Remember Erwtenpeller? The guy who did the awesome “Stripewaves Global 05″ mix including nothing but dutch artists? Well he made us another dutch only mix and its available now for you to download. Hit play below or click here for the full tracklist.
Juha van ’t Zelfde is situated in Amsterdam and well known as dj and (co-) organiser of events such as Viral Radio, Sonic Warfare, and recently, Hyperrhythm at the North Sea Jazz Festival. I had some questions and I got answers. Check them out!
Thanks for the kind words. The role music plays is perhaps best described as a second heartbeat, a natural rhythm that I have felt since I first started listening when I was 4, 5 or 6 (I can’t really remember, but I must have been that age. Thinking about it, I actually set up my parents’ pans in the living room and drummed on 80s rock music at an early age.) Like the stories go, I too spent all my allowance on tapes, records and later on cds. Although I started with Michael Jackson, I soon caught up with hiphop when I moved to high school (when I was 12).
The first electronic music I can remember listening to that I still enjoy was the album ‘Accellerator’ by Future Sound of London, in 1991. Rich with early signs of jungle, techno and electronica, this might be the blueprint of my fascination for music with off beat rhythms. Other music I enjoyed around these years was Ice Cube, Das Efx and Souls of Mischief.
I started djing in1994, when my brother Timo bough turntables. He introduced me to the music scene in Amsterdam, with the shops and djs I only knew from flyers he had brought home. Since he was into Detroit techno and Chicago house a lot (which I liked too), I decided I would buy jungle records to add to the collection, but also to explore my own direction. My first mixtapes – actual cassettes - consisted of early Moving Shadow and Metalheadz records. The music that was released around 1995 was the ultimate push towards professional djing. Those slowed down jungle tracks played by Amsterdam djs like Tommy and Datcho, and those trance-inducing techno Dimitri played were as inspiring as listening to Nirvana, Radiohead or Sonic Youth live.
After hiphop and jungle, all the various incarnations of UK bass music have come and gone, from Smith & Mighty and Bandulu to Digital Mystikz and Kode9. I have been a massive fan of Radiohead, Portishead, Underworld, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, but also of Fluke, Orbital and African Headcharge. Early 2000s I discovered Vladislav Delay, Rhythm & Sound and Oval, and later on Philip Jeck, Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi. Having worked at the Concertgebouw I have heard most of the composers of the past two centuries, enjoying Feldman, Berg, Webern, Cage, Schönberg, Strauss and Sibelius the most. The latest musical revelations have been Alog, Gonjasufi, Hudson Mohawke, Dimlite, Rustie, Ras G and Matthewdavid. But in all honesty: this list is endless.
My underlying motivation for djing and organising events is primarily the urge to share music with my friends. This has grown a bit out of hand now, and I have been fortunate to be able to make a living out of it.
I met Yuri at Rush Hour in 2007, just after he had released Beat Dimensions, and after I started Viral Radio. We became friends and started collaborating in 2008. The first thing we did was inviting Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke to the Bimhuis for a Beat Dimensions night on 1 May. It sold out and was a breakthrough performance for Flying Lotus. He recently stated that the Bimhuis was his “favourite venue in Europe.” Yuri and I run Viral Radio together. I would say 75% of our taste overlaps. Our regular Viral Radio nights we organise together, but Colors is his own project, whereas Hyperrhythm is mine. We have already had some studio time together, and will most likely continue with this in the future. But for the moment, we focus on the many festivals this summer. So far we have been at Exit, North Sea Jazz and Costa del Soul, and we still have Lowlands, Appelsap and our own Viral Radio Festival ahead. It’s a lot of fun playing together, and our styles are a good combination of deep and energetic.
These worlds are not so different or separated, and a lot of musicians can play at either venues, but the expectations and behaviours of the audiences can vary (even if it’s the same audience). Clubs tend to ‘force’ musicians to play more danceable, whereas concert halls can create more concentration. I like both, and both are deployed during our annual Viral Radio Festival on 3 and 4 September. Ras G, Darkstar and Knalpot will play at the Bimhuis. All three acts have played at Trouw before. But this time we – and in this case that is mostly Shane Burmania - have invited them for a seated concert at the Bimhuis, which demands a slighlty different approach. After our festival, I am doing the Amsterdam Dance Event there aswell, with two artist from the more experimental electronic music realm, Phonophani and Oval. I intend to continue down this line in both venues, just as I recently did at North Sea Jazz Festival.
