Tag Archive for 'music'

Favourite podcasts: Basic Soul Radio Show

Published on April 28, 2008 in music and podcast. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

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.

Music for sad days

Published on November 27, 2007 in music. Closed Tags: , , .

Not that I’m particularly sad today, but I was recently thinking about the music I play over and over again on less happy days. For some reason, it’s still the same songs I play as 10-15 years ago. So now that we have Youtube:

I play out my role
Why I’ve even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when I’m beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
An the tears for real not acted, anymore

“Long Hot Summer” (1983) – Style Council (with Paul Weller on Bass)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrmbcpQhhk[/youtube]
Continue reading ‘Music for sad days’

Moldover: Live mashup DJ

Published on September 7, 2006 in music. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Moldover: live mashup DJI wrote a post last year “REQ: Live mashup performance tool” on how much fun it would be to be able to do live mashups: mix basslines, drums, guiter riffs and vocals from different songs in real-time. I just found out via beatmixed that there is a New-York DJ that has figured out the nuts and bolts: Toto a.k.a. Moldover.

MOLDOVER SETUP

  • HARDWARE: He uses a PC laptop with Ableton Live (for loop control) and Native Instruments Reaktor (for sound FX). As MIDI-controller, he uses a Novation ReMOTE 25 (2 octaves). For audio output he uses an Echo Audio Indigo » io CardBus interface.
  • SOFTWARE: he has organized an extensive collection of loops in Live into 8 columns or channels – I think “DJ1″, “DJ2″, “Beats”, “Percussion”, “Melody”, “Bass”, “Ambient” and “Vocals”. Loops are color-coded for the key they’re in (if any). Each channel has 1 FX configured which is the Reaktor plugin. There are also some effects on the master output (limiter, compressor, …)
  • CONTROL: he uses the 8 white keys at the right to trigger each channel. The 8 sliders, which are nicely lined up right above the keys, control the volume of each channel. The 2 x 8 knobs control 2 FX settings per channel. On some channels these are equalizer settings (cut-off frequency), on others delay/reverb settings (depends on the type of ‘content’ of each channel, and what FX go best with that).

See him at work on this Youtube video:
Continue reading ‘Moldover: Live mashup DJ’

Bentzon Brotherhood: Rapper’s New Delight

Published on July 17, 2005 in music. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

A couple of weeks ago, at a party in Maastricht, I heard a new version of Rapper’s Delight (Sugarhill Gang), a 15-minute funky jazz version with a kick-ass bass. I went to the DJ booth and turned my head at 45RPM so I could read the name of the artist: “Bentzon“. Back home, some elementary Googling later:

Nikolaj Bentzon is Denmarks finest Keyboardist and has played alongside David Sanborn, Van Morrison & Joe Henderson amongst many others. For his debut release on Freestyle Records he teams up with the rhythm section from The Headhunters: Paul Jackson on Bass & Mick Clark on Drums and pays homage to the genius of the Sugarhill Gangs debut release Rappers Delight.
from kudosrecords.co.uk

Or here:

Listen to Rapper’s Delight (through Webjay)
A real head-turner, this one. The Bentzon Brotherhood, working around Nicolaj Bentzon’s slick Rhodes and Clavinet manoeuvres, take the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ and go all funky and jazzical on its ass.
from tunes.co.uk

It is released on a record label without a web site: Freestyle Records:

Freestyle Records is the new label from DJ & promoter at the world famous Jazz Café venue in London, Adrian Gibson

Hear a sample via jazz-network.com (RAM) and beatstreet.ca (MP3) or fatcity.co.uk (MP3).

Technorati: –