stimuli.ca » Beatport

Freshtunes.ca is launched!

Rupert — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:52:06 +0000

Over the weekend I whipped up a new site to cater to my music tastes. I’m really passionate about music, and I’ve been meaning to launch a music site for a long time. The idea is that others may be spared the time and effort I put into my hobby: hunting for and aquiring fresh electronic music. It’s a full-time occupation for me.

My tastes are fairly broad, although I lean towards progressive (house/trance/breaks), and minimal techno.

I really can’t wait to share some of the gems I’ve found over the last few years! Most of the tracks highlighted on freshtunes.ca will be songs you can purchase for a small fee (usually about $1.50 per song) from sites like Beatport and KarmaDownload, but I’ll host some free live sets I’ve gotten my greedy hands on as well.

At some point I want to put google ads on freshtunes.ca, as well as link to amazon CDs and such, to try and generate revenue to cover my costs, but to be frank, the costs aren’t that great (~$100 USD/year), and I’m doing it for the love of it.

The site design (a WordPress theme) will be available shortly to the public.

Another music gold rush: Solvent

Rupert — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 05:29:59 +0000

I like the best of anything, even electro-pop ;)

I always say 98% of anything is crap; it’s the top 2% that keeps me going. Art, movies, music, etc. I guess I have high standards? Or everyone else in the world has lower standards. (Occam’s Razor: it must be everyone else.)

Anyway, I’ve come across a Canadian artist named Solvent at Beatport; he does melodic, bittersweet vocodered electro. That may sound clich?, but Solvent does it so very well that I can’t resist. I’ve got like 6 Solvent tracks in my basket (along with like 20 other tracks) so that when I’m, er, solvent again I will purchase them, stat. Or maybe I’ll charge them to my credit card and pay later, which is usually how these things work out.

Recommendations:

My Radio (Extended mix and Schneider TM Mustang interpretation), a touching lifestory of Solvent’s love of music, from his first guitar, etc.
Wish, more bittersweet vocodered musings for rainy days.
Devices and Strategies, a classical-inspired staccato melody.
Radio Goo Goo, a patient, slightly sinister darker track with middle eastern influences.

Listen here

Visit Solvent’s homepage

Download free tracks! (A Quiet Life is good)

Joshua Collins: Who needs drugs with tracks like these?

Rupert — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:45:34 +0000

About once every two years, I discover an artist who rocks me, who renews my faith in the quest for Quality Tunes, who makes me wonder how I ever got this far without knowing about them. Like Monolake a year ago, and Fluxion the year before that. This year it’s Joshua Collins, a name that was vaguely familiar to me but ultimately meaningless.

I should also mention I’m not super-huge into house; most house is a little too “flaming” for me… a little too disco-ish or tacky or whatever. I’m generally not into vocals either.
This guy doesn’t just do house; he does druggy, spatial, liquid, freaky, groovy house that ripples and smears with tracers, that hovers in the air between your speakers and you. This guy does my kind of house. This music reminds me of coming home high as a kite as a teenager and listening to CITR 101.9 FM in Vancouver and listening to the alien sounds of house, drum and bass and techno until the wee hours of the morning, or until the drugs wore off and I could sleep. Music so far out there as to be almost inaccessible, yet strangely seductive. True human creativity in its rawest, purest form.

This music actually makes me feel high, the highest honor of any urban art work. It makes me nostalgic. And speaking of drugs, I’m guessing Joshua Collins did his fair share of acid back in the day.

Whoa.

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