While prepping for Figgy’s live debut, I went through his entire catalogue on SoundCloud, come to find half of it missing. SoundCloud has been more stringent on allowing sampled and remixed tracks recently, giving the major labels access to directly pull songs and even accounts from their service – Figgy was close to getting banned.
SoundCloud more recently introduced its Go premium service that includes offline, ad-free listening and a deal with the major labels that’ll increase their catalogue to compete with Spotify (it’s still in the works). What’s under the radar is that this deal may stop take downs for sampled and remixed songs and instead become a source of income for the labels – not that anyone gives a shit.
What we should give a shit about is producers will be able to keep their remixed and sampled songs on SoundCloud, probably at the cost of an ad. But at least we’ll get to use them for playlists. Until then, we’ve had Goldroom fill the void.
I went to Treasure Island Music Festival this year to see two performers. I’ve been a fan of Viceroy’s productions since 2012 and was amazed by deadmau5’s live “4D projection” in London around the same time. Unfortunately my expectations were high, which usually doesn’t lead to good things.
A few days before the festival I got a promo email from deadmau5’s team giving us pointers on what we should cover with his TI set. The one thing that caught my eye was letting us know that
deadmau5 is not a DJ. He is and should be referred to as an electronic musician or electronic music performer.
Deadmau5 in’t a DJ. Sure, technically. Funny thing is the day before I read an article on some all about the buzz music blog that deadmau5 got rated one of the worst DJ’s of this year (second behind David Guetta). I think most people consider any live performance by an electronic producer as DJing. And his performance was dated. […]
I only heard about CRSSD fest for the first time last week (actually second, long story) and booking a hotel in San Diego isn’t cheap. Plus flights are ungodly now, so Road Trip! I would’ve given up on this much hassle a long time ago (a week), but look at this lineup.
I’ve gone to a half dozen festivals this year and all of ’em combined don’t add up to what CRSSD has got. Zhu and Bonobo right there makes me there. It’s not really an option after that.
But if you’re not convinced of the lineup yet, check out the playlist we put together. That’s a lot of artists to see in two days. And I usually don’t go to festivals for the music.
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I’ll be driving down from San Francisco Friday afternoon, so if anyone needs a ride hit me up!
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.
Like the iPhone every year, this is our best playlist yet! It really is.
House has been my obsession for the past few years and my favorite kind is the mid-tempo, upbeat summertime jams. Which may or may not turn out to be called Tropical House. Or Summer House. Or Horizontal Disco. It’s up in the air really.
A few tracks do stereotypically incorporate the steel drums, but we did cover more ground than that. We also decided this should be more comprehensive than our usual playlists because we wanted to get all the trop house personas in one place. There are quite a few interesting characters.
Last time we tried to highlight some of the best female singers of 2013, the top one just so happened to be a man. We wanted to carry on the tradition on this list with Zhu, but decided an honorable mention would probably be more appropriate.
The rest are a fine mix of 17 female singers that have such damn beautiful voices. Every single one of ’em. How all of these ladies haven’t gotten more mainstream airplay this year is beyond me, minus Lykke Li & Little Dragon, but I guess that’s what we’re here for and so are they.
Never have I ever (love that game) been so impressed by a mixtape’s intro than on Goldroom’s latest Verano mix. Not only is it a thrill of a chill track, but it’s so unexpected coming from Goldroom.
Creep Crawl Flash’s ‘At Bay’ reminds me of my earlier years with downtempo, especially our second beats to blaze [plug], and it’s good to get back to it. We need to start fishing out more music like this.. for mixtape purposes of course. Recommend!
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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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There is no other sound more fun to dance to than disco. However fast or slow, it brings the spirit to soul music. This may only be our second mix of its kind (#1), but it’s got some soon to be disco legends for sure. So whether you’re alone or in public, get up & dance to this 13-track disco mix.
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How have I only just been introduced to Goldroom I wanna say I first heard of him through his heavy Saguaro Mix, but I feel like I’ve known about him even before that. It could’ve been The Knock’s remix of ‘Only You Can Show Me,’ which I may like more than Goldroom’s original, or maybe not. Still undecided.
A thanks also goes to Goldroom for crediting Mereki on the track. Not enough producers credit their vocalists, surprisingly enough. I’ll admit I like to see titles clean, but vocals like Mereki deserve credit at the top as much as Goldroom’s name does.
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