Deadmau5

Where’s the Drop? Identifying EDM Trends Through Deadmau5

Joel Zimmerman's musical alias Deadmau5 is among the most recognizable names in all of Electronic Dance Music. Frequently spotted wearing his iconic, enormous mouse head at the world's biggest festivals, Deadmau5's prolific output reaches millions of monthly listeners, with early hit "Ghosts 'n' Stuff" surpassing 100 million streams and album 4x4=12 earning platinum certification. Deadmau5 has been nominated for six Grammy awards and was named "Best Progressive House Artist" and "Most influential, forward-thinking and relevant person" by prominent online electronic music store Beatport as early as 2008. Zimmerman's prominence has led him to teach an electronic music production course for MasterClass, a platform reserved for luminaries in their respective fields, and in 2019, he realized a decade-long goal of scoring a feature film by composing the soundtrack for Jonas Åkerlund's Netflix film Polar.

These milestones make Deadmau5 an exemplar of modern EDM stardom and an excellent case study, but more than that, his career intersects with multiple trends that have come to define the genre as a whole as it grows in its status as a major music force worldwide.

Published in the anthology “The Evolution of Electronic Dance Music” by Bloomsbury Academic. More details here.

Genesis Inter

Ageing with Electronic Dance Music Culture: An Interview with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Where to begin with the storied achievements of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge? S/he's one of the founders of industrial music via the band Throbbing Gristle, and h/er other band, Psychic TV, made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most albums released in a single year, usurping Michael Jackson. Genesis organized underground arts collective Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and spread its occult themes with a 500-page tome (P-Orridge and Abrahamsson 2010). Then there's applying William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin's cut-up techniques in their extreme pandrogyne project, a melding of bodies with P-Orridge’s late partner Lady Jaye, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars of plastic surgery. Genesis has been the subject of multiple documentaries, including The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (Losier 2011), Bight of the Twin, and the crowdfunded A Message From the Temple.

Published in the Dancecult journal

HTRK

HTRK’s Venus in Leo

Horoscopes infuse us with everyday spirituality. The notion that distant stars might be affecting our terrestrial lives is a bit fanciful, but it’s also fun to indulge the less rational parts of our minds. Sure, these readings may tell us what we want to hear, but at the very least, the universe becomes a bit more connected. Then there are those of us who surrender ourselves to our star charts, seeing them as oracles that provide explanations for life’s successes and fuckups. Venus in Leo, HTRK’s latest collection of midnight-drive songs and the duo’s first new material in four years, is guided by one such astrological maxim.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

Obey Convention

Experimental Music Festival Obey Convention Draws Unconventional Voices

Each year, the Obey Convention, a four-day experimental festival based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, supports some of the best experimental voices in Canada and across the world, presenting both eclectic and confrontational programming. It's not every week you could take in the exciting musicians interviewed here: Debby Friday, exploring feminine aggression through her self-styled blistering Bitchpunk; Korea Town Acid, a classically-trained pianist who creates intricate, eclectic beats; and Layia, combining field recordings, instrumentation, and live vocals in dense ambient collages. Read on to delve into three discussions of the artistic process, vulnerability, authenticity, and more.

Published at Pop Matters

Tommy Four Seven's Veer

Tommy Four Seven’s Veer

Tommy’s sound has always thrived in the context of these bleak cityscapes and claustrophobic clubs, and they inform the sound of Veer as well. But here, Tommy Four Seven delves further into his sound design approach to composition, producing tighter, more daring results than on Primate. His gnarled industrial atmospheres add a chilling thrust to his Berlin sound, acting as warped machine homages that blend Steffi with Franck Vigroux.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

As one of the key originators of industrial music, organizer of the occult art collective Temple ov Psychick Youth, and participant in the ambitious body-altering pandrogyne project, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has embodied the artistic process for over four decades. Observing and critiquing culture from the vantage point of a disruptor, P-Orridge draws from the teachings of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whom s/he counted as friends. Throughout the years, P-Orridge has dabbled in occult practices, pouring h/er thoughts out in a 500-page tome, Thee Psychick Bible.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

NIN Bad Witch

Nine Inch Nails' Bad Witch

Every band lucky enough to sustain itself for decades is often accompanied by a staunch fanbase who perceive their earlier days with greater fondness. To them, the band’s new sound pales in comparison to their favorite albums. But for any collective, a sonic evolution is not only inevitable, but healthy. Enter Nine Inch Nails, who are celebrating their 30-year anniversary with Bad Witch. In 2018, Trent Reznor has grown up, and his music has matured alongside him.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

White Ring

White Ring's Gate of Grief

White Ring members Bryan Kurkimilis and Kendra Malia have adopted the anthropological concept for their latest release, refiguring the phrase to refer to personal struggle. Suffering several issues that continued to hinder music production, Gate of Griefstarted to crystallize after the inclusion of vocals from Adina Viarengo. Following the EP Black Earth That Made Me, the band’s first release in eight years is both a time capsule and an egress from the confinements of the witch house genre to which they’re affixed. 

