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Normally it's a great honour if a big pop band like Franz Ferdinand asks an underground producer to remix a song. If then also Royskopp, Yello, Annie, Mylo and even Roxy Music call the guy and ask for a mix you can be quite sure that the producer must be more than just one of the many new one hit club wonders. And if next this artists starts to record his solo album and people like Soulwax, The Rapture and Radio 4 want to sing on it, it's not unlikely that there is something special going on. All this is happening to Swiss born, but Berlin-based disco producer, DJ and painter Robi Insinna aka Headman. You can easily call Robi one of the leading figures of the new disco movement. His first HEADMAN album "It Rough" was released back in 2003 on the small German label Gomma and set new standards in club circles. It was immediately nominated album of the month" in Jockey Slut Magazine/ UK and called one of the most important and innovative albums of the year by DJ?s such as Trevor Jackson, Ivan Smagghe or even Hell. The title track (with a Chicken Lips re-work on the 12") caused a huge fuss in clubs around the world. Since then he has been building up a worldwide underground reputation as remixer, producer and DJ regularly playing hot clubs like Bugged out or Optimo in the UK as well as Tribeca in New York and FUN in Berlin. This year he even has been invited to play at occasions like the MTV music awards aftershow party in Lissabon or the famous Colette Shop Parties in Paris. He also is currently travelling with SOULWAX as Tour DJ all over Europe. Besides the records on his main label Gomma, Headman has also recently been asked to publish a single on London's Output records. He also started an own little inprint (Relish records) and from time to time he puts out records under his moniker Manhead. But his main project is the HEADMAN music: The Headman style is a very special version of (balearic) Disco, combining the organic sound of 70ies Leftfield Disco and Rock with the energy of 90ies house. The new album includes songs Robi recorded with Stephen Dewaele from Soulwax/2many DJs (he performed on the first single ROH), Matt Safer from The Rapture, Anthony from Radio 4 and Erol Alkan from London?s TRASH Club. The remix for the first single ROH was done by Trevor Jackson aka Playgroup. The second single MOISTURE includes two club mixes by Robi himself and the kicking MUSTAPHA 3000 remix. Robi`s projects are especially notable for their artwork. He studied painting at the famous Brera Art academy in Milan/ Italy and starts to get known also for his big Head paintings. (The ON album will include a 16 page booklet showing paintings made for every song on this CD) For more information for Insinna?s paintings please check out www.relishrecords.com/art (www.headman.org)
They play DISCO. But not so much mixing it with (Post) Punk and New Wave like so many other bands right now. WhoMadeWho use lot more influences: from Surfrock to Folk to 70ies Funk. And sometimes it feels like the guys heard a dose of Italodisco and Cosmic tapes before recording. One of the interesting things about WhoMadeWho is the fact that all the three members have totally different backgrounds. Tomas Barfod the drummer is known as one of Skandinavia's best electronic DJ's and has published acclaimed records on Get Physical, Kitsune and Gomma under his moniker TOMBOY. Jeppe Kjellberg , guitar player, used to live in NYC where he was established in the local Avantgarde Jazz scene. He even recorded an album with former Lounge Lizzard guitar player DAVIS TRONZO. And Tomas Hoeffding (the bass player) is also member of Danish garage rock band Garbo.. The band released only three singles in the last year - but these 12inches caused a good buzz and heavy rotations with DJ's all over the place. Especially the single SPACE FOR RENT (and The Rapture's remix of it) is currently getting a huge response (Leftfield single of the issue in DJ mag), and their cover version of Benny Benassi's Satisfaction is still a hit in many clubs. The album?s second single OUT THE DOOR was remixed by French producers IN FLAGRANTI and SUPERDISCOUNT and has been getting good exposure in clubs worldwide. Pete Tongfeatured it in his Radio One Essential charts and 2 MANY DJ?s featured a few WhoMadeWho Songs in their latest Radio One mix. MTV in France and Italy and MTV in UK put the video on rotation. The 2 MANY DJ'S/ SOULWAX guys are such huge fans of WhoMadeWho that they invited the band to do their live support on their big UK tour in autumn 2005. Same with MYLO who invited the band to support them on their tours. UK Press quotes: "Brilliant!"(NME) "...focused and brilliant." (iD sept 2005) "while the record is super fun, the band is even better live!" (Dazed & Confused) "Should coax even the shyest of floors back from the death!"(DJ mag) NME about WHOMADEWHO's Remix of MUNK's Kick out the chairs!:One of our favorite dance tracks of the year!
Swiss born, Berlin-based Robi Insinna, a.k.a. Headman, is a nu-disco producer on the small Gomma imprint.
