monday moods: the sight below - RA.322

this week's RA podcast from the sight below is a perfect pick for monday moods. the sight below is a seattle-based producer who has been active over the past half-decade or so. perhaps most 'notably,' in 2008 through '10 he put out a fine array of records on ghostly international.

i haven't listened to the sight below in a while, actually, although i recall seeing him play live in 2009 here in chicago at the beloved and defunct little club sonotheque, on a bill with lusine and josh eustis from telefon tel aviv - good times. anyway, 78 minutes of exceedingly pleasant ambient selections for the RA 'cast... go check it out.

anatomy's re-uploaded: 16, 17, 18, 19

good news, everyone: i've found a semi-permanent place, dropbox, to archive some recent anatomy mixes. here's a list so far, most recent mix (hakimonu's wondrous SLEEPDREAMARTIFICIALMODERN) first. you can try downloading them at the dropbox links, and you can still listen to them via the official.fm player (and of course, read introductions and interviews) at each blog link by clicking on the photos or texts below.

hakimonu - SLEEPDREAMARTIFICIALMODERN [anatomy 19]
(download anatomy 19 via dropbox) 

rossella - rain [anatomy 18]
(download anatomy 18 via dropbox)



slydex - live at sub:conscious [anatomy 17]
(download anatomy 17 via dropbox)

tr nch - live at artmospheric festival 2011 [anatomy 16]
(download anatomy 16 via dropbox)

voices from the lake - free track

go listen to and download an ambient track from voices from the lake, the duo of donato dozzy and neel who put out the uncannily good self-titled album (which is more like an hour-long live jam, not that that's a bad thing) earlier this year. "4caldo" is made freely available from those nice folks at prologue music.

at the moment, dozzy and neel are finishing up a VFTL tour across the US... sadly but not unexpectedly, no chicago show this time around. anyway, until material from the album gets a vinyl release, check out a free tune here:

it's over! (re: official.fm)

as i warned a week ago, official.fm has finally closed its doors to some users, which means my page there is unfortunately now dead. fortunately, the embedded players throughout this blog will still be working for a year, so for now you're able to still stream the sumptuous sounds of smilecoldanatomy.

i'm working on another download-friendly archive solution, and at the very least, i'll soon be posting a few alternate links to some of the recent anatomy mixes. until then, another huge thanks! for those who've tuned in over the past 2+ years. the smilecoldanatomy official.fm page counted some 9200 downloads and even more streams before it went under, and it was really nice to see perc's anatomy 12 mix surpass the 1000-download mark as well.

and i know that some of you are waiting impatiently for anatomy 20 and beyond - it's gonna happen but you're just gonna have to keep waiting. cheers!

interviews

a few interviews have been floating around the internets recently, check them out:

KANGDING RAY TALKS WITH RA the raster-noton artist who's recently put out material for modal analysis (i reviewed that EP here) and stroboscopic artefacts, talks in depth about his working processes at RA. i really liked this line - "[Raster-Noton label head] Carsten Nicolai is always telling me to be more direct and not do so many versions. He tends to prefer the early version of tracks—the rough ones." - as i think i agree with carsten nicolai. kangding ray's OR, which was one of my 2011 favorites, sometimes comes across just a bit too clean for my tastes. 

KANGDING RAY TALKS WITH SUBSEKT hey hey, another interview, this one at the subsekt blog, with the man formally known as david letellier. here he talks more about how his music has come out, particularly the SA connection, and mentions an upcoming remix for the strange and mysterious violet poison project... 

PERC PREACHES BALANCE AND MODERATION gotta love perc's honest and bullshit-free approach to things, as seen in this dub moniter interview. "Good music does not inspire me; it is the crap, the fodder, the unimaginative generic bland techno, solely produced to get gigs that inspires me to push forward to try to do something different both as a producer and a label owner." hear hear! also discussed: making sure that your output as an artist (or label) is never too prolific... so it looks like FSG's labour division will be the only long player out on perc trax this year. 

NICK HÖPPNER, SELECTIONS AND TAXES the ostgut ton label manager and panoramabar resident chats with the quietus about his recent panoramabar 04 official mix, and the financial poker game that germany's GEMA artist-tariff organization is currently playing with the country's clubbing culture. (head here, and pull up your google translator if necessary, for more information and a petition that - if you love clubbing - is totally worth your time and signature.)

NICK HÖPPNER, AGAIN another two-fer. this time höppner goes on video with FACT. he gets into more detail about the alleged 'berghain sound' and the GEMA problem.

