Posts filed under 'Dance Music'
With chops like this, there’s no need to “back it up”
Last week, I received a promo for a new track from both an artist, and a record label (XtremeNYC), I’d never heard of. I’m always a little skeptical when I get total unknowns, but I dutifully slipped the CD in my player, and was very pleasantly surprised.
The song is Back it Up, and the artist is 16 year old Gia Bella. The photos on her MySpace page convey a look that’s far more mature and mischievous, but be that as it may, she has a great voice that paired with a decent song and the strong production work on this release, is a combination that works.
Dave Audé’s name might be plastered on every other dance release these days, but his mix of Back it Up is incredibly solid; it’s got the perfect funky feel for the song, and a nice, dark, gritty percussion that just begs for you to get on the floor.
You can hear a sample on Gia Bella’s MySpace page (link above).
Add comment July 2, 2009
The sound of a new Belgian import
Belgium may stick out more in my mind for great chocolate than for dance music, but Robbins Entertainment picked a particularly strong track to bring to the US from that European country in Ameerah’s The Sound of Missing You.
As I’ve written here several times, I always pay attention to lyrics, and I love a well-written set of words that tell a story, convey emotion, and generally make me feel something. And The Sound of Missing You delivers.
The song was written by Swedish producers and brothers Sebastian and Didrik Thott, along with Carl Björsell and Ameerah El Ouiglani herself. The Thotts have penned songs for Celine Dion and Lindsay Lohan among others, and certainly brought their talents to bear on this project.
Ameerah’s vocals, however, are perhaps the main reason this song works so incredibly well. They are silky-smooth, heavy with emotion, and just plain beautiful.
There are only a couple of different mixes on the release; the original, plus one from producer Dave Ramone, each in a radio and extended versions. But it doesn’t need any others; the production on the original version is polished and flawless, and both radio- and club-friendly. And the reception to this track has been strong so far.
It’ll be interesting to see how this release does, and what’s next from Ameerah.
1 comment June 29, 2009
It’s Med-oon-yo
One of my favorite recent releases is a great track from a newcomer, just put out a couple of weeks ago on Casa Records. The song is We Are Meant to Be, and the artist is Vincent Medugno.
With my decidedly mutt genetic roots, that include a total absence of any Italian, I had no idea how to pronounce this guy’s name, and when faced with the need to say it on-mic recently, I totally botched it.
Freddy Retro, a New York producer who worked on the release, set the record straight for me recently. It’s pronounced, “Med-oon-yo.” So easy and seemingly obvious once he told me. *sigh*
Anyway, check out the track… You can hear it in Vincent’s MySpace player. I’ve been playing the mix from the incredible Georgie Porgie, but there’s a number of great mixes to choose from, including Freddy’s own.
With a debut this strong, I’m gonna wager this isn’t the last we’re going to hear from Med-oon-yo. 
Add comment June 25, 2009
A storied song gets a dance treatment
The controversial Sinéad O’Connor is fairly well-known, but I’d be hard-pressed to recall any of her songs, with one exception: Nothing Compares 2 U.
I was surprised to find out that Nothing was penned by Prince back in 1985, but it was Sinéad’s cover in 1990 that propelled her (and the song) to worldwide recognition.
I wouldn’t have seen the song as a good candidate for a dance cover, but that’s precisely what we have now from Consoul Trainin, one of the names used by Greek producer John Efthimiou (a/k/a John Stephanel), with vocals provided by Joan Kolova, whose has graced other Consoul Trainin projects.
Released under the modified title Nothing Compares to You, and finding its way to the US on the Redstick label, it’s a competent, inviting reinterpretation of the song. A number of mixes are available that go from chilly and loungey, to pretty “out there.”
Kolova’s vocals don’t attempt to replicate O’Connor’s distinctive sound (a strategy that is perhaps too-often used in dance covers), but rather, gives the song a cool, new sound that is at once familiar, and fresh.
Efthimiou chose remixers for the project that are, to me anyway, unfamiliar (which is a great opportunity to find some new sounds). My preferred mix is from another Greek producer, Agent Greg, but you can check more of them out on Consoul Trainin’s MySpace page (link at the top of this entry).
Add comment June 17, 2009
Playlist for Friday Night House Party Mixshow #33 (6/12/2009)
Alright, just pulled together the playlist for last Friday’s DJ Wesley Friday Night House Party, and here it is! Be sure and tune-in each Friday night on iDanceRadio.fm, at 7 Pacific, 10 Eastern. Need a reminder? Follow me on Twitter; just click the Twitter logo on my web site.
