[Event] Klangwerkstatt 2012 - Festival für neue Musik

This looks very promising:

More Info on their Homepage!

[Music] The Code - Sickest Ep (BlueCode Rec. 012)

Last week, BlueCode Rec. has published release number twelve: 

The Code - Sickest. 

Alongside the original mix you'll find remixes by BlueCode's own Flipmatic (psssht that's me) and the Ungarian producing machine AsWeSaid. Get the full release for free at BlueCode's Bandcamp. And don't get fooled by the "Buy" button. You can name the prize and by entering 0 you will get it for free. No strings attached! 






BlueCode Records 012 - The Code - Sickest EP from BlueCode Records on Vimeo.

[Music] The Electro Compendium pt.2

Full Interview with Dave Paton and Jean-Paul Bondy 
20. September 2012 , Interviewer: Philipp Rupp


Please, shortly introduce yourself and your connection to electro.

Dave: My name is Dave Paton and I have been releasing electro music under the name 'the wee djs' since around 1997.

Jean-Paul: I'm Jean-Paul Bondy, I've been an electro DJ since 1992, and have been producing and releasing records since 1999.

Was there a certain, initial moment or happening, which forced you to react and do something to remind people of the origin meaning of “electro”? Why and how was this project born?

Dave: We have been reacting against the misuse of the word electro for some time. Mainly just at each other on forums and various other networks. Myself and JP were both removed from an electro group for having a discussion which was not welcome. My reaction was to simply set up my own electro group, mostly on a whim. Almost overnight all the producers I know and many more had joined up along with many other electro followers.

The actual project was something that came to mind after many people had joined the group and were having good, friendly conversations on the subject of electro. I felt like we should make use of all these people in one place. The main intention being to promote the genre and bring all the small fan bases of many different artists together. Time will tell if this has had any lasting effect.

Jean-Paul: I'll side with Dave here. Electro has been an established genre for well over 20 years. In fact, some consider it the first form of underground electronic dance music. We were both sick of seeing the term being used for different styles that are clearly not electro, and decided to do something about it.

What was the reaction of the artists, when you explained your mission and the project to them? Were there some artists which didn’t accept the project and refused to take part?

Dave: Initially the takeup was a bit slow and I had second thoughts about it all very quickly. There were questions about the motives and how we could define electro. After a couple of weeks the interest was growing very quickly and the confidence grew. Gradually as we posted the list of people taking part more and more people started to get involved and contribute.

There were artists who didn't want to be involved, some for money reasons, others because they said they just didn't have any material. Others who didn't believe in the basic idea of the project. In the end I believe it has worked out very well. It seems to me that a lot of the artists felt they should really give their best for this and it shows in the music. Apart from my track obviously, which is just some guff I dragged off my hard drive.

Jean-Paul: As Dave said, people were a bit skeptical at first. But once a few larger name artists started submitting tracks, that opened up the floodgates, and showed other producers that we weren't fucking around, and that this project was not only legitimate, but was going to serve a very good purpose.

The Electro Compendium consists of 116 tracks from 116 artists. How did you manage to get in contact with all of them? And by which criteria did you do the selection?

Dave Paton 

Dave: A lot of them were people we both know personally through playing gigs, releasing records etc. Most of the communication was done via facebook or email. The criteria was that the track must be electro and the artist should be proud of it. I think we only rejected one or two tracks overall and that was because they had a straight beat and may have opened the door to the project getting closer to an electrohouse project rather than the sound of electro that we were going for.

Jean-Paul: Almost all of the artists, either Dave or I know personally. Electro is a fairly small community, and when you've been playing as long as Dave and I have, chances are you've played with and partied with almost every artist out there. But the surprise was how many people who are either relative newcomers, or people who'd never released a record before, started popping up with really killer material. As for the selection of the songs, that part was easy. As opposed to us curating the release, and picking out which tracks we liked, we decided to remove our personal preferences from the process and developed three criteria: 1) song is electro, 2) it's unreleased, 3) you're proud of it.

As finishing a simple EP can be very hard - thinking of deadlines and reliance of the artists – how exhausting was the work on such a huge compilation?

Dave: At times it was quite frustrating. I joked a few times that it seemed strange that we had many people who could create this very technological music but weren't very good at emailing a jpg. I had to chase people constantly and keeping the files organized was quite a task.

Jean-Paul: As you can imagine, it was a daunting process of monumental proportions. But it wasn't just David and I. Jon Drukman (aka Bass Kittens) is the programmer/engineer of the iOS app that goes with this release. We built the entire app from the ground up. Something that only Ghostly International has done, that I know of. So not only did we need to put the actual release together, but then build the app, with all of everyone's bios and photos and links, without typos, and making it work, work fast, and also work with iOS 6 which was released two days after we submitted to Apple. This is something that I'd never done before when releasing music, and as far as I know of, no one else has either. It was definitely ambitious, but as I've said countless times, the quality of the music that was given us, needs just as high of a quality in the method and mediums it's released in.

Did the artists deliver finished, mastered tracks or did you also have to work on the sound?

Dave: I suggested to people that they should try to submit the track how they wanted it to sound as mastering was going to be too time consuming and might possibly create more problems. Having to let every artist hear and approve their master would have been a nightmare. In the end the only changes I made were removing clicks and excessive silences at the beginnings and ends. I also sorted out the overall volumes.

Jean-Paul Bondy

Jean-Paul: The concept of mastering 116 tracks is mind-boggling. If this were to be a physical release, just the mastering alone would cost us around $10,000.00. This just wasn't feasible. Dave did some basic adjustments, but that's it. Thankfully, with modern technology, a lot of people can deliver a very high quality file and we don't really have to worry too much about mastering.

