Hello new friends, Max Pearl (aka, DJ Kat Fyte) here checking in as the newest contributor to Trash Menagerie.  For my first post, I’d like to take all of my new readers on a guided journey of those winding corridors and dark hiding-places that I like to troll as I make my way through the blogosphere.  That means recommendations, people!

I’d like to keep it multi-media, as much as possible, so here are a few treasures that deserve some exposure, from audio-visual art music to critical commentary on the state of the contemporary moment.

First up, here’s an astoundingly well-edited promo video for the current reigning champion of the drum machine, AraabMUZIK.  I’m pretty sure that everything you’re hearing in this masterpiece is generated by this dude triggering samples off of the MPC console he’s working with, even the gnarly chug-a-chugs!

In this day and age where DJs are exchanging their turntables for laptops and MIDI controllers, yet trying to find ways to keep digital DJing as impressive for the eyes as it is for the ears, an MPC prodigy is pretty much exactly what we’ve been looking for to satiate our tiny attention spans.  SOMEBODY BOOK THIS DUDE AND I WILL GLADLY ATTEND YOUR PARTY AND BUY EVERYONE BEER.  By the way, ‘dude does much of the production for the one-and-only Cam’ron and the Dipset crew. Makes sense.

araabMUZIK Live MPC set Part 2 from Death by Electric Shock on Vimeo.
[This is part 2 of 3 parts, by the way. I encourage you to troll Google until you find the other two. But this is by far the most technically awesome.]

WARNING: THIS NEXT BIT GETS A LIL’ GEEKY
But seriously, if you like bass music, you like critical rants and conspiracy theories about technologies of control, and you’re as floored as I am by the Afrofuturist philosophies espoused by everyone from Lee Scratch Perry to Sun-Ra to British theorist Kodwo Eshun, I would highly recommend you pick up a copy of Kode9’s new book, Sonic Warfare.

In the simplest terms, he addresses the use of sound as a structuring technology- a sonic architecture, if you will- from night-time sound bombs used to create an environment of paranoia and fear among the colonized, to high-pitched frequencies used in malls to prevent teens from gathering, all the way through to the careful crafting of good or bad vibes by soundsystems operators in the context of the global dancehall session.  Kode9, by the way, is the curator behind the virtually infallible Hyperdub record label, a leftfield electronica institution that’s centered around wonky hip-hop and dubstep, with releases from acts like Ikonika, Burial, Zomby, and Joker.  Act like you know.

Lastly, let me round out yet one more border to which my artistic and cultural interests extend, and make the jump from super METAL gangster beats and Sonic Warfare over to the contemporary state of Latin American and Caribbean party music!  I don’t mean to blow up anybody’s spot if you’ve been hoarding music from this bizarre little outlet in the global digital, but these guys deserve some props!  Check out the wonderful, regularly-updated music blog, Flow Cartagena, “EL BLOG OFICIAL DEL DANCEHALL Y REGGAETON,” for seriously cutting edge reggae/hip-hop everything.  Much of the music available at this site is from amateur producers and remixers, and a lot of it is unreleased, bootlegged, or really poorly mixed and mastered.  Still, you can find some gems if you’re willing to hit up google translator and spend an hour navigating the sketchy mess that is this website’s interface.

One of my favorites is this track here, an upbeat, layed-back hip-hop joint from Jiggy D and Mosta Man.  Just so you trust me that this site is in fact quite bangin’.

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Street Music – Jiggy D Ft. Mosta Man

(192kbps but somehow it still sounds good on a big system)

Anyways, till next time ya’ll, glad to be a part of this fabulous publication.

Mwah!

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Hey TM readers! Just saw this link to Zombie Nation’s eBay auction for his Akai MPC 4000 on Future Music and wanted to spread the word for any of you that are into MPCs or rainforest conservation:

Now here’s a brilliant idea. Rather than gracefully retiring his trusty Akai MPC4000 to the great loft in the sky, Zombie Nation is auctioning his online for charity! Yes, get a top MPC with celebrity heritage AND do your bit to help the rainforest too.

“This MPC has travelled with me to many countries and seen quite a lot of clubs It’s also the machine I made my last album, Zombielicious on,” he tells us. “It’s modded with an DOM 4GB disc and comes with an additional hard disk, CD ROM and the eight output option. It’s still covered in my gig stickers including one that says “HD up”, which means “Head up, don´t look on the display like a nerd!”

Reason for sale? “I switched to the MPC 1000 recently, simply because it weighs 12 kilos less, which makes my life a lot easier! But this 4000 works great and is the most advanced hardware sampler ever built.”

