is a writer, designer and producer who has spent the last decade growing The One Show and The Webby Awards and now runs Internet Week NY and Internet Week Europe. He occasionally works on other freelance and extracurricular content and design projects as part of A Thousand Men.
80 minutes of the best of Bandcamp from hot Motown’ers Dames Brown, satirical rapper Kool AD, plus Argentinian folk, rare Latin funk, and indie sounds from Jesse Ruins, The Features and Standish Carlyon. Gaudi, Lee Scratch Perry and The Orb, Lewis James, and Mykal Rose go deep n’dubby.
Massive playlist (121 tracks, 8 hours) of my favorite tracks from 2012. Jumps across genres and doesn’t repeat any songs. From Actress to Zammuto and a ton in between. Many you’ll recognize from the myriad “Best of” lists but hopefully there’s plenty outside of that often narrow view.
2+ hours of curated holiday tracks. Indie, folk, hip-hop, reggae and a handful of tried and true classics. Won’t fail you. My gift all you hosting.
I’m pretty sure that cover is Andy Gilmore, Dack.
Time Need Not End In The Multiverse
Imaged Above: Ultimate guide to the Multiverse
Gamblers already had enough to think about without factoring the end of time into their calculations. But a year after a group of cosmologists argued that they should, another team says time need not end after all.
It all started with this thought experiment. In a back room in a Las Vegas casino, you are handed a fair coin to flip. You will not be allowed to see the outcome, and the moment the coin lands you will fall into a deep sleep. If the coin lands heads up, the dealer will wake you 1 minute later; tails, in 1 hour. Upon waking, you will have no idea how long you have just slept.
The dealer smiles: would you like to bet on heads or tails? Knowing it’s a fair coin, you assume your odds are 50/50, so you choose tails. But the house has an advantage. The dealer knows you will almost certainly lose, because she is factoring in something you haven’t: that we live in a multiverse.
The idea that our universe is just one of many crops up in a number of physicists’ best theories, including inflation. It posits that different parts of space are always ballooning into separate universes, so that our observable universe is just a tiny island in an exponentially growing multiverse.
In any infinite multiverse, everything that can happen, will happen - an infinite number of times. That has created a major headache for cosmologists, who want to use probabilities to make predictions, such as the strength of the mysterious dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of our own universe. How can we say that anything is more or less probable than anything else?
You may recognize the items on our Call for Entries poster, but we want to know: What do each piece of tech really mean to you?
We’re excited to announce our #TechNameGame contest - where you get to assign meaning to the tech items featured on our poster.
Each week we will be highlighting one item and asking you to rename it; the best caption of the week will be chosen on the Friday of that week, and be featured and attributed on the second printing of our Call for Entries poster.
Tweet or comment on Facebook with your best caption using the hashtag #TechNameGame to enter for your chance to be forever immortalized on poster, which is sent around the world to industry leaders and influencers.
Besides, why wait until Spring 2012 to be a winner in our eyes?
This week’s featured tech is the Polaroid camera, or as we called it, the “Portable Photobooth, 1977.” But what memories does the Polaroid stir up for you?
We want to know; reclassify this tech relic and submit your renaming ideas on Twitter & Facebook (don’t forget the hashtag #TechNameGame) to be entered to win!
FINALLY! The next installment of Best Tunes Everrr!!!!!!!This time around, I recruited the help of Justin Miller to put together an unbelievable summer mix. By day, he works at the veritable DFA records (co-founded by the legend James Murphy). By night, Miller has made a name for himself as a DJ, transforming the NYC music scene into something of his own. He kinda kicks ass in a MAJOR way…..
I’m going to be playing this at my BBQ tomorrow night…..
Enjoy!
