More Style Please!

MILES DAVIS
Seven Steps to Heaven



Ah, good ol' Miles Davis. I figure that if I'm introducing my crowd to my first selection of music, I might as well start out big. Plus, I'd rather not have any of you getting immediately lost in my posts, wandering aimlessly around a labyrinth of jazz and running into brick walls of the musical tongue.

Miles Davis was a trumpet player during the era of Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie and has somehow been able to rise above the all-stars of his time to become one of the most influential jazz musician and composer in our history. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Davis' playing was his clear, round tone. The sound that he produced was the result of years and years of focus and discipline based solely on the idea of producing a perfect sound. This sound, in my opinion, can be described as "clean, smooth, or as I put earlier, round." In any of his recordings his tone is incredibly obvious because of how beautiful he makes the trumpet sound.

Oddly enough, as much as Miles Davis provides to the album "Seven Steps to Heaven", the reason I love this album isn't for the trumpet. It's because of the rhythm section and how it fits together so perfectly with the talents of Davis. Specifically, the song Seven Steps to Heaven (mpeg-4 format) features the drumming of Tony Williams. The chorus of the song includes a small segment of a drum solo after every voice of the horn section. This type of progression is known as a "call-and-response" where one voice (the horn section) plays a melodic rhythm for a short duration, then the second voice (in this case, the drum set) repeats the rhythm and melody in their own language.

I use the word "language" because every instrument speaks in it's own different way. A scale doesn't sound the same on a trumpet as it does on a saxophone, and certainly is nothing like that of a drum set (though this. So if a call is made on a trumpet, the response is translated into the drummer's own interpretation of what the call would be on his own drum set. This creates an effect much more gratifying than listening to the "call" repeating itself over and over in a boring system that some bands like to call a "chorus".

Aside from the call-and-response section, this song also includes a full-length drum solo about halfway in. The reason I enjoy this solo over most other solos is the result of two criteria: Sound quality and spacing. Good sound quality requires concentration of (surprisingly) the quality of the sound. Any person can walk up to a drum and beat it with a drumstick, but to have good sound quality, a drummer must hit the drum with style and color. In a more applicable scenario, a novice may pick up a trumpet in produce a sound not distinguishable from a squeaky door or a dying cow, but Miles Davis could pick up a trumpet and produce one of the most beautiful, clear tone of all time. Obviously this is a very extreme example, but the point is that it takes years of practice to be able to produce a quality sound, and this is definitely apparent in the solo in "Seven Steps to Heaven."

Spacing is one of the most interesting concepts, yet one of the easiest to understand. If a musician fires away millions of notes in a blaring, mind-splitting solo, the audience will only be amazed by the fact that the musician is playing with speed and not be able to comprehend anything else. This is why spacing becomes important in a solo. If gaps are placed in a solo, even if they are very small, they give the listener a moment to process what they just heard before being ready to listen to anything else. The drum solo in this tune includes these gaps, intentionally placed for us to stand in awe of his grandeur.

The combination of the amazing trumpet playing of Miles Davis with the genius solo work of Tony Williams creates a jazz chart that is most definitely worth opening my stream of blogs with. I apologize for the extreme WALL OF TEXT (lots of words), but I believe I would not be able to describe this chart in fewer words without doing it justice.

DJ Kenny Logic
Lost in Love ( Dedication to Amel Otabachi )
Roller Entertainment, Hyatt Music, & Import DJ Entertainment

Sample here and here.

"...if you love your significant other a lot, let them know, do something out of your heart to prove it to them." - DJ Kenny Logic

This is definitely an album that I will blast loudly and bob my head to during one of my daily drives! This is "Definitely worth your time and money" and is a 10 on my scale. Had a hard time selecting sample tracks for you guys because the whole album is so good.

Let's save the music stuff for the end and focus on something not so 'musicy' for a second. DJ Kenny Logic was able to express his feelings toward his significant other through machines. Not sure about the rest of 'you-s', but you can feel this DJ's love for his significant other through his selection of tracks and the way they are mixed. Let this be some food for thought... to be able to express yourself completely and honestly is very important. To do so through sound made with machines is an amazing accomplishment imo. Anyone able to do so should be made known.

This album is mainly composed of house music and is very upbeat or very optimistic. The transitions through the tracks are perfect and occasionally the DJ will lower the sound of the outro of the previous track and introduce the intro of the next song softly and slowly increase volume for the beginning of the next track. The body of each track is very uplifting and very cheerful and consists of very simple melodies.

Conclusion: Very good album overall: expresses DJ's feelings clearly, uplifts audience, and very smooth and clean throughout. 10/10.

Disclaimer: I Own Nothing. Every track belongs to their respective owners.

DJ Drumatik
A Summer of Trance
bb&co.

Listen to the two consecutive samples... The first being here and the second one here.

This would be one of those albums I would listen to in my car rides, so it is an 8 on my scale and is "Definitely worth your time and money". I posted tracks 3 and 4 for sampling because...

This DJ is very clean and clear in each of the tracks. The bass does not cover up the other parts of the song and the mixing is very smooth. The tracks in the album are lined up so that they help transition into the next song as if it is one big song. The beginning of the next track is actually played somewhere between 10 to 20 seconds before the end of the previous track, thus helping the transition.

As you get to the body of the song after fairly long build ups, it gets uplifting for most of the songs. (Keep in mind what I find uplifting might not be your uplifting.) As the body ends, the outro neatly introduces the next track.