Pop Levi has led what one might describe as a melodic life. From childhood his life has been steeped in music. He took up piano at age 3, joined a gospel choir at 7, and started record collecting at 9 just prior to writing his first song. It was a precocious start for an artist who has proved to be a prodigious talent. This English born, LA based multi-instrumentalist was a founder member of avant-garde rock collective Super Numeri before embarking on a global roller coaster ride as bassist with electro pioneers Ladytron. All the while he?s been perfecting his modern spin on rock and soul, releasing two singles on the ?Trons Invicta Hi-Fi label', and carefully crafting his debut solo album. August 2006 sees the release of his first EP on Counter Records. Drawing inspiration from such luminaries as Van Dyke Parks, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and Syd Barrett, Levi creates his own brand of gloriously funky alt-rock, meticulously piecing together his kaleidoscopic sound from recordings he?s compiled over a ten-year period. The roar of a motorcycle and the Bolan-esque swagger of title track Blue Honey, kicks off this five track EP. Track 2 (A Style Called) Crying Chic sees Levi pay tribute to the sun drenched sounds of 60's west coast America before he struts his stuff on the Zeppelin-heavy guitar riffs of Mournin Light. Penultimate song Baby Again (Midnight Version) has a looser, more experimental feel, prior to more close-vocal harmonising and finger clicking beats from Levi on an alternate recording of album track Skip Ghetto (Echo Park version). The album, The Return To Form Black Magick Party, described by Levi as a truly bizarre whirlwind of classic sounds has been mixed by Thom Monahan, Devendra Banhart's producer, and produced by Pop Levi himself. It is due for release in the New Year. Meanwhile Levi and his band have been astounding audiences with their soulful vocals and guitar pyrotechnics both at home and here in the UK and plan a return trip to the UK in August for a clutch of dates to be announced shortly.
Herbert: "Moving Like A Train"
Restless innovator, sampling wizard, classically trained pianist and superstar collaborator, MATTHEW HERBERT is one of electronic music's most versatile and prolific figureheads. Recording under his own name as well as Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radio Boy and others, Herbert has also produced and remixed artists as diverse as Bjork, REM, John Cale, Roisin Murphy, Yoko Ono and Serge Gainsbourg. An alchemist of avant-garde sound in the tradition stretching from Stockhausen to the Aphex Twin, Herbert combines playful pop sensibility with a strictly imposed experimental agenda. In his increasingly conceptual and political albums he has emerged as a unique figure in modern music: a kind of one-man Radiohead, or a Brian Eno for the 21st century. It was in January 1995 that Herbert gave his first large public performance. His instruments: a sampler and a bag of crisps. But long before he discovered the revolutionary possibilities of sampling, he began playing violin and piano at the age of four. When he was seven he sang in the school choir and played with orchestras. At school, he had the good fortune to have a music teacher who considered Reich, Xenakis and Jazz standards to be the equal of Beethoven. During his time as a theatre student at Exeter University, Herbert, the son of a BBC sound technician, continued to invest in his own home studio. Herbert's studies helped to germinate his interest in "musique concrete". Rummaging around his bag of crisps was only the beginning. His 1998 masterwork 'Around the House' (re-released on !K7 in 2002) collected sounds from the house and home: washing machines, toasters and toothbrushes were sampled and processed into swinging grooves and absorbing sound scapes. All the project needed was the silken voice of Dani Siciliano, Herbert's long-term collaborator, to humanise the album into a left-field classic. In 2000, Herbert wrote a manifesto, the "Personal Contract for the Composition Of Music (PCCOM) (Incorporating the Manifesto of Mistakes)", rules which have defined the compositional methods ever since. The manifesto, not unlike Dogme 95's filmic principles, prohibits the use of any pre-recorded musical sources, as well as any synthetic sounds that imitate acoustic instruments. Furthermore, accidental sounds or errors should influence the process of his production. Herbert considers mistakes in programming or recording as the welcome intervention of random humanity in a sterile world. This is a man, after all, who runs a record label called Accidental. Deriving much of its musical content from human skin, hair, bones and the random contents of Dani Siciliano's handbag, Herbert's 2001 album 'Bodily Functions' was the audible result of putting this theory to practice. But far from being limited by these self-imposed rules, the record unlocked rich new vaults of unique sound and fascinating rhythm from the most unlikely everyday objects. In 2003 Herbert redefined his musical agenda yet again with his big-band album 'Goodbye Swingtime', which was recorded at Abbey Road studios with 16 jazz and session musicians. Despite its self-consciously traditional elements, the album was composed under strict PCCOM rules, and again featured Siciliano on vocals. The subsequent live shows, including Sonar in Barcelona, the Montreux jazz festival, and Roskilde festival in Denmark, were rapturously received by large crowds. From bedroom samplers to concert halls, Herbert continues to expand the horizons of electro-organic music. The political content of Herbert's music has become increasingly overt in recent years. His 2004 album 'Plat Du Jour' was his most rigorously experimental to date, featuring sounds entirely derived from food and its packaging. Unified in concept and content, it used witty culinary metaphors to attack not just giant food companies but also the death penalty, body fascism and war in Iraq. In Britain, 'The Guardian' called the consequent live shows, complete with a chef making live smells "a wild stimulation of senses, feet and intellect". In 2005, Herbert produced 'Ruby Blue', the debut solo album by Moloko singer Roisin Murphy. A fertile garden of flamboyant dance-pop and artfully textured jazz-funk. Herbert's latest album, 'Scale', is probably his most pleasingly pop-friendly mellifluous so far. But beneath its deceptively glossy surface sheen of jazz, disco and sensual house rhythms lie quietly anguished meditations on mortality, global suffering and the end of the oil age. Among the 723 objects sampled on these lush tracks are coffins, petrol pumps, meteorites, an RAF Tornado bomber, and somebody being sick outside a banquet for a notorious London arms fair. More than any previous Herbert album, 'Scale' combines immaculately groomed dance music with subversive subject matter. Herbert is as solid as a rock in these times of "borderless digital arbitrariness," as the German newspaper 'Die Zeit' once described his work. Between programming mistakes and the conceptual stringency of his PCCOM manifest, between divine accident and strict intent, whether he scores films or theatre shows or paints the musical backdrop for fashion shows - Herbert's endless innovation and transgression of genres is never just art for its own sake. His music is always engaged in lively dialogue with the wider world, with the past and future of experimental music, with its own political and economic origins.
