Ben Neill Blog

More insights from Bob Lefsetz on the changing state of the music industry and culture at large…This time he’s talking about the new Grand Theft Auto and how video games are replacing music for younger people as far as pushing the edges of creativity.

GTA IV (excerpt)

GTA IV is a success because of the CONCEPTION! You might think you can replicate a Picasso or the work of some minimalist artist, but you didn’t have the IDEA! It’s all about the idea. We’re drawn to those who test limits, who state the obvious in a new way, who titillate us while respecting us. All the edges have been sapped from mainstream music, you wonder why people have no compunction stealing it? You wonder why no new act hits superstar status? It’s the baby boomers paying a fortune to see oldsters, not kids. Kids think it’s a rip-off. And ridiculous. To see tiny men in tights acting like they’re still in their twenties so middle-aged people can remember the way it once was.

This item from Wired News describes a new kick drum pedal for the Sony video game Rock Band. In a course I’m teaching at New Jersey Institute of Technology this semester a student brought in the game controllers and we connected them to Ableton Live and Garage Band, assigning the triggers to keystrokes. Instant interactive performance!
Video: Omega Pedal Adds Kick to ‘Rock Band’

Burial’s albums have brought a lot of attention to electronic music and dubstep in particular, now he’s doing a DJ mix CD. Dubstep is an important evolution of breakbeat programming, which I have always preferred over 4 on the floor house beats. In New York, the Dubwar parties are great, I’ve enjoyed every one I’ve been to at Love on MacDougal Street. Dubstep has a lot of variety, there is a wide range of sounds that fall under the general umbrella of the term. I’ll be presenting a show with Kode 9 and the Dubwar crew - Juakali, Joe Nice and Dave Q - on July 1 at the World Financial Center Winter Garden. And I’ll be premiering a set of my own future dub jazz on May 9 at Monkeytown with VJ Bill Jones.

Burial to mix next DJ Kicks CD
Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog

DJ-Kicks, the seminal compilation series produced by K7 Records is to add to its already expansive mix of collaborators by including dubstep legend Burial to produce the next in the series.

Live performance with digital technology takes a lot of practice. Even DJs such as Sasha deal with the tension between human and machine in performance. It’s a tension that never seems to go away, and something that all electronic performers have to come to grips with. The strange thing is that the machines do seem to perform differently in performance situations than when rehearsing, just like people.

In the Spotlight - Sasha - from Beatportal

Anyone who hangs out backstage with DJ Sasha before he’s about to spin better stay out of his way. When he is pacing the room back and forth with a glazed look on his face, there is no room for small talk or random club chatter.
He’s in the middle of a pre-set DJ ritual and to anyone who doesn’t know him, he looks, well, pissed off. “I’m not pissed off, I just get really really nervous before I play,” Sasha tells Industry Boy. “All I’m thinking about is my set and I’m hoping that nothing goes wrong.”

“Take last night for instance [he spun with John Digweed in Vancouver], I went for dinner with Kazel before the club and we were in good spirits, but as soon as I got to the venue I was like ‘leave me alone, don’t talk to me’.” “Even if my mum or my wife called me before my set, I’d tell them to leave me alone. I get that nervous.”

It’s a surprising revelation, especially for a man considered to be a legend amongst DJ superstars.
After all Sasha is renowned for his abilities to skillfully blend records and he’s been doing it for the best part of 20 years. You’d think therefore that DJing would be second nature to him, a walk in the park, but no. Why does he still get nervous after all these years of DJing at the top?
“It’s really strange, but I go though life gig by gig,” says Sasha. “It doesn’t matter how good the last gig was, or the last year, it’s all about making tonight good and not messing up the set tonight.” The power of dance music has always been the ‘now’. That moment, that second on the dancefloor when it all clicks. It is a specific time, a specific place, a specific beat; and in a way, Sasha’s anxiousness shows the pressure that top DJs are under to make ‘now’ the best moment of the crowd’s life. It doesn’t matter if he played good last year or last night, it’s all about ‘now’.

“Plus with all these new gadgets I’m using there’s so much that can go wrong,” he says.
Five minutes before Sasha was due to go on stage in Miami at the start of this tour, his special MAVEN MIDI controller - which he uses to control Ableton Live - blew up.
His laptop too crashed on the very last record during the New York Webster Hall date.
The woes of the digital DJ is that he relies upon technology which is yet to be perfected.
And as a pioneer of digital DJing, Sasha is a kind of lab rat, testing equipment and technology that is still in working beta. Things can and do go wrong. “Once I get through those first four or five mixes I relax,” Sasha says. “Once I know all my equipment is working OK, and it’s sounding good I start to enjoy myself.”

I’ve curated 5 concerts on the River to River Festival at World Financial Center this summer. These are free events starting at 9PM, featuring some of the world’s leading performers of electronic music in a broad range of styles. Here is the lineup:

June 24 - Ulrich Schnauss; Dorit Chrysler/Chiaki Watanabe

July 1 - Kode 9/Dubwar w/Juakali, Joe Nice, Dave Q/Eyewash VJs

July 15 - Fennesz/Sakamoto Cendre (US premiere performance)

July 22 - Kieran Hebden (FourTet) and Steve Reid; Nicolas Collins with Sawako Koen Holtkamp and Collin Olan

All Hail Brooklyn: Alt-Rock Thrives in Alt-Borough

This recent article by Ben Sisario in the New York Times on alternative rock pointed out a trend that I’ve been observing over the last couple of years. With the new level of availability of musical content through the internet, more unusual forms of music are becoming popular. It seems as though the vast amount of material that’s out there and available makes it an asset to be eccentric; in this cultural climate differentiation is perhaps the most important quality that any artist can have, as opposed to previous eras when it was more important to fit into a given genre or scene that already existed.

I’m thrilled to be going back to Amsterdam this summer to work on developing the new mutantrumpet; the wonderful STEIM studios have invited me back there for a residency. I spent a lot of time there in the 90’s, but haven’t had a chance to work with the amazing team of programmers and technicians there for several years. Amsterdam also happens to be one of my favorite cities in the world, I’m really looking forward to spending some time there.

After spending over 20 years developing and performing on the mutantrumpet, there seems to be a growing community of artists who are interested in the idea of musical instruments interfacing with computers. Recently I have been collaborating with Eric Singer’s group LEMUR, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. LEMUR is a computer interfaced percussion ensemble that is working with many composers and artists to create new performance works, a great concept that ultimately will develop a whole performance repertoire for the instruments. Their newest invention, a computer controlled gamelan, is truly amazing. Taylor Kuffner did a great piece for it at Issue Project Room last week. Holland Hopson, a former student of mine, performed a unique hybrid of southern American folk songs and computer music on a modified banjo on the same program. It’s great to see how this group is developing, and there are many others working in this area. The New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference is a place where this growing international community can get together and share new developments. I’ve performed on a couple of them, this year it’s in Genoa, Italy.