December blog roundup

The month of Christmas at Innotune brought you acoustic sweets. Håkon showed us a guitar cover of Out Of The Blue, the trance classic by System F. Then seven more great acoustic covers popped up.

What has been typical 00ies when we look back at the last ten years of EDM? Our reader Anton Sonin answered: The gated clap! Do you agree? We would love your opinion on what has been most important for EDM the past decade. The mic is still open.

Thomas went back to the school bench, but with a new approach: DJ math. The numbers showed modern DJ’s are lazy. A funny view, be sure to check it out.

We’ve also featured nine electronic albums you should listen to. That is if you’re into longplayers. Anyway, have a listen to our picks and add your favourites of 2009.

Last but noe least, the December episode of our podcast was filled with Scandinavian trance and the regular blend of new music from many electronic genres. Our very own Ville Lope did the mix.

Thanks for following another month of Electronic Fjord Music! We have high hopes for 2010!

9 must hear electronic music albums of 2009

Are we even listening to albums nowadays? A lot of you guys are probably just downloading the tracks you like, who doesn’t? But I still find satisfaction in putting on a good full-lengther which is both well composed and has good individual tracks.

I asked Innotune companion Håkon Lofthus if he had any good suggestions for this album sum up. He answered:

R.I.P. albums. When buying online – why would I want to buy an whole album, when I could only grab the tracks I like? (I can listen to them first as well) So, this year has been almost an album-free year for me, and iTunes better start pushing out those iTunes LP features to get me back on buying complete albums.

You have to agree. But I’m giving this list a shot anyway. I realise I haven’t heard enough releases this year to create the complete “top edm albums of 2009 bible”, but here’s nine I would like you to check out.

Maybe you’ll start buying albums again, or at least listen to complete releases on Spotify.

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The evolution of the lazy dj

When I first started out with the whole dj thing back around 98-99, the prefered media for playing music was vinyl. Today my choice is more or less CD’s. In 2010 I’m pretty sure I’m gonna run around with usb sticks, thanks to Pioneer!

Now this got me thinking, has the evolution made the DJ’s lazy? Lets do the math.

Today I have a CD bag holding 320 CD’s. Every cd has roughly 8 tracks on them, meaning my cd bag at all time holds 2560 tracks.

Now when I first started, if I wanted to bring 2560 tracks to the club on vinyl, I would have to bring roughly 853 vinyls. Let’s say every vinyl has 3 tracks. The biggest UDG record bag can hold 90 records, meaning I would need something like 9,5 UDG bags. And according to Wikipedia an average vinyl weighs approx 100 grams.

853 vinyls x 100 grams = 85 300 GRAMS / 85,3 KG.

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Open mic: Electronic music decade sum up

A decade has soon passed. We’ve gone from glowsticks and the commercial breakthrough of electronic dance music, to a digital revolution with producers in every bedroom. The electronic music industry has evolved, but what has made the change?

Which releases or producers/dj’s has had the biggest impact on EDM?

What technology or gadget has had the strongest influence on the scene?

And what has been typical 00ies when we look back at the last ten years of EDM?

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Top 7 acoustic covers of electronic music

Electronic Dance Music is somewhat different than most other styles. Instead of playing the tracks live at concerts; Artists play their cd/vinyl/track and backs it up by lots of lights, lasers, dancers and so on – Also called Djs.

But there are some really talented people out there that do what most EDM producers and Djs can’t: Play it live with real instruments.

Check out these awesome acoustic covers of EDM tracks:

Daft Punk – Around The World (On violin & guitar)

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November roundup

Another month has passed, and all of the Innotune vikings are busy decorating for christmas at the Innotune HQ. But before we stuff ourselves full of christmas food, candy, and viking aquavit – let’s take a look at what we brought you in November.

Marcus showcased the very talented producer Fredrik Ohr from Sweden in his post, and we took a look at a really facinating online production suite (?) called Hobnox. It’s absolutely worth trying out, and you can do so right here. All of the guys at Innotune were born among leather jackets and hairy guys; yes, I’m talking about the 80′s. And guess what, the 80′s are back stronger than ever. Endal showed us this by recommending Relation, a UK based duo making lovely 80′s synth-pop.

