Archive for January, 2009
My “Butterflies” remix hits iTunes!
As many of you know, I recently completed my first commercial remix project, which was done for Worldwide Groove Corporation, for their single, You Still Give Me Butterflies.
I’m very pleased to announce that the song has been released on iTunes today! (It will be coming soon to Amazon.com in MP3 format too.)
If you’d like to listen to the sample, write a review, or maybe even buy a copy, please visit: http://www.djwesley.com/butterflies/
As soon as the original artists permits me to do so, I’ll be posting a longer sample of the remix on my MySpace and Facebook pages.
If you do choose to pick-up a copy, I very much appreciate it. But if you like the remix, and/or the original song, I encourage and would appreciate you posting a positive review on iTunes.
I’ll post additional information about this project soon. Thank you in advance for your support.
Some people still don’t get it
I was reading the New York Times online this morning, as I usually do each morning over my first cupper, focusing (also as usual) on business and technology. One of the articles that got my attention was one with the headline, Europe’s Twisted Path Away From AM Radio.
It was interesting reading enough, but I was struck by how most of what I read about radio (whether terrestrial or satellite, analog or digital) simply overlooks what I feel is the real trend, the real threat to traditional radio, and it received one sentence at the bottom of the article: “Many radio stations are streamed over the Internet.”
To that sentence, I’d like to add a few points:
- Yes, many radio stations (in this context, conventional radio stations) are in fact streamed over the Internet. There are thousands of such stations from around the world doing just that, and along with them are thousands more Internet-only radio stations. (I have a vested interest here, since I’m program director at one of them, iDanceRadio.fm.)
- Together, conventional and Internet-only radio stations streaming their content provide something that Sirius XM, terrestrial (AM and FM) radio, and digital radio don’t, and frankly never can: a “radio band” (the Internet) with tens of thousands of “channels,” with every conceivable format, genre of music, and nature, from talk radio to bagpipe music.
- It is possible today to listen to Internet radio, easily and conveniently, with mobile smartphone devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone, and as mobile devices get smarter and more capable, and cellular networks continues to offer greater bandwidth, it’s not unreasonable to expect that this method of listening to “radio” will only expand in the years to come.
It’s true that mobile Internet streaming is a geeky thing at present. You have to have an unlimited data plan to go with your smartphone, and you have to be geeky enough to figure out how to find, install and use the sometimes cumbersome software. But it’s not by any means difficult, and as I can personally attest—I listen to iDanceRadio.fm on my BlackBerry for hours and hours each week during commutes and errands—the experience is quite good. (Yes, the connection drops occasionally, but it’s easily restarted, and it’s a surprisingly rare event on my Sprint network powered BlackBerry Curve.)
In any case, I have yet to see a single article from a major news outlet that even mentions this way of listening to radio. The New York Times article I referenced merely talks about how Apple hasn’t put a radio receiver in the iPod; well, in a manner of speaking, they did put one in the iPhone. And Sprint put one in my BlackBerry, too, in the form of the semi-tolerable “Sprint TV” application (which also does radio).
I truly believe that this is the future of radio, even if nobody quite sees it yet. Consumers want choice, and Internet radio gives choice. Consumer want mobility, and mobile Internet radio gives mobility. With improvements in hardware and software, mobile Internet radio could also easily deliver what the DVR has brought to cable and satellite television; program buffering to allow pausing and rewinding, and maybe even scheduled recording of programs (the RIAA would love that—not).
But alas, I think sometimes I’m the only one who “gets it.”
Keep listening.
Wes
When lyrics and production collide
Last week, I received a promo for a new song from Amy Studt, a singer/songwriter based in the UK. The song, Nice Boys, really got my attention.
WaWa, a Polish production team, have been kicking-out some great productions lately, and Studt’s track is one of them. I was immediately taken with the snappy arrangement; it’s just one of those rare songs that has me chair dancing the very first moment I hear it. It went into the “play this” pile without a second thought.
A good friend of mine for whom I played the song had a very different reaction to it. “It’s awful,” he said, causing me to wonder what the heck I missed. He explained that he couldn’t get past the key lyric: nice guys finish last.
When I listened to the song again, I guess I found myself having the same reaction to it. But I was still chair dancing.
I think what I find so interesting about this (and admittedly, I’m about the only one who’ll find it interesting) is that I “trained” this particular friend to listen to lyrics. “I didn’t listen to lyrics before you started pointing them out,” he told me at one point several months ago.
So, this is all my fault.
I do listen to lyrics, and a lot of it is because I have a tendency to sing to the songs when I DJ. (Fans can be thankful I usually have the mic turned-off or away from my mouth.) But in this particular case, I guess it was subconcious, because here I was, singing along with and enjoying lyrics I really wasn’t paying attention to.
Like my friend, I’ve dismissed songs in the past due to lyrical content (which is one of a few reasons I don’t play Beyoncé’s Single Ladies; I find it hard to choke-down how she belts them out in her overwrought and now very tiresome style). But obviously what constitutes a “good song” is both multi-dimensional—and very subjective.
Crank it up…
Wes
Still a sucker for pretty songs
Every week, I have the honor and privilege (or burden, depending on the week) of previewing somewhere between 200 and 300 new tracks, which once you remove duplications for remixes of the same song, equates to between 75 and 100 songs. I’m picking what goes into rotation on iDanceRadio.fm, and what I want to spin in my own DJ sets, and needless to say, there’s a lot of variety of approaches, styles, levels of quality, and so on.
