Calling all Berliners - Claude Von Stroke and the Martin Brothers (pictured above) will be touching down in Berlin this weekend for a Dirtybird and Mothership label showcase-extravaganza at Watergate. Infact Claude, Christian and Justin have been acclimatizing themselves to Berlin and its wonderful music scene since moving out there at the start of the summer. Whilst Watergate is no stranger to the very best dance music talent - recently voted 3rd best venue in the world, by Resident Advisor, behind London’s Fabric and Berlin’s Berghain - you can guarantee this will be one hell of a party if it is anything like their showcase party at Winter Music a few months ago. Joined by Catz N’ Dogz, Italoboyz, Todd Bodine and P.Toile, not to be missed. Beware of the bird Berlin !
If you liked the NRK’s Coast2Coast mix compilation cover art, you’ll want to check out their matching T-shirt line. The T-shirts are modeled after the Coast2Coast series album covers and each feature the city skylines of Berlin (Ame), Chicago (Ron Trent), London (X-Press 2), and New York (Quentin Harris). The designs are printed on brightly colored Jerzees Ringspun tees, each with the NRK and Coast2Coast logos on the back, and can be viewed and purchased on the NRK website.
New York City clubbers and party-planners alike were hit with some less-than-thrilling news last weekend when the Gay Pride festivities, planned to culminate with a grand finale of revelry, ended in a series of club drug-busts instead.
Police officers have been building the cases for nearly a year, posing as undercover druggies and purchasing small amounts of marijuana, Ecstasy, and Special K inside the clubs, over a period of nearly twelve months.
Thursday, the NYPD legal department gathered enough evidence to sue the owners of Pacha and Marquee, and Friday, the two clubs were shut down. The police have affirmed that the timing was nothing more than coincidental but their sensitivity is nonetheless under attack by many a skeptic from the gay community. The official parade after party was planned to take place at Pacha on Sunday and needed to be relocated at the last moment. Lucky for promoter Stephen Pevner, who had already spent $40,000 on the one party, Capitale on the Bowery graciously agreed to host it, impromptu.
Looks like Pacha will reopen in time for this weekends July 4th parties with Eric Morillo and the NYC debut of Hernan Cattaneo.
Just saw your co-worker come into work accompanied by a giant boom box? It might just be the new line from UK designer Paul Smith. The boom box bag is a fully loaded with a slip, zip pockets, double leather handles, and an adjustable messenger strap. If you like the boombox, you’ll dig Smith’s mixer-print design handbag (pick one up for the girlfriend). Essential kit for studio diehards. Via BoingBoing [www.boingboing.net] »
Omer Yosha, an Interface Design student at the FH Potsdam has designed a new polyphonic MIDI controlling device, he calls the “AirPiano,” that enables DJs to spin without touching a thing. The new technology uses infrared sensors that can be programmed to link to a variety of music applications. Check out the video above, showing the Airpiano controlling Ableton Live.
Here’s how it works: the AirPiano is controlled through a virtual matrix in the air above it. Each key and fader in the virtual matrix is assigned a note or controller, channel, and velocity via the USB-connected AirPiano software. When a key or fader is triggered (by waving one’s hand over the infrared sensors), an LED beneath the AirPiano’s surface illuminates and the note is played. Not only is the AirPiano impressively practical, though. Its sleek, narrow frame makes us think it may very well become an alternative to rolling around a closet-full of equipment.
This technology may indeed have a promising future. “The AirPiano is only one example of an application that could adopt this concept,” says Omer. That’s right, think AirOrchestra. Omer describes the AirPiano as “useful for DJ performance, as a music therapy instrument, or as a toy.”
It can be a difficult thing to keep your tech skills on par with your creative vision. Without the luxury of a studio engineer to bail you out when the going gets technical, most producers can find themselves at one point or another in a stump.
Dan Giove, founder of music production school Dubspot knows that pain. A DJ himself, Giove sought an institution that could further his passion for electronic music with a comprehensive education in studio production. Left frustrated with the shortcomings of the market, Giove decided to take matters into his own hands and start a school of his own.
“I’ve always wanted to make music,” says Giove, “and I just couldn’t find anywhere to go. I stumbled upon an empty office on 14th Street and thought I would build a studio and learn from just being there. The studio turned into classes and the classes turned into DJing and Production school. Before long, there was really nothing else like it in New York.”
Located in the Meatpacking District on the West Side of Manhattan, Dubspot has a mission of building a community of novices, experts, and everywhere in between who share a common love for music and a desire to further educate themselves in the processes of its production. Giove designs its programs to fit the needs of students with all kinds of musical backgrounds, ranging from experienced disc jockeys to those who have never touched a turntable. Classes offered include DJ tutorials, Electronic Music Production intensives, and weekend workshops that teach students how to get started with Ableton, Reason, Logic and more. In Dubspot’s summer youth programming, kids can also learn to mix and scratch and now, with Dubspot’s corporate team-building event service, you and your coworkers can even play DJ for the day. (Who knows, it may open up some new career paths.)
Despite its popularity with students, Dubspot still manages to provide personalized instruction to each and it’s no secret how. Giove works with his team to establish the ideal blend of hands-on experience and instructional supervision at every level. With its top-caliber facilities and diverse, knowledgeable staff, it has just the tools to do so. Instructors represent musical and educational talent across the board including professional DJs, studio engineers, product specialists, instrumentalists, software experts, and on occasion professional guest speakers, all passionate about the creation of music.
