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All posts for the month April, 2016
Yes, 420… and Bicycle Day, the day before, when Albert Hoffman (the man who synthesized LSD-25) took LSD for the first time and rode his bike and had a crazy time, not realizing what the effects of the chemical were..
Hmm.. Must’ve been a crazy experience. I can’t imagine that..
So anywho, about the 420, happy holidays!
In case you missed it somehow, click that paragraph above that legal LSD link. AND NO, it’s not “FAKE” LSD; there are various derivatives and varieties of lysergamides, and lsd especially, and this is a new one. It will probably be illegal soon when it inevitably get’s popular… So you got the underground scoop..
The ‘Golden Age’ OF the Golden Age of Rave Continues with Another Awesome Rave Mixtape Website… Yea, clever title, eh? …no??? Well.. Well, I thought so! Ah well, you keep your opinion, I’ll keep making shitty puns.. ;)
Point is, I just found a site that’s been around for more than a miiiinute (R.I.P. MARTEZ) and this site has a category of years to choose from, genres to choose from, and speaking of Martez a second ago, I gaurantee he would love this site. He was a friend of mine was ALL about the rave scene, pre-EDM era. He loved happy hardcore, especially. Anyway, I don’t have a 40 to spill a bit in his honor (no sarcasm intended) so here’s this site, instead.
mixtapes.demodulated.com/ (plus there’s lots of other mixtape sites down the page near the bottom…)
There are other sites. And if anyone wants to send me any, I’ll do my best post em.
The first line on the site was something I felt like I just had to post, I think it shows the dude’s sincerity in running a blog like this. And I have no problem sending love to fellow electronic-heads:
What is a mixtape? It’s an hour or so of a person’s life recorded for posterity.
It’s so fucking true.
I’m just gonna’ fucking quote the rest of the page. Fuck it, you can feel the dude’s love of old school rave and the extreme PLUR-mentality. He’s doing his best, IMO, to keep that PLUR ALIVE! We need that, so much, right now…
What is mixtape culture? Simply put, mixtape culture is a subset of people who enjoy compiling the things they love into a portable package and giving it away freely, or selling it cheaply for promotional purposes. Before the internet became widespread mixtapes were given to friends who made copies for friends who made copies of the copies. Quality degraded with every iteration but the love of the music and sharing was enough for this culture to flourish.
As practical and wonderful as the internet has become, the ease of self-publication has nearly caused the extinction of the face-to-face mixtape hand-off. This is both a blessing and a curse because although the internet enables proliferation on a mass scale, it forgoes the simple joy of placing something important into the hands of a friend.
It is in this spirit that I’ve decided to make much of my techno mixtape collection freely available. I hope you will download and enjoy many mixes, and invite your friends to do the same.
The site also introduced me to a phrase I’d never heard before: Kopimi…
“kopimi (copyme), symbol showing that you want to be copied.” Apparently, there are a lot of different variations, and you can make your own. That’s probably half the fun! Here are a few:
ok… this one doesn’t count… i just wanted to put in some pill photos… something just strikes me as pretty.
Ook, ok, that last one is just some ecstacy… It caught my eye when I was looking on my hard drive for the images I just downloaded… It’s just a photo… Anyway , if you click on the photos, you go straight to the copy-me-page. Hmm. I learned a new concept today. Should I kill that information with a bit of smoking? Hmm… A tough question… Well.. I’ll wait till later tonight to decide (again, I mentioned Martez earlier, and I KNOW what his answer what be: “DO IT UP, DUUUUUDE!”) Ahh, he really was rave-incarnate.
….
So is this it, StrangeFlow? Is this all you got? …
Is THIS ALL I GOT?? FFS! Thousands of hours of rave and an introduction to a new interesting possibly-anarchistic-internet-sharing-symbol? That’s not enough??!!
..OK. Fine! Fucking fine! Here’s a bunch of other mixtape sites for ya. (I also got a mixtape page up in the tabs section, go to the music and then click on mixtapes… I got that shit, too.. But I’m not just trying to hype myself, there’s LOTS of love to go around, so here are fucking 100s of thousands of hours of rave. This should keep you good for a miiiiinute:
http://www.torontoravemixtapearchive.com/links.html
http://torontojungletapes.blogspot.com/
http://deepinsidetheoldskool.blogspot.com/
http://www.dnb365.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.infinitesonicoutput.com/category/heavy-metal/
http://www.hardscore.com/?cat=250
(This was Dr. Dre’s to-do list for about a decade. I don’t know how his hands got orange but uh…. well, it’s a mad world, isn’t it?
