Monthly podcast: Nueva Forma Listening Pleasures

We’re very excited to present you with our Nueva Forma Listening Pleasures, a monthly enhanced podcast featuring artists from our label roster as well as various guest artists.

Our first episode, mixed by the label founders, marks the sonic commencement of new additions to the Nueva Forma family, including Matthew Flook (alias: Pinscape), Charles Garcia (alias: Lapse), and Aaron Sjogren (alias: Miori). You’ll also hear several pre-released tracks from the forthcoming albums of Masmöd and White Car. Lastly, we’re featuring tracks from three guest artists that we take quite a shine to: ElectricWest from Idaho, Recue from Finland, and Reii out of Russia. In fact, we like them so much that we’ve invited them to be on a future compilation (more to be disclosed later).

Episode 1 – Track Listing:

Nueva Forma – Introduction (feat. Robert Bowen)

Recue – Himanka

[Lapse] – Pillow

White Car – Arc

Masmöd – Lament

Nueva Forma – Coffee Break

Electricwest – Never Enough

Pinscape – Last Wish

Masmöd – Map Of The Stars

White Car – One Raum

Miori – Different Countries (feat. Jon Ragel)

Reii – Will No Fear

Nueva Forma – Thanks For Listening

We hope you enjoy these listening pleasures.

Podcast: Download (48.4MB) 51:22

We’d like to give a shout out to Robert Bowen for lending us his lovely voice in our podcast introduction. Thanks Rob!

In my formative high school years, my friends and I were discovering all sorts of amazing bands. My friend Stephen was hooked on The Ramones and tried to get me into them; quite unsuccessfully I might add. I just didn’t get it. There seemed to be nothing special at all about The Ramones but Stephen just couldn’t get enough. It all sounded the same to me. I told him, “Every song sounds the same to me” and he kind of paused for a bit. Then he got this look and said to me, “Yeah but it’s a great song.” Years later, after becoming a true Techno fan and DJ, I would remember Stephen’s words. Because they made total sense to me. Techno was my Ramones.

Dave & Philip of Kompakt

Speaking in Code is a documentary about the love of Techno, the people who produce it, and the people who are lost in it. The trailer is awesome and I’m really excited to see it because it seems so focused. Most documentaries on electronic music tend to focus on superstars and act as a starter kit for the uninitiated. Speaking in Code doesn’t really have that feel to me. From the press release:

“…an intimate account of people who are completely lost in music. A heartbreaking and lighthearted documentary, it’s a vérité glimpse into the world of techno.”

Features a stellar cast of producers (I’m really looking forward to the brothers Voigt footage): Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Monolake, Philip Sherburne, Ellen Allien, Tobias Thomas, Marc LeClair AKA Akufen, Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer, Reinhard Voigt, Sascha Ring AKA Apparat, Sascha Funke, Mario Willms AKA Douglas Greed, Miss Kittin, Dan Paluska AKA Six Million Dollar Dan, and Mike Uzzi AKA Smartypants.

Right now director/producer Amy Grill is trying to get the film into several film festivals so if anyone has any connections in their town give her a tweet. Also check out the behind the scenes trailer via Facebook.

Free stuff for August 2009

We’ve just posted two free tracks straight from Nueva Forma’s soup kitchen. The download links will only be active for thirty days, so get ‘em while they’re still hot.

Solipsistic Nation

A big shout out to Bazooka Joe & Solipsistic Nation for their recent podcast (No. 152 The Headphone Experience), and for featuring Masmöd’s track, Orbit Around A Sphere from his album, Axiom.

Here’s the list of all the featured artists on The Headphone Experience podcast No. 152:

1. Strange Fruit Project “Intro”
2. DJ Food “Extract From Stolen Moments”
3. Ras G “Return From the Great Unknown”
4. Prefuse 73 “Track 13″
5. KiloWatts “Two Parts”
6. Evan Bluetech “Another Bridge Burning” [FREE DOWNLOAD]
7. Nosaj Thing “Us”
8. Kingbastard “Data-Rape Function Creep”
9. Koen Park “I Am Not Aboard This Ship Anymore” [FREE DOWNLOAD]
10. Mochipet “Roll Credits”
11. Daedelus “Assembly Lines”
12. Moderat “Seamonkey”
13. SeventhSwami “Serpiente Cosmica”
14. Alka “Blueberry”
15. Gui Boratto “Besides”
16. general fuzz “eye heart knot” [FREE DOWNLOAD]
17. Masmöd “Orbit Around A Sphere”

You can download the entire podcast from Solipsistic Nation.

Masmöd sound design avatar

As some of you may know, a new release of mine has been in the works since the completion of my album, Axiom. Unfortunately, the transition from Axiom to my new release hasn’t been a smooth one. I hit an unexpected snag. The snag I’m referring to is specifically Logic Pro 8. When I made Axiom, I was using Logic Express 6.4. I’m sure if you’ve ever used LE 6.4, you know its limitations. Anyway, I really pushed the capabilities of that limited software, and the one key factor that really made Axiom possible was the EXSP24. The one major factor of the EXSP24 that really made all the difference was the ADSR envelope capabilities for manipulating sine waves. From the research I’ve done, most people never used the EXSP24 for actual sound design with the stock sine wave, (that would be without loading any samples into the plugin). Through excruciating trial and error, and weeks of nonstop loops through my headphones, I was able to produce a frequency kick, using only the parameters of the EXSP24, with no samples at all. Later, I beefed it up using the stock EQ plugins provided by garage band, and LE 6.4. The end result, well, if you’ve heard Axiom, I think the work speaks for itself.

