Influences

This week I wanted to feature my all time essential radio show which has been broadcasting for over 10 years and is available as a podcast from a huge number of websites, Soul searching, The Compost radio show hosted by Michael Ruetten. [click to continue...]

This week I’m spreading the word about the Soul Sides music blog, now some would say that everybody should already know about this amazing blog but it’s a wide wide web out there and I still talk to people who haven’t checked out Oliver Wang’s site.

Soul Sides is the first music blog I think I ever read on a regular basis and still enjoy because of it’s depth of knowledge and diverse approach to music blogging. The articles are always fresh and it’s been interesting and to see the blog develop over the years and still manage to keep one step ahead. Oliver has now started to write (amongst other things) more in depth articles based around a “box set“, the first focused on Aretha Franklin and the new one looks at Latin boogaloo, you can check it over at Uber.com.

Most of the musicians/producers/dj’s I know have an amazing level of knowledge around their style of music and don’t really think about how to maximise their opportunities for income generation (except being able to tell me which label my favourite artists released their first bootleg on and where I could buy it). Blogging can be a great way to move towards earning a living from your knowledge and passion and looking at how Oliver has done it could be a good start.

I’ll be posting a few articles in the future on music blogging and focusing on some of the bloggers who have used their blogs to start labels, release compilations and generally make more creative opportunities for themselves.

Just a quick post this weeks as I’ve been locked in the studio finishing a few tracks before the end of March, finally! This is the first in a series of weekly posts on some of my favourite mp3 blogs and online magazines. MP3 blogs have been around for quite some time now and most people who create music tend to have quite polarised views on them, are they killing the music industry? Do they help to promote the long tail of music for artists? For me they educate and enable me to find new and old artists which I would never have access to through any kind of mainstream media.

If your a lover of jazz and soul then you should take a look at Blaks Lair. He covers a wide range of artists in those genres and also branches out in to hip hop and rnb. There’s always a high number of new posts every week with some in depth knowledge and great bit rates for those with quality issues. I used to read a huge number of music magazines but really only grab a couple every month now because, well, the real knowledge can be found elsewhere now.

If you’ve got any mp3 blogs or online magazines you’d like to share just drop me a comment and spread the knowledge. Now go download that old Freddie Hubbard album then jump out and hunt down the vinyl.

Just wanted to put together a list of some of my favourite beat makers and producers from New Zealand. This list is purely based on my tastes and focuses more on new artists who are making both live and electronic beats which stand up against anything else internationally and have a really soulful and futuristic edge. I’ve thrown in a few heavy weights of the NZ scene too for those visitors from outside of NZ who may not know who they are. The local scene for beat makers is healthier than it’s ever been since I moved here from the UK in 2000 but still doesn’t get enough attention locally despite many of these producers exporting their tracks out to the world on a regular basis. [click to continue...]

Raw DMX - Do it to the funk

taken from “Credit to the edit - compiled by Greg Wilson”

Looking back through my record collection has got me thinking about where these records come from and how I got in to all this in the first place. I’ll be doin a few posts about some of my influences, posting a few rare classics and generally diggin in to a bit of my musical up-bringing in the UK. I thought I’d start with the first electronic music I ever got into when I was 13 way back in 1983, some people called it “electro funk”.
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