Fuck off, Dre.
Daft Punk? They’re so insanely brilliant, it takes them 6 years to make an album… Maybe they had to make everything perfect. THAT’S AN ILLUSION. That’s the illusion of professionalism… No. No, making music wasn’t a priority for them. Perhaps they were touring. Fair enough. That’s not lazy. I’m not saying touring is lazy. I’m saying sitting on your ass collecting a check while you act like you’re constantly reworking your tracks and making them perfect (ahem, Dre, AHEM)… Just get that shit done. Have other people give you input. Your tracks are far from perfect, anyway. What’s the last Dre hit? …. I … I couldn’t say… I remember that clowny one with Eminem and 50, lyrics like, “So crack a bottle, something something something.. something something lotto…” .. That one was alright. I’d say mostly cuz of Em and 50. Actually, I really like 50 on that one. He had a a surprisingly exceptional vocal range. I enjoyed it. Funky shit.
BTW, if you’re a new artist practicing to get started, this article is NOT about you. I want to clarify that.
But come on now… As far as finishing albums is concerned……. If Dre hadn’t said “I don’t smoke weed, it gives you brain damage, I’d accuse him of just being high…” (though I will give him IMMENSE credit for helping the movement to make weed cooler in the early 90s than in the 80s… Snoop, Dre, and a host of other rappers repped weed and strayed from crack, which was NOBLE AS FUCK, and I’ll give him ample credit for that. No sarcasm there, I’m very serious). As far as taking ten years? I know he’s got other projects, but ten years? I released a nearly-50 track album a month or so ago, took almost a year. Granted, some of the tracks were short, but the whole thing was 2 hours. I’d say it was decent. In fact, I’d say it was great :) but I didn’t even work on it everyday. In fact, there would be weeks where I’d ignore the album, out of laziness or busyness or whatever… But I still got it done… Now, you might say – “Ok, Will, but is it as good as a Dre album?”
FUCK YES! Dre’s beat’s are made of plastic. His headphones are a joke. An overpriced joke. Dr Dre is a joke.
Don’t get me started on that shitty band came along right before Nirvana helped kill hair metal… uh… what was it? OOOOH – Guns ‘n’ Roses. 20 years. Literally 20 years. Rock went through a number of phases since that last GnR album. You coked-out fuckbags (not YOU, I’m referring to GnR, lol).
I like that term…. “Coked-out fuckbags.” I’m gonna use that. Yeaaaa, coke makes you speedy, helps you get shit done? Well uh… two full decades on Chinese Democracy isn’t exactly efficient. And the Chinese Democracy Movement of 20 years ago was HUGE – and I know that in small / medium underground pockets here and there, China is slowly gaining true democracy… But, I feel like that’s not really the point. The point is, that douche singer from GnR, Axil Rose (stupid name) is just a big coked-out fuckbag who throws too many tantrums and is behind the curve and can’t catch up. Sure, he could stick to his roots, but that album was sorta like an older band trying and failing to get into the new style, because they never took the time to try to understand, “the new style,” which is.. well.. arrogant, to say the least. Also, lazy.
One might say, “Maybe making music isn’t a priority for them anymore…” Ok, Guns and Roses were comited to an album for two decades. That counts as SOME kind of priority. Dre made tracks, allegedly (?) deleted some of them, started over, over and over… (Well, that’s the story I heard, anyway…)
That’s not removing a priority. I don’t expect Sir Mix a Lot to drop an EP next month.. LOL.
Who else is there? Well, there’s Eminem. He had his pill addiction he was dealing with and he basically got into a funk (not a good funk) and disappeared for years… It was unfortunate, because I enjoyed a lot of his stuff. I enjoy some of his newer stuff, too. What was it, anyway? Valium.
Wow. This was an angry post. Hmm… And I took that chill-pill, too. Ah well. I know I’m right. And you know I have at least a few good points in here.
