[The Audiofiles] Usher In Winter with Lane 8’s Latest Mixtape

December 11, 2015December 11, 2015Leave a comment

With Los Angeles trapped within it’s version of perpetual Summer, I tend to forget that other seasons exist until we’re thrust into them feet first. Thankfully, I’ve begun to anticipate them thanks to timely mixes from none other than Lane 8, a rising star on Above & Beyond’s Anjunadeep imprint. Now with a host of large festival tour dates like Northern Nights, Spring Awakening, What The Festival and Global Dance Festival – not to mention, with his second album ‘Rise‘ and second North American Tour of the same name under his belt, Lane 8 has perfected his stage presence and ability to feel the crowd, which have both forayed into his exquisitely curated mixtapes.

Over the last year, I’ve found myself drawn to both his moody and brooding downtempo original tracks as well as his magnificent mixes that pull inspiration from each and every pocket of House Music. Deep, Indie, Tech – you name it, he’s mixed it into his wondrous works. Though I’d missed out on attending several of his shows around Southern California, I was delighted to be front and center while he brought the house down at Coachella’s DoLab Stage to watch him turn some of my bass buddies into tried and true Lane 8 believers. Each and every time I dive into a mix, I’m absolutely enthralled and blown away by his musical maturity and his latest Winter 2015 Mixtape is an absolute testament to that fact. Dive right in and see what you think!

For more on Lane 8, make sure you keep tabs on his socials –

Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud

Photo by Daniel Leist

Cross Published on The DJ List

[The Audiofiles] Funky Beats for a Funky Mood

March 26, 2015March 26, 2015Leave a comment

Originally, when I was getting ready for today’s post I had nothing but House, Techno, Love and Desert Hearts on the mind; if you’re not familiar with the group, trust me when I say over the next few years you’ll be hearing this name more and more frequently. A band of merry music makers and rump shakers from in and around San Diego, the Desert Hearts tribe is more than just a community of conscious music lovers – they embrace the yearning, creative fire that burns inside all of us and manifest it into a whirlwind of a weekend. From Friday morning through Monday morning, I’ll be grooving and moving to 72 straight hours of House Music. If you think of EDC like a race, and Lightning in a Bottle was a marathon – ths might just take the title of Hippie Olympics in my book (sorry, LIB – it was good while it lasted!). Plus, don’t get me started on the time, energy, love and passion it takes to last a week in the Desert for Burning Man – especially since I’ve yet to experience my own Playa Magic!

But, apparently – life had other plans for me. In the last 24 hours, I’ve dealt with and processed more emotions than I care to know about or share. It should’t seem so convoluted that the world can turn on top of itself in the same amount of time it takes to breathe, blink and iterate a heartbeat – but at the end of the day, it still is. I’m aware that we can only conquer or emotions if we make a conscious choice to control them, and doubly so that the people in our lives can give us expectation hangovers. On a personal level, I absolutely am enthralled by people who are passionately, unequivocally, unapologetically themselves – almost to a fault. I love the humanity it in, however flawed it potentially could be. But somehow, all of a sudden – because I’ve never installed rules, guidelines or boundaries – it all backfires. You know, those fast friends where you invariably said some familial form of ‘I Love You’ much too soon without getting to actually know them; the people that you accept at 110%, but then refuse to give more than 25%.You don’t adopt a dog expecting it to meow, and you certainly don’t acquire friendships for the flippant sake of social guise. The friends that I keep close to my soul are the ones that love me for the person I’ve become and constantly challenge me to be the best version of myself. At moments of stagnation, of static movement – we’re not just standing still but we’re moving backwards; especially in a world where we have to run so fast just to stay in place.

‘When words fail, music speaks’ so I’m going to shut up and let these songs take it from here. My heart hangs heavy, but my eyes are hopefully and my mind is open.

[Tech Talk] Spring Clean Your iTunes Library With Smart Playlists

January 13, 2015January 12, 2015Leave a comment

From the moment I flutter my eyes awake until the millisecond I drift off into dreamland, I essentially eat, breathe, drink, sip, slurp, embrace and flirt with music. And it’s not just some music, I love it all – music of all genres, shapes, sizes, styles, frequencies, tempos, colors, temperatures. Back when I was younger, I picked my high school based on my purported future basketball career – and I’ll be honest, I really had a good thing going. As an Eighth Grader, I was being recruited by a few Division II colleges. Yeah, I know – DII, but in my defense – I still had braces, didn’t have a drivers license and was far from my first kiss; but, basketball? I could do that. Well, until I couldn’t. My freshman year, I was sidelined with a stress fracture in my L5 and simultaneously discovered my obsession with music history thanks to an exceptional teacher. Sophomore year, as I File Clean Up optioned to leave the basketball team – I happily, and swiftly, replaced my basketball scrimmages with choir practices and reciting lines for the school musical. Looking back, it’s almost comical how life’s trajectory can change velocity in a heartbeat. Not to mention, this was right around the time when Napster came into play.