I have never really thought of ourselves as a collective, since I started on my own, and Yuri came right after, but maybe we are. Basically we have been a duo for quite a while. But recently we have been growing bit by bit, with Rolf of Grrr designing the visual identity, Meeus van Dis directing the light design during events, Shane Burmania adding next level energy and input, Darco Cezveciyan for the critical focus, and Andrew Makkinga as our distinguished host. And then there is Aardvarck, our mad and genius uncle from Rednose Distrikt, who is a resident artist at our nights. This makes Viral Radio an ever changing network of people presenting new forms of electronic music in different contexts.
I have been in touch with him for a while now, also with Lapti and Ol. I follow what they’re doing. At the moment we are trying to work something out in Moscow, instead of doing something in Amsterdam. If all goes well this will take place in September.
Gonjasufi – Kobwebz
Oval – Oh!
Phonophani – Mendel
Oscar McClure – Kitchen Scraps
Dimlite – Elbow Flood
Blue Daisy – Scars
Vex’d – Take time out (feat. Warrior Queen)
Kuedo – Starfox
Mike Slott – Phantom
Matthew David – Be honest
Ras G and the Afrikan Space Programme – Sloooooow Doooooown
Producing music has always been a dormant ambition. You have to understand that working with people like Dimlite, Hudson Mohawke, Icarus, etc. is the best way to stay away from the studio. But travelling around Europe this summer and playing in 8 different countries has motivated me to visit the studio again – I need to be back on the road next year, touring is just the best hobby I can imagine.
For djing I use Serato 3 and a Macbook Pro. In the studio, with my producing partner Darco Cezveciyan, I use an MPC, Juno60, Nordlead 3, Nordwave, a Metric Halo ULN8 converter, Nordstage, Logic, and some other tools. Our studio is acoustically prepared to survive an atomic attack, so we should be fine for years to come…
I am very much looking forward to our third Viral Radio Festival on 3 and 4 September, with Gonjasufi, Ras G, Darkstar, Gaslamp Killer, Aardvarck, Ikonika, Knalpot and Yuri and I. We are very fortunate to be able to organise such an event at two of the world’s best music venues of its kind. For the rest, I really enjoyed Hyperrhythm at North Sea Jazz, and I hope to continue with similar events. And I hope Colors will shine.
You want more? Go check
Allow me to introduce an exceptionally productive producer from Breda (NL), who goes by the name Coco Bryce. Some of you might remember him from sharing a vinyl slab with the likes of Slugabed. He recently released his free to download album called “At the Chopping Mall” on Myor.
When asked to deliver a brief personal statement, Coco declared:
“Uhm, dunno man, I hang around the LowRiders Collective, that kinda stuff. Oh yeah, I spin at Generation Bass and Impakt Festival.
As far as producing is concerned, believe me, I’m a tinkerer with weird ideas and sometimes a bit of luck [aren't we all, ed.].Thomas de Rijk-HALP came over to my place last week to work on a couple of remixes and he showed me some tricks on Ableton Live (r)… stood speechless… suddenly realized again how little I know about the software…
The track ["Comes to Mind", ed.] was more or less built like this: sliced up the original tune in Live, then simply **ed around with the different bits until i found something I liked. Programmed a beat and then severely compressed the chopped slices, side-chaining the compressor to the beat as to gently squeeze the slices and the beats together.
That’s pretty much all there is to it, and then of course, just tinker until it sounds good!”
It has been a while since the last Soundcloud Drop but I can assure you this one will make you happy. Lets begin with some new tracks by Joob, if you liked his Nebula EP make sure to give these tracks a listen.
Up Da Punx
Musica de Gente
Follow Me
22tape shot us a e-mail earlier telling us about his self-released EP entitled MosaicChangeTon. He released this EP a couple of months ago and he earned some well deserved positive feedback with this great 5 tracker. All the tracks are nicely produced and have a great amount of variety. If you are into glitchy beats you definitely have to check this one out. Below you will find the previews and below that a link to download the release.
22tape – MosaicChangeTon
Download page
In Lyon, (France) you’ll find Opti. After getting in touch with music when he was 5 years old, opti traveled on several musical ways, from noise to drone and grindcore to dub, garage and jungle. All these influences joined back in 2002 when he re-discovered the uk urban scene. Opti’s music tends to sow confusion between genres, keeping the loud bass and energic stabs a trademark of its own.
Opti also CO-runs Airflex Labs. Airflex Labs, based in Lyon, is a forward thinking, bass driven electronic music Label. Co-run by Dj Perkid, Led Piperz and Opti.
The three tracks below are only a small part of Opti’s work so make sure to check out the rest of his tracks if you enjoyed it.
