More developments in the world of Daft–

Last year, we first mentioned that the electronic duo had been commissioned to compose the entire soundtrack for Disney’s upcoming sequel to the Tron series. We’ve been eagerly waiting for news and at last, based upon a listing from Amazon.com, Walt Disney Records is slated to release Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy album on November 23rd of this year!

Again, nothing official has been released directly via the Daft Punk camp but we’re sensing that there to be some big announcements on the near horizon…

phives

Unless your name is Helen Keller or have been living under a rock for the past two decades, surely you’re aware of the French electronic music tag team known as Daft Punk.

Despite a period of lull and quiet since their most recent tour-of-epic-proportions titled, Alive 2007, there has been a recent surge of buzz surrounding Daft Punk’s involvement with the upcoming rendition of Disney’s cult-classic, Tron (Tron: Legacy to premiere 12/17/2010). One particular rumor that we, along with everyone else and their mothers, have been actively and eagerly tracking is a potential Daft Punk World Tour in conjunction with the Tron: Legacy movie and the 24 tracks they were commissioned to compose for the score.

While the details we’ve come across regarding this tour have yet to be confirmed by Daft Punk officially, the leaked tour dates seem fairly legit considering that the movie has been in post-production since February of this year. That said, check out the unofficial-official 2010 Daft Punk World Tour dates below!

In addition, we came across a ticket link for one of the shows at Heineken Music Hall’s website that happens to be in accordance with the rumored location/date (August 1st in Amsterdam)–so that’s got to account for something, right? Regardless, you’d be silly not to put ‘em back on your radars…they’re definitely touring either this year or next so no matter what, it looks as though we’re in for a very Daft treat in the near future

JULY
30 — Le Zenith, Paris, France

AUGUST
1 — Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam, Netherlands
3 — Allianz-Arena, Munich, Germany
5 — The O2, Dublin, Ireland
7 — Parc Des Sports, Nice, France
15 — Yankee Stadium, New York, NY
22 — Sydney Football Stadium, Sydney, Australia
28 — Olympic Park Stadium, Melbourne, Australia

SEPTEMBER
3 — Wembley Arena, London, UK
6 — City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester, UK

…and with that, we’ll leave you with a great Hell-Ektrik remix of Daft Punk’s, Digital Love.

Click here to view the embedded video.

phives

To ease into our WMC Recap series, we’d like to feature an artist who we honestly never thought twice about before but has recently forced us into a double-take after her performance down in Miami this year. Her name is Kelis. Yes, she’s the bossy milkshake song chick. Surprised? Yeah, we were too especially considering the fact that she’s an R&B singer/songwriter and her 2 most popular songs have absolutely no place in the WMC environment. However, just as many musical genres are gravitating towards the realm of electro, it really doesn’t seem too far-fetched to have R&B vocals placed over house and/or electro. And that’s exactly what Kelis has done. For the most part, we cringe at the very thought of such crossovers but we’re not ashamed to say that after checking out a few of her new electro-songs, we’re proudly claiming that Kelis is legit and is sure to be a huge player in the scene moving forward. Having recently dropped an instant club favorite titled, Acapella (produced by David Guetta), she has since been remixed by a plethora of big name DJs and about to release a CD titled, Flesh Tone on May 17th of this year (UK release). With the aid and collaboration of big names such as Boys Noize, will.i.am, David Guetta, Benny Benassi, Free School, DJ Switch, Burnz, and DJ Ammo, her new upcoming album is sure to be a successful foray into the dance/house/electronica style. Take a sneak peak at a few Flesh Tone songs from her performance at WMC below and let us know if you agree with our claim this new CD will be on par with Guetta’s One Love…wait for the drop at 2:50

Click here to view the embedded video.

And since we’re feeling extra generous, we’re gonna include a copy of her new mixtape featuring snippets of 5 new songs off of Flesh Tone: Acapella (already a hit), 22nd Century (meh…just another club fav), 4th of July (awesome), Home (dope), and Scream (sick).

DJ Replay presents Kelis: Flesh Tone Mixtape [right click, save as...]

