Phace & Misanthrop – “What’s Wrong:”

Phace & Misanthrop – “Out of Focus feat. Spor:”

Fairly raw. Would you expect any less from these producers though?

So Madeon is a 16 year old French producer. Pretty impressive.

Madeone – “Shuriken:”

Noisia – “Could This Be:”

Can’t believe we never saw this. Foreign Beggars and Noisia make a great combo.

Annie Mac – BBC Radio1 (Guests – Sigma and Ben Westbeech) 10-07-2011

Annie Mac is kind of awesome if dance music is your thing.

Rido feat. Thomas Oliver – “Twisted:”

This track was just released as part of the mix Fabriclive 58: Goldie, just a wee four days ago. It’s the intro track for the mix. Even if you’re not so into drum and bass, you can still get into this song. You can buy the full mix now over at the Fabric Store on the Fabric London site.

So Jeff Weiss over at Pop & Hiss — The LA Times Music Blog — talks about the Lightning In a Bottle Festival (“LIB”), which is only a couple days away! The line-up is massive, and we’re feeling what LIB has to offer.

Here’s a screenshot of the article–just click on the image for the full story.

This year, LIB has already run a mixtape contest, where the winner receives free entrance as well as a slot in the schedule of performances during the four day festival (among other things). The winner of the selection is THE SEX PIXELS. We’re looking forward to hearing their set, although it could be quite late. Could be? Actually, HERE’S A LINK TO THE FINAL SCHEDULE, so now you know the exact time they’ll be on (2:30am Saturday morning).

This festival is going to be terrific. But, if you’re on the fence, visit lightninginabottle.org for the full details.

Roni Size – New Forms (MD Juke Edit) by machinedrum

Don’t stop get it get it.

Dominique Young Unique – Hot Girl (Machinedrum Remix) by machinedrum

For years I’ve believed that the hottest jackets and coats come from the UK. There’s not really an explanation behind that aside from press photos of musicians–usually electronic artists or drum and bass producers. Of course, drum and bass / electronic music are way more popular in the UK than in the US, although the scenes for that music have grown drastically in the big cities in America over time. Now we’re seeing a mix of pop and electronic music. Why wouldn’t our music advance like our technology? But alas, digression.

One brand that especially caught our attention is Superdry. First off, love the logo. Japanese characters have looked cool for years in fashion: if placed correctly. Also, in light of the recent disasters that have stricken Japan, we should all be more mindful of the country, even if that’s not what the people behind Superdry had in mind when designing their logo. Overall, we’ve seen a trend of mending old and new from Superdry. For instance, take some classic looks like bomber or patrol jackets, then hype them up with interesting seams, zippers and so on. They don’t go over the top though.

What’s the best part about most any jacket? The collar, baby. That’s probably why Jay-Z talks about popping his collar and all this nonsense. We’re not here to read minds though. Anyway, Nas and Lil’ Wayne are bother better rappers than Jay-Z anyway. Check out the collar on this puppy. High ratings across the board. Why? Collar. Stylish. Good fit.

That’s another thing. The jacket has to fit properly. No more over-sized stuff like we saw in the 80′s and 90′s. Those days are over. If you’re a baller, you can afford to buy clothes that fit you rather than wearing an older siblings’ hand-me-downs. Looking good isn’t about having money though, that much is true. Having cash to burn on clothes is a nice luxury though.

Big fans of the site Very.co.uk. They never let us down for the latest in fresh gear. Although, it’s too bad we live in LA, because it pains us every time we remember how sound the Pound is (1 British pound sterling = 1.6368 US dollars). Oh well, the fact that America’s economy is in rehab is a whole ‘nother issue.

Label:Exit Records (7)
Catalog#: EXIT016
Format: M2T
Country:UK
Released:21 Aug 2009
Genre: Electronic
Style: Drum n Bass
Quality: 384kbps / 48.0 kHz

All credits go to the producer (Spectrasoul)
Buy this tune @ bm-soho.com/store/AutoKey/…

Brace yourself for Ninja Tune’s latest signing: King Cannibal aka Zilla aka Dylan Richards, because he is coming hard as hell in his forthcoming record “Let the Night Roar.” We were immediately feeling it and got goosebumps down the spine with the intro (which is exactly what Richards was going for, as stated below), and it’s the sickest album intro we’ve heard in a long time.

Starting with a movie soundtrack vibe that goes into a wild and unique dance hall beat on the second track, “Aragami Style.” You just have to experience for yourself to know what we’re talking about. Mary Anne-Hobbs knows what we’re talking about and if you listen to her regularly on Radio 1, she has already played the track multiple times, praising King Cannibal’s sound, affectionately referring to it as “too dark!”

Before we even listened to the CD, we found the cover interesting and just the artist name and album title Richards chose really are twisted. His music certainly lives up to the artist image and cover art.

