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News
New Releases
Festivals
Listen
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Feature
Credits
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OCTOBER 14 - OCTOBER 27
Earplug is a biweekly email magazine, delivering a handpicked
selection of news, sounds, videos, and original features for the
international electronic music community.
With all the wrangling in Washington over how to police the digital domain — and with more and more companies placing their bets on the downloads-for-sale game — the suits still want to impose the old rules on the new world. But Howard Stern's jump to satellite radio is just one shining example of how there's been an essential change to the way people listen. There's also the sheer scale of the free music out there for the hearing — from electro-loving Belgian video game freaks to German deep house super-duos to DJ /rupture — all you have to do is plug it in.
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Full Court Press
The debate over Internet piracy hit all three branches of the US Government this past week. In the Legislative branch, the Senate shelved the Induce Act — a bill that would have held liable anyone who "induced" others to reproduce copyrighted material. In the Judicial branch, the Supreme Court quietly influenced the Internet piracy debate by refusing to hear an appeal by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to force Internet service providers to simply hand over the identities of suspected file swappers upon request. In the Executive branch, the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force issued a scathing indictment of Internet piracy, recommending a dramatic expansion of efforts, including specialized anti-piracy task forces and a vast increase in the number of prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to fight this war. The DOJ has a new file-sharing enemy: eDonkey overtook KaZaA as the world's most popular P2P service. The RIAA's European counterpart, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), filed 459 lawsuits against file-swappers last week. And a slew of new media players are hitting the market soon: Toshiba's 60GB Gigabeat boasts a gigantic hard drive and a color screen, Virgin is hitting the smaller end of the hard drive spectrum with a 5GB slim player, Roc-A-Fella Records' Damon Dash is releasing a line of Rocbox MP3 players, and rumors abound of a photo-ready iPod with 60GB and a color screen. Finally, Howard Stern upped the ante between satellite and terrestrial radio with an announcement that he will soon take his act off the airwaves and into space. (CW)
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Rights Reasserted
With sampling and file sharing under ever-increasing assault in the courts and in Congress, many artists are beginning to fear that creativity itself is in jeopardy. Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization founded in 2002, is aiming to inject some reason and moderation into the copyright debate, and hopes to raise its profile this month with a new CD entitled Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. The album features 13 tracks from artists including David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, and Gilberto Gil, and more than 800,000 copies will be distributed for free with the November issue of Wired magazine. What makes the tracks on the CD unique, however, is the participating artists' embrace of the Creative Commons license, which gives listeners the permission — and right — to trade, remix, sample, and reinterpret the music as they wish. The project kicked off last month with a benefit concert in New York featuring Byrne and Gil, and other events are planned for the future. The Creative Commons license is not a free-for-all: some of the artists permit only non-commercial sampling and sharing while others are open to all potential uses (with the exception of advertising placement). But the point Creative Commons makes is that there's a difference between "all rights reserved" and "some rights reserved" — especially in the digital age — and artists should be free to make these decisions about their work for themselves. (DJP)
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MORE HEADLINES
SF Feels the Love
Berlin's Loveparade makes US debut more »
Homeland Security
RIAA goes after another 762 more »
Gathering Storm
Morpheus morphs into stronger technology more »
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Tech companies come together to stop piracy more »
New JetGroove raises labels' ire
MP3 scam? more »
RIAA looks for consumer input
Fans wanted more »
Lying Mouth on DVD
Radiohead compiles clips more »
What Wal-Mart Wants...
