Weekend Round-Up (8/16-8/17/14)
–Written by Kevin Madert
This is a weekly post we’ll be running to keep you as up-to-date on musical goings-on as we can. We’ll be gathering news tidbits from across the music world and compiling them for you after the weekend concludes. This is not meant to be an all-encompassing source for music news, but rather a collection of news items we found interesting, important, or otherwise necessary to share.
Over the weekend a lot of things happened in the world of music. Here are some of them.
1. Daft Punk who? IDM godfather Aphex Twin seemingly began the rollout for his first album in over a decade on Saturday by floating a blimp over London emblazoned with his unmistakable logo. Reports of sightings outside Radio City Music Hall came in shortly thereafter. I’d try to explain how exciting this news is, but I’m hopeful you already know. Via Pitchfork.
2. More from the IDM world; psychedelica purveyor Ott chose to cancel a show over the weekend in Israel out of respect for those who have lost their lives in the continuing Gaza conflict. According to the musician, the decision had “nothing to do with politics,” but was in the interest of, “respect for those on all sides who lost their loved ones. It’s unfortunate for the fans, but it’s quite the gesture – one that feels appropriate at the end of the day. Via Facebook.
3. The BitTorrent revolution continues to gather mainstream steam as über-label OWSLA released 20 free songs over the weekend via the site’s Bundling service. First popularized by Gramatik – EDM’s top crusader for a free and open internet – other artists have since followed suit, seeing the service as a great way to disseminate their tunes and their message for free to a massive audience. Along with tunes new and old from acts like Snails, What So Not, Dillon Francis and Seven Lions, the download comes with a free month’s subscription to NEST (OWSLA’s private fan site) as well as a few other goodies. Via This Song Is Sick.
4. MAKE SOME NOIIIIIIISE: BBC Radio 1 Extra celebrated its 12th birthday over the weekend. That’s twelve years of electronic music radio, twelve years of essential mixes, twelve years of all sorts of good stuff from the British radio imprint.
It’s our birthday! 12 years and so many memories. Here are some of our favourite moments- what are yours? pic.twitter.com/N89gaAvtqM
— BBC Radio 1Xtra (@1Xtra) August 16, 2014
5. More importantly, the anniversary celebration was capped off by an absolutely massive drum ‘n’ bass soundclash. Hospital Records, RAM Recordings, Viper Records and Shogun Records – arguably the top four labels in the genre – faced each other in a fierce live mix-off. Hospital Records took it by a nose, with plenty of good-spirited banter and play-fighting between each label’s artists for the duration. Have a listen here to get a better picture of just how awesome this scenario was. Via Twitter.