alex incyde

Ice Nine

2012-01-25T00:49:00.000-10:00

"In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, 'Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.'
And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud-as-man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud-as-man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. 'What is the purpose of all this?' he asked politely.
'Everything must have a purpose?' asked God.
'Certainly,' said man.
'Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,' said God. And He went away."

-Bokonon

Expansion & Growth

2011-10-29T23:29:00.001-10:00

Hexagram 42: I / Expansion

Whirlwinds and Thunder:
When the Superior Person encounters saintly behavior, he adopts it; when he encounters a fault within, he transforms it.
Get ready to ride a tide of accelerated growth toward self-actualization.
A joyful awareness of the best within you, coupled with an acceptance of your Shadow, will provide a greater repertoire, a much bolder vision, and new depth and clarity that will compel you to expand your horizons.

Hexagram 53: Chien / Gradual Progress
The gnarled Pine grows tenaciously off the Cliff face:
The Superior Person clings faithfully to dignity and integrity, thus elevating the Collective Spirit of Man in his own small way.
Development.
Adaptability mixed with integrity will bring a calm, steady progress.
Move from your center, always faithful to your principles, yet with the flexibility to weather any tempest.
Yours is not a meteoric rise to the top, but the solid, confident footing of one who has a clear vision of what can be, and who is willing to climb the distance to reach it.
The oracle foresees companionship along the way -- a Divine comfort on any journey.

Phase Transition

2011-09-03T16:45:00.000-10:00

The other day I cast the I Ching and got Hexagram 63: After Completion.

"Nature knows nothing about fixed order like man does. ‘Everything in its place and stay there’ as if he is training his dog. Nature knows equilibrium, an organic interplay of all creatures, things, climates, everything. When one thing changes, everything moves toward a new equilibrium.
People who have a mind like nature are healthy, happy and good. When they are disturbed, their mind moves toward a new natural wholeness. They are not rigidly organized inside, they have an inner symbiosis of all aspects of their personality. It is a mind of Chan, of Zen." (from here)

I find this somewhat satisfying because I know I have been working hard over the last two months since moving to Maui, chiefly organizing and ordering of the aspects of my life. Applying for jobs, picking up things for the apartment, fixing our car, et cetera, even in the musical arena too: beat-matching tracks in Ableton so I can continue to DJ without my turntables, and organizing my libraries of samples, making it easy to draw from a wide variety of sounds during the music-making process. I'm glad that these things are on the whole finished, because it's all so damn scientific and left-brained, the mindstate that I've always been naturally inclined to, but is markedly unsatisfying on its own after so long. I'm not so good at switching between these types of left-brained tasks to creative, right-brained ones, so my inclination is to just stay in left-brained mode for days, even weeks. The reason I say that this I Ching result is "somewhat" satisfying is because while these tasks have been completed, I do not in the slightest feel that I've made my mark, or finished what I truly intend to do in this life. This is still just the beginning. An exciting prospect, indeed.

I suppose it depends on how you interpret the result: "After Completion". The completion of one phase implies the beginning of a new one. So here I am. The essential thing to remember from this reading is that there is no such thing as true order: only points in time when things are more ordered than other points. In other words, you can spend all day cleaning your house and it will never be 100% clean. Ordered perfection is a concept, not a reality. There is however, equilibrium. In all of the universe's natural chaos: this is true wholeness, ever-changing and shifting. I feel that I lean too heavily on ordered rigidity sometimes, but this is okay as long as it has a purpose that leads back to its opposite: raw creativity. Beautiful works of art, in truth, embody aspects of both. The best works, in our eyes, embody raw creativity. But in truth they arise filtered from a pool of raw works, just as a beautiful sound from a synthesizer comes filtered through a raw waveform. No artist made 100% masterpieces. We only see and remember the best ones.

For me, now, the phase must shift over, because I just haven't been that good at embodying both the creative and the ordered at the same time: I tend to do a lot of ordering, then a lot of creating, then back to ordering again. But I must remember, as the reading says: I must cultivate my nature-mind; embodying all aspects of my personality at once, not just one aspect followed by another. I can't organize my brain: it just doesn't function that way. Our brains are made of nature, too, of course. A balance of order in the sea of chaos. When you think about it, it's obvious: the natural way is the way home. It's up to us, as a consciousness, to know this.

Incyde - Field Records Podcast 027

2011-08-22T10:45:00.001-10:00

I just finished a new mix for the Field Records podcast series, Field Recording.

Listen/download here: http://official.fm/tracks/293354

tracklist:
sendai - below k-pun one (peter van hoesen remix)
2562 - flavour park jam
emptyset - altogether lost (peverelist edit)
pangaea - hex
kode9 - sub-kontinent
xi - housekeys
vessel - nylon sunset (peverelist remix)
faltyDL - ten eighteen ten (incyde remix)
loefah - twisup (youngsta & task remix)
badawi - lost highway (incyde remix)
hizatron - executive ballscratcher
f - full throttle
a1 bassline - falsehood
geeneus - congo
toasty - splash
paul woolford and psycatron - stolen (dub mix)
scb - mace
reagenz - the labyrinth
pantha du prince - es schneit

Music

2011-08-16T13:07:00.000-10:00

Pop music today is at least 90% garbage. Where are people struggling, suffering, and in need of love? There you'll find the surge of musical innovation that the whole world is looking for, the birthplace of genres.

Out today - Telophase EP

2011-08-01T11:58:00.001-10:00

My debut EP is out today in all the good music shops worldwide! 12" vinyl for the DJs, and of course digital for everyone who doesn't own a turntable.

Telophase EP [Steadfast Records] by incyde

Pretty nice review of it in Resident Advisor...

http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=9473

And it's on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/telophase-ep/id451302616

More sounds to come soon, working hard...

Indra's Net

2011-07-29T16:14:00.001-10:00

Words: Joseph Campbell, The Power Of Myth

"Schopenhauer points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.

"It's a magnificent idea - an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can't blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.

"I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being. Just sheer life cannot be said to have a purpose, because look at all the different purposes it has all over the place. But each incarnation, you might say, has a potentiality, and the mission of life is to live that potentiality. How do you do it? My answer is, 'Follow your bliss.' There's something inside you that knows when you're in the center, that knows when you're on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you've lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don't get any money, you still have your bliss."

Emergence

2011-05-08T14:39:00.001-10:00

Excerpts from Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson.

Quote by Gerald Edelman:

"Can a selectional system be simulated? The answer must be split into two parts. If I take a particular animal that is the result of evolutionary and developmental selection, so that I already know its structure and the principles governing its selective processes, I can simulate the animal's structure in a computer. But a system undergoing selection has two parts: the animal or organ, and the environment or world. No instructions come from events of the world. No instructions come from events of the world to the system on which selection occurs. Moreover, events occuring in an environment or a world are unpredictable. How then do we simulate events and their effects on selection? One way is as follows:

1. Simulate the organ or the animal as described above, making provision for the fact that, as a selective system, it contains a generator of diversity - mutations, alterations in neural wiring, or synaptic changes that are unpredictable.
2. Independently simulate a world or environment constrained by known physical principles, but allow for the occurrence of unpredictable events.
3. Let the simulated organ or animal interact with the simulated world or the real world without prior information transfer, so that selection can take place.
4. See what happens."

==

How different is this, really, from the real world as we know it? First, start with the Tao, fullness, undifferentiated pure matter-consciousness and absolutely nothing else. This is beyond concepts, thoughts, time, space, the forces of nature, and organic life forms. Spontaneously, on the quantum level, it begins to vibrate, creating diversity and variation, evolving and changing unpredictably. In Hindu mythological terms, Shiva begins her dance, the drum of creation beats unrelentingly. As this process begins, soon certain characteristics emerge from the chaos, cosmological terms that are found to be the same everywhere we can look: the fundamental forces of gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, the speed of light, et cetera. So we now have a set of constraints on the environment that emerged unpredictably from the chaos, and which continue to produce unpredictable events. We have learned that these characteristics are the way they are because all other possibilities fizzled out long ago, the universes that they created had a negligible lifetime, leaving only one universe that continued to evolve into one where living entities emerge. Given the set of constraints on the physical environment and the inherent unpredictability, the environment begins to interact with itself as life, it continues with the process of variation and diversity through genetic mutation and reproduction. Natural selection takes place by the continual process of the environment consuming itself as its multiplicity of temporary forms, in a constant feedback relationship to the ever-changing, unpredictable nature of the environment. Eventually, after eons of iterations, we are where we are now and when we are now, conscious human beings, free to stare at the stars and wonder about our origins, ask questions and pursue knowledge, learn, dance, and create. In other words, for better or worse, this is the Tao, this is Shiva in her dance of creation. Now, more than ever, we can "see what happens." The beautiful difference between us and the simulation is that not only can we see what happens, we can BE what happens.

This is summarized in the following quote from Jane Jacobs:

"Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intimacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole."

Remember always, strange as it may seem, it is our nature to be this way. The way is strange, the way is ever-changing, the way is infinitely complex. We all have a part to play in the way, and it is up to us how we play it.

"You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny." - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Self, Detachment, Consciousness and Change

2011-05-08T12:47:00.001-10:00

Excerpts taken from Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss.

On the sensation of the individual self:
"The third chakra in particular resonates to the boundaries of the physical body. Are we physically strong or weak? Able or handicapped? Beautiful or scarred? Too tall or too short? From a spiritual perspective, any and all physical assets and limitations are illusory, mere 'life props'. Yet a person's acceptance of or resistance to them is critical to entering spiritual adulthood. From a spiritual perspective, in fact, the entire physical world is nothing more than our classroom, but the challenge to each of us in this classroom is: given your particular body, environment, and beliefs, will you make choices that enhance your spirit or those that drain your power into the physical illusion around you? Again and again, the challenges of the third chakra will cause you to evaluate your sense of power and self in relation to the external world."

On detachment:
"We achieve wisdom both through life experiences and by acquiring the discriminating perceptual ability of detachment. Symbolic sight is partly learned 'detachment' - a state of mind beyond the influences of the 'personal mind' or 'beginner's mind' that can lead to the power and insight of the 'impersonal' or open mind."

"The sacred truth of the sixth chakra is Seek Only the Truth. It compels us to search continually for the difference between truth and illusion, the two forces present at every moment. Separating truth from illusion is more a task of the mind than of the brain. The brain commands the behavior of our physical body, but the mind commands the behavior of our energy body, which is our relationship to thought of perception. The brain is the physical instrument through which thought is transferred into action, but perception - and all that is associated with perception, such as becoming conscious - is a characteristic of the mind. In becoming conscious one is able to detach from subjective perceptions and see the truth or symbolic meaning in a situation. Detachment does not mean ceasing to care. It means stilling one's fear-driven voices. One who has attained an inner posture of detachment has a sense of self so complete that external influences have no authority within his or her consciousness. Such clarity of mind and self is the essence of wisdom, one of the divine powers of the sixth chakra."

"Becoming detached and conscious means getting certain perceptions from our minds into our bodies. It means merging with perceptions that are truth and living them so that their power becomes one and the same as our own energy. Take, for instance, the truth 'Change is constant.' Mentally we can absorb that teaching with little difficulty. Yet when change occurs in our lives - when we notice we are aging, when people we love die, or when relationships shift from being intimate and loving to distant - this truth terrorizes us. We often need years to recover from some changes because we had hoped that it - whatever 'it' was - would remain the same. We knew all along that it would change, but we can't help hoping that the energy of change will pass by this one part of our lives. The promise of 'Change is constant' is that new beginnings always follow closures."

On consciousness and change:
"Consciousness is the ability to release the old and embrace the new with the awareness that all things end at the appropriate time and that all things begin at the appropriate time. This truth is difficult to learn to live with because human beings seek stability - the absence of change. Therefore becoming conscious means living fully in the present moment, knowing that no situation or person will be exactly the same tomorrow. As change does occur, we work to interpret it as a natural part of life and strive to 'flow with it', as the Tao Te Ching counsels, and not against it. Trying to make things remain the same is useless as well as impossible. Our task is to contribute the best of our energy to every situation with the understanding that we influence, but do not control, what we will experience tomorrow."

Don Juan on Knowledge and Path

2011-05-08T12:18:00.005-10:00

Excerpts taken from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.

Don Juan:
"To be a man of knowledge has no permanence. One is never a man of knowledge, not really. Rather, one becomes a man of knowledge for a very brief instant, after defeating the four natural enemies.

"When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.

"He slowly begins to learn - bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.

"And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: Fear! A terrible enemy - treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest.

Carlos Castaneda:
"And what can he do to overcome fear?"

Don Juan:
"The answer is very simple. He must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task. When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy.

"Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity - a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning, and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

"And thus he has encountered his second natural enemy: Clarity! That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. It forces the man to never doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumed to his second enemy and will fumble with learning. He will rush when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more."

Carlos Castaneda:
"...what does he have to do to avoid being defeated [by clarity]?"

Don Juan:
"He must do what he did with fear: he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power.

"He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him. But he has also come across his third enemy: Power!

"Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master. A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself."

Carlos Castaneda:
"How can he defeat his third enemy, don Juan?"

Don Juan:
"He has to come to realize that the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

"The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.

"This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind - a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.

"But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate though, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough."

==

Don Juan:
"Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

"This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you."

REVIEW: Kode9 & The Spaceape - Black Sun [Hyperdub]

2011-04-18T18:18:00.002-10:00

Here's the review I wrote for Kode9 and The Spaceape's new album Black Sun, out now on Hyperdub. This review was published in the current issue of Big Up Magazine.

==

In the seventh year since the induction of "Sine Of The Dub", a forshadowing of the Hyperdub empire, approaches the second long-player from the magistrate of permutations of all things sub and bass, Kode9, accompanied by his partner in grime, The Spaceape. Its title: Black Sun, due for dispersal in April 2011. As if blown from a supernova, along with the once nucleic center of sound-crafters surrounding the birth of a sound called dubstep, have expanded into their own respective spaces and thus continue their pursuit of a unique atmospheric ambience, each their own manifestation of sonic
evolution. This has not been made clearer than in the case of Kode9 and Hyperdub, who have over the years displayed a metamorphic growth, needlessly dispelling passing imitators with its consistent diversity. With Black Sun, it is as if the music’s aura plays shadowboxing with an antithetical adversary, of a Sun from the other side, as Spaceape’s lyric urges, “we need to find the enemy…”

Wasting no time on introductions, Black Sun bursts through a cloud of smoke into an otherworldly soundscape of subterranean vibrations and analog electronic synesthesia. The percussion
is crisp and rhythmic, deliberate and calculated, often tapping into the recent schizothemia for Roland’s foundational drum machines. Add to this the return of lyricist Spaceape’s arcane subliminal
hybrid, fusing elements and tempossubjugation, and the presence of symbiotic synergy is undeniable. Stylistically, it stands as a transgenic floating between nodes of dubstep, grimey funk, and cosmic electronica into a unique blend of arcane tribal-futurism.

It traverses an invisible landscape of uncertain terrain; the listener has no choice but to trust the conductor of such an apparatus, making a journey with a certain suspension of temporal distance, into temporary dissonance, resurfaced by harmonic scintillation, harnessed by Spaceape’s subfocal
suggestion. Making an entrance on this album is also Chinese emcee Cha Cha, lending her own style to the album’s mesomorphic nature. The result is on the whole remarkably effective and inspiring of movement. Closing out the album is “Kryon”, a collaboration with Flying Lotus that resounds with
an alien tinge, echoing with a distant Spaceape: a beatless descent that tickles the dendrites, offering a glimpse into the vast panorama of possibility that awaits in the yet to be imagined.

Certainly unique, and at times simply weird, Black Sun is for the imaginative listener, the explorative dancer. Its progression from their debut album in 2006 is provocative and impressive; it manages to maintain its own identity and displays a personal transformation, the vital core remaining unsullied by the wear and tear of temporal and cultural propagation. The development is only natural: artesian, as if a foundation were lain to allow it. Whether or not this is the case in reality, it is the reason it captivates us.