...is $10 CDs more »
Loose Lips
Flaming Lips hard at work on new projects more »
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Artist: |
Keef Baker |
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| Album: |
The Widnes Years |
| Label: |
n5md |
| Release: |
August 10 |
Keef Baker's The Widnes Years swings back and forth between ambient electronica and rhythmic noise. Like Gridlock — a band Baker cites as an influence — he welds jackhammer breakcore and spewing static to delicate ambient arrays and ethereal analog tone poems. "Castrovalva" is a cathedral hymn where the organ is a steam-driven remnant of the Industrial Revolution. "Bingo Hall Murders" finds a placid synthesizer melody kidnapped by an aggressive breakbeat, and the two engage in a Stockholm Syndrome-influenced exchange of roles. Elsewhere, the glittering ambience of "Calmed Robbery" is subsumed beneath an eruption of static-saturated percussion. Baker collides industrial cacophony with cinematic overtures and walks away without a scratch. (MT)
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Artist: |
DJ Krush |
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| Album: |
Jaku
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| Label: |
Red Ink |
| Release: |
September 7 |
For his eighth record, DJ Krush turns to his native Japan for inspiration, substituting shakuhachi flute and taiko drums for the quotidian MCs who have plagued his last few records. Krush had drifted away from the sublime instrumental work of his early records, but Jaku — Japanese for "peace and calm" — finds him merging the sum of his hip-hop experience with the cultural heritage of his native land. A delicate wooden-flute melody soars over the placid beats of "Still Island" like a breath of mist obscuring the shoreline. "Univearth" sets Krush's downtempo beats against Tetsuro Naito's (lately of Kodo) sparse percussion and whistling flute in a spine-bending fusion of East and West. "Slit of Cloud," with Akira Sakata providing saxophone and Shinto lament, attempts to capture the electric majesty of a sun break on the slope of Mt. Fuji. Can you achieve satori through music? DJ Krush's Jaku certainly tries. (MT)
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Artist: |
Solvent |
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| Album: |
Apples and Synthesizers |
| Label: |
Ghostly International |
| Release: |
September 21 |
Coming into focus with little more than beats that pop, swirling laser sounds, and insouciant, melodic bass lines, Solvent's Apples and Synthesizers is a delicious treat. The thing's just soaked in soul at a time when electronic music is still being dismissed as cold and calculated. But Jason Amm proves otherwise without reverting to acoustic instrumentation. A&S is methodical and, yes, synthesized, but it's not overly complex and certainly isn't emotionless. Highly stylized robotic vocals that sound happy, thoughtful, determined, and sinful; beats that make you want to move; songs that start to sound vaguely similar after several listens. The long and short of it? We think your electro just popped. (AM)
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Artist: |
Ricardo Villalobos |
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| Album: |
The Theoreme D'Archimede |
| Label: |
Perlon |
| Release: |
October 25 |
Ricardo Villalobos' DJ sets have been getting beefier and, dare we say, more tribal of late, but the Berlin producer has never been more restrained than on his new full-length for Perlon. Across nine tracks, Villalobos explores every nuance of glancing polyrhythms coaxed from drums both sampled and real, often offsetting his trademark clicks and gurgles with congas and thumping sheets of rubber. He's also never sounded this organic: "Hireklon" unspools into atonal guitar, Cassy Britton contributes unearthly coos to "Miami," and "Theoreme D'Archimede" eavesdrops on a drum circle in the rainforest — complete with birdcalls. The whole thing sounds a bit like "Dexter" with every last grain of sugar tweezered out — powder dry, but strangely sumptuous. (PS)
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Artist: |
Sir Alice |
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| Album: |
2 |
| Label: |
Tigersushi |
| Release: |
September 7 |
Welcome to the first great work of post-(post?)-post-punk. Alice Daquet delivers Parisian label Tigersushi's most unpredictable record yet, veering from overdriven, echo-laden drum machine punk into Speak 'n Spell-voiced ambient dread, and from there to glitch electro, uneasy electroacoustics, carnivalesque no wave, and more. Sir Alice's touchstones — Cabaret Voltaire, DNA, Metal Urbain — may be worn smooth from decades of derivatives, but Daquet manages to recapture their original roughness, even as she topples the icons to create a cryptic new formation. (PS)
