Back From Fusion 2013
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- Published on Thursday, 04 July 2013 13:57
Throught the rabbit hole
I'm back after my 6th year at Fusion Festival.
The maddest, coolest most beautiful place on earth. A place where Shakesphear's "all the worlds a stage and all the men and all the women merely players" really makes sense. It's more of a huge absurd theatre than a festival. A place where sights, sounds and experiences all melt together.
A total Alice in Wonderland experience (whether or not you're on shrooms), as exemplified by this years deco on the Tanzwiese stage, with huge lamps and an absurd clock.
Obvoiusly, these things can't be caught by camera or video, so I won't try to. What I'll do is to give a couple of the more odd musical recommendations I found (and show this one picture of huge dragon-kites that were flying around amongst each other at night, changing colors and being mind blowing).
Now, Fusion is mainly electronic. But house and techno recommendations are kind of crappy IMO. This guy played a great set and that guy was cool live. But it's all sort of the same, and everybody's preference is a little bit different. So these recommendations are non-house/techno.
Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate
We came down to the festival Wednesday. It doesn't start until Thursday, but coming down early, sinking in the sights, feeling the vibe and starting out early the next day is always a good idea.
Walking around, one stage was already going with a SoCal type Sublime hiphop reggae sound with a madman rocking a 21-string African harp like Jimi. Mental!
Huge surprise for an evening where nothing was expected to happen. After that we came across a huge fire organ. Yes. A fire organ. People playing with fire. Litterally. Playing music with fire. It was awesome. We were in awe.
Puppetmastaz
I saw these guys a couple of years back. The strangest, coolest thing ever.
Basically a hiphop puppet show. Which sounds really lame. But aren't the coolest things those which sound really lame, and then aren't because it gets pulled off?
The puppets are funny as hell, the rapping is mind blowingly good (especially the raggamuffin rabbit), the music is funky ... the show is amazing.
When I first saw them, it was just the crew of puppets. Apparently though, they have taken a break, and in this new show, R2D2, Yoda and much more shows up. Plus the human rappers (aka the Puppetmastaz From The Future) make an appearance on stage. All very cool.
Probally not something you want to listen to at home, but if you ever get a chance to catch the show: DO IT!
Wintergatan
This was almost TOO magically emotional to run into at the end of a long and hard festival full of loud dance music.
Suddenly, my girlfriend and I were sitting in a little magic forrest by the Neuland stage with these melodic strange instrumental kind of sweet sweedes. Huge tallent. Strange instruments and stranger chord structures. They're playing on Roskilde Festival Sunday I hear. Tip!
Wintergatan translates to the winter street and is the Swedish way of saying milky way. Nice!
Of course, there was loads of house and techno. But you probally don't need me to tell you Matthew Jonson vs Minilogue, Aril Brikha, Troy Pierce, Der 3. Raum and so on are nice, do you?
Supreme Sound of Copenhagen
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- Published on Monday, 10 June 2013 13:01
Get your box on, get your box on honey
Out good friends over at Sound of Copenhagen just made the most retardedly cool thing: a limited edition 10 vinyl box set with select tracks from the first ten SoC compilations.
I'm honored to have my track Factotum featured on it. I'm sharing grooves on disc 2 with some of my personal Copenhagen heroes: Rune RK, 2000F and Atle, plus my favorite new commers Ukendt Kunstner.
But wait, there's more! They also included a pair of Skullcandy Navigator headphones in the package. And it's all bundled up in a nice box.
So go on and get your box on! It's a limited edition of 500 copies available from some hip stores and websites. More info at the Skullcandy website!
Free Download Week
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- Published on Tuesday, 04 June 2013 05:44
Great Giveaway Bonanza!
Yesterday, the stats on my Soundloud page cought my eye. Just crossed 30,000 plays and 900 followers!
And allthough this fact is completely arbitrary and of little relevance to anyone but me, I'm going to insist on celebrating in the customary fashion of someone celebrating this kind of achievement: By giving away free downloads of my music.
So I've just set my album From Eternity to the Next Beat to free download on Soundcloud. In case anyone actually still downloads music. Does anyone? Maybe for running or burning CD's to listen in cars. Dunno. No matter what, it's there for the taking. Enjoy!
