Curren$y, aka Currensy:

Download the following:
i)Pilot Talk 2
ii)Covert Coup

Good stoner music.

Goodies

Ad Brown, Mango & Kerry Leva - Tonight (Original Mix).mp3
http://www17.zippyshare.com/v/47192214/dmca.html

Mango - Laiminga Be Taves.mp3
http://www63.zippyshare.com/view.jsp?locale=lt&key=83188017

Roul & Doors - Cameroon (Original Mix) (BacauHouseMafia.Ro).mp3
http://rockdizfile.com/o9qbmcldghr5/Roul_&_Doors_-_Cameroon_(Original_Mix)_(BacauHouseMafia.Ro).mp3.html

Ruben Amaya - Backing (Original Mix) (BacauHouseMafia.Ro).mp3
http://rockdizfile.com/31pa6shq5lwl/Ruben_Amaya_-_Backing_(Original_Mix)_(BacauHouseMafia.Ro).mp3.html

Aba & Simonsen vs. Sakis - Higher (Official Danish Deejay Festival Anthem 2012)
http://rockdizfile.com/iwzj05e60dud/Aba_&_Simonsen_vs._Sakis_-_Higher_(Official_Danish_Deejay_Festival_Anthem_2012)_(BacauHouseMafia.Ro).mp3.html

Mango - Citylanes Airplanes (Original Mix) (ResidentDJ.org).mp3
http://www39.zippyshare.com/v/1793743/file.html

Mango, DJ Orion, J.Shore - When All The Ships Are Gone (Mango Mix).mp3
http://www24.zippyshare.com/v/68205121/file.html

Mango - Sayonara (Original Mix) deeplh.com.mp3
http://www10.zippyshare.com/v/89261338/file.html

Mango - 5 minutes
http://www17.zippyshare.com/v/34349533/file.html

Mango-Lollipop Girl(original mix).mp3
http://www7.zippyshare.com/v/20554388/file.html

Mango - Good Morning Track (Sunn Jellie Remix)
http://www9.zippyshare.com/v/45519071/file.html

Mango-Forever July(Derek Howell Remix).mp3
http://www27.zippyshare.com/v/60844401/file.html

Serge Flibustier - Nowhere (Mango Remix).mp3
http://www12.zippyshare.com/v/48434725/-.html

New Trance/House 2012.

So 2011 is over, and everyone knows the world is going to end.

Look's like the DJs/producers know; ergo here's some trance/house for ya from this year 2012:

Axwell - In my Mind ft. Blablabla

Avicii - Enjoy the Day

Avicii ft. Nicky Romero - Fuck School

Hardwell - Spaceman

Danny Darko - Dragonborn Remix (from the game Skyrim. FUS RO D D DA)

Would love to hear this song in a club. hahaha

Norman Doray - Leo

Too bad Zyzz is dead and he can't hear all this new music :(

*BONUS. Hide and Seek, Trance remix by Avicii's protege, Otto Knows. How come I haven't heard of this? It's a 2010 track though. Sorry.

Check out ma Wubs - MrFijiWiji, Kryptic Minds.

CHECK OUT MA DUBZ WUBZ

Light up a spliff and zone out to some amazing wubble wubbly wubs.

First of all we have Kryptic Minds.

Thank you random 4chan dude.

A UK-based (origin of dubstep) duo.

Minimal/spacey dubstep

Bt dubs wubs, download this album Can't Sleep.

Second we have Mr FijiWiji

Brilliant EP, Walking Televisions 

free EP @ http://www.mediafire.com/?23achde82wsc36i

Also,

Rusko - Everyday (Netsky Remix). SICKSICK.

And then, 

Pour tu.

When I listen to the track above, I feel well banging n hardcore yeh like this ere fellow:

PEACE,

Andrew

Reggae & Pseudo-Reggae - Matisyahu, Marley, and others.

When I was a kid I didn't understand reggae...
Now I do. Kind of.


Jamaican-English patois is cool but very confusing.
Case in point: The following cutscene from the second best GTA, GTA IV, with some Jamaicon drug dwealer talking about this ting and ting mon.

Probably the most memorable cutscene from the game.

