Both Mason and Klein have been involved in the West Coast’s DJ/rave culture for years, each having performed at various festivals, and with Klein having been part of organizing some of Vancouver’s most memorable renegade dance parties.

Cycling through obsessions, but forever attached to pop hooks, Mason’s cindery voice is her primary instrument. Armed with a slew of synths, strings, and analogue pedals, the two have been writing and producing music since 2010.

This heavy, expertly mastered 12″ vinyl includes two original Evy Jane tracks, as well as remixes from Taal Mala and Max Ulis, and is out on February 13th, 2012.

A digital version will follow in March, with additional remixes from Andy Dixon and Julien Mier. Purchase of the record includes a download to the digital release as well.

For more info…
http://kingdeluxe.ca/evy-jane

Very interesting, and I’m gutted it’s not a bit longer, but a good watch when you’ve got five minutes.

There are some nice pieces with a few heads, and some nicely thought out voice-over explanations, and ultimately I’d say it was insightful, although I think we’re all agreed that dubstep is changing, whether it’s for better or worse.

I’m slowly drifting from dubstep elsewhere, finding my own feet and exploring my own avenues, but for those who need a catalyst to delve in to more traditional dubstep, or who need a push to explore their own sub-culture, this is a great piece, and well worth a watch.

Check it on Vimeo here, if the above video fails.

Well, arguably less actually. But in a good way. Aside from getting an oddly voyeuristic view in to the not-nearly-long-enough Monday evenings with Nooka, Praveen (Braille) and co., in Brooklyn; you get an admirable selection of tracks for a few hours which I quite enjoy having on while I work. Not, that this is background music by any means, but unless it’s live, it’s easy to set the video element aside while you listen, and just check in periodically like some sort of musical child monitor. Except they’re not children, they’re grown ups, and they’re not sleeping soundly, they’re sort of bobbing around in a room. What i’ve yet to work out though, is whether it’s a basement or room in someone’s apartment. Someone lucky enough to have more than a cupboard to live in in NYC, or whether it’s a mostly empty bar where it seems to be quite bright all the time.

Perhaps it’s the sense of mystery that keeps me hooked. I don’t know. What I do know, however is that this week, Dean (DJG) was in town, and joined Jones and Braille for what I’d describe as an incredible selection of house, deep techno, and bass music. Oh how I loathe these definitions, for we all know the score here. Just listen and find out. I for one, discovered a handful of tracks that I’ll be adding to my DJ box. Not only that but these nice little Monday sessions tend to brighten up my Tuesday at work, and get me just that little bit more excited about my impending move to NYC this coming year.

Stream the mix above, or check it on ustream here.

Percussion Lab the site, is here.

Cue the internet, and it’s vast sprawling wealth of information.

I stumbled upon these two tutorials that had been caught on camera while searching that string of numbers in the title. 1 6 2 5 1. It had been mentioned in something else i was watching, and I wanted more information on how it worked.

This, my friends will enlighten you somewhat. If you have a little knowledge about the scales and keys on a piano – this will be a doddle. If you have no experience whatsoever, then you might want to look up some very basic theory.

Either way – Karen Cuneo Ramirez goes some way to explaining how and why chords are numbered like this, and shows some pretty crutial information for stringing chords together and getting them to work.

Yes, it’s a basic tutorial of sorts – so anyone who’s a whiz at the piano will probably know this stuff, but hey – I found it a great short watch. Now I’m off to play with chords.

Video 1: (also above)

Video 2:

Pressed on heavyweight vinyl and housed in a stunning gold glitter screenprinted sleeve designed by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja and crafted by The Vinyl Factory, this is likely to become one of this year’s most coveted releases. Only 1000 copies too, so better get on it, if it’s not already sold out!

The 12″ is available to stream and pre-order exclusively from www.massiveattack.com and www.vfeditions.com from 5PM GMT Monday 10th October.

Based out of Leeds, these guys are making serious moves right now, and if you’ve not heard their output, then now is as good a time to check them out as any. They’ve just dropped their new single “Always” on a rather keen fan base complete with remixes from Manchester bass-peddler Synkro, and Oxford producer Laxx.

I’m struggling to decide on the pick of these three. The original cut is a delight for sure, but Synkro spreads some trademark intricacy, vocal snippage and synthy-emotion on his reworking, while Laxx seems to take the whole thing in a really nice 4-4 driven modern dub style.

