AbstractRadio Session - december 2014

Further adventures into the Abstract world...

The first of two ramshackle collections from the wonderful world of house - a typically mixed bag of floor-fillers, groovers, shakers and peak-time belters, plus a quote from Corinthians, all for your listening pleasure. As usual, everyone's a winner, but of particular note for us are the Wanklemut mix of Asaf Avidan's "Reckoning Song", Mr Parker's  "Let God Arise" and the last three trax: Soul City Project, Sade and Homero Espinosa.

Enjoy.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

select mixes by genre:

Deep

Funky

House

Tracklist

Start	Artist	Track Title	Label
000.00	Don Carlos	house jazz	emi
007.16	The Family Pres.	feel the light – humphries	umm
013.25	City Soul Project	the jam	city soul recordings
017:55	Horatio	submarine	degree records
025:50	Jamie Tench	that groovy thing	roots for bloom
028:45	The Aquanauts	africano	guidance
035:30	Kid Sublime	I wont give you up	faces
039:58	Asaf Avidan	the reckoning song - wanklemut	fine
048:08	Loose Joints	is it all over my face – maw	west end
055:22	Cleavage	prove	musical freedom
058:48	lts	drifting	luvbug
064:04	Terrance Parker	let god arise	superb entertainment
071:00	The Checkup	the race	beef records
075:40	Nathan G	if we try	large
082:03	Tube Berger	love break	kittball
087:33	City Soul Project	jah school	city soul recordings
092:15	Sade	t’s couldn't love you more	notonlabel
101:17	Homero Espinosa	blues in a rose	moulton music

-- Total running time – 109.56 --

download from house-mixes.com

Tune of the Week - No.3 - 9.11.14

With so much wonderful music knocking around here in the Abstract studio, we thought we'd take the opportunity to showcase a few very special items that are close to our hearts. Our choices for Tune of the Week may be fresh through the door, or decades old - our aim is that they will always epitomise the ethos of AbstractRadio...

After a small hiatus, here's our third tune of the week:

DJ Mark Brickman
- Rhythm Is Love -
Original and remixes
Rambunktious Miami RB009 - 2013/14

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A couple of mixes here for your perusal, both squarely on the house tip, with the original bearing all the hallmarks of quality vocal house, while the remix delves into a deeper, dubbier world. So, not a particularly ground-breaking premise then. And yet, these two tracks still manage to stand out from the crowd. So what makes them special? Well, to start with, this is exceptionally well-made music, sounding pretty fresh within a genre which has been well worn over the last two decades.

First up, from earlier this "summer" (and we use the term in its loosest sense) is the rather excellent "God Gave Us Rhythm" remix. It's deep, it's catchy, it has sexy soulful vocals, it builds; it's brilliant dance-floor fodder. There's also a picture of a lovely looking lady on the sleeve. If, like us, you heard this first, before you had a chance to catch the original, then you'd also quite likely be making it your tune of the week on its own merit (assuming of course that you too indulged in the same self-involved, asinine, fatuous practice of having a "tune of the week").

Which brings us on to Brick's Main vocal (the original mix), released back in those fondly remembered halcyon days of 2013.
Actually, this starts out pretty tamely until the first piano break, where it then it picks up a bit of momentum, utilising the excellent uplifting vocals to build up a decent slice of dancefloor pressure. As an individual track, it's not going to change your outlook on life, but here's where the magic lies - individually, both these tracks are pretty good, strong material as they say, but stick 'em together, and you have a potential riot on your hands - and yes, we'll try and post this little blend for you as soon as...

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Here's the original

And here's the remix

Tune of the Week - No.2 - 5.10.14

With so much wonderful music knocking around here in the Abstract studio, we thought we'd take the opportunity to showcase a few very special items that are close to our hearts. Our choices for Tune of the Week may be fresh through the door, or decades old - our aim is that they will always epitomise the ethos of AbstractRadio...

Our second tune of the week? So, no pressure then...

"Hello?"
"British Rail?"
"Can I please reserve a first class weekend return ticket for:"

Jessica Lauren Four featuring Jocelyn Brown
Happiness Train - Miss Marple Edit
Freestyle Records FSR096 - 2012

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There are a couple of takes of this knocking about - we're choosing the shorter "Miss Marple" edit for no better reason than that we think it's a bit quicker in getting to the action. The long version is great as well.

