Monthly Archives: February 2011
Juan Atkins Vs. Oliver
Juan Atkins is The Man, I used to love Cybotron way back when, and right now one of the names to keep an eye on is Oliver, Dreamwave/Nu-Disco dup made up of U-Tern & Oligee. A track that brings the two together is more than I could have wished for.
And I love the result, it’s got it’s Disco Funk turned up so high. Cut-up talkbox vocals, laidback Funk bass, big bright 80’s synths, what more could you want? The whole EP is being given away for free by Scion A/V reMix, which is awesome ‘cos this track alone would be worth the price of an EP!
♫ Juan Atkins – Dayshift (Oliver’s Nightshift reMix)
Download the entire remix EP here.
Wow! Grab yourself on official electronic rumors T-Shirt!!!
That’s right folks, the OFFICIAL electronic rumors T-shirt is here!!!
Featuring the classic logo, and the crazy keytar guy from our 2010 awards, this shirt is pretty much guaranteed* of get you laid!
Available in a variety of sizes, both in guys and girls shirts and a range of classy monochrome colours on top quality shirts from just $18.18/£16.80!!!
*that’s not a real guarantee, just in-case you never have sex again in your life and blame us!
Futurecop! & Sferro
Futurecop! are currently running a reMix competition for their forthcoming EP ‘Starworshipper’ (that’s right, they are not content with their summer crushing single ‘Dreams’ blowing up right now, ‘Starworshipper’ is out next month!).
Sferro, the head-honcho of the awesome Girlfriend Records gang has turned the track into a chilled synthetic ballad with an almost Old School Electro beat. I can so imagine B-Boys in the 80’s spinning on lino and poppin’ & lockin’ to this tune! The original vocals are pretty 80’s anyway, the beat in this reMix just highlights the fact. I guess when you get two 80’s loving acts like Futurecop! and Sferro together this kinda’ of thing is bound to happen. Let hope it happens more!
♫ Futurecop! – Starworshipper (Sferro reMix)
‘Starworshipper’ is out next month, we’ll be running our interview with Futurecop! in the lead up to the EP’s release!
Chilly Gonzales reMixes by Walter Sobcek
Chilly Gonzales’ ‘You Can Dance’ is an amazing tune in it’s own right, but let awesome French ElectroPop producers Walter Sobcek get their hands on it for an official reMix and you’re on to something really special!
WS take the vocal hook and run with it into their own amazing SynthPop land. whereas the original was a cool piano led Disco tune that could get any dancefloor moving, Walter Sobcek’s mix is so awesomely 80’s epic that it would have kids dancing in the streets, on top of cars, postmen and cops too! You know what I’m saying!
♫ Chilly Gonzales – You Can Dance (Walter Sobcek reMix)
Gonzales’ ‘You Can Dance’ EP with reMixes by Walter Sobcek, Edwin Van Cleef and Gemini Club is out as a Juno exclusive 30th February.
French Horn Rebellion’s ‘This Moment’, as reMixed by Jacuzzihidive
”Post our remix of This Moment by our friends French Horn Rebellion! It’s fuckin’ hot!”
That was basically the entire content of the email we received from Jacuzzihidive, an as much as we hate to admit it, they’re right. Their reMix is fuckin’ hot.
French Horn Rebellion’s ‘This Moment’ gets a full on analog Disco workout. Bouncing analog bass and strings give the track a new lease of life by this Las Vegas based ElectroPop trio, throw in some Moroder-esq synths and you’ve got a track that won’t quit.
It’s fuckin’ hot!
♫ French Horn Rebellion – This Moment (Jacuzzihidive reMix)
French Horn Rebellion’s ‘This Moment’ has been out, like, forever!
French Horn Rebellion @ Beatport
French Horn Rebellion @ 7Digital
French Horn Rebellion @ Amazon
Kap10Kurt’s new video and Justin Faust reMix
Kap10Kurt has just dropped his new single ‘Speed Demon’ on Work It Baby. It’s a full on soaring, retro synth, Nu-Disco/Electro powerhouse with a massive Pop chorus.
