EarPIPE

May The Rave Be With You!

Friday, April 24th, 2009 | Event Preview | No Comments

I love this stretch of April to May. There’s a nice series of bank holidays which firstly equates to four day weeks or long weekends, but secondly and most importantly it means so many great rave up opportunities. You might have only just flushed the last bank holiday weekend out of your system, but here it is again, another extended weekend in our midst.

So what are the options for the May day rave up?

Saturday has some nice options with Excuse The Mess being top of the pile. They’ve got My My live along with the always excellent Matthew Styles in room 1. Then in room 2 Ralf Kollman takes the spotlight to entertain along with Shane Watcha.

The first part of Eastern Electrics also kicks off on the Saturday too. They’ll be vibing with some dub-tastic sounds with Dublime who have brought in Brendon Moeller. Room 2 has been taken over by the folks that brought you the Bloc Weekender. Their room is looking particularly sharp with the likes of Metro Area, Appleblim and Zomby. Then the third and final room is hosted by the Man Make Music guys. They’ve got the West Coast house head and Buzzin Fly aficionado Justin Martin.

Tickets are still available for both, so get Excuse the Mess tickets here and Eastern Electrics tickets here.

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Tags: 2000 and One, Appleblim, BLOC Weekend, brendon moeller, Brothers Vibe, Craig Richards, Craig Torrance, Dan Ghenacia, Disco Bloodbath, Dublime, Eastern Electrics, Escape From New York Roof Top Party, Excuse The Mess, Freak n Chic, Hobo, Holy Ghost, House and Terrace, Ilario Alicante, Justin Martin, Ketoloco, Light Bar, man make music, Matthew Styles, Melon, Metro Area, Minus, Move D, Mulletover, Murmur, My My, Queen of Hoxton, Ralf Kollman, Secretsundaze, Shonky, SiS, Terry, That, The Mole, The Revenge, Unabombers, Zomby

Butane – Mutation | Single Review

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | Single Review | 1 Comment

It’s good to hear Butane return to our speakers with this single from his forthcoming album on Crosstown Rebels. Its been a good year or so since his last release, but the wait was worth it. New track Mutation is a fantastic slice of glitchy hypnotic minimal techno. It begins with a murky hypnotic bassline and a spattering of electronic twitches. Every so often the murky bassline would raise its head above the water line as it filters out into a clean synth trickle before quickly diving back below into the murky bassy depths. It’s interesting how Butane uses the bassline as the melody for the breakdown. Its pretty one dimensional in its execution, but the shear depth of sound gives it all the kick it needs.

On the same release is two remixes from some heavyweight up and coming producers. Sety of Circus Company fame reworks the dark original into a more bouncy shuffling number. Sety fills in the minimal gaps with quite an infectious horn hook which sounds like something out of the King and I. Musical prejudice aside it seems to work, giving it a catchy and infectious edge the original didn’t have.

The other heavy weight remixer is man of the moment SiS. He also uses the original’s bassline but pads out the space with a clichéd minimal tap drip and samples of an Indian sitar. Add the skipping beats that SiS is so good at and the result is another infectious shuffling remix of the original. Another great release from the Crosstown stable.

Tracklist (Click for Mp3):
1. Mutation (Original Mix)
2. Mutation (Sety Mix)
3. Mutation (SiS Mix)

Tags: Butane, Circus Company, Crosstown Rebels, Sety, SiS

EarPipe Has an Even Hazier Look Back at the Music Through 2008

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Music, News | 1 Comment

I normally struggle to think what tunes have been and gone in the last month, so trying to remember what I was listening to back in January is a mountainous mission in itself, which is probably why I’m going to write this avoiding any specifics and will talk around the subject pretending I know what I’m talking about like any good politician would do. But from what I can recollect “minimal” became housier (or maybe I became housier?), Dubstep collided with Techno and Disco has undergone a massive revival

So lets start with the shift towards the housier sounds. We noticed a lot of DJs ditching the repetitive and bland “minimal” sounds that were starting to stagnate and instead nudging more towards the house end of the spectrum. This meant a bit more funk and soul embedded into tracks, more vocals and jazzier samples. It may sound like we’re harking back to the funky house days circa 2000-02, but this was slightly different, it was more an amalgamation of what came out of the “minimal-tech” sounds which dominated ’05-’07 with older house music sensibilities as seen from the Chicago deep house days. A perfect example of this is probably My My, their remix of Djuma Soundsytem’s Les Dijnns ’s typifies where the sound was during 2007 whilst their latest release Everybody’s Talkin’ is a glimpse into the house sound doing the rounds at the moment. The same goes for Josh Wink’s Stay Out All Night and Matthew Styles We Said Nothing, both distinctly Chi-town influenced numbers which bebop’s to a fun and funked up skipping rhythm. In a similar vein who could forget Johnny D who’s had a fantastic year. His track Orbitallife was causing raucous everywhere through the summer not to mention all his other releases.

But then it wasn’t all fun funked up house, this year saw a lot of dub style house and techno music with heavy basslines at a relaxed pace. Tracks like Trus’me’s W.A.R Dub particularly stood out as did a lot of the output from Gedde’s new label MurMur which had artists like Bearweasel pumping out deep and hypnotic house. One of the best tracks of the year for me was the highly elusive Wax1001. There was no artist or label, just this white label containing the rawest house track ever. A simple track with clunky beats, classic hi hat patterns and a dark raw bassline made Wax1001 show how less is definitely more.

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Tags: Afefe Iku, Ame, Appleblim, Bearwesel, Disco, Disco Bloodbath, Dixon, Djuma Soundsystem, Dubfire, Dubstep, Fabric, Geddes, Henrik Schwarz, Hercules and Love Affair, Horse Meat Disco, house, Innervisions, Italo Boyz, James Murphy, Johnny D, Josh Wink, Laurent Garnier, LCD Soundsystem, Lindstrom, Metro Area, Minimal, Mulletover, Murmur, My My, Mymy, Osborne, Pat Mahoney, Prins Thomas, Quiet Village, Radioslave, Ricardo Villalobos, Secretsundaze, Shackleton, SiS, Skull Disco, Smalltown Supersound, Stimming, techno, Trus'me, Villalobos, Wax1001