I’ll let you be the judge – check the EP out on iTunes now.

And please, dear people, go and check them out live. It’s a great way to support the musicians, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy it!

October tour:
3rd – Manchester – The Ritz
5th – Huddersfield – Bar 1:22
6th – TBC
7th – Coventry – Warwick Arts
11th – Oxford – O2 Academy
12th – Birmingham – O2 Academy
13th – Leeds – The Wardrobe
15th – Brighton – Coalition
18th – Southampton – Joiners
20th – Guildford – The Boileroom
21st – Bristol – The Thekla
22nd – Nottingham – Stealth
26th – Wroclaw – Firiej
27th – Warsaw – Fabryka Trzciny
28th – Poznan – SQ Klub
30th – Katowice – Jazz Club Hipnoza
31st – London

Seen them live? Feeling the tunes? Want to submit your own opinion? Why not comment below and let me know…

Merry Go Round is dreamy swirling haze of a track full of the dubstep flourishes Planas is renowned for. Featuring the sumptuous vocals of Claudia Georgette who memorably invites you to “climb up my stairs”. The mesmerizing Merry Go Round will be going round your head long after you’ve heard it.

Kicking off with Agbekor as his first release on Ranking Planas aka Toby Davies has already acquired a staunch following amongst the dubstep fraternity whilst his involvement with the hotly tipped Gentlemens Dub Club is spreading the word much wider still, whilst his rather special remix of Submotion Orchestra’s Finest Hour brought yet more fans into the fold.

We’ve got some excellent remixes too. Toby ioi’s genre crossing sound has already been making waves on Radio 1, 1xtra, Choice FM and Rinse Toby has worked with and alongside artists such as Sway, Estelle’ Blak Twang and Wiley and for us he delivers a spankingly bouncy mix of Merry Go Round. Dubstep don Ruckspin takes it one step deeper into dub putting his own ermmm spin on the track, which should befiled under required listening, And if that’s not enough we also have Seemore Productions, signed to DJ K.O’s Elementality Productions in New Jersey, doing the honours in the remix department.

One great track, five excellent versions, what’s not to enjoy ?

BUY IT: Beatport / iTunes

Granted, it’s the obvious choice really – and fair play, but I do hope they spend a bit of time checking the deep Manchester scene, and I’d love to see them hit Scotland in some capacity since we’re putting out so much good stuff these days. Blackwax, Koreless, LuckyMe, Paranoise, Gravious, anyone?

However if I had gone, I’m almost certain I’d have enjoyed the Sonar By Night visuals provided by the talented Shaun Bloodworth. His work with Give Up Art (usually involving some of his excellent photography skills) is second to none, and his visuals done for the festival are excellent.

A hypnotising mix of woodland and urban areas, with Mary Anne Hobbs wandering around are pretty mesmerising. I recommend taking a few minutes to check them out.

View them on Vimeo here, or on this page, above.

Image credit: Samantha Meis

View it here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7uYqJJBiD0

An odd combination of robots dancing and getting hit by cars and trains it’s a bit bizarre, but then what else would you expect? Here’s what the director Mark Simpson (of Sixty40) had to say:

Out In The Streets is about lowly domestic bots around the world choosing suicide over recycling. It uses footage group-sourced from friends-with-cameras around the world as background plates for action to take place on. We placed lovingly animated robots into the world and stitched together the tale of a massive failure of robot batteries causing erratic behaviour in otherwise complacent robots. On the one had, a major PR problem for the robot industry, on the other, a major ontological crisis for the individual robots facing recycling.

We worked closely with Africa Hitech to make the track work with the vision and vice versa. While there is robot dancing in the film, it’s not a traditional music video. It’s just a short concept film that works with the music themes. This isn’t totally new by any means, but what makes it really pop is how Mark Pritchard and Steve Spacek edited the track and layered a lot of film music score elements to their track to allow the music to meet the film in the middle. The result is something in between very narrative music video and very banging short film.

Africa Hitech’s debut album 93 Million Miles is out now.

Discovering Cold Tear records was a bit like that. Describing themselves as an “Independent electronic music label” they release (as far as I’ve heard) mostly dub-techno and deep electronic stuff.

When I discovered the website, complete with downlodable albums, I mentioned it to a couple of people, but since let it slip under the radar. it was only recently I found the CDR that I had written with Giriu Dvasios’ “Metai” album on it and re-discovered that gem.

