Tag Archive for 'electronic'

Favourite podcasts: Basic Soul Radio Show

Published by Peter on April 28, 2008 in music and podcast. 4 Comments

I subscribe to less and less podcasts (not enough time to listen), but there is one I always install on every newly installed iTunes. It’s called the Basic Soul Radio Show, it’s presented by Simon Harrison. Every week Simon selects two hours of old and new funk, soul and electronic music, which makes for a 200MB MP3 every time (upgrade that hard disk!). I have discovered lots of little pearls thanks to it. Some examples from the top of my head:

Expect to encounter a lot of artists/groups that you’ve never heard of. Some of it you won’t like, some you will adore. Because I wanted a better tool to search the 5+ years of archive, I built a little search engine on

http://tools.forret.com/basicsoul/

that allows me to search for artists, titles and labels. Per found occurrence it allows me to view the full playlist (reformatted from the original page) and if the podcast MP3 is still online, to listen to it (with a SMIL playlist, a M3U playlist or a Flash based MP3 player). I enjoy using it, to see when a track was first played, what other tracks that artist made etc …

Basic Soul Radio podcast Search
Check it out!

PS: Every podcast episode starts with: “Today is the shadow of tomorrow. Today is the present future of yesterday. Yesterday is the shadow of today. The darkness of the past is yesterday. And the light of the past is yesterday“, a piece of lyric from “Shadows of Tomorrow” - Madvillain & Quasimoto.

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I remember house before it was techno

Published by Peter on September 26, 2004 in music. 5 Comments

I remember house before it was techno
I remember house before it had an afro
I remember house before it was deep
I remember house before it was hard
I remember house when house had tempos
I remember house before mpc 60’s
I remember house before house had loops
I remember house before the whole world knew
“Do You Remember House” - Blaze

If, like me, you every often have to explain why you’re into house music, but not techno, and what exactly the difference is between acid jazz, downbeat, deep house and lounge music, you should know about the Ishkur’s guide to electronic music. It gives an overview of styles, genres and sub-genres of house, trance, techno, breakbeat, ambient, jungle, hardcore and downtempo, all defined and annotated by a Canadian guy who compensates his lack of enthusiasm for some genres by a fair amount of sarcasm.

Hardcore is the musical genre with bi-polar disorder: one half is blistering, sadistic anger, a seething uncontrollable rage that seekd to ruin and wreck everything that exists, including everyone else’s fun time. (…) The other half of hardcore is way too silly and stupid to take such anger seriously anymore.
Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music

It even includes multiple sound samples with each definition, so put on those headphones and experience the delights of Nu Style Gabber, Gloomcore and New Beat (yes, we Belgians are still quite proud of that)!

Another, more serious way, of discovering house music is the excellent Jahsonic’s House Music History (some sound bites and really well cross-referenced), and if you really want to graduate from House University, check out House Music 101 (by Appollo). Wanna hear some? Browse through DeepHousePage or just use Smoothouse’s Smooth-o-Matic.

Disclaimer: If Chic don’t make you snap your fingers, if George Clinton can’t incite you to move that booty and Bob Marley cannot make you wave that spliff above them dreadlocks, then you will not get it. Go back to your R.E.M. albums (or Metallica, whatever) and forget about it. You’re a lost case.