yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy what a month
we had so many gems and brilliant guest bloggers, The Young Punx
this month’s APC TOP 10 is dominated by videos
it’s a kindda visual fiesta

first, here is the official APC chart
followed by the exclusive TOP 10 of The Young Punx
plus the APC Family members charts

#01 Sebastien Tellier – Look (promo clip) [link]
promo clip for the Record Makers’ 10th Anniversary
sweet animation, great tune, nice booty
#02 Kraddy – Android Porn (Mochipet Godzillaporn Remix) [link]
AudioPornographers <3 Android Porn
#03 J Wow – Klang [link]
the debut single of J-Wow of Buraka Som Sistema
#04 Bomb the Bass – Up The Mountain (Gui Boratto Remix) [link]
the most downloaded song of the month
#05 SugaMotor – Bitter boy [link]
RiRi RAWKZ
#06 Frail Limb Purity – Drake v. Sub Focus [link]
spring break hit alert
#07 Hot Chip – I Feel Better [link]
LAZERZ KILL
#08 Eli Escobar – Oslo [link]
taken from the superdope Scion A/V Sampler V. 29 by Plant Music
#09 Frunt Room – Hey Stavros! [link]
the funkiest lollicop
#10 Dj Moule – Kids are Stronger [link]
two overused songs get a new life

and now let’s see what our VIP Bloggers loved most on APC in March

The Young Punx’s Top 10

#01 The Young Punx – Ready For The Fight (Black Noise Remix) [link]
#02 Marcos Cabral & Shux – A Lifetime Groove [link]
#03 Reset! – If We Try (Kry Wolf‘s Space Disco Remix) [link]
#04 The Young Punx – The Young Punx Theme [link]
#05 Plan B – She Said (16-bit Remix) [link]
#06 Acid Washed – SNAKE (Future Beat Alliance remix) [link]
#07 Eli Escobar – Oslo [link]
#08 SugaMotor – Welcome song [link]
#09 Hell On Steele Wheelz – GorillaMama [link]
#10 The Phenomenal Handclap Band – Baby (Architeq Dub) [link]

and here are the personal charts of the APC Family members

Continue reading »

One of the best things about dance music is a fat old bassline and seeing as the best things come in threes…  Here at Punx HQ we are fond of melody, we appreciate the need for structure and form, and a song WILL make ladies sing and dance.  But we know the best girls… now they like rhythm :)

I’m not talking ill-considered wobbly basslines thrown over a rock or rave sample for the sake of, nonsense Herve copycat cliches, or fidgety rising rasping guff that has no sense of rhythm.  I’m thinking grooves that lock you, three-dimensional glue like structures that seem to stick in every corner of your brain, and that special frequency that pumps lead into your chest.

Here’s three producers and three new tracks that force a smile on my face like the victim of a Chelsea FC hooligan.  Three that will certainly be hitting the airwaves when the Punx take to the stand.

Paul Weller ‘Wake Up The Nation’ (DJ Zinc Remix) - Zinc has long been rocking my World since my early adventures in Drum & Bass.  Most notably for tracks like ‘Super Sharp Shooter’ but also forgotten classics like “Reach Out’ and ‘Casino Royale’ and then of course his whole Bingo Beats years.  Still on form some fifteen years later, first with the Crack House EP and now this, a remix of Paul Weller!  Typically great rhythms, fantastic b-line and nothing short of what i expect when i see that name appear on a promo pack.

Delphic ‘Halycon’ (L-Vis 1990 Remix) – this guy in my opinion seems to be doing no wrong.  I’m seeing a really exciting rebirth in garage 2-step soaked rhythms and thankfully people have dispensed with the pervasive plastic beats of early noughties UK Garage.  L-Vis 1990 is right up there on the frontline.  Alongside cohort Bok Bok with their Nightslug parties, basslines have never sounded so exciting.  Often twisted and unexpected there are no cliche fidget wobbles and squelching here.  Just hard-hitting filth straight from the gutter.

