Dance Tracks – Page 5

Category: Dance Tracks (page 5 of 6)

Far Off Course

Far Off Course is a weird, crossover track from 2001. It starts out with some broken beats and then morphs into a smooth driving adventure.

The focus throughout is on percussion (at the time I came across some weird tube sounding samples that resemble something from the Blue Man Group soundtrack, and I used them when arranging the drums on this track), aside from which the only melodic passages are creamy stabs and evolving pads which emerge half way into the track and drive it to the end.

While the track is not easy to categorize and fit into a concise set I always liked it and am happy to present it here. Enjoy.

Download: Far Off Course (mp3)Download: Far Off Course (wav)

Steady Tremor

September 29, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

Steady Tremor is a relatively recent track (given my studio drought of the last few years). It was produced in January of 2005, a time of year (fall/winter) when I am generally most productive in the studio. (I not a fan of sitting in a studio during the hot summer, and air-conditioners tend to interfere with the sound/air flow).

Anyhow, the track has a nice tribalesque groove and a choppy synth line bouncing over it. It also has a sibling, a jam titled The Ploy, which is a different idea dropped over the same beats. We’ll cover that one later, but for now, catch the tremor.

Download: Steady Tremor (mp3)Download: Steady Tremor (wav)

New Predicament

September 25, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

New Predicament is a smooth acid flavored track from 2001. While a straight forward track, it does have a breaky West Coast feel which makes it fun to play. Aside from the percussion and airy samples, most of the sounds were produced by the mighty Virus synth, some sampled and morphed further in the DAW, others recorded straight from the box and tweaked in real-time.

Listening to it after all these years I decided to slow it down a bit as the original was too fast by today’s standards. So I brought it down to 135bpm, and actually prefer it at this rate.

Once again, the wav download is available and recommended.

Download: New Predicament (mp3)Download: New Predicament (wav)

Carbon Face

September 21, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

Carbon Face is a funky track that was picked up by the Netherlands-based Work Hard Play Hard label and released in 2006 on a self titled 3 track EP. The track was inspired by the techno-house sound of the early 2000’s pioneered by Italian producers like Marco Carola, Rino Cerrone, Gaetano Parisio and others, and is essentially a tribute to them. In recent years this flavor of techno has faded in favor of minimal sounds but I look forward to hearing it reappear in future genre mutations.

We’ll cover Gimmick and Thoroughbred (also on this EP) later, but I was pretty happy with how this release came together as each of the tracks features some pretty mangled samples but the focus on the groove is maintained throughout. As for Carbon Face itself, its based on a bass line played through a sampler using sounds from some expensive bass guitar sample CD which I bought and almost never used. Almost. But it ended up on this track and sort of made it worth it since I dig the track and it wouldn’t work without it. (Come to think of it, I think I used a different bass sound from the same sample CD on the track Homeage, covered here earlier this year.) The vocal sample is from another sample collection and its not as ambiguous as I it ought to have been, but its a good fit.

Anyhow, the release is available at BeatPort in any format you like.

Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” in Time

September 18, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

If you are familiar with the track Hide And Seek, you know that its a voice-only track, vocoded and layered to perfection by the one and only Imogen Heap. This little missy just released her new album Ellipse and while I’m still trying to get into it, I remembered that a while ago I tried dropping some beats on Hide And Seek to see how that would sound. I quickly realized that the tempo of the track is very free-form and unless I busted out a real drumset and mics, getting this to work in a digital domain was going to require some heavy time adjustments.

Enter Ableton Live‘s sick Warp feature. (Time) warp works automatically by assessing the nature of the track and figuring out where stuff fits on its timeline as well as whether it should create a loop or sections that it attempts to play quantized (in time). It does a decent job but usually requires manual adjustments even for very straight-forward and repetitive dance tracks. But as expected, it had no idea how to deal with Imogen Heap’s beat-less jam. After manually tweaking words into time for a while without totally ruining the the vibe of the song, I dropped a few drum hits under it. (Admittedly, the first few verses could use further adjustments, but I got lazy.) The plan was to add other orchestration but that never happened (well, not yet). So I’m posting this here for you to listen to, drop in your editor and mess with further, or whatever. The BPM is 120.

I hope I don’t get in trouble with IH’s label or the miss directly. It might be wise to pull this one off asap since it may not last long.

Look for the updated remix at some point in the future, but for now here’s the first draft tagged as in progress.

Download: Hide and Seek (Montaz Mix)Download: Hide and Seek (Quantized by Montaz)

Decoy

September 14, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

decoy In the short list of my most favorite techno labels has to be Luxus, a short lived German imprint known for intelligent arrangements built on crispy, groovy beats and superbly put together. A few records by Plasmatics and Lower Level released on this label were frequently heard in my mixes, as well as of other New York based techno DJs including my boys DJ Eleven and Preston Space.