The King of Reggae, Bob Marley:
Jamming: My favourite Bob Marley Stinson song.

and others of course: Could You Be Loved, Exodus, One Love, I Shot the Sheriff.
All the songs in Bob Marley - Legend

And others:
Max Romeo - Chase the Devil (from GTA:SA's formidable reggae station KJAH WEST)

 Matisyahu: King without a Crown, One Day
A Jewish Reggae artist. SO COOL.

One Day:
http://www11.zippyshare.com/v/51542716/file.html 

Snow - Informer aka I Licky Boom Boom Down:

Damian, Bob's most prolific reggae son, has an aggressive reggae song called  Welcome to Jamrock.

These are some other songs that genre mix with reggae aka pseudo-reggae:

Hip Hop & Reggae - from the Nas and Damian Marley album, Distant Relatives.

DnB with Reggae Chorus: Pendulum - Set me on Fire

The Pendulum album, Immersion, is pretty good.

House and Reggae: R.I.O. - After the Love
Mediocre-cheesy production. NVM because the vocals make the track

Pop meets Reggae:
Shaggy, of course...

LOL.
And Sean Paul...

Andrew

John Mayer Masterclass - Inside Wants Out, Room for Squares, Heavier Things, Continuum, JM trio, Where the Light is, Battle Studies, Born and Raised.

John Mayer.
34 years old in 2012.


Shadow Days:
http://www.4shared.com/mp3/OkcbyrNe/John_Mayer_-_Shadow_Days.html


Recently he's gone for the Broke-Back Johnny Depp look for his new upcoming album, Born and Raised.

Maybe Mr. Mayer imagined this reaction:

Or this:

Whatever. He's good enough at music that he can do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it.
This is why you get that douchebag aura from him.

But in a totally heterosexual way I'm just gonna say he looked better with the 'punk look' = short hair + tattoo sleeve showing.

Right?
Right?

I'd probably get a sleeve like that if I was 10 times better at guitar.
LOL.


Impressive repertoire.
Inside Wants Out, 1999
*pretty damn good for a 21 year old.
Shit I'm 21 and I suck: song writing + guitar skills wise.

Room for Squares, 2001
Heavier Things, 2003
Continuum, 2006
JM trio,
Where the Light is,
Battle Studies, 2009
Born and Raised, coming out May 2012.

My first contact with JM's music was in boarding school:

I remember sitting in the common room watching MTV's Top 20 when this gay sh** came on.
I didn't listen to his music until Continuum came out.

I gobbled up Gravity, Slow Dancing in A Burning Room, Vultures, Belief, Waiting on the World to Change.

Later on I did download his previous albums, Room for Squares and Heavier Things.

Being an avid moderately awful guitar player I do admire JM's playing style.
SRV, a bit of Hendrix, and contemporary alternative/acoustic songwriter mush all put together.
Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not:

Here's my favourite John Mayer song; it's a instrumental of Neon, and he doesn't sing on it:

Here's another good instrumental, if you excuse the microphone douchebaggery:

I was nice enough to even rip it for yall:
http://www26.zippyshare.com/v/38535468/file.html

Anyway back on track,

I argued with someone that Continuum was the superior album but he told me this was the best.

It's ok, I guess.
Alot of mush.

The best song is probably Neon:

On the guitar, you gotta tune the low E string to C.
It's the only song that's got a jazz-feel on the album; the rest is mush for pre-pubescent teenage girls.

No Such Things is probably the second decent song on the album:

Nelly remixed it:

I heard the remix first before I heard the original song.
Like Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls, and Stand By Me.
And Sean Kingston - Me Love, and Led Zeppelin - D'yer Mak-er.
LOL. and probably some other songs...

Anyway back on track,
on to Heavier Things,

TBH, I hated this album until about 3 listens.
Especially New Deep.

It's so strange how I used to hate the guitar lick, + chorus, and now I love it.
Werd.

Daughters is decent.
I don't think he deserved a Grammy for it...

Something's Missing is the other decent song:
The guitar riff is good.

I think the part where he says: Money CHECK, Geeeetar CHECK, etc. is pretty funny.
What a douche. haha.

ONWARDS: Battle Studies came out when I was in the army.
I was disappointed at first because I expected it to be like Continuum.


Oh well.
My favourite songs were: Crossroads, Assassin, Who Says, Do You Know Me.