-Alex Incyde

Things to remember

2011-04-15T23:14:00.004-10:00

Three months on Maui. How do you describe that to someone? I've been pondering this ever since I got there, and now I'm back on the mainland, concluding that you really can't. You can, but not really. It goes like this: one day you're in New York, the next Boston, then Dallas, then on through the Maui time-warp, thousands of miles of ocean surrounding you in every direction, on an island grown out of volcanic lava, teeming with life everywhere you look, everywhere you listen. Three months have passed and what do you say??? I think the only way is to remember what stuck out, the bits and pieces you don't want to forget.

Remember: The Obama burger at Paia Fish Market.

Remember: The ridiculously coincidental meeting with Indi

Remember: The Cove at Baldwin Beach

Remember: There is a reason we love the beach: it is one of the most ancient things in the world, and the source of life as we know it.

Remember: Lockjaw, the 1990 Honda Accord.

Remember: "Simple and clear" - Raphael

Remember: Go with the flow.

Remember: "Shake out!" - Raphael

Remember hexagram 57: Sun - The gently penetrating wind, subtle influence

Remember: The Raphael Special

and don't forget: "To heal is to make whole." - Raphael

Remember: "Tell me who you are."

Remember: True wisdom lies not in books, nor those who consider themselves to be wise, nor those who you consider to be wise. It lies in anyone and anything: in the experience itself.

Remember: "The ultimate ecstasy is in here." - Raphael

Remember: Polly the parrot
Remember: Manu the love-hungry jungle kitty
Remember: Indi the dog
Remember: Maggie, the alpha chicken
Remember: Wild Tina and her tiny egg

Remember: Teak temple sunrises

and don't forget: Microcosm and macrocosm.

Remember: "Stop the world.
I am empty
I am absolutely empty
I know nothing, I receive everything
I know nothing, I receive everything." - Raphael

Remember: The music temple

and don't forget: Ti plant pipes.
"...Chuck Norris wrapped in bacon..."
"You turn my floppy disk into a hard drive" - Mark

Remember: "I am not fired, I am quit!" - Sergio

Remember: There is no right or wrong way of doing the dishes

Remember: "Feel your feet" - Raphael

Remember hexagram 53: Chien - Gradual development

Remember: Big buck hunter, Yogurtland, and Backgammon

Remember: Kids need hugs, not drugs

and don't forget: Romanesco - Fractal broccoli

Remember hexagram 32: Heng - Persevering, endurance, constancy

Remember: "Take what you get." - Raphael

Remember: Going all hunter-gatherer in the Ho'okipa cow pasture with Tommy

Remember: Flower farm party

Remember: Six hours work, six hours play, six hours sleep, six hours pray

Remember: "What you can't let go of still owns you." - Raphael

Remember: "If you want to make one perfect universe, you also have to make a million others." - Paul

and don't forget: Drinking the water straight from a coconut: nature's energy drink.

Remember hexagram 5: Hsu - Calculated waiting, preparation, patience

and don't forget: Safety meeting

Remember: Acknowledge your feminine side, your masculine side, your spiritual side, and your shadow side. All together, they are you.

Remember: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Remember: In mystery there is beauty, and in beauty there is mystery.

Remember: Space creates time creates everything.

and don't forget: Build from the bottom up.

Remember hexagram 52: Ken - Mountain, keeping still, sitting quietly, doing nothing special. The action of no-action.

Remember: Looking for, but never finding exactly what we seek. As soon as we stop searching, there it is.

Remember: "Enlightenment is not something you achieve, it's something you remember." - Raphael

Remember: In the ancient Hawaiian tradition, "Before you can play a song, first you have to dance it."

and don't forget: Raphael's awkward massage class

Remember: It's not what you use, it's how you use it.

Remember: See yourself in everyone, see everyone in yourself.

and don't forget: The chicken sees

Remember: Existence and observation create each other instantaneously. Nothing exists before it's observed, and nothing is observed before it exists. They require each other.

and don't forget: The coral-eating fish caught by Tommy the fire-spinning spear fisher.

and don't forget: Josephine's delicious kiwi banana bread.

Remember: Embrace change like a mirror embraces its reflection.

and don't forget: Pushing one of the guests' brand new Mustang up Kutira's lawn

and don't forget: John C. Lilly's magical dolphin sheet

and don't forget: Where's Waldo?

and don't forget: Malio!

Remember: Snorkeling at Molokini crater

Remember: Iao Valley

and don't forget: Mustache party

Remember: The seven chakras

Remember: Life's most important things come in sevens, and sixes, and fives, and fours, and threes, and twos, and ones.

Remember: "What you maintain, also maintains you." - Paul

Remember: Humanity is not unnatural. It is in perfect accord with the evolution of nature.

Remember: The wise don't go out of their way to tell you so, they just are.

and don't forget: the whales at Little Beach

and don't forget: "Superego? More like stupidego!"

Remember: Create, refine, arrange, process

Remember: "Everything is a reflection of my own consciousness. I don't get what I want, I get what I am." - Raphael

Remember:
Page of Pentacles - Optimistic beginning
Ten of swords - Having nowhere to go but up
The Star - Hope and possibility lies for those who seek it.
The Tower - anything built on an illusion will crumble.

Remember: The impermanence of all things.

and don't forget: Danny in the waterfall throne

Remember: Sweat your prayers - "Do you have the discipline to be free?"

Remember: the road to Hana
Remember: The accidentally perfect dinner party at the tree pavilion
Remember: "There's no snobby rum drinkers." - Amanda
Remember: Nick's showdown with the baby black cow tied to a rope by the ocean
Remember: The black sand beach
Remember: The secret rainwater cave
Remember: The red sand beach
Remember: Nick crashing Lockjaw into the guard rail... "The Vannigan"

Remember: Human sacrifice to the gods of Oogoogaga

Remember hexagram 29: K'an - Plunging in, acclimating, flowing consistently, sincerity to oneself. The water period.

and don't forget: Polly doesn't know how to say goodbye.

and don't forget: "You guys wanna smoke some hash?" - Nick

Remember: "Bog indictment, ocean vindication" - Amanda

and don't forget: The world is alive, and you are in it.

Always remember: Be here now

and don't forget: Aloha!

Mix and interview for Knowledge Magazine

2011-04-07T03:14:00.001-10:00

I was interviewed by Knowledge Magazine... plus I did a mix!

Check it out here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/legacy/editorial/features/incyde-guest-mix

Incyde - Aquazoo - dub
Appleblim & October - NY Fizzzzz - Schmorgasbord
Incyde - Sykle - dub
Furreshu - Lucid (Shifted Remix) - Project Squared
Incyde - Emeraldz - dub
Incyde - Axis - Hotflush
2562 - This Is Hardcore - When In Doubt
Photek - 101 (Boddika's Drum Machine Remix) - Darling Dept
Lando Kal - Time Out - forthcoming Hotflush
Ike Release - Don't Know - forthcoming Infrasonics
Pangaea - Inna Daze - Hessle
Distal & HxdB - Booyant - forthcoming Tectonic
Boxcutter vs Kab Driver - Little Smoke - forthcoming Planet Mu
Arkist & Kidkut - Vanilla Imitate - forthcoming Hotflush
Incyde - Traverse - dub
Incyde - Telophase - dub

BACK AND 4TH is out on Monday

2011-04-02T11:34:00.000-10:00

My debut release "Axis" on the BACK AND 4TH compilation is out on Monday 4/4/11!

Joe Muggs says:

As the wake of dubstep's dramatic push into the mainstream continues to stir up the waters of electronic club music, genre meltdown is all the rage. It's all “nu” this, “post” that and “future” the other, as a thousand hybrid sub-sub-genre names are pulled out of the air to try and sum up what is going on. And as often as not, key releases like Joy Orbison's 'Hyph Mngo' and Mount Kimbie's 'Crooks & Lovers' album are held up as somehow representative of this highly variegated zeitgeist.

What this last tendency fails to register, though, is that Joy Orbison and Mount Kimbie are just the latest of a long and distinguished line of individualist artists going right back to 2003 and the birth of dubstep who have been nurtured by the Hotflush label. Hotflush is an institution that was always just beyond or just outside dubstep, even as it released foundational tunes for the scene. From the very beginning in 2003, it brought out the fine detail of dubstep's mongrel nature, emphasising its kinship not just to garage, dub and techno, but to breaks, ambient and post-Aphex Twin electronica – different elements of these sounds coming together not into some homogeneous blur, but into unique, precisely-engineered structures.

There can be coherence in diversity, though. Core dubsteppers like Benga, Distance and Loefah, and maverick talents like Boxcutter, Pangaea and 2562 alike, have been able to come into the orbit of Hotflush and – despite the variety of their talents – contribute to a label aesthetic which sounds strikingly consistent from 2003 right through to the newly commissioned tracks from the likes of Roska and dBridge on this collection. It's a shadowy aesthetic, one that doesn't give up its secrets easily, full of hints and clues, often suggestive of deep reflection – yet always, whether its rhythms are that of dubstep, techno, garage, acid house or something more abstracted, rooted in the moving mass of bodies in dark clubs.

At the heart of all this is the main man, Paul Rose – Scuba. Not only has his own music embodied all of these influences and tendencies, but in his move to Berlin he helped define the Hotflush mentality – not abandoning the UK, but bringing it with him, injecting it right into the dark heart of Berlin's scene via his Sub:Stance nights at the infamous Berghain club. Again, the connections and cross-fertilisations are not vague things, random attempts to fuse “a little bit of everything, man”, but very precise realisations of what works together, based on one individual's real experiences in the world.

And that's what Hotflush is, pretty much. In the decentred, internationalist internet age where everyone's a freelance, marshalling so many individualist talents should result in a mess, a carcrash, a tower of Babel. But Hotflush remains living proof that clear vision and clear understanding of music and personalities can create from this myriad of voices and influences something that grows over time as a distinct and influential musical entity in its own right. Maybe the zeitgeist needs to catch up with that.

– Joe Muggs 2011

Disc 1
01 Sepalcure: Taking You Back
02 Boxcutter: LOADtime
03 Boddika: Warehouse
04 dBridge: Knew You Were The 1
05 Scuba: Feel It
06 FaltyDL: Regret
07 Sigha: Fold
08 George FitzGerald: We Bilateral
09 Incyde: Axis
10 Roska: Measureless

Disc 2
01 Mount Kimbie: Sketch on Glass
02 Scuba: Twitch (Jamie Vex'd Remix)
03 Joy Orbison: Hyph Mngo
04 Mount Kimbie: Maybes (James Blake Remix)
05 Sigha: Expansions
06 Untold: Just For You (Roska Remix)
07 Scuba: Tense
08 Untold: Sweat
09 Pangaea: Bear Witness
10 TRG & Dub U: Losing Marbles (2562 Remix)

==

It's an honor to be alongside so many other producers whose work I admire.

Woooooooooooooo

Alan Watts on Nothingness

2011-02-04T17:53:00.009-10:00

In addendum to my last post about nothing, here's something from one of my favorite speakers, Alan Watts. If you haven't heard (or thought) enough about nothing already, these are wise words.

"I've always loved weird things. I remember when I was a little boy people used to say Alan, you're so weird. Why can't you be like other people? Well I thought that was just plain dull, like having the same thing for dinner every day."

"Nothing brings something into focus"

Something About Nothing

2011-01-30T17:44:00.027-10:00

From Nothing: A Very Short Introduction by Frank Close.

"Our immediate experiences are of bulk matter and our senses are blind to the existence of atoms, but clues to the restless agitation of the atomic architecture are all around. As I watch my plants grow I don't see the carbon and oxygen atoms pulled from the air and transformed into the leaves; my breakfast cereal mysteriously turns into me because the molecules are being rearranged. In all cases the atoms are calling the tune and we lumbering macro-beings see only the large end-products...

"Many physical systems do not show the fundamental symmetries of the forces that build them. Electromagnetic forces don't care about left or right, yet biological molecules have mirror images that are inert or even fatal while their originals are food or beneficial.

"Balance a perfectly engineered, cylindrically shaped pencil on its point. Turn around: it looks the same. This invariance when one rotates is known as a symmetry, in this case rotational symmetry. Balanced on its tip the pencil is metastable as the force of gravity will pull it to ground if it is displaced from the vertical by the slightest amount. The gravitational force is rotationally symmetric, which implies that when the pencil falls to the ground, no particular direction is preferred over another. Do the experiment thousands of times and the collection will show the pencils have fallen to all points on the compass, in accord with the rotational symmetry. However, on any individual experiment you cannot tell in which direction the pencil will fall; having fallen, perhaps to the north, the 'ground state' will have broken the rotational symmetry. Roulette is another example. Play long enough and all the numbers will win with equal likelihood; this guarantees that the house wins as the zero is theirs. But on any individual play, it is your inability to predict with certainty where the ball will fall that is the source of the gamble.

"In the example of the pencil, the state in which the symmetry is broken is more stable than the symmetric state in which the pencil was precariously balanced on its tip. In general, the laws that govern a system have some symmetry but if there is a more stable state that spoils it, the symmetry is 'spontaneously broken', or 'hidden'. So it is with a snowflake and water, or with magnetism of iron.

"You may cry foul at this point arguing that this is not really a failure of symmetry, but more a result of one's imprecision in balancing the pencil: 'The pencil dropped because it was not perfectly upright.' This is true, but suppose that it has been balanced on a perfectly engineered point. Even then, the atoms in the tip are in random motion, due to the heat manifested in their kinetic energy. This randomness means that the direction of toppling is random. You might agree, but suggest that we do the experiment at temperatures approaching absolute zero of temperature, -273º C, where the kinetic energy tends to vanish. Your gedankenexperiment supposes the tip to be engineered from perfectly spherical molecules, the pivotal one being frozen in place at absolute zero temperature where thermal motion has ceased. The catch is that the quantum laws take over. If motion has vanished, then position is unknown and the point of balance is itself randomized. If the point were precisely known at some instant, motion would be undetermined and the resulting imbalance unpredictable. It seems that here, and in general, the quantum fabric of nature enables high-energy metastability to choose a state of lower energy where the symmetry is spontaneously broken. Thus melting ice, or heating magnetized metal, causes the symmetry to return, but when allowed to cool again, the symmetry is broken with no memory of what happened before. The rule is that raising the temperature causes structure and complexity to melt away, giving a 'simpler' system. Water is bland; ice crystals are beautiful.

"The universe today is cold; the various forces and patterns of matter are structures frozen into the fabric of the vacuum. We are far from the extreme heat in the aftermath of the Big Bang, but if we were to heat everything up, the patterns and structures would disappear. Atoms and the patterns of Mendeleev's table have meaning only at temperatures below about 100,000º; above this temperature atoms are ionized into a plasma of electrons and nuclear particles as in the Sun. At even hotter temperatures, the patterns enshrined in the Standard Model of particles and forces, where the electron is in a family of leptons, with families of quarks and disparate forces, do not survive the heat ... the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force that controls beta-radioactivity melt into a symmetric sameness. Theories that describe matter and forces as we see them in the cold imply that all these structures will melt away in the heat. According to theory, the pattern of particles and forces that we are governed by may be randomly frozen, accidental remnants of symmetry breaking when the universe 'froze' at a temperature of about 10^17 degrees. We are like the pencil that landed pointing north, or the roulette wheel where the ball landed in the slot that enabled life to arise. Had the ball landed elsewhere, such that the mass of the electron were greater, or the weak force weaker, then we would have been losers in the lottery and life would not have occurred."

"Here I have come full circle back to my starting conundrum. If the spontaneous symmetry breaking had made other parameters and forces, we would not have been here to know it. This has given rise to the radical idea that there may be many vacua, multiplicities of universes, of which ours is the one where by chance the dials were set just right."

