‘Tokyo Disco Music All Night Long’ was released by Kagami in 2001, and if Denki Groove had initiated me into the world of Japanese electronic dance music, it was Kagami who cemented what would become one of my biggest passions.  It was through the exploration of Kagami’s catalog, that included such fascinating works as ‘The Repaired Sequencer,’ ‘Romantic Time Slip,’ and his absolutely amazing live performances at the Wire gigs that I would discover other artists such as DJ Tasaka, DJ Sharpnel and Yoji Biomehanika.  Kagami also seriously informed the music that I was making with my partner at the time, as both of us started to consider crunchier and more rhythmically complex ways of using samples.  Our DJ act also began to meld the French filter house we had been previously listening to with the Kagami sound, which injected fresh energy into our playlists and helped set us apart from most other DJs in Canada who had never even heard a single Japanese house track.

My love of Kagami culminated in a trip to Japan in May of 2009, when I was able to catch him perform a live set opening up for Miki Furukawa in Tokyo.  The timing was fortuitous – I had not known in advance that Kagami had any shows scheduled in the city during my visit.  Although it was a somewhat odd experience to see row upon row of young men and women sitting quietly and respectfully as they listened to his set – one of many differences between Japanese audiences and those I was accustomed to in North America – it was simply incredible to finally be in his presence and experience his DJing firsthand.

Takashi Yasumi passed away in May of this year.  I only found out recently – there is almost no English-language news coverage of the Japanese house music scene, and he is virtually unknown in North America.  The details of what happened to him are unclear, with a heart attack listed by most press sources as the cause of death.  He was only 33 years old.

I had always dreamed of bringing Kagami to Montreal when I was actively promoting, wanting to celebrate his music by helping expand it to the worldwide audience he deserved.  At the same time, I also knew that the chances of a successful Kagami show in North America were almost zero, given the relative scarcity of J-House fans on the continent.  It would have been a vanity project, my gift to an artist who had already given me so much himself, without ever knowing it.  Now, of course, it no longer matters.  Takashi Yasumi will never see a crowd dance for him again, nor will he ever hear from my lips how important his music was to me.  Because I was too shy that night in Tokyo to go up to the decks and introduce myself to one of my heroes.

Seven years have passed between the recording of trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack’s new album, Heligoland, and their previous studio album 100^th Window.  While the band hasn’t exactly been on hiatus in that time – there have been soundtracks, a greatest hits album, singles and shows – it is clear that the time away from a concerted creative effort has taken its toll.

Specifically, there are two impressions that the listener takes away from Heligoland.  The first is that Massive Attack have strayed from the cohesiveness of expression found on past works and instead have chosen to embrace the unpredictable fruit that is borne when working mostly with outside collaborators.  While several of the vocalists who contributed to Heligoland are familiar faces, such as Horace Andy, a full eight of the album’s 10 tracks feature the talents of artists outside of the band.

The second and perhaps more pervasive sentiment associated with Heligoland is that Massive Attack’s prolific soundtrack composition has heavily influenced its songwriting direction.  The majority of the tracks on the album feature the type of subdued, ethereal backing sound that is characteristic of a film score.  While Massive Attack have rarely gone for bombastic, in-your-face arrangements in the past, Heligoland’s tunes are lacking the drama and sense of purpose found on albums such as Mezzanine or even the earlier work of Protection.  Several tracks, such as Babel featuring Hope Sandoval (formerly of Mazzy Star) or Psyche fail to establish enough of a lead for listeners to latch on to, leaving fans to conjure up their own story lines to accompany the album’s aural soundscapes.  Likewise, Flat of the Blade starts out promising, but it fails to deliver on its early intrigue.

There are, of course, exceptions to the general Heligoland feel.  In fact, simply raising the volume imbues the opening track ‘Pray For Rain’ with far more presence than it at first appears to offer the listener.          Saturday Come Slow, which features the talents of Blur frontman Damon Albarn, is perhaps the catchiest and most engaging effort to be found on Heligoland, despite straying from the general blueprint of the album.  It does so by embracing a slow, acoustic-oriented ballad style that evokes a sense of loss and loneliness in a way that brooding synths and rumbling bass haven’t been able to anywhere else on the record.  In direct contrast, Heligoland’s final track, Atlas Air centers around a whirling organ melody that imparts a sense of purpose to the piece and which aptly bookends what is perhaps the most energetic, frenetic and concentrated dose of Massive Attack on the entire disc.