I’m sure there are TONS of other lazy ass bands. Feel free to post in the comments.
PEACE, Y’ALL!
HAPPY MIXIN’!
MERRY CHRISTMAS! I KNOW IT’S APRIL… FUCK IT, MERRY CHRISTMAS ANYWAY!
-StrangeFlow
CLICK ABOVE TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE SITE WITH THE FULL SAMPLES, or get some info, here:
Just came out with this one… New Orleans bounce samples.. The problem? Up until now, most bounce songs are based on copyrighted beats… So… If you wanna sell your track(s) (or if a mainstream bounce musician – typically from Louisiana or somewhere geographically close, already sold their tracks) – it’s a lot of money, depending on a lot of different factors involving copyright law. And I’m not the first to say it, and I KNOW I won’t be the last, but let me just make it clear: IMO, copyright law is a real bitch. Sure, an artist wants to get paid, but sampling something from fifty years ago SHOULD be acceptable. It’s usually not. Sampling something from 1991? 1992? 1993? Very illegal. Unless you clear the samples – but that’s half the problem – there are different TIERS of payment depending on how many units you want to sell. What the fuck. Can’t it just be, “If you’re getting rich, making millions, pay up, if not, well, give us 5%, or something,” ???
Well.. it’s not, unfortunately. And until Disney collapses (which won’t happen – and ESPECIALLY will never happen since they own Star Wars now) we’re going to have to deal with copyright. I’m ok with an artist making money, but some copyright laws are just fucking stupid… You gotta pay royalties on a song until 70 years AFTER the artist dies? Seriously? CALL ME CRAZY but that shit’s stupid. You’re great grand kids live off your music? Awww… fuck it. At least on bandcamp you can get away with pretty much anything.. Well, almost, unless you get snitched on, I suppose. (SHHH! Let’s keep it that way! It’s one of the last bastions! Especially since soundcloud is getting fucky.)
If you want any kind of info, go to Wikipedia and look up copyright law… then look up copyright law in context of clearing samples from your music… It varies from country to country with copyright law, making it REALLLLLLY ridculous…
Why am I ranting about all this shit??? Here’s why – New Orelans bounce samples. NOW, FREE OF COPYRIGHT. That’s fucking right. Sample to your heart’s fucking delight. Make them bounce tracks!!! Make sissy bounce! Make hardcore footwork bounce! Make death-bounce! …. (…..”death bounce” is not a real genre… but… hmm… it COULD be… anyone here makes a “death bounce song, I promise to post it… unless it’s snuff, or something..)
Anyway, enough of my bullshit rant about legal shit, here’s that preview I promised:
(And yes, the visuals are slightly pixelated.. the beats and loops? golden…and on sale)
ALSO: if you liked that, or are curious about it, there’s a sale on this bounce pack. I predicted bounce and twerkin’ trax would blow up years ago, and it turns out, I was right. I kept my ear to the streets better than DRE (who kept his ears to his interns, who likely “discovered,” Snoop and Eminem… But anyway. This isn’t about my rant about Dr. Dre being a fake-ass “perfectionist,” that takes 1,000 years to produce a dozen or whatever tracks… this is ABOUT THAT BOUNCE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s some info on the FULL pack. Samples ALL royalty-free and golden. Longer loops, too. 100-200 bpm, and 19 seconds long, WAV format, perfectly and seemlessly loopable..
SEEEECREEEET DISCOUNT: Type StrangeFlow50 in the “voucher” tab on the sell page to get a fucking LARRRRGE discount. Probably too large, honestly… And if it doesn’t work… Take out the caps… Maybe it’s “Strangflow50” or just “strangeflow50” … But… it should work.
Oh, I should probably give you the link to get them too, eh? Here: https://sellfy.com/p/NYu7/
Anyway! There y’all go!
A lot of good samples in that pack. I don’t wanna toot my own horn but… uh.. *toot* …
Again, that link for the samples in full : Heeere!
Peace
Happy mixin’ !!!!