- Vincent Medugno – We Are Meant to Be (Georgie Porgie Extended Mix)
- Katy Perry – Waking Up in Vegas (Jason Nevins Electrotec Club Remix)
- Wideband Network – Bad Days (Extended Mix)
- Ithaka Maria – Confession (Viani Club Mix)
- amberRose Marie – Wanna Be a DJ (Josh Harris Club Mix)
- Sunfreakz – Drive Out (Original Mix)
- Livvi Franc – Now I’m That Bitch (Mike Rizzo Funk Generation Club Mix)
- Daisy – Everytime (Buzz Junkies Club Mix)
- Jacinta – Electric Universe (Robert G Club Mix)
- Liquid Spill – In the Heat of the Night (Pop Me Extended Mix)
- Mike Bordes pres. Angela Severiano – Don’t Know What U Got (Original Extended Mix)
- Sirens – Dreams (Tony Arzadon & Nathan Scott Extended Remix)
- David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland – When Love Takes Over (Original Extended Mix)
- A.R. Rahman feat. The Pussycat Dolls – Jai Ho (Soul Seekerz Vocal Mix)
- Steelers feat. Naomi – Time 2 Wait (Bellatrax Extended Mix)
- De-Grees vs. The Real Booty Babes – Apologize (Sunloverz vs. Michael Mind Club Remix)
- Lucardo Parena feat. Antonia Lucas – Let It Be Me (Wendel Kos First Sunlight Mix)
- Beat Thrillerz feat. Elissa – Your Love Still Haunts Me (Original Extended Mix))
- Oceana – Body Rock (Dave Aude Vocal Mix)
- Pepper MaShay – Freeway of Love (Oscar Salguero Club Mix)
- Yass – When Doves Cry (Yass Main Mix)
“See” you Friday!
Add comment June 16, 2009
It’s a novel concept, anyway…
In a recent blog posting, I mentioned that the once-underwhelming Pandora music service—still was.
Truth be told, if I’m going to listen to Internet radio, I’m apt to tune-in to iDanceRadio.fm. I’m the program director, as most readers of this blog know, and I like to make sure things are working musically, technically, and check for songs that probably are ready to be retired from rotation, played more or played less, and so on. Basically, it’s the classic eating of one’s own dog food.
The vast majority of the time, I listen to iDanceRadio.fm on my BlackBerry smartphone, using BerryTunes, an horrifically overpriced, absolutely butt-ugly, and in some ways badly implemented media player for us CrackBerry users. If there was anything better, I’d use it, but there’s not… It’s the only BlackBerry software I know of that plays streaming Internet radio. Considering there are at least half a dozen such apps for the Apple iPhone, ranging in price from free to about $5, I sense an opportunity for a CrackBerry programmer, but BerryTunes, for all its myriad faults mostly works most of the time, and it is pretty cool to take my Internet radio with me on my long (~75 minutes each way) commute. And most of the time, as long as Sprint’s network is cooperating, I tune-in at home, and there’s no interruption the entire journey. Very geek cool.
So, streaming media on the BlackBerry is, as Martha says, a Very Good Thing. (Does she still say that after spending all that time in jail?) It’s what drove me to try Pandora again (their BlackBerry app), and it’s what drove me to try out Slacker.
Slacker Personal Radio, like Pandora, offers user-customized “radio.” Unlike Pandora, they dispense with the novel “music genome” stuff, and instead take a more satellite radio like approach, with 100 or so professionally-programmed (I’ll comment on that in a moment) stations to get you started. You can make your own from scratch, or start with one of theirs, and tinker with it.
Like Pandora, you listen online on your PC, or on your iPhone or BlackBerry. But what’s unusual about Slacker for BlackBerry is that their system allows “caching” of stations. When you hook-up your CrackBerry to your PC to sync, a small software shim runs that loads-up your memory card with about an hour or so of each cached station’s content. Every time you sync, it’s refreshed with more content. When you play a cached station, it pulls the content from the cache—not using any mobile data bandwidth at all. If it runs out of cached content, or the station you want to hear isn’t cached, it streams it live over your data connection.
The live streaming works quite well; they’ve obviously figured out how to make it as resilient as possible to the occasional burps that occur with mobile data (the makers of BerryTunes could learn a thing or two there). If you lose your data connection temporarily, it’ll restart by itself as soon as it has a connection again. (Of course, if cached content is playing, you don’t even need a cellular signal.)
Slacker has the technology down, to be sure. But like Pandora, the programming, while much better than Pandora, still leaves a lot to be desired for dance enthusiasts. Kudos to Slacker for creating a lot to choose from in dance/electronic (I’d have to look again, but it’s about 10 channels wide), but the most logical choice for me, their Club Hits channel, leaves much to be desired. It’s as though they play the songs you might hear in a club, but the mixes of those songs are frequently the worst sounding and least clubby of the available mixes for a song, as if they were just chosen at random.
In fairness, Slacker’s ability to ban artists or songs from a channel, and to mark favorites, allows one to customize the station to one’s liking. All those bad mix choices? I can make sure I never hear them ever, ever again. So if an interactive experience is what you want, then Slacker delivers. But I have to wonder: If you need or want to customize a “radio station” to that extent, would you not just pull out your iPod and play all your own music?
In closing, I have to say that I’ve actually thoroughly enjoyed Slacker’s Explicit Comedy channel. With a nice blend of classic material and the very latest comedy releases, if you like irreverent comedy like I do, it’s worth listening to. And with Slacker’s ban and favorite capabilities, you can always mark the crap you don’t like, and you’ll never hear it again.
