Kyran Smith – Winter Disco by Kyran Smith

The Roots – Dear God (Alex Darkly remix) by alexdarkly

Exile – Kiss You All Over (Moments Edit) by Moments.

LINE-up ANNOuNcEmENT

LOOk wHO’S ON THEIR wAy TO wA!

Hello Perth! One year on from our inaugural event, we’re back with news of the second instalment of Perth’s very own polyphonic spree, ON THE BRIGHT SIDE 2011.

ON THE BRIGHTSIDE 2011 is set to bring some of the hottest acts from Australia and abroad to Perth for one big, beautiful, sonic extravaganza under the Supertop at Esplanade Park on Saturday 23 July!

Once again the promoters of Splendour In The Grass will present the good people of Perth with a top notch line-up of acts who will mostly also perform at Splendour 2011, but not before they turn it on for Perth first!

So Perthians, get ready to have your socks collectively knocked off! The following acts will perform exclusive Perth appearances at ON THE BRIGHT SIDE 2011 for you!

THE HIvES • puLp • mODEST mOuSE • TAmE ImpALA THE kILLS • THE GRATES • FOSTER THE pEOpLE

JAmES BLAkE • wARpAINT • TIm & JEAN

Hey man I read on twitter something went wrong in Geelong last week, what happened?

The crowd was really good and stuff they just didn’t have the right equipment!What didn’t they have? How do they not have the right equipment at a club!?

I use the CDJ2000s, with the USB function. All my music is obviously stored on the USB stick, they didn’t have the 2000s so I couldn’t play any of my music. Luckily I had a few old CDs in my bag, that I’d burnt maybe about 3 months ago and just go with whatever I had on those CDs. So no new tunes or bootlegs. I actually spoke to the guys, they had the rider, I spoke to them two hours before, and I asked ‘just to double check you guys do have the 2000s right? Otherwise I’ll just go burn some CDs.’ And the answer was like ‘yeah yeah yeah, we’ve got em.’ I get in there and I’m like so easily avoidable! Haha

Do you find the 2000s are making life a lot easier?

Yeah.

What about flicking through tracks whilst playing?

It’s really easy, the screen on each of them makes it really easy to flick through playlists you’ve played and folders and you cans search for things by key for example. It’s just as easy as searching around Serato or Traktor. It makes things so easy for me, it’s great.

Are you able to do a lot more now then?

Yeah, like Traktor and Serato, you can put in cue points and loops as well. When I’m listening to all my new tracks, I can sit there on my laptop and put in cue points, where I might want to mix from, or a place to jump to, or put in the background on the third deck. Then when you put the USB in all the cue points are ready to go and you can get way more creative.

With the current tour, it’s not as busy as usual, are you doing lots of production?

Yeah I just finished the album, and a bunch of remixes, one for DJ PP, one for Kid Massive and another one for FRU (once again I’m unsure of this artist!) and originals for BKCA.

The album that’s being released on Monday?

That’s the single. The album is the collection of stuff from the last year and a couple of new ones on there as well. It’s something that can be put on and get the idea of the sound of Bass Kleph. This is the first time it’s all my stuff and you can find out what I’ve been doing.

I really like the stuff with Chris, some of those tracks are really awesome, how long have you been working with him?

Actually I’ve known him for years, we used to be in a band together as kids (Loki for anyone interested) and we got back into writing together in the last year or two and they’ve started to take on their own sound which is not necessarily Bass Kleph it’s not necessarily Chris so we’ve started this new thing called BKCA, where our sound meets in the middle, a bit more rocky radio friendly version of the dance stuff we do. It’s nice to get back to our pop music roots. Write a few versus and choruses, play a bit of guitar, there are quite classic instruments on there but it’s still a dance feel to it, with the beats, but with more of an organic edge.

It really does draw you in quite easily, it wasn’t as techy as the other stuff, really easy to listen to?

It just kinda happened yeah. We hadn’t done that kinda stuff in ages, and we missed being able to write ‘song’ songs, you know the ones you can write on an acoustic guitar and it works well.

Do you ever want to go back to doing something live?

Yeah. We’re looking at it at the moment. How we’re doing it is somewhere between dj and that. Chris is singing and I’m doing a lot of live programming and playing stuff back on the machine and we kind of dj the backing tracks, and he does a lot of effects. It’s half between djing and live stuff. If it blows up we’d be interested in forming a whole band around it and turning it into like a four or five piece traditional band.

Would you go back to being the drummer? (Bass Kleph was the drummer for Loki)

Maybe! Haha I’m kinda undecided. Drums would be the easiest one for me to do, but because I’ve written the melodies and chords and stuff it’d be fun to play some keys and guitar through some spots, I might change instruments part way through.

It’s sound like it’s going to be hard to decided what you want to do?

Yeah it is because it’s all so much fun, you can’t do ‘em all you just try and do what you can.

Speaking of doing everything, how are your record labels going? How many are there now? Vacation, Exit Row and Dirty Weekends?

Yeah that’s them. They’ve all been on a bit of a slow slide lately. I’ve had to put them on hold pretty much about 6 months ago. The way everything is running in the industry it’s difficult to do more than break even on them. Unless I wanted to give up my djing and production into running it, I got into this to write records and play music to people. I focused on my own stuff for a while and stepped away from the label stuff and reassess. I’m really glad I did, because in the meantime I was approached by a really big distributor in the UK and they saw all the new stuff I was doing and they asked what was going on because they’d love to lend me a hand and help you out. They’re called Three Six Zero and they look after Deadmau5, Calvin Harris and Chris Lake’s records, hopefully they can take Vacation now to the same level?

Why is it so hard to break even?