Oh, and a genius video too!
In the single you’ll also find this epic reMix by the man Justin Faust, with this huge 80’s riff you can#t help but fall in love with!
♫ kap10kurt – Speed Demon (Justin Faust reMix)
‘Speed Demon’ is out now.
The Electroscopes’ new EP
Northampton one-man-band The Electroscopes is back with some new tracks for you.
We wrote about this progressive ElectronicaPop producer last year as he was gearing up for the release of his ‘Harder Each Day’ single. Well, after a bit of label shuffling, the single is finally out on 28th of this month through Red Robot Records (owned by Warp’s Lex Loofah). To commemorate the occasion The Electroscopes have send on over these two tracks, not featured on the EP, as a bonus.
‘Let Yourself Fail’ is a downtempo Sci-fi ElectroPop tune who’s atmospheric and abrasive synths serve as a counterpoint to the haunting vocals. It’s 3 and a half minutes of enveloping electronic Pop while ‘Daydream Not Believer’, is boarderline old school EBM, kinda’ like a Front 242 B-side. I haven’t heard a track like that in years!
♫ The Electroscopes – Let Yourself Fall
♫ The Electroscopes – Daydream Non Believer
‘Harder Each Day’ is released 28th February.
The Sound Of Arrows’ new video
The Sound Of Arrows made this video, for their forthcoming single ‘Nova’, themselves, which just goes to show they’ve got as good an eye for visuals as they do an ear for a catchy ElectroPop tune.
Anthemic, and surprisingly late 90’s sounding, ‘Nova’ works seamlessly with the cosmic imagery of the clip.
‘Nova’ is out 25th April on Geffen, The Sound Of Arrows have just finished recording their début album.
The Sound Of Arrows @ Beatport
The Sound Of Arrows @ 7Digital
Binary Week: Win one of three awesome Binary T-shirts!!!
And so, it is with a heavy heart that we bring our Binary Week to a close.
Over the last seven days you’ve been able to get to know the seven members of the Binary family a little better and hopefully you’ve heard some rad music you’d not previously been exposed to. If you were already a Binary fan I hope you’ve been entertained and interested over the week. If you weren’t a Binary fan before I hope you are now!
I also hope we have been able to inspire you to go and track down some more music from the leaders of California’s ElectroPop scene. Seriously, go and buy the ‘Binary Presents: LA Lights’ compilation, or LexiconDon’s ‘Pink + Blue’ album, or NightWaves’ ‘Sweet Carrie’ single, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
And if you’re lost, here’s a recap of the week:
Binary Week: Futurecop! & Keenhouse’s Dreams
Binary Week: electronic rumours mixtape: Pop-Fu 09 ‘Binary Entertainment Special’
Binary Week: The Kids Are Radioactive
I’d also like to say a massive thanks to Binary’s Josh who helped us get this week organised, he’s been a busy man promoting these last few months but has still taken the time to round up the Binary clan (which must be like hoarding cats!) for interviews.
Right, on to the good stuff! Binary Entertainment have been kinds enough to let us give away an awesome Binary T-shirt to three, yes three!, lucky winners of our Binary giveaway!
You can see the shirt below, I’ve got two of these bad boys personally. Comfy as hell!
All you need to do to win one of these badass shirts is follow these steps:
1) Follow @BinaryEnt and @electronicrumor on Twitter
2) Tweet the following (without inverted commas):
“Hey @electronicrumor, I loved your week of @BinaryEnt Dreamwave artists, I wanna’ win myself a T-shirt now! http://bit.ly/e5uVjA #binaryweek”
3) Don’t forget the #binaryweek hashtag!
All the winners names will be written on bits of paper, screwed up and put in my pork-pie hat and we’ll pick three winners at random.
Simple as that! We’ll give you two weeks to enter, ending the competition 5th March and we’ll announce the winners (and contact them by Twitter DM) on Monday 7th March.
So get entering, and get listening to so of the awesome output from the Binary camp!
Binary Entertainment @ Beatport
Binary Entertainment @ 7Digital
Binary Week: NightWaves
I doubt NightWaves need much introduction to readers of electronic rumors, they are the heart and soul of the Binary family.