So why the charity auction? “I wanted it to go to someone who appreciates the story of this machine which gave me a lot of great moments. The final auction price will be donated to WWF for rainforest conservation project in memory of Daniel Hansson – founder of Elektron Music Machines – who was a big supporter of the WWF. Remember: Paper has two sides so print doublesided!”

“The highest bidder will receive a copy of the proof of donation of the full amount as well as a signed photo of me and the MPC plus a list of all the dates and clubs this MPC travelled with me.”

The auction goes live on the 1st of March and you can find the page here. Bid generously and let us know if you win!

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Black Rock City. Photo from Crave Online.

Of all the people I’ve been surprised to learn have gone to Burning Man Festival, it’s got to be techno/tech house DJ and Lot49 label owner Meat Katie, who’s hard-edged sets that include breaks, broken beat and minimalist I only imagined stayed within the cold walls of stripped down clubs.

It turns out that the legendary far out art and music festival-event-circus-lifestyle that takes place every year out in Nevada’s inhospitable desert made a deep impression on the DJ. One could even call it a soft spot.

I talked to Meat Katie (Mark Pember) about why, how and again why a club DJ would ever find himself at a glorified love-in with a bunch of hippies. He tells me about the the miracle of consumer-free living, porn, eggs, and why this is one festival the loo roll comes provided. PLUS check out his live mix from Rockbottom.

Meat Katie having it at Rockbottom, Burning Man 2009

Amy Riley: Hi there, how are you?

Mark Pemberton: Okay. I was supposed to be playing in Greece, but instead I’m sitting on my sofa, sick. Where we work, we have a block of studios that I share with other DJs like Alec Metric – so now we all have the flu and having to cancel our gigs.

AR: So the question I’ve got to ask: what’s a DJ doing at Burning Man? Wasn’t it just a hippy fest?

MP: I had the same reservations about Burning Man. The thing is, I’ve got a really good association with some promoters in San Francisco called Opal. I’ve been doing their parties for the last 8 years. They got involved in Burning Man right when it got started, about 12 years ago, and then it just grew. The weird thing is they kept saying, ‘You got to come, you’d love it’ and I thought ‘hippies, no way’.

Slowly but surely, other djs were playing for them – they went there and said it was amazing. I fought it for six years – ‘you’re lying to me, it’s going to be crusties with no clothes on’. Well, it’s kinda true. There’s a lot of crusties and a lot of people naked, but it’s more than that’ (laughs).

This year I decided to go and the promoter gave all our DJs – the Saturday night. I took on the daytime shows. That video clip you see is at Rockbottom, which was on at 4 in the afternoon. Because of time, Elite Force and I did back to back sets, which was good since our music is quite similar. Doing the day time parties, it meant I arrived early. I didn’t know what to expect. People said ‘it’s not what you think it is.’ It’s not hippyfied. The art side of things is not tie-dyed – it’s amazing sculptures and fire . They have fire orchestras, half the size of a football pitch.

AR: How is the music organised?

MP: All the soundsystems have their own vibe. There’s no sponsorship – Burning man don’t give them any money. It cost 70k to put one on.

AR: Why do they do it?

MP: People put on stuff because they want to do it. We got there Monday (early) and there was forklift trucks to put soundsystems up. There’s nothing like it here.

AR: Is it like the rave scene used to be here?

MP: It’s like early raves, but it’s organized so they’re set back from each other.

AR: What soundsystem are there?

MP: It’s crews of people based around cities. A lot of people from San Francisco because that’s where it started. Denver. Crews from Florida have started coming out. They have all their own sounds.

AR: What kind of music were they playing?

MP: A lot of dubstep and glitchhop – which suited heavy electronic and desert and Mad Max anarchy. It was a nice backdrop for that. I didn’t hear a lot of trance, which I was expecting. There was a lot of minimal and techno, which I like.

When I wandered around, I discovered there was an amazing number of international DJs who made the pilgrimage to be there.  Armand Van Helden was there -he played a really underground set, not the euphoric hands in the air set he normally does and he’s not being paid 50k to be there either. He did himself lots of favors by playing there. I met Carl Cox when were were both DJing out there. We bought our own tickets and paid our own way.

AR: So is Burning Man in your top ten festivals?

MP: It’s my number 1 event – nothing even comes close. I walked out of there with my jaw on the floor. Coming back to UK and hooking up with people who had been there, everyone said the same thing. It’s such a harsh envionrment you’re in, the way people brave this terrain to be there and do this, you get something from it. I don’t want to sound like a hippy, but I gained something from it and the benchmark was lifted to unrealistic level for anywhere else.