So I took a look on the site to see what had been going down since my last visit, and low and behold the Lithuanian producer has released an album under his other monkier “SoulSonic” – his second under this guise for the label.

Titled “Every Day Is Good” it’s a mix of electronic styles merging chillout, IDM, big beat, breaks and experimental stuff (some of it reminds me of Moby in his “Play” days). It’s quite a vareity of sounds, but what interested me most is that he’s planning a short video series on how he came up with each piece for the album.

I genuinely think this is a great idea, and something I might consider doing in future.

You can see the video above, or you can stream the album below.

You can download the album for free, or buy the album from its’ page on the label site.

For the “Metai” album (which I highly recommend) check this page.

“Some weeks ago, I finished working on the music for a Nissan GT-R commercial produced by Daniel Michaelis and his team at Format67 (www.format67.net). The movie got some good responses by fans of the Nissan GT-R and/or other car-enthusiasts all over the globe and the requests regarding the music came in one after another. So finally, Daniel came asking for an extended version of the songs I produced exclusively for the spot – and here we go…

The free download consists of two tracks, “Through The Night” from the nightdriving scenes in the movie and “On Track”, a forward thinking, harsh breakbeat from the racing scenes. I hope you enjoy!”

Download the soundtrack here

Version – Background Sound (Demo Reel) from Alberto Hernandez on Vimeo.

I love the music, the vibe and the feeling it gives me watching the visuals. As someone who loved the states when I was there in the first half of 2010, this takes me back and gives me snippets of cutting about New York, and chilling with the people I met there.

I’d love to find out more about this video, and how Background Sound all fits in to this. Anyone able to shed some light – email me!

Future Sound is a short documentary that looks into a small cross section of London’s forward-thinking underground dance music scene, exploring some of the things that define and affect it as it moves into a new age of digital innovation.

Featuring interviews with Roska, Scratcha DVA, Blackdown, Mark Fisher, and Lisa Blanning, plus footage from a live SBTRKT DJ set.

Directed by Jamie Whitby & Rachel Lob-levyt

In his words:

There is a story to this one:
Some months ago, I packed my bags, took my girl by the hand and activated the auto-responders – off to South Tirol for a week.
I knew it would be the only time off this year and therewith the only chance to record some fresh nature-sounds without the disturbing humming of hamburg in the back – mobile recorder bagged!

The result: I had a great time running around in  the alps and dolomites at around 2000 meters in altitude, collecting some of the weirdest insect sounds, from crickets & locusts to bees, flies and, for sure, some happy italian cows.
After being back in the studio, I started to edit and trim all the applicable sounds to sort them in my foley-libraries. The longer i listened to those insects, the more I wanted to do a track with those edits and use the sounds in a more or less melodic context. That’s when “Insct” was born.

Right at the same time, Johannes Timpernagel hit me up, telling me about this VVVV Patch he’d been working on and that he needed sound to work something out. The rest is history, haha…

So, some months later, I find myself writing you this little note and I want to give you the opportunity to become a part of this journey just by watching the final animation, looking at the pictures and maybe get a little inspiration from all that.

So, what do we have?

The VVVV Animation by Timpernagel:

The photos from the recordings:
http://www.facebook.com/skyence#!/album.php?aid=34914&id=100000545335679

AND my promise, that the full version of the tune will be on my forthcoming album on Project Mooncircle.
http://www.projectmooncircle.com

After much fun and games, Spherix’s ‘In a Hole’/'In the Dark’ (loca001) is now out in the record shops!

It’s the debut release for lowercase, and it really sets the tone for what they’re about – deep, progressive tunes that blend the weight and futurism of dubstep with the relentless groove of techno.

Having already released tunes for some of the scene’s most respected record labels (Immerse, Aquatic Lab, Bare Dubs, Sub Continental Dub) and earned support from big hitters like Ramadanman, Appleblim, Sigha and Scuba, Spherix steps up on his own lowercase imprint.

As an extra bonus for vinyl lovers, a special locked groove has been created for the flip and will be available only on wax.

Distributed by Triple Vision and ST Holdings, ‘In a Hole’/'In the Dark’ (loca001) is hitting the record shops this week, and you can peep the preview videos below for a taste.

Spherix – In a Hole – lowercase – loca001 from Lowercase Records on Vimeo.

Spherix – In the Dark – lowercase – loca001 from Lowercase Records on Vimeo.