As NightWaves Josh Legg and Kyle Petersen, besides founding Binary Entertainment and inventing the term ‘Dreamwave’, make the kind of music that epitomises everything that Dreamwave should be. Optimistic and aspirational, their songs conjure up memories of loves and losses, heartbreaks and sunsets, the best times in your life revisited, the times when nothing else mattered.
From their first single ‘She’s Electric’, through compilation appearances, to last years ‘Sweet Carrie’, NightWaves are evolving at a rapid rate, yet keeping this evolution organic sounding. The duo’s début offerings were pretty straight ElectroPop. Their 80’s inspired melodies and vocals stood-out amongst the emerging retro synth scene as being particularly true to the classic SynthPop sound. Their most recent single ‘Sweet Carrie’, though, was a dreamy Indie-Electro summer soundtrack that came a both a shock and a gift. I will admit that I’m always a bit weary of synth bands who start using guitar (in an ‘another one bites the dust’ kinda’ way, but that’s my problem, I’ll deal with it!) but within seconds of ‘Sweet Carrie’ opening you could tell that this was such a natural progression for NightWaves, it sounded so right. The track blew up online, and rightly so. Synth and guitar blended in to a whole that was so much bigger than the sum of it’s parts. ‘Sweet Carrie’ encapsulates, I think, the Dreamwave philosophy, good times and a summer that never ends.
While working on their début album NightWaves has kept their fans happy with remix after blog destroying remix that have gained them DJ support and radio play all over the world.
NightWaves, ambassadors of Dreamwave, here’s what they had to say:
ER: So how did you guys get together, where you in other bands previously?
J: Yeah Kyle and I have both been musical our whole lives. I played cello for a number of years and Kyle can play the trumpet quite well. We both dove into being in rock bands in our teens. I was a bit of an acoustic singer songwriter in the early 2000′s, as was Kyle (and a hell of a lot of other young males). Its a bit corny to listen back on, but I do believe it broke our songwriting chops to be stripped down to just a guitar and voice. I think it gives NightWaves a big leg up to have written so many songs that way while a lot of other electronic producers are just starting to learn how to construct a song well.
ER: And what came first, NightWaves or Binary?
K: Binary came first, but not by much. Josh and I started Binary in early 2008, and then by mid-2008 we were moved into our office with Binary being our main priority. Since we had some space in our office, we thought it would be a cool place to bring our music gear and have a little space dedicated to being creative and making music. So within the first few weeks of the full launch of Binary, NightWaves was born in some early moments of free time. It was a pretty spontaneous beginning that started with some pretty amateur sounding early demos, haha.
ER: Who are your heroes and influences, both musically and otherwise?
K: Hmm, well that can probably be split into a few groups. There are a ton of musical influences that shape the music I try to make, ranging from pop punk groups like Saves the Day, to Phoenix, Daft Punk of course for their amazing ability to create a spectacle, Miike Snow is influencing how I want to make music now…there are a ton of random past influences. My heroes in music relative to my life are people like Busy P and James Murphy that have built very unique entities and had the resilience to stay at the top of their game and make a lot of the right moves to build their own brand of sound and scene in their towns. And I’d have to say my parents…both are very musical and always supported me in music and inspired a lot of my taste in music and I wouldn’t be able to do this now without them.
ER: ‘Sweet Carrie’ introduced us to a slightly more guitar oriented sound, more of a chilled summery indie vibe. Was this a natural progression for you?
J: Absolutely. I think we would’ve incorporated more live instrumentation into our earlier songs if we could have. Its pretty difficult from a technical standpoint to incorporate live instruments into a mainly electronic mix and it took some time for us to get ‘good’ enough to make it work. We grew up on guitar music and I think it was very natural for us to start to include more guitar in the songs. You’ll definitely hear more guitar on our record, although in a lot of cases the style won’t be quite as out there in the mix as the guitars were on “Sweet Carrie”.