Claude Von Stroke ‘Monster Island’ (Christian Martin Remix) - Claude von Stroke’s not really somebody you’d necessarily associate strictly with ‘bass’ but a pioneer nonetheless.  ‘Who’s Afraid Of Detroit’ made it ok for a dropping bassline to be played in a house club and his remix of Luke Solomon’s ‘Ghosts’ was pure ‘tear-out’ drum & bass reinvented.  His label Dirty Bird has a steady rate of releasing subtle little bass-fueled bangers and this, the latest is just brilliant.  Taking on all the themes i love in jungle/drum & bass; sinister overtones, tribally beats, and a heads down stepper basslines.  It WILL freak some people when we play this out but i for one can’t wait.

No YouTube link on this one but you can check it here

Well, it’s Friday evening. I won’t lie to you, I’ve got better things to spend my time doing than writing another of my meandering essays here. Instead I’ll just point you in the direction of HUGE AMOUNTS OF GREAT MUSIC.

Check out The Young Punx FM Podcast. It’s a 2 hour show we do roughly monthly combining the best in new electronic music, special guests, mayhem, humor and, occasionally, snack reviews. You’ll probably like it.

So kick back, turn up the sound and have a little party. Or get ready to go out. Or whatever takes your fancy.

Subscribe using RSS. Or subscribe on iTunes. Or just play it in the soundcloud player.

The Young Punx FM Podcast by MofoHifi Records

Hello. So the reason we have a week of VIP Blogging on APC THIS WEEK is that we are celebrating the release of our second album, Mashpop and Punkstep. (um… apart from DE, AT, CH – May and AU, NZ, JP – June). Now I’ll have you know that the week’s VIP blogging is the warm-up – not the main event. We have a couple of much more exciting things for you in the coming couple of weeks. But for now I thought we should tell you about the album a bit.

Our marketing bumf says: “The Young Punx return for their second studio album, a startling and inventive exploration of the deliberate destruction of genre boundaries in electronic music. Probably the first album in history to have toyed with drum and bass, heavy metal, electropop and cuban timba within the first 5 minutes (!) “Mashpop and Punkstep” is a vibrant manifesto for the next generation of mashup music.”

Well. That’s what we like to tell people anyway.

1. This is me talking about making the album

2. This is what it sounds like

The Young Punx – ‘Mashpop and Punkstep’ – OUT NOW! by MofoHifi Records

3. This is the page on our web site with more information about the album

4. This is what some blogs have been saying about the album this week

5. Some music for you

The Young Punx – Simple Pleasures [mp3]

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The Young Punx – Ready For The Fight (Black Noise Mix) [mp3]

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The Young Punx – Juice and Gin (Riva Starr Mix) [mp3]

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Buy now!

…and if you fancy being oldskool and buying some music we’d really appreciate it because it cost a frickin’ fortune to make. Try iTunes (most of the world), iTunes (USA and Canada), Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Beatport, Juno, eMusic (USA) etc.

A lot of what we spend our time doing at Young Punx high command involves taking production ideas, and aesthetic principles that evolved in the Mashup community and finding ways to express them in other contexts, such as live or using 100% original music rather than other people’s records.

As a result we spend a lot of time effectively making ‘fake samples’. If we want a track that has the sound of having sampled a disco record, but we don’t want to be simply recyling someone else’s music, we will record a whole disco track using vintage instruments, vintage production techniques, mix it down, master it, add vinyl noise and hiss, down-sample it it in a Bitcrusher to sound like an old MPC or Akai sample, and then ‘sample ourselves’ to make a dance track.

We’ve have done this for 60s soul tracks, bossa nova, punk, opera, heavy metal, 80s pop, and so on – creating a whole ‘retro sounding’ song – which we then sample only part of to make a second track, which is the one you actually hear.

You then have the option of working with the creative constraints of NOT having the multitrack of the sample (as is the case when doing most mashups / bootlegs) or you CAN go in and, say, remove the drums from the ‘sample’ if you really want to.