Yea, earworms… They get stuck in your head an you need a doctor to remove them… Corporate pop music designs music this way, nowadays.. and it has for years, actually. But it’s not all the big billion-dollar businesses, it also happens on a folk-music level as well…
(NOTE: when I say ‘folk music,’ I refer to any music that organically came up on it’s own… from rap to footwork to acid house to chopped ‘n’ screwed…)
So, it’s not as if I’m recommending that you avoid music repetition… (why would you do that anyway?) Afterall, music comes from the heart…NO – literally... the beat is a reflection of the pulsating rhythm of our actual, physical heart, which gives us life. We’re attracted to it on a very primal level… We’re attracted to it as animals…
SO! Juke and footwork… What’s the deal here?? Well, footwork is not just an ignorable style of music, nay! It’s the evolutionary and logical result of years of earworm pop songs attacking the part of your brain responsible for retaining sounds. I think a lot of loopy electronic music is. Big Beat (a sub-style of house ((that’s due for a comeback soon, I’m predicting NOW)) really hit it with it’s overly-repetitive housey flair. Juke and footwork though? Faster, the melodies are often (but not always) simpler (IMO) and the style is faster so there are more loops. It’s scientifically modified to get stuck in your head. You think it’s just art? You think it’s just for fun? Well… Both of those statements are true – but there’s also a real science to it.. check this out:
Or something a bit slower but with the same idea (overly-looped….. and when I say “overly,” I don’t mean that as a bad thing, I’m just explaining it)
And it goes back over a decade… So, I guess I might as well mention a Fatboy Sim track. it’s pure loops:
And….. GOING BACK EVEN FURTHER:
There was an older track (and not the only one like it, but a great example.. It’s fast, similiar to footwork/juke levels… Surfin Bird….
So… There’s a good example from the 1960s by the Trashmen… And, it’s worth noting: these are all songs with VOCAL loops. When disco and then house and then techno and then jungle came out (spanning the 70s to the 90s right there in that sentence) there was extreme emphasis on repetition, and not necessarily vocal repetition. Sometimes there would be looped vocals, sure. Wy not? Vocals add a lot to a song. But with instrumental (or mostly-instrumental) tracks, you might not get that VOCAL repetition, but you get the loops regardless…
And, with the same sounds being used in multiple songs (as in, the 808 or 909 being used in 10 million songs (not to mention the Amen loop, which spans EVERY genre worth it’s salt) people get very accustomed or acclimated to these sounds. They sound familiar, and therefore comforting… And, although you don’t want to play the same exact song everyday, non-stop, forever; with a variety of different variations, you hear some of those same sounds, but you don’t always realize what’s happening (as far as the earworm principle)…. It’s my theory behind why rap music had a hard time coming up in popularity…. But before we dive into that, here’s a good example of the rave repetition I was talking about:
LTJ BUKEM !!!!!!!
So, on to hip hop….
Now, despite facing more obstacles than any other musical style in history, rap music DID and DOES (usually) have a repetitive beat, but it’s harder for some folks when there’s no easy refrain, no chorus, no easy-hook – the vocals are constantly changing (and that’s certainly not true for every rap track) but it’s something that threw some people off. Eventually, for a number of reasons, people got used to it. But you look at a track like the one below, and the “refrain,” is so loose in the definition of a refrain, it’s just one sentence before the verse carries on. Luckily, the track had a lot going for it – it was groundbreaking, it DID have a prominent instrumental loop (extremely prominent) so here’s that track:
So there’s barely any vocal repetition, just similar themes throughout the song… And in between verses there ARE sounds that get repeated… buuuuut… it’s a pretty long ways from the average pop song of the day. Nowadays, rap and r&b have seemed to come together more and more (its a trend that happens about as often as the US has a recession… about once a decade, more or less)….. But my point is, rap and modern US corporate-radio-BS-r&b have refrains and instrumental repetition – and rap latched onto that. We really need another Wu-Tang Clan to bring it back, in my opinion.
But fear not. Trends come and go, and everything in this crazy universe is cyclical; there will be a raw straight-up hip hop movement… And I know there are folks who will point out examples, but I’m talking mainstream radio-play… Anyway, I suppose that’s all I have to say for now..
Again, repetition is a reflection of what it means to be alive and have a ticking heart beat. No need not to embrace it. My hope is that you just find the GOOD songs with repetition ;)
Peace! Happy mixin’
-Will
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