"An example here is of magnetized metal: heat it, destroying the magnetism, and cool it again. In one part the atomic magnets become frozen together pointing in one direction, while in another part of the metal they lock in another direction. This phenomenon is known as 'magnetic domain'. Could this be a model of the universe? Theorists have built mathematical models of the Big Bang, which have to agree with what we know and exhibit the 'true' symmetry in the early hot epoch. A general feature seems to be that such models imply that when cooling occurs from the initial symmetric state, there is a 'landscape' of possible solutions. When you view the entire landscape, you see on the average the original symmetry: like the orientations of the fallen pencil at all points of the compass, there are all possible masses and forces that are consistent with the original symmetry. What is true hereabouts, and in the billions of light years accessible to us, might be different elsewhere."

===

This can lead us to conclude that we experience the universe's current state simply because we exist. We see what we see because these are the only conditions that allow it. The possibilities held in every moment are reduced to a singularity by our presence. This is natural selection on the quantum level. We are birthed from the random: endless possibilities have come and gone in the wake of our presence, leaving only one experience of reality that is entirely observer-dependent. Randomness rules every aspect of our lives, but ultimately, only one result prevails that is dependent on our mode of perception. In light of relativity, every observer lives their own personal version of the universe with their own perception of time: our own place in a vibratory, multidimensional mandala. Though some of our experiences can overlap in symmetry, we find that we are God playing dice, the Brahman playing hide-and-seek with itself, creating uniqueness in every moment, now ad infinitum. We find polarities unified: chaos and order, difference and similarity, organism and environment, unity and separateness, something and nothing, as sides of the same coin. They create each other and depend on each other. All arises together, in and of itself.

In Motion

2011-01-07T10:26:00.035-10:00

Where to begin? I say we can't begin, we can only move. I find this to be most apparent when we embrace our true nature: motion. In this instance, in travel. Going somewhere. Many of us choose to stay still, but in truth we are never at rest. Even when we think we are, or feel we are, we can't help but move through at least one dimension. In reality it is this motion that defines us: as the undefinable. When we travel, this is when we have the chance to embrace this truth of ourselves most intimately. Often a moment can never last long enough before it's gone, especially our most cherished ones, yet others seem to drag on forever: time stretches, melts and warps according to our mode of perception. If space is curved, then so is time. No matter how far we travel, we'll never get back to where we once were, we'll only get to where we are.

Lately I try to take the most pleasure I can in everything. Whether it's an assembly of friends over dinner and drinks, or getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the way back home, gazing down the endless stream of red and white lights under the sunset, or taking ten minutes to do donuts in an empty parking lot over freshly fallen snow, I take a moment to appreciate that it will never be quite the same as it is right now. So it's important to take pause and appreciate these situations, whichever form they may take. Whether it's talking with my Dad over dinner about a passing relative, recognizing how significant a life they lived, for better or worse, or seeing the distance between my parents grow with each day, and finally, truly taking to heart the fact that yeah, they're not meant for each other anymore, it's time for them to go down their own paths now, and that's okay. It's time to sell the house that my brother and I were raised in for our entire lives, and it's time for me to become more independent than I already am.

Whether it's the typical indifferent look on the train conductor's bearded face as he says "train to Boston" in his characteristic Boston accent, or a trained violinist playing classical music just for its own sake in the middle of the downtown subway, we should appreciate these things. You can't just expect things to stick around, because they won't, not forever. Whether it's having coffee and cookies with my aging grandfather, or petting my thirteen-year-old, fragile-boned cat, these existences are equally significant in that they will one day come to pass, as will I. It makes me grateful that I made the effort to spend time with my friend Josh (DJ Skunk), who last year passed away unexpectedly, because now those moments are the only ones we'll ever have, and all we can do now is be glad that we were there to have them, and to be thankful for the enormous, yet unrecognized influence he had on the growth of underground dance music in New England.

In truth, we never know what lies around the corner for us, for better or worse. Change comes often, and unexpectedly. If we don't do what we want to do now, we'll never be able to do it in quite the same way, ever again. There may be other chances, but why not now? If you truly feel it, do it. This is how I've made my decisions for as long as I can remember. Granted, maybe it doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me. I think if your intentions are really pure, then there's no reason not to follow this method. It's what has made me who I am today, and who I am becoming. Whether it was saying to myself years ago, you know, I'm in college in Boston, and the world is too big for me to just stay here for the whole time. I liked British culture, so I went to London as a Goldsmiths College visiting student for three months in 2006. Right before I was due to depart, Josh played me some new records he had picked up: among them Loefah, Skream, Tempa, DMZ. I ask him, what is this? Dubstep. Oh, wow. That BASS!!!... So once I arrive in London, I'm hungry for more, and I pick up Dubstep Allstars Volume 4: Youngsta and Hatcha. Reading the liner notes, I realize, wow, this is happening RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. My friend Giuliana (who had just graduated from the our music industry program at Northeastern) takes me to FWD>>, and then to DMZ. Wow. That BASS!!! Here, smoke this......WOW... I'll never forget those moments.

Fast forward six months and I'm back in Boston, having reverse culture shock. The seeds of the city's own dubstep scene are just beginning to grow out of its drum & bass and UKG contingents, via the able hands of promoters Damian Silva, C Dubs, and recent Maui transplant Pandai'a. It will soon become Bassic, the city's most successful dubstep event to date... Meanwhile I am desperately trying to get myself back to London. Going through the limited collection of dubstep records I had brought home, I find the email addresses of every label I like: among them Random Trio, Chestplate, Dub Police, Tempa, Hyperdub, DMZ, Hotflush, and ask them if they are interested in having me work for them, for free, for six months, as I'm able to on Northeastern's interna tional work experience program. After receiving a sparse response, I decide I need to go there in person and see what I can dig up. The perfect opportunity arises: my spring break and DMZ's two year anniversary party coincide, so in March 2007, I fly over for a visit.

That week, in an internet cafe, I get an e-mail reply from Paul Rose, aka Scuba, he runs a label called Hotflush, asking me if I can meet him at so and so pub at so and so time. He needs someone to help with publicity, promotion and general organization, so this turns into my internship. Meanwhile, I catch word on Dubstepforum that a handful of dubstep DJs from outside London are in town on Thursday, the night before DMZ, and were supposed to play at Redstar, a local night run by Letty Fox, but their venue shuts down at the last minute and they have nowhere to play. Naturally, I think immediately of Goldsmiths College S tudent Union, so I go to their office and speak to the music director, Wil Fincher. It just so happens they had an event fall out for Thursday, and he likes dubstep, so let's get these guys in and book a headliner. FWD>> is also that night, but fuck it. The line up is Loefah, Matty G and Nick Argon from San Francisco, Tes La Rok and Tommi Clouds from Helsinki, and Moldy from New England, with Emcee Child, a UK-born San Francisco transplant. The attendance of the night is surprisingly big, especially for being so last minute and the same night as FWD>>. I run into Kode 9 in the crowd, among others I can't remember now.

Fast forward again and I fly back over to London in June 2007 to start my internship, working out of a tower block flat in Bethnal Green, East London. The six months that follow is a whirlwind of activity: late nights, bass bins, dubplates, spliff smoke, going into a "deep medi", new faces becoming familiar ones, pirate-style Sub.FM radio shows from my room, Boomnoise, Sgt. Pokes, DJ Scientist, Skipple, Stanton, Ed Contakt, Jennifer, Rogue Star, Grand, D-Man, Braiden, Deapoh, Roko, Subeena, Ikonika, Ben UFO, Ramadanman, Markle, Farrah, Melissa Bradshaw, Rekordah, Heny G, Quest, Silkie, Oneman, Asbo, Loefah, Crazy D, Appleblim, Blackmarket Records, Georgie Cook's Drumz of the South night at Plan B in Brixton, Letty Fox's Platform 1 at Corsica Studios, Bert and Kid Cazual's Streamizm show in Brighton... all playing a part in one way or another.

It's over before I know it. Feeling like I could live forever in that world, in that time, I've only just begun to scratch the surface, things are continuing to develop further, but I have leave it all to go home to Boston and finish my degree.

Returning back to Boston is hard at first, but I start to get used to it. Bassic is beginning to become popular in the city, situated in a very Plastic People-like basement of Good Life downtown, and awareness of dubstep is growing thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned Josh Skunk, rest in peace you crazy mofo, Damian, C Dubs, Pandai'a, Scotch1, Dabu, G Notorious, Jam-2, DJ Flack, and Wayne and Wax. I soon become increasingly close with Josephine (Pandai'a), and our shared love for long hours of spinning records at home or on Sub.FM, often with Skunk, not to mention Jack Daniels and spliffs, eventually leads to Dave Q of the legendary Dub War night in New York City asking Josephine and I to play an opening set in April 2008, since its resident DJ, Joe Nice, is out of town. Also on the line up is Caspa, Matty G, Dave Q, and MC Juakali. This is one month before my graduation from Northeastern.

After my graduation, a summer of indecision, or slacking, leads to me decide that I need to go back to London. My plan is to go there with another six month student visa, get certified for teaching English as a second language, and work as a teacher while continuing to DJ. In order to get the certification that is most accepted in the UK, called CELTA, I have to take a one month course that just so happens to take place in New York City. So I sublet an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, via a friend of Dan Goscombe, a fellow Goldsmiths traveler. While in New York, in one way or another, Dave Q tells me that if I was to stick around, I'm welcome to become involved with Dub War, as well as a new event idea we were brewing up: the NYC branch of Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder parties. This didn't end up happening, but I stayed anyway, because I felt that New York was about as close as I could get to London on this side of the pond. Maybe I was ready for New York, and maybe it was ready for me.

Fast forward two years or so, following my continued residency at Dub War and many other significant personal experiences that I won't get into, I'm still here in my current residence of Astoria, Queens, New York City, at present day, January 2011, standing at what I feel to be the threshold of a transitional period in many ways. Dubstep, what was born as a niche genre centered around a post-2000, post-UK Garage South London, is becoming a but a wave in the tide of a greater global movement that we are beginning to call "bass music". Dub War, after launching its first party in 2005 (a few months after the first DMZ event in Brixton), has taken an undetermined hiatus following the 5 Year Birthday party, chiefly due to the loss of a suitable home at Club Love in the East Village. From its founder Dave Q, a new night called Twisup will make its debut in the basement of Deity Underground in downtown Brooklyn on January 14th. More personally, as the parental foundation I was raised on for twenty-something years begins to change shape, but not strength, I meanwhile grow closer to Josephine, and we embark on a new phase through life in this new year. Though we may not always be close in space, we will always be close in spirit.

So where does this leave me? Over the last few years, though I have not found much in the way of what most modern Americans might call "success", that is, in the monetary sense, I have found something far more important: the ability to do what I love. Since returning from London, my musical interests have progressively changed from "what sounds are being made out there that I can get my hands on?" to "what sounds ARE NOT being made out there that I can CREATE?". Success, in this sense, began to take shape in the form of tunes like "Patter", the best tune I made in 2009, and that I played on BBC Radio 1 as my portion of Dub War's guest mix on Mary Anne Hobbs' Experimental show. More recently, "Axis", the best tune I made in 2010, was also played on Mary Anne Hobbs' show, by her own selection, and later was chosen by Paul Rose to be released on Hotflush Recordings in Spring 2011, as part of a full-length compilation entitled BACK AND 4TH, alongside an array of other producers of what is now called "bass music".

This finally brings me to where I am, here, now. On a bus from Boston to New York, to attend the 8th anniversary party of a foundational techno night called The Bunker, featuring Donato Dozzy and Optimo. I'm going here tonight because it's my last opportunity to experience the magic of a truly amazingly organized night of electronic music, with an attendance of a bunch of truly amazing people who really just love to get together, enjoy good music and dance. The last opportunity, that is, before I embark on my next journey, at noon on Sunday January 10th. First it will take me to Dallas, Texas, where I will meet Josephine, and spend a few days in her hometown, before we fly to Seattle, Washington to spend the weekend with a friend. From there we will connect through Portland, Oregon, and then on to our final destination of Maui, Hawaii.

We will spend three months on the island of Maui, smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, living at the Kahua Institute, a special tract of land that is off the grid, self-sustained, green, organically farmed, and owned by a married couple of spiritual teachers named Kutira and Raphael, who are also musicians. This will be my first contact with anyone that I would call "spiritual", whatever that means. My intention is to learn from them what I can, musically or otherwise, as well as meditate, read, write, sleep, dream, work, and generally just live it up to the fullest in paradise, alongside my best friend and love.

So that's where I'm at. Who knows where I began, and who knows where I'll end, but as we say, the point is not in reaching where you're going, but how you get there. It's the journey: it's in the motion.

Incyde's 2010 year-ender on Sub.FM

2010-12-29T05:58:00.006-10:00

The dawn of 2011 is nearly upon us! Hopefully all of us will be entering the new year with a renewed perspective on our lives and what we want to do with them. I certainly have my own aspirations and plans for next year, which I feel will affect my life, but I will get into details about this soon enough.

Before moving into the new year it only makes sense to pay some respect to the year that has passed and appreciate its favored moments, especially its musical ones. Unlike many end-of-the-year charts you'll see across the internet, this year-end celebration will be one that you can actually listen to as a unified whole. After all, listening is the most important part of all of it, to me at least.

As it happens, my last show on Sub.FM is tonight, and not only will it be the last one of this year, but the last one I will personally do until April 2011 because of my aforementioned plans. More on this later.

So tonight's show will be a special one, I'll be playing my favorite tracks of 2010, a few of my own productions, and a portion of my live set at Dub War NYC from earlier this month, in the spirit of appreciating what's come to pass this year, with an optimistic outlook towards the future and what's to come in the next.

It's gonna be fun, at least for me, and hopefully for you too.

Here is the archived recording and tracklist (3 hours!):

Download/Stream: http://archive.subfm.com/Incyde_Year_End_Special_29_Dec_2010_Sub_FM.mp3

Alex Incyde - 2010 Year End Show
Part 1: 2010 Favorites
01. Space Dimension Controller - The Love Quadrant - Kinnego
02. Flying Lotus - A Cosmic Drama // Zodiac Shit - Warp
03. Lukid - Rags - Werk
04. Mount Kimbie - Mayor - Hotflush
05. Machinedrum - She Died There - unreleased
06. Illum Sphere - Blood Music - Tectonic
07. Silq - Ca$hmere - unreleased
08. A Made Up Sound - Rear Window (Shattered) - Delsin
09. Peverelist - Better Ways Of Living - Punch Drunk
10. Scuba - Three Sided Shape - Hotflush
11. Icicle - Anything - Tempa
12. Andreya Triana - A Town Called Obsolete (Mala Remix) - Ninja Tune
13. Ital Tek - Black & White - Planet Mu
14. Andrea - Got To Forget - Daphne
Part 2: Incyde productions
01. Incyde - Aquazoo
02. Incyde - Telophase
Part 3: Incyde live at Dub War NYC 12.10.2010 with MC Juakali
01. Incyde - Axis - Hotflush
02. Acre - Ghatt - forthcoming Embassy
03. Compound One - Tud Naat - Compound One
04. Incyde - Traction - unreleased
05. FaltyDL - untitled
06. Benny Ill & Loefah - Mexican Slayride - Tempa
07. Moving Ninja - Lost Tribe - Tectonic
08. Incyde - Station - unreleased
09. Boddika - Rubba - unreleased
10. DJG - Transparent - unreleased
11. Distal - Amphibian - unreleased
12. RSD - After All - Tectonic
13. Incyde - Dusk - unreleased
14. Helix - Attaque (Incyde Remix) - unreleased
15. Phil Kieran - Skyhook (Scuba Remix) - PKR
16. Daega Sound - 11C - unreleased
17. Skream - I (Loefah Remix) - Tempa
18. Boddika - Underground - Swamp81
19. Untold - Mass Dreams Of The Future - R&S
20. Boddika - Electron - Swamp81
21. Pearson Sound - Blanked - Hessle Audio
22. XI - Gunnery - unreleased
23. Arkist - Rendezvous - unreleased
24. FaltyDL - untitled
25. Sepalcure - Your Love - Hotflush
26. Emika - Double Edge (Pinch Remix) - Ninja Tune
27. Incyde - Impulse - unreleased
28. Pinch feat. Emika - 2012 - Tectonic
Part 4: Last Tune of 2010
01. Mala - Livin' Different - DMZ

The Conduit

2010-12-17T10:16:00.007-10:00

At the end of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton eloquently distill the DJ's essence, what in my opinion every DJ should constantly aspire to be: a conduit; a channel through which pure creative energy flows.