I call this a ‘twice baked’ approach because you do a track once, finish it, and then use that as the starting point for making your second track.

Anyway, the end result is “mashy sounding” music that does not actually incorporate anyone else’s work.

I went into more detail about this in a feature for Computer Music magazine in 2008, which the production minded of you might be interested in watching:

What’s that you say? You didn’t come here to talk about side chain compression and bit crushing? You came here to get music for free? Oh OK then.

Here is the track ‘Drum and Bacharach’ from our debut album “Your Music Is Killing Me” in which we first of all created an imaginary Burt Bacharach style lounge Bossa Nova track. Bounced it down, then took it round to the house of Number 1 Drum and Bass DJ in the World^TM John B where we used it as a sample in a semi tongue in cheek drum and bass track. What with the Brazilian Drum and Bass scene etc, it isn’t that unusual to hear Latin sounds and Drum and Bass sounds together, but I think by separating them out into 2 totally different production systems like this, even in different studios, it makes for a more striking soundclash.

The Young Punx – ‘Drum and Bacharach’ [mp3]

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Meanwhile, for those of you who mash, boot and remix, here is the acapella (plus some of the psuedo Jacko instrument parts) for The Young Punx track “It Doesn’t Stop” which was featured in the Computer Music tutorial, in case you want to do your own mix.

[The Young Punx - "It doesn't stop" acapella / remix parts"]

OK. See you tomorrow.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Please.

G’day. In ye olden days there were two types of pop recording. Your home made demo, which was basically zero budget shit, and of no commercial use except in the lofi garage scene, and acts that were SIGNED TO A RECORD LABEL. Record labels would throw some money at signed artists to make them sound good and pay for musicians, producers, expensive studios etc. So a commercial record would have pretty plush production values.

It’s all changed now.

At the bottom end of the market, anyone who owns a home computer essentially has free access to the majority of the facilities that would previously comprise a multi million dollar recording studio. So there is now no real differentiator between ‘home made’ music and ‘professional’ music. At the high end, most traditional labels are starved for cash, conservative in their A&R and not throwing money at developing new acts – so the chances are even if you are signed you don’t often have much scope for elaborate recordings. Even artists as established as Beck have commented that since no-one BUYS his music anymore, they just file share it – there basically isn’t a cashflow to put into complex expensive recordings any more, and though he can make good sounding records – they are creatively different from the days when there was a noticeable budget for making a record whatever way he wanted.

Now I am of the belief that all these changes are overall for the better. However, something negative has been happening to the palette of sounds producers are using. Essentially – any sound that can be made by a computer plugin, performed by a commonly found musician, or recorded on one microphone is still in circulation. Any sound that requires many musicians, large recording studios, specialist skills and equipment – or basically costs a lot to record – is disappearing from most records

These are the lost sounds.

I spend a lot of my time trying to find them again.

Choirs, orchestras, brass sections. The oldskool shit. And don’t talk to me about sample libraries and software emulations. They can cover you on certain phrases – long notes and short stabs, but they can’t mimic the phrasing of a collection of real, imperfect, players.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s – pretty much ANY commercial act that asked for an orchestra to play on their record would get one. These days, in dance music in particular, its very unlikely to happen. Hire all the musicians and facilities required to record full orchestral session costs a minimum of £3000, and probably much more. i.e. More than most records will ever be likely to make, and more than a good remix package for your record. NO-ONE does orchestral dance music now.

But they used to. Disco was heavily orchestral and we LOVE the sound of it, which why we keep sampling it. Then the whole War of the Worlds into Hooked On Classics orchestra with a drum machine vibe is a bit kitch and naff, but I think its a great ‘lost sound’ for dance producers.

I wanted to find a way to be able to re-capture these orchestral sounds without having to sample someone else’s work, in an affordable way.

