I was under the impression that the entire Metalheadz library has been uploaded to YouTube five times over by now, however to my surprise there are still a couple of gaps left to fill! What we have here is a highly obscure and little known release on the label: Total Science’s “Silent Reign” EP from late 1999. This was at a time when Total Science was still fairly unknown as a collective; and very few people even drew the connection to Q-Project and his service as one half of the duo. Goldie knew what these guys would be capable of however, he’s always been a pretty good purveyor of fresh talent. Tracks like their Champion Sound and Dubplate remixes, Squash, and Jungle Jungle, were still about a year down the pipeline.

The Silent Reign EP actually had three tracks on it: Silent Reign, Shift, and Colony. All three were very sparse and dark. You can tell by even listening to this for a minute that it is very tense and unnerving, yet at the same time I still feel right at home with their all-too-familiar drum kits and skin tight editing work. The samples used in this specific piece are very scant and tweaked with the greatest of subtlety as the song progresses. The tracks on the other side manage to sound even more unsettling; Shift actually sounds similar to much of the minimal drum and bass music that has been coming out over the past year or so! 

Regardless, I don’t think many copies of this EP were pressed up and I’ve never heard any of the tracks here played in DJ sets before, even back then. Right after this came out, Metalheadz quietly took an almost two year hiatus from releasing tunes (their only break in their 15+ year history). Even though it’s not a record that is high up Quiff and Spinback’s resume, it’s still a great listen, especially at home under headphones.

There are a multitude of pre-fabricated, ready-to-use-right-out-of-the-box percussion samples out there, available to download. Many consist of the same old tired sounds of Roland’s vintage drum machines, or break loops that have been rinsed to death over the years. Puremagnetik, on the other hand, always seem to find unique sounds for producers to work with, as well as making these sounds tweakable in ways outside what the host DAW program is capable of even doing right from the start.

One of Puremagnetik’s recent micropaks is titled Analog Drums. This is a series of multisampled drum sounds that were created entirely on modular synthesizer devices, such as the Doepfer and MFB. Now you might normally associate a synthesizer with creating your typical lead or string sound, but one of their hidden capabilities is working with simple white noise to create actual drum sounds too! In fact, all of the drum machines we have come to know and love (i.e., the 808, 909, Linn Drums, etc.) are merely tools that take white noise samples and shape them into sounds such as a kick drum, hand clap, hi hat, etc.

Analog Drums incorporates Ableton Live’s drum racks and macro controls to tweak the sampled drum sounds to your liking (similar to their other micropaks). For Kontakt they have even want as far as to create an entirely new interface (pictured above) with which you can model every last parameter of your sounds. 

I would definitely recommend this micropak if you produce tech or minimal house, as well as other styles such as industrial or electro. Or, anything else for that matter, to be honest. Just keep in mind that right now, since Analog Drums is one of their “current” micropaks, you can only download if you have a subscription. However, as it was released over a month ago, it should become available for anyone to download for a reasonable price (probably around $10-20) very soon.

If you want a demo of a real Doepfer in action, check out the video below. The drums sound nice even through a low quality Internet stream!

In light of the double vinyl/Serato control surface and slipmat that Stones Throw made available to showcase a few of Mayer Hawthorne’s original tracks and remixes, they have decided to offer more packages like this, the second time around with late producer J Dilla’s name affixed on the cover. As much as his archives have been scraped over the past few years it’s unbelievable how much unheard quality content from him is still out there, deep in the vaults.

What you’re getting in this package is 6 instrumental Dilla productions and remixes, split across the two plates. Serato control surfaces on the flip side of each record. Donut slipmats also included (Dunks should thank Stones Throw, I admit going out and grabbing a couple after first seeing this).

In my personal opinion, I see a lot of potential for packaged, limited edition vinyl box sets like this. If there is only one pressing of this, I have no doubts that people will scoop this up fairly quickly and will hold a reasonable amount of value in the second hand market. But not only this, but the functional capabilities of the control surface is pretty cool too. So even if you’re one of the very few people out there who could actually get tired of a J Dilla jam (or anyone who has a release like this, for that matter), you’ve still got the control surface that can hopefully be of some use if you DJ digitally using SSL.

As long as the artwork is well thought out and the songs are good, it can even generate a bit of buzz for the artist. I don’t think a vinyl release alone will fly off store shelves, but if there’s a little thought and extra effort put into how it’s packaged and marketed, it can really make a world of difference. 

The J-Dilla box set is available for pre-order right now on Stones Throw’s storefront. It is slated to ship May 10th. Cop that now before it’s too late!

I think photographers and non-photographers alike will get a kick out of this video. This is a demonstration by BH Photo/Video of what is probably one of the highest, fixed focal-length camera lenses ever built: the Canon 1200mm L-Series telephoto lens (wait, was that Canon or cannon?) It is a lens that was introduced in 1984, and to this day, fewer than 50 are rumored to even exist. When and if you order one brand new through Canon, they actually custom build it after you place the order!

This lens is 36 pounds and 33 inches long, and in the video you get a glimpse of this sucker in action. From across what appears to be the hudson river, the photographer is actually able to read signs in windows of buildings in Manhattan on the other side. It’s tough to get a true sense of how much it actually magnifies things until you get to the “oh look a helicopter!!” section at around the 3 minute mark.

BH actually has one of these things in stock on their used section right now. If you can part with that $120,000 of spare change that I’m sure is just burning a hole in your pocket right now, it’s yours.

I’ve actually never seen this video before up until today, and came across it on youtube just by chance! Pretty neat short documentary on drum and bass music during it’s fledgling years (circa ‘96) in London. It highlights a few of the big dogs’ thoughts on the music and the scene from back then, including DJ Hype, 4Hero, Kemistry, Storm, Nicky Blackmarket, and others. And here’s where I put my obligatory “boy it would’ve been SO much fun to have lived there and been part of it all back then” comment!