"The disc jockey has been with us for almost a century now. In that time he has been ignored, misunderstood, despised, worshipped and adored. He has stayed in the forefront of music, twisting and shaping it into fresh forms, perverting technology and forcing from it stunning new sounds. He has conjured a series of novel genres in his endless search for material to keep his dancers moving. In the U.S. the DJ created amazing music, then the UK gave him a home and made him a star. He continued his magic and around him there grew a musical culture more revolutionary and more enduring than any before.

Having forged music more truly universal than any preceding it, the DJ is arguably a conduit for celebration and communion on a global scale. It's possible that the DJ is the ultimate expression of the ancient shamanic role; that the DJ is the greatest witchdoctor there has ever been, unmatched at shaking us out of the drudge of the day and into the life of the night.

Why do we worship at the knees of the record-slinger? Because he is occasionally capable of divinity. When it all connects in a club, there's nowhere you can have more fun.

'A really great DJ is capable of making a bad record sound okay, a good record sound great, and a great record sound fantastic - by the context they put them in, and what they put around them. How they steer them. They can do all kinds of tricks. A great DJ can make people spontaneously cheer just for a little squelchy noise. Which is quite insane really. A little noise like wha-wha-wha and people go, 'Yeeeaaah!' They can have people clapping along to a cymbal, just by the way they're bringing it in. When it's done well, it's fantastic. If it's done really well, it can be quite transcendental.'

It's a mystic art indeed. It seems so banal, but it holds the potential of phenomenal, inexpressible power. A great DJ can arouse more raw emotion in his audience than the composer of the most bittersweet opera, or the author of the most uplifting novel, or the director of the most life-affirming film.

When you're DJing and you're great at it, you're not playing records, you're playing the dancefloor. You're not just mixing tunes, you're mixing energy and emotions, mixing from surprise into hope and happiness, cutting from liberation to ecstasy and love. When it goes right, you're inside the bodies of everyone in the room, you know what they're feeling and where they're going, and you're taking them there. You're sweeping them off the earthly plane and transporting them to a higher place. You're moving their bodies and their souls with the music that flows from your fingertips.

You're putting them in the moment."

Quotes from the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test

2010-12-17T08:49:00.009-10:00

Recently finished reading Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and it was pretty awesome. His manner of writing, that sort of stream-of-consciousness method really made an impression on me. So I've included some of my favorite passages from it...

While these are not necessarily stances that I fully agree with, I think they're worth taking into consideration.

We begin with Ken Kesey's introduction to psychedelic drugs as a willing test subject in the covert CIA-run Project MKULTRA at Menlo Park Veteran's Hospital, in California.

"And you don't even know, bub... with these drugs your perception is altered enough that you find yourself looking out of completely strange eyeholes. All of us have a great deal of our minds locked shut. We're shut off from our own world. And these drugs seem to be the key to open these locked doors. How many? Maybe two dozen people in the world were on to this incredible secret! One was Aldous Huxley, who had taken mescaline and written about it in The Doors of Perception. He compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world. Primitive man once experienced the rich and sparkling flood of the senses fully. Children experience it for a few months - until 'normal' training, conditioning, closes the doors on this other world, usually for good. Somehow, Huxley had said, the drugs opened these ancient doors. And through them modern man may at last let go, and rediscover his divine birthright...

But these are words, man! And you couldn't put it into words... But don't you see? - the visual stuff was just the décor... The whole thing was... the experience... this certain indescribable feeling... Indescribable, because words can only jog the memory, and if there is no memory of... The experience of the barrier between the subjective and the objective, the personal the impersonal, the I and the not-I disappearing... that feeling!... The very miracle of creation itself and your own dreams... A miracle... an experience..."

And before Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters embark on their cross-country bus trip...

"'Here's what I hope will happen on this trip,' he says. 'What I hope will continue to happen, because it's already starting to happen. All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we're going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing.' 'Bullshit', says Jane Burton... 'That's Jane', he says. 'And she's doing her thing. Bullshit. That's her thing and she's doing it. None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody's thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that's what he's going to do on this trip, kick asses. He's going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, 'I'm sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I'm not sorry I'm an ass-kicker. That's what I do, I kick people in the ass.' Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip.'"

More on the doors of perception...

"[Carl Jung] put forth the hypothesis that the unconscious perceives certain archetypical patterns that elude the conscious mind. These patterns, he suggested, are what unite subjective or psychic events with objective phenomena, the Ego and the Non-Ego, as in psychosomatic medicine or in the microphysical events of modern physics in which the eye of the beholder becomes an integral part of the experiment. Countless philosophers, prophets, early scientists, not to mention alchemists and occultists, had tried to present the same idea in the past... Every phenomenon, and every person, is a microcosm of the whole pattern of the universe, according to this idea. It is as if each man were an atom in a molecule in a fingernail of a giant being. Most men spend their lives trying to understand the workings of the molecule they're born into and all they know for sure are the cause-and-effect workings of the atoms in it. A few brilliant men grasp the structure of the entire fingernail. A few geniuses, like Einstein, may even see that they're all part of a finger of some sort - So space equals time, hmmmmmm... All the while, however, many men get an occasional glimpse of another fingernail from another finger flashing by or even a whole finger or even the surface of the giant being's face and they realize instinctively that this is part of a pattern they're all involved in, although they are totally powerless to explain it by cause and effect. And then - some visionary, through some accident - through some quirk of metabolism, through some drug perhaps, has his doors of perception opened for an instant and he almost sees - presque vu! - the entire being and he knows for the first time that there is a whole... other pattern here... Each moment in his life is only minutely related to the cause-and-effect chain within his little molecular world. Each moment, if he could only analyze it, reveals the entire pattern of the motion of the giant being, and his life is minutely synched in with it..."

Though perhaps a better description of these modes of perception would be windows rather than doors, as it is not something one can pass through or enter, but can only look through temporarily... or is it?

"Beyond acid. They have made the trip now, closed the circle, all of them, and they either emerge as Superheroes, closing the door behind them and soaring through the hole in the sapling sky, or just lollygag in the loop-the-loop of the lag. Almost clear! Preque vu! - many good heads have seen it - Paul telling the early Christians: hooking down wine for the Holy Spirit - sooner or later the Blood has got to flood into you for good - Zoroaster telling his followers: you can't keep taking haoma water to see the flames of Vohu Mano - you've got the become the flames, man - and Dr. Strange and Sub Mariner and the Incredible Hulk and the Fantastic Four and the Human Torch prank about on the Rat walls of la casa grande like stroboscopic sledgehammer Cassadys, fons et origo ::::: and it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon :::::"

DUB WAR SPECIAL TONIGHT

2010-12-10T09:05:00.003-10:00

The residents return to Dub War's Brooklyn roots for one night only. Extended 2-hour sets from everyone. Deity is on a proper underground flex, and we're bringing in reinforced sound for added beef. Original Dub War vibration for the true heads...

DJ's:
Joe Nice
Dave Q
Incyde

Hosted by Juakali

11pm-4am
$10
21+ (bring ID)

Deity Underground
368 Atlantic Ave
Brooklyn, NY

Live mix on WNYU TableTennis.FM with Jordan Rothlein

2010-12-10T08:23:00.004-10:00

I did a guest mix on WNYU radio last night and a brief interview after, here's the recording and tracklist. Big thanks to Jordan Rothlein for having me on.

Table Tennis is definitely a show to keep an ear on, keep posted with future shows here: http://tabletennis.fm

TT005 with Alex Incyde by tabletennis

Tracklist for my mix (first hour):

Alex Incyde (Hotflush, Dub War | New York) in the mix
2. Ekoplekz “Distended Dub” (Punch Drunk)
3. Incyde “Axis” (Hotflush forthcoming)
4. F “Escape”
5. Ramadanman & Appleblim “Void 23” Void 23 EP (Aus)
6. SCB “Futureloops” (SCB)
7. A Made Up Sound “Rear Window (Shattered)” Rear Window (Delsin)
8. Compound One “Tud Naat” (Compound One)
9. Horsepower Productions “Mexican Slayride” Quest For The Sonic Beauty (Tempa)
10. Untold “Mass Dreams Of The Future” Stereo Freeze (R & S)
11. Boddika “Electron”
12. Pearson Sound “Blanked” Blanked (Hessle Audio)
13. DJG “Transparent”
14. Distal “Amphibian”
15. Phil Kieran “Skyhook (Scuba Remix)”
16. Kutz & DJG “Hella Tight”
17. Arkist “Fill Your Coffee”
18. Incyde “Station”
19. Illum Sphere “Blood Music”
20. Echospace “Celestials” / “Vibrational Studies In Echospace” The Coldest Season (Modern Love)

Well then

2010-12-07T19:19:00.003-10:00

So I made a goal for myself about a year ago, that I wanted to have a release confirmed by the end of this year... proud to say that I have reached that goal, only a few weeks before the deadline! December 8th 2010.. just sent a wav file of Axis to Paul to be mastered, and it'll be coming out on Hotflush around March next year. There is something about the track that stands out, I'm not quite sure what exactly.. but people seem to like it, as do I. It has personal significance for me too. So it's a good day! And a satisfying end to the year for me. On to 2011, I say... bring it.

Axis [forthcoming Hotflush] by incyde

a few new tracks

2010-12-07T11:53:00.004-10:00

since my last music update, i've done a couple new ones... listen to them below...

Traction by incyde

Aquazoo by incyde

Live from the Lab

2010-11-27T19:11:00.019-10:00

Think think think start start start...

Inhale, exhale...

To me lately, the longer time goes on, the less it means. If its passages are only neuronic separations, then it's no surprise why a moment can feel like an eternity, a year can go by like a month, a night's sleep can pass like an instant, or sometimes things can seem to move so fast we can barely keep up, or even begin to make any sense of it all before the next thing's come and gone.

More and more, amidst this sea of creation, the created, and the yet to be imagined, often the things we create have already been made a hundred times in a hundred other ways, so why bother, I ask? Is a hundred too much, or not enough? Or just right?

Lately I try to live like I breathe. In and out, in and out, the inner transformation turning inhales into exhales, working on the theory that what we take in affects what we expel, and how we experience life, so if we dine on a diet of ancient wisdom, will our experience become less confused, more clearly focused? Of course it will. These days I consume music like food, going from the wildest jazz ramblings to the darkest broken rhythms, spiritual disco and techno-psychedelia, rocksteady dub, nerdy electronica, fringe-Reich-Glass-Cage-music, and everything in between (especially the things in between). I read the cream of the crop of teachings and realizations that took thousands if not millions of years of cosmic evolution to reach, things that people way back when, people would have died to know, or only were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of, or even understand, things that you can now buy for $15 or less on Amazon or wherever. This is where we're at now. Always trying to keep up, keep up.

These days it feels like everything's already been figured out for us by our predecessors. If we can breathe in words of wisdom and the most superb compositions of music, years and years of trial, error, and persistent effort, prepared for us to now consume so easily, what do we DO with it? What CAN I do? What's the POTENTIAL?? What remains to be done that is worth doing, that hasn't been done a hundred times in a hundred other ways? And does that matter? Should I care? Is a hundred forms or more enough for the world, or not enough? Since everything keeps expanding, time seems to move a tiny bit faster every moment, but we don't notice since everything remains proportionally equal, perhaps these realizations have some purpose to serve, to provide a little mental solace in the ever-reaching unknown, or to help us sleep at night. In the end, it's okay, in the end we're minuscule and gigantic all at once, we're a cosmic eyeblink, and the slowest time-drag ever known. After all time is just neurons to us, stretched out by gravity. In the end, we're so insignificant in this ever-expansive multiple-dimensional ocean, yet everything we do is significant to US, we control our lives, our destinies, with every neuronic twitch, we control the present and react to it, to the best of our ability. We do and we don't. We're the biggest paradox ever known. Try to keep up...

Again, this has probably been said before, many times, in many other ways. So I'm not sure why I bother. If I understand what I mean, that should be good enough for me. Either way, it's been a while since I let my thoughts expel into words, so maybe it's about that time.

I suppose that's what I'm getting at... it's all about time (and it's not). Some days I FEEL time, other days I feel an eternal singular moment, the trees reaching up into the sky, splitting off in fractal branches are simply creeping along through their time slower than us, if you sped up the playback of the life's movie, you see how they develop just the same as our veins, lightning, rivers, and a million other things, some of which we know about, and a lot of which we don't. When you take time out of the equation, it's everything-happening-everywhere-all-at-once. And isn't that just great? If that doesn't help you sleep at night, I don't blame you. We're still ACTING things out here, still figuring out how to make A meet B, X pair up with Y, and always trying to keep up...

It's been said by many a wise man that in the end, all that's left to do is have a good laugh. That's why I try to never take anything too seriously, and laugh often. Because in the end, everything is ridiculous. A + B does not equal C, everything is getting weirder, weirder all the time. What is X now is the same as Y later. Our words are feeble at best. Our bodies show us what we need to see in order to survive, to continue seeing it, NOT what's always there beyond our everyday human spectrum of sensitivity. Beauty is always just around the corner, perfection is just over the next hill, if we could just grab onto something, if we could just get there a little faster, we're catching glimpses of it from time to time, if we're lucky, if we could only just keep up, always keeping up...

I think my cat gets it more than most. He sleeps when he's tired, eats when he's hungry, looks for warmth when his bones are cold, rolls in the grass when he's got an itch, and chases things he knows aren't really mice, just because life would be all the more boring if he didn't. And that's why I love him.

Getting back to the global cosmic thing. Or just.. getting to it. One thing we can do, and are doing, with all of this music and convenience in our lives now, is having more time to just get down on it, get high off of it, rock out, shake your groove thang, come meditate on bass weight, or just chill out man, sit back and relax and enjoy the ride, go out of your mind, go insane, go a thousand miles in a jet airplane, cuz pretty soon it'll all turn to dust, and we'll see you in the next life...

Yet, it appears this... act... is something we've either had time to do, MADE time to do, or hell, just done, ever since the beginning. Something about the methodical, repetitive, tribal, group-minded nature of THE DANCE itself is too natural to be invented. I venture to say it's been there all along, the party element, the tribal dance around the fire, the joy of the hunt, the mating ritual, the religious sacrifice, the universal rhythm, the synchronicity, the cosmic groove, the throw your hands in the air like you just don't care, there's a party over here, a party over there... THE RELEASE... RADICAL ACCEPTANCE.... SHAKE OUT YOUR DEMONS.... GETTING IT ALL OUT FRONT...

After all, that's all we can do. We need to just keep up, but then again we don't. Just stay with it, just ride it out, ride it all the way, all the way home, it will all be okay...

I for one think we can do great things with what we have now. We can, and we should. Because who else is gonna do it, but us, so it might as well be me. or you. Then again, if you don't do it, I'll do it, or the next guy will. Up to you, your loss, or gain. The choice is yours.. do what you will, do what you feel... we'll be OK, we'll see you in the by and by... the next transformation, the next mutation, just stay with it, always further, always forward.

To me, we must always be asking the question, how far can we take this? How weird can we get? Can we reach something new, something unprecedented? To me, that's all we can do. Always finding new ways to get down on it, get on that groove. Finding ways for us to sync up. Sure, there will be creations worth keeping and things worth forgetting, but that's life. Otherwise we're just one of the hundreds and thousands repeating ourselves, over and over, and is that even enough, or too much.... or does it even matter....

