Seeing as I haven’t posted in a while, and since being at V Festival last week, I thought it would be fitting to post this old(ish) note I scrawled.

I really don’t care who you are, where you’ve come from, what genre you chopped up, filtered, spliced and sellotaped back together again. I don’t care where you get your samples from, who’s style you’ve mirrored or where your beat has developed from.

I couldn’t care less if you’re retro, new-age, post-modern, old skool, electronic, or an all-time veteran of balancing beats and frying them up with a tasty portion of melodic drum-step. I don’t care if you’re fidget, bassline, clown step, hardcore, electro-tech, funk-indie, blues or rock and roll.

Artists change dramaticlly over the course of their careers. Usually, the journey will begin with some underground bedroom production, things will get big, and then beats will be flying out the door faster than double cheese’s at McDaddys.

I’ve seen far too much criticism thrown at artists because of what they look like, who they are, how they’ve produced and where they are heading. How they’ve fucked up and commercialised a genre by simplifying it and shipping it out to the masses. How they’ve ruined the world of music and forced us all to listen to [insert awful chooage here] for the rest of eternity. I think criticism on the internet must be the cool thing to do.

Listen to the beats, decide if you like them or not.

When you go out for a meal do you question the background history and cookery methods of the chef before you decide if you like your meal?

All that other stuff is just fluff by comparison. Stop judging music based on genres, impact and popularity – just listen to it as music and decide if you like it or not. Don’t worry about being cool or down with the kids. It matters not one jot. You like Lady Gaga? Go and dance the roof down to it, have fun!

Too many people take the ‘coolness’ of music far too seriously.

It’s all about the music.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve picked up an excellent podcast by Lazy Rich; a monthly 2 hour show that includes the latest releases and stormers across electrohouse and (electro)breaks. Really useful if you want listen to some new sounds but don’t have time to trawl through latest releases and charts.

The latest broadcast features a mix from one of my current favourite dj’s and producers, Far Too Loud – highly reccommend! You can grab it through iTunes or via a direct download.

Also worth noting, I’ve been mightily impressed with how the genre has been moving over the past 4-6 weeks. Cut up electro breaks seem to be coming out of the woodwork, a nice move away from the repipitive vocal heavy electrohouse of old.

Lazy Rich Podcast

“Featuring the biggest and best in Electro House, with exclusive tracks, guest mixes, and a countdown of the 10 biggest tunes each month.”

That can increase to an ad every 2-3 tracks with continued use (or at least has for me).  Combined with their introduction of a 10 hour listen limit, it’s getting to the point where the new restrictions make the service unappealing.  Only using it for occasionally for work, I don’t really justify paying for it.  In it’s current form, with a 30-40 second ad every 3 tracks, I’ll simply move back to listening to my mp3 collection.

That’s not forgetting of course that there’s a great streaming music service I’ve been using for years, that I rarely hear anyone mention these days.  An advertising free app, unlimited minutes music player with millions of artists, tracks and features that is totally free to use.  It doesn’t seem to get as much press or media time as Spotify has in recent months (maybe because of the label interest in Spotify) but  I’ve been using it for years and remains one of my favorite web services.

Scobbling and the social aspects mean, like Spotify, I can keep track of my friends beats and explore who’s bopping to what.   No, it doesn’t allow you to listen to the Lady Gaga or Take That album on repeat five time, it forces you to discover new artists, no doubt a scary prospect for many of the crowd following pop sheep, and probably one of the reasons I think the masses haven’t adopted it.

Guessed yet? Last.fm.

And no, I’m not a sponsor, employee or sell out.  Just a satisfied (non-paying) customer that has been using a great service for years and doesn’t think it really get its dues.

To get you started, if you want some beats while you’re working, checkout some DJ Food bops.  You’ll get advertising through the web service though, so install the desktop app and away you go.

Again, not perfect and not generally up to my standard to release tracks, but quite a fe people have been asking for something and this should satisfy your darker electro musical taste.

All comment and feedback appreciated! The mix can be found here, for download or stream. Tracklist coming soon.

I’m looking at adding a mixes section to the site and bringing them over there through some fancy plugin action to make things a bit easier.

I’ve setup a soundcloud profile which is where I’ll be hosting most of my stuff for now -

http://soundcloud.com/art-1 (you can download from here as well as streaming online)

Tracklist:

Freemasons – Rain Down Love
Loveshy – AM to PM (Club Mix)
Congress – 40 Miles
Henrik B – Soul Heaven (E-Squire Remix)
MAW – Work
My Friend Same feat. Viola Wills – It’s My Pleasure (E-Squire Mix)
Dirty Old Ann – Turn Me On
Cahill – Trippin on You (Extended Mix)
Bart B More vs. Oliver Twizt – Finally (Simmons & Christoper Extended Mix)
Mac Project – Another Love
Riff ‘n’ Ray – Let The Music Play
Freemasons – Watchin’ (Motivo Hi-Lectro Remix)
Freemasons – Uninvited

When I’ve got some time I’ll re-record it on my new mixer (woop!), which should sound smoother and sort my few slips out that are in there.  I’m also going to upload an Electrohouse mix shortly which was also done around the same time, again, a bit rough but overall not a bad listen.