Not so dope jams…

Best-of- and end-of-the-year charts are like assholes, everyone’s got one.

And yes, I know that it is almost February and shouldn’t bother because the curtain is drawn. Bla, bla…just take it in the vein of the slow food movement.

Actually, come to think of it, Brooklyn’s cherished Dope Jams record store is a bit like slow food. They don’t order every record, they (usually) love what they sell, could care less about the flavor of the month, take pride in their taste and try to communicate that to their customers. And that is what a record store should do, no? If you don’t think so, go and leave your money on iTunes. Kristian already recommended their store and some of their observations here, which caused a bit of a stir and some commentary here.

Now you can read their Best and Worst of 2009:

http://www.ustem.org/dopejams/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=33

And what a read it is. Written in such a witty, entertaining and sometimes unfortunately very true manner, they kill some of their favorites next to holy cows, poke fun at a lot of people and hold up to the saying that you can’t polish a turd.

If you still feel disgusted by the “negativity”, rest assured that they give Pépé Bradock some well-deserved love of the decade, while they also reach fever pitch with ‘Never Forget’ by Hardrive 2000. A record I would rather want to forget about, as it not marks the end of a great era in NYC house, but rather the beginning of its demise. Yes, here we are again. Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s…and always look beyond your own backyard.

Dope Jams, we love you!

p.s. It’s hilarious!

Looking back and looking forward …

Hey folks.

2009 had been a good but also difficult year. Record sales still went down, some rumours about the dead of the MKII (which wasn’t true … thanks!) made it even more scary, people won’t go to clubs that much anymore due to personal financial crisis or whatever … let’s say: there had been some issues.

But still: we had many amazing parties this year in great clubs. We collected so many inspirations on our tour with A Critical Mass! And we had 8 releases that we are very proud of including our first artist album from Tokyo Black Star. We moved our office and we had some personnel changes: Matthias who was in charge for many many things at Innervisions left us in December (Thanks a lot to you for everything you did!)

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And the winner is …

Hey you all!

After checkin the huge amount of answers to our little WINNERVISIONS quiz about all the heads on the cover of the FUSE EP we were totally overwhelmed about how many of you guys found right answers! There must be more nerds out there as we expected! And even if you had only a small number of correct answers:

Congratulations to all of you and thanks a lot for taking part at this!

And here are the correct answers … More … »

A Passage To India

This one goes without a lot of words. We already suspected that he could be a guru, but coming straight from the horse’s mouth, it must be true. Thanks to an Indian tabloid and Red Bull Music Academy, we have the printed proof. But see for yourself…

Charts for your Pleasure II

Time goes by and the amount of records at home has been seriously increased, it reached the point that i even got into trouble with my wife. But there is a good and a bad side of liking so many different type of music.
In Clubmusic we suffer from an oversupply of releases. But on the other hand a lot of different genres are not really well represented. Thats why i want to focus today on records aside the dancefloor. You might have realised some of our other preferences if you visited a clubnight with us recently. More … »

Those little things … 5 Studio Cheapos! (Pt. 2)

Hello.

After great response for the first article in this series (thanks to twitter …) here comes part 2. And this time Monsieur Cyril Etienne aka DJ Deep who I met a few weeks ago at the ADE shows us some of his cheapest secrets. He mentioned that he would rather ask DJ Gregory for this but I think it’s quite interesting what he sent me as it’s a bit more DJ orientated … So here we go:

5 STUDIO CHEAPOS BY DJ DEEP

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Innervisions 2009 End of Year Competition

Hey guys,

Innervisions starts a new sweepstakes today and with a little bit of research you can win a lot of Innervisions stuff!

You might have seen the cover of our latest release The Machine “Fuse” and wondered who these people on the cover are. Radio Slave is the man behind The Machine and the name he chose for his new moniker inspired us to do this cover.

Every year the Royal Swedish Academy is honoring great inventors and scientists who contributed a lot to humanity with the Nobel Prize. Well – we are not Swedish nor do we have a lot of money to donate but this is our way to give some tribute to these outstanding originators.

So here is the question of the sweepstakes: Who are the 16 people on the cover of “Fuse”?

The one who can assign the most correct names to the faces shown on the cover will get the first prize. All following prizes will be given to those who can name the next amount of faces. Your last entry will count.

It might be pretty hard to identify the people – but don’t be shy. Even with 4 right answers you might win! As a little hint: to find the right answers, think of mixing gear inventors, computer pioneers, music and DJ equipment innovators, audio explorers …

Deadline for this competition is December 12th 2009.

And here are the prizes:

1. Prize:  One free Innervisions Vinyl & CD Subscription Offer of 2009, which includes all of the records released by Innervisions this year plus one limited subscriber vinyl, limited subscriber t-shirt and the subscriber box that holds all 2009 Innervisions vinyl records.

2.-4. Prize:  Limited edition hardcover version of our English translation of Tobias Rapp’s “Lost And Sound – Berlin, Techno And The Easyjet Set”.

5.-10. Prize: Limited Edition Vinyl that is only available with the 2009 subscription offer.

Please enter your answers here: Innervisions Competition 2009.

All the best,
Alex

Be Raymond Scott for a day!

On my daily “waste of time internet search” I found this really interesting software from “Gleetchplug“. They have rebuild a nearly complete studio environment from the 50ies as a software. It’s called “Berna” and the video they posted on their site speaks for itself … and the price (around 10 Euros only) should prevent nobody to buy and try it! You got virtual oscillators, delays, tapes, mixers, noise generators etc. Looks like fun and (if it sounds good) it could be a very creative tool.

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Those little things … 5 Studio Cheapos! (Pt. 1)

Hey everyone.
I’d like to start a little series here for all the producers out there who might be interested in the little helpers that some friends and I use for the daily productions in our studios. You might expect really expensive preamps or heavy rare to get monster synths. But we’re talking about the real bargains! For example a russian drum machine that you got for 80 Euros on a flea market. Or a delay that sounds so strange and unexpected that you use it more often than your top notch 2000 Euros multi effects processor? I’m often surprised how cheap it could be to get unique sounding tools.

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Japanese people do care – Isao’s Portable Ashtray

Isao of Tokyo Black Star: “You don’t have this here? But where do you put the ash if you smoke outside in the nature?”