Hot Swedish electro artists The Knife?s third studio album Silent Shout will be in stores on July 25th. Based in Stockholm, Sweden The Knife create subversive, shape-shifting soundscapes that defy categorization. Moving between realms, from highly danceable to tightly intimate spaces, theirs is music left of center and on the avant tip. Silent Shout, The Knife's third album, debuted at #1 on the Swedish charts. Mute will release Silent Shout, The Knife's first domestic release on July 25, 2006. "Silent Shout," the first single and title track, will be released on 12" and CD June 27, 2006 and features remixes from Shinedoe, Troy Pierce and more. Brother and sister, Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson, began making music together as The Knife in 1999, releasing records under their label Rabid Records. Deftly utilizing technology to strip, break down, defile, rebuild, and renew, their self-titled debut album The Knife, released in 2001, was followed by a soundtrack for the independent film Hannah med H, and their second artist album, Deep Cuts, both in 2003. The Knife is also famously responsible for penning ?Heartbeats?, a soul-tugging track made popular by Mute label-mate (and fellow Swede) Jose Gonzalez.
Pete Tongfeatured it in his Radio One Essential charts and 2 MANY DJ?s featured a few WhoMadeWho Songs in their latest Radio One mix. MTV in France and Italy and MTV in UK put the video on rotation. The 2 MANY DJ'S/ SOULWAX guys are such huge fans of WhoMadeWho that they invited the band to do their live support on their big UK tour in autumn 2005. Same with MYLO who invited the band to support them on their tours. UK Press quotes: "Brilliant!"(NME) "...focused and brilliant." (iD sept 2005) "while the record is super fun, the band is even better live!" (Dazed & Confused) "Should coax even the shyest of floors back from the death!"(DJ mag) NME about WHOMADEWHO's Remix of MUNK's Kick out the chairs!:One of our favorite dance tracks of the year!
Ben Jelen is the first artist release for 2007 from Custard, home to multi-platinum selling "You're Beautiful" singer James Blunt. Jelen recently finished recording the final tracks for the album with producer/label head Linda Perry whom also mixed the majority of the songs in addition to two mixes from famed producer Bill Bottrell (Shelby Lynne, Tom Petty, Rosanne Cash, Elton John).
With one foot in the early roots of her career as a "dance artist" and the other foot planted firmly into the sound of "future disco", Madonna returned to the clubs with a vengeance when CONFESSIONS ON A DANCE FLOOR was released by Warner Bros. Records on November 15, 2005.
Recorded in London, Confessions features songs primarily co-written and co-produced by Madonna and Stuart Price, producer, mixer and DJ-supreme ( Les Rythmes Digitales, Jaques Le Cont). Price was Madonna's musical director on her 2002 Drowned World Tour and last summer's Reinvention Tour. Additional producers and co-writers include Henrik Jonback, Grammy Award-winning team Bloodshy & Avant, and Anders Bagge + Peer Astrom from Murlyn Music collective. In addition Mirwais Ahmadzai, the producer of Madonna's last two albums American Life and Music, contributed two songs and co-produced one track. The song "Jump" was co written by previous Madonna collaborator, artist, and producer Joe Henry (Don't Tell Me).
Kinski: "Rhode Island Freakout"
Kinski's Sub Pop full-length debut! (This record was also released as a limited ed. double LP, by the fine folks at Strange Attractors Audio House - www.strange-attractors.com.) New Sub Pop roster addition Kinski is a (mostly...) instrumental rock quartet from Seattle. By turns melodic, swelling, roaring, propulsive, and sparse, Kinski walks the margins of avant-rock (ref. High Rise, Sonic Youth, Bardo Pond, Mogwai, GYBE) with nods to Krautrock and a penchant for noisy psychedelia. Airs Above Your Station is Kinski's third full-length (after the self-released Space Launch for Frenchie and 2001's stunning Be Gentle with the Warm Turtle on Pacifico Recordings).
