dj chainz

Hey guys,

I’d like to announce my first official release. It’s an ambient remix I did for a trance label called Digital Insomnia Recordings, great for chilling out this Summer. Check it out:

Delph Project – Be Itself (Chainz Ambient remix) by chainz

I’ll make another post on the 11th August when it’s released

The UK Life expectancy is 80.1 years.

82.1 years is 30,000 days.

This is therefore a good estimate of how long you will live – life expectancy will grow a bit in our time due to medical advances, but then again, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow.

When you consider your 30,000 days, when you realize your own mortality and factor it into your thinking, you can have a profound perspective change.

10 months is 300 days – 1% of your life.

Think about what you achieved in the last 10 months, then multiply it by 100 – that is your life’s work.

It’s even an overestimate, considering you didn’t do much as a toddler.

Okay, that might be a bit of a downer for some. I know it is for me. Ten months ago you were probably wearing the same underwear and munching the same brand of tortilla snack chips. But that doesn’t mean the next 10 months, the next 1%, isn’t going to be great.

There is no excuse for any time wasted. Even a single month is 0.1% of your entire time alive. Anything you are delaying ‘until a rainy day’ or ‘when the time is right’ – the time is ‘right’ now. It’ll never be perfect, so why not today? Today has the advantage that you’ll have more time afterwards to correct course once you get started.

And whilst you’re stopping yourself wasting your time, don’t let others waste it either. If you have to wait one day for one thing, that’s 1/30000^th of your entire life. Don’t let them do that to you.

Life is urgent.

30,000 days.

Just saw this awesome video for the latest Spectrasoul tune:

Totally awe-inspiring.

I love music with a message, so I thought I’d share this:

Poignant.

Lynx’s production is always on point, “attention to detail” as his label ‘Detail recordings’ is about. It comes out next monday, pre-order at boomkat. (Which is the wittiest record store name ever… boomkat,boomkat… boomkat,boomkat). And no, Lynx isn’t giving me money to say this (though he should!).

Peace guys.

This week, we had the honour of another guest talk at Musictech. Randomer came to visit and walk through a recent tune he made (unheard by the rest of the world!). He’s known for making Dubstep, Drum and Bass, and now super party percussive House, including most recent release a collab with crack wobble house king Foamo.

The wall of contemplation.

He was full of useful tips and wisdom, like a senior monk of electronic music. Here’s a selection of his advice:

• He stressed the importance of ‘having your own sound’ – “You want people to know it’s you after listening just a few seconds… a continuity between your releases, a similar sonic quality”. This certainly holds for his music, you can pick similarities between all his tunes, from Dubstep to House, although he thought he could have done it even better.
• He sees the music making process as one of balancing two sides of the same coin – Symmetry vs Asymmetry [in structure], Balance vs Unbalance [in harmony], and Organic vs Synthetic [in sound quality]. A very yin-yan approach.
• Even though he sometimes makes pretty experimental things (case in point : brunk), he believes it’s important to fit into some kind of box, so that there are people who will like/use your music. However he stressed it’s most important to have an original idea when starting out – just like Data said.

There’s a little summary of the 2 hours of fun. He also gave some Ableton Live tips and tricks; I’ll try get these into my production blog when it’s ready. I leave you with the most recent randomer release:

This Monday Drum and Bass producer Data came to talk at Imperial Musictech, that little society of music lovers and producers I help run.

Data dissects "For Your Eyes Only" for us; don't worry, we could see on the projectors

Data, or Nick, talked about loads of things, from his start in making music, to his signing, to production techniques. I can’t get everything down, but here’s a few interesting facts:

• He has been producing about 15 years now, and got signed to Metalheadz in 2007. Since then there have been 38 Data releases!
• The story behind his initial contact with Goldie from Metalheadz is pretty funny, and shows how ‘unconventional’ a career path in music can be. Back in the day, Nick would cover Goldie’s back daily on Call of Duty, and then bug him to listen to his music. Eventually Goldie knew he’d had his bacon saved enough times, listened, and invited Nick down to Metalheadz for a review! Now, Goldie even helps launch CoD products.
• Nick just got back from touring the USA, and is looking to tour Australia and Japan soon too. He has “travelled the whole world” with his music, very romantic.

The perfect accompaniment to a relaxed Drum and Bass talk

• We had a live ‘dissection’ of his recent tune ‘For Your Eyes Only’; from drums to bass to pads to vocals.
  