Track List for – Kelis: Flesh Tone Mixtape

1. Handful (intro)

2. No Security (Crookers vs. Bart Bmore)

3. Acapella (David Guetta vs. Benny Benassi)

4. Bossy (Switch vs. Alan Braxe and Fred Falke)

5. 4th of July (Flesh Tone Album Snippet)

6. Grey Goose (Free School feat. Apl d ap vs. Stardust)

7. Milkshake (Mighty Fools vs. Major Lazer)

8. Get Along with You (Laidback Luke vs. Mstrkrft (Goldenchyld Blend))

9. Home (Flesh Tone Album Snippet)

10. Caught Out There (Eric Prydz Blend)

11. Scream (Flesh Tone Album Snippet)

12. Lil Star (Linus Loves Remix)

13. 22nd Century (Flesh Tone Album Snippet)

We’re finally starting to see why her milkshake does what it does…

As is the case with many artists and performers today, they tend to sell out once they hit it big and rise to the top. It may be that they have succumbed to the temptations of major mainstream revenue, or perhaps they just feel that there’s no reason to screw up a good thing. Whatever the reason(s) may be, these musicians have opted to settle for their single working formula thereby ceasing to push boundaries and experiment with new forms of artistic expression. Who’s to say that a trance DJ can’t cross over to the dubstep universe? Or why should a drummer from the 80s being ridiculed for entering the electronic/DJ realm?

Life is the constant pursuit of knowledge, experiences and happiness. As such, individuals should strive to quench an insatiable thirst for learning new things, meeting different people, undergoing foreign sensations, and expanding limitless horizons.  One such musician who epitomizes all these aspects is a man by the name of Joel Zimmerman, also known as Deadmau5. We’ve been following him for quite some time now and only recently have we fully come to appreciate his endeavors and true dedication to creative progression. Constantly pushing the envelope, Joel is now making his foray into dubstep production. What’s more is that following a vast array of responses on forums to his new musical endeavor (both good and bad), he simply responds with, ”I’m just fucking around and practicing guys…you gotta switch it up every once and a while to keep sharp.” We rest our case.

Have a listen to Joel’s “Dub5tepthingie” below and check out the most recent works-in-progress on his Suncloud page: fuckmylife.

Dub5tepthingie4 by fuckmylife

Also, during our research-induced insomnia, we discovered a handful of other interesting (and bad-ass) tidbits on the Mau5:

• Deadmau5 performed at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver on February 19, 2010 during the live medal presentations for men’s luge doubles and women’s 15-km individual and men’s 20-km individual biathalon. His track “Moar Ghosts N’ Stuff” was aired on national TV when it was played over loudspeakers during Hannah Kearney’s gold-medal run in women’s moguls.
• Joel also put on a free Olympic performance at LiveCity Yaletown that drew over 20,000 attendees to an 8,000-person venue. People began waiting in line at 11am and even after they reached capacity at 5:30pm (show was at 9:30pm), thousands of fans stayed and turned the entire outside area into a raging dance party. [full story here]
• Currently under design and production is a brand-new, state-of-the-art Mau5head weighing about 10lbs and possibly featuring a shoulder harness. Inside the head, there’s to be a video system installed displaying all of his audio monitors, essentially making the entire thing into a giant set of virtual reality glasses…and also thus preventing him from seeing anything outside of the head in the process.  This should be interesting.
• Unlike many other DJs that only use turntables and software-loaded laptops, Joel performs with a variable cornucopia of music hardware including: 2 MacBook Pros, custom-built shuttle PCs, Pioneer DJM-800,  Xone:4D, Monome 256, JazzMutant Lemur, Percussa AudioCubes and ton of other effect controllers. All these components allow him to perform live and insert unique sequences within each set.
• In December 2007, Marcus Schossow, Maor Levi and Dj Eco created a project named, Deadrat6, to rip on Deadmau5 for having similar sounding tracks. Their spoof song titled, “Very Exactly,” was actually played by Armin Van Buuren on “A State of Trance 330.” Later on, Deadmau5 refused to perform at a club in Oslo if Marcus Schossow was allowed to play afterward. This led to Schossow being denied entry and made the night a solo Deadmau5 event.
• Back in ’08, Deadmau5 joined forces with Mötley Crüe drummer, Tommy Lee (who now produces electronic music and DJs), DJ Aero, and Steve Duda under the name of, “WTF?” to produce a handful of tracks such as, “Chicken,” “You Can’t Afford This,” “Redic,” and “CEBA55555.”  Oh, and Joel briefly toured with Tommy Lee and DJ Aero for their Electro Mayhem Tour too…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Finally here are a couple of videos from last year–one of Joel gettin’ tatted up with Tommy Lee and model Chanel Benton in London and the other of him dropping “Strobe” at SPACE in Ibiza (wait until 4:15!):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s all for now…PEA5E!

Hey Everybody…after an action-packed 4 weeks, we’re finally back from the ROKTRONIK World Tour!

From BPM Festival, to Sundance, to Gasparilla, we’ve had the honor of meeting some incredible people who have introduced us to many new tastes of music as well as fed our insatiable appetites for what we’ve come to know and love. We want to thank everyone for their hospitality and kindness…and of course all of you for your patience during our month-long “electro-vision quest.”