Breathing in musical, literary, and spiritual wisdom, what can I exhale with my own level of articulation and if I'm fortunate enough, grace, to the best of my ability, that will take this thing of ours, this thing we're doing, just a little bit further? How far can we take it, and what will that SOUND like? How much can music HOLD, how much can it transfer, and ACHIEVE? It can inspire movement, but can it inspire thoughts? States of consciousness? Is there a universal message to be found among the threads? What's there that we haven't even been listening to, that's been there ALL ALONG? Can it make you say to yourself, oh, I gotta keep up, gotta keep up with this right here...

I say yes. For me, that's what's to be done, so that's what I'm doing. if you want to keep up, keep up, if you don't, it's OK, I won't mind, I'll stay on my groove, I'll keep doing my thing, you do yours, and we'll see you in the by and by, see you around the bend, and just within your reach, stay with it, you understand, you can stay on the bus or get off it, just along for the ride, all along... all aboard... next stop, wherever, whenever... when we finally catch up with ourselves, we'll be home, until then, inhale, exhale, think think think think....

A letter to the dude who busted into my car

2010-10-22T23:00:00.007-10:00

Hi dude,

Congratulations. You smashed my window and managed to get away with my 5 year old iPod. it's probably worth less than $100 on Ebay. I hope at least that you enjoy the music that's on there, maybe it will change your life and hopefully make you less selfish. Meanwhile, I will get my insurance company to reimburse me for your damages.

Dear potential jacker of my car that now has a missing window,
You won't find anything of value inside the car, except for a Flying Lotus CD which i left in there, just in case you feel desperate enough to take something, I am sure that it will change your life more than it has changed mine. That red thing attached to the steering wheel is called "the club". have a good time trying to hijack my car.

Sincerely, a more cautious Alex Incyde.

Hotflush Showcase live video at Decibel Festival 2010

2010-10-21T07:04:00.003-10:00

Here's a sweet lil video of the Hotflush Showcase that went down last month at Decibel Festival in Seattle.... good times! The tune i'm playing in the video just happens to be my own "Patter"!

Hotflush Showcase at Decibel Festival 2010 from Primus Luta on Vimeo.

Big Up 2nd Birthday Podcast - mixed by yours truly

2010-10-18T07:18:00.003-10:00

It's been quite a while since I've done a DJ mix, so I am proud to announce that Big Up Magazine has asked me to put one together in celebration of their 2nd birthday. It's an exploration into the areas of bass music that I find most compelling, traversing an array of rhythms, sounds, and tempos, in hopes of connecting a few dots between them all. Links and more info below.

Download/Stream: http://www.thebigupmagazine.com/podcast/Big_Up_Magazine_Podcast35_Incyde.mp3

Big Up blog post: http://thebigupmagazine.com/blog/2010/10/big-up-birthday-podcast-incyde/

RSS Feed: http://www.thebigupmagazine.com/podcast/biguppodcast01.rss

Tracklist:
01. Tim Xavier - Ambient Duality [Clink]
02. Incyde - Axis [unreleased]
03. Unknown - HG005A [Horizontal Ground]
04. Voodeux - Enter The Voo [Mothership]
05. Braiden - The Alps [forthcoming Doldrums]
06. A Made Up Sound - Demons [A Made Up Sound]
07. Gaiser - Green Steam [M_nus]
08. Hizatron - Telescope Dope [forthcoming Wigflex]
09. A Made Up Sound - Extra Time [A Made Up Sound]
10. Fis-T - Night Hunter [501]
11. Hem ft. Terrible Shock - On A Mission (Shortstuff Remix) [forthcoming Berkane Sol]
12. Machinedrum - Van Vogue [unreleased]
13. Distal & HxdB - Typewriter VIP [forthcoming Surefire Sound]
14. George FitzGerald - Fernweh [forthcoming Aus]
15. Sepalcure - Our Love [forthcoming Hotflush]
16. XI - Vampires [unreleased]
17. Eleven Tigers - Flux [Soul Motive]
18. Icicle - Anything [Tempa]
19. Mayhem & Distal - Frozen Barnacles [forthcoming Surefire Sound]
20. Phil Kieran - Skyhook (Scuba Remix) [forthcoming Phil Kieran Recordings]
21. Pinch - Elements [Swamp81]
22. Badawi - Anlan 7 [forthcoming The Agriculture]
23. DJG - Plant Food [Voids]

Hope you enjoy it!

Expansions

2010-10-03T09:26:00.002-10:00

"...the thing I was really interested in was the ultimate experience on the dance floor. How high can we go? How far can we take this? I was looking for the ultimate spiritual experience. What form that was going to take, when it was going to happen, and how we were going to go about it, I didn't have a clue."

"I distinctly remember experiencing it for the very first time... All of a sudden it just manifested itself. We all came as one, and I said, 'This is it!' In my mind I literally had to stop myself. I said, 'What is this higher source of energy that I am able to tap into now?' ... I was so liberated I just let go of myself, but it was very fleeting, almost like an introduction. It made its presence felt for a moment, and that was enough for me to be completely intrigued by it. I was totally mesmerized by the experience of this higher force. It was friendly, it was loving, it was great, and it wanted to help. It was a welcoming but overwhelming experience... The new experience was polymorphous... Sexuality dissolved. It just became energy. It wasn't particularly male or female."

"The music was becoming more electronic, more beat-driven, and more tribal. That definitely had something to do with the change. It allowed your mind to travel. If you don't have vocals to anchor you to the dance floor it's easier for your mind to go to a different place."

"Drugs made it easier for you to lose your inhibitions and to become less aware of your immediate surroundings... I don't think it had much to do with what drug you had done or how much of it you had done. The main thing was that you had done something... to remove yourself from everyday reality and travel to a different realm, or at least to be open to that possibility. If other people were high then you could tap into this source and make it a shared experience. It could be enjoyed as much by someone who did very few drugs or a lot of drugs."

-Jorge La Torre, quotes taken from Love Saves The Day

Sounds familiar.

2010-09-29T16:45:00.007-10:00

"The organizers of the downtown party network also looked on in dismay at the disfigurement of a culture they had once claimed as their own ... they were effectively powerless to intervene, lacking the infinite finances and the critical mass that would have been required to shape these new venues in their own image. Not that a massive amount of money and a captive audience of millions would have made much difference given that their organizing principles ... meant that they would always spread more slowly than their less discerning competitors. Then there was the obscure yet persistent problem of political isolation ... New York's most radical and visionary party people were operating in an ideological vaccuum, thanks to the fact that politicians and union leaders were not exactly open to the field of progressive pleasure ... 'That ... moneymaking attitude contributed to the demise of disco.' "

-Tim Lawrence, Love Saves The Day

"I knew that if it became more commercial this positive statement that I was trying to make would be harder to maintain. I didn't decide to stay in because it was awful outside but because I knew what I wanted to do. Change comes from within."

-David Mancuso, Love Saves The Day

==

So as you might guess I have been reading from this book a lot lately. And I can't help but notice how many parallels can be drawn between what happened then and what is happening now. Some of it is reassuring, but some of it, particularly the above quote, leaves me feeling dismal about the whole process that occurs whenever art join hands with business. Is every major art form doomed to experience a beautiful golden age before it spreads too quickly across a massive population, facilitated by those who are eager to market it, serve "consumers" with what is "next", and in turn make more money than they need? The source of the problem seems to be to be fundamental. When entering into a business venture, we expect and do anything we can to achieve profit, and steady growth. Unfortunately the world does not work like that, so we are left with a mass of distortion. This phenomenon will clearly continue to accelerate, due to the internet and the progression of global communication and connectivity.

There is a clear distinction that must be made between two angles. First, the natural dissemination and progression of a manifestation of culture, one who shares something beautiful with others for its own sake. On the other hand, a speedy expansion and over-saturation of something "next" that is viewed as a means to provide a "product" to a faceless consumer, and in the end, profit. The difference is between making enough, and more than you need. Unfortunately, this is the reality that we live in, and apparently these are two poles in the same spectrum. I suppose the difference comes down to each and every individual. Do you have dollar signs in your eyes? If not, then what is the alternative? Hearts? Gifts? Love? Maybe there isn't a symbol for it...

I realize that dissemination and variation is a natural and ever-present phenomenon. But it's undeniable that it is only us humans who attempt to put a price tag on its results, exploiting them, in turn stretching and reshaping them, in vain expectation of a constantly increasing payoff.

Is my entire reason for writing this, my dismay for the loss of true quality in the midst of marketable or "good enough" quality, an inevitable result of a capitalism? I'm afraid so.

Boom

2010-09-29T14:54:00.004-10:00

"Note by note, beat by beat, the music becomes more intense and rhythmic until everyone and everything is drawn into a dizzying display of movement. The source of the music, however, remains a mystery: party host David Mancuso is placing records on his AR turntables but his inspiration comes from the dancers, who in turn are inspired by the music. The messages are untraceably complex - no physicist could hope to calculate the unfolding relations of energy, force, and motion - but the communication is unmistakable."

"In Mancuso's terms, a 'third ear' - the aural equivalent of the all-seeing 'third eye' - had started to beat, directing the path of both the music selector and the crowd according to sonic trajectories that had acquired a supernatural momentum. 'There was neither the DJ nor the dancer. Someone would approach me to play a record and I would already have it in my hand or it would already be on the turntable. We would look at each other in recognition. It got very psychic because we knew we were following a sonic trail.' The path manifested itself with a bewildering kinetic energy. 'When a plane takes off there's a moment when the pilot decides that the speed is right, he pulls back and - boom! - you leave the ground. The party was like that. There was a point at which it just went up. It didn't happen right away. It took time. But it happened.' The experience was enlightening. 'Om is the source of all sound ... and I felt as though we had returned h-om-e. It was very childlike, very peaceful, very liberating ... Music helped us reach that place. Music was the key to get back h-om-e.' "

-David Mancuso from Love Saves The Day by Tim Lawrence

Black Noise

2010-09-21T08:12:00.002-10:00

Lately I've been re-appreciating how beautiful this album is! And you can still listen to it for free here.

"For music is always already there, even without humans. Music slumbers in all matter; any sound, even silence, is already music. The mission, then, must be to render audible what is unheard and unheard of: black noise, a frequency that is inaudible to man. Black noise often presages natural disasters, earthquakes or floods; only some animals perceive this 'calm before the storm.' Black noise is something archaic and earthy."
-Aram Lintzel

Many Faces

2010-09-21T07:15:00.002-10:00

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."

-Shakespeare, As You Like It

Recycled

2010-09-21T07:06:00.004-10:00

We wanted to blast the world free of history.... picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course. You'll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We'll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what's left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against the bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.

"Imagine," Tyler said, "stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you'll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you'll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles."

~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 16

"Axis" on BBC Radio 1 with amazing Shackleton mix, Sub.FM archive

2010-08-27T05:31:00.003-10:00

Massive respect to Mary Anne Hobbs for playing my tune "Axis". I'm floored! The whole show was amazing... Shackleton's mix was mind-melting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tgxh0

You can listen back for the next week with that link... and I'll replace it with an archive recording after that. dope!

Also, check the archive of myself and Nihal Ramchandani going b2b on a dub/tech/step tip on Sub.FM right before the show.

http://archive.subfm.com/Incyde_b2b_Nihal_25_Aug_2010_Sub_FM.mp3

Axis

2010-07-27T05:48:00.002-10:00

Here's a new tune I finished up...
Axis by incyde

Incyde on Sub.FM 7/26/2010 archive

2010-07-27T05:48:00.001-10:00

Incyde - special cover show 26 Jul 2010

http://archive.subfm.com/Incyde_26_Jul_2010_Sub_FM.mp3

tracklist:
01. Peverelist - Gather - Punch Drunk
02. Shed - Keep Time - Ostgut Ton
03. Actress - Wrong Potion - Honest Jon's
04. dBridge - ZX81 (Ramadanman Remix) - Exit
05. Sbtrkt - When Doves Cry
06. VVV - 3804dr
07. FaltyDL - I'ma show you somethin
08. DJ Abstract - Physical Force
09. Nocturnal Sunshine - Broke
10. Crystal Fighters - In The Summer (Sepalcure Dub)
11. Eleven Tigers - Stood Up - Soul Motive
12. FaltyDL - Because You - Planet Mu
13. Mosca - Gold Bricks, I See You - Fabric
14. F - Slowdown
15. Ramadanman - Fall Short - Swamp81
16. Coki - Officer - DMZ
17. Scuba - Plate - Hotflush
18. Skream - Dark Light - Freeizm
19. XI - The Ghost (Headhunter remix) - Orca
20. XI - Vampires
21. Eleven Tigers - Flux - Soul Motive
22. Eleven Tigers - Atomic Turnip - Soul Motive
23. Peverelist - Erstwhile Riddim - Punch Drunk
24. Horsepower Productions - Sholay (Epic Mix) - Tempa
25. Peverelist - Clunk Click Every Trip - Punch Drunk
26. Incyde - Station
27. FaltyDL - Hard part 2
28. FaltyDL - Power Lost

Quote

2010-07-26T04:23:00.000-10:00

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

- Robert Frost

Yes

2010-07-13T11:11:00.001-10:00

Flying Lotus feat. Thundercat - Mmmhmmmmm

Noises

2010-07-09T10:53:00.003-10:00

"... I got addicted to making noises. That was the buzz for me. At that point, I'd never really listened to music. Most people get into music and then decide they want to make it, but I started making sounds, and only later got interested in listening to other people's stuff. I didn't really listen to my own stuff, either, I just liked making it, making new stuff constantly."

"When I was little, I decided sleep was a waste of your life. If you lived to be 100, but you didn't sleep, it'd be like living to 200. But , originally, it wasn't for more time to make music, it was just that I thought sleep was a bit of a con. I'd always been able to get away with four hours a night, but I tried to narrow it down to two. And you do get used to it. I reckon it'd take you three weeks to whittle down from eight hours to two. But it's fucking excellent, not sleeping, you really should try it. It’s sort of nice and not-nice at the same time. Your mind starts getting scatty, like you’re senile. You do unpredictable things, like making tea but pouring it in a cereal bowl."

"It's weird, cos it's hard to say why one track is good where the others are shit. You could make a great record or a shit record using the same riffs, it's all in the production and the mixing."

"Richard James is polite and far from laconic throughout, but it's clear that being interrogated is a chore, a distraction from the only thing he truly cares about: the moment of creation. As for the rest, he says repeatedly: 'I just don't give a shit'."

- Richard D James, taken from this Simon Reynolds interview from 1993

Amazing.

The Bunker

2010-07-02T13:05:00.006-10:00

In Passing

2010-06-23T15:04:00.009-10:00

Where to begin. It's been ages since I've written much... mostly because I haven't felt confident in language's ability to express truth. But alas, we must try. Now is the time.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the universal love energy, how it expresses itself in the world, and most prevalently, how it transfers between us living, impermanent, transient beings.

Love has its own path, its own self-organizing method. Love flows through us. It is greater and more powerful than us. That said, it is our responsibility to let it take its course. The best thing we can ever do is trust in it. When we resist love, and resist change, ultimately we suffer.

Love takes a myriad of forms. Sometimes it is clear and obvious, others it disguises itself in ways that hardly anyone can recognize. But at root, love abounds.

Love is what gives us life. In order to live, we must love ourselves, first and foremost, and we must also love our fellow beings, and feel their expressions of love too. Love must be shared, and it grows and multiplies with its transference.

I have always made a constant effort to show my love for all beings, living and inanimate. But given a recent event I fear I have failed in some regard in this. A dear friend has passed, one who once was very close to me but who I let drift away, because of a mistake that I couldn't bring myself to fully forgive him for. Now he is gone, and I can't help but feel that I could have helped him if I hadn't resisted the force of love. It saddens me deeply to see him gone, and to know that we will never see him again as Josh Marshall. I fear that he did not love himself, and that he didn't know how much he was loved. It is tragic, and the only solace is the knowledge that he is at peace now. His energy will be recycled, it will stay alive in us, the people whose lives he affected, and who affected him. It will change us in ways that we will never fully comprehend.

