Brilliant or insane?

Here’s a surprise.

The guys in Röyksopp put out one piece of unreleased material for free download every month. Sometimes pretty crazy stuff. But this christmas they chose to publish a cover of  ”O Holy Night” (Cantique de Noël).

I cannot decide whether this is beautiful or just totally wrong. It’s a thin line between the two.

Listen and judge for yourself.

Le Cantique de Noël by Röyksopp

To be fair – it is after all a new year and we just celebrated Christmas – I’ve also included one of their superb freebies.

“I Wanna Know” was up for grabs at SoundCloud before, but unfortunately not anymore.

I Wanna Know by Röyksopp

The other way to sample tracks is to have straight part, a loop from another track. This is particularly common, or rather used, way in house music in general.

Let me give an example. You must have heard the sickest, weirdest craziest track out there at the moment: Duck Sauce – Barbra Streisand.

It’s been sampled from… well, there’s two options. It’s either a Boney M track or from german origin Nighttrain – Hallo Bimmelbahn.

I have no certain info, but it was claimed Hallo Bimmelbahn was released in 1973, while Boney M’s version was made in 1979. Sampling? Plagiarism? You decide.

The reason why I am writing this post was actually because of the Podcast Episode 012.

My ears caught the beautiful pads of one of my favorite trance tracks from mid 2000, Reflekt – Need To Be Loved. How ever the track wasn’t listed on the tracklist. I had to double check.

Compare them yourself:

It can be a coincidence. It can be because you’ve heard it back in a day and the chord progression keeps playing in your head but you can’t recall where it’s from.

There are countless of examples of sampling an/or lending melodies, hooks from other productions. This was merely an opener for conversation.

What tracks are driving you crazy in matter of sampling or ripping off?

At a young age, trance music was a fresh breath of air in a rock and pop world. It was breaking the “rules” of music and was raised by persons such as Astral Projection, Dance 2 Trance, Orbital, Oliver Lieb and Sven Väth. Trance music was breaking grounds at a age when it still was wearing diapers – just like the people who listened to it eventually needed after subcombing to the chemical usage.

Trance music quickly grew up, but experienced a troublesome time. It was struggling to find its place in this world and trailed a lot of paths trying to find itself. Hard trance, progressive trance, baleric trance, club trance (?) was some of the ways trance tried to find it´s path. Trance even joined dance music, and after this trance never was the same again.

The last few years trance music has been in a care home being taken care of by technically skilled doctors and nurses. We would like to tribute some of these by names. Armin van Buuren, Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Paul van Dyk, Andy Moor, Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz, Trance.nu, Audiojelly, Anjunabeats, Armada, Lost Language. You will all be remembered for the good effort of trying to breathe life back into trance. We´re sorry that it didn´t have a better ending, but there was no way back for trance music after the severe exploitation of greedy djs.

Even though trance music has walked in the walley of the dead, and now are among the likes as happy hardcore, hard dance, Scatman Joe, Rednex and Aaron Carter – There is light. There still is House, Electronica, Dub Step, Drum & Bass, Chill-Out and other genres that has the ability to adapt to times. We honor these genres today in the light of the death of trance.

R.I.P. Trance music. You had it coming for a long time.

——–

Update: In case you’re in denial, here’s a graph showing the evolution of Google searches for Trance vs the evolution of searches in the category “Electronica & Dance Music”:

To promote the DJ Hero 2 game, Tiesto has teamed up with Activision to create what is suppose to be the first music video ever created with nothing but video game footage.

Tiesto has made two exclusive tracks for Dj Hero 2, and according to Mixmag ‘Speed Trail’ has been a regular on his lates tour as well, together with his own game character flashing on the big screen. So why not make a music video out of it?

We have written about trance in video games before, but this has to be the exact opposite.

008: Way Out West

The Innotune podcast is one year old!

Today, September 16th, we celebrate the one year anniversary of our podcast. A year ago Marcus Schossow was the first artist to headline an episode of the Innotune podcast.

Here’s the highlights – in our own opinion.

In episode 003 we had the honor to feature the legendary producers Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren, aka Way Out West. Their mix is consisting of their own tracks only, with both old classics and material from their latest album “We Love Machine”.