At Dubspot, students are the teachers as well, though. “In the classroom environment, students are constantly interacting,” Giove says, “which means they are always sharing ideas. There are students who come to learn hip-hop and then decide to go a completely different direction because of the guy behind them, who is working on techno.”
In addition to receiving expert coaching, students are given the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art music equipment as used today by the industry’s pros. The school boasts an impressive studio and mastering facility, DJ stations and student workstations, in which the latest of hardware and software is made available to all.
Although the school’s facilities look an imposing sight to beginners, its classes are not. Classes are capped at a maximum of six students to make certain each student receives the personal attention they necessitate.
Sound good? It is - we know because we went to the school to check out one of the classes ourselves. We sat in on the Ableton introductory class where instructor Heinrich Zwalen, a veteran of Live since its early versions, took the class through the software’s basic functionality, through to the more advanced topics, like various ways to go about tackling a remix, and the foundations of any production. The class is structured with 20-30 mins of instruction followed by 10 minutes of hands on, allowing the students to put into practice what they have just learned. The students we spoke with at the end of the two day training class (6pm to 9pm, Saturday and Sunday evening) all spoke highly of the class and the education they had just received.
Dubspot has surely conquered some undiscovered territories, to say the least, but Giove sees the company as ever growing: “There’s still so much for us to do here in New York. People come to Dubspot from all around the world - it’s an international community for music-lovers. We just want to get more artists and keep building the community we started.”
With the varied assortment of classes, teachers, and students at Dubspot, everyone interested in music is sure to find their fit. Go experience Dubspot for yourself during their open house sessions.
Check out Kid Sublime’s video to ‘Own World’, his latest release on Dopeness Galore. Toying with the video orientation over a rolling, Kid-original beat, Sublime sits back in his minimalist stage-set and gives us a taste of his ‘own world’ – and hopefully, the rest of his upcoming LP, ‘Rappin’ Blak’.
Environmentalists and dance enthusiasts alike will gape at the ingenuity of the new eco-friendly dance club opening in King’s Cross, London this July. The club is proud to offer organic beverages (in biodegradable cups, of course!), a recyclable water-flushing system, and free admission for those who arrive on foot or bike.
Perhaps its most cutting edge feature, however, is its energy-generating dance floor, powering sixty per cent of the entire building’s energy. The spring-filled dance floor uses piezoelectricity – the production of electrical currents from the crushing of crystal blocks beneath the floor’s surface – to constantly recharge the batteries nearby. Put simply, the more you dance, the more renewable energy you create.
The club’s founder, Andrew Charambous, thinks of his new club as a means to highlight the immediacy of global warming issues to the younger generation. It’s a “sexy and fresh approach,” as he puts it. The club is part of Charambous’s Club4Climate, a larger organization that plans to launch several environmentalist projects in the near future, including an initiative to plant one million trees and a self-sufficient vacation resort venture to be completed in 2010.
Read the full article about Club4Climate at UK’s The Daily Mail [www.dailymail.co.uk] ». The club will be opening on July 10th in Bar Surya on Pentoville Road and is the first of its kind. In their words, “all you have to do is dance to save the world!”
House enthusiasts and fans of the legendary DJ Francois K will have mixed emotions towards his upcoming performance at the closing of Tokyo’s revered Space Lab Yellow this weekend.
Club Yellow, which began in December 1991, soon evolved into an international landmark of electronic music. Founded in Nishi-Abazu by the owners of celebrated Tokyo clubs P.Picasso and Cave, Yellow was originally meant to hold the party “World Connection,” an initiative to bring together talented DJs worldwide under one roof. It did so successfully with an opening night audience of over two thousand, and it quickly became known as the second largest venue of its type in Tokyo. Its name and literal underground location (it resides in the two-story basement of a large building) reflect its experimental approach and substantiate its proclamation that “here, we can try anything.”
Since opening, Yellow has enjoyed a successful sixteen years and has been visited regularly by the finest talent - Frankie Knuckles, Carl Craig, Kerri Chandler, Derrick May, Louie Vega and regulars Laurent Garnier and Francois K - which is why February’s disappointing news of the pending closure came as such a shock. The close is rumored to be due to the building’s demolition but no speak of relocating has been offered and with the demise of Cisco Records’ still fresh in their minds, Tokyo house listeners are taking the hit particularly hard. Although the bittersweet emotions will no doubt remain in the back of their minds, an extravagant closing-party weekend may momentarily help pay an awesome final salute to the club.
Laurent Garnier, will play the penultimate party at Club Yellow. Garnier has played at Yellow several times before, including at its fifteenth anniversary, which he has described in interview as one of his favorite nights ever. According to Garnier, that night, the dance club was “absolutely going mad”. His “Tribute To Yellow” performance of Friday, June 20th may take that phrase to a whole new level.
Francois K then has the honor of playing the last record at the last set in Space Lab Yellow on Saturday, June 21st. Though the night marks the end for Space Lab Yellow, it also marks an exciting return of the club favorite. Francois has played the club often for the past sixteen years and knows its system, room and crowd intimately. Die-hard fans of the club eagerly await his arrival and think it only appropriate to have Francois K be the final performer of Club Yellow, given their long-standing relationship and mutual admiration.
The closing of Space Lab Yellow and its final performance will be sure to go down in dance music history.