We caused quite a few discussions among people on forums and in social media this month (Believe me, we’ve had a LOT of discussions internally as well), and it all started with the fantastic Way Out West podcast that you can download right here.

The source of the discussion was that we received mails from some prominent labels that they mean a “podcast” is defined by Steve Jobs. In other words: Our extravagant, fantastic, fabulous, classy, trashy and smashing (yeah, we’re proud…) podcast was only to be distributed via iTunes. So we had to choose: Drop a very important label and risk to loose even more of them, or drop the mp3 download. Our mission is to bring fantastic electronic music to our listeners, and we need labels approval for doing so. So the result is that you now have to subscribe through iTunes, or stream it on mixcloud. All in all, it’s not what we wanted at first, but in the iTunes version you also get cover art, chapter markers, tracklisting and more. So go subscribe here.

Bring on December, we’re ready for you Santa Claus!

What is podcasting?

As you may have noticed we have removed the MP3 feed of the podcast. The iTunes feed continues, as good as ever.

This happened after a discussion with one of our cooperating labels. From the beginning we have intended to do the Innotune podcast the right way, so we’ve asked the labels about permission for playing previews of their music in the podcast. It just turns out we have different opinions about what a podcast is.

Podcasting raise legal issues. It’s fundamentally different from the regular broadcast as the podcaster can download the file and do whatever he or she pleases with it. The move of control of the content from the broadcaster to the user, which on demand services like podcasting represents, is hard to get used to for the music business, no matter how short and distorted the music is. However, the EDM record companies has shown to been more liberal than their colleagues in the mainstream music business. We’ve gone directly to the labels in stead of negotiating a deal with any musical rights organisation. And they’ve been cool about our project. Therefore it’s very important for us to communicate in a good way with the labels.

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In the 80′s retro jungle: Give Relation a try

So, everyone’s doing the 80′s nowadays. Some with melodic hints and synthy references every now and then, like Way Out West on their terrific We Love Machine album. And some adapt the complete 80′s sound. I don’t mind, I’m a sucker for 80′s synth pop.

If you are too, check out this blend of Chromeo, Depeche Mode, Human League and whatnot from the decade of high hair and shoulder pads: Relation. This is two guys from Essex, UK. They claim they make essextronica, naturally.

Try Relation at MySpace. You may also listen to Your Tiny Mind at YouTube, just be aware of the goofy music video.

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October blog roundup

Another month of electronic fjord music is over. Let’s have a look at the October content highlights from our five edm Vikings.

We kicked off with a funny video in which Woody Van Eyden showed us a pretty neat dj act. Since then we’ve showed you analog synth porn, a sneak peak of new music from Sami Saari and Heikki L and 5 iPhone apps for music production.

The second podcast episode was launched in the middle of the month, with Toolroom head Mark Knight in the mix. We also started the Toolroom Knights competition, which still is open.

The most enriching post and discussion of October was Originality and superstardom in the EDM scene written by Ville Lope. Get in there and write your opinion about the subject.

At the end of the month DJ Mag published the long awaited Top 100 dj list of 2009. Innotune resident Marcus Schossow was one of the new entries. Håkon Lofthus wrote about all the new kids on the block.

Make sure you don’t miss out on the upcoming content: Follow our RSS feed.

Win a signed Toolroom Knights cd!

We’ve got one signed copy of the next Toolroom Knights cd mixed by Funkagenda.

Want it? Just follow Innotune at Twitter or Facebook and leave your username (or real Facebook name) in the commentary field below.

The double cd is out October 26th and contains 36 tracks.

Some of the included tunes are D.Ramirez & Mark Knight ‘Colombian Soul’, Adam Shaw & Tim Weeks ‘Jesmond’, Funkagenda & Kim Fai Present Yam Yam ‘Gayfest’, BT feat Kirsty Hawkshaw ‘Running Down The Way Up’ and Mark Knight & Funkagenda ‘Good Times’.

The competition is over, and the winner is announced in podcast episode 003. The lucky one is Nauris Sadovskis. Congratulations!

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