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Artist: |
DJ /rupture |
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| Album: |
Special Gunpowder |
| Label: |
Tigerbeat6 |
| Release: |
October 5 |
"The city is burning, for real" intones Elizabeth Alexander over scrappy bass and meandering saxophone loops on "Overture: Watermelon City," aptly setting the tone for the debut album from Jace Clayton, aka DJ /rupture. The Barcelona resident has long been known for his unconventional multi-deck mix CDs, which mash up North African music, hip-hop, dub techno, ragga, and more, and here he proves that his productions can go just as far. Singers including Sister Nancy, Wicked Act, and Wayne Lonesome offer vocal focal points — alternatingly sing-song and gruff — over /rupture's ripply digital dancehall. "Taqasim" fuses Central European-tinged violins with Ghislain Poirier's minimalist hip-hop beats, and "Can't Stop It" gives Max Turner the chance to add his unconventional flow to live drumming and burbling electronic effects. Every track is like a Russian doll, opening up into finer and finer detail, and then, with the folky "Mole in the Ground," the whole thing breaks into splinters and sawdust. (PS)
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EARPLUG FAVES
Brian Eno, Music For Airports (Astralwerks)
BJ Cole, Trouble In Paradise (Cooking Vinyl)
Jedi Mind Tricks, Legacy of Blood (Baby Grande)
Domenico Ferrari, The Kick (Straight Ahead)
Various artists, Tapis Rouge Solarium (Cirque Du Soleil Musique)
Roy Davis Jr., Water for Thirsty Children (Nice+Smooth)
Telephone Jim Jesus, A Point too Far to Astronaut... (anticon)
Talib Kweli, The Beautiful Struggle (Rawkus)
Vector Lovers, Vector Lovers (Soma)
Mercir, As Small as the Center (Mercir)
Saint Privat, Riveria (Dope Noir)
Smith & Mighty, Retrospective (!K7)
Mosquitos, Sunshine Barato (Bar/None)
Thomas Fehlmann, Lowflow (Plug Research)
Michael Mayer, Touch (Kompakt)
Ada, Blondie (Areal)
Ellen Allien, My Parade (Bpitch Control)
Kiki, Run With Me (Bpitch Control)
Sten, Leaving the Frantic (Dial)
The Soft Pink Truth, Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want... (Soundslike)
Booka Shade, Memento (Get Physical)
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Preview: Amsterdam Dance Event
October 21-23
Amsterdam, NL
What's not to like about a weekend in Amsterdam, one of Europe's most beautiful, easy-to-navigate, and forward-thinking cities? Every October, when the Amsterdam Dance Event sets up shop for a serious, productive, and business-minded weekend of workshops and discussions, the city's numerous clubs and cafes play host to top electronic music talent from around the world. This year's program again features a host of homegrown and to-be-discovered musicians and DJs, alongside top international headliners. It draws more than 1,200 industry types and thousands of music fans to the Dutch capital, and for those who can pull themselves out of the coffeeshops, the musical
highlights include old-school techno pioneers Joey Beltram and the Advent; Chilean new-school guru Ricardo Villalobos; a party hosted by Warp Records featuring DJs Ellen Allien and Ease and live acts Plaid, Richard Devine, and Jamie Lidell; a DX and EFX set from Black Strobe featuring Ivan Smagghe; an Ovum night with Gene Ferris, Josh Wink, Funk D'Void, King Britt, and many others; and a two-night Kindred Spirits weekender at the Paradiso with Rich Medina, Peaven Everett, and Breakestra. (DJP)
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listen » |
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RadioClit, My Tits are Too Big... (RealAudio)
Back with a vengeance! The Clit returns with Johan from Stacs of Stamina and Infinite Livez manning the wheels and taking you on another hip-hop excursion through the gutters of the world.
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listen » |
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Don Rimini (RealAudio)
Don Rimini is a fixture in the Paris club scene. Having held many club residencies over the past four years, his finger is on the pulse of the Parisian underground. Listen in as he gives up a peek at what is moving their floors.
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listen » |
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DJ /rupture, Sonic Acts 24-9-2004 (RealAudio)
After rewiring many heads with his groundbreaking mix Gold Tooth Thief, DJ /rupture has been busy bringing his signature breakcore-booty sound to the masses. Recent appearances on John Peel's radio show have been well received and portend more great sounds from /rupture and his Soot Records camp.
