While the Japanese freeform scene continues to decline, thank the gods for Le Dos-on, who is already set to release his second artist album. Excellently titled Crying Beauty, this is looking very tasty indeed. Although a few of the tracks are definitely straying into UK territory, there’s also plenty of deep melancholy on show here – my early favourites are Morning for it, D and Le pt.2.
Releases
BRK’s newest FINRG release is my favourite so far, and really one to check out if you haven’t yet done so. Plenty of Lab 4 influence as always, this one shows how much progress BRK has made with the quality of his sound, with a nice bassline and some lovely synths in the intro/outro.
About time I mentioned this release from Hekatoncheir Beats, an excellent Japanese label that is doing a grand job of pushing some very nasty sounds. The HEKATONCHEIRES concentrates on schranz and dark drum and bass – during my recent little ustream experiment I managed to use both of my favourite tracks, Crafty Fact and running.
It’s well worth checking out the other releases on the label, as in addition to especially quality tracks from siromaru and ZOONOODLE you’ll find Betwixt & Between’s Enter the Void and Alabaster’s Evil Eye. I also picked up ZOONOODLE’s superb solo album Hai no Nioi, which while not really useable in an NRG/freeform set is full of inspiring, darker atmospheres.
Many thanks to Gaia for the initial heads-up!
What better way to start things off again than with another brand new tune? This week we have a superb track called Lost Elegy from Amini, a real rising star of the scene. He’s an inspiration to any rookie producers out there, as his progress over the past year has been just phenomenal, and really shows how much work he’s putting in (being pals with the rest of the Tampere freeform crew probably doesn’t hurt, either).
Anyway, Lost Elegy is an awesome track with a strong Substanced influence, but full of extra touches and the super-rough synth work that Amini is making something of a trademark these days. Many thanks to the man himself – TYFTH is honoured to be releasing this one, and I’ll be doing my best to make sure it reaches as many freeform fans as it should.
Now I’m back from my trip there are a couple of other TYFTH-related projects to deal with, one of which might even be ready to announce in about a week’s time. Oh, and I’ll try to catch up on mails, mixes and other stuff over the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the track, and don’t forget to share this one (and indeed all the others) with anyone who might be interested.
Byproduct’s latest set includes his excellent Concorde remix, and I’d say that’s enough of an excuse to make it the headlining post for today. This is a live PA that once again lives up to the description – even without the synth twiddlings that were surely part of the full performance, there’s plenty going on here with the track edits and lovely connections.
For those who (inexplicably) haven’t been keeping up with Byproduct lately this set will be a treat, with a lot of new material. Starting off with the downright hilarious-awesome remix of Gangnam Style (which thanks to my stubborn avoidance of YouTube trends I discovered through this tune), there are game remixes aplenty and some superb stuff from Byproduct himself.
Listen up above, download from Byproduct’s site, and enjoy a brief promo video of the event in sunny Lahti.
The final upload for this week is a special one for Kreatrix fans – Level 13’s updated version of Is That All. We previewed it back in the day here on TYFTH, and earlier this year I used it in the first part of my 10 Years of FINRG set. While I’m not often a fan of vocal freeform, this is a very original tune with quite a different feel to a lot of tracks, while of course keeping the manic filtering that Kreatrix is famous for.
Looking at the downloads these past few days it seems that a fair number of people are discovering/catching up on the account’s older tracks too, so this is probably a nice point to stop the uploads for now. Fear not though – there are already some more tunes on the horizon which will be going online very soon indeed.
Fantastic news from the Smiling Corpse crew – the first full CD compilation has now been released, and is available to buy from the SC site. For a mere £5.37 you can get hold of some of the best tunes of the year so far while helping to ensure there’ll be more releases to come in the future, making this an absolute must-buy. Massive congrats to SC for an awesome release, and of course for firmly supporting the deeper side of the scene.
The next track on the upload is a 180 bpm stormer from Pulse, the Hungarian producer who’s now a veteran of many a freeform release. Very heavy on the acid, this is another track with a hint of Hybridize about it, thanks to the piano breakdown and lively melodies. Many thanks to Pulse (and apologies for the massive delay), I can imagine this one in a lot of different sets – which hopefully means that it will appeal to quite a wide range of freeform heads.
Stay tuned for another track tomorrow!
The next tune on the TYFTH SoundCloud is Children, another of Rob.O.T.T’s impressive first efforts at producing freeform. The hint is in the title, but this is actually a bootleg remix of Robert Miles’ mid-nineties chart bothering trance track, freeformed up with some superb filtered sections during the intro/outro. Although it’s already up there quality-wise with a lot of Hybridize tracks, it was never completely finished (this is a ‘first draft’) and so didn’t get the release it deserved.
Thanks this time to Meke for pointing me in the direction of J-Gear’s remix of the Resident Evil theme. I haven’t seen any of the films, so tonight I’ve learned that Manson was behind the original, and that Nightforce sampled this section for his now-classic Symphony For The Devil. Slightly hamstrung by the genre, J-Gear’s version can’t quite match that, but this is another quality schranz track to follow Rock you like a Hurricane.
edit: Thanks to Labraska (in the comments below) for linking to this awesome version by DJ Hammond.