Some might say that the face presented by the group on Heligoland is an indication that Massive Attack have lost their way.  An argument could be made that seven years spent working in tandem with the artistic visions of others in the film world or through collaboration with outside musicians have allowed Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall to transition into the role of uber-producers rather than focused artists.  Massive Attack purists may bemoan the fact that the group has slowly transformed into a vehicle for the electronic experimentations of a star-studded cast of musical guests, but at the very least Del Naja and Marshall have spread their wings from a creative standpoint and chosen to explore new horizons within the basic framework of the band.

Yes, Heligoland does offer enough of the group’s classic dark British sound to appease a large number of its fans.  However, it is clear that the marriage of strong pop sensibilities and underground energy that characterized Massive Attack’s most accessible work is now in the rearview mirror.

(This article is part of a series that will examine seminal albums released a decade ago and attempt to reevaluate their impact and significance through the lens of history.)

One of the most oft-used clichés associated with Madonna’s prodigious musical output has been the declaration that she is a ‘cultural chameleon’ who is capable of morphing her own sound to mimic and match the popular trends emerging around her.  This is the same sort of misguided label that was originally directed at David Bowie, a man whose desire to explore new genres and push the boundaries that had been imposed on him by critics, fans and the expectations of the industry frequently caused him to move in seemingly unpredictable directions.

I have never bought into the idea that Madonna’s ability to remain relevant through several of the seismic shifts in musical taste that occurred during her reign as a pop icon was anything other than her continued growth as an artist.  However, I do believe that as she entered the new millennium she became increasingly concerned about connecting with the youth market that she was no longer a part of chronologically.  This desire was reflected in her work from the year 2000 on, resulting in a definite alteration of her image as an artist and arguably a similar change in the quality of her music – a change that began with the album Music.

Music hit stores in September of 2000 and while it continued the definite electronic inflections of Ray of Light which had preceded it in 1998, it took those influences in a very different direction.  In the two year gap between the two albums the dance music universe that Madonna had once been a paragon of had been invaded by a revitalized house music scene.  At the forefront of this new wave of music were French producers such as Daft Punk and Cassius.  The harder-edged, less melodic sound was very funky and very danceable, and Madonna was definitely paying attention to the wave that was about to crash over North America and Europe, crested by Daft Punk’s crossover Discovery album in 2001.  At the same time, the more underground, grainy sounds of electro were starting to gain momentum in clubs around the world, and Madonna also had her ear turned in this direction when it came to drawing inspiration for her new album.

Madonna’s Music featured a number of producers, which was part and parcel of her customary studio process.  While she retained the services of William Orbit, whose influence had helped to make Ray of Light one of Madonna’s least mainstream records of the 90’s, she also enlisted the more radio-friendly talents of Mark Stent.  However, the most important contributions would come from in-house Maverick talent and Madonna protégé Mirwais Ahmadzai, a French producer who would author (among others) the title track and Don’t Tell Me.  Each of these songs, in addition to being successful singles would also help to push Madonna’s music style for the next 10 years in a completely new direction.

What did the future sound like to Madonna in the year 2000?  While the album offered several nods to her past – the ballads I Deserve It and Nobody’s Perfect, and the Austin Powers-esque Amazing (essentially a less catchy reprise of Beautiful Stranger) – it was clear that the soaring vocals and breakbeats that had dominated Ray of Light had been cast aside.  In their place the new Madonna shone through loud and clear in between the stop / start rhythms and chunky baselines of the album’s first track Music, a vocoder-laced entreaty to the DJ to ‘put a record on / I wanna dance with my baby’.  Rough around the edges without the sheen afforded to Ray of Light, the track was designed to hit dancers hard in the hips and offered compressed mid-range tones, crushed percussion and a pulsing single-note bass line.  Dynamically monotonous, Music also predicted the loudness wars that would soon sweep over the pop charts.

