May 9, 2006 at 2:27 pm · Filed under Free, House, progressive, Trance
Harry Lemon, aka Lemon8 is one of the best progressive trance and house DJs going. Based out of Holland, his consistently fresh productions, remixes and live sets are always in demand. I went to a Paul Van Dyk event a few years back, and the DJ who opened for him (name unknown), while suspect in his mixing skills, played the best progressive tracks I’d ever heard. The “peak” of his set *wink wink* was the dancefloor monster: Kid Vicious – Contagious (Lemon8 remix). It blew me away. Hypnotic, menacing house gave way to pounding tech-house. Alas, this track is not available for digital download. Sorry.
But his fantastic live sets are!
Here is one of my favorites… the first half is solid gold, a blend of progressive house and trance.
Also, check out his excellent productions available at Beatport.com
May 9, 2006 at 12:58 pm · Filed under Breakbeat, cold & clean, Free, progressive, Trance
I first heard Noel Sanger spinning on proton radio a few years back, on a segment sponsored by Electrofly records. The set was extraordinary, but unfortunately I only caught the last 45 minutes of pure gold. I emailed Noel, asking him for a copy of the set, and he informed me it would be up on Hybridized.org soon enough. Indeed it was! Thanks, Noel.
Also from Hybridized.org is another great set Noel, from Global DJ Broadcast 2004. It’s well worth checking out.
April 28, 2006 at 1:36 am · Filed under Chillout, Free
I don’t know much about shuttle358, aka Dan Abrams. What little of his music I have heard is of high quality. I’d describe his stuff as being on the softer, ambient side of minimal techno, although 12k describes his music as ‘microsound’ whatever that means. Peaceful, introspective stuff. The song, ‘logical’ is so good, I’m surprised it’s offered as an mp3 from the 12k label. I was mighty pleased to add it to my collection. It’s a shame Dan’s music is not available from Beatport, as I am pretty much through with mailordering CDs.
April 26, 2006 at 4:22 am · Filed under Free, hard & nasty, Techno
When I think of “techno” I think of hard, pounding, nasty, synthetic, distorted, static noise, punctuated by beats and sweeping, spatial stereo effects.
For the longest while, I thought that such a thing did not exist, that my idea of techno only existed in my head. Then I discovered Speedy J.
I’d first heard of Speedy J, or Jochem Paap, many years ago. He had several releases on Plus 8 records, and to be frank, I didn’t like a single one of them, and still do not. Then, he produced some softer material in the mid 1990s, which I also didn’t care for.
But as of Loudboxer, and his freakin awesome live sets, I am a huge fan.
Jochem’s a true techno pioneer. He makes records that only have short endless sound loops on them, his personally crafted loops, which he feeds into Ableton Live, a cutting edge realtime music mixing software. He then tweaks some knobs and creates, live, an organic, flowing, cerebral mindfuck music that slowly mutates and morphs over time. Motifs emerge to the ‘surface’ of the sound and dive back into obscurity; patterns overlap each other, speeding up and slowing down, asynchronously intertwining. Like Plastikman’s seminal Consumed album (but much, much harder), this music is simultaneously purely synthetic and technological, while at the same time organic, fluid and ever-changing.
This is deep, nasty techno, and if you’ve never heard anything like it, you’re in for a treat!
Hear Jochem cook up a cerebral, spatial, morphing main course for the adoring crowd with these incredible live sets:
