Bristol Bass merchants GotSome are about to hammer home their new single, the follow up to last year’s clubland destroying Bassline. This new tune sees the duo teaming up with notorious festival hater and humourless narcissist Wiley to produce an absolutely massive slice a speaker shaking that is likely to see them have their first (and much deserved) cross-over hit. This is Vibe Out.
This one is heavy, so make sure you system is turned right up. Robotic beats and razor sharp bass dominate the tune that mixes a little Dancehall and a little Grime into a terminator style Bass House juggernaut. GotSome live up to their manifesto, this one is all about the bassline The duo tease you for over a minute before unleashing, layered with buzzing synths and rumbling subs, the big bass that powers the festival dancefloor powerhouse that is Vibe Out.
Leo Kalyan – Stranger Mixtape = Leo shows off his skills with this mixtape taste of what is to come from the man,. With some songs we know, and some brand new tunes, this is half an hour of tracks that give us high hopes for Kalyan’s career.
♫ Leo Kalyan – Stranger Mixtape
The tracklist: 01. Leo Kalyan – Stranger (Written & Produced By Leo Kalyan & Shift K3y) 02. Leo Kalyan – Whenever I’m Down 03. Leo Kalyan – Going Goa 04. Leo Kalyan – Love Like Thissss 05. Leo Kalyan – Full Circle (Co-Produced By Grades) 06. Leo Kalyan – Tragic Kingdom 07. Leo Kalyan – YoYo!
Here’s something petty sweet and blissful to kick off you week. This storming reMix of our favourite new Jersey synth master Teeel’s Imperial comes from new Texan duo MNYNMS (who shall henceforth be referred to as Many Names). Putting aside for a second our hatred of artists who just have names they’ve dropped the vowels from (c’mon, it’s not 2007 any more!), this is an absolutely beautiful slice of synthesizer gold that offers up something for both the feet and the heart.
Dropping the tempo and heaping on the lushness, MNYNMS give the track their own spin. Subtly introducing a slight laid back Deep House groove that has been wrapped up in warm SynthPop swirls to Imperial, this reMix takes all the things we love Teeel for (classic synthetics, majestic, magical and galactic moods and a relaxed dancefloor vibe) and runs with them; culminating in a richly textured and emotionally resonant SynthPop tune that demands to be stuck on repeat. Let this one carry you away.
S’up peeps? We hope you had an amazing X-mas and destroyed yourself on the New Year. We did, and that’s just one of many reason why we’re not really back. Oh no sir, we’re still firmly on holiday; expect a return in a week or so.
We are sticking our head above water briefly, though, to let you know the results of The Blog Sound Of 2015! To remind you here are the 15 acts who placed in the long list: All We Are, Black Honey, Chloe Black, Coasts, Deers, Fickle Friends, Flyte, Halfrican, Honne, Låpsley, Prides, Shura, Soak, Sophie Jamieson and Tei Shi. And the winner is…Låpsley
Considering (once again) no-one we vote for make the final list, we can pretty much get on board with this result; the Liverpudlian singer.songwriter does deliver a pleasing line on brooding ElectroPop.
Anyhoo, we’re going back to sleep. Catch you in a few days!
And were done! Time to change into something more comfortable and reflect on the highs and lows of a shock packed The electronic rumors Awards. For those who left in the company of a golden Keytar Axeman life will never be the same again. It’s all gravy from here on it. To those that didn’t; there’s always next year.
Here’s you final chance to soak up some amazing talent who have soundtracked out lives this year. It;s these guys who make everything, literally everything, possible. ‘Nuff respect.
This is, as they say, ‘the big one’! The musical equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar. It’s The electronic rumors Awards’ Best Song of 2014. This genre free list is crammed to bursting point with some of the finest ElectroPop, Disco, SynthWave, House and Electro released this year. Whatever your taste, get involved with these tunes!
This is always the hardest list to compile, the hardest winner to choose. These twenty tracks started our being sixty-three, then forty, and eventually, after much heartbreak, the list you see before you. We’re happy with the way it turned out though. Here it is.
Starcadian one of, if not our favourite producer working right now. His musical concoction of SynthWave, Disco, Boogie and Electro blows us away every time and following his amazing Sunset Blood album of last year, this year he released the Saturdaze EP. The opening track n this release was Ultralove; a majestic and bombastic Power Disco track. An immense tune that whisks you away with it’s retro cinematic intro before dropping some of the toughest Disco and Boogie around.