Basically I’ve cracked it. I’ve managed to get to the point where we can record a convincing orchestra using one mic and around 2 to 5 musicians for around £500. The down side is it takes forfuckingever and you have to have a strong working knowledge of arranging and mixing for an orchestra to make it sound decent. Essentially its blindingly obvious. Record a small number of players a lot of times and track them up – rather than recording 60 people in a room at once. In practice there are lot of do-s and don’ts about making it sound convincing. Which would take too long to go into here.

But on our new album, mid way through we drop fully into Puccini Opera, in which we have performed every single instrument of the orchestra one at a time, between me and 1 violin player using mostly ‘real’ instruments, padded out with good sampled instruments low in the mix. You have to do no end of hacks to make it work. To make one string player multitracked sound convincing you have 1) Make them keep standing in different parts of the room 2) Make them play ‘like different people’ – different vibratos, different bow positions. 3) Tune the violin down to play the Viola parts 4) Play the violin through an octaver to do the cello parts, then add in cello samples to cover up the carnage etc. etc. etc. And edit and mix it for days. But the end result is an entire symphony orchestra and opera singer recorded for just a few hundred pounds. Of course spread this attitude over a whole album, throw in a few guest performers etc and you still end up spending over 10k of your own money that you may never see back again, but at least it was POSSIBLE.

Which brings me to our first track for today, The Young Punx theme. This track is basically me and Phonat trying to capture the essence of those late 70s orchestral disco records, but with a 2010 attitude.

The Young Punx – The Young Punx Theme [mp3]

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um… I hope you like it.

We are more than happy to have some more versions of the track on hand, so for those of you who are producers, here are the remix parts for the orchestral elements, in case you want to make your own remix of it. 125bpm, once it gets going.

For those of you who are interested in how this orchestral sound is built up, here is a screenshot of logic showing; tubular bells on the sampler, 3 trumpet tracks, 2 high trumpet tracks, 4 trombone tracks, a synth flute, 4 tracks of the trombones playing out of position to mimic the sound of French horns, 3 tracks of flugal horn, 4 choral singers, then a load of sampler orchestral percussion and piano. All put into a bus, compressed and then put through a convolution reverb of a concert hall. That’s 3 musicians (me, the trumpet/flugal player and the trombone player) plus 4 choral singers. And a lot of work.

I’ve also employed this approach in a Mashup context. For example, I wanted to do a mash up of Deadmau5 “Ghosts N Stuff” with Shapeshifters “Lola’s Theme” (or more accurately with Johnny Taylor “What About My Love”). However – all the instrumentation in the sample made it far too cluttered, and if stems exist, I certainly don’t have them. So we pulled in a violin player, a trumpet player and a sax player, and some days editing later we have this, which is one of my favorite mashups.

The Young Punx – “Lola’s Ghost”
Deadmau5 VS Johnny Taylor / Shapeshifters [mp3]

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Anyway. Screw you guys. I’m going home. :-)

See you tomorrow.

Hal

Well hello there. Nice to meet you. This is Hal from The Young Punx here to take the reins of the APC VIP blogger series for the week. And a great honour it is too.

We’re here this week in celebration of the release of our second album “Mashpop and Punkstep”, but I’ll leave talking about that until later in the week when the bastard is live on iTunes in the USA. We have a few pretty damn exciting things lined up specifically for APC in the coming week or two. But Mr Iddol says today I can just tease you about it, but not make any big announcements. Consider yourself teased.

For those of you who don’t know who we are; we are a largely London based collective of DJs, producers, mashers, musicians and vocalists held together under my evil dictatorship benign leadership. We started out doing mashups and bootleg mixes around 2003. It’s all expanded a bit since then with moving on to ‘official mixes’, original material, DJing and live performance. But our home is always really in the mentality of the mashup scene, and a lot of what we do involves taking the aesthetics and approaches born in the mashup community and expressing them in other more diverse places.