Leaving aside the "extreme major player alert" just for a moment, let's have a look at this track's other credentials - for those not in the know, Ms Lauren is (amongst so very many other things) the ivory-tinkling genius behind the vast majority of Dave Lee's (aka Joey Negro) club stormers on Z Records. For that alone she gets a prominent place in AbstractRadio's Hall of Fame (still under construction - we're having problems with the wiring and the plumber's taken a leave of absence). And then there's Ms Brown, who needs absolutely no introduction whatsoever and simply owns the place.

This jazzy little number opens up in the humble origins of a railway yard, with basic percussion and some atmospheric trains sounds. Then Jessica lays down a cool, slowly building piano riff before Jocelyn joins in with some sultry, laid back vocals. So, no great surprises so far - everything is running on-time and as it should be, snacks are being served in the buffet carriage. Ah, but did we not mention the word "building"? For build it indeed does, dropping through the gears until the runaway locomotive that is Ms Brown's vocal performance explodes onto the track, sending everyone ducking for cover.

So, it's cool, it's jazzy, it's has one of the world's greatest soul-stirring voices and it goes mad at the end - what's not to like?

Happiness Train - no leaves on the line here - woo-hoo!
(OK, that's quite enough train references).

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Here's a live take - audio only

Here's another live take with video - sadly rather poor audio quality

- Footnote - Check out "I Believe" from the same ep - it's equally wonderful

AbstractRadio session - early october 2014

Time for another venture into the Abstract sound... 

We're dropping the tempo this time, kicking back with some real gems that have been getting heavy exposure on the station, including our second-ever Tune of the Week.

It goes without saying that everyone's a winner, but if you haven't caught them before, please check out "This World", "Fingertips", "Happiness Train", "Summer Brass", "In the Black of Night", "Colleen", "Up with People" and finally, "Gabriel". Go on, we insist.

Almost forgot - there's a minor "gangsters and molls" theme going on as well.

As always, any feedback is much appreciated. 
Enjoy.

select mixes by genre:

Funky

Jazzy

Lounge

Beats

Chill

Broad

Choice

Tracklist

Start	Artist	Track Title	Label
00.00	Squeezebrain and the Machine	lovegroove intro	teutonic beats
01.00	Air	playground love / highschool lover	virgin
04.14	Unforscene	in the corner of her eye	wob
08.10	Jakatta	the other world	rulin records
11.44	Selah Sue	this world - dorfmeister edit	because
15.27	Emiliana Torrini	fingertips	one little indian
19.45	Hint	re percussions	hombré
24.54	Jessica Lauren Four	happiness train	freestyle
29.13	Waldeck	our day will come	dope noir
36.18	Dire Straits	money edit	white
39.41	Morcheeba	fragments of freedom	wea
42.50	Jakatta	feeling blue	rulin records
48.32	DJ Cam	he's gone	inflamable
52.12	Nightmares On Wax	passion	warp
59.34	Sarah Winton	summer brass	big chill recs
64.43	Thievery Corporation	heaven's gonna burn your eyes	esl music
68.39	Lambchop	up with people	third gear
73.06	Dominic Glynn	easy street	future jazz
75.59	Slow Train	in the black of night	murena
80.06	Savages	you're my chocolate	chameleon
85.29	Chet Faker	no diggity	downtown
89.14	Amon Tobin	stoney street	ninja tune
93.06	Easy Listening	trip hoppin’ - k&d dub	world2media
95.38	The Heavy	colleen	ninja tune
101.21	Brazilian Girls	homme	verve forecast
104.21	Emiliana Torrini	sunny road	one little indian
108.45	Aim	good disease	grand central
112.03	Lamb	gabriel – hooper mix	mercury

-- Total running time – 117.40 --

download from house-mixes.com

Tune of the Week - No.1 - 23.9.14

With so much wonderful music knocking around here in the Abstract studio, we thought we'd take the opportunity to showcase a few very special items that are close to our hearts. Our choices for Tune of the Week may be fresh through the door, or decades old - our aim is that they will always epitomise the ethos of AbstractRadio...

With our very first selection, we decided we really needed to stick our necks out and dig up from the vaults a piece of music that truly exemplifies the Abstract sound - something special, something that defies any easy form of categorisation, something that stands out in the crowd, makes a bold statement and stops you dead in your tracks in much the same way as being slapped squarely in the face with a fresh halibut.

Something a bit like this:

Producers For Bob - Discarnate Woman
reincarnated by coldcut assisted by PC
Ninja Tunes ZEN1213 - 1992

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One of Ninja tunes earliest releases - now some twenty plus years of age, relatively obscure (at time of writing, we could find one youtube post of this track, with 700 views), with absolutely zero commercial appeal and weighing in with a hefty running time of close to 12 minutes, this masterpiece is not exactly dance-floor friendly (unless you know what you're doing and already have the crowd in the palm of you hand).