But for dance music? I think I’ll stick with my iPod, or BerryTunes streaming iDanceRadio.fm.
Add comment June 11, 2009
I’m wrong. Again.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m either blessed or cursed (depending on your point of view) with listening to a ton of new music each week to keep current on what’s happening, decide what to play myself, and decide what to play on iDanceRadio.fm. While my long daily commute gives me 10 to 12 hours each week to do this, the amount of time I spend actually listening to each track is admittedly quite short.
amberRose Marie - Wanna Be a DJ
I can remember the morning in the car I was listening to the most recent release from amberRose Marie, Wanna Be a DJ. I popped the CD in, and almost immediately, my reaction was, “What the hell is this?” I tried; I really tried. I sampled every mix on the CD, but could stand no more. I pressed “eject” and it went into the “I don’t think so” pile, and got mentioned in a rare negative blog entry.
I heard from amberRose Marie’s record label on that one, respecting my opinion, and encouraging me to try it one more time. And I heard from Harry Towers, the promoter of the track, who also wanted me to try it again. So, I did, and I had the same rather nose-wrinkling reaction. I thought that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
A few weeks ago, I was asked again to listen to it, and rolling my eyes, I got the CD out, again, and plugged it in, again. Only this time, my reaction was, “Hmmm… Maybe this isn’t that bad.” Then I listened again. And again. And I started to like it. It’s sorta like what I went through all those years ago with Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
As is the case with almost every dance track, I still don’t like all the mixes. And while the track still strikes me as a bit of a novelty in terms of its lyric, not every song, let alone every dance song, has to have some deep emotional meaning. It’s perfectly legitimate to have a song that’s there just for the sake of having fun, not taking itself too seriously, and Wanna Be a DJ is just such a track.
This is hardly the first time I’ve been wrong about songs. The one example I keep citing to people is Tod Miner’s Luv N Music. I just could not even stand the song the first 10, or 20, or 30 times I heard it. Then magically, “OK, this is sorta cool!” And I still use that one in sets pretty regularly.
Anyway, some songs wow you the moment you hear them (like the lastest David Guetta track), and some just take some time (sometimes a lot of time) to sink-in. It’s unfortunate, but I just don’t have time to listen to songs 20 or 30 times a piece just to “make sure” my negative reaction is “real.” (And I’m not about to subject myself to that for the truly bad songs, of which there are many.) But I am glad that some people bang on me a little when they’re passionate about a track, vested interests aside.
Because, sometimes… I’m… Wrong.
1 comment June 1, 2009
Dualing “Clothes Off” follow-up
Last week, I blogged about the song We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off, which has been recently released by both Miami Starfish and Chocolate Party.
One of the commenters of the entry was Billy Mead, and I thought I’d follow-up the post with some revisions.
First, I was pleased to hear that Mead and Simon Langford were still collaborating:
For the record, Simon and I are still *brothers* in almost every sense of the word, and he did a mix of ‘our’ version as the Soul Seekerz.
Great to hear, and I’d missed the Soul Seekerz remix when I was listening to these dualing releases before. As a big fan of Soul Seekerz, I did of course like it, and I’m reconsidering my selection of which version of Clothes Off to play.
As for replacing the MySpace presence of Avalon Superstar with Miami Starfish? Well, that’s simple enough too:
I’m getting lazy in my old age and since I am producing music less than part-time i just couldn’t be bothered to build a new MS page, promote it and find new ‘friends’.
Admittedly, that is a great big “PITA” and understandable. And easy enough to change back when Avalon Superstar have another release.
As for how the track came about:
I really did this as a laugh for my wife who has always loved the original track. I gave it to a few DJs, and got good reactions… so had a few mixes done and are just now getting promos out. I had no idea there was even another version out and really like what they have done. But yeah, you pick one or the other.. not both.
Interesting background, and funny how projects end-up coming together sometimes.
Thanks to Billy Mead for setting the record straight.
Add comment May 29, 2009
More country crossover
On the heels of country artist Taylor Swift’s recent success with Love Story, and the release from Plasco of a nice remake of the Sugarland hit Stay, Wynonna finds her way to the dance music scene with some nice remixes of her new single, Sing.
As I’ve written before, at least some people who manage these country artists understand that one way to expand awareness and the potential market for the material is to commission a few dance remixes and get them out there.
Curb Records, Wynonna’s label, seems to understand this better than some. In addition to Wynonna, they’ve ensured that every pop-friendly song from LeAnn Rimes has been accompanied by a suite of remixes as well. Perhaps it’s because, oddly, in addition to all the country artists on the label, they also are home to the decidedly dancey Kaci Battaglia, Nemesis Rising, and Kimberley Locke.
In any case, Wynonna’s Sing makes for a nice, pleasant, mainstream-friendly dance track. The Jody den Broeder mix is predictable but good, as is the treatment from the UK’s Almighty. The duo Digital Dog (UK producers Stephen Cornish and Nick Mace) give it what I think it my favorite take, but then, I’m a real fan of these guys of late.
As always, give it a listen and see what you think.
Add comment May 28, 2009