The rest is all mush.
Good music when you feel mushy, but rather mediocre overall
.

I wish this guy would do more distortion based guitar work.
He's too much invested in acoustic, classical and clean guitar.

When he solos with gain he can do some pretty amazing licks

He should do a distortion based album.
It has the potential to be SOOOO much better than clean.
Clean soloing is just MUSH.
Why are you wasting your talent braaa???  

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that Born and Raised will be more gooey mooey mush.
Oh well.
Bah.


Most Mayer fans will appreciate him for this:

But the true playas will appreciate him for this:

PEACE,

Andrew

Progressive House, Mango, Pryda, Chicane, Chilled House Session

What does Progressive (aka prog house) sound like?

Prog is very mellow house, ~128bpm, with a soft/medium drum beat, deep bass, reverb + delay are freely used; sometimes there are vocals, usually a cycle of piano chords (sounds like the z3ta+ plugin: chords of life) dominates the song and is the reason for the 'good' feeling you get from prog house.

Mango - Master of Progressive House


At the edge of this mountain, thanks bros @Albert @Daniel

Here We Go

Pryda, alter ego of Eric Prydz (famous for Pjanoo, Call on Me)
Melo - amazing prog house.

Chicane - Poppiholia (remix of Sigur Ros, Hoppipolla, Hollipoppa?)

GOOD.


If you're looking to add a decent consortium of prog to your EDM library I suggest you download the Ministry of Sound Chilled House Session.

3 Albums, 53 songs, 3.9 hours, ~544MB.

http://torrentz.eu/381cfe2f090bff0f02e1064e5eb349159776fc71

Very good.
All the songs are mixed so you can plug it into your car and you won't hear any skipping between songs, e.g. perfect if you're driving down California Route 1

Highlights

Disc 1: I'm Not Alone, I Remember (Deadmau5), Poppiholia, Kidsos (horrible drop) Melo, Deepest Blue

Disc 2: Days Go By, Pjanoo (Afterlife Remix), 9:09 PM At the Beach.

Disc 3: Paris (Aeroplane Remix), Rolf Royce.

Dutch House Masterclass - Afrojack, Chuckie, R3hab, Sidney Samson

What does dutch house sound like?

House music with atypically arranged drum beats that tend to emphasise the most noticeable characteristic: a repetitive high pitched farting noise as the hook.

Afrojack:
Bangduck... fond memories of rocking out to this in the platoon office w. @BEN @HIMMAT Charlie Company, Lim Chu Kang.

Satisfaction remix:
Your EDM collection is incomplete w/o this insane epitome of dutch house.
Dutch House in God Mode.

Chuckie

Nice farting sound.


R3HAB

Sidney Samson

Similarly your EDM library is incomplete without this blessed banger:

The cherry of course being the vocals:
Tupac in Juice saying, "Riverside, motherfucker", before he pops a cap in a chino's ass.

 

You might be right in thinking that they make tracks this good because they smoke a lot of weed in Holland.

Andrew's Deadmau5 Masterclass: Strobe, Ghosts and Skrillex.

Sometimes I miss not being in college; I served in the army for 2 years after high school and am now on a year long sabbatical to (sarcastic quotation marks) "find myself" or whatever the hell that means.

Anyway I miss writing + my brain is getting mushy, so here's an attempt at insight into one of the artists that I love:

Deadmau5. Joel Zimmerman.

This guy:

He's my favorite DJ/EDM producer, since I learned to love EDM music circa early 2009 (also when I started drinking, getting substantially inebriated, and learning to enjoy and eventually revel in club music).

Sure his inveterate attitude of typing in internet jingoisms (meowingtons, hax) and his indifference in naming his tracks (dub5tep thingy, moar ghosts n stuff) do get somewhat tiresome but Joel is a geek, man.

deadmau5' facebook

He just happens to be a famous, rich, fucking fantastic geek who took his quirky hobby, tweaked it over several years until he got the right progressive/electroish hard sound that WAY deservingly brought him into the limelight.

He didn't start out as a fag producer but as a computer techie and I admire his despise of the whole DJ charade: it's true, all DJs do is put two tracks on different turntables, listen and arrange the beats in sync, and then move the crossfader from one to the other
Albeit for several hours; but hell, they get paid $100s to $1000s.