It's a track in three parts - the first being on a cool house tip, with mellow synth stabs in a leisurely early balearic style. This then breaks down into an absolutely blistering slice of ravey breakbeat/techno, before finally meandering off into ambient trip-hoppy noodleness in the coda. Appearing all the way through are little snippets culled from "Bob's Talk Show", a bi-product of the somewhat off-kilter world of Bob Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius.

Why have we chosen this little stunner, out of thousands, to be AbstractRadio's first ever tune of the week? It's not even close to being the greatest piece of music ever written (fyi: they were all composed hundreds of years ago by guys in high collars and wigs). It's probably not even the Ninja crew's finest hour - there are quite a few contenders for that title, many of which will no doubt be future tunes of the week. So why then? Very simply, it's an ever-so-crazy show-stopping work of pure genius, that's why.

What makes it so special to us here at AbstractRadio? It represents the almost limitless possibilities of modern music: it's not about house, breakbeat, ambient, jazz, soul or techno, it's all of these things. It's about breaking out of the mould of pigeon-holing, categorising and compartmentalizing the world into nice, neat, antiseptic, easy-to-digest packages. It's about resisting the all-encompassing and soul destroying homogenisation that is becoming the norm of our modern existence.

Anywho, we love it.

Thank you Matt, Jon and Patrick, for being big and boundless.

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Watch a video of a nice discerning chap enjoying the Discarnate Woman in the comfort of his bedroom

[can't imagine how we're going to follow this next week...]

AbstractRadio session - august 2014

So, without further ado, our first mixcloud post... 

In an effort to clear the studio desk, here's a little selection of also-rans that have been cluttering up the place. 
A bit of a mixed-bag - some light, some a bit darker - hopefully there's something here which will get your toes a' tapping - apologies for the occasional intrusive hi-hat. 
Any feedback is much appreciated. 
Enjoy.

select mixes by genre:

Deep

Funky

House

Tracklist

Start	Artist	Track Title	Label
00.00	Gruia & Horatio	the ritual	VIVA music
07:17	Lay-Far	new day, new light	lazy days recordings
10.22	Doorly	I want you to dance	toolroom
15.15	MAM	hand in hand	nice to be records
18.35	Mickey	sweet baby	exploited
24.14	Ramon Tapia	the clash	snatch!
28.23	In.Deed	turn me on	kittball
35.44	David Morales feat. Tamra Keenan	I don't belong here	ultra
40.45	Plastik Funk	don't push me (house it dub)	tiger
44.19	Belocca	back to the old school	mainground music
50.16	Audiowhores	subject of my affection	soulfuric deep
55.43	Moodymanc	joy	exploited
58.16	Twenty Twelve	ramon	aquarius recordings
66.56	Detroit Swindle feat. Mayer Hawthorne	64 ways (65th way dub)	dirt crew
71.10	Brooklyn Friends	tramp (morales and harris remix)	nite grooves
76.48	Urban Soul	black in my soul (tiger stripes instrumental)	king street sounds
83.12	Jay Lumen	nobody	off recordings
89.25	Tiger Stripes	genesis (florian kruse remix)	soundz
95.00	Elektrochemie vs. Tiger Stripes	pleasure seeker vs me	dj series / defected
100.48	Tiger Stripes	give you up	suara
108.18	Mashall Jefferson feat. curtis mcclain	move your body	ultra

-- Total running time – 116.07 --

download from house-mixes.com

AbstractRadio: A Manifesto

AbstractRadio - turning a dream into reality.

AbstractRadio was born out of a simple observation: there's a lot of great music out there, and it never ceases to amaze how little of it is well-known. 

AbstractRadio is here to rectify this sorry state of affairs, to redress the balance caused by one of the major pitfalls of commercial radio, namely playing a constant rotation of mediocrity - mainstream music, the quality of which is, at best, somewhat dubious. 

AbstractRadio aims to be a little different. AbstractRadio aims a little higher. 

Here at AbstractRadio, we have a truly vast library of amazing music at our fingertips - amassed over decades, much of it not in the public domain - and a fantastic team, ever-eager to present it in its best light possible. AbstractRadio never plays obscure material lacking in substance - with our combined experience as radio and live djs, we guarantee that the hidden gems we unleash on you are just that - gems. 