TOSHIYA KAWASAKI - RARE CHAT WITH RA yes, another RA interview, this time with the founder of japan's excellent mule musiq imprint. kawasaki talks about the early days, aesthetics, and mule musiq's interaction with the scenes and artists in japan and beyond. he also shares some interesting thoughts about how he and the label approach the album format. and with recent singles coming from oskar offermann and christopher rau, methinks that mule musiq is doing pretty well at the moment.

about official.fm

attention, readers and anatomy mix enthusiasts:

it's official (bad pun, i know). according to a recent email and blog post, official.fm will finally make a full switch to their new format, and all media accounts are set to "disappear" on wednesday, july 18th - that means the smilecoldanatomy official.fm page might soon be wiped from the face of the earth.

the statement also reads, "if you have embedded players from the old site, they will keep working for a year" - i understand this to mean that you will still be able to play (stream) the files, which is a good thing, but not necessarily download them. official.fm has proven itself a great resource for smilecoldanatomy over the past few years, one that was well worth the investment, so next week i will try to make the jump to the site's new format to see if it can still work as a host to this blog's mixes. either way: please, if you haven't yet, i highly recommend you download any and all anatomy mixes (or my own mixes) by next tuesday, july 17th.

on tuesday, i'll try to move on with the new official.fm. if that doesn't work, i may move to another hosting site where i will not be able to afford unlimited storage space - which will mean 'archiving' older mixes to make room for new ones. don't worry, the anatomy series is not going away, it's just been in limbo the past few months as i've been considering how to move forward. you can expect another mix or two soon, but until then, why not download a few more mixes while they're still easily accessible?

anyway: THANK YOU, to everyone who's ever listened to or downloaded any of the sounds i've tried to share here, and to each and every artist who decided to join the fun. my official.fm page shows more than 9100 total downloads and 9300 total plays - numbers that i am very proud of. so, go grab a few more mixes if you need to, and stay tuned.

great american techno festival - denver

this just in: the initial lineup for denver's great american techno festival!

Kevin Saunderson (Detroit, MI)
John Tejada (Los Angeles, CA)
Mike Parker (Buffalo, NY)
Rrose (Washington, D.C.)
Drumcell (Los Angeles, CA)
Raiz (Los Angeles, CA)
Deepak Sharma (New York, NY)
Donor (Brooklyn, NY)
Jason Short (Jacksonville, FL)
Tiari (Detroit, MI)
Oonaslim (San Francisco, CA)
Dela (Milwaukee, WI)

it's looking like a very nice combination of talent, all US-sourced. which is always nice to see, especially because there's a bunch of legitimate *techno* whereas lesser events may try to over-hype any number of so-called 'minimal' or 'tech-house' acts. my pick of the bunch so far is mike parker, but i'm also personally keen to see what rrose, john tejada, drumcell and raiz from droid behavior, and of course kevin saunderson can do. you can read what i had to say for RA news here, then check out the festival's homepage and stay updated via facebook. oh, did i mention, i'll be in attendance? it will be my first time in colorado in almost a decade, i think. see you there...

monday moods

 

mondays always hold a unique combination of suspense and intrigue (new music, reports from the weekend's festivities, etc) and this monday is no exception. so, read on, and LISTEN, to what i have to point out on this particular afternoon:

first up, before you do anything else, go to the CLR podcast and download today's new mix from the inestimable mike parker - whom, if i haven't yet made it obvious, is one of my absolute favorite american producers. it's his second CLR mix, and his second mix released recently, after a set for the fabric blog a few weeks ago. both sessions should leave no mind unblown. this one uses a few of my favorites, like the frustratingly hard-to-find aquaplano 000 from donato dozzy and nuel, and cio d'or remixed by shifted on prologue, along with jeff mills' first something in the sky record.

okay, with that pumping out of your speakers, now here's this:

BLOC 2012 SHENANIGANS if you've kept your eyes on any techno news media this weekend, you might have noticed that london's hugely anticipated BLOC 2012 festival - which was to feature an absurd lineup of talent including but not limited to surgeon, monolake, perc, xhin, shackleton and luke vibert - met a calamitous and premature end. RA announced this initial bit of news exclaiming that overcrowding seems to have played a huge role in its early shutting on friday, and cancellation on saturday.

so, the rest of the weekend was filled with rampant speculation and, as expected, claims of (allegedly!) sinister motivations on the part of BLOC's organizers - a pessimistic sentiment that perhaps could have  partially been undone by a more quickly-transmitted apology (at the time of this writing, there's been at least one apology made on their homepage). along the way we got a compelling read from sleeve claiming that in relation to continental europe's thriving scene, the british festival circuit is in distress at the moment. but some heads kept cool, and it seems like saturday in london turned out pretty damn well given the circumstances, with many local promoters and artists originally billed for the festival teaming up for a spontaneous array of parties, mostly free to festival ticketholders, around the city. from my perch here in chicago it looks like a bunch of people pulled together and did really, really good things that hopefully compensated for the BLOC disappointment. anyway, helping to keep things level-headed throughout the weekend were the guys at the quietus; check out a nice essay from that site's rory gibbs that discusses the festival (which had expanded greatly from previous editions), the make-up parties (or nonBLOC parties, or unBLOC, or what have you), and what it all says about our community at large.