005: Thomas Sagstad

For episode 005, resident DJ Thomas Sagstad was behind the decks. Enjoy the pumping house in the second half, as well as 30 minutes with Innotune selections in the beginning.

Innotune episode 008 had finnish trancer Darude in the mix. Listen or download this piece of fine EDM if you have’nt already.

And now, let’s have a look into the glass ball.

Who do you want to hear in the Innotune podcast in the future? Which DJ’s should we ask to be our guest mixers?

We want suggestions for interesting picks. Talents or established artists. But please make your wishes realistic.

008: Darude

Leave your suggestion in the comment field below.

Sweden: IKEA, blondes and house music.

What do Steve Angello, Spotify, Abba, Pirate Bay, Max Martin and Marcus Schossow have in common?

They are all Swedish musical phenomenons. Some famous for their brilliant music making and some for their sharing of music, both legal and illegal.

According to the latest IFPI figures Sweden now has the world’s fastest growing music market.

The country of the blue and yellow vikings is the third biggest exporter of music around the globe.

Schössow as a kid, planning world dominance.

And while people in the rest of the world  stopped buying albums, the Swedes in 2009 increased their music sales for the first time since year 2000.

Right in the center of this attempt for musical world dominance we find the Swedish House Mafia, Marcus Schossow, John and Jesper Dahlback, AN21, Eric Prydz, Avicii and loads of other talents defining the sound of the dancefloors.

The Swedes has long ago taken over house music.

Listen to this radio story about the subject, done by reporter Sinead Garvan for BBC 6 Music.

Over 80 great chillout tracks for you!

What music gives you that special summer feeling?

It is of course an individual thing, but for me good downtempo sounds like summer. I mean, I listen to slow beats all year long, but there still are some tracks that suits better to sun, smiling people and lazy days.

I’ve made a Spotify playlist with a bunch of tracks I would define as chillout classics. Some obvious picks, like Bent – Swollen and Moby – Porcelain, but also pieces from artists like Jon Hopkins, Røyksopp, Orbital, Air, Boards of Canada, Thievery Corporation and Sebastién Tellier. And many more, of course.

Click here to listen to the playlist “Chillout classics”.

Here’s a video that will make you smile. But it’s also a slap in the face to all those serious faces behind the decks. Loosen up and skip the cool look. This guy sure makes his crowd happy.

A big thank you to Bjørn for the tip.

Check out Oliver Englafjord – a new and undescribed act from Iceland. There’s not much info to find on this guy, other than the dark, slow and tight sound on a couple of YouTube clips. It’s the soundtrack of Eyjafjallajökull. And since the economy is flat out broken, this might be Icelands way of giving something back to frustrated flight passengers.

Check out our Spotify playlist.

We’ve made a Spotify playlist for you. It contains a bunch of more or less new electronica albums that we think you should check out.

Subscribe to Innotune Album Picks May 2010 at Spotify

The new version of Spotify with Facebook integration works quite nice. It’s easier to share your playlists and discover new music through your friends. If you’ve got Spotify, try our fresh playlist and share it with your homies.

At Innotune we feature a lot of single EDM releases through our podcast, but we also enjoy a couple of longplayers every now and then. This playlist gathers some of the most interesting albums of 2010 so far.

Massive Attack and Booka Shade recently released new albums. They are both in there. Orchestral breakbeat masters Hybrid are out with their fourth album Dissapear Here. It’s a neat piece of electronic music, so be sure to check it out.

Since we’re EDM Vikings and all, we had to include a couple of Scandinavian picks. Familjen is a brilliant Swedish act. The guy is out with his second album Mänskligheten, and it’s a great mix of 303s, electro beats, 80s synth stabs and no-way-understandable Swedish lyrics. The Danish compilation Sound of Copenhagen Vol. 4 is an album with fresh electronica from the capital of Denmark.

The Basement Jaxx released Scars last year, and later they gave out what was meant to be the second part of a double album. They decided to split the goods, and the follow up EP Zephyr was a reality. This is the nemesis to Scars. More chilled beats and almost no lyrics, but still as playful as a Jaxx release should be.

And last but not least, Groove Armada is out with Black Light, a darker and more rocked up album than their previous longplayers. The first single Paper Romance stands out as the peak.

Subscribe to Innotune Album Picks May 2010 at Spotify