MARKUS SCHULZ @ THE GUVERNMENT, TORONTO – FEBRUARY 25, 2012
The renovations to The Guvernment look impressive — especially the new LED wall, which brings a hypnotizing feel to the performances. All in all, the new Chroma room is great addition to the legendary “house of EDM” — the new DJ booth looks fantastic, with a real Deadmau5 “cube” feel to it. The sound system superlative, too, lending real power to the basslines. The mannequins that populate this new “lights and sounds” room recall the feeling you used to get walking through Circa, surrounded by mannequins, rabbits and other fantastical gewgaws. On Saturday I felt like I was in an scene from Star Wars, with people wearing stormtrooper masks and wielding lightsabers left and right. Partying in Chroma really gives you the sensation of slipping into an otherworldly fantasy realm — quite a different experience, to say the least.
“Markus… Markus…. Markus.” The chant kept booming until the headliner, renowned German DJ/producer Markus Scuhlz stepped onto the main stage, and could be heard throughout his performance. This is a true DJ — one who doesn’t let anything hold him back from his music and his crowd. Not even The Guvernment’s faulty hydraulics, which left the stage stuck in the upright position. (“#theshowmustgoon,” he tweeted.) He delivered an amazing show that lasted until 7:30 am.
The first half of his set was dominated by crowd-pleasing vocal trance. Then, as the dancefloor loosened up — with the crush of bodies giving way to those who came for the music and only the music — Schulz began to explore more adventurous territory, delivering a raw, underground sound with a dirty bass line that had an absolutely orgasmic effect on the ears and the body. After more than 20 years on the scene, Schulz definitely knows the ins and outs of creating a performance that pleases every constituency in the EDM crowd.
Today we got a fresh new mix from yours truly, featuring the latest from Wolfgang Gartner, Hypercrush, Kill the Noise and Datsik, Lucky Date, Helicopter Showdown and Flosstradamus. Whether you’re jogging, working out at the gym or just looking for some hype background music at your spot, “Scott’s Selections” gotz u covered like a bad rash on Poison Ivy Island, ya dig?
Feel free to download and stock this bad boy in your library for the hot nights that await us. And remember: if you want to get your own mini-mix featured on bpmtv.com, hit me up at scottw@bpmtv.com and we’ll check out your skillz and song selection.
With March almost here, the EDM season is about to kick off. The Ultra Music Festivalis looking awesome, as always — and unfortunately, it’s sold out. But what about some of the other destination events for all us house junkies?
Coachella, one of the biggest musical festivals out there, has taken on a definite EDM feel, so I’d call that one a top priority. Alas, those tickets have come and gone, too, and the sound of teardrops hitting the ground can be heard throughout the land.
But wait! Turn that frown upside down. The Electric Daisy Carnival is returning to Las Vegas (June 8-10), and I have a feeling this one will be even bigger than before. But don’t just take my word for it — check out the visuals HERE, call your friends and plan your trip. We’ll be there. Will you?
A short week, what with the Family Day holiday on Monday, but I’ve still managed to load up a supply of raging tunes to rock you all through the weekend. We’ve got new cuts from some lesser-known names that you’ll want to clear some memory space for, plus a brand new remix from New York’s own Nico Jaar that is up to his usual high standards. Plus new joints from A-Trak, Guxxi Vump and Conspirator. A serious supply of 128 bpm, so let’s get right into it.
SWEETS
Seems right now like some of the most innovative sounds are coming out of … Hungary? Tits & Clits put this country on the map for me, but it’s We Plants Are Happy Plants that have me booking my flight to Budapest. This track may not get people in the club raging like lunatics — but it’s definitely one for those early morning sessions when you feel the need to zone out and vibe.
Nico Jaar has the rare ability to make each of his songs sound completely different from the others. That’s creativity in a nutshell. Another slower track for you to vibe to — and like the previous offering, it’s a top-quality production.
Brodinski is as streaky as Phil Kessel. For long stretches you don’t hear from him — then he turns around and pots five joints in a week. He’s definitely feeling the heat right now.
Moombah madness. Let’s take one of the biggest hip-hop tracks of our era, and throw that 110 bpm we moombahton fans just can’t get enough of. Sounds wick-it!
The best thing about music nowadays: everyone is doing it. OK, sometimes that’s actually a bad thing. But in the case of Dimension5 it’s a magical thing. Try it on — bet it’ll fit perfectly!