This was a mix I recorded a couple weeks ago that became part of the trippysoundscapes series, hosted by Boston DJ Guarav Mehta. The first half of it is primarily deep house, and at around the halfway mark it gradually builds towards more of a peak hour tech-house sound. Most of the songs at the end more aligned towards the minimal side of the scale as well. It was recorded on 2 CDJ-1000s and 1 turntable, link and tracklist below.

Effective Resolution (Nickdawg) :: Deep/Tech House Set 2.22.10

aki bergen- history of soul 
dirt crew- deep cover (roberto rodriguez remix) 
brainows- ray okpara (lahaus & boris werner remix) 
dominic martin- mistreated 
dale howard- 4 hour bang 
kasper bjorke- alcatraz (jimpster dub) 
bas amro- took you for granted 
kevin griffiths- oh yeah (julien chaptal mix) 
dave robertson & jon gurd- never do that 
tim green- lone tone 
noze- you have to dance (mathias kaden remix) 
green & falkner- satisfaction 4.25 
harry axt- bastardo 
v-sexion- oh moin (phunklarique remix) 
tube & berger- funky shit (gui boratto remix) 
alex celler- la palma 
flori & ethyl- tanqueray

If you check out cs5.org, you will start to notice that there are a pretty significant amount of short videos that are being uploading that hint at some of the new features (both significant as well as minimal) that the upcoming release of Adobe Photoshop is going to have.

The above video highlights their JDI (“just do it”) development process where they make minor tweaks to the program that specifically address the needs, concerns, and requests of Photoshop users who submit feedback to the company or user forums. Two things addressed here, based such feedback, are new ways to straighten images faster than ever before, as well as alter the opacity of multiple layers simultaneously (both VERY practical small additions!)

As many already know, the painting and brush tools are going to get a significant overhaul in CS5. For these tools, which haven’t had a huge revamp in almost a decade (since version 7 in 2002, to be precise), this will probably be a welcome feature to illustrators. This video demonstrates the new editor that controls the physical properties of bristles on your brush, which opens the floodgates for texture generation when you paint. Also highlighted is a new on-screen color picker via a simple key command, and the ability to now control brush size/hardness from simple mouse movements.

Photoshop CS3 introduced the ability to create pretty accurate on-the-fly selections with the quick selection tool, which enabled you to refine the parameters of the edge once it was made. Taking things a step further, CS5 builds on the refine edge tool by it’s ability to sense the contrast of your pixels in greater detail than ever before. Watch as the guide brushes over the edges of the cat- even though it’s whiskers are fairly dark on a dark background, it appears to do a decent job of determining one from the other. Although it probably won’t work perfect, it could save a ton of time siloing objects from the background! The extract tool has now become about as useful as Adobe Streamline (read: not at all!) 

I was reading a recent edition of Computer Arts Monthly when I came across an interesting tutorial on motion graphics written by Alex Johnson, better known by some as Vector Meldrew. After the tutorial there were several examples of some of his recent work, which I was pretty floored by. Not only does he do brand identity and design work for clients such as Adidas, Mercedes, and Levis during the day, but also spends almost all of his downtime doing video DJ performances around Europe, as well as cover art and video design for many prominent dubstep producers in the UK, including 2562, Appleblim, and many on Tectonic’s roster. A pretty well rounded batch of clients, to say the least! Check out his work below, as well as more on his website.

Headhunter LIVE AV Dubstep / Techno Performance @ Stuk, Belgium from VectorMeldrew on Vimeo.

TranceDrive is the product of a single developer (yedey.com) who entered a developer contest hosted by KVR to create a synth software package designed and programmed via their SynthMaker editor. What he ended up completing looks so polished that it’s no wonder he completely forgot to end up submitting it to the KVR site; his prize ended up becoming the kickass plug-in he built from scratch!

Without going into the technical details, TranceDrive is a soft synth geared towards trance music, so the emphasis is mostly on the piercing, nasal-like qualities of the saw wave. Taking notable cue from the Roland JP-8000, TranceDrive carries a supersaw wave, which is essentially the culmination of a room full of saw waves, as opposed to just one, for added impact. The super saw is something you don’t see in a plug-in very often. There are also 6 other waveforms you can shape your oscillators to, as well as 3 LFO’s (with 5 waveforms), modulators, and filters. 

As per your everyday subtractive synth, any of these parameters can be assigned to control one another, and there are also 9 general-use effects (reverb, delay, etc.) right out of the box. Another cool feature that makes TranceDrive unique is the fact that it also includes a limiter at the very end of the signal chain, so you can prevent clipping/overdrive before sending your signal back to the host DAW.

Check out the yeydey website to download! It’s freeware, so be sure to leave a comment to thank him for his hard work and share any presets/patches, if you decide to create any of your own from scratch.

In this edition of Coffee Table, I share with you, an object that you can actually put on your coffee table! Canon recently produced a batch of coffee mugs that were designed off the exact size and exterior of their 70-200 EF L-Series macro lens. A very limited number were promoted at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and obtained no shortage of comments from people interested on the canonrumors.com website. 

It appears as if Canon will be manufacturing more in extremely limited quantities, and you may be able to pre-order one from the Henry’s photo store.

Incidentally, the actual 70-200mm lens is very high on my want list at the moment- it’s the least expensive piece of L-series glass they produce (costing roughly $600 new and slightly less if you’re patient and like hitting the refresh button constantly on random ebay auctions). It’s a bit slower than the f/2.8 model with image stabilization, but also roughly a third of the price of that version!