Eunice
“As Kind As Summer”
Unis Summer Playlist by Justin MillerGet It Up For Love - Ned Doheny
Monkey See, Monkey Do - Michael Franks
Waters Of March - Art Garfunkel
Sweet Thang - Shuggie Otis
Smell Of Incense - The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Drume Negrita - Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban
Give Me A Chance - Donnie & Joe Emerson
Live in Another World - Itadi
Trust & Believe - Keith Hudson
That’s What I Want - The Witch
Sunshine Love - Rikki Ililonga & Musi-O-Tunya
Sweater - Terry Reid
Andorra - Colin Blunstone
Castles In The Sand - Little Stevie Wonder
Give Love A Try - The Equals
U.F.O. - Jim Sullivan
I Had To Tell You - 13th Floor Elevators
‘Til I Die - The Beach BoysDownload it HERE
I am the CEO of Svpply, Inc., a social shopping S-Corp operating out of New York City. My company has been the recipient of over half-a-million in investor dollars, for the stated purpose of building an unknown, 3,000-member web service into a cultural phenomenon, and I truly have very little…
New vid for great “Kill your Co-workers” track from Flying Lotus’ new EP from Beeple.
One of my favorite moments from Gold Panda’s new Lucky Shiner, definitely one of the best electronic records this year. Ghostly getting it done.
Lucky for you, the first Scissorkast in too long is an all-music/no-talking affair. (I need an XLR adapter for my microphone). 100% new music, much of it unreleased, hitting the usual mix of instrumental electronic, emotive headphone post-rock, experimental dancefloor stuff and the like. Joyously looping, meticulously crafted sounds. Stuff from the US, UK, and Japan this time with a heavy emphasis on melody. No reason to go on at length, but please leave comments if you enjoyed the mix and make sure to send it to friends who you think will enjoy it. Most importantly, support the artists below by buying their music. I stress that if you like a song on this mix, there is a very high likelihood that you will like either the LP or single from whence it came. 1. Pan :: Byoko(0:00) 2. Lali Puna :: Move On (Baths Remix) (1:22) 3. Bon Iver :: Woods (Japanese Wallpaper Remix) (5:27) 4. Shigeto :: Huron River Drive (8:25) 5. Hidden Orchestra :: Vorka (11:11) 6. Kelpe :: Midsommar (16:01) 7. Samuel Jackson 5 :: Never-ending Now (18:28) 8. Toe :: Mukou Gishi Ga Miru Yume(21:41) 9. Lymbyc Systym:: Prairie School (26:05) 10. Vcheka :: Akzidenz Grotesk (30:22) 11. Beak> :: Yatton (35:03) 12. Grasscut :: Pieces (39:50) 13. The Cast of Cheers :: Animals(44:05) 14. Seams :: The Glow (47:08) 15. The Invisible :: The Stain (50:06) 16. Four Tet :: Jupiters (55:05)
…And just in time for the upcoming NYC heat wave, it’s a new installment of the ScissorMix series designed to make you get up and move! I wanted to get this out in time for The 4th of July but there’s a new tiny person in my life and, as a result, some of my priorities have been shifted. And it turns out that messing around with a mixtape is not considered an essential fatherly duty. But better late than never, right? This mix is pretty much all hip hop, reggae, soul edits, afrofunk and other goodness that sounds great coming out of a boombox. Lots of familiar tracks in new packaging. It’s the soundtrack to the BBQ I haven’t had a chance to attend. So get out there, cook some meats, drink some beers, and pump these tunes for me. 1. Guts :: Didn’t I Cover (0:00) 2. Marvin Gaye :: Sunny (Mercury Edit II) (2:37) 3. Luke Vibert :: Combination Reggae Dancing (7:44) 4. Oscar Sulley :: Olufeme (Natural Self Remix) (10:17) 5. De La Soul :: Itsoweezee (Fela Soul Remix) (14:58) 6. The Expert :: What’s Going On Today (18:10) 7. Marvin Gaye :: Ain’t That Peculiar (Oddisee Remix) (20:51) 8. Suff Daddy :: Dilemma (24:03) 9. Mos Def :: In My Math (Mos Dub Remix) (26:01) 10. E.D.G.E :: Mathematics (29:38) 11. Raw Stiles :: Kush (Revolution Interlude) (32:05) 12. Young Montana? :: Sacre Cool (33:16) 13. Breakbot :: Baby I’m Yours (feat. IRFANE) (36:06) 14. Usje Sukatma :: Waiting for Your Love (39:28) 15. Ogyatanaa Showband :: Disco Africa (43:45) 16. Ghostface Killa :: Funky Criminology (GhostFunk Remix) 47:42) 17. Ikebe Shakedown :: No Answer (50:17) 18. Hollie Cook :: Milk & Honey Dub (54:17)