Rusko is doing an album with Cypress Hill. At first I thought there was no way they would blend well. I am and continue to be wrong. Perfecto! Expect to hear this a lot.
That’s it homies … keep it locked and bookmarked, ’cause the sweet is never as sweet without sour………..xx
Toronto-based Russian DJ duo Kotov & Andre Wilde are impressive producers as well as performers. In the way each brings something entirely different to the table, they embody the Asian philosophical concept of yin and yang – an idea that describes ”how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.” Diverse talents, they create together a perfect musical balance.
The musical bond that they share is deeply esoteric, and watching them live perform live is a pleasure. It can be awe-inspiring to see two artists with wildly different styles come together as a team to realize such enrapturing tracks for the audience. Their names are becoming deservedly better known; I recommend keeping your eyes and ears on Kotov & Andre Wilde — and I definitely recommend seeing them live.
I had the opportunity to sit down with the duo recently. Here’s what we talked about:
IAMMUZYKA: How would you describe Toronto’s EDM scene/community?
KOTOV: Toronto is like a university for EDM. With such amounts of DJs and producers, only the best make it — and only the best make the difference. Look at the world, there’s plenty of talent that we supply!
WILDE: The EDM scene in Toronto I would say is blooming. We’ve got lots of locals going international; we’ve got Carlo, Flipside, Deadmau5, Manzone & Strong, we’ve even got the The Junkies who just got signed to Dubfire‘s management company. So we’ve got lots of local guys who are going international and that’s really good and nice to see.
IAMMUZYKA: What brought Kotov & Wilde together?
KOTOV: The music and the groove is what brought us together. You have your own personal opinion and feeling, but in the end what essentially brought us together is the mutual goal of bringing something better to the audience that people will feel good about. There are things I do that Andre would never do, and some things Andre would do that I would never do. It’s opposites but it brings us together. The bottom line is that we depend on each other for production, for better production, and we wouldn’t survive without each other in the sense of creating that particularly perfect track that we want to get to.
WILDE: What brought us together was the love for the music. The love for the production and getting our own stuff out there and just getting better at it. One thing is our own production, but the next step is to be able to play our own productions to our audience and fans. Right now we’re at the point where we can play our own stuff and people go nuts, they don’t know the tracks but they go nuts. And that’s what brought us together and will keep us going.
IAMMUZYKA: What are you guys working on at the moment?
KOTOV: We’r'e actually looking into something different. We’re looking at being something that’s not the same as everyone else, and that’s essentially always been our motto: to not be the same as anyone else. And our production has always had a part of our own sound, our own groove, our feeling to it. We would never trade it off for the popular sound — it always has to be real and from the heart, otherwise it doesn’t matter what we do. We might never reach the top or anything close to it, but we can do what we like and it will always be something of our own. Or we could do something everyone else does and get on the same track as everyone else towards the top — but then there would be no internal feeling to it, it wouldn’t be personal or have our own touch to it. Everything we do has our own touch and sound to it, and that’s what we’re all about. We’re about not what everyone does, we only care about what we do and how it reflects on the people who come to listen to us. It’s only about the music and about the feeling.
WILDE: We’re working on a lot of new productions. We’re sort of trying to take the next step but not follow trance — we never really followed trance, even when minimal was out, we did a minimal track but it had our own hook, our own sound, something we put into it it that wouldn’t really follow the trends everybody else was trying to follow. Right now we’ve actually got some stuff with a couple of vocalists that we are trying to work on. We’re working on an album of sort of top 40 stuff. We’re opening the horizons from the regular techno and tech house sound that we usually produce and going into sort of top 40 house, which is a genre all on its own. So that’s what we’re working on right now: the next few tracks that you hear will have a completely new sound. We’ve got something coming out in the next few weeks with Christopher Norman, something that we’ve never done before. Which maybe you’ll never hear from us again, maybe you will. What we love is what we do. Lots of stuff is coming, lots of stuff is done; it’s just a matter of releasing it.
IAMMUZYKA: What can one find playing on your iPod today?
KOTOV: My iPod has stuff that is back to the basics, kind of the beginning of 2000 drum and bass. I listen to stuff I love to dance to, stuff that is completely unpopular, stuff that is overlooked and never really catches anyone’s attention. Stuff you can dance to and just be yourself. You can find three things: Pendulum, Sub Focus and our productions. That’s pretty much the things you would find on my iPod.