Two other standout tracks from the album – which were of course also singles – were less enthusiastic in their presentation of Madonna’s new musical agenda, preferring instead to gently guide loyal fans through their idol’s fresh sonic landscape.  Don’t Tell Me featured a straightforward structure with synth string highlights, but it also provided deftly processed vocals, a watered-down stuttering beat and the same droning bass found underpinning Music.  What It Feels Like For A Girl was slightly more ambitious in expanding horizons, combining a drum track composed from an electro artist’s beginner sample kit with a slightly glitchy main melody, tied together by Madonna’s ambiguously androgynous lyrics.

Overall, when taken together even with the filler ballads and pseudo-experimental tracks such as Paradise (not for me), the album presents the most mature portrait of Madonna available both to that point and beyond to present day.  While the effort made by the track Music to connect with both electro and French filter house was in no way subtle, both Don’t Tell Me and What It Feels Like For A Girl feature none of the musical stunts or self-importance that would litter her later work.  The more subtle approach taken by these songs when it came to breaking new ground in partnership with her core audience would be completely abandoned on the empty concept album that followed three years later (American Life).

What is the legacy of Music?  It could be said that this album represents the last time that Madonna took a calculated risk in the studio without resorting to the tired attention-getting devices of sampling the hooks of dance hits hailing from another era (Confessions on a Dance Floor) or awkwardly teaming up with pop stars half her age (Hard Candy) in order to generate hits.  More importantly, Madonna’s Music introduced American audiences to the French and electro influences that had been bubbling just under the surface of the mainstream (Fischerspooner, Peaches, Ladytron and Thomas Bangalter) and which would emerge more fully into the musical consciousness within the one to two year window following its release.  As for Madonna, while sales remained at the level expected of a superstar of her caliber throughout the decade, Music would mark the last time she could count herself as being genuinely positioned as the herald of any musical trend.

(This article is the first in a series that will examine seminal albums released a decade ago and attempt to reevaluate their impact and significance through the lens of history.)

It was the year 2000 –  Halloween, to be precise – and the world of hip hop was at a turning point.  Eminem had dominated record sales for most of that year thanks to the 10 million copies of The Marshall Mathers LP that flew out the door at a never-before-seen pace.  At the other end of the spectrum, party maven Nelly had dropped Country Grammar, an album that would make him a household name and give him a brief pass into the world of rap stardom.

That fateful fall day, however, would see another record birthed into the world that would straddle the line between hip hop purity, exuberant crowd-moving joy and deep personal introspection.  Outkast’s Stankonia was perhaps one of the most important rap albums to be released at the dawn of the new millennium, and it would in many ways serve as a dividing line between what was suddenly old and what was about to become new.

That it has been a full decade since the tracks from Stankonia ruled both the airwaves and the video charts seems hard to believe.  This was the record that took Outkast from hip hop heroes to pop phenomenon, achieving for them even greater fame than they had been able to find with their previous crossover success, Rosa Parks.  It also served to more blatantly display the eccentricities and willingness to explore new territory that would eventually dominate Outkast’s musical production for the rest of the decade.  Stankonia might not have completely prepared us for the shock that was Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, but at least we had been warned.

It was on Stankonia that Big Boi and André 3000 took the opportunity to stretch their wings and deliver a raft of tunes that hewed to no previously established musical order.  World beat shared groove space with rock-tinged beats, funk and jazzy slow jams.  Tying it all together was rhyme delivery from each of Outkast’s pair of supremely gifted lyricists that swung back and forth between smooth and frenetic.  This was intelligent music that aimed its salvo far above the partyheads and successploitation artists that were starting to dominate the charts, rap that didn’t cater to gritty street tales but instead touched on subjects both ethereal and substantial that when taken together formed a cohesive, 360-degree Outkast worldview.

Stankonia was also an album that introduced two enormously different yet extraordinarily influential singles.  The first was B.O.B. which engaged the ear with the inviting jingle of synthesized chimes before launching a full on breakbeat assault that stole liberally from both the headlines (the Iraq war) and the lives of Dre and Big Boi.  The song’s power was undeniable, and it was so different from anything else currently spinning on hip hop radio – especially with its gospel-influenced ‘bombs over Baghdad’ chorus – that it instantly separated itself from the hip hop fray and has over time helped to make the group as accessible to newcomers as it was indispensable to hardened rap soldiers.

