Long time no see, huh.
Speaking of long times, finally some new material! Find "Down In Flames" here, and it'll be going up on the last.fm over the next week or so, when I finalise it.

In the interest of self-promotion, I have put my entire back catalogue on Last.fm. Please, get scrobbling and increase the likelihood of my getting radio-plays!

It's not that I've had too much on my plate recently to write anything. It's more that there hasn't been enough. There's nothing to talk about.

However, set aside 75 minutes to watch this. Daft Punk are a seriously good band and their Coachella set in 2006 is now the stuff of legend. This is the whole thing including the encore (yes!) with very good sound. Listen out in particular for One More Time vs Aerodynamic, Da Funk and Harder Better Faster Stronger.

On a very related note, Alive 2007 from Paris earlier this year is coming to dual-CD in November! It will be preceded by a single release of HBFS from that recording, and the video for that will be shot by members of the audience, Beastie Boys style. I can't wait.

Meanwhile, I'm counting another 10 years until they tour again. I'll be first in line for tickets though.

Pretty crappy update for you todayday. I have had another pop at my last track, Touch Wood. For the original I did without any reverb whatsoever both to make my life easier and to save CPU. The result of that is the clinical, flat feel of the original. This time I've gone back to my usual 3-send layout.
I've also re-balanced the whole thing, changed EQ, and added a very subtle bass guitar and a lush pad (which I'm particularly pleased with).
The result is a brighter, more polished, better-centred mix.

I dare you to click here. Yes! New song!

The entire track spawned from a synth patch I ended up hardly using. You can hear it in the background throughout; it provides the drone in the second section. I had intended it to be the centrepiece of the track but it wasn't going anywhere.
I was on the edge of canning it when I decided to dig out the old Rebirth CD (free download!). It's really good! The 303 loop, as you can hear, hijacked the entire song.
At the time I was also missing a coherent rhythm section which Rebirth also fixed for me. The program consists of two 303s (I only used one), an 808 and 909 and it's the lattermost that provides most of the thudding kick/snare pairing. The 808 and obligatory Redrum are responsible for minor augmentation/reinforcement.

I have also found the best drum processor ever! Blockfish is one of the most fun compressors in the world in that it's incredibly difficult. From the somewhat idiosyncratic controls (a single-knob envelope?) to the pingy biting sound it's very easy to abuse and will give you the best hypercompressed material in the world if you use it right. I've found it too aggressive for more subtle vocal compression but that's what every other VST in the world is for.
Here's a tip to get you going with Blockfish on drums or a lead synth. High compression ratio, quick envelope, high saturation. Leave the makeup gain at 0 or push it up a little little bit. I leave bass-cut on for synths and off for drums, and rarely touch the air button or remove the front panel. I also prefer VCA mode for bonus vintage analog style but your mileage may vary.

PS: new music myspace! Add me!

In my last post I basically said Justice were lazy for letting up in the middle of †. In short, I've changed my mind. Valentine is the apex of their laid-back work to date (and there's actually been quite a bit) with a lead synth that hums and twirls its way through a series of simple yet engaging melodies.

TTTHHHEEE PPPAAARRRTTTYYY has an awful title, but it does feature Uffie, who is ultra-cool at the moment. While the instrumentation seems minimal it's actually very complex if you pay attention to it and it really suits the globetrotting (born in Miami, moved to Hong Kong, now a Parisian) girl's vocals, accentuating the growl in her sassy spoken word.

DVNO really improves with listens, as does most of Justice's work. It's got an engaging melody (Dr. Internet doesn't know who from; I'll tell you when I get the CD back) and a healthy serving of bombast. The instrumentation keeps you on a knife-edge throughout because it's quite unpredictable, and they've got an irregular distortion on the bottom of the voice, continuing the lush rumble subwoofer owners will hear throughout the album. This amounts to what's actually one of the most underappreciated songs on the album (I myself was skipping it habitually until I sat down with it the other day).

So I suggest you try those three again with a critical ear.

Also, I've changed my opinion of Wooden by SMD. I still think it's quite self-congratulatory (sorry SMD, the rest of the album's top) but it's grown on me a little. It's not wank like Scott is (sorry SMD), and it's not that good, but it's OK.