Tracklisting:

1. Intro (0:59)
2. Aragami Style (6:14)
3. Murder Us (6:16)
4. Virgo (Featuring – Jahcoozi) (5:03)
5. So… Embrace The Minimum (Featuring – Face-A-Face) (5:48)
6. Dirt (Featuring – Daddy Freddy) (4:58)
7. Colder Still (6:07)
8. A Shining Force (6:12)
9. The Untitled (5:40)
10. Onwards Vultures (5:32)
11. Flower Of Flesh And Blood (6:40)

King Cannibal himself on his music:

I never really started off making music with a theme but at the half way point it really became clear that it had built its own outside of what I was consciously thinking. It is quite obviously, sonically speaking, a violent piece of work, but where as most albums who tackle this subject fall back on its links with horror films I’ve really tried to make this about real life happening outside of our windows, in our backyards and in our small lives. We get trapped into thinking a certain way, doing things we don’t want to do just so we can postpone our ambition another day. It’s about cutting through these things with a positive violence and letting ‘the night roar,’ for the night is when we finally get to do the things we really want to do. The title, Let The Night Roar, is from a speech made by Jim Jones, the man responsible for the Jonestown massacre. Whilst it was a terrible series of events I happened across a recording of part of his speech and it really shivers down my spine and the album title really jumped out at me when he spoke it.

Really interesting and articulate story behind the music, and so deliberately creepy. King Cannibal has already earned the respect and support of The Bug, Bong Ra, Jagz Kooner, Strictly Kev, Kid 606, Knifehand Chop and Ebola.

Before he was King Cannibal, Zilla was best known for a series of well-received mix tapes, including “A Friendly Game of Chess” (with Buddy Peace), “One Foot In The Fire, One Fist In The Air” and his compilation “Watch And Repeat Play” for Warp Records (also with Buddy Peace).

The King Cannibal debut album drops on October 6, 2009, so get your ears ready for the pure, raw darkness to come.

So we caught up with Libby Picken from Lazerbitch and got a chance to interview her, finding out all kinds of information about  the group and some of the East Coast music scene in the process. Even though the Lazerbitch fan base keeps growing, Picken was still friendly and down to Earth, not letting her ego get the best of her.

We’re really excited to see the forthcoming music video for the “Coquette” track and look forward to hearing more from Lazerbitch in the future. We were impressed by the duo’s musical history before forming Lazerbitch both before and after speaking to Picken. It’s always nice to get a chance to converse with artists you follow.

You’ve worked with a lot of successful producers before Lazerbitch was formed. What’s some of the story behind the sound that Lazerbitch has created?

I’ve been singing since I was a little kid, I would sing Broadway tunes at talent shows and such. I started going to raves back in 1994 in the Baltimore/DC metro area. A couple of the big parties back then were Fever and Buzz. I started throwing events in Baltimore in 1998. Going out and promoting for my parties allowed me to meet many different DJs and producers. While promoting my monthly party,“Go,” I met DJ Sinestro(Chis Baggett), who introduced me to and suggested I work with his friend Holmes Ives. At the time, Holmes was producing tracks under the moniker Memnon and Aurora. Holmes was also just starting to garner attention from people like Paul Oakenfold for his trance music production. Holmes then introduced me to his friend Michael Meacham; they were doing music on the Caffeine label out of New York. Holmes then used my voice in small portions on a couple of his records. Among those tunes, I was tossed in the background of a BT remix, and my resulting Caffeine release was a record called “Exit 9″. I was only 19 at the time. Since I was always going out, it was only a matter of time before I became friends and involved with the people backing Buzz. One of these people was John Tab. Whenever I knew of a DJ/producer coming through to play Buzz, I would hit John Tab up and ask him if I could pick up that person from the airport. This would enable me to get some face time with the producer I was seeking to chat with. Unfortunately, it more often than not ended up with the DJ hitting on me and not taking me seriously as a vocalist.

In August of 2000, I picked up John B as a trade off for guest-list to Buzz’s then monthly weekday Wednesday night party, Mango. I had actually met John the night before at Bar Nun in DC, and I chatted him up about getting me on one of his tracks. I mailed John a CD of mine shortly thereafter, and John emailed back that he loved my music, and very much wanted to work with me. This resulted in our 2002 release on his Beta Recordings label entitled “Electrofreek”. Somehow, Paul Oakenfold heard “Electrofreek”, and asked John B to do a trance remix for his “Great Wall” CD, which was released in 2003.

