differ from the higher BPM, bombastic music dominating EDM right now.
We get into various forms of house music on here, but there’s plenty of other influences as well — I’m being vague because I just spent way too much of my time putting together this list and I don’t have time to articulate it (like always).
Sometimes it’s more about the creativity than the quality in a remix. Some of these aren’t perfect, but they show a lot of potential. And that’s another good reason for remixing, to get producers just starting out vocals actually worth making something new out of.
This is our biggest remix playlist yet. We tried hard to remove as much as we could, I mean that’s our job, but let me tell you it’s just as hard, if not harder, removing tracks from a playlist than adding them in (as we mentioned in our how to playlist music article).
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I had a good talk with a few of my coworkers yesterday about remixing and they brought up a good point. A lot of remixers just don’t add enough to the original to warrant credit.
So many of the remixes I favorite on SoundCloud turn out to be not all that different from its original. Often times this is because dj’s are adding in simple edits, something as simple as a synth, to make the music more danceable.
The point of a remix is to take something from a song, whether it be a vocal or other memorable part, and update it into a more modern sound or flip it into a completely different style, among others I’m sure.
I actually had to get rid of a few that were originally on here because of that very problem. They brought something new to the song, but it’s really the same tune, just an edit. And maybe producers should start labeling it as such.
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Nothing is better to dance to right now than this style of electronic music. I thought electro funk sounded fitting as a title, but it’s more commonly known simply as electro and to some extreme electro house and bass music. Though this naming shit is getting outta hand, as necessary as it is.
The sound actually sounds like something between disco-house & bass music, but more experimental than the former and more soulful than the latter. It gets a little strange at times, but that’s exactly what dance music needs right now.
Highlighting singles have long dominated on here. We’re coming up on our thousandth post, this will make 999, and we’re slightly shifting from singles towards playlists. We really just no longer have time or the writing prowess to cover every single track we love.
Pop remixes especially have fallen back from the spotlight, but we’ve collected quite a few over the past few months and a playlist of the best seemed like the perfect way to share. We may not have much to say about every single track, but they all have taken their original and slapped a new style (usually better than the original).
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Electronic is overtaking the industry and has done the same on this blog more & more each year. Our list of electronic music is so massive this year we split it in two.
First up is our best electro soul of 2013 that ranges from funk & jazz to R&B & dubstep (melodic dubstep). We weren’t sure if we wanted to include the remixes from our last list, 2013’s Top Remixes, but there is just as much soul in the remixes as any of the originals. Make sure to play through all 25, it’s got a good ebb and flow to it.
Also, stay tuned for our next list in electro: electronic dance music – and not that bullshit shit.
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Banks has got a beautiful voice, but her ‘Warm Water’ is a bit too mellow for me. Snakehips (love the name) however has graciously put some nu funk, electro-soul sauce into this Warm Water melody.
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