So without further fluff…here are your BEATS!!

Dada Life – Let’s Get Bleeped Tonight (12inch Edit)

Chelley – Took The Night (Alvaro Mix)

Green Velvet – Shake and Pop (Cold Blank Remix)

Dave Darell & Hardy Hard – Silver Surfer (Dub Mix)

Tocadisco ft. Nadia Ali – Better Run (Afrojack Remix)

Dirtyloud – Trash House Music

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sorry for the brief hiatus with our posts. Apparently regulation in China is a bit more extreme than we thought. Facebook, Twitter, and even Youtube are all blocked out there. One thing’s for sure though, they do know how to party balls in China. We can attest to many long nights juggling massages, food, and partying. A typical day in mainland China would go a little something like this: Wake up, eat dim-sum, get an hour-long foot-scrub/full-body massage, eat a meal consisting of fresh local veggies and protein, tour the countryside, get an hour-long hair wash/full-body massage, eat a large family style meal, go out and play multiple drinking games at a club, eat a late night meal in a private dining room with more booze, party again at another club with a private room and our own personal DJ, and finally sleep (if that). This was our itinerary pretty much every day. However, while that all sounds amazing, there was a downside to partying out there…the beats were absolutely awful. Listening to their music was like taking a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face with every bass thump. Along with annoying happycore/eurotrance, below is an example of some of the crap they play (and enjoy):

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re sure that you can imagine the degree of amusingly terrible dancing that accompanied such music.

Good thing our party rooms came stocked with our own DJ who played our CDs featuring “good” music like…

Kings of Leon – Be Somebody (Telemetry Remix)

Madonna – Into The Groove (Sidechains Remix)

The Bloody Beetroots – Warp 1977 (Teaser)

Daniel Haaksman – Kid Conga (HighBloo Remix)

Sad it’s over but damn, it’s good to be back!!

Greetings from abroad!

For the next couple of weeks, Roktronik will be spreading electro love all over Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Macau. We’d like to thank our hosts at Prive who helped to launch our night of debauchery in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong bar/club/restaurant district.

Home to over 100 bars/clubs/restaurants, Lan Kwai Fong is where Hong Kong socialites and party goers from all over the world gather early in the afternoon for drinks and continue to rage early into the wee hours of the morning. Here’s a little re-cap of our journey yesterday:

We got off of the MTR subway station (which is incredibly clean and efficient by the way) at the “Central” stop. As we exited the electronic turnstyles, we were immediately greeted by a drunken horde calling it quits from being out since happy hour. Booze is in the air. An array of slurred languages echoed from the subway halls and almost created a unique language in itself. The masses were increasing by the second as the last few trains for the evening were set to depart. No matter, we were committed at this point after sitting on a plane for over 15 hours and thus, we continued on and swam through the intoxicated waves until we made it out of the underground station. We marched on with a new group of prospects, eager to get the night started. We finally made it to the base of a steep, uphill street. We were unable to see the cobblestone pavement due to a flood of what appeared to be an ocean of singing, dancing, and plastered bodies. We wanted to be the kings of this hammered hill. Drinking on the streets is not allowed in Hong Kong, with the exception of Lan Kwai Fong. Rest assured that the public made that very apparent and have taken full advantage of the exception. We, of course, followed suit: “When in Hong Kong…”

On a side note, 7-Elevens reign supreme in Hong Kong. They are literally everywhere and they sell booze. What’s even better is that you can use your Octopus Card (similar to a public transportation card in many major cities) to make your purchases with a mere swipe over a scanner. Marvelously genius.

After grabbing a few beers each from the 7-Eleven located conveniently along the way, we continued our ascent. Sensory overload strikes again. Bumping music blared out into the streets. The neon lights emitted from the bars/clubs were reminiscent of a compact Vegas. Intermittent wafts of smoke, food, and liquor filled our noses. The street was so packed that we were left with no choice but to go with the flow of the crowd. Nevertheless, onward we trekked past bar after bar, restaurant after restaurant, and drunk ass after drunk ass. As we finally reached the apex of the street, we finished the last “sips” of our beer to the soundtrack of ACDC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” which took an audible precedence from a pair of ginourmous outdoor speakers. Looking back proudly at our daunting journey, we came to the realization that our night had only begun…

After being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his left salivary gland, Beastie Boys member Adam, “MCA” Yauch will be undergoing cancer surgery next week. They will be canceling all upcoming performances including Congress Theater (August 6th) and Lollapalooza (August 8th), as well as pushing back the release date (September 15th) of their new album “Hot Sauce Committee Part 1”. Yauch is expected to make a full recovery…we wish him the best!

Chicago Tribune Article here