You offer the compilation for free. Just to reach a bigger crowd or is there perhaps another statement, relating to the current problems in music business ?

Dave: I just didn't want to involve money as it tends to dilute things. I don't believe in music as a business and I've never made music to make money.

Jean-Paul: Money is the root of all evil. When money is involved, evil can happen. We both felt that delivering this monster to the world would be best served pro boon. Besides, the idea of trying to split money 116 different ways is just ridiculous. Especially for two guys who are more at home behind a sequencer than behind a calculator.

While techno and other genres of electronic music got more and more famous in the past decade, electro is still kind of a special interest. For what reason?

Dave: I really don't know. I think maybe it doesn't have the initial impact of a proper acid tune or a good techno stomper but electro on a dancefloor can rock it as much as the techno classics. Electro is dead. Long live electro!

Jean-Paul: Good question. Electro has been through ebbs and flows in the couple of decades it's been around. Once in a while a pop musician will release some big tune with a killer 808. People like Skrillex and Deadmaus have obviously been influenced by electro, as you can hear with their (ab)use of formant filters, and bass wobbles, and glitched out arcade noises, not to mention those two being the biggest offenders in co-opting and bastardizing the word Electro. The real question is: Is Kraftwerk a special interest? My answer is, not by a long shot. Bleep out. 


Get the Electro Compendium here:
http://anti-social-network.bandcamp.com

[Music] The Electro Compendium pt.1

A friend of mine (let's call him Knut) recently wrote an article about a very interesting musical project called "The Electro Compendium". I asked him if I could publish it on JAZZFUCKED and he did not only say "yes" but he was even going to translate it, as the article was originally in German. Thx man! Good stuff. 


The Electro Compendium - A musical statement
Berlin, September 29th, by Philipp Rupp

They simply had to do it. Dave Paton from Scotland (39) and Jean-Paul Bondy (41) from Texas share a common, musical passion for many years now: Electro. This should be a simple, clear statement. But there’s a certain problem with the term.

Cover artwork for the Electro Compendium. © Geso 

Although Electro has got the same roots as other kinds of electronic music, like house or techno for example, it is a separate genre on its own. The music is characterized by a broken beat, which features a snare on the backbeat and basically a kick on the 1 and 3. Beyond the distinctive rhythm, the music comes with a very futuristic, highly technical and often dark minded attitude. Electro does strictly not want to sound earthly or natural, but artificial and mechanically. The conflict between man and machine is a constant, central topic. Computers, machines, robots and androids are omnipresent in the names of artists, tracks, covers, artworks, lyrics and in the music itself. It is this special, distinctive character, which gives electro its very own esthetic and deepness.

By steady misuse in the last years, the term “electro” got more and more washed-out and unclear. In the meantime electro is even used as a collective term for all kinds of electronic music. This doesn’t only cause communication problems, but leads to the serious danger, that the original style electro gets buried in oblivion. The Electro Compendium wants to act against this process. „We were both sick of seeing the term being used for different styles, that are clearly not electro, and decided to do something about it.”, explains Jean-Paul Bondy. A lot of people are aware of this problem. 116 artists accounted a track for the compendium.

While techno and other genres of electronic music got more and more famous in the past decade, electro apparently stayed in the underground. Asked for the reasons, Dave Paton answers: „I think, maybe it doesn't have the initial impact of a proper acid tune or a good techno stomper, but electro on a dancefloor can rock it as much as the techno classics.” And he’s right: although electro is more abstract in its structure than straight techno or house, it comes with strong rhythms and is absolutely danceable.

As the involved artists live spread all over the globe, the project had to be realized across geographical distances. Facebook and Email made it possible. The whole idea actually was born in virtual networks, as Paton reports: „We have been reacting against the misuse of the word electro for some time. Mainly just at each other on forums and various other networks. Myself and JP were both removed from an electro group for having a discussion which was not welcome. My reaction was to simply set up my own electro group, mostly on a whim. Almost overnight all the producers I know and many more had joined up along with many other electro followers. The actual project (Anm: The Electro Compendium) was something that came to mind after many people had joined the group and were having good, friendly conversations on the subject of electro. I felt like we should make use of all

these people in one place. The main intention being to promote the genre and bring all the small fan bases of many different artists together. Time will tell if this has had any lasting effect.”

The honesty of the compendium also appears in the fact, that there was absolutely no money involved. All artists gave their music without any payment. Also the artwork and the administrative work of Bondy and Paton were free of charge. „I just didn't want to involve money as it tends to dilute things. I don't believe in music as a business and I've never made music to make money.“, says Dave. Jean-Paul gets even more explicit: „Money ist the root of all evil.“ Consequentially the compilation is released as a free download in the web.

“The Electro Compendium” is a great, high-quality compilation with the best and only real ambition music can have: passion. A corporate group of artists rises with an extensive piece of art against disregard and oblivion of its musical genre: Electro. The 116 tracks reach from experimental listening experience to raw, functional dancefloor-killers. For freshmen this compilation is an educational lesson – a friendly invitation to get in touch with the cosmos of origin electro music. For lovers it’s a generous gift of unreleased material.

“The Electro Compendium” is available as a free download under http://anti-social-network.bandcamp.com. Besides downloading it for yourself, your task is to support the mission by sharing and spreading this musical statement.

But still not enough of the good work: in addition to the music package, Jon Drukman (aka Bass Kittens) developed a really nice iOS-Mobile-App for The Electro Compendium. And guess what – its available for free in your app-store. To end with Dave Paton’s words: „Electro is dead. Long live electro.” 


Note: Part 2 will feature an interview with the two main characters behind this project. It will be released tomorrow, right here. Stay detuned.