On Tuesday night, I got to see the lovely Ellie Goulding and the energetic Bag Raiders and take pictures of both of them. I’d been a fan of Bag Raiders, but their music just translated so perfectly to the live setting that I’m now 10x more of a fan than I was before. And Ellie. Oh, Ellie. Don’t know what else to say about her, except that she’s all around great, seems like one of the nicest people ever and has got a great set of gams. Whoever put this double bill together was on the money. You’ll notice the pictures below are only of Ellie, and that’s because I’m a bad photographer and came home to find all of my Bag Raiders pics in a haze of blur. Anyway, enjoy the survivors.
Our good friend Monsieur Adi has been pretty busy these last few weeks with finishing up his newest EP and remixes galore. His latest is this great remix of The Knocks’ “Dancing With The DJ”, a tune we first posted a few weeks back and are rather fond of. And just as to be expected with Adi, he takes the song and makes it larger than life with his unique combination of electronic melodies overlaid with perfectly contrasting strings that give all of his remixes such a lush and full sound. The 7-minute rework is definitely not lacking in the huge wall of sound department, even though the original version of the track was pretty huge to begin with. We’re looking forward to hearing one or two more remixes from Adi before the year is out, and we especially can’t wait to hear his newest EP which we think/hope should be all up in our ears some time in the very early parts of 2011. In case you missed it before, you can check out Monsieur Adi’s remix of “Make It Better” right over here.
Sometimes a song just jumps out at me and screams, “Hey! I belong on your site, because I’m a lot of the things that you like and that your readers have come to expect!” In this case, it was “Dancing With The DJ” by The Knocks, whom you may remember from this Monsieur Adi remix of “Make It Better” that I posted earlier this summer (FYI, if you are a fan of Monsieur Adi, keep your eyes peeled, because there just might be something super awesome coming your way soon, we hope we hope). Well, way back then, we said almost nothing about the band itself, mostly because we were in the middle of our incredible yearly week up north with tons of friends at a sick cottage that couldn’t even be called that, and I was trying to finish up posts as fast as I could so I could meet the rest of the crew at the beach for fun in the sun. But the LES duo of Ben “DJ B-Roc” Ruttner and James “JPatt” Patterson, whose name comes from their humble beginnings in their apartment with the neighbors, you guessed it, knocking on doors and walls to get them to shut the F up. Luckily they’ve since moved on and are know producing some pretty funky jams like this one.
Another month in the books for us, and another great month it was. A few great shows by Foals and Klaxons closed out the month and got me warmed up for the live music madness that is to come in October and into November. Here are your favorite tunes from the past month. This month, Anoraak took the top spot on the non-existent charts with his Neon Indian remix, and with good reason. Good work on listening to good songs.
It’s been a long time coming, far too long in fact (hey, I’m a busy guy, I can only do so much), but last night I finally gave a listen to the Fear of Tigers album Cossus Snufsigalonica after first hearing “The Adventures of Pippi Longstrum” so many moons ago. And alls I can say is that Mr. Benajmin Berry really knows what’s up. I’m going to have to try to work out a way that we can go to some club on EuroSpringBreak2011 and get the DJ to play the entire larger-than-life album from front to back. If the French Touch thing isn’t for you, however, (which would be a shame) then make sure to check out the slowed down but always excellent Monsieur Adi remix. Because the only thing better than one great producer is two great producers. And to all of you DJs out there, if you aren’t currently dropping “I Can Make the Pain Disappear” into your sets, you should probably consider it for some instant dance crowd love.
Even though it’s only been a few weeks since we’ve heard something from Monsieur Adi, it feels like a lot longer, but maybe that’s just because we are usually so smitten by anything he puts together. Lucky for us, he’s recently remixed “Make it Better”, the newest single from The Knocks, and it stays true to his form in all of the best ways. The original version is pretty fun with it’s whistled melody throughout the tune (which work great with the high pitched vocals), but as he always does, Monsieur Adi takes it to another level, one that, thanks to his gratuitous but never overdone use of great synth lines, is a little deeper, but one that always remains bright.
As you hopefully recall, last month, we put together our first ever mixtape entitled A Blogwave Summer which was curated by 20 of our favorite music blogs, each contributing a track of their own and mixed together by none other than myself. Well, I had so much fun putting that together that I decided to do it again with a bunch of tracks of my choosing. There wasn’t really a theme at the onset, it was just a lot of mostly high energy (and, for the most part, extremely bright) tracks that I love, most of which I hadn’t heard until I started this site last May. When I gave it a listen this past weekend on a 4-hour solo drive up to Traverse City, I decided it made pretty great driving music, especially on a sunny day, and thus, Summer Drive was born.
I could have also very well called this mix dailybeatz 101, because for someone who doesn’t visit the site regularly, it’s a fantastic representation of exactly the type of music that we love here. In fact, most of these songs have been posted on this site at one point or another, so you may have heard many of them here already, but I must say there’s something to be said for the way that juxtaposition can really change the feel of a song.
Special thanks to CrystalSister whose picture I used for the mixtape artwork.
Just like last time, you can right click/save as the zip file below which includes the mix split into individual tracks as well as front and back covers. Or, you can download the full mix from the soundcloud player below (this is what I recommend as you are sure not to encounter any split second gaps between tracks which really hurt the flow) and you can save the front and back artwork from this post. Either way, I really hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and please please PLEASE let me know what you think. I apologize for naming every mixtape “summer” something, but it’s what I love, and what the music sounds like for me. Check out the track list below.
Or listen and download one continuous file from the Soundcloud player below (what I recommend) by clicking on the down arrow on the right side of the player.
Here’s a sample track from the mix that’s become one of my favorites the last few days. It’s the beautiful, flowing “We Ah Wi” by Javelin, which sounds like a breezy summer afternoon.
If you read this site with any regularity, you are probably already aware that Monsieur Adi is among my favorite producers on the scene right now. Every song he remixes just becomes larger than life, but with his generous but appropriate use of strings and synth, he keeps his remixes warm as well. And he makes sure to always highlight the quiet and subdued parts of the songs he remixes as well, which leads to a huge contrast and happy faces all around. Even though this remix was done late last summer, I never heard it until just now, and it might just be among my favorites that he’s done. The track is “Los Feeling” by UK outfitVisitor, a duo who collaborates via the interebs. They are getting set to release “Los Feeling” as their debut single on June 21. In addition to the fantastic Adi remix below, we’re also bringing you “Love”, a b-side on the single, for your listening pleasure.
Have I mentioned that Monsieur Adi is one of my favorite producers out there right now?