  There was a mountain of good production advice and techniques, but I think the most effective groundwork piece of advice he gave was : “Start with a concept, and work from there. I always find this will give the music an overall sound and impression, unlike starting with just a few cool techniques and sounds you’ve found.” He claimed to have found inspiration in books and movies, but anything that gives you a scene to recreate with your music is game.
• He also stated the importance of going for a progression in your business model : from singles, to album, to newspaper reviews, to ‘sync work’ : getting music chosen for tv/movies/games. Apparently this is where a lot of the money lies as a producer (DJing aside) ; it makes me recall Skream’s appearance on this game trailer.

Basically, Nick gave us an awesome talk, and I hope he can return to musictech next year for more of the same. If you want to learn more, you can even get one-on-one online tuition from him. I suggest you contact him on facebook to ask for details.

I just wanted to share this tune I’m really enjoying right now..

Some really cool effects with the whole ‘arrows past your ears’ sounds, on top of a catchy melody and the high definition sounds of the ancient orient. It’s fun to listen to and memorable.

I can’t wait for the full thing to come out on Monday. But why is it the B-Side? The A-Side, Dreadnaught, is a much less interesting tune, in my opinion a very “same-old” tune with standard lyrics about how low the bass is.. Icicle’s production is on point as always, but it is nowhere near as innovative and fun as Arrows. I hope the album ‘Under the Ice’ features more music with variety..

Just sayin’..

Last Saturday evening, I had an encounter with a DJ from the other side!

I was doing a little set at my University’s Union bar, back-to-back with my good friend Tom of Snatch DJs. It was good fun, playing my new tunes and Tom matching with his selections.

Some of the bits I was playing were ‘loud system tests’ of my new material I’m working on. There’s some good minimal drum and bass in there, in a similar direction to the recent Mosaic series on Exit Records, along with many other varieties of music. New clips up soon, I promise!

Action pose

But anyhow, I had been warned about the act following us, I just hadn’t believed the hype. When I saw it with my own eyes, I was shocked.

An undead DJ.

Raath-Mon-Tet is an Ancient Egyptian Pharoah re-risen, in possession of a fresh human body, and turning his hand towards DJing as an attempt to enslave the human race. I was initially scared shitless, but relaxed a bit when he ordered “just a coke please mate”.

However the vengeful forces of the Ancient gods do wreak their havoc in his music. Anything and everything gets heavily mashed up in an eclectic mayhem – he’s mostly known for his psycore (on the aggressive side), but also does dubstep, electro, drum and bass, etc. The set he unleashed actually started with some really groovy house.

Seriously, that mask is real gold.

The undead pharoah has even discovered how to use the internet and built himself a website – check out the official Raath Mon Tet site.

There are always blurry colours all over the mixer and cdjs

It was a good weekend, for this and many other reasons. I also finalized booking Minimal DnB master Data to give a talk at Musictech society, so we’ll have an interesting insight into his production process. He’s putting some good stuff out recently, such as the astoundingly popular ‘For your eyes only’, which I leave you with:

Happy Valentine’s Day! I have some news for you..

It’s a day of love, and you maybe want some music to give you that feeling. My good friend Phrij has a jazzy dubstep release out today on Lifestyle Recordings. The A-side “Boom boom bap” is a jazzy piano with big bass concoction, and the B-side “The Intrepid” takes things on a more funkatastic edge.

Phrij a.k.a Dave has been producing some beautiful Jazz/Drum & Bass for years, and this is his first release with the new alias Phrij (from the phrygian mode scale). His style is fairly unique and fits in as a sort of liquid/jazz crossover, with an emphasis on a real-life jazz-band sound. On this release, he says:

“I wanted to sort of fill a gap. It was fun to produce in a completely new genre to me, and I guess my inexperience helped me out in getting (what I hope is) a different sound.”

Hope you’ve enjoyed the listen in the soundcloud player, you can go grab a download copy of LFS004 at
iTunes. (or digital tunes / play.com / juno / beatport / spotify)

Have a Happy Valentine’s – love you readers!

It’s time to talk about a topic that’s on everyone’s lips: Tea. *

Tea is the hidden power to the Music production industry. Everyone has many cups a day, unless they’re the kind of person that prefers sugary drinks or coffee. However these stimulants are known to induce unfriendly, jittery states. Certain individuals even go for the so-called “sugar rush”.

I fancy myself a bit of a collector and have a few varieties in stock at any time, from green to jasmine, mint to lemon. When making tunes, it’s important to have a mug or two to relax the brain muscles and increase productivity.

This tea is Japanese, it comes in silk bags, and has strange beans mixed in. I can't read the packet.

Asides from electricity bills, Tea (and associated snack products) is the only major running cost of a music producer.

* (sorry for bad pun)