Soda Island is a collective of 8 or so producers, all of which are my favorite names in an emerging style of electronic. Kawaii is what I hear it called most, or more generally future bass, but I like vapor. Bubblegum funk works too.
Along with the rest of this future bass movement (let’s rename), the folks at Soda Island are doing to electronic what jazz did to classical music. Rewriting the rules.
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/170938111" params="color=551A8B&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="20" iframe="true" /]
I’ve never seen Del live before his performance after the ICBConference last Saturday. I went to Hiero Day last year where I got to meet my favorite right now, Anderson .Paak, but couldn’t catch Del in time.
After seeing Tommy Chong close out the conference, he was a good closer, Del performed a few hours later at Pier 23 Cafe. Actually, like every other damn rap performance, we had to wait for him until the wee hours of the night, but not as ridiculous as the Ghostface-Raekwon show. While waiting for Del to come on, I saw a familiar face waiting around too. […]
Super City 50 was a one night EDM event held the night before Super Bowl 50 at the Oakland coliseum. My photographer bailed last minute, but luckily I had a few friends going. I’ve gone to festivals alone before and it’s one of the easiest ways to find new friends, but organizers could do a lot better job to encourage it.
People will find the easiest way to connect with each other and drugs help out a lot. I saw all sorts of people on all kinds of things and it’s sad to see how much the law contributes in creating an unsafe environment. Laws change slowly, but the festival experience is about to change rapidly. And that change starts online.
We’re all connected 24/7 and using that to start conversations online will help people meet up more easily offline, at festivals. The closest thing I can find to what I’m talking about is Red Bull Sound Select, which is based around a community for curators. The best way to get people connecting around music online, in my opinion.
We anti-Valentined last year with our Hip Hop + Heartbreak, thanks to the help of mimb, and this year we’re covering everything but (hip hop).
Most of heartbroke (as fuck) is some sort of soul music along the electronic scale, leaning heavy on electronic near the end.
If you’re in for a lonely Valentine’s this year, I hope this makes for a good background soundtrack.
My dad bought a 2013 Corvette and wanted to get a custom license plate. The guy’s a real charmer, but he couldn’t convince the dmv agent to put ‘4play’ on his license plate.
I thought of beats4play when starting up our YouTube channel – I think Silence Nogood was taken – and I loved how it brought on a few more meanings than my dad’s original line.
Here’s a solid hour and some of music foreplay.
We haven’t had a proper disco list on here for years, but our groovewit & tits held us over last year. For our first list this year, we bring the best disco for dancing.
Frisco Disco came from a producer’s name I misread at first, Frico Disco, but I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere else before. I gotta give it to 95 Royale for introducing us to this style of disco house – disco pop vocals with a heavy house kick – and after more than three years we finally got all the best of it together.
Disco is having another revival. Here’s out toast to it.
2015 was the year of live music for us. We covered eight festivals. I don’t think I’ve been to that many before in my life.
Hip hop seemed to make a return on here. That’s what we started on, but hit a major dip from 2010 to 2013. It started back up in 2014 with Kendrick Lamar, and predecessors have been poppin’ up all over the place since. Some with possibly more potential than Kendrick himself. One at the top of this list.
Other genres in electronic dominated the year even more. We got out a good amount of Kawaii in the first half, but future & trap took over the second. And of course house has been most dominate. Going from the deeper, heavier side and splitting into future & chill house near the end, as well as the funkier side of house music to jack to.
The amount of new singers seems to have dipped compared to past years, but the quality hasn’t. Anderson Paak, Madelyn Grant, Liz Vice & Joey Dosik to name out of the dozen others with clear personalities in their voices.
We’ve collected 29 tracks in total and a list of our 12 musicians with the most potential. Plus our biggest accomplishments of the year below that, the playlists. We put together 35 in total! That’s up from 25 last year.
I first met Lauren in 2011 on Twitter because of a Facebook Ad I was running about a SoundCloud initiative I was doing for Silence at the time (I love how convoluted that sounds). As many people as I’ve talked to on Twitter over the years, I’ve never met someone so honest about her love for music. Someone without another agenda. And I see her dedication every day.
I usually don’t start my daily SoundCloud listening until later on in the day, but this girl is up at the butt crack of dawn listening to the shit out of it (she seriously wakes up too early) and she always gets in the comment or reshare before I do. The one thing I’ve given her shit about is what she’s doing to contribute in music, but she’s been doing something about it […]
You should also dance to last year’s list.
All I Need does something I love to see in house, the gradual reveal. Grey Area, Desiree & Michael, start the track with the vocals chopped short, but lay out the full chorus line gradually towards the end. You won’t appreciate it until you listen a few times through, but eventually your mind will start to fill in the chopped up parts in anticipation for the full thing. Makes for a fun dance (in ya head).