The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Just out of 3.5 days of solid work meetings and I need some other sounds in my brain. Fortunately I have this lovely set of music tabs to share with you. Also, I feel it necessary to pass on a particular musical milestone. This past weekend I was rockin' out to DJ Steveboy's 10th anniversary Groovelectric mix and got Thing 1 interested enough to listen. And then he downloaded it to his iPod. The torch, it is passed. FUNK4EVAH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sntzSLk05Eo
Bessie Jones also deserves to be remembered forever, and here Enzo Siffredi takes her blues vocal hook from "Sometimes" and uses it in his own take on the track. White Americans like me probably recall this hook best because Moby used it in his very popular tune "Honey" in the late 90s (1998, Wikipedia tells me). The description explicitly credits Scorsese and and Berlin's Underground, which is quite the pair to draw off of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVERjAdaWdg
The All Good Funk ALliance put this out a couple years ago but I just came across it. Keith Mackenzie and DJ Fixx give us a fast-talking breakbeat track with a definite funky vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B8W6pe6ReM
Shifting gears into a high-pitched electro-synth vibe, "The Blitz" - from Swanky Tunes & Sunstars - gives us an energetic three minutes. The video is fun to watch as well, a little action-adventure, a little parkour, and a funny ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b74YehJMEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GISQcX-C_gQ
I've been playing around with a new station on Pandora that's based on music similar to Pegboard Nerds so a lot of P.N. has shown up and I'll probably link some of it so I can talk about it. The first track is Pegboard Nerds' remix of Elizaveta's "hero". On the one hand, I'm not all that much of a d&b fan and P.N. also use some dubstep tropes that were hot a couple years ago but feel worn now. On the other hand, Elizaveta's vocals make this this track smokin' hot. European vocal trance has brought some operatically trained singers to EDM, which I really like. Elizaveta has that kind of training and although there's a pretty heavy production hand on this track her voice still lifts this track out of the realm of the ordinary. I also like the way it works in unusual tempos and beat changes.

The second link is her original version, which is much more orchestral/choral and more clearly drawn from European folk roots. I can see why P.N. wanted to remix it and I think the pair go well together as two takes on one idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxniucMF2ck
Also out of that same messing around comes Nick Thayer, whom I stumbled over once a few years ago. This track is also a few years old but it has aged well. It's electro, hip-hop, and glitchy. I like that EDM has moved away from the more glitch-filled styles of a few years ago, but it's nice to revisit once in a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iKekphXwQg
One of the things glitchy electro evolved into was glitch-hop, of which this is an example. It's still got many of the wub and fuzz effects from the earlier tracks but now it's integrating new sounds. This one, "Viper" from Howla & WBBL, is obviously a tribute to big band dance tunes from the mid-20th century. This is still not a sound I'm going to listen to a lot, but as I'm putting together a new stream interesting variations pop up and I'll blog things that catch my ears.

Lots of good and interesting stuff here, but damned if I can figure out a theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7sj684zcmzw
MS MR (http://www.msmrsounds.com/) are a new New York-based duo whose first full album isn't due out for a bit but who are already getting a fair bit of airplay due to an EP they released last year that charted well in Europe and got some MTV airplay in the States. The sound is pretty pure electro-pop but with a nice edge to it that reminds me of early Florence or the XXX. This track has been remixed a fair bit but I haven't found a mix I like better than the original.

http://audioporncentral.com/2013/04/rudimental-double-pack.html
Speaking of remixes, here are two takes on Rudimental (http://soundcloud.com/rudimentaluk) tracks. The first is Skream's take on "Hell Could Freeze" and the second is Andy C doing "Right Here." I didn't like the Skream track on first listen but it's been growing on me, providing you're in a sufficiently disco-tolerant mood. The mix of rap and disco electronics is... odd. Takes some getting used to.

The second track is more house-influenced and more vocal centric, with high BPM and a strong beat track laid in. It's an interesting example of how mixes are being influenced by dubstep without themselves being dub. This is good "getting things done" music for me.

https://soundcloud.com/nickraymondg/pegboard-nerds-tristam-razor
Speaking of dub, here's another track off thissongissick.com, an instrumental mix by Pegboard Nerds & Tristam called "Razor Sharp". It's fun to read the labels producers put on their Soundcloud tracks - you can see the real-time evolution of styles as DJs grab, tweak, and republish. This one is labeled (among other things) "moombahcore" and "drumstep". I long ago gave up trying to keep track of this stuff - it's definitely a case of not drinking from the firehose. I just pick and choose stuff I like and this one I very much like, as you don't get this kind of floor-clearing bass mixed with melodic stuff often enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c6ZOLFgLg3E
Armen van Buuren put out a bunch of things promoting some of the new trance artists he's bringing to his label. I thought most were OK, but this one stood out. It's someone calling themselves Airbase (http://airbasemusic.com/) who has been working around Scandinavia for a few years. AFAICT this is their first big US release and it's a sweet piano-centric extended trance track.

http://djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html
DJ Steveboy's post this time is a salvage job. It's two hours out of a longer party set he DJed back in November of last year. Sadly there's no track list, because there are some real winners in here. I got to dance at a party he DJed at Worldcon a few years ago and it was a blast. He's got a huge library he draws from and although I recognize a few of the tracks there are a couple more I don't and would love to look up.