My musical taste expanded with every breath I took and every song that got stuck in my head; I’d scour the internet for unreleased masters, live versions, acoustic versions – of? Well, anything! As much as I ‘appreciate’ (and I use that term vaguely) the radio – it’s a purely commercial market that people are funneling mindless music at ten times the rate of intelligible, honest, legitimate work. So, instead, I use my hunting and pecking skills to scour the internet in search of everything that the Record Labels didn’t want me to hear. Keep in mind, this started when I was a teenager – now that I’m 30 and I’ve been collecting music for the better part of the last two decades, my iTunes library better resembles a game of minesweeper than an actual music library.

There are two basic malfunctions in my iTunes library – ‘Incomplete Information’ and ‘Missing Files’. They’re equally obnoxious but in entirely different ways, but I’d say the later is worse – because your library will literally stop playing when it can’t find your music file. Let’s tackle that first. Besides, do your really want to rename files that you could potentially be deleting? Right; didn’t think so.

Before I started this, I had 43274 songs in my music library – according to iTunes, about 210 days of music (my personal goal is to have 365 days worth…but whatever, that’s for a different time). But, thanks to all of my warning signs – literally, flags – I knew that this wasn’t the case: almost 10% of my library was actually missing or deleted.

Missing Files.

Ever wonder what that annoying ! mark was in the left hand column on iTunes? Well, if you’ve never seen it – you can probably skip this part. But if you’re like me and files are scattered throughout your machine haphazardly, this section will be your bread and butter. Each and every time your iTunes comes across one of these files, the music stops and a dialogue box pops up, asking you to locate the missing music. Sometimes, I know exactly where that Above & Beyond album is sitting, or which single by Griz I needed to link back to my library – but more often than not, I have no damn idea where the files are. The biggest annoyance? Whatever groove I was getting on has been thwarted, and I have to start fresh – and less funky. Thank goodness I found these simple steps to Music Library Liberation. Make New Folders

First things first, the folder up. We’re eventually going to make a hat trick of Playlists, so first let’s make a Playlist Folder to enclose them:

File > New > Playlist Folder

Then, we’re going to make two Smart Playlists and one Static Playlist. From a data doll in the flesh to the rest of you, if you’re not playing around with your Smart Playlists you’re honestly missing out! I have a playlist set to collect data every month, and yearly, for the songs I’ve ranked 4+ so I can have an ongoing ‘Best Of’ Playlist without touching a single thing. You can set filters on filters for the multitudes of metadata each file contains.

We’re going to be creating two Smart Playlists and they’re going to be working off of each other, like logic statements. The first smart playlist is going to encompass ALL of your music files. And I mean, all of them. To do this, we basically tell our playlist to find all files not made by some fake name – logically, the smart playlist places anything and everything in this folder. Make sure the live updating is on, and there aren’t any file restrictions. If you don’t feel like being creative – you can try using my folder name, unless you have some yodeling music on your computer or something…

File > New > Smart Playlist > “All Files”

The more I played around with iTunes and sought some solice online, I found an incredibly helpful hint: If you’re dragging a group of songs out of a Smart Playlist and into a regular playlist, iTunes will automatically eliminate all files it can’t locate. That said, let’s tackle the easy playlist – the Static Playlist. Think of this playlist as a bucket; a helpful, musical bucket where we’re going to be moving our files to. Label it ‘All Live Files’

File > New > Playlist > “All Live Files”

Last, but certainly not least – your second Smart Playlist. This is going to be for your ‘Dead Files’ – we’re going to set this folder up like a sieve, it’s going to collect all the crap data within the application. We want this Smart Playlist to match two rules – we want it to be in the “All Files” Smart Playlist, and we don’t want the files to be in “All Live Files”

File > New > Smart Playlist > “Dead Files”

dead files

Head into your “All Files” playlist and select everything – yep, everything (Command + N), right click – and add the files to your ‘All Live Files’ folder. This could take a few minutes, especially if you’ve got a large library, so go open a cold brew, sit back and let your Smart Playlists do the work. When you get back to your tracks, you should see a pretty folder with no warning flags – and a populated “Dead Files” folder. Go to the “Dead Files”, highlight everything – right click and scroll down to delete. Voila; a cleaned up iTunes Library!