AR: What do you like most about Burning Man?

MP: That you can’t spend any money.  When you go to normal festivals, you don’t even realize how caught up you get in spending money and you don’t realize how branded and corporate it is. At Burning Man, you’re not being sold anything. All they do is provide a a perimeter fence around the site and you have to make your own fun. It’s a totally different type of experience to any other festival, where you go based on the lineup so you make a decision based on what you’re going to get – at Burning Man, there’s no lineup so you go. I’d be happy to go even if I wasn’t playing.

They supply toilets as well, and not once where there was no toilet paper and they were always clean, which is quite an achievement.

Punters at Burning Man 2009. Photo from Crave Online.

AR: Any advice you’d give to punters?

MP: Prepare properly. If you want to go, don’t just turn up with your camping gear. Its important where you stay, but people are so friendly. Goggles, face masks.

AR: Oh what, people need to dress like that? I thought they were just trying to look cool with those stupid vests.

MP: I know you look stupid, but the sand is everywhere, it’s unbelievable. And then you get the sand storms, the white outs where you can’t see your hand. I was walking to our camp and there was a white out and it was like being sandblasted and there’s some people having sex and we just walked around them. You couldn’t see them until you were right up close.

You have to queue to get on the site – it’s not like Glastonbury where you can stay in Bath or Bristol – you’re there for the duration – seven days – it swells out on Thursday and Friday. Some people say there for two weeks.

AR: Where there a lot of drug casualties?

MP: I got a sore throat half way through, just from dust. I went to the medical centre there – it was all run by volunteers, it was like M.A.S.H – and I didn’t see anyone there freaking out on drugs. It was mainly people who fell off vans. When the doctor saw me, I gave him ten dollars, and they went to Reno and picked up my prescription for me. They say Black Rock City is the only place in America where you get free medical care (laughs).

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Meat Katie live from Rockbottom, Burning Man 2009

Lot49 are running a competition to discover a new producer for a lucky 3 EP deal as part of their New Lot competition, which closes on 1 December. For more details, check out our post on the competition or go to the Lot49 site.

(more…)

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Are you a dance music producer who wouldn’t mind a plummy record deal? Lot 49, UK dance music label, are looking for the next big thing.

The label, which covers techno, electro, tech-house and breakbeat, already boasts artists such as Dubfire, Lutzenkirchen, AudioJack, Lee Coombs, Robbie Rivera, Marco Bailey, Vandal, Audiofly, Miles Dyson, D.Ramirez, Evil 9, Infusion, Bassbin Twins & Elite Force – you could be next!

One lucky winner wins a three EP deal on Lot 49, mastered at London’s Wired Masters studios with Kev Grainger (Steve Angello, Bjork, Gilles Peterson) plus a heap of software prizes.

14 finalists will have their track featured on Lot49 Recordings “New Lot Compilation”, due out in early 2010.

All entries, which must be original dance tracks, will be judged by a prestigious panel including label owners Meat Katie and Dylan Rhymes and label artists Timo Maas, Orbital, D Ramirez, James Zabiela and Steve Mac.

To enter, register on the Lot 49 website, then submit (up to three tracks) to the competition dropbox at http://soundcloud.com/newlotcompetition/dropbox

Last day for submissions is 1 December so get cracking.

All winners will be announced on the website on 14 December 09.

For more details about entering the competition and the prizes, please visit the Lot 49 website. The competition is sponsored by Native Instruments, Loop Masters, Soundcloud, and Wired Masters.

I talked to label boss Meat Katie more about where the idea for the competition came from:

We were just looking for new artists. In music, there’s been so many breakthroughs in technology, so the problem now is getting it heard.

I’d say 99.9% of what I get sent is what I’m not looking for. The thing is you get all these emails and they all blend into one another. We’re getting nowhere with it. Also make it clear to people exactly what we’re about. And hopefully people will listen toe our back catalogue to understand where we’re at creatively.

We’re all checking out and emailing each other – some artist in Venezuela will have a chance to have their track listened to by people who’ve produced before. It’s not just a demo drive – we have prizes as well. It’d be great if someone from the ass end of nowhere got their stuff produced.

As a special bonus, Meat Katie has given us a brand spanking new mix, the Dirty Stop Out mix (November 2009).

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Meat Katie – Dirty Stop Out mix

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The West Country’s breakbeat mafia, Ben and Lex are back after a 7 month break… and they’ve come back with the goods this time with a fresh release; Tha Bizniz! This is the 12th release on Ape Music, and it features a wide range of remixes, from breakbeat to dubstep to bassline wonk and techno. I am loving every version, particularly the 2 Bit Thugs gangster-esque take on it.