Music Business Rant
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- Published on Tuesday, 28 May 2013 08:22
STFU and be awesome
Bandwagon DJ's
Sorry to break it to you, but you've been made. Scam's over.
Those ”real” DJ's who's authenticity and coolness you're trying to leach on – even they don't have it anymore. The pool has been sucked dry.
There's really nobody left to fool. Not a single person in the world still thinks wearing headphones behind a laptop, putting your hands up like an idiot with your DJ partner takes any skill or taste or talent any more. It's over.
Now fuck off to the next big thing, so real music lovers can get back to spinning great tracks.
Audiences
Keep you phone in your pocket. You're taking crap photos, your videos suck, you'll never ever watch whatever you're documenting and you're missing the whole concept of "live".
Really. Not understanding "live" is a level of stupidity I had never imagined could exist.
Plus you look like a moron.
Musicians
Posting an iTunes link and writing ”what do you think?” isn't "social engagement".
Use your next level creativity. Find some new and cool way to engage your fans.
Or, maybe just be honest? Keep it real? Be yourself? Stop using social media if you're too boring or too much of a dick to interact with people? Concentrate on making great music?
Just a thought.
Social Media ”Experts”
Stop telling musicians to ask their fans stupid questions to promote ”engagement”. You're missing the point, "expert".
And while you're at it, stop telling people you're a "social media expert". Tell the truth. You're a moron.
Because, by definition, anyone who claims to be an expert in the field of social media is a moron. If you don't understand why ... well, point in question.
Live Set Up Now
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- Published on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 11:42
Machine room
Last month, I did my first live set.
It was at the legendary Copenhagen venue Huset. An event called Maskinrum - litterally machine room.
The club's focus is live electronic music. More in a listening way than a dancing way. So the set is made accordingly. Which works pretty well for the streaming part, as you (or I at least) usually want something to listen to rather than to rave to, when you're listening to a mix or whatever.
Unfortunately, the computer recording the actual live mix crashed during my set. So the first 25 minutes are so are a live re-enactment from the studio. The last 9 minutes are from the live gig though.
Liquido Live at Maskinrum - Huset, Copenhagen by liquido
For the musicians and gear heads, a couple of details about my set:
I've been working on a live-set for a while. Early attempts were all about cutting up my tracks and re-assembling them using clips in Ableton Live and my Launchpad.
My only problem with this was that it felt sort of pointless. Sort of just playing your tracks as they are, only making it a bit more difficult for yourself (and a tiny bit more "live").
Since then, I got two pieces of equipment that have really helped give the set some life. My Jomox Xbase09 analog dum machine and the NI Maschine.
The Xbase is mainly for drums (of course). But actually, because it's programmable for each step, you can also make something like basslines on it.
The Machine is also mainly for drums, but also one-shot samples and synths.
This all makes the set a lot more live. Because instead of just tweaking the elements that are already in my tracks, I can partially or entirely have drums and other elements live. Melodic and evolving elements are triggered as clips in live, and I have my hands and mind free to do fun stuff with my machines.
So the setups is:
Ableton Live with clips from my tracks, triggered by Launchpad and mixed with a Behringer controller. I use eight tracks and try to keep the same elements in each track (kick, bass, snare, hats, percussion, melody, vox and atmosphere) though it doesn't always work out like that. I have one send (delay) and one effect (or effects chain) that fits the track (low-cut for kick, delay for hats, chorus for bass) on each track.
On the master, I have a couple of master-type effects. One called supa-trigga.
One track in live for Machine, which I treat as a whole sepperate machine.
And my Xbase on the side with a couple of pre-programmed patterns.
At one point, I want to hook up a synth as well. And, allthough I'm on a gear-buying break, I sort of want to buy some cool guitar pedals or other effects to hook up on the Xbase. It has three outputs (kick, snare, hats). So I could have something on each. We'll see.
Anyway. Hope you enjoy the set. And I really hope to play a lot more live soon! Feels like I've really found my niche here, and I'm mad hyped to play some more.
Next gig is July 6th at Raahuset, Copenhagen.
