Melbourne Techno Collective

Techno producers look out! Reason 5 is about to launch and it has some gnarly additions which make its already impressive list of instruments even better. The original studio in a box has been neglected of late with all the hype of Ableton and other DAWs, but with the recent renaissance of hardware instruments and these new enhancements, Reason may just be set to make a renaissance of its own.

No doubt more features will be released as we get closer to launch but for now check out the teasers below.

We at the Techno Collective stumbled across this little gem the other day and just thought it was too damn cool not to share. These customised Vestax controllers replace the standard transport controls with 8 arcade style buttons, for serious button mashing madness and feature optional coloured knobs for additional flair. Personally we are hoping that the DJ Tech Tools team behind this custom controller, will soon turn their attention to Native Instrument’s X1, but until then we’re happy to occupy ourselves with this particular brand of DJ geekery.

These custom controllers are available to purchase from www.djtechtools.com

The latest Balance mix CD was released earlier this month on EQ records and has already received the sort of critical acclaim that we are coming to expect from the series. The Melbourne Techno Collective’s Sabine Brix took the chance to speak with the man behind the mix.

How are the balance release party dates going?

Thanks for asking, really good so far! i really enjoyed Arma 17 in Moscow, Loft in Barcelona, Rex in Paris and obviously Panorama Bar in Berlin ! All were really packed and I guess we all had lot of fun ! Great memories for the beginning of that tour! This week end i will be in UK touring, Pulse @ Edinburgh this Friday and Fabric @ London this Saturday! I obviously can’t wait to go to Australia for my first ever gigs in your country!

How is the CD being received?
Well it’s not out yet! But according to all the interviews and what people told me about the mix, I guess people are really happy about it and they all said they enjoyed a lot the selection and the way I mixed it… so let’s see!

What can Australian fans expect at your upcoming tour?
I hope the best ! We can never know before as the alchemy depends of the place, the crowd, my mood, the people around, the toothpaste,… I do hope I will be able to play all kind of stuff, and that everyone will leave the club with a big smile. I should have come few times before already for the Creamfileds and Stereosonic festivals but each time we had to postpone it for studio reason or sponsorships problems, so that time I really hope to arrive in your continent!

You mentioned this release, for you, was all about balance, can you explain this in more detail?

Well I made a long break not producing electronic music during two years as I worked on the soundtrack of “Go Fast”, a french movie produced by Luc Besson, and then I spent few months working on establish my own label InFiné, trying to develop it… At the beginning of last year I asked myself if I wanted to start working on a new album or anything else. I wasn’t sure i was ready to create new materials and honestly I was wondering if there was still a relevant reason to make a new mix CD. Every website get his own quality podcast, music is everywhere, I wasn’t sure of the necessity of releasing again a mix CD. But I decided to try. I thought it was relevant to find my own personal and exclusive selection in a time when u can find any single track you look for in less than a minute. How could I excite the desire of the listener one more time with this excessive music offer ? First I needed to find by myself the key to discover those tracks…I spent five months looking for materials, i wanted to experience again virgin fields. My desire to find music was a bit dead, we received so much tunes everyday by simple links on emails or promo accounts that I had the feeling I needed to find music by myself like when I was twenty spending my entire days in records shops. I wanted to experience again the happiness of finding music by accident. Nobody is buying records nowadays without having listened to them before. I do wish that the listener of both mixes will feel like entering in a record shop, letting himself to be guided by the sound of the shop. I also asked few friends to make me listen to 5 tunes each that I could have missed or I should known. I have obviously discovered massive albums that I didn’t know like the album “666″ from Aphrodite’s child. And I finally organized a contest on Soundcloud to find newcomers that have never released any record before. So the selection has been inspired by lot of different influences and styles. Then I asked EQ recordings to clear more than 120 tracks thinking that half of them will not accept to be part of the project and I have been surprised to see that almost everybody has accepted to appear on the mix. They have been so much efficient and quick! I had then so much material that the idea of finding The right Balance appeared like an evidence. This concept has been a great guide for me and helps me to innovate.
Do you think you have achieved a ‘perfect equilibrium’ as you have described, with this Balance, release?

Iwont be pretentious saying that I found that perfect equilibrium but I tried to get the essence of the tunes and to be as close as possible to this idea using all tools and ways to mix the selection. Sometimes I feel free to let entire tracks, sometimes I just spin few seconds, it all depends about the result I was looking for. For example on the second cd when I wanted to emphasize a growing with “libellules” I’ve added a track of Marc Antona + Avril + Gadi mizrahi before the climax of “french kiss”, it comes just after two minutes of a voluntary more monotone passage. Another example on the first CD, before going down on the second part of the CD, I thought it was useful to let the remix of Felix Laband by Todd Terje for four minutes alone cause it helped to catch the attention for the following. With this “little frustration” I could more easily turn down, something not so easy to do, it’s much easier to go mental or to grow than to go down step by step without loosing the attention of the listener.