There are a few artists and band on the short list for Hall Of Fame entries but with the unfortunate event of October with the legend that was Mark Bell sadly passing away, it seemed timely to bump LFO to the top of the list. LFO, originally Mark Bell and Gez Varley, later Bell alone, consistently pushed the boundaries of electronic music whether with their own music, reMixes or production for the likes of Bjork and Depeche Mode. Pioneers and innovators of UK House, Techno, IDM and Electro, LFO need little introduction so instead I’ll here’s what they meant to me.
I’ve made no secret of my love for early 90s Bleep House (which is what we called it at the time, these days I’ve heard people use terms like Yorkshire Bleep ‘N’ Bass or Bleep Techno), I mention it on these pages quite a lot and referred to it as my first, and fondest, dance music love. It all started with LFO. It was early summer 1990. As a kid I has dabbled with various different kinds of music. SynthPop hand-me-downs from my Brother got me started any stayed with me for life. Electro Hip Hop was the first music I was into that was ‘mine’ and I consumed it with a passion. Back them it was hard to separate Hip Hop and House, the few late night underground radio shows that did play one always played the other so my exposure to, and interest in, House music was quietly growing. It was work experience time at school (remember work experience week? Do they still do that?) and I had sneakily arranged for myself to do a weeks work in one of two specialist dance music record shops in Bristol (Tribe Of One on Frogmore Street). The week there was mostly spent smoking and listening to Hip Hop and House (learning great work skills for the future!); and then on Wednesday the new shipment of records came in. LFO’s LFO was amongst them, just released. The record selling part of the shop was in the basement, the upstairs being the only place in Bristol you could get Hip Hop and Club fashion, imported from London and New York, and that morning, whilst walking down the stars I hear this otherworldly Sci-Fi synth riff and a speaker shaking bass. Even now when I hear it I am taken back to that shop in 1990, smells and all. I was enraptured with this sound LFO had produced. Futuristic and menacing, enigmatic yet irresistibly funky, so began my brief love affair with Bleep House. I say ‘brief’ because the scene itself didn’t last very long but it set me on the course that led me to where I am today. The news of Mark Bell’s death earlier this year genuinely saddened me and I’m honoured to be able to bestow our Hall Of Fame award on LFO. It’s pretty meaningless, but it means something to me.
Oh, this’ll be a surprise! The Best Album list is always the one that comes easiest to us. It’s by far our favourite format for music. Delivering a musical narrative, a complete picture of an artists work, it’s more exciting to rave about your favourite LPs, as you would your favorite book or movie, rather than an individual song. You’re talking about 45+ minutes of music rather than 5.
There are some seriously, insanely, good records on this list. Like scarily good. Each one worthy of your attention, each one we could listen to over and over (in fact, we have mostly done just that this year), the top three alone constitute some of the best music released this decade.
However, the number one slot was never in question; and here’s why. You can read our particularly glowing review of Ronika’s Selectadischere, that should tell you all you need to know about just how flipping good this record really is, and how much it means to us; but the real test for Selectadisc is that despite having got our hands on it in December 2013, and it being released in March this year. Now, days away from 2015, we’re still playing it just as much as we were back then. It stood the test of the whole year, and stiff stiff competition, and is still one of our favourite go-to albums. The fact that it came from a British, D.I.Y artist just makes the whole thing mind-blowing.
Here we go with another of our optimistically titled Reader’s Choice awards. We’re going to have to make up new definitions for both the words ‘Reader’ and ‘Choice’ at this rate, every year this list get more and more convoluted to compile.
So as you know there’s no poll, in the beginning this category was a straight ranking of download clicks, but as download hosting moved more consistently to SoundCloud and the like it became a hodge-podge of download clicks, click-throughs and post popularity. There’s no science, and really that’s not important. From the analytics that are available to us (and frankly, that leaves a lot of stuff out of the equation) this is what you guys likes this year.
The top post was a massive surprise, Allie X’s Catch was massive ElectroPop tune to kick off 2014 that, surprisingly for American electronic Pop, didn’t fall into the tedious mediocre ‘EBM’ trap. We had a couple more tunes from Allie before she went quiet for the rest of the year, we wonder what 2015 holds for her.
There were a few contenders for Best Video. Ultimately Chromeo took home the prize simply for being two of the coolest peeps on the planet. The video for Old 45s, one of our favourite tracks on their White Women album, epitomises this.
Directed by Dugan O’Neal, the clip is six minutes of distilled Chromeo. Suave, funny, classy, slightly dreamlike and incredibly retro. With cameos from HAIM and Napoleon Dynamite‘s Jon Heder the video blends narrative, comedy and performance with a stunning, and shockingly expensive, leather jacket from Dave-1. See how cool people are when they don’t take themselves seriously?
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