Thanks to Aryx for letting me know about his newest track – this version is obviously just a preview (played on Audiosurf), but it’s really promising and show’s how he’s improving with every tune. Personally I reckon this melody is easily a level or two above Chaldea’s, so fingers crossed that the rest of the track will keep the level this high.
Make sure you’re sitting down before you open this link, as seeing this many tracks at once might be too much for a lot of Alek Szahala fans. After all the recent requests for old material, Alek has put together an amazingly comprehensive list of releases from the earliest tracker days to current work-in-progress tunes. I can’t imagine how much time this must have taken – all we can do is thank him for making such an effort.
I’m a big fan of his old Goa style, so I’ve been checking a lot of that out, as well as listening to his older trancy .xm tunes. As you’d expect, there are also some real gems in the freeform section, with tracks like Phobos, Jinnaya and Luna online for the first time, and his truly amazing edit of Vengeance is up there too. Talking of Vengeance, check out Glacier Queen for a lovely jazz lounge version of the piano melody. The one main regret is that Freezing Clouds has been lost, as that was really a special tune…
Congratulations to Alek too for the release of Crystal Thunder on the Spacesynth Revolution compilation. It’s got a really nice MOD feel to it, and from the preview it sounds like there are some other good tunes on the CD.
Thanks again to Soham for this great clip of KA-NA playing at the last Hell’s vs Trance Enough event. As usual it’s Alek Szahala overload, with the very underplayed Hydra followed by Man Eaten – typical of her style.
I was meaning to post about Alabaster’s latest two-track EP a few days ago, but I hadn’t heard the full versions of the tunes. That’s all sorted now, as Alabaster very kindly gave me a promo CD at last night’s NRGetic Romancer.
The first track on the CD, Tungsten, shows off his slower style while keeping the brilliant Grimsoul-style synths that he’s perfected lately. The breakdown brings in a classic Alabaster melody that rolls along with some nice acidy sounds at about 150bpm.
Revenant is a real stormer of a track, with the usual lovely filtered synths and a great pace about it – as soon as I heard this one I could imagine it working perfectly on a dancefloor. As well as being some of Alabaster’s best work, it might even be one of the best freeform tunes I’ve heard anywhere in the last few months.
Aquanox – Meteor Rain by Aquanox
Aquanox is back again with two more high bpm freeform tunes, and both are really worth checking out. My favourite is Meteor Storm, which builds up a brilliant atmosphere with the chorals and detuned acid. I think I like the first half more than the second, but it’s a very well structured track, one of his best so far.
The other tune is Chupakabra, a really pacy track with plenty of acid. There are some great sounds in this one, and you’ll find it on Aquanox’s SoundCloud.
Operation Karma has been and gone, and so here are a few of the videos from the event. It’s taking me a long while to upload them all, so for the time being I’ve focused on the freeform DJs.
Anyway, first up is DJ MT, who followed Dairin’s hard house with uplifting freeform. The first half of the set was very much UK style, but things got darker/harder as it went on and finished with the Karma anthems of Operation Stardust and Ephexis’ Quantum Fury (both slightly edited by MT himself). Here he is playing Epyx & Cyrez’s Heroes for Sale.
Check the rest of the post for videos from Kaz-B and KA-NA.
A few of us at Romancer didn’t know too much about Bootek until recently, so Guld has been passing this video around as a good example of what his style sounds like. Maybe not what we usually hear at NRGetic Romancer, but it really seems like it’d be hard not to enjoy one of his mashed up sets.
I was at Takuya Angel’s shop in Harajuku again today, and it reminded me about this footage from his fashion show in the US last November. All the designs are by Takuya himself, and that’s him on the decks in the background, playing his own tune. A few of these outfits might be a little (!) too neon for NRGetic Romancer, but I’m always impressed by his work – apparently the next Tokyo show is in July.
Aquanox – Killer Bee by Aquanox
A very welcome return to production for Hungarian artist Aquanox, who disappeared for a long while after a few nice releases a year or two back. Killer Bee is a 160bpm acid track, and while it doesn’t quite match up to Thunderbird it’s great to hear his different take on dark freeform – hopefully there’ll be more tunes on the way soon.
Suge’s tracks have found their way into a few mixes lately, so this promising release is nicely timed. Check out the crossfaded demo on the release page – there are some very nice sounding tracks from Suge himself, as well as guest tracks from Alabaster, Betwixt & Between, ziki_7 and Takumi Yamamoto. Hydra is a really nice tune with a bit of an old-skool Betwixt meets modern-day Betwixt feel to it, and even if the bpm is pretty high it seems like it might pitch down well. I’m not familar with the Alabaster tune yet, but the clip is sounding good…
The CD will be on sale at M3 2010, which seems to be a tech market held every year in Tokyo -not sure I’ll be able to get there though, so I hope it’ll be available somewhere else too.