If you like dark indie pop, then you’ll love “Skulls & Xs” from Irish band Angel Pier. This track has previously only been available for purchase at their shows (on the Sacrifice EP), but for those of us that live across the pond, here’s our chance to take a listen. Angel Pier makes a discordant noise through unhinged classic pop melodies by layering looping drums and brooding bass, a confrontational guitarist with severe riff-tourettes & a melancholic vocalist with dark lyrical tendencies. The band is currenrly recording new material for the release of a single and limited 7″ in April and will be playing dates across Ireland in April and May. The debut album will follow later this year.
Author Archive for Alan KhalfinPage 13 of 16
“Fort Gaze” is the product of a collaboration between Dreamlin, an electronic music group from Belarus, and Kim Powers, a vocalist from the UK. These artists recently began working together, and this track is a great example of worldwide collaboration done right. This is something we can appreciate at MixMatchMusic, as each artist brings their own distinct sound into the mix. The result: a grooving downtempo jam with elements of soft-psych that will make you want more! Listen to Fort Gaze here.
The first band in the Tra.kz Artist Spotlight is T. Mandrake, a clever new outfit out of the UK that fuses rock with ’60s Stax soul and jazz. They say a T. Mandrake song is as likely to remind you of Strange Days era Doors or Young Americans era David Bowie as it is to conjure up images of a Weill/Brechtian theatre-piece performed by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Yes, they are unique and they don’t care who knows it. Take a listen to their song “Honey” here.
They take their name from the flower (mandrake) whose roots (which resemble human figures) are used in magic rituals – although a lifelong love of the Peter Sellers character Captain Lionel Mandrake in Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb surely proved an influence. Later this year, T. Mandrake will release their debut album entitled From East To West And All The Rest. Until then, you should hear these four tracks, and prepare to think again.
To celebrate the launch of tra.kz, a great selection of indie and emerging artists have come together to release new music using tra.kz. Throughout the day, new songs will be released on Twitter, with Evolving Music providing extra golden nuggets of information.
As part of the Tra.kz Artist Spotlight, MixMatchMusic has partnered with the forward-thinking folks over at Controlled Substance Sound Labs to release new music from Pepper, Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution, the Expendables, Mat McHugh and the BlackBird, Fishbone, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, and Sabotage Soundsystem.
Controlled Substance Sound Labs was formed by brothers Jon and Matt Phillips as an artistic pipeline for the family of artists under Silverback Management. As a firm that has represented the vision and career direction on the management side, they have created a refreshing record label and distribution scenario that caters to the new “independent” minded landscape of the music business, and its changing climate. They have created a trustworthy scenario to release albums and own their own masters and copyrights, which as we all know, is not a practice commonly held by the major label behemoths currently in a steep decline both creatively and from a business standpoint.
Here is the full schedule of today’s Artist Spotlight. Get ready for some great music!
7:30AM: T. Mandrake — Honey
8:00AM: Dreamlin featuring Kim Powers — Fort Gaze
8:30AM: Angel Pier — Skullz and Xs
9:00AM: Throw Me the Statue — Ship
9:30AM: Trifonic — Gutter Box
10:00AM: Fishbone — Behind Closed Doors
11:00AM: Pepper — Too Much (Straight Board Mix)
12:00PM: The Expendables — Set Me Off
1:00PM: Slightly Stoopid — Closer to the Sun
2:00PM: Mat McHugh — Under the Landslide
3:00PM: Rebelution — Feelin’ Alright Dub
4:0PM: Sabotage Soundsystem — Love 2 the DJ
4:30PM: Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad — Season’s Change
5:00PM: BLVD — Vortex
5:30PM: Enzyme Dynamite — Girls
6:00PM: Radio Nowhere — London Calling
6:30PM: The Dance Party — Sasha, Don’t Sleep
7:00PM: Alessandra Conti — Empty Words
MixMatchMusic™ announced today its acquisition of Mix2r. The combination creates one of the premier sites for internet-based music collaboration, discovery and fan engagement, and provides tools to help artists monetize their music.
MixMatchMusic, which launched this past September and already has a library of more than 2500 stems used by thousands of artists and fans, enables musicians to collaborate on, profit from and engage fans with their music. Mix2r, founded in 2005, enables electronica artists to upload completed songs and allows others to create derivative works from those songs. Mix2r’s community of thousands of musicians, DJs and fans features more than 6200 songs and music stems.
Stems of guitar, bass, drums, keys and other instruments are the building blocks of songs. Both sites encourage mash ups and remixes of stems to create new songs, ring tones and music.
“MixMatchMusic’s combination with Mix2r adds a lot of dynamic new music to our library and brings us closer to the critical mass of stems and community needed to fuel our next stage of growth,” said Charles Feinn, MixMatchMusic co-founder and CEO. “This combination also brings us Mix2r founders Duane Nickull and Matt MacKenzie, two exceptional serial entrepreneurs and technologists who join our Board of Directors.”
“Emerging and indie artists win as a result of this combination,” said Nickull. “The breadth and depth of content and the number of people contributing to it adds energy and creativity to the community, and that in turn will attract more people and more great music.”
Nickull, who is a well known senior technical evangelist for Adobe, said the Mix2r site uses Adobe® Flash® Platform technologies including Adobe Flash, Flex and Adobe® AIR™. These technologies, which are critical to Web-based online collaboration, will be used to create future versions of the combined site.
Nickull co-founded Mix2r with Matt Mackenzie, with whom he previously co-founded Yellow Dragon Software Corporation (acquired by Adobe in 2003), and XML Global Technologies (publicly traded, acquired by Xenos Group in 2003).
Mix2r content joins with existing MixMatchMusic content to become one of the largest sources of stems, works in progress and other musical content available for collaboration among artists. The dynamic Mix2r forum will also become a part of MixMatchMusic as the sites and companies are combined in 2009. Mix2r Members will be immediately granted access to MixMatchMusic.com content under the MixMatchMusic license terms.
Participation in the MixMatchMusic community and use of its MixMaker audio sequencer are free to musicians and casual fans alike. Fees are incurred when stems, works in progress or finished songs are downloaded for sale or other use.
About MixMatchMusic
MixMatchMusic was founded to serve the needs of millions of independent and semi-professional musicians. Its services, technologies and community enable musicians to collaborate on, profit from and engage fans with their music.
MixMatchMusic is based in Silicon Valley and is angel-backed. Mix2r.com was completely funded by its founders and has taken no VC investments.