Sales are down, there just isn’t that much, there’s so much choice on Beatport. Anyway what you could do is get more serious about it by taking a portion of the artists bookings but that’s more work to follow up on. If you take someone’s publishing you really wanna do a good job for them and make the most of having their publishing. It was all this extra work I couldn’t really commit to because I have my own releases and tours. It has to be nice and simple. It’s still a thing we really do for the love of it, but with three six zero in charge of it now it’s going to go to another level. They handle all the stuff, the distribution to all the stores, promo to all the djs accounting to all the artists at the end as well.

That’s a good weight of your mind too then.

Yeah I can focus on what tracks I want to put out!

How does this all come across in the US? I saw pictures of the tour through the US last year it looks like there were some pretty big crowds!

Yeah I think it’s the best for me at the moment in the world. I was back there about a month ago or something. I’m aiming to go over every three months or so and play a few weeks of shows. The shows are awesome, there are really cool crowds and really cool clubs. It’s more mixed type of people, all ages, young through to older and they love to party and they love their house music.

I always imagined the American house music scene to be hard to get into, but looking at the auditorium in LA it was just amazing.

Things are growing over there at the moment for dance music. They’re all excited about it. Especially with the success of the pop people like David Guetta and Black Eyed Peas and it’s making dance music more commercial over there and exposing it to more people which is great, because up until then so many people would go and see RnB and hip hop when they went out clubbing. House music was a ‘ravey’ kind of thing. Now the perception is more like ‘this is for everybody,’ so when they go out on the weekend they’re happy to go to a house club.

It’s opened up so much work for me over there too, with great singers, song writers and labels. It’s awesome man! I’m really excited about the shift towards dance music in the states.

How important is maintaining your image, via twitter etc…?

I dunno, it’s good for the fans and stuff. The things I do in America people back here don’t get to see, and the things I do here people in America can’t see. Unless I take pictures or video or something everyone is left out of the loop. I’m just stoked to be able to share it.

Hey man thanks for the interview.

My pleasure man.

Danger (France/Ekleroshock) LIVE!

support from Audageous, Robot Skream, Dead Vents. + Jack Spaks

The Danger phenomenon is one that cannot be missed.

Danger exploded onto the scene in 2007 and emerged as an integral artist of the French electro scene.

After a hit EP 11h30, a sold out vinyl in 3 weeks, remixing the likes of Kanye West, Sebastien Tellier, La Roux and The Midnight Juggernauts, Danger returns to with his first shows in Australia since 2007 and first LIVE show in Perth ever.

The live show is one of epic proportions; the massive stage show incorporates live instrumentals, an incredible stage and lighting show, and the amazing visual costume of Danger himself.

SHOCKONE & PHETSTA

[VIPER / TECHNIQUE]

Support:

SEMPY

XANDER

DART

DEANEL

Hosted by MC XSESSIV

Australia’s biggest dance music act since Pendulum have been selling out Shape Bar EVERYTIME they play for the last couple of years, and things show absolutly no sign of slowing down as they continue on their path of world domination….

Winners of countless PDMA’s over the last few years, both Shockone & Phetsta have topped JJJ’s super request, and ‘The Sun’ is still being played regularly on daytime radio 2 years after its release.

Shockone’s achievments include having the #1 drum & bass and #1 dubstep track on Beatport at the same time, Aswell as being featured on Andy C’s Nightlife 5 – the dream for any drum & bass producer.

Phetsta’s Prism EP with Run You Down is still in the Beaport Dubstep top 10 six weeks after its release, and the video clip was the #6 most watched youtube music video in January 2011 (!!!!!!)…

Keep an eye out for their hotly anticipated single “Crucify Me’ which is finished with the release being imminent, watch this space

I turned up to see the Brow Horn Orchestra and was pleasantly surprised to hear them smash out a really good funky set in front of the Freo crowd. Everyone soaked it up and the dancefloor was busy for the whole set. Their on stage energy really sells the band well, and you can see why they’re gaining so much attention across Australia.

After a quick filler set by Cut & Paste Djs Tom Thum jumped up to show everyone his beatbox styles. Nothing short of amazing, I couldn’t handle beatboxing every weekend, but as a once and while treat it’s definitely enjoyable. His slow progression, showing the crowd how the whole set up works is genius, it shows his true talent and is an easier crowd pleaser, it pleased me when he did Roots Manuva’s Witness The Fitness!

Sampology’s audio-visual mixing absolutely slays the crowd (as with Dj Yoda etc…) These visual mash-up sets become so much fun, the visuals usually preempt the audio, so there’s a sweet moment to get excited before the next track drops. From Ghost Busters, to Michael Jackson to The Muppets, everything was a blast and 100% enjoyable, even if it was 80-90s revisited again.

All three artists used their craft to play the crowd well, and that’s what makes a good night out, when you feel like you’ve been entertained. Nice work Razar and Cut & Paste crews.

Album: Isam

Label: Ninja Tune

Release Date: Out now

Rating: 8/10

Ever more electronica for our ears, but once again it’s been enjoyable. Amon Tobin’s brand of electronica is intricate, emotion pours from every impeccably chosen sound. There are some really dark and creepy tracks like Goto 10, contrasted with breezy and light tracks like Wooden Toy. There’s a real magical quality to each track, the way that simple sounds can be place together to form some emotional value is pretty impressive. However, if you read the notes Amon has put on the full stream of the album (below) it takes a fair bit of the emotional magic away! It doesn’t detract from the fact that the whole album is well crafted, and enjoyable either for it’s technical skill or for it’s ability to use sound to create something more emotionally charged.
‘ISAM’ – Full album with track-by-track commentary from Amon Tobin by Amon Tobin