First and foremost, let me just say that I heard about Carmack about three months ago and was immediately perplexed with how this dude created some of the sounds he puts in his tracks. Every texture sounds like it could have been made with a SP by a hiphop head from the 90's but filtered through some crazy Mars DMT-lens. And these tracks bang too. There is mad versatility in this guy's music.
But not only this, Mr. Carmack has proven to be mad profilic as well. He has released at least a track a day for the past 11 days now. To review the past week and a half, here's what he has put up on his soundcloud page:
By now you should be pretty acquainted. Excited to see what this guy does next.
Machinedrum is one of the first producers that has provided me a stepping stone from the banks of hiphop to the shore of bass-music, and one of the best things about his music is that it meets somewhere in the middle of the two aesthetics. However, in terns of growth/progression within his own work, Machinedrum has shifted almost effortless between glitchey hiphop tracks and remixes, percussion-saturated juke burners, and bubbly island club music. Almost all of these ventures share the same nostalgic junglist mindset. With his new venture set for release on Ninja Tune.
"The Gunshotta Ave. EP will be released on 14 October on 12" vinyl and download, featuring remixes by Fracture and AMIT, as well as non-album track "Stirrin"" - Ninja Tune
To start off this 808Roundup I thought I would throw in a recently released track from two of my favorite producers I've been listening to a lot of this summer. Both of these producers are from the MOD collective and really good at making intricate and rapper-friendly bass tracks. This stwo remix from the duo is a tropical, chilled-out club track. The pitchbent and reverb-laden synths remind me of something from Donkey Kong Country for the SNES mixed through a 00's R&B filter. The rhythm jumps between percussion-driven Angola influences and dirty dirty Cadillac music. Good for headphones or clubs. This will be out on HW&W.
Next up is the funkiest new producer I've heard in a minute. Kaytranada is from the electronic hotbed of Montreal and makes swingy, bouncey, and vibratoey groove tracks. As Summer is pretty much over at this point, this track is a good little last minute mood-lifter before the Fall comes crashing in. I really suggest you go listen to this guy's other stuff too.
And then we have Bondax, of course. These guys are super talented and super young, which I'm sure pisses off all sorts of melvin, old man producers. The cool thing about Bondax's tracks is how sophisticated and layered they are. They exist somewhere in that shadowy, yet growing grey area between R&B and UK bass music. They posted up this set on their soundcloud featuring all of their free goodies, so take advantage.
I also found this lil gem track by the good homie Nate Kodi and producer IAmusick. Short and sweet. This track starts off in a synthy landscape then drops down into a heavy drum section. 808 heavy one.
If you got bass-oriented goodness you think should be on a 808Roundup send me an email
The homie Danny DVINCI over at LA-based creativity output LVN LGT has been a long time supporter of my shit for awhile now. He even was kind enough to send over some awesome stickers and labels earlier this year (shown below) ...
Danny also mentioned earlier this year that he wanted me to contribute a lil, itsy-bitsy 11-min minimix. I found this pretty hard to do. Having listened to all of the LVN LGT mixes in succession (as Danny told me they should be), this all became clear to me. They all occupy a certain place in modern music and manage to fit together without stepping on each other's toes.
On the second edition of my 808 Roundup posts I included some slower, smoother bass-driven tracks.
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The first song I found today was by a producer that I've been sleeping on for the past year or two now: Evil Needle. Evil Needle is a German-born, France-residing producer that makes what could best be described as music within the range of soulful R&B and trap-esque bangers. I say 'within the range' because this guy is super versatile, yet ALWAYS consistent. Almost every track I've found from him I like, if not love.
Be sure to check out his other stuff on his website here.
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Next up is a compilation of mixtapes from Vancouver, B.C. house/bass/techno producer HxdB. Sev's production is super deep and on-point while his mixes are patchwork of originals and homie exclusive previews. I saw him a-grip ago at a club in my college town of Bellingham when he performed with my homie Cedaa / Simon Ho. Having heard his shit, I went on my mobile soundcloud and immediately started harvesting free cuts from his profile. His cuts are perfect for danky clubs and headphone meditations alike.
Here's a fat 4+ hour block of HxdB mixtapes to get acquainted if you aren't already.
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The final entry is from another one of my favorite labels. The ubiquitous, Parisian bass music imprint, B.YRSLF division. I got to say this these guys exposed me to a lot of very talented producers. Last summers 'Summer Crisis' mixtape was on heavy repeat during intra-city bus trips and 6am walks through campus. Now we have Summer Crisis vol. 2. Another set of 20+ free tracks that I'll probably be rinsing a whole lot in the weeks to come. My favorite so far off this release might be "Swift" by Yoin. Bouncey 808s and summery synth stabs is almost always a good recipe.
Cop a free download of my new release, Zenojimesis EP.
I released this EP to get rid of some remixes/edits and older cuts, as well as some newer stuff.
Its mostly for just head-nodding purposes.
A lot of these tracks are on the more hip-hop side of things for me.