WILDE: In all honesty, I don’t have an iPod. You can find me listening to some downtempo, jazz and bossa nova. If you’re looking for artists names, I would say: Prodigy – the first album was one of a kind. You would find TuPac, the Scorpions live album, Sting and quite a bit of Russian stuff. Everything I listen to is an inspiration to me; it can be hip-hop, jazz, electronic music, it can even be pop. I’m all over the map when it comes to music.
IAMMUZYKA: What is next for Kotov & Wilde?
KOTOV & WILDE: Next is opening new horizons: what we can do and what we can achieve. Developing our skills, our sound and bringing something new to the world — bringing our own Kotov & Wilde sound and hopefully making it international. At the end of the day, I think the biggest thing for us is to actually not just be electronic DJs but to be musicians. We would like to develop more as musicians and not just as electronic dance music producers. I think that’s our next step — what we are looking forward to, what we’re working towards. International in the sense of making it bigger. Our sound has become quite international and global, now it’s just about making it so a larger, broader range of people can hear our music and appreciate our sound and be our fans.
It’s been a healthy amount of time since Deadmau5 capped his Meowingtons Hax tour with an epic show at the Rogers Center in Toronto. Since that magical night I have heard and seen performance discussed and dissected everywhere, from talk radio to blogs to pop culture magazines. It seems like nobody fully understood how just how extraordinary that night was going to be until it was over. Until they’d witnessed it for themselves.
Those of us who love EDM and Deadmau5 and Toronto electro never doubted that the evening would be memorable. We didn’t worry if it was going to sell out, if the music would to sound good in such a large venue, if Deadmau5 was really capable of making this performance historic. These questions never passed through our minds. We just knew we had tickets to something special — and that was that.
And special it was. I was thrilled when I heard that Deadmau5 planned to memorialize the occasion with a concert DVD. The night was such a glorious celebration of Toronto electro — and when it was over, I knew there were many people who would one day tell their kids and grandkids about being there. We needed a visual record. When the “Aural Psynapse” video popped up, it was flashback time for those of us who’d been there — and proof, for those who hadn’t, of just how insane the night really was. After seeing that video, I was practically salivating at the prospect of being able to experience the whole show again.
Now that I’ve seen the DVD, I can say definitively that this is the closest feeling you’ll come to traveling back in time and being at the show. The quality of the camera work is right up there with the meticulously engineered audio. In fact, and I tread lightly here, it almost feels as if you’re getting to see more of the night than you did if you were actually there. Think about it: as soon as most of us arrived at the Rogers Centre, the sheer adrenaline of the night took over. Many of us had never had the experience of being in the same space with so many thousands of others who shared our taste in music. Never had we witnessed a sea of 10,000-plus glowing ears while listening to the likes of “Strobe,” “Ghosts N Stuff” and “These Chords.” When you slip this DVD into the player, you’ll immediately recapture that feeling — and maybe even see a couple of things you missed at the time.
And again, I have to underline the sheer quality of the production. Nothing is overlooked. Every kick and snare and clap and hat is highlighted perfectly. The obligatory shots of the audience are smartly chosen, capturing honest, intimate moments — and s**t, if you were there, maybe you’re in one of them. Even if you can’t stand this kind of performance DVD, let me tell you: this is the exception. You can sit and watch it start to finish, or just enjoy it playing in the background at a gathering. The convenient track listing and the ease with which you can skip through songs helps make this a must for Mau5 fans.
Only one thing I’d change: if I had my wish, there would be a bonus DVD featuring the opening acts. It would have been nice to see the killer sets by MSTRKFT and Crystal Castles one more time. That aside, I’d judge the Meowingtons Hax 2K11 Toronto DVD a success — just like everything else that Mr. Joel Zimmerman puts his fingers on. The attention to detail and superb production values make it a joy to watch. Oh yeah, and it just happens to showcases one of the best EDM performances this country — or any country — has ever seen.
If you follow this blog then you know I’m a huge fan of Kris Menace. The German producer always seems to follow his own path and work at his own pace. Sometimes it seems like artists are in a desperate rush to get as much of their content out on the streets as fast as possible — and this can mean that quantity ends up trumping quality. This disorder doesn’t seem afflict Kris Menace; he doesn’t put out a track until the song is perfectly finished. Whether working on original solo material, doing a remix, or collaborating with a group like Black Van, he only knows one way to do things: the right way. It’s gotta be the Blood Music connection.