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

oOoOO and Islamiq Grrrls

Pure Intuition Without Any Limits: An Interview with oOoOO and Islamiq Grrrls

oOoOO has released murky music since 2010 via Tri Angle and Disaro. Recently, he's fashioned an imprint, Nihjgt Feelings, allowing him to release music on his own terms. Islamiq Grrrls has come to music more recently, having shared "Yr Love"in late 2016. Their paths converged while both living in Berlin. oOoOO had taken a hiatus from the music industry, while Islamiq Grrrls was just starting to find her voice. Meeting proved alchemical, and in this interview, they share how productive working together has been for their upcoming album, Faminine Mystique (pronounced "Famine in Mystique".)

Published at Pop Matters

Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois

Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois

One of the aims of collaboration is to engage in dialogue through musical instruments. On Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois, the musicians talk past each other, each carrying on with their own monologues. One can’t fault either artist for playing his sound; it’s just that these aesthetics don’t gel. If Snares eschews emotion, Lanois is indebted to it. If Snares is complexity incarnate, Lanois is distilled modesty. These are strengths that are realized individually but create discord in tandem.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

Alva Noto

Alva Noto's Unieqav

Headliner Alva Noto was slated to perform during the first of two Mutek Mexico City A/Visions programs. These events were more cerebral in nature, pairing innovative visual explorations with electronic sound as a contrast to the dance-oriented weekend. It was the perfect context for Alva Noto to unveil Unieqav, his latest exploration of audiovisual synthesis. Unfortunately, Alva Noto was having technical difficulties.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

Antenes

Antenes

There is a moment during Antenes’s Issue Project Room show, past where the static-y radio and telephone signals have crackled away, wherein the ominous, booming drones have subsided. From her surrounding menagerie of self-made synthesizers, Antenes lifts a rotary dial cannibalized from an ancient phone. She places it near a contact microphone and dials a single number. The dial whirs its slow churn, a technology many of us are familiar with, but few use. The sound emanating from within is alien, chilling, even unholy.  A century after Russolo, Antenes channels technological ghosts conjured from a bygone world.

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

William Basinski

William Basinski at Issue Project Room

Basinski is playing the inaugural event for Issue Project Room’s 2017 fall season and celebrating his new release, A Shadow in Time. He unfurls the 8-second loop of “For David Robert Jones,” a requiem for the performer most know as David Bowie. Basinski’s ceaseless looping becomes ritualistic in order for listeners to appreciate its half-hour degradation. 

Published at Tiny Mix Tapes

Polica

Poliça and s t a r g a z e Get Political on Music for the Long Emergency

Gentle pizzicato strings pluck at the far ends of the stereo field. They cradle a closely-miked bass that captures fingers grazing, caressing its frets. Though the tempo is a glacial 75 beats per minute, the listener is flung right up against the recording studio amps. Singer Channy Leaneagh's voice enters a moment later, accompanied with a little underscore of a sound, whining low in the mix. This inaugural moment forms "Fake Like", introducing the Poliça-Stargaze collaboration Music for the Long Emergency, out 16 February. This interplay, both intimate and intense, is all over the album, an exchange that produces varying levels of success.

Published at Pop Matters

Eluvium

Eluvium's Shuffle Drones

An accomplished veteran of ambient music, Eluvium's work has earned him a distinguished spot on Pitchfork's "50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time". Shuffle Drones is a collection of two dozen orchestral snippets clocking in at roughly 30 seconds each, but its novelty results from how it is meant to be experienced – in shuffle mode.

Published at Pop Matters

Total Jazz

Total Jazz

Since the 1980s, comics veteran Blutch has penned enough drawings to fill nearly two dozen books. Blutch’s latest, Total Jazz, collects nearly a hundred pages of strips centering on the genre’s idiosyncrasies. His sketches show a clear love for the style and its biggest luminaries, but there are darker elements behind many of the jokes.

Published at Spectrum Culture

Morton Subotnick

Music As Studio Art: An Interview With Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick is one of the most significant figures in electronic music history. His seminal Silver Apples of the Moon emerged as the first fully electronic album ever recorded and has since been included in the National Recording Registry within the Library of Congress. This year, Subotnick celebrated its 50th anniversary with a three-day run at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Published at Decoder Magazine

Deradoorian

Deradoorian's Eternal Recurrence

Angel Deradoorian, most commonly associated with Bitte Orca-era Dirty Projectors, has been crafting her solo act for years. Both the 2009 EP Mind Raft and her 2015 full-length album, The Expanding Flower Planet, showcase her affinity for mellow, unobtrusive indie rock. Aside from that, she’s worked with an impressive and broad array of collaborators including Flying Lotus, Matmos, U2, Vampire Weekend, Charlie XCX, the Roots and Prefuse 73, experiences the chanteuse has internalized for her own material. But Eternal Recurrence isn’t another EP of rock ballads; it’s a radical shift in her sound.

Published at Spectrum Culture