I feel you need to move forward to stay current, and I think John understood that. A lot of people either loved or hated “Electrofreek” because it was so different from what John had been doing at the time. I will acknowledge that drum and bass is still relevant, although I don’t think it’s anywhere nearly as huge as it was years ago. People are surprised to learn that I will still work on the odd drum and bass track, but it is a very rare occurrence. My only drum and bass projects are with Mark Subsonik of Subsonik Sound Recordings. I find Subsonik’s sound incredibly advanced; that was the main reason why I agreed to work with him. He also came with the John B stamp of approval, which totally worked in his favor. Subsonik’s and my track entitled, “Let You Go”, will be released on Beta Recordings as the B side to Subsonik’s “Mercury Skies”(original by John B) remix.

I’ve known Max for a long time. We met and dated briefly back in 2000. After having no contact since our breakup, I randomly ran into him in 2006 in a park party in Arlington, VA. Max told me he was back in DC, engaged, and doing really well. He had put out a few two-step garage songs on some UK labels and e-mailed me some of the songs he had done. I was really impressed by his new stuff. In the beginning of 2007 Max e-mailed me some Lazerbitch tunes and I loved them! It was everything that I had ever wanted to do with a local unsigned producer. I shot Max a response telling him how much I was into Lazerbitch, and included my phone number in the event he ever wanted to work on any side-projects. In February 2007, I got a call from Max who told me that things with their vocalist didn’t work out, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Max moved to Oakland, CA in March of 2008 and we took a break with Lazerbitch, which meant turning down a couple of major bookings, even though we had discussed having me play the gigs by myself. I turned down the first few opportunities to do this because I just didn’t feel like playing a gig as Lazerbitch would be the same without Max. When I finally realized that I could, in fact play a successful gig by myself with a DJ, I started getting booked pretty frequently. DLake of Claire Hux often does gigs with me, as well as performing our tune “Pussylips”, too. Luckily I have a varied rotation of DJs that are able to do gigs with me, cos Daren is moving to NYC in the Fall. I’m gonna miss him!

As far as the production process, Max and I get on iChat, AIM or just work over the phone. Max makes a beat and will send it over to me. I’ll then write lyrics and a melody, sing to him over the phone or via iChat, e-mail him my lyrics, and we’ll go over them together.

Musically, we don’t really have one genre – so many of our songs sound quite different from one another. For example, “High School Shoot-Out” is electro-punk, “Spacebase” is disco house, “Do Me Wrong” is club, “Pussylips” is Baltimore club, “Ravest0r” is old skool breakbeats, and “Coquette” is electro. Taste the rainbow? ; )

There are a lot of factors that affect how a show will be for us. How long I’m given to perform, who’s able to perform with me, what songs we’re playing (some tunes only get played when Max performs, because it makes more sense live). Max plays guitar, bass, and the keytar live. Unfortunately, we are temporarily without a keytar, as Max smashed it on stage during the filming of the club scene for our “Coquette” music video. Even more unfortunate is that the camera man wasn’t even filming Max when he did it, so the epic smashathon will not even be featured in our video. Booooo! New keytar soon, Max is saving for a Roland.

It definitely changes frequently based on what I’m exposed to and the more I’m exposed to. One of my personal influences is Deee-Lite, but I also listened to a lot of punk music growing up, so Fugazi, Smashing Pumpkins and anything from the early 90’s definitely. I love pop, so Britney Spears, but referencing her newer creations, and not her old teeny-bopper stuff. And Lady Gaga, she’s really great. I also credit some lesser known groups such as Morphine and The The.

As far as Max’s, I couldn’t say. He’ll cringe when sees this because he doesn’t really care for pop music [laughs]. He definitely likes some off the wall shit though. It helps round out our sound from my mostly pop-influenced background.

Not that I’ve really noticed. The music I listen to is an “I like what I like,” kind of thing. But, I’ve also been told that I have trouble seeing past my likes and dislikes. I have been approached with some tunes that are said to be “good tunes”, but I will have dismissed them as garbage simply because I don’t like them.

True Blood – see that’s kind of biased too – because I don’t watch television at all and Daren(DLake of Claire Hux)told me about True Blood, and he put it on my Mac one day while fixing it for me. I finally had some free time a few weeks ago and just zoned-out and watched half of the True Blood first season. I couldn’t believe I spent over five hours sitting and watching my laptop. I’m all caught up now to Season Two! Yuh!

When I sang “Spacebase” live at The Paradox for Ultra Nate’s Deep Sugar Presents: Next Aid Benefit.

I really liked the sound system and the fact that I didn’t have that many friends in the crowd, so it was a very different experience for me. “Spacebase” just sounded so amazing on that system.

It’s not finished yet; it’s turned into quite the production. We’ve got one day left of shooting. I just saw the rough cut for the first time, and was pretty happy with it. Brian Morrison is the director, he’s so talented.

I’m vegetarian. Grapefruit, I eat grapefruit pretty frequently. Yeah, I love grapefruit. And you know what? Spinach is my hands-down all-time favorite food. I eat spinach every single day. Like Popeye, bitches!