Here’s a new installment of the Scissormix series out just in time for the holidays. This mix lives solidly in the realm of downtempo. So it’s perfect to throw on after a long day of shopping/family/work and whatever other stresses come your way this holiday season. A pretty decent mix of new and old on this one. I’ve spent a lot of time on turntable.fm and discovered a boatload of new music. It’s also inspired me to dig through the archives and pull out old gems from the past. And I noticed that there’s some a couple tracks that I unconsciously jacked from the fantastic O N E S U N mix. But they’re definitely good enough to hear again. I won’t go through all of these as I’ve listed the tracklist below. But remember to keep supporting independent artists and labels when you’re picking up your gifts this holiday season. And I also want to drop a quick “thanks” to all the people who check out the site and mixes. Have a bangin’ holiday, New Year and all that! 1. The Frantics :: Werewolf (0:00) 2. Onra :: Ms. Ho (1:55) 3. Printempo :: Sono di Monte Carlo (3:40) 4. Tall Black Guy :: Water No Enemy (6:06) 5. Kashmere Stage Band :: Ain’t No Sunshine (J Rocc Remix) (8:09) 6. FUR :: Friends (Letherette Remix) (12:21) 7. Martyn / Mike Slott :: Pointing Fingers (15:38) 8. Michna :: Real Hero (18:18) 9. Mux Mool :: Palace Chalice (20:58) 10. Sina :: From Love to Lust (Kelpe Remix) (24:29) 11. Mr. Beatnick feat. Ahu :: I Know All the Bitches (Bullion Remix) (28:09) 12. O-D :: Be Still (32:11) 13. Plastiq Phantom :: 492 Cups to China (Nautilis Remix) (34:20) 14. Damu the Fudgemunk :: All Green (37:51) 15. Pools :: The Oak (42:05) 16. Dam Mantle :: Rebong (45:15) 17. Kenny Dope :: Get on Down (48:54) 18. Sound Defects :: Take Out (51:38) 19. Freddie Joachim :: Whispers (56:15)
A compilation of moody, ethereal, abstract but chilly beats and textures from Justin Kim, aka O N E S U N. Features Tycho, Active Child, Mount Kimbie, Pictureplane, Grimes, Nosaj Things, Mux Mool and much more.
Did this mix over the Summer for our amazing developers at Substantial and realized I never posted it here on Scissorkick. Sure, they are great developers, but what’s more impressive is the collective musical knowledge in their office. I wanted to dig deep with a mix of old and new. The heat was on. The [...]
“I enjoy a good space jam while sorting through the Disney VHS collection,” reads the myspace bio. Levek—also known as David Levesque—enjoys a strange existence indeed. But the key word there is ”enjoy.” By day, David drives a bus of elementary schoolers. By night, he crafts deeply poetic, folky tunes with tribal rhythmic schemes. I hesitate to use the word “tune,” for fear that it detracts from the legitimacy of his work, but the whimsy and touch of fiction that live within his music make it the only appropriate term. I first heard about Mr. Levesque on iguessimfloating.net, where I found the track posted here, “Second Second,” which is really really lovely and it’s sad that I haven’t seen it anywhere else. I admit I haven’t been appropriately keeping up with his releases. In 2009 he released a nine-song free demo which I only just downloaded, and a good amount of other material is floating around in a pretty disorganized manner. also, watch this. RIYL: Grizzly Bear, Paul Simon, Beach Boys, old Disney movies Read: myspace.com/levek Download: levek.bandcamp.com
Right back again with another installment of the ScissorMix series. I’ve been making up for lost time and came across a wealth of new, great tunes so quickly that this thing basically put itself together.