Today I’ve got three brand new Kris Menace joints — and as you would expect, all are download-worthy.
The first is “Falling Star.” An original track, it has an airy, spacey feel without seeming too “soundtracky,” and manages to stay current in a way that only Kris can deliver. It reminds me a bit of his “Spaceship” remix for Kelis – not necessarily because there are strong similarities in the music, but because both give you that sense of listening to music in a galaxy far, far away. Oh yeah, and the video is pretty hot, too.
Next, a remix of Depeche Mode‘s “Fragile Tension,” and this is that fly s**t. Seriously, if this doesn’t make you want to hit the dancefloor, then nothing will. Just like Fake Blood — and maybe even more so — Kris has the rare ability to create a song capable of both rocking you to sleep and turning a lukewarm party white-hot. What I would do to be a fly on the wall at these studio sessions!
Last, a remix of “Crescendo” by Little Boots. For this track, he steps away from that futuristic, intergalactic sound and gives us something a little more down-to-earth. When you get to play around with the vocals of Ms. Victoria Christina Hesketh, the chances of coming up with something magical are pretty high. But it also means you need to step up your game. That’s no problem for Kris, who turns a straightforwardly poppy track into a song that would fit perfectly into a remake of The Neverending Story.
Fresh from his Grammy Awards hat trick, Skrillex is back with some new visuals. The video for “Bangarang” appeared late last week; it’s pretty cool, and seems likely to lend even greater popularity to one of Sonny Moore’s catchier songs. How long till this hits the number 1 spot on bpm:tv’s Hot 20 Dance Chart? The choice is yours.
It’s Friday! TGIF! This weekend feels like one made for the inner socialite in all of us. Since the single people of the world had to endure the shame of being alone on Valentine’s Day, you can expect the clubs to be packed with people redoubling their search for Mr. or Ms. Right. And if that’s true, then the DJs best come correct with tunes to help you bolster the courage. On the other hand, if you’d prefere to keep it low-key with a house party or a small gathering, we’ve got you completely covered with this week’s best tracks. Have at it!
SWEETS
No hesitation about jumping into the warm waters with this one. Bingo Players have a banger with help from Heather Bright.
I am definitely not one to highlight an artist in the aftermath of his or her death. That has to be said. However, I am one to highlight anything that features Chromeo. Whitney had what may have been one of the best voices in the history of time — so we can hope that, among the truckload of remixes that will be doubtless appear over the coming weeks, we get more gems like this.
When I chatted with Chris Lake last year, all he could talk about was Tommy Trash. Tommy this and Tommy that … apparently he knew something the rest of us didn’t, cuz Tommy is killing it right now.
A little R&B twist on this one. Nothing says Valentine’s Day like a good break-up song. This beat is good — almost too good. Don’t go too far to the dark side, Diplo!
Enough of that soft and slow s**t — let’s get into the nitty-gritty. If you hear this song at the venue tonight, grab him / or her / or both and get to it. Your choice.
The forthcoming single from Above & Beyond‘s studio album Group Therapy, this vocal trance track is the perfect, entrancing nepenthe. Group Therapy itself is a heart-stirring album perfectly summed up by its title. Listening to this LP, pegged by Mixmag as the artist album of 2011, is pretty much guaranteed to alleviate any form of negative emotion.
The newly released music video for “Love Is Not Enough” plays in reverse, taking the viewer on an emotional rollercoaster as it tells a story of deep love that was just not meant to be. The video, directed by Vicky Simmons and starring Emily Beecham and Liam Boyle, fits the track’s sad love story perfectly. Together, the track and the video play enticingly on the emotions.
We’re fortunate to be able to stay up to date with new tracks and new artists from Above & Beyond’s influential Anjunabeats label by tuning into their weekly show Trance Around The World. As they have proven yet again, their sound is sempiternal, and we can count ourselves lucky to have such an incredible trio on the EDM scene.
Gosia Mrugala is a Toronto-based blogger and reviewer. You can read her blog HERE, and follow her on Twitter HERE.
Gosia Mrugala is a Toronto-based blogger and reviewer. You can read her blog HERE, and follow her on Twitter HERE.