This is what I mean about energy transfer. If a troubled friend passes away, his energy must also pass on. We will have our memories of him, but most importantly, we have his true spirit living in us now. If we nurture it, the energy melds with ours, and we will never be the same. We must become better lovers, and thus better livers. We must be stronger, and we must be closer. It is the natural balance of the universe. This is what has been happening for billions of years, and will continue to happen for billions more. It is what makes the world what it is today.

I believe this is the best way we can define time: in passing. How does the world change, how does it gradually become closer to itself, more aware of its interconnectedness and interdependence on itself, despite matter's continuous spatial expansion? In the passing of what we call time. I often wonder what the final result is. At the beginning, all was identical, a pure infinite weight packed into a space smaller than a single atom. At the end, will we reach that again? Will the unifying force of love that everything is made of finally find itself again in ultimate, singular peace? If it did, it would be beautiful. But we won't know. Fortunately, not knowing is beautiful too. All we can do is trust in the force of love, let it continue to be us, shape us, drive, teach, and guide us to wherever we are heading.

What we must do is feel it, and express it as truly as possible. For me, this is best done with music. When we dance together, we feel love. It is the ultimate energy transfer. And I know that is what he would want us to do.

Two new tunes

2010-06-23T15:02:00.002-10:00

En Passant, dedicated to Josh Skunk (RIP):
En Passant by incyde
Stares:
Stares by incyde

REVIEW: Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma [Warp Records]

2010-05-24T12:20:00.003-10:00

Here is my review of Flying Lotus' new album Cosmogramma on Warp Records, written for Big Up Magazine's Issue 7.

===

Flying Lotus // Cosmogramma // Warp Records

Flying Lotus returns on the mighty Warp Records with his second full-length, Cosmogramma, undoubtedly his strongest and most original work yet. From the first second of the record, it immediately grabs you by the shoulders and like the force of gravity, you plummet into his world with an intense sixty seconds of electro-acoustic hybrid mash, quickly followed by a two minute jam-out of fractured drum & bass and fretted bass noodlings. The third track shoves you even further, pummeling your ears with an ascending fat bass pulse, chopped-up drums and spacious strings. Try to think of this as your (dis-)orientation, clearly intended to knock you off your conventional shoes and prepare you for what’s to come, as it should have.

At track four, you’re plunged into a beatless space, carried forth by celestial violins and cascading harps, cueing the album’s actual beginning. It kicks off into a series of bass-heavy hip-hop machinations, showing us the Flying Lotus that we’ve come to know so well. Its highlights are “Computer Face//Pure Being”, a phantasmagorical derivation of bitted Nintendo music, seamlessly traversing into the 4/4 roller, “And The World Laughs With You”, caressed by the soothing vocals of Thom Yorke, growing progressively glitched-out as it putters along. Other standout tracks are “Mmmhmm” featuring the tranquil lyricism of Thundercat, and “Satellliiiiteee”, a crunked-out opus with pitch-shifted Lil Wayne-style vocals.

What’s really impressive about this album is not only how Steven Ellison has further perfected his signature sound electronically with mysterious synthesis and sampling, but has also enhanced it with organic flavors such as fusions of jazz saxophone and guitar, as well as original vocalists. The result clouds the contour between electronic and traditional acoustic music, begging you simply to simply let your brain absorb it, without a thought of “what” or “how”. This is a true sign of an accomplished musician. It doesn’t seek to elude classification, but effortlessly does so of itself. A great example of this is “Do The Astral Plane”, a somewhat house-like track beginning with straight up scat-talk, a spirited square-wave bassline, and a vivid string arrangement.

Flying Lotus’ tracks are enriched by sounds that can’t even be described; soft layers that don’t grab your attention, but you hear only when you’re blasting it loud and listening closely, almost playing tricks on your mind. The energy flow of this record is rather irregular too, beginning at full throttle, and progressing downwards, as if you’ve taken a toke of some amazing substance and are listening to the soundtrack of it being gradually processed by your receptors until you return to waking reality. The only problem is the album feels too short; each track leaving you wishing it had lasted a little longer. Still, that’s the beauty of being able to experience it all over again, and perhaps encounter something that you hadn’t before.

-Alex Incyde

===

Buy it HERE.

Quote from Stephen Hitchell (of Echospace)

2010-05-18T11:22:00.006-10:00

Taken from this interview...

"We don’t think very much. That’s the beauty of music, or the beauty of art, once you walk into the studio you turn off all the thought process. I think that if you have preconceived ideas or preconceived notions it changes the direction of what’s naturally meant to take place, I think that’s the beauty of art in itself."

Quote from Mala

2010-05-18T10:22:00.002-10:00

From this interview in FACT Magazine...

"For me, releasing music isn’t the most important thing; it’s the process, it’s about being there in the studio building tunes, it’s not the end product but how you get there, and even if you don’t get there it doesn’t really matter because… well it’s just about doing, isn’t it? For me it’s just about doing."

Music Curation vs Music Criticism

2010-05-18T10:20:00.002-10:00

From this article in Wired magazine...

2) Music curation vs. music criticism

In the old days all music fans actually had to pay for albums, which meant they had to be careful with their choices. They turned to people called “music critics,” which publications hired to help guide purchasing decisions, because there was no way to find out how something sounded on your own unless you stumbled across it on the radio or stood in line at record stores that allowed free previews on headphones.

Today, you can discover in seconds how nearly any band in the world sounds, assuming it wants to be heard, on YouTube, MySpace, Spotify, The Pirate Bay and other services. At that point, the role of the music critic shrinks considerably and becomes more about curation than criticism.

The fact that your favorite MP3 blog mentions something at all is more important than what they say about it, because you can then download or stream the song and decide for yourself.

Next DUB WAR - 5/21 with Headhunter, Sepalcure, Spatial

2010-05-18T07:05:00.001-10:00

Friday, April 16th
DUB WAR NYC
featuring HEADHUNTER aka ADDISON GROOVE (tempa, swamp81) + SEPALCURE (hotflush) + SPATIAL (infrasonics)

The mighty Headhunter makes his return to Dub War. A Bristolian veteran of the dubstep scene, he has consistently proven himself to be a pioneer with his tech-infused liquid bass. After dropping numerous 12"s, remixing Modeselektor and a putting out full-length album on the foundational Tempa label, 2010 has seen him rocking the world with his ghetto-juke bass mutations like the massively infectious "Footcrab" anthem under his new Addison Groove alias.

Dub War also welcomes a live set from the Brooklyn-based duo Sepalcure, just signed to the influential Hotflush label. A collaboration between Machinedrum (LuckyMe) and Praveen Sharma (Percussion Lab), their shared love for bass and 90s house acapellas has culminated into a unique blend of tribal dub, two-step and soulful rhythms.

Just added: SPATIAL of Infrasonics (London)

+ residents Joe Nice, Dave Q, Juakali and Incyde

http://www.myspace.com/dubstepheadhunter
http://www.myspace.com/sepalcure
http://www.myspace.com/spatialdubs

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 at the door before midnight / $15 after midnight
Advance tickets - $10 - TBC
21+ (bring ID)

Get on the Dub War mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/dubwarnyc?hl=en&pli=1
Follow Dub War on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DubWarNYC

Dub War promo mix for URB

2010-04-13T10:37:00.001-10:00

I made a promo mix for Dub War this friday featuring Geiom and FaltyDL...

http://www.urb.com/2010/04/13/dub-war-april-16th-in-nyc-exclusive-preview-mix-from-incyde/

01. Onra – Broken Language – All City

02. FaltyDL – Hard – dub

03. Sbtrkt – 2020 – Brainmath

04. Ike Release – Vagabond Saga – dub

05. Jus Wan – Coma Wall – dub

06. Sepalcure – Love Pressure – forthcoming Hotflush

07. Mount Kimbie – At Least (Instra:mental Remix) – forthcoming Hotflush

08. Incyde – Patter – dub

09. Sigha – Shapes – forthcoming Hotflush

10. Ramadanman – Glut – forthcoming Hemlock

11. VVV – Dorsai Irregulars – dub

12. Geiom & Dawntreader – Toscani – Double Science

13. FaltyDL – Because You – dub

14. Marco Bernardi – Mystery of Nazarus (2562 Remix) – Clone

15. DJG – Escape Pod – forthcoming Transistor

16. XI – Ghost – dub

17. Kloke – Meltdown – dub

18. DJG – Time Is The Fire – forthcoming Transistor

I really do mean to write.

2010-04-09T06:42:00.004-10:00

I really didn't mean for this blog to just be me posting various things about my DJ and review activities and such. Seems like just doing that would make it a diary or something. But no, this is a BLOG!

The last few months have been a period of internal growth, change, and reflection, which has taken up most of my time and effort generally, which probably explains the brief updates on this thing. Also because I prefer to spend my free time working on music and expressing myself aurally rather than verbally, and I think one should only write when they feel they have something worthwhile to say, with a healthy amount of confidence and conviction behind it.

Eventually this time will come for me, but for now, here is a groovy tune by Onra.

And a tune by me:
Whirligig by incyde

April 2010 Chart

2010-04-09T06:14:00.001-10:00

Just did a chart of my top 10 tracks for April 2010 on Resident Advisor. Check it out HERE...

my last two Sub.FM show archives

2010-04-08T08:28:00.004-10:00

Since the Sub.FM archive upload server has been down, here are my last two Sub.FM shows for download.

March 24 2010 - the deeper side of dubstep featuring tunes from DJG, Jus Wan, F, Scuba, etc

April 7 2010 - two hours of bass-heavy weird face-melting experimental beats and hip hop.

gettit.

as always, tune in live every other wednesday from 7-9pm EST, 12-2am GMT.

DUB WAR NYC 4/16 featuring Geiom and FaltyDL

2010-04-08T07:26:00.000-10:00

DUB WAR NYC
featuring GEIOM (berkane sol) + FALTY DL (planet mu, ramp, rush hour)

The Berkane Sol founder Geiom makes his debut at Dub War this month. His anthem "Reminiscin" saw remix treatment by scene heavyweights Skream, Kode 9, and Shackleton. He has since continued to push the envelope, exploring 2-step garage and house way before it was fashionable in dubstep. He introduced the world to Brackles, Shortstuff and Spamchop through his Berkane Sol label, and has continued to produce uncompromising new sounds and tempos under his new Hem alias.

Then the New Yorker Falty DL makes an overdue return to Dub War. Since playing his first ever live show at Dub War last year, he has released an album and an ep on Planet Mu, seminal 12"s on Ramp and Rush Hour, and has found himself in demand around the world for his unique take on UK garage, jackin house, and IDM.

+ residents Joe Nice, Dave Q, Juakali and Incyde hold down the fort this month.

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

I'm coming to Chicago

2010-04-08T07:06:00.004-10:00

From Little White Earbuds:

Chicago, have we got a treat for you: On Thursday, April 22nd, Little White Earbuds, Abstract Science and Fresh Kid will welcome supreme DJ, producer and Hotflush impresario Alex Incyde for the latest edition of Subfix at Smart Bar. With outstanding support from Timid, Jeff Pietro and Olin, this is a night of bass music to be felt and remembered. It goes down at Smart Bar (3730 N Clark Ave) from 10pm-4am and costs $8 or $5 if you sign up for Smart Bar’s text message alerts. Hope to see you there!

Looking forward to this!! Extra special thanks to Mica @ LWE for hooking it up.

MIX: Incyde live at Dub War Feb 2010 w/ Juakali

2010-04-05T05:45:00.002-10:00

Live recording from the booth at Dub War 2/19/2010, a classic Incyde opening set. Juakali on the mic.

Incyde @ Dub War NYC 02.19.2010 w/ Juakali by incyde

East Village Radio tonight!

2010-04-01T10:17:00.004-10:00

I've been asked to do a guest set on the mighty East Village Radio tonight.... tune in from 10pm-Midnight for my top class selections, alongside host DJ Still Life.

Tune in here: http://www.eastvillageradio.com

Here are the details:

Alex Incyde has his hands in so many aspects of bass culture it's tough to keep track of it all. While he's most visible as a resident at NYC's influential dubstep institution Dub War, he's also busy managing Hotflush Recordings and acting as publicist for Surefire, the premiere dubstep booking agency. In other words, he’s immersed — and that’s a good look for EVR listeners…

This week, Alex will be taking over the decks on Worldwide Smash to give you a look at what's shaping up on the horizons of bass culture. He always comes strapped with dub plates, exclusives and unreleased joints, so listen carefully — he's likely to give you a first-taste of some records you'll be hearing a lot more of down the line.

Extrasolar

2010-03-19T06:56:00.002-10:00

Dub War 3/19 featuring Shortstuff and XI

2010-03-12T19:11:00.002-10:00

Friday, March 19, 2010
DUB WAR
w/ SHORTSTUFF + XI

flyer by ashes57

All the way from the UK, the Blunted Robots co-conspirator (along with Brackles and Martin Kemp), and all-around hard-jackin badboy DJ Shortstuff makes his Dub War debut. His signature blend of dubstep, grime, funky, breakbeat and progressive trance (joking) have found fans worldwide, and his skills behind the decks have turned heads. Check his XLR8R mix and releases on Ramp, Berkane Sol, Punch Drunk, and his own Blunted Robots label.

He's joined by Toronto's finest, XI, whose production talents are becoming favorites of savvy dubsteppers. Still criminally under-recognized, watch out for him making waves this year.

Friday, March 19 2010
Dub War featuring Shortstuff (Blunted Robots, Berkane Sol, Punch Drunk, Ramp) + XI (Immerse, Lo Dubs)
+ Joe Nice, Dave Q, Incyde

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

Cassette NYC - 3/20 at 319 Scholes

2010-03-09T11:16:00.004-10:00

Sub.FM archive 02.24.2010 vinyl spesh

2010-03-03T13:27:00.002-10:00

Here is my Sub.FM archived show from last week... 100% vinyl... lots of gems from 2006-2008.

http://archive.sub.fm/Incyde24Feb2010SubFM.mp3

get in there!!

VIDEO: Scuba - Before

2010-03-03T08:46:00.004-10:00

Here is the music video for "Before" from Scuba's new album Triangulation.

It's the first original music video we've ever done on the label... pretty sweet!

Scuba - 'Before' from FACT Magazine on Vimeo.

Out to Sam Geer the videographer!

VIDEO: Shackleton live at Dub War, NYC 2/19

2010-03-01T12:25:00.003-10:00

Deeeeeeep

Efterklang - Modern Drift

2010-02-22T17:35:00.001-10:00

new free track from one of my favorite non-electronic artists, Efterklang.

DUB WAR this friday with Shackleton, Eskmo & Eprom

2010-02-17T09:27:00.003-10:00

This friday.... make sure you come early for two reasons: a) it's going to fill up quick, and b) I am doing a two hour opening set!!!

Dub War returns from last month's roadblock to deliver a wicked concoction of three of underground bass music's evil geniuses.

Skull Disco mastermind Shackleton returns to Dub War for a rare appearance Stateside. In the 3 years since he first appeared at Dub War, Shackleton has transcended his UK dubstep roots to reach deeper into the soul of Berlin's techno scene. In the process he has transformed his live set into a uniquely mesmerizing voodoo science.

Two San Francisco producers - Eskmo and Eprom - make their Dub War debut as they celebrate a split 12" release on the mighty Warp Records.

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

Get on the Dub War mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/dubwarnyc?hl=en&pli=1
Follow Dub War on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DubWarNYC

VIDEO: Sepalcure - Feeling That I Know So Well

2010-02-17T08:52:00.003-10:00

NYC's own Sepalcure is one to watch... a collaborative project between Machine Drum and Praveen Sharma of Percussion Lab, they just rocked it hard at last weekend's UNSOUND festival. This video was made by Sougwen Chung.