There are a lot of things that can make a song stand-out, but “beauty” is one of them. I suppose it comes from my liking emotional songs my entire life; I like music that makes me feel something. But well-written, well-produced songs that are just “pretty,” whether the vocal or the production, always register.
One recent example comes from Italy’s Alice Edun and Spanish producer Oscar Salguero. I know Edun (actually as just “Edun,” too) from her 2007 smash hit, Put ‘Em Up, which was a worldwide dance success. I know Salguero from his work with my friends at CAPP Records, most notably on some of the Rikah tracks, which is what initially caused me to listen to this track.
But when I did, I found an uplifting, emotional, and well, beautiful song with amazing songwriting, and a vocal that shines through like a flashlight during a power outage.
I don’t know who actually wrote the track (I suspect it was Salguero), but it’s one that’s definitely worth checking out. It’s in-rotation on the radio station, and it’ll be a part of my DJ sets for some time to come.
A new twist on an old classic
I have blogged multiple times in the past about remakes, those dance cover songs that have been a near mainstay of much of dance music for several years now. I won’t go into all the bigger issues of cover songs again, at least not right now, but as a precursor to the blog posting, I’ll say the following…
Cover songs come in two forms: faithful covers, and what I’d probably refer to as trailblazing covers (although the word “trailblazing” probably overstates the concept most of the time).
Faithful covers are those that respect, often to a fault, the original. Of course they have a place, and they are often commercially quite successful. A faithful cover is familiar and comforting, but still quite fresh, because the production is new, and of course if it’s dance, it’s often got an entirely new feel—especially if the original was, say, a slow ballad. But with faithful covers, the overall arrangement is designed to keep close to the original, the song key is the same, and often, the vocals are designed to closely (or even exactly) emulate the original.
Trailblazing covers go to the other extreme. They keep enough of the original to be familiar, perhaps a sound pattern, or instrument hook. But frequently the lyrics are massaged, keys might be changed, and the entire point is to sound quite different from the original.
The problem with a faithful cover is that they’re often too close to the original, almost a knock-off. Trailblazing covers are often too cutting edge, so far from the original that they are nearly a slap in the face.
While there are certainly shades of gray in between the two extremes, a just-released example of a great trailblazer comes from System Recordings out of New York: Trona’s Jaded Love.
Trona, a Liberian-born producer who grew-up in North Carolina, delivers a fresh, interesting take on Soft Cell’s Tainted Love. Why Trona (or his label) chose to rename the song isn’t particularly clear, but it’s fitting; the song is at once a cover, and most definitely a trailblazer. Lyrically, it’s Tainted Love, and it keeps a couple of familar elements of the original arrangement.
But from there, Trona goes into entirely new, interesting, and fresh territory, truly making the song his own (as those pesky American Idol judges are fond of saying). It is at once minimalist, and yet, rich and sonically complex. It fits into a DJ set perfectly, and yet is relaxing to listen to. System Recordings calls it “progressive house,” and I suppose it probably is, but it doesn’t fit the classic definition.
This one’s for sure going to be a part of my DJ sets for awhile, but if you’ve not heard it, definitely find it and check it out. It’s one of the coolest, most innovative tracks I’ve heard in awhile.
Random thoughts about dance genres
As I was eating breakfast this morning (I think about these things at weird times), and listening to iDanceRadio.fm, I was somewhat struck by something.
When I first starting DJ’ing almost several years ago, the dance music I preferred was what I’d today call filter house. It goes by a lot of other names too, but the best way I can describe it is modern day disco. It sounds a lot like the disco music of the 70s, but with a more up-to-date “feel” in terms of composition, arrangement and certainly production. (Unfortunately, a bit like the classic court definition of obscenity, you know it when you hear it, but it’s difficult to describe it with mere words.)
Over the past 18 to 24 months, my tastes have slowly evolved toward a harder edged sound, first to what I’d probably call progressive house and electro house, as well as techno in its various forms (which is definitely a bit of an acquired taste, especially for someone in my age group), and more recently, toward trance.
Now, I’ve liked a lot of trance for a long time, but for whatever reason, I’m really getting off on the sound at the moment. I still tend to prefer trance tracks that incorporate vocals and elements of more traditional song form. But even traditional instrumental trance that’s well-produced is increasingly getting my attention, and I continue to be struck by its similarities with classical music (rich textures, rises and falls in energy levels, and so forth).
In programming iDanceRadio.fm (and in my own DJ sets too), I work very hard to select tracks which, for lack of a better word to describe it, are “commercial.” There’s a lot of dance music out there, from artists who clearly put a lot of effort and passion into their work. Judging music is always very subjective, but I hear an awful lot of dance music that just, for lack of a better way to put it, lacks polish. The songwriting is pedestrian; the production screams that it was done by someone without a lot of experience; perhaps the engineering itself was off (it wasn’t mastered properly); or maybe the vocals are just badly sung or badly recorded.
But when a song is simply well-done, it catches my ear, and it doesn’t generally matter anymore whether it’s soft and squishy filter house, or the edgiest hardstyle techno, or various points in between. Quality is quality, and quality gets played… In my sets, and on iDanceRadio.fm.
The great thing is that quality comes from a lot of different places. It can come from a major artist on a major label, and it can come from the unknown trance producer barely out of high school working in his basement. It can come from California here in the U.S., and it can come from a small town in Austria.
The fun part about my job is discovering those gems and getting them heard. And the great thing about programming iDanceRadio.fm is that I’m never told what to play. The whole point is to provide tremendous variety in dance music styles. I have that luxury in a lot of the DJ’ing I do as well, and the good news is that there’s a lot of great material out there—regardless of what genre label you want to apply to it.
Keep listening.
Wes
