In Unison: Porter Robinson

In case you missed it, Porter Robinson is everywhere. The 19 year old Electro DJ blew up recently and is now scheduled to open for none other than Tiesto at his College Invasion Tour. Similarly to how Skrillex was discovered and subsequently signed by Deadmau5, Skrillex has taken young Porter under his wing.
                                                    Via Facebook:

Well it appears that partnership is already paying dividends as Porter's new album spitfire was released several weeks ago and debuted at #1 on the Beatport Top Ten (pretty solid protege choice for Skril if you ask me).

The title track is decent, and you can definitely hear the Skrillex influences. Where the album really shines is with its 2nd track: Unison. The fact that Unison has two remixes included on the album should be a clue that this is where to start listening. The original track begins pretty trancy and then hardens out with classic Porter about 2 minutes in, while the "Knife Party" remix starts out with calm melodies, before absolutely running you over with an amazing dubstep freight-train at 1:05. Look for a lot more out of Robinson, as he's not going away anytime soon. As far as other tracks to check out, his remix of Avicii's Bromance is incredible, and the fact that he and Avicii are only 19 & 23 years old seriously makes my head hurt.
Porter Robinson - Unison by Porter Robinson
 
And the Skrillex..er..Knife Party Remix..

Porter Robinson - Unison (Knife Party Remix) by Porter Robinson

Other Porter Robinson Tracks/Remixes to Check out:

TGIF = DANCE

Not necessarily new, but some of my favorite extremely danceable tracks to get ready for the weekend.

If you have a sick beat why not just essentially loop it for about five minutes instead of fucking with it too much:


I dare you to try and sit still throughout this track (Bag Raiders’ own remix of this song is pretty good stuff too, and we should note they’re also incredibly fun to see live):

Whatever he pumped his kicks up with, I want some

Ridiculous dance moves I can't even describe to Butch Clancy's dubstep remix of Foster the People's "Pumped up Kicks", which is an awesome track in and of itself. THIS is how you dance to dubstep:

At a Glance- A State of Trance #526

Weekly recap of our favorite tracks from Armin Van Buuren's ASOT

VM's Track of the week

Headstrong feat. Shelley Harland - Helpless (Aurosonic Progressive Remix) by ViciousManatee
Angelic Vocals? Check. Piano? Check. Tantalizing build-up? Check. Speaking of which, you should probably sit down for this one because the beat doesn't drop til nearly 4:45, but trust me it's worth it.


Other Notables:

Rafael Frost - Smash by ViciousManatee
Final track of the night from the live set by Cosmic Gate. Starts off abrasively hard (as you'd expect from the show closer), but cools down about the 2:05 mark. Could see this track really taking off.


Gareth Emery & Ben Gold - Flash by ViciousManatee
Gareth Emery's tracks have a tendency to grow on you the more you listen to them. If you like this track you owe it to yourself to check out Sanctuary, which came in 2nd place on ASOT's top tracks of 2010.

Talk about a Sunday Funday

I went and saw Avicii this past Sunday at Ruby Skye in San Francisco, which is always a great venue at which to see your favorite artist:
This was actually my first time seeing the 23-year old Swede live, though he’s been one of my favorite DJ/producers since blowing up in the past year or so. He really has his own unique and identifiable style, and the uplifting and feel-good sound of most of his tracks makes for unbeatable party music (Sunday night was no exception). Unfortunately none of the videos I took turned out very well, but here are what I consider the Avicii essentials (in no particular order) Appropriately titled “Sunshine”, this is his latest single and what he opened with at the show. Although it’s a collaboration with Guetta (and on his new album), I think it’s fairly obvious Avicii had a petty significant influence in the song: Just…awesome: This video is pretty incredible; make sure you watch until the very end (Avicii also goes by Tim Berg, btw): A remix of Armin’s “Drowning”, this was far and away my favorite track for a while and still gets a lot of rotation:

The earlier instrumental version of this song was called “Penguin”, and although I’m not always a fan of needlessly adding vocals to great instrumental songs (perhaps best exemplified by Guetta’s “Little Bad Girl”), I think they work pretty well here: I don’t think Avicii will be going anywhere anytime soon, and I’d definitely add him to your list of must-see shows if you haven’t had the opportunity yet (though preferably on a night when you don’t have to wake up early for work the next day).

Look & Listen

a track, a photo and a quote.

DJ Feel, Matisse, & Sadko - A Day To Remember by ViciousManatee

 

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Photo courtesy of the consistently amazing on-display.tumbler.com
Quote by Philip K. Dick. Chosen at random from http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 -

New Deadmau5 Material

So if you’ve seen Deadmau5 live lately (I recently saw him at SF’s Outside Lands) you’ve probably noticed a lot of new material in his set. While it sucks that he has to make room for new material by not playing some older classics (I’ve seen him four times in the past year and he only played “Strobe”, the song that got me into Deadmau5, once), he has been dropping some pretty sick new tracks. My favorite of which thus far is “Professional Griefers” (also known as Deer Bus), which he often mixes with Daft Punk’s "Harder Better Faster Stronger" live. The light show for this song is particularly awesome as well, which is saying something for the Mau5. Can’t wait until he inevitably puts all this stuff on a new album. Enjoy!

American DJs S̶u̶c̶k Rock.

A couple years back, as a few friends and I were relaxing and discussing the general awesomeness of the latest trance track we were listening to, someone said it:

"You know, American DJ's just aren't very good"

Quickly the room was filled with argument. "Oh right! What about Sugar Hill Gang & Run DMC, yeah probably terrible DJ's..". and "Hey, Prodigy was pretty good, right?" or "Wasn't Fatboy Slim from the US?" (British actually).

Not quite..

As I sat back and thought it over in my mind I realized it was something I had already known, but never really thought about all that much. Somehow Americans, the inventors of the turntable, the originators of Techno(Detroit) and House(Chicago), had been beaten at their own game. While European DJ's were selling out arenas, cities, entire islands, and generally taking their respective nations by storm, the American dance music scene paled in comparison.

Recovery Mode

Fresh off a trip to Las Vegas, here's three tracks that epitomize the experience.

No Beef - For the music video (despite making me again question why it is that Steve Aoki is famous...)
Drink to Get Drunk - Does this really need an explanation?
Alarma - For the pounding headache I still have a week later.









Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike Vs. Promise Land -Alarma

Now THAT is what I call a mashup

"Pop Culture" is the latest single from 17-year-old Frenchie Madeon (the fact that he's only 17 makes me seriously reevaluate what I've done with my life at 25), who blew up earlier this year after his absolutely sick remix of Deadmau5's "Raise your Weapon". It's actually a mashup of 39 songs (you can see all 39 in the YouTube link) and it's fun to try to listen for all the songs you know throughout.

It's nice to see a DJ/producer really "performing" as opposed to just pressing play on an iTunes playlist like you sometimes see, complete with a solo on the Launchpad (the awesome controller he's using) and all.

Also, here's a fucking amazing dance video to the track which I think really captures the spirit of the song. Look for about 80% of these moves coming to a San Francisco or Seattle dance floor near you.