ER: The video for ‘Sweet Carrie’ seems to perfectly visually capture the atmosphere of NightWaves, who directed it? How did that vision come about?
K: We discovered this really talented filmmaker named Cody Bralts. At the time I don’t think he’d even graduated high school, but he was shooting these gorgeous little videos of his life. They really captured the innocence that makes Sweet Carrie the song that it is. We approached Cody about shooting some footage for us and he was eager to let us go through his material. Our guitarist, David Urbina is actually a film editor during the daytime, so he took the footage and really turned the video into the perfect story to accompany the song. We’re really proud of the way it turned out!
ER: ‘Sweet Carrie’ kinda’ blew up on the blogs, have you seem that blog hype translate into much in the way of new fans or sales?
K: ‘Sweet Carrie’ definitely did well for us…the sales haven’t been very inspiring but I guess that’s a good picture of the music industry these days. But I think a lot of people took notice of NightWaves because of that song and the beautiful video that Dave and Cody put together. Some labels perked up their ears, and a lot of our musician friends were really into the song. Josh heard some dudes singing the hook at the Empire of the Sun concert that just happened here in LA, haha, so it looks like people took notice a bit. The trick is following that up.
ER: What lies in NightWaves’ studio. Do you have and ‘go to’ bits of kit?
K: Lots of delay, all day.
ER: And how does the NightWaves live set up work?
J: We perform as a four piece actually. Kyle and I play keyboards and electric bass. David plays guitar on pretty much all of the tracks. We’ve had a few different drummers over the last couple of years too. We rotate around a bit on stage depending on the song, since everyone can play a few different instruments. The only thing that stays consistent is that Kyle and I sing the songs.
ER: If money was no object, what synth would you like to get your hands on?
K: A Jupiter 8…Josh and I probably both agree on that one.
ER: What does Dreamwave mean to you?
K: Dreamwave, to me, and this has some personal bias of course, represents a lifestyle more than anything else. The good life…appreciating being comfortable where you are in life, and beautiful weather, and memorable days hanging out having some drinks with your friends at the beach, and a general optimism about life and about the future. It has a very sunny feeling to me, and I know that it sounds very southern Californian, but I think the same principles can apply to anyone in their hometown. It certainly has the influences from 80′s music, but sonically that’s not really the point and it has more to do with youth and nostalgia, as we always mention. The ability to always feel young and carefree and looking forward to the next day. I think America needs (and is already starting to gain) a sense of things being alright and the future looking bright. Whether or not that will be the case is kind of irrelevant, because a positive mind can have a pretty profound effect on how we make our future.
♫ Walter Sobcek – Je Me Souviens (NightWaves reMix)
ER: You’ve recently started writing your début full length record, how’s that going, what can we expect from the album?
K: Going out to Boston to record was a great chance for Josh and I to take some time away and really focus on the future of NightWaves and making some new music. I think you can expect hopefully a good mix of some darker atmospheric songs alongside some driving SynthPop anthems with big hooks. I want to get weird with this record, but not like, too weird. A nice eclectic mix of beautiful sounds. That’s my goal.
J: Yeah… I think we’re up to 18 or 19 pretty completed demos. We’re not quite satisfied yet, so I think we’re looking to write another batch of songs (5-10) before we’ll start the process of finalizing things. The response from friends and family has been great so far though. I think we’ve done a good job of maintaining our ‘sound’, but hopefully pushing our songwriting and production skills to another level.
ER: Are NightWaves more of a cereal or pile of pancakes for breakfast kinda’ band? Would that change the night after a show?
K: I never really eat breakfast, unless it’s a weekend brunch after a night out, at which point I’ll have some eggs benedict. That or I’ll have a bacon and egg breakfast burrito from Pete’s Burgers on Hoover and 24th St…best breakfast burrito in the city, nay, on Earth. And they have the best coke in the city too, with crushed ice, which is crucial. Were you looking for a deeper answer?
♫ Empire Of The Sun – We Are The People (NightWaves reMix)
NightWaves’ ‘Sweet Carrie’ single is out now, as you heard Josh and Kyle are busy recording their début album. We can’t wait.
