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!