Now, if you’re still in the mood to fill in that missing metadata – make a new Smart Playlist, set ‘Artist’ ‘is’ ‘Blank’ – or, Album ‘is Blank’. Your new folder will have all the files missing information – it’s a long, tedious road to adding it back in (trust me, I’m in the middle of it), but it’s so much easier when your playlists are seamlessly streaming.

[The Audiofiles] Alt-J: Changing the Game

December 16, 2014Leave a comment

In the current state of the music industry – genres are merging, producers across the board are collaborating and the end result is a smorgasborg of music that simply put moves the feet and soothes the soul. Guitar riffs layered over gritty, emotive lyrics; basslines pulsing in time with your heart beat; ethereal melodies dichotomized by dissonant chords and tense moments dispelled by eerie moments of quiet. Partly thanks to advances in modern technology like streaming media, though in part also due to piracy problems, today’s music makers are sitting on an epoch of music history; commercial ‘pop’ music is as readily available as what the rest of us consider ‘underground’ tech house, trap, glitch, minimal and all of those other nuanced sub-genres that might or might not actually exist anywhere beyond our minds.

Musicians are compounded, creative beings, constantly evolving from generations and artists before them. Unknowingly or in tribute, time and time again artists sonically ingrain their surroundings into their source material – only to remix, rework, regurgitate, and revolve the cycle of the arts once more.

It was a typical Tuesday morning – scouring Soundcloud and hunting through Hypem. Lido’s remix of ‘Left Hand High’ came through my feed and I was instantly hooked. Repeat Button. Within moments, I was having a one person dance party in my living room, grooving to the deliciously layered drops and almost ethereal vocals. Twenty minutes later, I emerged from a trancelike haze – instantly yearning for more. Instead of doing the typical – researching the remixer, I pulled back a layer to find Alt-J.

Though Alt-J(∆)’s been around for the better part of the last decade, they’ve only been releasing music for since 2012 and I didn’t discover them until literally a week ago. A triumvirate of creativity, Alt-J is constantly pushing back on the boundaries in the most beautiful way. In the Venn Diagram of Alternative Rock, Indie Electro and Hip-Hop Syncopation, Alt-J sits proudly front and center. Diving further into their discography, I’ve come to a unique conclusion – I almost don’t like any remixes of their work. And why would I? Did the Mona Lisa need a Lo-Fi filter? Great work needs no retouching, and almost every remix I’ve heard seems like a building block of their intricate design – not an homage to their work or a complex re-imagining of their harmonies.

If you don’t believe me, try this on for size: after logging at least 100 listens to ‘Left Hand High’ (and no, I’m not kidding), I matriculated on to Story 4: Sleeplessly Embracing. So, for a second – take all I knew of Alt-J. I’ve heard Tessilate and Breezeblock on the radio, and then all a sudden – a glitching, booming bassline takes over – grimy, street smart lyrics overflow my headphones as the bass fills my body. Combine that all into one compact musical package, and what you have borders on genius.

[The Audiofiles] Throwback Thursday: Rockin’ to the 90’s

September 25, 2014September 25, 2014Leave a comment

Last Weekend, when Danny and I gallivanted up the California Coast for our friend’s beautiful wedding at the Falkirk Cultural Center – we took a necessary deviation from what’s seemingly become our standard road-tripping playlists, bass heavy, glitch infused tracks that more often than not lack a vocal track. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive on the complexities, deviations in structure and the plethora of noises that stem from Electronic Music. But, now that I’ve had my ‘Robot Ears’ on for the better part of the last decade – songs from individual genres seem to blend together effortlessly into musical amalgamation of Dubstep, Deep House and Trance.

If it weren’t for the varied live groups like Modestep, Odesza, Keys n Krates, EOTO, Emancipator Ensemble and STS9, expertly fused live DJ sets from the likes of Bassnectar, Andy C, Beardyman, Kastle, Disclosure, Bonobo and Shpongle and exceptional one off live Trance shows like Armin van Buuren’s Armin Only and Above & Beyond’s Acoustic at the Greek – I wouldn’t lost my faith in the umbrella genre of EDM long ago. So, for this 10 hour cruise – we put up our disco duds and busted it old school thanks to some help from Spotify, and a whole lot of great memories from our childhood. On my infinite list of things I love about Danny, it’s that even though we didn’t grow up near each other nor share any childhood memories – we both used to rock out to the same ol’ songs and that fact brings us so much closer together. Music, as it already stands, is a building block of our relationship (hell, we met EDC weekend 2010, said the magic words at LIB then got engaged at Shambhala) – but it’s also an emotive, binding force.