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listen » |
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Ame (MP3)
The deep house super-duo Ame hails from Karlsruhe, Germany. They have developed a smooth and flawless DJing/producing style that has garnered them a cult following in their homeland. Now they stand poised to take their fresh and deep sound around the world.
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listen » |
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Tinez, Tigertronicz (MP3)
Belgian video game freak Tinez drops a hip-hop and electro breaks mix that would get even the stiffest head-bobber out on the floor poppin' and lockin' with the greatest of ease.
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Looking for more hot mix sets and fresh new tracks?
Check out Blentwell for an
ongoing document of the evolution of blended music online.
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watch » |
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On the Other Side
Chicago's house music absurdists the Greenskeepers are doing their best not just to move the dance floor, but occasionally to have you rolling on it. Led by James Curd and Nick Maurer, the quartet of DJs and producers are often credited as the creators of "hillbilly house," the unlikely paring of big band-era swing with Derrick Carter-style Chicago production. Two recent videos from their newest record Pleetch, however, confirm the group's proficiency with a sort of electronic/rock hybrid marrying ZZ Top and the Talking Heads to Cameo's angular retro-funk. An extra dose of twisted humor has made the videos a huge hit on websites like iFilm. "Filipino Phil" moves along as if Kenneth Anger were directing a Dalí-inspired Broadway musical, and it features stunning footage of the dearly departed Herve Villechaize (of course). "Lotion" cleverly loops footage from The Silence of the Lambs to match the song's ridiculous lyrics, which were inspired by the film's oft-quoted directive to "put the lotion in the basket" but motivated by the Greenskeepers' mission to inject some giggles into the discotheque. (SM)
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The Gooom Squad
French record label Gooom Disques has been in the spotlight lately as the home of French electronic duos M83 and Cyann & Ben: two acts that heavily incorporate synthesizers to create thick fields of oscillating cinematic swell. M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was championed as one of last year's most regrettably overlooked recordings — a work of radiant, shoegazing keyboard histrionics that ebb and flow over 12 lush tracks. Two of those tracks, "America" and "Run Into Flowers," have been immortalized with videos now available on Gooom's website, next to other bonus material like free mixes and album samples. The anonymously directed video for "Run Into Flowers" layers freefalling aqueous bubbles and underwater currents over images of majestic mountain peaks. "America," directed by Jamie Scott and Nina Wilking, incorporates the frenetic time-elapsed urban photography made popular by the Qatsi Trilogy to tell the story of two intersecting, fast-paced lives, and the moment of calm shared between them. (SM)
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Header Design:
Xavier Bougouin
Mailer Design:
Keats
Editors:
David J. Prince
Philip Sherburne
Sascha Lewis
Christopher N. Hampton
Cyrus Wadia
Jon Spooner
Steve Marchese
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Production:
Mark Mangan
Anjuli Ayer
Peter Stepek
Jane Lerner
William Pierce
Sander-Martijn Milks
Contributors:
Andy Cumming
David J. Day
DeepSix
Carleton S. Gholz
Carl Hagen
Jorge Hernandez
Sebastian Koch
Alissa Mariello
John McCormick
Aaron Miles
Colin James Nagy
Nick Parish
Mia Quagliarello
Mark Teppo
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Submissions/Feedback |
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Tell us what you think is exciting and worth including in Earplug by dropping us
an email at tips.
Writers interested in getting even more involved should reach us at contribute.
And if what you want to do is criticize, praise, or generally comment on this publication,
please send an email to feedback.
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Header Design |
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We have an open call to create the headers that run at the top of each issue.
If you would like to submit a design, please email us at design
and we'll send you the necessary specs.
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About Us |
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Earplug is an email magazine dedicated to electronic music and its
many dynamic styles and influences. Published every two weeks, it features a
handpicked selection of music news, cultural spotlights, tip sheets, CD
reviews, original reporting, and music festival previews and reviews.
Earplug offers only pure editorial and unbiased news — no money is
accepted from any artists, labels, promoters, or companies seeking
mention.
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