This album has the potential to be a 9 or even a 10, but right now based on the current mood, I can only give it an 8. I believe everyone has experienced something where their favorite song is playing on the radio, but due to certain stresses or their mood, they suddenly dislike the song. Well, since I'm not listening to this album in my car, it is just different in that I'm stationary.

Conclusion: A very good selection of track to mix and that some of the mixes are originals. Most if not all the tracks are very upbeat and very uplifting. Lyrics are clear and understandable, some tracks will even get you to bob your head. For example, the second sample. Should give it a try and listen to the whole song.

Disclaimer: I Own Nothing. Every track belongs to their respective owners.

Rock On DJ
The Tribute

Click on an image to listen to sample. Gray being the not-so-good sample and Orange being the better.

Let me first explain my rating system. "Not something I'll listen to in my car" is something around the range of 1 to 3 on a scale of 10. "A good choice" is around the range of 4 to 7 on a scale of 10. Lastly, "Definitely worth your time and money" being rated with an 8 or higher.

Okay... now the review. On my scale, this album is "Not something I'll listen to in my car" or a 3 in this case. I posted a sample of the best track on the album and a sample of a bad track, which is about the rest of the album.

Why? Firstly, the 3 was me being generous since the DJ is not the most experienced in the world. The bass is way too deep to hear the treble and the lyrics to most if not all of the songs. You would have no idea what the people are singing about in the song if you did not either listen very intently or know the lyrics in the first hand. Also, when the DJ ends a song and introduces the next track, he simply crossfades the songs. This method would usually work if you put songs that matches each other in some way, but this DJ simply puts the songs in random order and the transitions as a result sound really bad.

The overall album may be a "3", but track 9 I'll have to give a "4" because it does not have lyrics that you can't understand and because if the bass was weaker and the song's clarity was better, this would be a good song.

Conclusion: A good selection of old tracks to mix, but overall not too upbeat to be enjoyed the way it was meant. Not the best music to drive to.

Disclaimer: I Own Nothing. Every track belongs to their respective owners.
MY terminology and everything may be wrong, but... Oh wells. I listen to listen because I enjoy this genre of music, my lingo may be off so feel free to correct me.

Audion
Mouth To Mouth
on Spectral

On a much different note from my last post, I am introducing you to the monster of all monsters. Released late in September of 2006, it was considered club track of the year by many. Although Audion, named Mathew Dear who also goes by alias False under Minus Canada, continues to produce fresh house music at an amazing rate, nothing compares to this floor filler. The LP consists of two songs, Hot Air on the B side and the notorious Mouth To Mouth on the A side.

The track starts out with a belting kick and a dark resonated bass line that pierces your ears and puts you at the gates of hell. Soon enough, the pure rush of adrenaline hits you instinctively driving you to your climax as the congas ramble on and the beat continues to flow down a spiral of darkness.

I consider this to be the best dance song ever made, just because of the sheer fact of how wild it can make a crowd of people. I haven’t been to any clubs in the USA, but in Mexico I experienced what this track could do first hand. I envy the talent of Audion for being able make music that can drive people to their limits. After all, that’s what it was engineered to do.

The New Deal


The New Deal's members describe their sound as live progressive breakbeat house, which really means their musical style has too many facets to fit neatly into any genre. Some tracks have an acid jazz feel, some have a strong 4/4 beat for dancing to, and others are slow and simple chillout tracks. Hailing from Eastern Canada, the trio of keyboardist Jamie Shields, bassist Dan Kurtz, and drummer Darren Shearer gets party people dancing all over North America on their sporadic tours.

Unlike most bands that play electronic music, The New Deal doesn't use any sequencers to produce their music. Instead, everything is played live, which is an important part of their engaging, energetic stage presence. But it gets even better. When they're performing, they often improvise the songs they play. They use a system of cues to move shift from one song to the next without stopping, making their shows and their recordings sound like they were mixed by a DJ.

But, enough with telling you what they sound like. For a good sampling of The New Deal, check out Gone Gone Gone on the iTunes Music Store. The title track Gone Gone Gone and VL Tone are both energetic dance songs that show how the live bass and synth play wonderfully together, and are fun to listen or dance to. Homewrecker shows what they can do with an acid jazz concept, and A Little While is an impressive track that combines breakbeat drums, a deep groove on the bass, and smooth, hypnotic vocals to make a really great song. Perhaps the best part about The New Deal's sound is that they have a really decent track for you no matter what mood you're in.

The New Deal hasn't put out many albums, at least not in the usual sense. They recorded The New Deal in 2001 and Gone Gone Gone in 2003, and they released two EP's as well. But what you'll find in record stores barely scratches the surface of their recordings. Part of The New Deal's connection with the audience is that they encourage people to record and share their live performances. Because of this friendly policy toward taping, there are some 155 recordings of The New Deal's shows on the Internet Archive. These are available for free download, so there really isn't any excuse for having no New Deal in your collection.

Whether you get a studio album from a record store, or you browse the Internet Archive for a live jam you really like, you're bound to like at least something The New Deal offers. If you like the smooth chillout sound of The New Deal, I'd suggest you take a look at Massive Attack, Zero 7, Nightmares on Wax, and Thievery Corporation. Lotus is a band that does similar live jams, but they just don't pull off the electro sound as well as The New Deal. The Baldwin Brothers' album, Cooking with Lasers, has a similar progressive-breakbeat-house sound, but with a more present electronic feel to it.