Beatport Weekly Recommendations

Loads of fresh new releases out on Beatport today. Some haven’t yet hit the New Releases page yet, but thanks to the magic of Beatport RSS feeds, I get a bit of advance notice. Joel Armstrong comes around with a new one, which seems likely to escape notice since it is sharing space on a Deeplife Records EP with some unrelated hip-hop and drum ‘n bass tracks. Or it might just be an error on Beatport’s part.

This week, Fatal Music release an attention-grabbing tribal vocal track, Alex Dolby’s Obsessive Sound finally comes to Beatport and if the Flying Doctors can take time out between delivery babies and saving lives to put out a track, the least we can do is listen to it, especially since it is so worth listening to. Sentient drops one from Mikel Curcio and a bunch of remixes that I love equally like my own children, and there are a few others from the same label, and from the completely separate Sentient Audio Collective, a release from Clubbervision. For my taste, Source of Gravity tends to err on the side of trance, but this Nicholas Bennison release gets a pass for the sake of doing something slightly different, Paul Van Dyk support notwithstanding.

Is it my imagination, or is Beatport more responsive these last few days?

• Joel Armstrong, Endangered Species – Balboa [Deeplife]
• Alex Dolby – Obsessive Sound (Extended Mix) [Mantra Vibes]
• The Flying Doctors – We Make Contact [Kindred Sounds]
• Nicholas Bennison – Soloplex [Source of Gravity Digital]
• Mikel Curcio – Losing My Mind [Sentient]
• Clubbervision – The Lost Dream [Sentient Audio Collective]
• Big Al – The Fine Nelly EP (Ready Mix)
• Sertac Kaya – Ultima (Hakan Unsal’s Unreleased Tone Remix) [Sentient]
• Jericho, Crashguard – Cosmic Walk (Original Mix) [4-Stroke Produktunes]
• Plass – We Are Going To Buenos Aires [Sinister]
• Adam Freeland – Heel & Toe feat. Juice Aleem & Toastie (Daniel Taylor Remix)
• Justin Martin – Cicada (Pedro De La Faydro Birth Mix) [Dirtybird]
• Gadgets – Go There (On The Floor Mix) [ELP]
• Delicious & Rutte – Ja Ja (Original Mix)
• BAM – Open Your Mind (Original Mix) [Fatal Music]
• BT – Never Gonna Come Back Down (Timo Maas Mix) [Nettwerk]
• Unai – I Like Your Style [Disco Inc.]

How To: Share Your Chart With RSS and del.ico.us

Charts are a great way to find out about great new music. Finding another DJ with similar taste who publishes a chart is like a gold mine of information about new and hard-to-find music. But there are a couple of problems that make them hard to use.

The Problem

The first problem is that charts almost never have audio links. Usually, if I want to hear a track that I find on a chart, I go to Juno, search for the artist or the track name, scan through the results before I can finally hear the track. If I decide I like it and I want to buy it, then I have to go to Beatport, EDMDigital or DanceRecords.com and see if its available. This is a lot of work.

The second problem is that you might find hundreds of charts on the web. How do you know when they are updated? You have to check back at their website all the time, which is fine if the chart is updated regularly, but it sucks if its updated once in a while or with no regularity at all. You have to do way too much digging to get at the gold.

The Solution

The solution is del.icio.us, a free social bookmarking service. If you are browsing Juno (or any other music store) and you find a track you absolutely love and you want to add it to your chart, you make it a del.icio.us bookmark. What makes del.icio.us bookmarks special is that they are available on the web for everyone to see, and you can add tags to each bookmark to categorize them. In this case, you might want to add these 2 tags to each track: edmchart november2005. From there, you simply post a link to your chart on your website, favorite forums or signature. Here’s a link to my chart as an example.

The great advantage is that the audio samples are 2 clicks away from your chart, instead of 10 clicks and a lot of searching around. The other reason to use this is that del.icio.us tags are accessible as RSS feeds, which means that anyone with an RSS reader can subscribe and get notified the instant you add a track to your chart. RSS readers are built into Firefox and Safari, as free online web services like BlogLines, NewsGator and NetVibes, or for power users, as a standalone application like GreatNews for Windows or NetNewsWire for Mac. There are a couple of other social bookmarking sites that I’ve been checking out as alternatives to del.icio.us, like Spurl and Netvouz. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose, as long as you can share your bookmarks as RSS feeds.

This is a great promotional tool for DJs, because there is really no better way of raising your visibility on the web than by letting your fans know that you are alive and that you are playing out, and giving potential new fans a taste of what they can expect.

Update: If anyone knows any DJs (big or small) are publishing charts as RSS or Atom feeds, please leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

• Ewan Pearson

Beatport Weekly Recommendations

Some amazing, must-have tracks out on Beatport this week. Baroque drop a new Noel Sanger track, and the familiar but excellent BPT track, which, as of this writing, is not quite yet available. Phatjak returns with the Dirty Sunday EP, Pig & Dan remix on Anjuna, and This is Audio Therapy is finally released in the US, including an incredible vocal remix from Stel & Tone Depth. Vector Lovers continue their streak with Capsule For One — a powerful album on Soma of enduring quality. Absolutely essential.