I bring up this label here since its sound, and the sound of Plasmatics and Lower Level in particular, was the inspiration for the track Decoy, available for download here. Decoy is another personal favorite – a raw, loopy track with a tribal feel and a thick revolving bass laid over polished drum sounds. The bass was (once again) played through the Virus B synth and processed with the RNC 1773 compressor. The sound is deep enough to sit alongside the kick drum even without side-chaining and ducking, though this technique could have perhaps given the track more of a pump. But it rolls nicely without it and the spotlight is on the sounds in the top end, of which the core is the highly compressed clap. I used this sample on a few tracks and, if I remember correctly, it came from a Luxus record! Aside from the percussion samples, present are a couple of other classic Techno elements – the TR909 snare drum and ride cymbal.

Download: Decoy (mp3)Download: Decoy (wav)

Fake House

September 11, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

Fake House is a rare house track of the bunch. It sort of caught me by surprise and took all of about 4 hours to arrange. It has a very raw, sample-based vibe which makes it a fun track to play (and play with) in an early or late set.

The creamy bass line was played on the Nord Lead keyboard, and is joined by a reversed electric piano riff and a couple of other mangled samples. The main beat was summed and reversed in a couple of breaks to add to the odd feel.

Download: Fake House (mp3)Download: Fake House (wav)

Exclusive: Battery

September 8, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

Produced 6 years ago (almost to the day), Battery is an alternate version of Alkaline, a track released in 2003 on one of New York’s premier techno labels: Gotham Grooves. Alkaline was a B-side on the Funk Matter EP, which featured remixes of the title track by Agent Orange and Valentino Kanzyani and will be covered here more directly later, but for now we’ll just focus on the Alkaline‘s gentler sibling.

Unlike the released version which has a darker, mangled vibe, Battery is a funkier jam with a free style bassline. Until now, only a couple of select few DJs had access to this rare mix. Now you do too.

Download: Battery (mp3)Download: Battery (wav)

Btw, you can hear and even Download Alkaline and Funk Matter on BeatPort!

Alek Biotic Presents: Funkin

September 4, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

We’re going way back to 1999 for one of the first Alek Biotic live mixes: Funkin. A disco house set, Funkin features a few classics from the period, most notably Knights of The Jaguar by Aztec Mystic (aka DJ Rolando). A flurry of remixes followed the release of Jaguar, but Funkin features the original which I’m happy to stay I still have on vinyl (2 copies, in fact). Also present is one of my favorite Basement Jaxx jams, Miracles Keep On Playin’ (Red Alert Remix), often heard in my sets around this time.

The mood of the mix toughens up in the second half with a couple of tracks from Timo Maas, Joey Beltran’s Arena and ending up with Adam Beyer’s remix of The Real Jazz – a sick crossover track and a personal favorite. (The original version of Krome and Dahlback’s The Real Jazz appears on the mix The Hook Up Service, completed in early 2009 and featured on this blog.)

There were lots of copies of this CD going around and it actually got quite a few plays. According to unconfirmed reports it even reached cafes on the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts. I worked on a follow-up tentatively titled Stylin which followed the same vibe but was never officially released. I’ll see if I can dig it up and make it available here in the future.

Download: Funkin (mp3)

Track List:
Ramon Lafour & Tim J – Pluck Funkin’
Techhouse Phenomena – Pure Science
Aztec Mystic – Knights of the Jaguar
Funky Derrick – Keep It Up (Third Earth Mix)
Mile High Club – Pill Pipeline
Mastermind – Free To Do Whatever
Basement Jaxx – Miracles Keep On Playin’ (Red Alert Mix)
Mr. Spring – Blax Trax 1
Armin Van Buuren – Free (Olav Basoski’s Bodycheck Mix)
Funk Function – Empress Zero
Timo Maas – Eclipse
Jan Driver – Drive By
Joey Beltram – Arena
Timo Maas – Riding On The Storm
Thomas Krome – Real Jazz (Adam Beyer Remix)

Ghost

September 2, 2009 / admin / Comments Off

Produced ages ago, Ghost is the first officially signed Alek Biotic track! It appeared on the German label Bazooka 10‘s first release, oddly titled Erectional Thoughts. A sublabel of Hadshot (one of the first and most respected psy-trance labels), Bazooka 10 offered a different sound and to kick things off the label’s founder, Israeli DJ Yaniv Tal, assembled this compilation. The album was available on both vinyl and CD and featured a variety of international artists including Cortex Thrill.

My discography with Bazooka 10 would include two follow-up EPs, but Ghost still stands out as it was the first ever signed record deal.

Ghost was inspired by the industrial sound of acts like Nine Inch Nails as well as a few popular Underworld tracks from the period. It was arranged using the Akai MPC2000 workstation and recorded to DAT. All of the sounds (drums, synths, samples) were played through the Nord Lead keyboard and the Quasimidi Polymorph module, and no loops were used. Ghost is a personal favorite and I’ve wanted to do a remix of it for a long time, however having sold most of the gear used to produce it and left with just the summed master the effort of recreating it from scratch didn’t seem particularly appealing. Maybe someday…

Lastly, this is the first track featured on trak.fm which has been previously released. So, no WAV download available, but you can get yourself a copy of the full album at online stores like Psyshop.com.

Download: Ghost (mp3)

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