For laughs I do imagine a night when
if I was a DJ and the crowd was decent I would bring up iTunes, play one rerecorded 6 hour setlist, and then play DoTA.

The crowd would have NO CLUE.
They'd think I was turning this knob here for the flanger, or bass/treble, or whatever bullshit that DJs pretend to do, when in fact I'm ganking some n00b with my level 25 maxed out Dwarven Sniper, or Rikimaru.


Anyway point is: Production >>>>>>>>> DJing.
However nowadays we do get 16 year old kids like Madeon doing god knows how on these fancy multiple square loop devices.

Also some DJs apparently do do more than play tracks and crossfade, tweaking sets real-time with Ableton Live; regardless, DJs are not rock bands, there is only so much that your hands can do when spinning live.

Shit.
What was I doing when I was 16?
Jacking off, watching anime, studying for my GCSEs, and probably being pretty stupid.
I envy this kid's mad skills.


But back on subject: Deadmau5, the mau5.

I like the music, the contrarian geek, and the idea of deadmau5 so much so that a deadmau5 head is one of the foremost ideas in my tattoo waiting line:
In order to show my allegiance, and personal veneration. Perhaps. Plus it would be 'cool' in a stoopid way to have a EDM tat on my body, like this:

  


Also those who know me know I enjoy bad tattoos:
Having some small and stupid ink drilled into the dermis of your body is a great way to stick it to the man.

A glimpse at my illegally acquired deadmau5 library: 139 songs, 14.7 hours, 1.24 GB.
LOL.

I have downloaded most of his good albums (4x4=12, For Lack of A Better Name) as well as his older ones (the old Get Scraped (see the alarm clock song: Waking up from the American Dream), Vexillology) and have listened, enjoyed, and pondered about much of his music.

For the most part,
Deadmau5's songs can be divided into three types: black, white, and grey

• The tight electro sound: hard to learn to love but once understood is very enjoyable.
e.g. Dr Funkenstein, The Reward is Cheese (when I first heard this I hated it, it took me 2 years to learn to love it), Maths, Professional Griefers, A City in Florida, Animal Rights.

• The beautiful, slower pieces e.g. Strobe, Brazil (2nd edit), Some Kind of Blue, I Remember, You and I, Raise your Weapon.

• The random totally whack types e.g. dub5tep thingy, Aural Psynapse (a nontypical deadmau5 trance wonder-production), Subvert (I hate this song. I reckon it's more of a filler piece for Joel to transition between different songs; as a singular entity it is horrible and hurts my fu**** ears).

Anyway,
Here's a chronological list of my favorite mau5 pieces:

Ghosts n Stuff 
First heard it in 2009; initially starstruck/amazed. The initial astonishment at this genre of music has dissipated since.
Pretty much brought me into researching the genre (at the time I was listening to Benassi, Fedde le Grand) I liked the name deadmau5 and thus looked up, listened, and fell in some love.

Strobe
His best song; talked about more further down.

I Remember
It's THE late night drive song.
In your moderately fast vehicle with rows of yellow effervescent street lights flashing past.
* can be coupled with You and I. That beautiful proggressive house song with the z3ta+ chords of life, reverb; Wow.


Then came 4x4 = 12 (2010):

It was a different album in comparison to For Lack of a Better Name (2009).

For the most part 4x4 is incoherent; you can kind of see that Joel is experimenting with LFOs (low frequency oscillations) for that low swoop sounds (see Cthulhu Sleeps) but it is left to the listener to imagine if deadmau5 doesn't know how to incorporate wub wubs into his songs or whether he just wants it that way.

Also despite my hardest attempts I've come to the conclusion that Sofi is annoying. (Sofi Needs a Ladder should be called Sofi Needs to Shut the F*** Up; listen to You Need a Ladder? with the Zelda intro theme and TELL me it's not miles better)

Anyway here's some more in depth insight into some deadmau5 songs:

about Strobe:
Get a good pair of headphones, an empty room, and listen.

Personally I have 3 Strobes in iTunes; the 6:00 club edit, original whopping 10:00 long mix, and the MrFijiWiji remix.