“Skwee” is one of those little bitty “genres” that keep popping up nowadays. I hate to say genre, because a lot of them are more like trends than anything else, and I don’t exclude skweee from that group. Maybe it’s just a personal thing—I don’t like my music all cut up into a million little subgenres. But just because I see it as more of a trend than a genre does not mean that skweee isn’t music—just ask Boss Kite. There ain’t a whole lot of info about Boss Kite aside from that he’s a producer from Brighton, UK, and that he makes DOPE skweee. Boss’s joints are pretty representative of the trend. Skweee is kind of like what you would get if you took dubstep and yanked it inside out. It keeps the same kind of rhythmic feel and wobbly electronic instrumentation, but strips it down to the bare bones. Because the style of production is so minimal, it’s really easy to sort of ‘fake’ skweee; pretty much anybody can open up GarageBand and poop out a stripped down beat with claps on 2 and 4 and a couple of drops. You will find none of that in Boss’s work. This guy is all about melody and creating an engaging groove, and he seriously knows how to get it done. Musical awareness on this level is hard to find wherever you look. At least I feel like I can stop looking for a couple days, after this find. READ: facebook, twitter LISTEN: bandcamp, soundcloud RIYL: dødpop, eero johannes, dubstep, coco bryce, mesak, niño
Walker throws up a mix with Midnight Lab Band, Jatoma, Captain Planet, Jason Forrest and more.
Music critics tend to carry big bags of creative insults, and one of the more bizarre is the allegation of “wallpaper music.” To some jaded critics, certain music is so inconsequential, so “background,” that it fades into unnoticeability like so much flowery wallpaper, or the corn-cob curtains in Marge Simpson’s kitchen. But home decoration need not imply boredom. Jatoma’s self-titled album has been out on Kompakt for several months with bafflingly little buzz. Their music is not wallpaper music: it is Persian rug music. It is something you can sit on, roll around on, get lost in. The patterns are there, complex in their simplicity, wrapping around each other and weaving themselves into new combinations. And it tells a tale, creates a journey. If I were driving around in my car right now instead of looking at a rug, I would swear this album was the soundtrack to the voyages of some sort of astro-Jacques Cousteau. And like the fractal visions locked into a Persian rug, every strand is better than every other strand: choosing just one song to post was nearly impossible. Highly recommended album. RIYL: Bonobo, Thievery Corporation, Jean-Michel Jarre, Matthew Herbert Read: http://www.kompakt.fm/artists/jatoma Buy: http://boomkat.com/cds/344008-jatoma-jatoma
Even though the weather in NYC is shitty, it’s always a great day when I can post something new created by a close friend. Sam Willis, one half of Kompakt recording artists Walls and the fantastic DJ/blog duo Allez-Allez is a busy man these days up in Hackney, but somehow found the time to launch another pseudonym side-project as Snoretex. It’s mind blowing when I think that it’s been nearly 15 years since Sam and I were skating the South Bank and leafing through bins at Rough Trade (in the basement of Slam City Skates) and in that time I’ve been privileged to watch one of the most enthusiastic and humble music lovers and DJs I know evolve into an equally as passionate and talented creator of sounds. Snoretex indulges a more mellow, ambient side of the oeuvre with elongated melodic stretches and slowly developing phrasing that suits the moniker well. This is somnambulist music, sleepwalking gently over a rich history of ambient influences both obvious and more esoteric. It’s a stark difference to the first Scissorkick post that I put up from Sam — a superb dancefloor mix as Deven Miles way back in 2005 — but shows the same attention to detail and breadth of knowledge that got me excited about electronic music way back when. And still does today. RIYL: Emeralds, Tim Hecker, Brian Eno, Arp, Oneohtrix Point Never LISTEN/DOWNLOAD: http://soundcloud.com/snoretex/sets