What kind of sound were you aiming for with this compilation?

That’s not really the sound I would play in a club from 3 to 6 when people want to dance and have fun but that s definitely what I wanted to show on a mix cd. 
I guess both mix CDs represents me perfectly and that’s also what i’m trying to show with InFiné. Eclecticism, quality and homogeneity! I don’t mind if it s techno, pop, house, indie or electronica, it just need to be personal and different, it doesn’t matter if it is the trend of the moment. For example, we have been working on Aufgang project for more than three years now and i’m happy to see that Francesco, Rami and Aymerick are in the lightspot now. This is a “UFO” in the landscape of music released nowadays and that’s maybe why people are paying attention to it as well. I really hope that Aufgang will get the audience they deserve, they are truly gifted.

You’re working on a fourth album, when will that be out, what can we expect?

I will try to finish my album for next year…it’s too soon to give u an idea sorry.

Agoria’s Balance 16 is out now through EQ records.

Yes Sven Vath is in the house, or to be completely accurate, was in the house – the house of Perth resident James Francis, who’s Future Music after party got a little bit wild when Mister Vath rocked up with an entourage that included John Digweed, Dubfire, Booka Shade and Above & Beyond. In the Mix reported on the techno legend’s cameo appearance, after discovering this Tweet from Above & Beyond which mentioned the impromptu gathering. “an amazing party here in Perth [at Future Music Festival], followed by a crazy house party with @svenvaeth who truly made it an unforgettable night!”.

ITM followed up by making contact with Francis who had this to say. “We had Sven Vath, John Digweed, Dubfire, Booka Shade and Above & Beyond all partying in our garden with about 70 or so other people,”  “…It was truly amazing. Sven played for about six-and-a-half hours, and all the other internationals just watched and danced in awe with the rest of us! Sven played ‘one more tune’ about 20 times.”

The full editorial can be found here.

The answer of course, is increasingly quite a lot. And it’s not just limited to DJing either, electronic musicians of the feminine persuasion are having more of an impact on what is historically a lads only scene, than ever before. So why state the obvious, well while female DJs and producers are more than mixing it with boys across all genres, the truly talented DJs and producers still face certain challenges to be accepted as just that – truly talented DJs and producers.

While it is arguably true that being a female may open the occasional door, there is a lot of crap that female DJs/producers put up with, that their male counterparts would never have to endure. Compounded by cringe worthy inventions such as Pioneer’s “She DJ” and the emergence of topless DJs of various persuasions, being a female in the boys club that is the underground music scene, must at times feel like being in an episode of Mad Men.

In this article from The Electronic Farm, Poly Lavin tackles this very issue and asks the question are women really perceived differently than men in the electronic music sector?

Read it here

On March 5 Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky will give an exclusive live performance at Shed 4, Melbourne’s iconic Docklands warehouse. Fusing a large scale video installation with a digital DJ set, Miller will also incorporate a string quartet into this arresting multimedia performance. Thanks to our friends at Shed 4, the Melbourne Techno Collective have 2 double passes and 1 single pass to give away to this amazing show.

To go in the draw all you have to do is subscribe to the Melbourne Techno Collective newsletter on or before Feb 28 and answer one simple question. “What’s something SPOOKY that’s happened to you?” most interesting responses win!

Enter the competition

View event details
Visit the official website

taken from www.beatportal.com

Pioneering techno DJ Richie Hawtin has announced the development of a new Twitter application that enables him to broadcast his Traktor tracklists in real time over the network.

The custom Twitter application was developed in-house by Richie Hawtin’s label Minus, and it works by uploading song metadata through Traktor Pro’s inbuilt broadcasting functionality.

Track details are automatically posted to Richie Hawtin’s Twitter account every 30 seconds (you can already see Traktor tracklist updates on his Twitter), giving anyone access to the tracklist of his performance, and providing exposure to the artists and labels whose music is being played.

The Twitter app is so advanced that it inspired Native Instruments to add the functionality themselves to version 1.2 of Traktor Pro which will be released as a free update.

That means that soon everyone will be able to tweet their tracklists via Traktor. Awesome!

US techno producer Audion aka Matthew Dear has made his latest track I am the Car available for download from his website free of charge. According to Resident Advisor, Audion will release a new track on the site every month, which will eventually form the basis of a new album which will be released through his Spectral Sound label at a later date.

Download: get Audion’s ‘I am the Car’ for Free from www.Audion.me

An interesting article on the history and continued prevalence of the bootlegged LP from the cats at Resident Advisor .net

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=985

Bootlegs have always been a part of dance music culture, but in an age where online documentation should hypothetically render the practice impossible to pull off, some stores still sell them. RA’s Richard Brophy tracks down the how and why of bootlegging in the 21st century.

This is a very interesting video which I also found on Beatportal. Richie Hawtin discusses in detail how he uses traktor in his DJ sets.
http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/riche-hawtins-dj-set-up-revisited/#When:23:21:00Z