In the light of that, I thought a fun, if totally random, place to start with on our first post might be reporting on some of our recent activities doing mashups totally live. By which I don’t mean mashup live on the fly with Ableton (which we also do) but performing mashups while playing all the parts live in a band. We have done this for years with The Young Punx, but the reason this has been most fun recently, and got a fair bit of exposure, has been that I have had the privalege of working as Musical Director for Dizzee Rascal at several of his live shows. Dizzee has been great to work with because he has given us a huge amount of creative freedom to back him however we like, which has enabled us to pull some mashup based stunts that might have lead a more closed-minded artist to say “what the fuck are you doing with my music” but Dizzee has been really up for it.

The mash that has got most attention has probably been our decision to play Dizzee’s track “Stand Up Tall” over a live backing of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. We’ve done this at a few gigs now and it always goes down a storm. Big lolz at the yourtube comments, where the mashup people love trolling the hardcore Nirvana geeks who think that rap isn’t real music and this is ruining ‘their song’. Here we are seeing in 2010 on New Year’s Eve on BBC TV in the UK:

Or for an alternative performance, here we are playing it at the Roundhouse at the BBC Electric Proms:

Dizzee Rascal backed by The Young Punx
Stand up teen spirit [mp3]
live at the BBC electric Proms

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I know Teen Spirit is a bit of a mashup cliche, but its been fun.

We’ve also been dropping odds and ends of mashing wherever we can. When playing “Jus A Rascal”, although we’ve been mainly doing the ‘original’ version, we’ve been able to drop into the Strokes Reptilia mashup of the track for the second verse (at 2:27), and then add in some Jeremy Paxman in the playout in the place of the original Answerphone message.

Dizzee Rascal backed by The Young Punx and The Heritage Orchestra- Jus A Rascal (/Reptilia) [mp3]
live at the BBC electric Proms

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It’s come full circle in a nice way really because one of the very first Mashups we ever did back in 2003 was a mash of Dizzee’s “Fix Up Look Sharp” with J Lo “Play” and Madonna’s “Music” called Play Big Beat Music. It’s a bit rough around the edges in places with imperfect timestretching, but its still decent.

The Young Punx – Play Big Beat Music [mp3]
Dizzee Rascal VS J-Lo VS Madonna

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Another fun Dizzee related live mash we were involved in recently was the Dizzee VS Florence and the machine mashup at The Brits. Dizzee and Florence were basically put together to do a joint performance of 2 of their songs together, doing the vocals live on the day, to a pre-recorded backing track. In response to this brief, we put together the “You Got The Dirty Love” concept, using the stems of You Got The Love and acapella of Dirtee Cash. Florence and Dizzee learned the structure from this mash, then performed live at the show.

In a great move, the Brits people put the song for sales on iTunes just a couple of hours after it was recorded live and it went to number one. Its for charity, so feel free to buy a copy.

Anyway. That’s enough for now. We’ll be back during the week with anecdotes, tech tips, exclusive downloads, and EXCITING NEWS FOR YOU.

Cheers

Hal

can’t tell you how happy we are
next week we will start the new season of our VIP Blogger Series
and our guest will be none other but the mighty Young Punx!!!!

we will celebrate the release of their new album Mashpop & Punkstep
and we will have a whole lot of  mashed punk fun
so do NOT miss this
make sure to check out APC every day next week to read their exclusive posts

menwhile say hello to the guys and check back our previous posts about them

welcome Hal and Nathan , welcome The Young Punx!!!

the APC Team

we were more than surprised when we have seen the headlines
its all over the internet now,  like in Reuters for example
we were and we are trying to reach his team who we work with
but no feedback so far
so we decided to stop the BPA VIP Blogger week, for obvious reasons
and we also close the contest too!!!
and we will get back to you with more info as soon as we can

till then  like we say it in the header
go Norman go! you will win mate
and we are looking forward to meet with you again!!

the APC Team

+++UPDATE+++
just to kill the rumors
yes he blogged with us
and even if Copycat is PRO with whiskey
and Panic Girl wins every drinking contest
and Phil is Irish
and I’m handling Jagermeister pretty well
but now we R innocent ;)

we wish all the best to Norman
and we hope he will get back soon in one piece ‘n healthy!