Sepalcure - Feeling That I Know So Well from sougwen on Vimeo.

Dave Q - Dub War interview on Percussion Lab

2010-02-17T08:09:00.004-10:00

Check this interview on Percussion Lab Radio, Praveen Sharma sits down with Dave Q for a little fireside chat about dubstep, bass music and the origins of Dub War in NYC.

Dave Q Interview by percussionlab

Sub.FM archive 02/10/2010 with Nihal

2010-02-17T08:04:00.002-10:00

Here's the archive from last week's Sub.FM show, featuring Houston transplant Nihal Ramchandani. Expect deep tech vibes and dubby rollers all night! Great show.

http://archive.sub.fm/IncydefeatNihal10Feb2010SubFM.mp3

VIDEO: Mario Basanov & Vidis feat. Jazzu - I'll Be Gone

2010-02-05T11:55:00.002-10:00

This is pretty awesome. Thanks to Kendra for finding this tasty eye candy.

I'll be gone from KORB on Vimeo.

Dub War Podcast 11 - Incyde

2010-02-02T08:44:00.002-10:00

Dub War Podcast 11 - Incyde
Download

Dub War's latest podcast comes from Dub War resident and Hotflush coconspirator Alex Incyde. Those of you who follow his show on Sub FM or have caught his DJ sets know to expect a techy concoction that can be experimental one minute and banging the next. Look for lots of unreleased material from up and coming producers including New York artists like FaltyDL, Sepalcure, and Badawi.

Download and subscribe through iTunes:
http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=262435766

Or direct via RSS:
http://www.dubwarnyc.com/podcast/dubwar_podcast.rss

Enjoy!

Tracklisting:
01. Dopplereffekt - Calabi Yau Manifold [Rephlex]
02. Al Tourettes - The Next Meal [forthcoming If Symptoms Persist]
03. Asusu - No Kya [dub]
04. XI - Slippin [forthcoming Immerse]
05. Pangaea - Neurons [Hessle Audio]
06. F - Forever [forthcoming 7EVEN]
07. Scuba - Three Sided Shape [forthcoming Hotflush]
08. Ben Verse - Inhale [forthcoming Wheel&Deal]
09. F - Spacewalker [forthcoming 7EVEN]
10. FaltyDL - Body Down Mark [dub]
11. Sepalcure - Down [dub]
12. XI - Superwhatever (Incyde VIP) [dub]
13. Incyde - Station [dub]
14. Djunya - On The Verge [dub]
15. Al Tourettes - When I Rest, I Rust [forthcoming If Symptoms Persist]
16. Badawi - Lost Highway (Headhunter Remix) [forthcoming The Index]
17. Distance - Beyond [forthcoming Chestplate]
18. Ben Verse - Flip The Coin [forthcoming Wheel&Deal]
19. Seven & Elvee - Breakdown [forthcoming Wheel&Deal]
20. Compound One - Perhaps The Darkness [Compound One]
21. F - Funk Injection [forthcoming 7EVEN]
22. EPROM - Never [forthcoming Surefire Sound]
23. Scuba - You Got Me [forthcoming Hotflush]
24. Peverelist - Clunk Click Every Trip [Punch Drunk]
25. Dopplereffekt - Compactification [Rephlex]

REVIEW: F - Energy Distortion / Untold Remix [7EVEN]

2010-02-01T10:41:00.004-10:00

And here is my review of F's "Energy Distortion" album sampler for Big Up Magazine, with an Untold remix on the flip, out on 7EVEN Recordings. I must say that since writing this review, I've grown to favor the Untold mix much more than before. But it's already been printed, so whatever.

==

F / Untold - Energy Distortion (Album Sampler Part 1) [7EVEN Recordings] (12")

Another quality release from the 7EVEN camp out of France. This one is built by my favorite of the crew: the producer simply known as F, backed with a great remix by the man of 2009 – Untold. If you haven’t heard anything from this label yet, I highly recommend doing so NOW. 7EVEN has released some brilliant techno-dubstep crossover material by the likes of F and Helixir over the last year, for fans of Headhunter and 2562.

“Energy Distortion” may be the best one on the label yet – and I have to say, despite my expectations when receiving the promo, the original is the real killer. Relentlessly throwing shuffling, syncopated rhythms to your face while spraying you with beeps, bloops, and warm filter mods from the very start, once it fully drops in, it’s all over. Not literally… but if you don’t lose your s&!t at that point, maybe you’re not paying attention. I’m not kidding, you’ll want to check your pants. It’s a delight to the ear from start to finish, whether at home or on the dancefloor, but subwoofers are highly recommended for maximum effect.

On the flip, Untold takes the tempo down a bit, with a slightly more meditative version, which is a welcome surprise given the near-silliness of his recent releases. It’s still got his characteristic sound – fat, subby percussion underneath, complemented with imaginative re-workings of F’s musical textures. It’s not quite what you’d expect of an Untold remix, but it totally works in its own right.

- Alex Incyde

==

Buy it HERE.

REVIEW: Asusu - Small Hours / Taurean [PSQ001]

2010-02-01T10:30:00.004-10:00

Below is my review of the new single from Asusu on Project Squared, taken from the new issue of Big Up Magazine.

==

Asusu - Small Hours / Taurean [Project Squared] (12")

Here’s a brand new label focusing on dubstep’s mutated evolutions. Kicking it off on the first release is Asusu, bringing some quality production to the fore, taking bits and pieces from techno, breakbeat, and garage, then reformulating it into a wonderfully deep, yet upbeat and tasty pair of tracks, for fans of Scuba, Jus Wan, and Spatial.

“Small Hours” is a warm roller, utilizing skipping hi hats, a subalicious kick and punchy snare to deliver the goods in full force, served over a bed of sub-bass, laying the foundation for its dubbed-out synth lines dancing about over the top. The melodies are pleasing to the ear and complement each other perfectly, enticing you to just close your eyes and bob your head. It stays interesting throughout, not falling victim to the standard “copy and paste” technique after the breakdown, instead making subtle changes and shifts between the sonic layers.

On the flipside, “Taurean” is on a similar tip but errs more toward the UK garage side of things, especially in the drums. The synth lines are delicious, and carry the flow throughout with just enough variation, a bit reminiscent of Untold’s “I Can’t Stop This Feeling” and “Sweat”. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a rip-off, but you can hear the influences clearly.

Overall a very strong release, with two carefully crafted tracks that are well paired, like two leaves coming from the same branch of the tree. Out in December on Project Squared, this is definitely a label to watch out for in 2010.

- Alex Incyde

==

Buy it HERE.

Sub.FM archive 01.27.2010 with Dave Q

2010-02-01T07:32:00.001-10:00

Here's the archive from last week's Sub.FM show. Brooklyn stylie with Dave Q from the Chocolate Factory.

http://archive.sub.fm/IncydeDaveQ27Jan2009SubFM.mp3

Juicyfruit!

Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise

2010-02-01T07:30:00.005-10:00

Loving this today.

Pretty interesting promotional technique, as well. I guess they're not that worried about people just recording the whole stream...?

VIDEO: Dub War w/ Instra:mental and Vaccine - Jan 2010

2010-01-18T11:20:00.000-10:00

Here's the video from friday... off the hook!

Sub.FM archive first show of 2010!

2010-01-17T13:41:00.003-10:00

Here's the recording from my first show of 2010... 2 hours of straight sliced beets... FaltyDL and MC Andrea in the bizzle too.

http://archive.sub.fm/Incyde13Jan2009SubFM.mp3

no tracklist for this one sorry!

till next time...

Chaos Theory

2010-01-11T13:11:00.002-10:00

"In Chaos Theory, forms emerge, dissolve, and reform through the creative process known as self-organization. These forms resonate with our spirit and foster a cultivate of connection. Healing originates in the chaotic consciousness and emerges as the process of creative self-organization. Chaos is ubiquitous in nature. It reveals in its own depths, hidden degrees of order and structure that resonate with the soul and reveal to us the basic forms and structures repeated throughout nature and throughout our nature. It underlies the fundamental laws of nature and natural processes, and implies a universe of evolution and constant re-creation. Structure arises in the moment and is in resonance with its environment. But in a universe of constant evolution each form eventually becomes dissonant as the evolving environment surrounding it changes.

Chaos Theory restores the balance to the entropic forces which lead to the decay and death of outworn systems. It is the means of creative self-organization which arises from the undifferentiated disorder that lurks within the processes of creation. Chaos holds infinite possibilities of new form, and these forms are eventually revealed and emerge from chaos as new structure. This also applies to consciousness dynamics, such as thought, spontaneous behavior and creativity. Reality is neither structure nor chaos, but a process in which structure and chaos dance between form and formlessness. This is the eternal cycle of death and renewal, the dance of Shiva.

Emergence is a process by which order appears “spontaneously” within a system. When the mind lets go of its rational order and enters into unstructured chaos, it emerges later with a new structure or form. Since order arises spontaneously from disorder through self-organization, healing is an ever-present potential."

-Lori Gardi

Tunes to ride a spaceship to

2010-01-08T14:16:00.013-10:00

Thought I would share some of the tracks that I've been listening to a LOT over the last few weeks. I go through a ton of music every day, so I think it's always interesting to see which ones cut thru the rest, time and time again!

1. Mike Slott - 40 Winx

Download for free from XLR8R

Just blissful trippy hip hop. Every time i listen to it it's like taking a breath of fresh mountain air, rolling thru clouds.... The whole new album is awesome too.....

2. Mala - Level Nine

Pure outer space dubby brilliance here. Words don't do much justice so I won't bother... but this one always makes me feel transported... like i'm not in the same place I was at the beginning of the tune. buy here...

3. Millie & Andrea - Spectral Source / Ever Since You Came Down
Millie & Andrea - Spectral Source / Ever Since You Came Down by modernlove

I personally like Spectral Source more, the ceaseless pulsing of warm goodness is irresistible.... but the flipside is nearly equally awesome, taking things a bit ravey and old school in the best way. Buy it here..

4. Instra:mental - Forbidden

Just can't get enough of this one. Their other non-traditional tunes lately like Watching You and Leave It All Behind are great too in their own way, but this one drives me straight thru to my chest. Reminiscent of techno sounds... perfectly placed in those mysterious pockets! Buy it here... oh and don't forget they are playing their debut US performance next week at Dub War NYC. I can't F'ing wait.

5. Peverelist - Clunk Click, Every Trip

Tune is deep as funk. clicklickliclcicklciclick every trippppppp just listen! its a journey.

From his album JARVIK MINDSTATE buy it here...

6. Kraftwerk - Tour De France

Come on. An oldie but a goodie. Listening to this tune kinda makes me feel like I just brushed my teeth.

==

I can't help but notice a common thread in all of these tunes. Zooming through outer space or something.... ZOOOOOOOOOOM!

well that's it... this was fun.

This is what our genome looks like

2010-01-08T13:30:00.004-10:00

next Dub War - Jan 15th with Instra:mental & Vaccine

2010-01-05T10:32:00.003-10:00

The first Dub War party of 2010 kicks the new decade off with next-level sounds. First we present the US debut of INSTRA:MENTAL, well known for their tasty drum & bass productions over the years, but more recently their forays into dubstep and experimental bass music, via their popular Club Autonomic podcasts, and releases on such labels as Apple Pips and their new imprint NonPlus+. To top it off, we're also proud to welcome San Diego's CHRISTINE VACCINE for her first East Coast performance... over the past few years she's been in the studio writing gorgeous bass music for labels like Hotflush and Offshore, and recently she's been crafting faster tempo productions and has just announced a 12" release on NonPlus+. This will be her second live performance EVER so be sure not to miss this opportunity.

Friday, January 15, 2010
DUB WAR NYC

featuring
INSTRA:MENTAL (NonPlus+, Applepips)
VACCINE (Hotflush, Offshore, NonPlus+)
+ Joe Nice, Dave Q, Incyde

http://www.myspace.com/instramentaluk
http://www.myspace.com/vaccinedub

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

RSVP on facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=264719587728&ref=mf

Electricity

2010-01-05T09:14:00.003-10:00

by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

More here.

Arabesque

2010-01-03T12:42:00.001-10:00

"The conventional duality of subject and object, knower and known, feeler and feeling, is changed into a polarity: the knower and the known become the poles, terms, or phases of a single event which happens, not to me or from me, but of itself. The experiencer and the experience become a single, ever-changing, self-forming process, complete and fulfilled at every moment of its unfolding, and of infinite complexity and subtlety. It is like, not watching, but being, a coiling arabesque of smoke patterns in the air, or of ink dropped in water, or of a dancing snake which seems to move from every part of its body at once."

-Alan Watts

Sub.FM archive 12.30.2009 with Dave Q

2010-01-03T09:57:00.005-10:00

hey hey

here is my last sub.fm show of the decade... live from the chocolate factory in brooklyn with Dave Q.

http://archive.sub.fm/IncydeandDaveQ30Dec2009SubFM.mp3

freshness across the board and some new incyde productions as well. wooop

Buddhabrot

2009-12-31T07:06:00.013-10:00

The following are images derived from the Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set is a complex plane showing the boundaries of this mathematical function:

z = z * z + c

It is named after Benoit Mandelbrot who first mapped it. Melinda Green discovered an alternate method of drawing the Mandelbrot set, where instead of selecting initial points on the real-complex plane one for each pixel, initial points are selected randomly from the image region. Then, each initial point is iterated using the standard Mandelbrot function in order to test whether it escapes or not. Only those that do exit are then re-iterated. The areas that remain are called "strange attractors", the hidden islands of stability that emerge from a chaotic system, but are not simply random, they appear to reveal a deeper pattern and structure. The resulting image from such a function was called a "Buddhabrot", first named by Lori Gardi.

I find it hard to classify such a discovery as a mere coincidence! It must be true that simple formulas when reiterated infinitely over a seemingly infinite space (i.e. the universe) can only result in the current configuration we are experiencing today. How else could it be that an image from such a simple function result in an image that so much resembles the form that has emerged from millions of years of evolution of life on Earth, not to mention billions of years of cosmic evolution before that? The form I am speaking of, of course, is that of the human form.

Such natural functions of course do not always result in human forms. Variations on these functions result in other images of pure beauty that we experience just as much in the depths of outer space as we do on our own planet.

"At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction." -Aldous Huxley

Some quotes on music

2009-12-24T10:39:00.004-10:00

"Dance music producers have a strange habit of mimicking other producers. When this happens, large bodies of available tracks lean to a particular style - leaving certain areas of creativity unexplored and ignored. To be able to discovers these voids, I think one has to have a wide perspective on what other artists are doing and more importantly, why they're doing it."

"Making music is an ongoing learning process. The more music one makes, the more chances there are to discover, so it doesn't compromise the artist's project at all. It’s the opposite."

"I think if DJs and producers begin to put more of themselves (not their machines/software) into their productions, try not to mimic and copy other people, adapt a mindset that any and everything is possible, we might have a chance of raising the level of the genre where new discoveries come more frequently than they have in the past decade."

"Producers could consider making music without the objective of releasing vinyl, CDs, sounds files -- maybe they could make music for the sole reason of learning on how to make it differently. If this truly catches on, I do believe we would begin to hear extraordinary work."

-Jeff Mills

Self-Orientation

2009-12-18T12:12:00.002-10:00

The Known Universe by The American Museum of Natural History

Watch this, I suggest in HD.

Sub.FM archive 2009.12.16!!!

2009-12-18T10:07:00.005-10:00

Here's my Sub.FM show from this week.... it was a really fun one so I even made up a tracklist. check it below.