Finally, look what a bit of digging, reading inlays obsessively and the most useful yet unknown resource on the Internet has thrown up! The first MP3 on the page should shound strangely familiar. Yeah, it's crappy prog, but huzzah for fantastic sampling, bonus bonus points for Justice.
Oh, and I might be going to see them at Koko this September, if I can find anyone to go with me. I have not been the gig-goer I should have been recently. I will start regularly checking ticket websites.

I might talk about Daft Punk and the White Stripes a bit quite soon. EARLY TRAILING

I've just realised I haven't talked about the recent SMD and Justice albums properly. I'll get the semantics out of the way first: both are excellent.


First under the microscope is †. The lead singles DANCE and Waters Of Nazareth (as well as We Are Your Friends, of course - though it's missing from the album) were very good, and stylistically this LP is largely in keeping with that track record. Up there with them is NewJack, a sliced-up mangled vocal disco bleep-out track reminiscent of Daft Punk circa Harder Better Faster Stronger. There's also Phantom II, a re-imagining of the DANCE B-side with a longer chord progression and strings.

Unfortunately the album loses momentum in the middle a little, with Valentine, TTTHHHEEE PPPAAARRRTTTYYY and DVNO. The first of these is slightly better and, while none are bad songs, they don't have the club-pumping atmosphere as the rest of the LP.

Stellar as DANCE, 'Nazareth, NewJack and Phantom II are, they are not the best tracks on the album. That crown has to go to Phantom (which we saw before on DANCE) and Stress. The former is utterly fantastic from the opening with a synth that sounds like a vocalised glockenspiel through the über-distorted breakdown to the bleepy fade-out. If you wanted one track that exemplified Justice's work to date, it would be this.
Better still, though, is the aptly-named Stress. It's a frankly terrifying affair with a shrieking lead violin and four (count 'em) different siren sounds. Any song with sirens is good (look at Atlantis To Interzone or Heavyweight Champion Of The World) and this is no exception. I dare you to blast it at 11.


Any song with sirens is good, and Tits & Acid by SMD has a pair. It's a totally insane track with an exceedingly pitch-shifted lead loop, chordal stabs and a percussive vocal sample ("is he saying 'bass'?"). I challenge you not to bop a little when it charges through your speakers like an underground club rhinoceros. This is a re-recording (as are all the album tracks which were previously available) and while it's generally better there are one or two elements I've missed. I suggest you track down the other version of all the tracks on the Hype Machine for comparison.

The other singles on the album are It's The Beat, Hustler, I Believe and Hot Dog. They've all been revamped for an edgier indie-rock feel, not entirely unlike early Kasabian. Standing out among these already-great tracks is I Believe. The re-recording has given it a new lease of life; it's a lot less dancey now. The original seemed to put the (very good) bassline and drums first; now the melodic vocal and synth are emphasised. It's very much in the indie realm of dance crossover, sounding like a proper new-rave tune.

It's a great shame tracks Wooden and Scott, tracks 8 and 10 (out of 10) respectively are gratuitous bleep-out sessions. We forgave them for the end of the Hustler single because it simply emphasised the song's inherent style, but there's no excuse for randomised arpeggios and boring pads on their own. Wooden suffers less landing just this side of listenability but I suggest you take the CD out a track early and forget about Scott.

On a much brighter note, opener Sleep Deprivation is an absolute stomper. I'd say it was the highlight of the album, and perfectly illustrates SMD's electro ethos. The eight-bar chord progression sits at the heart of the track, and the pulse is provided by a straightforward buzzy bassline. It culminates in a blastable chordal synth towards the very end, accentuated by keyboard stabs on the beat. I can't get enough of it, and to be honest I can't get enough SMD. Attack Decay Sustain Release is the unmissable album of this quarter (Think Before You Speak was last quarter, right?).


Epilogue: I forgot to mention the high production values on each album. Neither fall into the dance music trap of simply pumping bass and lower mids to mask the lack of interesting music further up and the result is easy-to-listen-to electronic indie. It doesn't get any better.
Oh, and the White Stripes album, Icky Thump, is good. I have been too busy to sit down with it properly but I promise I will over the next fortnight or so.