Let's start with the original:

*I mucho envy Joel's producing skills: he's kind of like a quasi-Mozart of the electronic scene;
and I quote I would chop off both my pinky toes to possess half of his talent.
Seriously, serious good house music production a la FruityLoops, Albeton, Reason, Cubase is extremely difficult. The software might be floating freely on the torrent cloud but the learning curve is way too high in comparison to the sounds being made.


The xylophone like melody ****

Those shakers with delay + reverb *******

That riff (that get progressively faster and faster until it reaches equilibrium) *****

Mini drop when the drum line comes in ***
GOOD.

Bass comes in ****
GOOD. Chills.

Bass disappears and a haunting electronic howl echoes in *****

The rising riff *****

The riff solos and rises and rises and rises *******

The secondary riff comes in ( da da da dada , dun da da da dada, da dada dada, dun da da da dada) ****

The final clang sound echoes ****

The 7 minute drop (one of the longest and most deserving drops in EDM history) ********

The follow up with the bass, drums, riff: so beautiful *****

I imagine being on some ethereal plane, Zolton, blind, and just swaying to this song.
When the drop came, I would release into a trillion dots in every direction and merge with beauty.

One day I hope to roll on E and be in a huge arena/beach (maybe Ultra), and just listen to this song.
Escape all the bullshit.
Pure music magic.

On to the most famous song of the mau5:

Ghosts n Stuff

I put up the live version of Ghosts n Stuff played in some mansion-like club in LA because the setting matches the happy-haunting vibe of the song.

The long haired deadmau5 is Steve Duda, second half of BSOD (Joel and Steve).

Also it's fun to see the undulating motion of the crowd down below; you get a sense of the epicness that is a live deadmau5 gig.

I used to dislike the version w. Rob Swire's vocals but now I believe that the vocals version is better than the instrumental mix.

Anyway; great medium harsh electro song;

Perfect +10db snare, 0db bass, -10db hi-hat ratio: ultra solid beat, essential component of any electro track ******

drop ***
good

The deep bass melody ****

The haunted mansion stabs *****

You can also see Ghosts n Stuff is a precursor to Skrillex's famous Scary Monsters and Sprites;
those seemingly random placed swiveling sounds in the verse of Ghosts inspire the same random monster-like sounds coming from Scary Monsters...

Funny that they are also the two well known songs Deadmau5 and Skrillex songs.

*Skrillex is signed to mau5trap recordings and is a sort of protégé of deadmau5.
He also brought the dubstep/electro amalgamation that all the "now grown up" teeny boppers have just found and LOVE.

By the way Skrillex was part of the emo/post hardcore scene (see From First to Last), and some of his earlier recordings with vocals under the name Sonny Moore do make me cringe.

 O_O"
 Sorry bro, your music production skills are intense but that haircut is fagalicious.
Shave that horse tail for god's sake.

Some of Skrillex's songs are a bit too faggy.
I am referencing to the songs in his repertoire which are too too hardcore electro and will probably attract that group of young impressionable idiots who look like this:

I've never been to a Skrillex concert; I want to, but I'm afraid I'll get swamped and trampled on by a bunch of sweaty stoopid kids as shown in the aforementioned picture.


But I digress; some Skrillex songs are genuinely good see Scatta ft. Foreign Beggars and Reptile:

Also the Zedd remix of Scary Monsters is good.

Not gonna lie. The chorus is meh, the beat into the verse is the killer for me.

Anyway back to deadmau5.

I shall leave you with a white deadmau5 song: Move for Me

Ah Kaskade.
Producer from the Mid-west of the USA.
Shock! A good US DJ? It cannot be?

He's another favorite DJ of mine: Eyes, Samba Love, Steppin Out (Chill Out Mix), Peace on Earth

And a very very dirty black deadmau5 song:

Sounds like porn.
In a more-than-expected literal sense.

Cheers,
Andrew

Mini essay on Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek, and its many reincarnations

Let's discuss this song:

The first time I heard it was on The O.C.: the part where that dude gets shot and Imogen blurts out "Mmm whatcha say" so oppurtunely.

I love the O.C. by the way; it was one of my favorite shows to watch in boarding school.

But anyway; I did end up downloading Come Here Boy, and Hide and Seek back in 2006?2007?