I think that Baltimore is booming right now, and apparently I am not the only person that feels that way. I read a blurb in Rolling Stone about local artist Rye Rye(recently signed to Interscope Records), and there was a quote from M.I.A. in that interview. She said that she feels Baltimore has the counterculture that NYC once had, but doesn’t have any more.

We also have some really amazing promoters here that bring crazy talent through as well.

Funny story: I hang out with Naeem(Spank Rock)’s sister Maya, so it’s funny that I haven’t met him yet. My homegirl Holly was actually playing my song “Coquette” in the car with Naeem and Maya on their way to Island Jam this past April, and Holly told me he asked her, “Who is this, Gaga?” Hah!

Upcoming releases include “Burning Bridges” on Strictly Rhythm/Deep Sugar Music for the end of July ’09 with a Mr. V remix on the B side, and “Coquette” on Play Me Records for August ’09. Both will be available on Beatport.

Fast-talking and profanity aside, Dillinja and Lemon D make some interesting points about the state of drum and bass in 2003. Now, in 2009, we have seen some validity to what they’ve said about some of the developments in better drum and bass being produced today.

Marky and Spy – “Collie Trips [Clip from Marky Podcast]:”

Thanks to Godfather Sage for this.

LAZERBITCH is not your ordinary outfit. Before they became what they are today, LAZERBITCH’s Libby Picken worked together with some respected names in electronic music such as John B (and we think he’s great, by the way), Paul Oakenfold, Donald Glaude, and T-1000. Picken also worked with drum and bass producers Tech Itch, Kraken and DJ Dara.

Having good taste in music and having the privilege of working with top producers as a foundation will certainly help to form a better final product. Not only is LAZERBITCH cranking out catchy tracks, but the subtle edits on Picken’s voice give the group the modern twist it needs to be set apart from being  just another 80′s influenced band or run-of-the-mill synth pop group. LAZERBITCH will keep you guessing on their style from one track to the next.

So, take some cool synth pop sounds, 80′s influence, solid electronic instrumentals then add Picken’s charming and melodic voice, and you’re getting closer to the LAZERBITCH sound. The group doesn’t stop at that, though. We hear some punk sound in “High School Shootout,” and then if you visit the LAZERBITCH Myspace page and give a listen to the “Pussylips” track, you’ll see they also have an electro/hip-hop feel as well.

Big up to LAZERBITCH and we’re looking forward to future releases.

So we have a bunch new from Don Diablo. Check out the playlist.

If asked to pick three favorites from all the tracks, we’d choose, Frankmusik – “Confusion Girl (Don Diablo loves to slowdance remix),” Dragonette – “Fixing to Thrill (Don Diablo Dub),” and Don Diablo & Example – “Hooligans (Spor Remix).”

Click here to download all songs.

Velapene Screen – “Chop Suey:”

This coming Winter Music Conference (WMC), only select DJs will be receiving copies of this drum and bass compilation produced by Dominion and Godfather Sage. With an intro track fit for a professional sound studio and four tracks reminiscent of producers such as Dom & Roland, Ed Rush & Optical, Konflict and Noisia: the trio are onto something with the EP. With a lively variety of samples, including those from the film The Professional and custom samples from private recording sessions of Godfather Sage, the beats and basslines aren’t all that’s rocking in the compilation.

Breaktheory: One member of the Dominion duo is known for writing catchy basslines, as well as sound design, and mixing/mastering capabilities. It was his involvement that made the use of Machine Head Studios in Los Angeles possible for both the early and final stages of the compilation’s production. You’d be hard-pressed to find sound processing and manipulation or samples quite like Breaktheory’s with any other artist. BKY drops it like it’s hot, exploring new, creative areas in sound. Currently, Breaktheory is working on a dark ambient record that’s atonal, esoteric and of course: beatless. Watch for the forthcoming release.

Clay Nyse: The other mind behind Dominion. Recognized for his excellent beat programming in the tracks, Nyse’s beats are water tight and will leave you nodding to the precision. Clay Nyse has good taste in drum and bass–classic and new–which surely affects the flavor of any track or beat pattern he writes. Clay Nyse also happens to be a professional graphic designer, designing the fliers in his spare time for lots of big name shows on the East Coast. If you’re active in the East Coast rave scene, you’ve probably seen Nyse’s artwork.

Godfather Sage: The man himself. If you know GFS’ sound, you’ll hear it in everything he has touched in the compilation. With such an eclectic taste in different styles and genres, and countless hours spent in the studio, Godfather Sage has really nailed a sound that is truly his and his alone. Soulful, jazzy, international vibes: say hello to drum and bass and hip hop. Give him any sound and a studio and Godfather Sage will own it before the day is done.