To Fall Under Your Spell
How I Feel
Whispering In A Tree
And we are not leaving France yet, first you’ll have to give this track by Paris based artist MoreSounds a listen.
MoreSounds – Quero Ouvir?
Stripewaves regular Milyoo is doing great lately, check out his latest productions below.
Guidelight
Face to Face
James Blake – Postpone (Milyoo’s Edit)
I also did some beat building myself last month, you might need to crank up your volume a bit.
tomlaan – Stable
tomlaan – Table
Here is an interview to one of Rotterdam’s foremost pioneers of IDM/Dubstep: Atiq (Guido Van Den Brink), who has agreed to let us release a peek review of his long-awaited collaboration LP with Enk (Pim Arnoldus).
Atiq & EnK – “All Things” (exclusive preview) by stripewaves
“I’ve been producing for about 7 years now, after graduating at the SAE [School of Acoustic Engineering - Rottedam, ed.]. Until that time, I’d been playing in metal bands (turntablist/DJ/samples) which is the scene I know Enk from. He used to play guitar with the band Brainshake and, back then, already used his PC to make music – mostly with the old “Fruity Loops” 3.5.6
SW: Would you care to comment on the present-day music scene in Rotterdam?
Right now there is no scene in Rotterdam. As a matter of fact, there isn’t much of a scene for our style antwhere in NL. Sure, there’s a couple of things happening here and there, but nothing reaches a musically competitive level. Unfortunately, Rotterdam lacks many basic aspects of a music scene; especially now the WATT [Rotterdam's largest electronic music venue, ed.] has filed bankrupcy, there is in fact very little going on in town.
I used to organize events for several years – now I’ve had to put an end to that. It was a financial challenge, and it was way too hard to get audiences to respond to unfamiliar styles. People seem to prefer staying at home.
SW: Musically speaking, what are you into right now?
There are definitely a number of interesting styles i’ve got my ears on. Everything from Instra:Mental and pretty much everything that gets aired on the Club-Autonomic podcast. I am somehow attracted by minimal samples and some sort of 80’s Blade Runner atmosphere [8 bit/Aquacrunk/wonky, ed.]. You have to get into that in order to properly appreciate it, and right now i’m totally hooked, buying piles of records of the stuff.
Moreover, I listen to a lot of Synkro who, in my opinion, is proposing that 2-steppy/garage sound in a very innovative manner. I’m also a big fan of Reso – the man produces “party dubstep” with an uncanny finesse and outstanding care for details. His tracks truly are as structured and varied as a song. I would also flag out Marlow, this guy simply comes up with the sickest basslines.
Besides that, I also dig a lot of quiet music, movie soundtracks, stuff like Burial. My musical taste is rather varied.
SW: How do you go about producing a new track?
We [Atiq-Guido and Enk-Pim, ed.] deem it rather important to develop a personal style, instead of just imitating other tracks. Producing is making something you really think is radically innovative and cool, and if it’s unusual or weird, well, so be it! We find it important to stand up for our inventiveness.
When we come up with a musical idea, we have no preconception whatsoever of the result. We just sit in the studio, fidget around with samples or with some fat-ass beat, and the track very much comes together by itself. We first assemble a looping beat, then develop it and articulate it, etc.
We used to work with Logic 5.5 but nowadays we switched to Fruitystudio and it works fine.
When we publish something we always have it mixed down and mastered at the Mokosound studios – they are the only people we ever allow to touch our music after it has phisically left our studio. Mastering should be left to people who truly are specialized engineers – it definitely is a craft apart. Each time we’re at Mokosound we learn something new – besides, when you’ve been working on a track for a while, you’ve heard it so much your ears are not objective any more.
SW: How is your musical production taking shape for the time being?
We’ve been putting our LP together and it now finally looks like we’re getting somewhere. We really tried to develop our own style and make a strong musical statement. That simply takes a lot of time. On average, we spend about 6 weeks on a single track. Since we both have jobs and we’re not neighbors, we can only meet once a week to produce.
The LP is going to be published by Mindtrick Records [Guido-Atiq's Rotterdam label, ed.] on CDs and 12″. We will also release a videoclip and plan a small release party tour – until now we’ve been focusing on the album rather than getting gigs.
In the meantime, Mindtrick Records will release another 2 single tracks, a downtempo LP by The Eerier Child, and i’ll publish my solo album in October. Plenty to keep Rotterdam busy for a while”.
m.b.glitchcore 1:02 am on August 12, 2010 Permalink
oh yeah.