Then Hide and Seek resurfaced as a sample in 2009's Derulo's "Whatcha Say";

I'm not saying it's bad; it's expectedly catchy as far as mainstream pop/hip hop goes
but it does well again at reinforcing the somewhat true stereotype that the general opinion of music taste is ignorant, and quite a bit stoopid.

Nevertheless you can't really blame the mass music assembly line because they exist to serve the needs of the mass.

When you are inebriated and dancing inside a mediocre hip hop club (see Rebel, Clarke Quay, Singapore), these kind of songs with repetitive hooks shine strangely brilliantly.
You'll dance your socks off.   

You should also watch this acoustic guitar rendition of Hide and Seek.
aka the Funeral/Bawwwww Remix.

The reverb *****
The expert playing *****
Natural harmonics ****

The end result compels teary reminiscence especially when watched late at night, drunk, or high.

There's also the Afrojack remix:

Look at his man tits jiggle . . . man.

It starts off with the typical hook "Mmm whatcha say";

then Dutch House producer Afrojack puts in the drum loop with heavy hall reverb **...

drumline snare to drop***

drop comes ***

and we get that typical high pitched Dutch lick ***

It's not Afrojack's best work, (see Satisfaction, Bangduck, No Beef); it's OK.

***

Sad nostalgia - Embrace, Gravity

Holy.

I was looking at some HIMYM videos on youtube and I found this Robin/Barney montage with this song in it.

I must have been like 14 when I had this song on iTunes but somehow it left my library until just now.

It was part of my Boston, Howie Day, Snow Patrol, and generally sad song phase...

But dayum. It's still a good sad song and brings me memories of 7 years ago.

Other good songs called gravity are by john mayer and sara bareilles, both of which I love as well and I've had long musings about.

Similar songs:

Hip Hop in relation to Sb, Cw - Cunninlynguists, Little Brother, Kanye

Snowboarding. 

You know that feeling when you're surfing down a 30 degree'd medium-groomed piste with 5-7cm of powder on the top?

Sun on your back. Smile on your face. Strong, bendy board on the bottom.

Godjizzlla feelings...

There's a whole stoner/boarder culture in the USA/Canada where bros wear gangsta clothes, smoke pot, and ride the slope. Kind of like the surfer-culture, except they switch sand for snow, surf for carve.

I like it. In the winter of 09 I went to Whistler and hiked around with my board; when the sun came out and I was carving down peacefully (doing the odd butter here and there), I felt God-like. 

Godamn.

The hook is good ***, the rest of the song is very complicated... You'd think that these intellectual rappers are just rambling on? What are they talking about?

There's 3 types of Rap: Intellectual (Cunnin), Mid-intellectual (Lupe), and Stoopid (Lil Wayne).

I like the middle ones the most, imo: Lupe Fiasco, Pharell (quirky) Kanye (eeh kinda) Wiz Khalifa (kinda)

I be doin alright, I be doin ok, as long as I can see another day

On a strangely related tangent, C-walking:

When I was a sophomore in high school I enjoyed watching vlogs on Youtube, and there was this one asian kid, Kevjumba, who had this cool video of him c-walking. Not gonna lie. This vid inspired me to cwalk. haha

I have memories of cwalking to this on weekends at my boarding school. Ha.

Once the beat comes in, bam! Sick song to cwalk to.

Lol @past me.

Epic Trance Toon - Tiesto, Beautiful World

Holy crap.

If you listen to this song with a good set of quality headphones I swear that jizz will drip out of your ears.

When the vocals come on, "If you close your eyes.. it's a beautiful world" 

.

.

.

Godamn trance feda.

Dennis Ferrer - Hey Hey

This track is banging.

I first listened to this song in a Defected Records video compilation about ZoukOut Singapore, and Zouk, KL (which I can't seem to find now).
It's got a chubby painted half-naked dude who plays the hand drums

That bleep in between the hi hats *****
The vocals *****
Hey hey *****
Ba bo da ba ba ba *****

That chunky bass attack thing that comes after the 'ba bo da ba ba' *********

The rising hi-hats after the first verse ***

DAYUM. It's an electronic masterclass.

Progressive off-beat track: Phaeleh - Afterglow

Great chill track.

Off beat drum. Typical dubstep-like drum.

Haunting female vocal.