Little did I know that the amazing 12" by Sorcerer that I had picked up earlier this year was by an artist living in my backyard! I had been initially attracted to "Surfing At Midnight" due to its fantastic Prins Thomas remix and the fact that it was on white-hot UK label Tirk (aka the folks behind the highly revered Nuphonic imprint), but I was further intrigued - who is/are Sorcerer? Well, it didn't take too long to find out.



Sorcerer's debut full-length White Magic was released in August and the SF Electronica section has been singing its praises ever since. The album is chock-full of sun-drenched beach vibes, slow tempos, wistful guitar melodies and gentle, rolling beats - basically everything I'm feeling in 2007. I finally met Daniel Judd - Mr. Sorcerer himself - recently, at Prins Thomas' SF debut earlier this month and got to tell him how great I thought his music was. He's a chill, friendly guy, not unlike his music unsurprisingly, and he introduced me to his partner Sam Grawe aka Hatchback, who recently released a fantastic 12" on SoCal boutique label Sentrall Records, and who Daniel collaborates with as Windsurf. Not long after we exchanged pleasantries, Thomas played a tune that was so great I *had* to find out what it was. Lo and behold - it was Windsurf's remix of "Us vs Them" by LCD Soundsystem, coming out soon on the Bunch of Stuff EP on DFA. Awestruck, I walked over to Sam and Daniel. "This is your tune?!", I gushed. They confirmed it, and it was then I knew I had a new favorite artist. I invited the duo to play a DJ set for Mandala, Amoeba SF's weekly DJ series, which they will be doing this Friday at 7pm. In the meantime, I asked them some questions via email; here are their responses:

Here's something you don't see every day: Newsweek columnist Steven Levy pairs up the unlikely combination of hipster mash-up laptop god Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk and Democrat Congressman Mike Doyle, who counts Pittsburgh, Gillis' home, among the areas he represents, to discuss the Copyfight and what sort of compromise, if any, can be made between the current generation of media-saturated sample-heavy artists and the clampdown attitude held by corporate copyright holders. Doyle seems like one of the good ones, especially when he puts his money where his mouth is - back at the House Telecom Subcommittee. Read the article right here.

While it's quite obviously inspired by LCD Soundsystem, this gem of a single from Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip has wormed its way into my brain and continues to make me chuckle upon repeated listenings/viewings. "Thou Shalt Always Kill" is the best kind of rant: one that is intended ultimately to be beneficial for the listener. Sac and Pip are (presumably) both English, and there are a few references in the tune that non-Britishes might not get, like Stephen Fry, but the rest of this list of commandments applies everywhere - and definitely in San Francisco. Check out the video:



Love that video, especially how it gets more visually clever as the song progresses. While it starts with a couple of cute and slightly cheesy puns like the pedestal, the bit about using music to get into girls' heads then appearing in the woman's thought bubble to tell her "thou shalt not watch Holyoaks", it gets better with the animated map of global inequity and the photocopier running off "repetitive generic music".

These two seem to be part of the loosely-grouped scene of message-board mashup DJ's, IDM-influenced laptop glitch producers and booty-music afficionados that's been rumbling about since the early days of the century. The single has been quite hard to find but is blowing up iPods virally via the 'net, which is a good place to keep up with these two.  Also of note is that this single is put out by the venerable Lex Records, a Warp-affiliated label that puts out lots of other great music from the likes of Boom Bip and Amoeba's Own Subtle. Lex has been around for a few years now and is worth your time and money, so check them out.

London's stalwart pirate radio underground has been an essential tool for the growth of electronic dance music since the mid-80's, specifically Acid House, Breakbeat Hardcore, Jungle/Drum'n'Bass, Ragga and now Grime/Dubstep. It provides, free of charge to the listening public, a wealth of brand new music, often produced right in their own neighborhoods, that mainstream radio either can't or won't play (although that's changed greatly in recent years), as well as offering a community rallying point culturally. There are a few perspectives of pirate radio, one from The Powers That Be concerning "theft" of the airwaves and another that's more about the music. Here's a local news item from the early 90's with the "official" message:



Another London news clip, this one from 1994, the early days of Jungle, with squareness in full effect:




There's a sense of mystery surrounding pirate radio that lies in its clandestine nature - both musically as well as physically. Jungle and Ragga both got very little attention from the mainstream during their inception periods but flourished through the pirates via dedicated DJ's and promoters, some of whom turned their popularity into lasting careers in radio, with a few stations actually going legit. Throughout the "Second Summer of Love", as the heady Acid House-drenched summer of 1988 is often called, pirate radio was the beacon in the night, guiding clubland refugees to the nonstop party. This UK documentary from '94 shows a bit more of a balanced viewpoint, particularly showing the establishment's skewered views in stark light. Check the intro for a track that tweaks a sample from the news clip above!

Reactable is a new music-making interface coming out of Barcelona that I've been wanting to feature in this blog before I knew I'd be writing it - it was part of my pitch, actually. Now that It's been Boing-Boing-ed I feel I should probably get this post out about it considering it's quite of-the-minute, about which I'll get to later.

Reactable:



While it's been around for a couple of years now, folks are only starting to catch on. Thanks to this past weekend, I'm guessing A LOT more people will be exposed in the near future. This video above is the first exposure I had to the technology, and I was pretty mesmerized. WTF was going on here? One initial observation is that it's like a modular synth that you literally build as you use it, which turned out to be partially correct. The Reactable was developed by Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger, and Marcos Alonso of the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. These demo videos are fairly self-explanatory, especially after multiple viewings, so I don't think that not having a base knowledge of synthesis or electonic music-making is necessarily a hindrance to appreciating or enjoying Reactable.