As only children, a lot of the time we were left alone with music and our own thoughts – meaning that these artists had a substantial impact on our childhood, as well as our world view. For the drive, we listened to it all. From Rock and Roll like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sum 41, blink182 and Sublime to Linkin Park, Foo Fighters and the Barenaked Ladies to Hip Hop and Rap from Run DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, Nas, Puff Daddy (back when he was actually Puff Daddy), Notorious B.I.G. and some guilty pleasure pop music a la Celine, Whitney, Mariah, Alanis and Fiona – we went back, way back – and it was the best time ever. So good, in fact, that I’ve made a collaborative playlist on Spotify and y’all can add your favorite 90’s tracks, too! So take your hair down, put your feet up and let’s kick it old school for Throwback Thursday.

What’s your go to 90’s track? Leave it some love in the comments below – or better yet, head on over to Spotify and add to my collaborative playlist!

[Artist Spotlight] MNEK + Sam Smith

January 14, 2014January 16, 2014Leave a comment

There aren’t many male vocalists that get me choked up, but over the past year a handful have popped up on my radar much to my excitement. Each time I hear a new song featuring Sam Smith or MNEK, my heart stops until I press play – and what I’ve found with each artists, is that I’m addicted to their soulful sounds.

Sam Smith, named the BBC Voice to Watch in 2014, has slowly but surely etched a permanent place in my heart. I first heard his breathtaking vocals when he lent them to Disclosure for the feel good crooner ‘Latch’; if that single doesn’t take your breath away, try your hand at the acoustic version:

Then, he does it again on the Nile Rodgers x Disclosure Collaboration ‘Together.’

So far, you’ve gotten an earful of Electro – but Sam Smith’s original work is something closer to Indie Rock with a sexy, bedroom twist:

Not to mention, his voice just remixes so pretty! MK does the jam ‘Money on my Mind’ excellent justice by infusing his remix with some signature deep house grooves.

This morning when I jumped on my mandatory morning music safari, I found a new singles under the man’s belt and I’m beyond excited to share. ‘Make it To Me’ – has me wrapped up in all of the feels and almost in tears; his vocal prowess is so beautifully honest and refreshing, and that high register – hot damn that sounds phenomenal:

Stay up to date with Sam Smith across his socials: Webpage | Facebook | Soundcloud | Twitter

Another vocalist that I can’t get enough of is MNEK. Every time I find a new MNEK (pronounced Em-En-E-Kay) cover on Hypem, I’m absolutely enthralled by how he refixes the song by ignoring the original format and laying down his own, silk smooth notes. There has been a host of singles over the past year that I’ve heard MNEK re-do, and each and every one is beautiful and unique in it’s own right. 19 years young, MNEK has the vocal power of an old soul; time after time, he infuses his sultry R&B vocals into deep house rhythms to perfection and I simply can’t get enough. One thing I really enjoy with the singles he’s released, is playing them back to back with the original; if you want to understand the man’s genius, it’s a great jumping off point – so I’ll get that party started for you:

[Original]

[Re-Fix]

[Original]

[Re-Fix]

[Original]

[Re-Fix]

[Original]

[Re-Fix]

And then of course, there are the original tracks he’s lent his stellar pipes to – like with Rudimental, SubFocus and DEVolution – proving that his voice is so much more than just [Deep] House, it’s an instrument that producers across the genres love playing with.

Keep tabs on MNEK across the interwebs – Webpage | Soundcloud | Facebook | Twitter

The Audiofiles: Top 20 Songs of All Time

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013Leave a comment

There’s nothing that piques my interest like a challenge – and when that challenge involves my favorite tracks of all time? Well, that’s simply music to my ears =) So, when my best friend posted about creating a list of favorites for a friend, I couldn’t help but be inspired. We exchanged a few quick IMs and I went on my merry way through the interwebs and back in time.

Even though I’m currently living as a pseudo-raver-kitten, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of classic rock, country and slow jams – it’s just been extremely few and far between as of late 😉

It only took me about an hour, and I only thought about the fact I was limited to 20 jams three or four times; I’d call that a success in itself. So, what we have here are songs that resonate in a special way with my soul. I hope y’all enjoy this trek down memory lane as much as I do =)