SoundCloud incorporates advertising, storms at Burning Man festival, The Knife call it quits and stream Prince’s new single ‘Clouds’.
Perc & Dan Chandler’s live session. London noise-techno producer Perc teams up with the former lead vocalist from metal band Dethscalator for a live and extended version of his track ‘Take Your Body Off’, in the latest edition of RA‘s live sessions series. Watch above.
SoundCloud to incorporate advertising. Following deals with publishing giants Sony/ATV and BMG, SoundCloud has started incorporating advertising as part of its ongoing licensing negotiations with record labels, artists, publishers and distributors. It will be possible to earn royalties for the first time via the streaming service. SoundCloud explain the development here.
Celebrating 10 years of Beatport in key stats. Who’s sold the most records on Beatport since its inception a decade ago? And what’s Beatport’s best-selling genre? Get the answers to these questions and more in a new industry-insider feature celebrating 10 years of Beatport here.
Macintosh, MIDI, and Music. A vintage Apple promo video (1988), which shows that Apple was already putting serious resources into courting musicians to the Mac platform from early on. The video also shows how ubiquitous MIDI had become in the six years since its introduction. Check it out above.
Matthew Dear makes machine music with General Electric. Matthew Dear recently collaborated with scientists at GE’s Global Research Center in gathering samples from some of the world’s most powerful machines. Armed with an hour of recordings, Dear disappeared into his home studio and emerged with a three-minute sonic odyssey called ‘Drop Science’, which you can stream above.
Storms extinguish Burning Man festival. Bad weather forces the organisers of this years Burning Man to close the festival on its opening day, prompting this statement on Twitter: “Black Rock City is closed until midday Tuesday due to rain and standing water. At the request of organisers, law enforcement is turning back cars.” More info here.
Andrew Simper on The Glue and EQ Eight. Ableton Live 9 introduced The Glue (an analogue-modelled compressor based on classic console bus compressors) and major enhancements to EQ Eight. Ableton spoke to Andrew Simper, the architect of both The Glue and EQ Eight’s enhancements, about analogue modelling, his thoughts on Live 9, and more here.
Dick Fontaine, Goldie & James Lavelle Q&A. Director Dick Fontaine discusses making classic hip-hop documentaries Bombin’ and Beat This! with Goldie and James Lavelle, and talks about his experiences making films in New York after meeting Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. Lavelle and Goldie reveal how they became involved in hip-hop culture in the Q&A here.
The Knife call it quits. One half of Swedish electro duo The Knife, Karin Dreijer, revealed that the act are calling it quits for good in an interview with Dazed. “When we finish the tour now in November we will close down, it’s our last tour,” she said. “We don’t have any obligations to continue, it should only and always be for fun.” Find out more here.
No more harassment on nights out. Launched in London on International Women’s Day, Good Night Out is a volunteer-run campaign that works with venues, training staff, security and management on how to deal with and prevent harassment on their premises. The campaign is now going nationwide across the UK. Watch the promo above and ontribute to their Indiegogo campaign here.
Prince debuts new single ‘Clouds’. British soul singer Lianne La Havas lends her elegant vocals to the psychedelic new song from The Purple One. Warner Bros has also announced two new releases from Prince: Art Official Age (which will house ‘Clouds’) and PLECTRUMELECTRUM with his band 3RDEYEGIRL. Both drop on September 29th. Stream ‘Clouds’ here.
Ben Sims on NTS Radio. British techno mainstay Ben Sims joins NTSLive for a monthly show this week. Although yet to reveal the exact format of the shows, Sims will be presenting a mix of music from his vast and varied collection alongside fresh house, techno and more.
Object of Interest: The Vocoder. The New Yorker explores the vocoder in settings ranging from the Second World War to Kraftwerk parties, featuring interviews with Laurie Anderson, Cozmo D, Dave Tompkins and Frank Gentges in their Object of Interest video below.