The second single, and the one that put Outkast over on the crossover crowd was the pop masterpiece Ms. Jackson, an intimate entreaty to the mother of André 3000’s baby momma Erykah Badu.  Marital strife, the strain of deciding custody issues and the overbearing presence of the in-laws are all boiled down to simple poetry that makes it impossible not to extend a hand in friendship to Dre’s beleaguered narrator.  The fact that every word he said was true – or at least, a version of the truth – has added poignancy to the song that reverberates through the years.

In the 10 years since this seminal rap recording was made the hip hop genre has become so twisted and disfigured as to be almost unrecognizable.  There are, however, a few clear signs as to the impact that Stankonia had on the industry as a whole and on Outkast in particular.  While it did not light up the charts initially, the success of Ms. Jackson as a single and the ensuing popularity of Outkast as a cultural phenomenon allowed the duo to gain both the confidence and the clout needed to go forward with their extremely ambitious double album only three years later.  Outkast’s use of local Atlanta talent and un-selfconscious promotion of southern rap as a viable fountainhead of nationally marketable music also help to uncap the wellspring of acts that were signed below the Mason-Dixon Line over the course of the ensuing decade.

Stankonia also serves another purpose ten years past its drop date.  It is very difficult to search out and discover a hip hop record in 2010 that manages to speak with the same immediacy, smoothness and substance as Stankonia did while avoiding the pretense, overproduction and trend-hopping that has become a hallmark of this increasingly confused and diluted genre.  With Stankonia, Outkast may have put together the last of the accessibly strange yet undeniably powerful rap efforts.  In a subculture where grandiosity has become a prepackaged dance routine with very clearly defined career steps and sound palettes, high concept efforts have increasingly begun to seem like copies of a copy of a copy.  Stankonia was the final original brick in traditional hip hop’s foundation.

I originally fell in love with the band at the tender age of 16, when random chance brought me to my first ever Sloan show.  I was visiting my best friend in Aylmer, Quebec and his older brother asked if we wanted to tag along to a show that Saturday night in Ottawa.  I had by that time heard the song Penpals, but I was completely unaware that that was their second album, or that Underwhelmed even existed.  The concert took place in a large open hall with no seating whatsoever, and I remembered being dazzled by the energy of the group, by the way they all seemed to be constantly swapping instruments with each other, and by the fact that they brought a random girl out of the audience and had her play bass on one of their songs.

I was hooked.  I went out and bought the Twice Removed album the next day and listened to it obsessively, enjoying almost every track which was rare for me at that age.  I eventually learned that the reason the band switched instruments on stage was due to the songwriting arrangement that saw each member contribute their own tracks.  I also found out that their first album – the previously mentioned Smeared – was in a significantly different musical vein than Twice Removed, erecting a barrier between the former’s distorted guitars and the latter’s harmonic pop that it would take me years to overcome.

For Sloan, record label Geffen’s reverse-appraisal of the situation (they had been hoping for Smeared II and were instead handed one of the best pop albums of all time according to two independent Chart magazine surveys almost ten years apart) meant that they were about to be dropped from the mainstream of American music.  This sent them wandering on their own unique path, a fact that has seen them produce some of the most impressive and diverse music ever to come out of Canada.

I spent 10 years of my life involved in the organization, promotion and production of music events. The majority of those were focused on electronic music and took the form of club events or what the media has termed ‘rave’ parties. Together with my partner, we regularly drew crowds of between 400 and 600 people in several different cities.

Obviously, the logistics of putting together an event of this size can be complicated. In fact, being organized is far more important than being well-funded when it comes to starting out as a promoter. If you aren’t careful, you can easily blow your budget on aspects of your event where you should be saving as much as possible. This list highlights three of the most crucial things to keep an eye on when promoting a serious event.

1. Lock down your venue. It’s very, very easy to get complacent when it comes to finding a venue, particularly if you are throwing an after-hours party. The reality is, your venue can cause you one of your biggest headaches, particularly if it disappears at the last moment due to the owner changing their mind, the permit issues or deposit problems. There’s no point in spending weeks and weeks promoting your event and then have it be cancelled when the venue falls through. This is why so many promoters prefer to return to the same clubs over and over – the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their party will definitely occur outweighs the risk of the location getting stale for a large proportion of people. If possible, always make sure to have a tried and true backup venue in place should your primary option be taken off the table.