Also, I get a shiny new graphic on the left side

• Inbox – Snapshot [Black Hole]
• Vector Lovers – Capsule For One [Soma]
• Phatjak – Club Soda [Therapy]
• Oxygen Breathing Apparatus – Words With The Shaman [Pacific Front]
• Jono Grant, Mike Koglin – Sequential (Pig & Dan Remix) [Anjuna]
• T-Quest – Deadline [Lupp]
• Noel Sanger – One Drop [Baroque]
• BPT – Moody [Baroque]
• Introvert – 5am Illusions [Aurium]
• Oliver Moldan – Marracash [Audio Therapy]
• K Roxx – Surreal (Trafik Remix) [Audio Therapy]
• Ashland – Clear (Stel & Tone Depth Remix) [Audio Therapy]
• Panopticon – Revealing The Door (Sean Quinn & Dan Mangan Remix) [Audio Therapy]

In and About Altered States

OC Register: “‘Turn on, tune in, drop out.’ That was the mantra for a generation…It also appears to be the theme underscoring the Museum of Contemporary Art’s latest exhibition, ‘Ecstasy: In and About Altered States’…”

NY Times: “[Creator Paul Schimmel] continues, ‘This experience is not about the hippie ethos of “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” but about overcoming the isolation of contemporary life – the pervasive sense of disconnectedness that is to some degree due to the failure of hippie ideals, to the cynicism and greed that followed the dissolution of 1960’s counterculture.”

Thanks, OC Register, for getting it totally backwards. That’s some fine journamalizing!

Now that the culture’s brain trust (a.k.a. the New York art scene) has intellectualized and to an extent sanctified the concept (but not the act, no sir) of ecstasy use by pointing to the larger social context in which it takes place, they might get some DJs off their (ahem) high horses, who have long regarded the culture they participate in as being a fundamentally unnecessary. For them, rave and club culture serve no purpose other than to fulfill the needs of the abnormally regressive, and wouldn’t exist except for their audience’s depraved needs to pop pills, dance around listening to loud, repetitive music until dawn while being childishly entranced by blinking lights. How could this behavior possibly represent anything of enduring value?

Or so goes the argument.

Jonathan Lisle 5 Hour Mix

Jonathan Lisle just updated his site with a 5 hour set from August, although you do have to jump through one hoop and register for the mailing list to get access. Worth it though — they’ve promised some more new stuff up sometime this weekend.

Podcast: Cold Hands Into The Dawn

Kind of a chill techy/minimal/progressive mix here. Check it out.

Download or Stream

1. Peter Martin, Ray Romero – Project 6 feat. Jannica [Proton]
2. Unai – Oh You And I (Rene Breitbarth Remix) [Disco Inc]
3. Lusine – Flat (Lusine Mix) [Ghostly]
4. Jean-Paul Bondy – Cold Reformer (John Tejada Remix) [Compost]
5. Michael Fentum – Warm Hands (Traum)
6. Mortar & Pestle – Itsachickthing (Luke Chable Remix)
7. Doug Villeneuve – You Think You’re Jesus feat. K-Mart (Audiofly Jesus On Earth Remix) [Skyline]
8. Habersham – Into The M (Paul Kwitek and Paul S Remix) [Existence]
9. Eric Prydz – The Gift [Pryda]
10. Brahma – Bringing The Dawn [Sentient Audio Collective]
11. Speedcats – Speedcats [Silver Planet]

New Tracks

Weekly Beatport Picks:

• Beckers, D-Nox – You’re A Star (Original Mix) [Baroque Records]
• D-Nox, Beckers – Jet Lag Slave (Original Mix) [Baroque Records]
• Spencer Parker – Open Your Eyes (Luke Dzierzek Mix) [CR2]
• Bush II Bush – Piano Track [CR2]
• DJ Hell – Tragic Picture Show (Alternative Version) [International Deejay Gigolos]
• Jake Fairley – Breaking Up (Einmusik Club Mix) [Combination Records]
• Envotion – Vessel Of Poison feat. Laura Camillia [Plastic Fantastic]
• Stan Kolev – Nibiru [Outta Limits]
• Joel Armstrong – Serenity [Proton]
• Kriece – Fallujah (Ed Function Remix) [Arabica]

New Plastic Fantastic and Beckers? Or just new for Beatport? And new one from Stan Kolev, who is turning out some great stuff — seventeen tracks in two months on Outta Limits. The man is a machine. Or had an extensive unpublished back catalog. His stuff is slightly tribal, ethereal and occasionally funky, but incredibly subtle and never overbearing. Its not an obviously innovative sound, but I have a feeling it will stand up well to the test of time. This is a man to watch, on Outta Limits and Plastic Fantastic as Casa Flava.

Future Synth

Club Future is San Francisco’s premier Electro/Synth night, 1st and 3rd Thursdays at Underground SF. Let’s just hope its not campy and nostalgic, and therefore temporary. The “indie dance party” throws me off a bit, but I might still check it out. That is, if I wasn’t already hosting my own electro-synth dance party up in Momu Lounge every first Thursday of the month, which is tomorrow, so come out and support.

Update: No electro-synth dance party at Momu Lounge this month

Beatportfeeds: Two Weeks Later

Two weeks after posting a note on the Beatport Forums, I’m getting between 60 and 90 unique hosts a day. Here’s a handy sparkline graph of the last two weeks of growth: Its good to know people are getting some use out of it. What feeds are they subscribing to?

Interesting counter-intuitive usage stats. With this tiny sample (n=200), the niche genres seem to have the broadest appeal.