If you’ve not heard of Ben and Lex, these two award winning DJs and producers, you need to seriously get involved! Ben and Lex have played alongside the likes of Rennie Pilgrem, The Freestylers, Wu Tang, Afrika Bambaata, Grandmaster Flash and James Lavelle (UNKLE).

Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz Minimix

This release is huge, with five tracks… each one a banger. Don’t believe me? Then you best take a listen to the mini mix showcasing this fine, fine release.

01. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz [Original]
02. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz [Benjamin Vial Remix]
03. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz [Metro Boy Remix]
04. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz [2 Bit Thugs Remix]
05. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz [Mskr-nt Remix]

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Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz Minimix

Ben and Lex – August 2009 Promo Mix

Not only have Ben and Lex put together a minimix, they have also furnished us with a stonking 65 minute mix featuring some of  the fattest tunes to grace the dancefloor this year. The tracklisting for which includes:

01. Baobinga and ID – No Bright Lights
02. Audiofly – I Cant Remember (Eric Prydz Remix)
03. Aquasky ft Tee Ski – Back To The Top (Vandal Remix)
04. The Loops Of Fury – Flick A Switch
05. Disco Of Doom – Warpig
06. Zodiac Cartel – We Don’t Play That
07. Rack N Ruin – Skitzo VIP
08. Hyper vs Vandal – Fugazi (Vandal Remix)
09. Future Funk Squad – RaveULator
10. Plump DJs – Soul Vibrates (Enough Weapons Bootleg Mix)
11. Beat Assassins ft Sweetie Irie – Boom Style (AC Slater Remix)
12. Ben and Lex – Tha Bizniz (Mskr-nt Remix)
13. Freerange DJs – Gotta Get High (=AVE= Mix)
14. Audio Bullys  – We Don’t Care (2 Bit Thugs ReRub)
15. Rico Tubbs – Lumberjack
16. Enough Weapons – Super Sonic
17. The Proxy – Dance In Dark

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Ben and Lex – August 2009 Promo Mix

Ben and Lex 2009 Tour Dates

Ben and Lex will be performing all over the UK this autumn, and you can catch them at the following dates:

If you would like to find out more about Ben and Lex, check out their MySpace page, better still, go catch them live!

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I had the pleasure, and privilege, of working with The Orb in Chicago during the early 90’s, they are true living legends, and their contribution and influence on electronic music is immeasurable. Condolences go out to Andy’s family and friends in the light of this sudden tragedy. The following press release was forwarded to us by The Orb’s US agency, WME Entertainment.

ELECTRONIC MUSIC ENGINEER/PRODUCER GENIUS ANDY HUGHES OF THE ORB SADLY PASSES AWAY ON FRIDAY 12TH JUNE 2009

Andy Hughes, electronic music producer/DJ who was born 11th November 1965 and, and who lived and grew up in Harrow, Middlesex, tragically passed away on Friday 12th June 2009 after a short illness.

Andy was a genius who gave so much inspiration and passion to all with his incredible work. He was loved by many aficionados of the trance/ambient genre, but will be especially remembered for his work with Alex Paterson and The Orb, most notably the album Orblivion and single Toxygene, which reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1997. Together with his musical partners Alex Patterson and former members Kris Weston, Simon Phillips and Thomas Fehlmann together with Nick Burton of Westworld fame. Andy created electronic and ambient/techno/house/dub masterpieces. These took him across the globe where he played to masses of fans in countries including the USA, Japan and Canada as well as a sell out concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1998.

Prior to his Orb years he had helped to design and build the studios for Bunk Junk & Genius and worked with many famous artists. He was with the Orb until 1999 during which, along with his musical input including the Live 93 album, he assisted with the building of their Back Passage studio in Clapham.

In 2000 he started producing music on his own and more recently produced music for artists such as Kovak and Basement Jaxx at their neighbouring studios in Brixton, London. Andy was an incredibly doting and loving father who always made time for his children Gabriel and Circe and their father’s passing will leave a chasm in both their lives.

Andy’s funeral will take place at West Norwood Crematorium, Norwood Road SE 27on Monday 29th June ’09 at 11.45am. The service will be open to anyone wishing to attend. It is hoped to arrange a Tribute concert in the future to allow his many fans and friends to meet up. Any floral tributes to Funeral Directors W. Uden & Sons, 265 Southampton Way, Camberwell, London SE9 7EN or donations to the Liver Intensive Therapy Unit, Kings College Hospital via the web site justgiving.com/andyphughes

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The Orb – Ba’albeck – Orbsessions Volume 2

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