2. Lock down your talent. Do you have performers flying in from outside the country? If so, do you have all of the paperwork they will need to get through customs and legally work at your event? Do you have a dedicated driver who will pick up your talent, take them to the hotel and then make sure they get to the event safely? These are all important responsibilities that you will have to delegate in order to have your rave or club event run smoothly. Even if your talent is local, managing deposits, timeslots and guest list concerns is far easier to do in advance than it is at the door the night of the party when you have a thousand other things to be concerned about.

3. Get the word out. It has become trendy to simply promote over the internet – that is, post a notice about the event on strategic message boards and build online hype instead of going out and actually pounding the pavement with flyers. Don’t be lazy. While you will certainly get a percentage of online responders to buy tickets and show up at your party, you have a much greater chance to catch someone’s attention by going the extra mile and targeting nightclubs, other events and even social gatherings with flyer crews and networking through other promoters. It’s also important to make sure that those you have entrusted with spreading the word about your party are actually doing what you ask them to – it’s not unheard of for boxes of flyers to disappear into the closet of a crew leader instead of into the sweaty hands of partiers.

The above advice is basic, but there are many promoters who don’t even have a skeleton of planning upon which to base their event organization. Following these simple guidelines can help you put effort into what’s important, freeing you up to deal with other more peripheral details in an efficient and confident manner.

Having abandoned satellite radio and requiring a new form of audio entertainment for my automobile, I decided to finally invest in a sizeable MP3 player. While I had owned a number of 2 gigabyte and smaller devices over the years, I knew that in order to match the depth and breadth of music that XM used to provide me with I would require something with a high capacity hard drive. I briefly investigated in-car storage options, thinking that they would be a more elegant solution than a portable unit, but I quickly discovered that this is one sector of the automotive audio market that seems to have died on the vine.

My remaining big-gig choices were either an iPod, a rather expensive and somewhat sketchy beta-version 100 gig no-name unit or a Microsoft Zune. As I didn’t trust the no-name brand in terms of support and have never been impressed with either iTunes or the interface that comes with an iPod, I made a deal with the corporate devil and embraced the Zune. As an aside, I find it vaguely unsettling that in order to usurp the iPod hegemony it is necessary to go with an ‘outsider’ device produced by probably the most faceless super-corporation of all time. How quickly rebellion has become commoditized, on both sides.

I chose the 120 gig version of the Zune, which came in black monolithic form from my local Best Buy, along with a charger and a docking kit. The screen is sufficiently large – 3.2 inches – and it weighs just under 5 ounces. I have no trouble slipping the unit in my pocket at the gym or placing it on a no-slip mat on the console of my car. The Zune uses a small, circular up / down / left / right pad at its base in order to navigate through onscreen menus, and a back and play / pause button are provided on either side.

For someone like me, one of the most crucial aspects of an mp3 player is just how easy it is to load music onto it. I would have preferred a simple drag-and-drop interface from Windows Explorer, similar to a portable hard drive. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not enabled the Zune with this type of functionality and forces users to go through their proprietary software interface. Basically, you configure it to look at where your mp3’s are stored on your hard drive and it loads them into its music manager. From there you can add albums and tracks from their online store and transfer all of your music to the device itself.

I quickly discovered that even loading a list of your tracks into the Zune software would alter the files on your hard drive, most irritatingly their ‘last modified on’ date, making them impossible to sort chronologically in Explorer from that point onward. To get around this, I created a specific folder where I kept the music I intended to transfer to the device, resulting in a temporary duplication of my music collection but keeping the source files safe from MS tampering.

Naturally, given the low-rent characteristics of the vehicle – it had been purchased as cheap winter transportation, although it was later converted into a fire-breathing sleeper-mobile – I was reluctant to invest too much money into a stereo system.

At first I made do with a portable MP3 player and a terribly inaccurate FM transmitter, but this was stolen during a smash and grab whilst the car was parked outside of my loft. Forced into reviewing my musical options, I made the plunge into the shiny new world of satellite radio.

In Canada, where I was living at the time, satellite radio had not yet been approved by our regulatory agency, the CRTC, which controls all television and radio broadcasts within the country. This meant that I had to make use of my American address to avail myself of a gray market XM account. The slick little device clipped onto my heater vent and used a powerful built-in transmitter to link up with my early 80’s FM head unit.