Anyway, once I was finished with Axiom, I decided to treat myself to upgrading to Logic Pro 8. I can’t tell you how excited I was to have all the capabilities of Logic Pro 8 at my fingertips. Unfortunately, to my disappointment, Apple (the now proud owners of Logic) had decided to do away with the EXSP24 (play back sampler). I can’t tell you how crushed I was to discover this. I thought to myself, “how could this be?” “Why would they do this?” Then I remembered… No one ever used (or at least documented publicly) the EXSP24 like I did, so there was probably no reason for them to keep it. Besides, they had the EXS24, which is supposedly better, but so far it seems to fail in comparison. But that’s a whole new rant for another time.

Moving on, after panicking, contemplating using a new DAW, and desperately searching for a way to port the old, and now diminished EXSP24, I decided to roll up my sleeves, and get down to the dreaded task of working with a new synth that could carry the torch of the EXSP24.

This was not an easy task I had ahead of me… But! After more trial and error, especially with the really shitty “Sculpture modeling synthesizer”, (which, if I might say, is supposed to be able to produce such results, but has a bug in it, but apple refuses to acknowledge that fact), I was able to find a suitable, and more than capable replacement, using the ES2 synthesizer.

The ES2 synthesizer is everything that the EXSP24 was, and more (minus the sampling capabilities). The great thing about the ES2 is that is has the capability to use both the ADSR envelopes, and it’s vector envelopes simultaneously. It’s like layering frosting with whipping cream. It’s dangerous, but it tastes soooo good.

Anyway, I’ve decided to share my experience, (and the parameters) with designing my new frequency kick for my new release, using the ES2. Please note, though, I purposefully used an earlier saved progress version screen shot for this post, so that you can learn to familiarize yourself with the ES2, without just jumping right in and using it, without knowing what does what.

I have since refined the ES2 kick sound, so if you end up using the parameters that you see here, and they don’t sound the same as the example below, don’t worry, just tweak the parameters more, and eventually you’ll nail it.

ES2 parameters image 1. Click to enlarge.

ES2 parameters image 3. Click to enlarge.

You can download the ES2 preset here:

masmod-sub-kick-9

The preset should save to your download folder. After you’ve downloaded the preset, be sure the logic application is shut down. Then go to the Finder, and select the » “GO” tab from the horizontal menu. From there, select » “Home”, then select the “Library” folder. From there, select the “Application Support” folder. Then select your Logic folder. From there, select the “Plug-In Settings” folder, and then scroll down to / and select the “ES2″ folder. After you do this, drag the ES2 preset you downloaded into the ES2 folder. After you do this, start Logic Pro 8 again, and select the ES2 plugin. You should see the “Masmod sub kick 9″ preset. Once you select it, all the parameters that you see here should load.

In the event that you end up using these parameters as a stepping stone to create your kick, I’d love to hear what you create. If you want to share what you’ve done, (presuming that you’ll do anything at all with these parameters) feel free to post a link to your work here, or you can hit me up at:
michael@masmodmedia.com

So anyway, that’s it. Thanks for reading.

Peace ¥,

- m

Free stuff for July 2009

We’ve just posted two free tracks straight from Nueva Forma’s soup kitchen. The download links will only be active for thirty days, so get ‘em while they’re still hot.

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 1)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 1)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 2)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 3)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 4)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 5)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 6)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 6)

Nueva Forma video spot (scene 6)

Nueva Forma video spot from Colorcubic on Vimeo.

The official Nueva Forma video spot. This twenty-eight second piece reveals the surrealistic world of the audio / visual record label, Nueva Forma.

Produced by: Colorcubic™.
Sound design by: Masmöd™.

To view a larger / HD version of the video, please visit the
Nueva Forma vimeo page. Thanks for watching.

+/- by: Ryoji Ikeda

“densely minimum.” If I have to explain who Ryoji Ikeda is consicely, that’s the phrase I’d be probably using. Yesterday I went to see his exhibition, “＋/－[the infinite between 0 and 1],” at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. I’ve known him for his electronic music for a while, but not the visuals… damn. I was wasting so much time for not knowing such dope artwork.

What I felt from seeing the exhibition was so different (almost opposite) from the other media arts I’ve seen. Nowadays, there are millions of media artists and electronic musicians, and for my opinion, they are cool by creating that artificial and impractical atmosphere, but Ikeda’s approach is so original that it has almost organic feelings in itself. Yes, the matrix! What most media artists have been doing is the work of pasting over pasting till it has a shape, but Ikeda is doing opposite. He shaves everything down to the minimum. He drastically breaks his image down to the atomic level and reconstruct something new from minimal elements. So the finished artwork is still all digital and artificial, but it has the feelings of organism. I wasn’t expecting to feel life from seeing his work. Kind of  weird but so dope! I might not be making sense, but you’ll know when you see it in real. (you can find some of his work on youtube. experiencing his work on its site is the best, but at least something…)

By the way, this is Toyohisa Kanno writing from Tokyo, Japan. From now on, I want to write about what’s going on in the art and music scenes here in Japan to the people in the US. I’m not a native english speaker, so I might not be making sense sometime, but I’ll be glad if you keep checking out nueva forma blog. Thanks for reading!

Work it, own it!

Comes in several flavas: Bad, badder, and baddest.

Found this strange little novelty item while drooling over the Optimus Maximus. Not quite sure if the DJ scratch pad would make it in the winner’s circle. I can imagine some dude pulling this card out of his wallet and whispering slyly to his date, “Hey… check this…” then start scratching like he’s Kid Koala. Deal-breaker? Probably. At least the video is hilarious.

Free stuff for June 2009

We’ve just posted two free tracks straight from Nueva Forma’s soup kitchen. The download links will only be active for thirty days, so get ‘em while they’re still hot.