Machines Eat My Homework

Watching the future

2009-07-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

Please find below my new chart for July.

If you're a house fan you probably won't recognise the first track on there. Instra:mental's 'Watching You' sounds to me like 22nd (yes that's 22nd not 21st) century electronic music. Not quite dubstep, not quite ambient electronica, not quite drum 'n' bass yet tipping a cap to all three it's proof that the UK is currently making some of dance music's most visionary music right now. While underground house might be trying to remake the 1990s, in London, new musical rules are being written. Dubstep is the 'catch all' term for the sound that has caught the world's imagination and it's no surprise that it seems to have polarised into two camps. Instra:mental and artists like Pangea or Appleblim definitely fall into the camp of artists that I find inspirational. Brought up on a diet of Detroit techno and forward thinking d'n'b, flick through their Myspaces influences and you'll uncover artists like Drexciya alongside hip hip visionaries like Method Man and Wu Tang Clan. It seems a lot of us in this game are all coming from the same musical places, yet in the 4/4 format of house and techno there is very little truly exciting futuristic new music breaking through.

In the early 2000s of course that wasn't true. The musical movement that later became mistakenly referred to as 'minimal' ignited an explosion of ideas and sound collages that propelled the scene. The cause was simple. Ravers were getting older and their tastes more sophisticated. Now the same seems to be happening with dubstep and drum 'n'bass artists like Instra:mental. Most are bored with the ever quickening BPMs of d'n'b and the formulaic drops. Like the 'minimalists' flocked to DC10, Fabric or the Panorama Bar the older d'n'b ravers are drifting towards the more discerning dancefloors.

The first electronic music to blow my mind was early jungle on a pirate station in London in 1993. I listened to the tapes I recorded of them for months on end and each time it was like peering through binoculars into the future. It's this futuristic thrill of discovering something truly new and invigorating that I'm missing most from house and techno right now. But as a music maker I share the burden of bringing something new to the table just like everyone else should. It's heartening though that artists like INstra:mental or Kode9 are providing the inspiration. Let's take a lead from them and re-imagine 22nd century.

Listen to 'Watching You' on this Myspace link

Some notes on my Electronic Beats Radio mix

2009-07-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

I discovered the Orb's landmark album Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld roughly around the same time i chanced upon electronic music culture in 1992. It enveloped my listening for a very long time in that decade and beyond. CD 1 in particular is particularly weather worn. Best known for the hit 'Little Fluffy Clouds' it invaded my consciousness and provided the soundtrack to many mind expanding weekends.

For the first time in my short lived musical explorations it wasn't the songs that demanded to be revisited. It was the mind altering journey the album takes you on. The musical transition through soundscapes interspersed with samples from the movie Flash Gordon or NASA footage of the moon landings stamped a mark in my brain that's as fresh today as it was the very first time I listened to it.

Although the Orb at the time were steeped in the LSD influenced ambient scene of the 1990s you don't really need to take acid to understand its magic. Although it wasn't a DJ mix just like Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon,' it opened my mind to the possibility of a fluid musical emotional journey. Almost two decades later the DJ mix compilation and the idea of the DJ journey is now stamped into our culture and watered down year after year by successive onslaughts of bland hits compilations (usually involving the words 'Ibiza' or 'Chill'). Yet few take you into the valleys and up the peaks of human emotion quite like 'Adventures.'

WHen Electronic Beats invited me to provide a mix for their digital radio station I decided to embark on a similar musical journey to the Orb's hallucinogenically inspired albums. Unlike my previous mixes which are largely aimed at highlighting the music I play in clubs, this mix is aimed at your inner space. Amongst other samples it references LSD evangelist Timothy Leary talking about his experiences in the world of consciousness expansion as well as Buddhist priest Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi teaching Zen Buddhist techniques. As much as it takes influences from the idea of the musical trip it's also inspired by the idea of mind expansion. Hopefully like Adventures in the Ultraworld once did for me, it'll open a door in someone else's brain to a new way of thinking about music, consciousness and your inner space.

To listen to the show on Electronic Beats radio click here

If you'd like to download the mix directly click here or visit this links page www.gavinherlihy.com/mixes

Thanks to Electronic Beats and everyone who provided music for this mix and I hope you enjoy it.

Gxx

Cadenza showcase

2009-07-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I was invited to submit a mix for a special series of shows highlighting Cadenza artists on Spanish radio station Doce Pulgadas.

I decided my mix was going to showcase the kind of music I'm playing in clubs rather than a concept mix like my Electronic Beats mix which you can read more about above. It contains a few teasers of forthcoming tracks as well as some excellent new music from labels like Cadenza and Murmur as well as the classic Mike Dunn wig out 'I Swear.'

This is my second mix for Doce Pulgadas. Big thanks to the DJ in charge, Kiko Martinez, for inviting me on there. I first came into contact with Kiko after a visit to the excellent Barraca club in Valencia. While Ibiza might steal the show when it comes to Spanish clubbing, Barraca is quietly proving itself to be ample competition to clubs like Amnesia. The fact that it's the only mainland Spanish club that Ricardo Villalobos plays speaks volumes. The staff are pretty intense when it comes to their passion for the music and the proof lies in the excellent Barraca label which has already given us a club hit for it's debut release in the shape of 'Points'

To find out more about Barraca check this vid:

Barraca Music Documentary feat. Ricardo Villalobos, AFFKT & Danny Fiddo from Barraca Music on Vimeo.

And to download the mix click here

Tracklisting:

Pablo Gadeira 'Mucho Carnaval' (Amoeba)

Mic Newman 'Sizzled Sally' (Murmur)

Cesar Merevile 'Tribute' (Cadenza)

Amir 'ROcky Mountain (Reuter remix) (Trapez Ltd)

Gavin Herlihy 'The Random' (Kindisch)

Marcel Knopf 'Rec-Chord' (Mo's Ferry Productions)

Santos 'Hold Home' (Immigrant)

Tom Demac 'Sweet Humming' (Murmur)

Gavin Herlihy 'Sandman Cometh' (unsigned)

QX1 'I Won't Hurt You' (RHythm Beat)

Guy Gerber 'Stoppage Time (Reshuffle remix) (Bedrock)

Gavin Herlihy 'Underneath the Wind Machine' (Cadenza)