It didn’t take long for me to fall in love. XM had dedicated DJ’s who labored tirelessly, putting together excellent sets filled with tracks that were rarely if ever played on the tired terrestrial radio formats that had caused me to give up on that form of broadcasting. As someone who had been very active in college radio, I could appreciate the deep playlists, as well as the specialty channels devoted to old school hip hop and trance. That the entire thing was also commercial-free was a definite plus, and the monthly fee was low enough to be almost negligible.

There was simply no way to duplicate the breadth of musical offerings provided by my XM account, and I became an overnight evangelist for satellite radio. Soon enough, my friends and family were the recipients of accounts for birthdays and Christmas, and I spent many a happy road trip flipping back and forth between excellent tunes and NHL play-by-play.

It was with great sadness this past Fall that I received notification via email that what I had long feared as a result of the XM / Sirius merger had finally come to pass. Sirius took the lead role in the combined company’s programming and overnight 80% of my favorite musical channels had been wiped off the digital dial. Most of these had no replacement, with electronic music and hip hop suffering the most.

A few new rock stations appeared, but after a week of listening it became clear that the new entity that had absorbed both satellite competitors could not match the depth of XM’s previous playlists. Repeats abounded, as did single-artist channels that played nothing but AC/DC, Metallica, or Led Zeppelin 24 hours a day – kind of like a CD changer stuck on repeat.

There was of course an uproar amongst subscribers, but with little other option than to cancel our accounts, our hands were tied. XM and Sirius had made their decision to homogenize a large portion of their content in an effort to entice a demographic that was far more similar to listeners standard terrestrial services than the eclectic mix that had attracted me in the first place. That their executives talked openly of this decision and derided special interest ‘music snobs’ in the media only served to rub salt in the wound.

After careful consideration I decided that I wasn’t interested in paying for what essentially amounted to format-driven radio that I could get for free over the airwaves. I canceled my account and decided to move to an all-MP3 car stereo setup. After about a month of research, I ended up moving to the dark side and purchase a Microsoft Zune. I’ve detailed my experiences with the Zune in another post.

I regret no longer having access to the vast musical world that XM once offered me, and I pine for the chance to hear my favorite hockey announcers call a game while I am driving somewhere late at night. However, I know that what I really miss is something that I can never have again, as the XM that I knew and loved has been put out to pasture.

Has anyone else experienced the same sad satellite radio withdrawal that I have?

As someone who manages a record label – one which has shifted entirely to digital online releases after initially pursuing a semi-traditional vinyl-release format – I am deluged with email messages from musicians, groups and individual artists intent on having me or someone in my organization listen to their demos. The requests seem to come in waves, with 5 to 10 a week forming the crest of the onslaught, gradually dying down to a few per month until a new surge once again presents itself.

Now, I have no issue with artists promoting their own music. In fact, I feel that this is the single most important responsibility that an artist has, after of course the creation of their art. There was a time, before it became impractical due to time constraints, where I responded personally to every request, no matter how off-base the content might have been to our specific musical niche (primarily electronic). I still feel somewhat guilty when a new submission hits my inbox and I don’t take the time to send the musician a message.

However, there is something that many music makers neglect to consider when vying for the attention of record label personnel. In a word, convenience. I receive a healthy percentage of submissions from artists across a variety of genres in the form of Rapidshare links. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rapidshare, this service provides free uploads and downloads of any file, so long as the downloader doesn’t mind answering a skill-testing question and waiting up to 60 seconds to view ads before the download begins.

Here’s a tip: record company workers are busy people, and they have absolutely no interest in jumping through hoops in order to listen to your music, no matter how amazing it might be. In a world where registering your own domain name and setting up web hosting can be done in as little as 10 minutes for a minimal cost, why put a barrier like this between the fruits of your hard work and its intended audience? Not only does it make you look unprofessional, but it also sends the message that you value the time of the person you are sending your music to far less than your own. Not a great way to start a relationship.

This same advice applies to those who host their tracks at one of the many free services that allow members to log in and listen at no cost. If I have to sign up for something in order to hear the music you want me to eventually release, then it’s not going to happen.

In short – sending direct links to downloadable files is one of the best ways to ensure that your tunes will actually make it to the ears of the right people at a record label. Keep it simple, and keep it direct.