Somewhere along the line, various strains of electronic music separated into unspoken (or overspoken) factions, such that some tunes sound distant, ethereal and ghostly, drowned in reverb and static, and others sound compressed, crunchy and in-your-face to the point of bludgeoning. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and plenty of acts avoid these extremes. Somehow the Lithuanian producer Eleven Tigers has managed not just to avoid such extremes but to synthesize them. His tracks are bathed in reverb and static, with ghostly echoes as you would expect from the darkest dubs, but they manage to be immediate and earthy at the same time, with real presence (and not just in the sub-bass register). They also flow like wine, although in practice they go down more like a rich mead. It doesn’t hurt that Eleven Tigers’ debut album, Clouds Are Mountains, is structured like a DJ mix, or, if you prefer, like an album, where the end of one track and the beginning of the next are impossible to distinguish. It is one big aural Jacuzzi, and one of the best albums of 2010. Read: http://eleventigers.net/ Buy: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eleven-tigers/id328949299 RIYL: Burial, Magda, Mad Professor
It’s a real shortcoming of Hallmark as a company, that they don’t offer a “Post-Rock brings families together” greeting card. New York’s Phone Home is the second duo of brothers (the awesome Lymbyc Systym is the other) to channel potential angsty rivalry into beautiful musical alchemy. On their first 4-song self-released EP, Michael and John Vallarelli layer looping, ambient rock rich with melody over a steadily building series of instrumental narratives. Their influences clearly range from originators like Eno to contemporaries like The Album Leaf, but there’s still plenty of room left around the post-rock campfire for earnest, emotive soundtrack-ready missives. Plus, today’s post “Panda” got me through the end of a 2-mile run, giving me just enough of a propulsive blast to get it done. Not only does it sound good, but Phone Home will keep your ass alive. As my Greek father-in-law would say, “This is the real health.” RIYL: The Lymbyc Systym, The Album Leaf, Benevento/Russo Duo, Small Sails FOLLOW: twitter.com/phonehomeband READ: www.myspace.com/phonehomenewyork BUY: http://phonehome.bandcamp.com/
More than one promising dance music producer has met their end by succumbing to popular musical trends. While the “new disco” sound has grown in popularity over the years, the genre has been inundated with imitators who have nothing to offer but one lackluster production after another. Producer extraordinaire Ilya Santana is one man who will not meet this fate. The Spaniard has never tried to model his productions to a template, and has succeeded in creating music with a unique style and sophistication. Santana first came to my attention with the fantastic Discotized/Holding You EP in 2007. “Holding You,” a plodding, emotional, melodic number contains elements of the Balearic beats that define “new disco,” as well as a healthy dose of the House vibe championed by New York legends Metro Area. What sets this music apart is Ilya’s ability to mesh those qualities with melodic atmospherics that recall the likes of downtempo greats Tosca. “Holding You” has a story, and tells it, in a clear and purposeful manner, while still remaining utterly dance inducing. This fullness of purpose is most important to understanding Ilya Santana’s music. His most recent release, Erin EP (named for his new daughter), features the eight minute “Iron Horse” which works flawlessly on the dance floor. Yet still, Santana has managed to craft the song into a memorable piece of music that works as a “song” as well. And the bass, well, speaks for itself. Regardless of whether or not “new disco” will hold its place as a lively force in dance music culture, Ilya Santana has created music that transcends the genre. It is this dedication that will keep his productions successful for years to come. RIYL: Prins Thomas, Aeroplane, Metro Area READ: http://www.myspace.com/ilyasantana BUY: http://amzn.to/dgqYU6
To identify and curate the best of the Web and honor those who create it.
2nd-generation MP3 blog. Electronic, post-rock, moody headphone stuff.
Bliss Dance by sculptor Marco Cochrane. While the subject matter is undeniably hokey and the title "Bliss Dance" makes me cringe, but the fact that this is 40' tall and seemingly standing on it's toe and withstood the elements at Burning Man is just unreal. You have to see a photo with people to grasp the scale.