The Bibio Forest trip

Ambivalence Avenue has been my most played album these past months, its awesome. A far progression since his last, it’s like Bibio has been fed a few funk pills tripping out to old Cassius stuff, whilst watching the Wicker Man. Not quite sure how i got to that conclusion, but it makes sense for me.

Whilst on these pills, he phoned up Warp and said, “my album has trees on it, build me a forest”, so they did. A nice little mini-site which lets you build your own ‘tree’ colour it purple, add some poisonous berries, set an ambient background noise and Bibio soundtrack, and top it all off with a Robin. What else could you want? Oh yes, prove your insanity and share your tree with all your friends on Facebook.

Its great though. Check out my rubbish tree, then have a listen to my favourite track from Ambivalence Avenue – Fireant:

Hobnox – The flashy Audio Tool

I remember years ago playing with a music programme called Mixman. It’s evolved a bit now, but it used to consist of just two spinning vinyls each with 6 buttons representing different beats, symbols and loops. Pick your genre ‘DANCE’, ‘RUMBA’, and away you go. No-matter how hard you tried, you always ended up with the same tune. Now for the retro-rant.

Nowadays, music production programmes do just about anything, take months to learn and are a tad expensive. What happened to the programmes you could use for free? Pick-up in seconds? Make you feel like Daft Punk? Sound like Justice? How about one that makes you sound like a fucking genius…

The tools of your dreams in a virtual music production flash app? Not quite as satisfying as the real thing, but a great idea and really addictive. Especially when you add the Tenori-on. Link up the instruments like a glorified electrician and away you go. Press some buttons, see what you get, see you in a week. When you’ve got no money, who needs Ableton.

Hobnox.

Asip Twitter

I avoided it for so long, but i actually like it. A great way to share content, links and idiocies not worthy of a full blog post. Be great to see you on there: http://www.twitter.com/asip

Echaskech get a new toy

Get on over to the new Echaskech website www.Echaskech.co.uk for the latest photos, gigs and downloads. Also updated is a lovely little Biog, where you may recognise a little asip interview from back in December.

You can catch the crew at a few upcoming gigs in London or if you are willing the summer on as much as me, book your appointment at this summer’s Blissfields or Bloom Festivals:

28th February @ Ginglik (Shepherds Bush – London)
24th March @ inSpiral Lounge (Camden – London)
3rd-5th July – Blissfields Festival
14th-16th August – Bloom Festival

The new site also hosts a blog, which currently features mixes by the man behind the Echaskech visuals Mach V, with tracks from Telefon Tel Aviv, Fujiya & Miyagi and Fleet Foxes amongst the tracklisting. And if you wanted an Echaskech hit straight away, then check out ‘String break’ visual mix below:

Spotify vs Last.fm

Talk about topic of the moment. My thoughts exactly.

Give me a Spotify widget that enables you to link to/play/add my playlists and i will bow down and suck the proverbial.