Download (right click Save file as): http://archive.sub.fm/Incyde16Dec2009SubFM.mp3

Incyde - Sub.FM 16-Dec-09
01. Blue Daisy - Strings Detached - Blackacre
02. Mount Kimbie - Serged (FaltyDL remix) - dub
03. Cardopusher - It's Yesterday Already - forthcoming On The Edge
04. Martyn - Mega Drive Generation - Hyperdub
05. Sbtrkt - Rekorda - dub
06. Sines - Twitta Dat - dub
07. FaltyDL - I'm Gonna Show You Somethin - dub
08. Asusu - Taurean - Project Squared
09. Al Tourettes - She Shimmers - dub
10. F - Energy Distortion - forthcoming 7EVEN
11. Djunya & Headhunter - El Presidente - forthcoming Surefire Sound
12. Instra:mental - Forbidden - Apple Pips
13. Youngsta & Seven - Masaimara - Wheel & Deal
14. Verse - Flip The Coin - forthcoming Wheel & Deal
15. Ben Neill - Afterimage (Pinch Remix) - Thirsty Ear
16. DJ Shadow - Monosylabik - MCA
17. Seven & Elvee - Breakdown - forthcoming Wheel & Deal
18. DJG & XI - Putney Says - forthcoming Surefire Sound
19. Cardopusher - Taken For A Ride - forthcoming On The Edge
20. VVV - Flyaway (HxdB remix) - dub
21. Jus Wan - Noir - dub
22. Incyde - Patter - dub
23. Incyde - Pulsar - dub
24. Asusu - Small Hours - Project Squared
25. Incyde - Formation - dub
26. Daega Sound - 11C - dub
27. Guido - Chakra - Punch Drunk
28. Millie & Andrea - Temper Tantrum - Daphne
29. FaltyDL - Safe - dub
30. Untold - Bad Girls - forthcoming Fabric
31. LD - Shake It - Hyperdub
32. Mala - Level Nine - Hyperdub

DUB WAR w/ Sensational & Spectre, Badawi

2009-12-17T08:36:00.008-10:00

Ooops I forgot to post this. Dub War tomorrow night, New York Special!!

Friday, December 18 2009
DUB WAR NYC SPECIAL
feat Sensational + Spectre, Badawi

Dub War closes out an amazing year of future bass music by returning to our New York roots.

At the heart of the mighty Wordsound label, producer/DJ/label owner SPECTRE crafted some of the dankest, darkest, strangest hip hop rhythms ever produced during the Brooklyn label's mid-90s heyday. Drawing inspiration from producers like DJ Premier, RZA, and Evil Dee, Spectre reduced his productions down to the darkest and most minimal core.

These tunes proved to be the perfect vehicle for the one-of-a-kind verbal weirdness of MC SENSATIONAL. Formerly part of the Jungle Brothers, Sensational veered toward ever weirder and more experimental flows. But he always stayed close to the streets and has recently been making waves, appearing on the cover the The Wire magazine this month and releasing a record on the amazing Werk Records label in London.

Another New Yorker who helped paved the way for the current underground bass movement makes his return to Dub War this month. BADAWI has made waves recently, appearing with the Dub War crew on the Mary Anne Hobbs show on BBC Radio 1, getting remixed by Kode 9 and Shackleton, and offering up new original material for the new Index label launching early 2010. His work as part of Sub Dub in the early 90's, and solo albums like "Bedouin Soundclash featuring Honeychild" were way ahead of their time. Check his latest mix of new original productions for the Dub War Podcast: Download

Then the residents - Joe Nice, Dave Q + Incyde are going to bring the freshness as always!

Lineup:
SENSATIONAL + SPECTRE (Wordsound NYC)
BADAWI (The Index, Skull Disco, Agriculture, ROIR)
+ Joe Nice, Dave Q, Juakali, Incyde

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

Get on the Dub War mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/dubwarnyc?hl=en&pli=1
Join the Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22845052784
Follow Dub War NYC on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DubWarNYC

Trees

2009-12-13T11:16:00.005-10:00

Some wonderful tree images, showing the beauty of Li!

Sub.FM archive 2009.12.02

2009-12-04T09:22:00.004-10:00

Hey all

Here's my Sub.FM show from this week.... was a good one. tracklist may be coming.

http://archive.sub.fm/Incyde2Dec2009SubFM.mp3

til next time!

VIDEO: Dub War vs Swamp81

2009-11-28T05:02:00.005-10:00

Yo yo.... here's the video from last week's Dub War.... what an insane night. I gotta say it mustve been one of the best parties of the year..... big up everyone who played.. killer sets all around.. and to everyone who came out to get down on bass weight.

DUB WAR vs SWAMP81 w/ Loefah & Kryptic Minds:

See you next month..... Dec 18th.... mark it down!

Dub War vs Swamp81 this weekend!

2009-11-19T07:34:00.004-10:00

Dub War is this friday...

This month Dub War goes head to head with London's Swamp81 label. Headed up by one of dubstep's pioneers, LOEFAH (DMZ), his new label is responsible for bringing darkside disturbances back to the fore this year with the cerebral debut album from KRYPTIC MINDS entitled "One Of Us" this past summer, as well as a slew of exciting releases in the pipeline from The Bug, Skream, and Addison Groove. Both will be taking full advantage of Love's soundsystem with the finest in upfront bass-weight on Friday.

Also this month the NYC legend LIONDUB will be starting things off with a set of reggae, garage and other surprises. His Liondub International label has been making waves this year in the dubstep scene, as well as his anthem "Heartbroken" on Earwax Records featuring the vocals of Jah Dan Blakkamore. Working at Halcyon Records in Brooklyn he has quickly made the shop an essential stop for New Yorkers hunting for dubstep vinyl. It's an honor to have him at Dub War for the first time!

http://www.myspace.com/swamp81
http://www.myspace.com/loefah
http://www.myspace.com/krypticminds1

Location:
LOVE
179 Macdougal St, @ 8th St NYC
Subway: A,C,E,B,D,F,V to West 4th St

10pm - late
$10 advance tix and door before midnight / $15 after midnight
21+ (bring ID)
Buy advance tix at http://www.musicislove.net

Get on the Dub War mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/dubwarnyc?hl=en&pli=1
Follow Dub War on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DubWarNYC

==

TONIGHT, we're having the usual monthly warmup instore session at Halcyon Records in Dumbo. As always come hang out in the shop, hear some beats and bass in advance of tomorrow's Dub War party at Love, bring beer, and maybe even buy some vinyl!

Thursday 11/19, 5pm - 9pm in-store and broadcast live on dailysession.com.

DJs
Incyde, Liondub, Dave Q + guests

FREE
Location:
Halcyon Records
57 Pearl St
Dumbo, Brooklyn (York St on F train)
(718) 260-9299
BYOB!

Review: 2562 - Unbalance

2009-11-16T10:47:00.008-10:00

Here's my review of the new album from 2562, found in the new issue of Big Up Magazine, available in all good shops this month!

==

2562 - UNBALANCE [TECTONIC RECORDINGS]

2562 returns on the esteemed Tectonic label with his second long-player entitled Unbalance. No, it isn’t that there are too many producers in the world that they’re forced to use numerical monikers these days; 2562 is quite simply Dave Huismans’ post code at his home in The Hague, Netherlands. It’s proven to have been a perfect place for his style to nurture: one that resonates in a sonic universe where the galaxies of dubstep’s bass weight, techno’s pulsing hypnotic euphoria, and the fragmented rhythms of broken beat have collided into a unique shape where the whole is most definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Sonically it is soothing on the ears, pulsating with warm synthetic textures, rich bass, crisp Roland 909-style percussion, and shimmers of electronic pointillism. Oh, and did I mention it’s irresistibly danceable? Yes. It is.

A brilliant follow-up from his first album Aerial, this one immediately draws the listener in with a short introductory track to set the mood before launching into what I can best describe as the soundtrack to an interstellar tour to the edge of the cosmos and back again. Unbalance shows Huismans really hitting his stride in this second effort, resulting in a compelling, cohesive, yet diverse musical journey from start to finish. Its dynamic ascension from the album’s liftoff toward the high-octane vibrance of “Dinosaur” at track five, my personal favorite, is eclipsed by the sudden zero-gravity suspension of the title track, forming a distinct turning point from which it grooves in a futuristic tech-funk style, swelling and spiraling to the very end, gaining momentum with every turn.

2562 has managed to create a unique headspace with Unbalance that can only arise from seasoned talent and careful execution. The lively rhythmic core of each tune acts as a foundation to the drifting harmonic progressions and electronic dovetails that alight on your deeper mental chasms, while never losing its grasp on your primordial inclination to dance and move about through space.

Such a gathered result is impressive, considering it was composed in the midst of a US tour last year, and has also managed to overcome all of my reservations about its predecessor. The first LP had good elements but lacked delivery and unification, probably because many of the tunes had already been released as singles. In this valiant return, the looking glass has been finely polished, and should be met with great praise. Each track holds its own temperament, while serving its role in the overall voyage, like chapters in a novel, separated only by spatial perforation.

Unbalance is undoubtedly one of the finest results of recent genre cross-pollinations yet, showing absolute indifference for preconceived notions. It’s not quite dubstep, techno, funky, or broken beat, but a completely re-constructed, re-imagined, inspiring soundscape that can only be called 2562.

-Alex Incyde

BUY IT HERE

The Gateless Gate...

2009-11-15T21:15:00.004-10:00

"What they're doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence. They offer things to you, saying 'Look at this! Look at this!' and as your attention goes towards these objects you realise that what you're being shown is impossible. It's not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture, it's impossible to make these things."

-Terence McKenna

"Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large."

-Aldous Huxley

Hotflush Podcast 05 (Jus Wan)

2009-11-06T09:31:00.004-10:00

Hey yall

Definitely need to grab this!

Hotflush Podcast 05 is online today, mixed by San Francisco-based producer Jus Wan (Apple Pips / Naked Lunch), taking you through the freshest submersive sounds in low-end dance music, including productions from Jus Wan (obviously), Addison Groove, DJG, F, Von D, DFRNT, and much more.

Download it via the following links...

Hotflush Download: http://www.hotflushrecordings.com/download.html
Subscribe (iTunes): http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=322041639
Subscribe (RSS): http://www.hotflushrecordings.com/podcast/hotflush_podcast.rss
Download MP3: http://www.hotflushrecordings.com/podcast/hotflushpodcast_05_juswan.mp3

Incyde on Sub.FM 11.04.2009

2009-11-05T08:24:00.006-10:00

hey all

sorry not been updating much lately. ive been busy with tunes. more soon.

here is the archive from last night's Sub.FM show... i was very pleased with it... great reactions.

download: http://archive.sub.fm/Incyde4Nov2009SubFM.mp3

tracklist included too!

==

01. Claude Speeed - Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn - LuckyMe
02. Mike Slott - 23 Halfs - LuckyMe
03. FaltyDL - Must Sustain - Planet Mu
04. FaltyDL - Hip Love - forthcoming Ramp
05. Actress - Redit 124 - Werk
06. Scuba - Golden - Hotflush
07. A Made Up Sound - Rework - A Made Up Sound
08. 2562 - Lost - Tectonic
09. Incyde - Emerge - dub
10. Sigha - Hold Your Heart Up To The Light - forthcoming Hotflush
11. Jason Burns - Come On - dub
12. Scuba - Aesaunic - Hotflush
13. Incyde - Patter - dub
14. Al Tourettes - When I Rest, I Rust - dub
15. Martyn - Vancouver (2562s Puur Natuur Mix) - 3024
16. Jus Wan - Azure - forthcoming Pushing Red
17. Jus Wan - Align - dub
18. Non Person - Undefining Moment - forthcoming Channel Zero
19. DZ ft The Fix - Motor City - dub
20. Kryptic Minds - Generation Dub - Swamp81
21. Mr Lager - Tell Me ft Alys Be - SubFreq
22. Ben Neill - Afterimage (Pinch Remix) - Thirsty Ear
23. Dhyan Moller - Lost In 3s (DJG Remix) - dub
24. Scuba - Reverse - Hotflush
25. Incyde - Formation - dub
26. Al Tourettes - She Shimmers - dub
27. Samuel H. Simpson - Spronkle (F Remix) - dub
28. DJ Madd - Someone (Breakage Remix) - Black Box
29. Hyetal - Gold or Soul - Soul Motive
30. DJG - We Don't Go Home - dub
31. Pearson Sound - PLSN - Hessle Audio
32. F - Night Dive - forthcoming Transistor
33. Untold - No One Likes A Smart Arse - Hemlock
34. 2562 - Dinosaur - Tectonic

Incyde on Sub.FM 10.21.2009

2009-10-23T09:50:00.006-10:00

Here's this week's Sub.FM show for ya, and I even made a tracklist!

DOWNLOAD

01. Barrington Levy - Stray Away Girl
02. Scuba - Golden - forthcoming Hotflush
03. Wickeda - Ramadanman Remix - white label
04. Spectr - Red Hot - Hotflush
05. 2562 - Lost - Tectonic
06. Sigha - Hold Your Heart Up To The Light - forthcoming Hotflush Two
07. Dhyan Møller - Lost in 3s (DJG Mix)
08. Incyde - Emerge
09. 2562 - Flashback - Tectonic
10. Sigha - forthcoming ABUCS006
11. Spatial - 90807 - forthcoming Infrasonics
12. FaltyDL - Safe
13. Untold - I Can't Stop This Feeling (Pangaea remix) - forthcoming Hemlock
14. 2562 - Dinosaur - Tectonic
15. Scuba - Reverse - forthcoming Hotflush
16. Samuel H Simpson - Spronkle (F Remix)
17. FBOM - Erat (HxdB remix)
18. Headhunter & F - Dedale - forthcoming Transistor
19. 2562 - Narita - Tectonic
20. Incyde - Patter
21. Jus Wan - Align
22. Scuba - Aesaunic - forthcoming Hotflush
23. 2562 - Escape Velocity - Tectonic
24. F - Night Dive - forthcoming Transistor
25. DJ Madd - Someone (Breakage remix) - Black Box
26. Hyetal - Neon Speech - Soul Motive
27. DJG - We Don't Go Home
28. Pearson Sound - Gambetta - Soul Jazz
29. Cluekid - Shifty - forthcoming Earwax
30. Kryptic Minds - Chosen Few - Swamp81
31. DJG & Headhunter - Spacecake - forthcoming Wheel & Deal
32. Jus Wan - Azure
33. Autopilot - She Says (HxdB remix)
34. 2562 - Unbalance - Tectonic

Sigha - Rawww EP - Preview

2009-10-23T09:48:00.000-10:00

HFT010 - Sigha - Rawww EP
Release date: 23rd November 2009
Format: 12", Digital

A1. Rawww
B1. Hold Your Heart Up To The Light
B2. Untitled #2

Hotflush Two presents a 3-track EP from London-based producer Sigha. Developing his sound from his first two releases on Hotflush which circulated on the edge of dubstep, these tracks dive headlong into deep, dubbed out house and techno, soaked in sub bass.

Dub War featuring Brackles & Moldy (VIDEO)

2009-10-19T04:35:00.002-10:00

Was a totally crazy night... Brackles was off the chain, so was Moldy.

Big up seckle as always on the video skills!!

Dub War warmup tonight at Halcyon Records

2009-10-15T07:57:00.001-10:00

Tonight, we continue our monthly pre-Dub War warmup with an in-store
Blessup! session at Halcyon Records in Brooklyn, and broadcasting live
on dailysession.com.

Joe Nice, Moldy, Incyde, and Dave Q will be sharing the decks in
advance of tomorrow night's Dub War party at Love featuring the first
US appearance of DJ BRACKLES.

As always, it's a FREE event, and you're welcome to BRING BEER, hang
out, meetup with the Dub War faithful, and hopefully BUY VINYL at one
of the only shops in the city selling dubstep on vinyl.

BlessUp! Halcyon In-Store
6pm - 9pm
Halcyon Records
57 Pearl St, Dumbo (F train to York)
and broadcasting live on www.dailysession.com
BYOB

October 2009 Chart - Incyde

2009-10-14T10:50:00.003-10:00

Just did a chart for this month on Resident Advisor... check it out HERE.