Would love if you showed the release support by following me on soundcloud
Preview the track "Lunar Shit (ft. Antwon Vinson)" here
I also just posted this Danny Brown remix up on my soundcloud
Lately I've been sluffing. I intended to get my latest monthly mix published up on Soundcloud but I have it stashed on my external up at my house and have been couch surfing around Seattle for the past two weeks. It really sucks because there are some really cool original tracks and cuts from close homies within the new mix. I'll post it up on my twitter (@zenojim) as soon as its up.
In the mean time here's some older mixes from past months. Be sure to follow me on mixcloud
In taking a minor of astrophysics, most students usually capstone their minor by taking a class on cosmology. This subset of astrophysics can best be described as the one that deals with the large-scale structure of the universe and looks at universal phenomena through the eyes of the Cosmological principle. Their are plenty of details to get into, but to sum up the main points, when looked at through very large scales the universe looks the same in all directions and has no central location.
Image of the Carina Nebula
Okay..
What does that even mean? Well if you are in the middle of the ocean and see no land anywhere on the horizon, then everything looks the same in all directions. So the first point does make some sense. But what about the universe having no central location? That is pretty strange to me. Almost every physical thing has a central location. One could try to maybe make the case that 'the internet' has no central location, but then someone else comes along and says that "Well, it's safe to assume that as far as we know, the internet can be centralized to the planet Earth." So how do you visualize something with no center?
Well here is one way to do it...
This is a huge computer simulation of a bunch of 'gravitational-bound' particles interacting with one another, as the computer program is run, they begin to coalesce into a certain structure at different scales.
The diagram below shows how objects at these different scales look like compared to one another.
If the video above reminds you of neurons, you are not crazy. Almost everyone I've showed this video to says this about it.
One of my favorite podcasts to listen to is the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. A couple months back Mr. Rogan interviewed Dr. Tyson for some very interesting conversation..
Some stuff I found this morning on soundcloud. I'll tend to do this alot.
This first track is by Mr. CARMACK, a producer who makes these sort of heavy drum-pattern hood anthem type tracks. The kind of stuff that would look great cued up to And1 mixtape or the battle scenes in Pacific Rim. These tracks aren't just dumb bangers though. There is a lot of crazy little sound effects and bits of complexity sprinkled through-out. Carmack's style is def sophisticated.
Here's an EP preview from another one of my favorite producers in the past year, 813. 813 really explores a whole range of blings, blips and bell sounds with straight-forward drum patterns. I don't like the T word when it comes to trying to classify this release, but it definitely appeals to the times.. albeit the production is really good and creative.
Another producer that I've listened to a lot in the past year is Obey City. With all the recent releases of his Astro Nautico label, it seems hard to imagine how productive he stays. This new EP from him I found on soundcloud the other day is a testament to this. Exploring all kinds of modern funk, 90's & 80's nostalgia, on-point, clubby drum-patterns and wavy synthlines, Melted Magic seems like the perfect name for this EP. I probably like the track "Intrigue" the most. It reminds me of an older Ginuwine/Timbaland-type track that had a baby with the Paper Mario soundtrack.
The last track I wanted to share was a dreamy little 808 track called "Aurora" by Sipp & Thomas White. Love the atmosphere and the little part that comes in around 2:17 before they let the drums come back.
As all you do not currently know, I am a student of physics and astronomy and I am working on my Bachelor Degree in the subject. After the difficulty of my last quarter in the Spring, I decided that I would get a head start on my studies before the Fall quarter is to start. Among the courses on my schedule is a subject that tends to have many popular connotations that, at this point in my science career, I now know are erroneous. That subject is called "quantum mechanics".
By some strange free association, the first phrase that floated to my mind after the name of the course was "Feynman".
If you know a moderate amount of physics, the history of science, or great names of the 20th century, you would happen upon prolific physicist Richard Feynman. Now, we've all heard of Isaac Newton, Galileo, Copernicus and Einstein, but Feynman is a name that often isn't as readily spoken in many households. He was a brilliant, fun-loving, and critically-thinking mind who made vast improvements to the field of modern physics, won the Nobel Prize and worked on the Manhattan Project with many the great names in science.
So who is Richard Feynman to me?
Well I've heard his name quite a lot in my years of studying physics but only until about four months ago did his name really mean anything. I went onto to audible.com and downloaded all of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. And to anyone who wants to know physics...I can't think of a better, more concise explanation of all of the fields up until that point in 1962.
Here is a great BBC documentary on him (I honestly haven't watched the whole thing but I watched the first half before bed last night):
Here are some great Feynman quotes:
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama." - Statement (1959), quoted by James Gleick in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman(1992) "To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in." - The Character of Physical Law(1965) Ch. 2 "The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it." - Letter from Feynman to Koichi Mano (3 February 1966); published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track : The Letters of Richard P. Feynman(2005) Feynman is a good example of how to see the world like a child but to solve it's mysteries like a scientist.
I'm starting this blog as sort of a brain dump. I will post up random thoughts, ideas, music I've made, articles I read, things I've made, and life that I've lived. I hope it helps /entertains someone.
I make modern music of all types, be sure to check out my Soundcloud
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