NEW MIKA VAINIO ALBUM now, time for more pleasant news, this time from an anatomy favorite, mika vainio (i discussed one of his prior, excellent albums here earlier in the year). magnetite is the name of the finnish sound master's newest album, which is due out in early september according to the wire. vainio recently got involved in a positively out-there collaboration on PAN, a snippet for which can be heard here.

FORWARD STRATEGY GROUP TALKS WITH TEA have a gander at the very random selections al and patrick from FSG cite in this TEA talk. chain reaction and melt-banana are among their oddball picks.

MNML SSGS MX SERIES CLOSES WITH PETER VAN HOESEN some sad news, this. the mnml ssgs blog's excellent mix series has come to an end, with a volley of closing "mx fnl" sets from donato dozzy and svreca among others, finished by a 3+hr recording from peter van hoesen. kudos to mnml ssgs for all the work over the years: the well-informed writing may have been too pretentious to be effective at times, but the mix series was always serious in the best of ways, and a huge inspiration for me here.

moving on to some US and chicago news:

GREAT AMERICAN TECHNO FESTIVAL TO REVEAL LINEUP the second annual edition of the denver festival will be announcing its lineup soon, so look out! the lineup i've seen is short but sweet, and i should be in attendance...

PATRICE SCOTT AND MORGAN GEIST HEAD TO CHICAGO this week, at our beloved smart bar: detroit selector and sistrum recordings boss patrice scott will guest at rhythmatic this wednesday (this mix of his has been my recent jam), and morgan geist of metro area hits the decks on friday with olin.

and rounding out the day's goodies, there's two more queue-worthy mixes to be had: szare's set for little white earbuds (notably, they're the first to submit a second mix to the LWE podcast)... and, if it's your thing, james zabiela's RA.319.

oh, and i also posted the tracklist for my weirdo/ambient set test1108b (you can also just scroll down)... so check that too. and that's it - take it or leave it!

friday funk

fresh mixes is the theme for today's edition of friday funk: aside from rrose's very nice RA podcast, there's been some excellent sets of sounds put out across the internets this week.

claro intelecto - FACT mix 336 an excellent accompaniment to his recently released LP reform club - which is surely one of the better 'techno' albums out so far this year. claro intelecto (formally known as mark stewart, from the UK) has been making tracks for about a decade, but he seems to be in particularly fine form right now. so, perfect timing for a unique mix for FACT made up of only his own productions; expect sensually slow-burning stuff on this one.

luke slater - CLR podcast 175 (read about it here) taken from luke slater's set at fabric in london last month, it's clear that he has the long game in mind for this one. it's two hours long, and takes a bit of time to get moving, but is totally worth the patience. slater's such a great dj with his own dynamic and almost quirky mixing syle. along the way there's a few developer tracks, a kinky norman nodge remix in the middle, and of course a fair amount of slater and planetary assault systems material.... hell yeah.

skirt - URB exclusive mix i don't think this one is as good as the blinder of a set she recorded just a wee bit ago (probably because that one had a grip of my recent favorite tracks), but as usual skirt has scary-good track selection. extra points for tossing in svreca's excellent "narratif," along with skirt's own "collider" HG remix from the frozen border compilation minutes in ice.

and that's just about all for now. time for my friday to begin with a visit to the beach, probably followed by some partying at smart bar. moodymann and the advent are headlining tonight and tomorrow, respectively. and, my buddy and local dj (and mind behind the currently in-limbo tektite recordings) merrick brown, who incidentally just cooked up a diverse set of electro and techno for the club, is on the bill tomorrow as well.

later this weekend i may do a ustream set at some point; if you haven't noticed via other anatomy social media, i occasionally broadcast sets here. anyway, coming soon: some of my favorite music from the first half of 2012.

monday moods: RA.318 - rrose

THIS is what you should be listening to today.

and if you need anything else to listen to when you're done with that one, this would be a good choice.