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AbstractRadio was born out of a immense, all-encompassing passion for music of all kinds. 

And so, the music should be allowed to stand on its own, hence the desire to play the best music, without break - we never cut to the news or an unwanted ad., and you won't hear any inane, needless, self-promoting banter coming over the air. If the best version of a song runs three times as long its radio edit, we will still play that one, the best.

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AbstractRadio was born out of a dissatisfaction that while we, who have worked in the industry for years, have access to some truly great, some say life-changing, music, our audience has until now been limited - restricted either to local/national radio, and usually required to adapt to the programming limitations of playlists, audience targetting, advertisers' needs and radio charters (which determine the ratio of how much talk/music/news etc you can broadcast per hour), or to working as live djs where, even if you play 10 times a week to a crowd of 1,000 each time, this weekly audience of 10,000 is negligible when compared to the reach of a global internet-based radio station. 

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AbstractRadio was born out of an ever-growing despair over the cult of personality. 

For AbstractRadio, it is the music that counts, not the person playing it. And so, unless we have a very special guest contributor (and we do have some wonderful talent already lined up), we won't be telling you much about the dj.

←   So, absolutely none of this.

Instead, as part of AbstractRadio's 24-hour live stream, there's an up-to-the minute list of the tracks recently played, so you know what's what, along with a chat feature so you can discuss the merits of late '90s Patagonian techno, or whatever else takes your fancy, with your fellow listeners and with us here at the studio.

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One other thing - AbstractRadio aims to be completely transparent, with a warts and all approach - that is, we will report about all the problems, pitfalls and decisions encountered as the station finds its feet. 

Thanks for coming, and enjoy the show...

By way of introduction...

"Well, we've got to start somewhere, so it might as well be here."

A great man once said, "I have a dream". Well, here at AbstractRadio, we also have a dream...

   Mission Statement    

The task is simple : create the world's finest radio station. 

"Well, that's no simple task!", you cry. 

Followed quickly by: "What exactly do you mean by 'world's finest'?", and "How do you intend to achieve this monumental task?"

You raise very valid points...

Clearly, 'world's finest' is open to a fair amount of interpretation. Here at AbstractRadio, it simply means the following: seamless quality music on a global stage - no chat, no ads., no breaks, no news, no frills; just music, sweet music.
For a lot more on this, please have a look at the manifesto.

And how are we going to do it? Hopefully, with a little help from our friends.

Here's the plan:

1) Get established as a reliable source of quality music.

It's early days, we're still learning the ropes and, at present, with the station's current revenue stream flowing at a mere trickle, AbstractRadio does not yet have the means to provide the sort of bandwidth necessary to reach its intended global audience.

So as we find our feet, AbstractRadio will stream its live feed on a fairly low bandwidth, while simultaneously posting the same fine line in quality music as mixes/podcasts at a much higher bitrate on our mixcloud page.

With this approach, we hope that, over time, you'll will get to know and trust that our commitment to fine quality music is a genuine one. And you can then recommend AbstractRadio to your friends, and so on, helping us slowly build up an appreciative following of happy listeners. 

2) Crowd-funding our early steps.

AbstractRadio is completely committed to providing a seamless listening experience, kept totally interruption free, including ads. But, nothing comes for free, and with both bandwidth and hosting costs rising as we expand, the best way to pay for these services on internet radio is by placing adverts within the live broadcast, and that would defeat the whole point of the exercise.

So, to escape this, AbstractRadio hopes to crowd-source the funds from you - our lovely and fantastically generous listener - to help support the first six months of broadcasting by covering its running costs. And over these first six months, we intend to develop and expand a following large enough to give the station enough market presence to allow us to sell advertising space here on the website (and so keep the broadcasts ad. free) - hurrah!

It's worth pointing out that we don't need to source vast sums - if 1000 "followers" donated just a few pennies each, that alone would cover the bills for a fair while.

Understandably, we need your help with this - we can't do it alone - this is a radio station for anyone and everyone, so anyone can... 

3) Get in touch and get involved.

As well as providing financial support for AbstractRadio, we would love you - the listener - to take an active part in the station - what do you want to hear? Do you have new ideas, new music, are you a dj, a musician, a producer? - get in touch, send us your thoughts, your demos, photos of you dancing around the cat, anything - let's do this together - it's more fun that way.

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So, a fairly simple plan: build up a following, raise a small amount to cover the bills during the early days, develop a global audience and use ads. to support the station, all the time spreading the gospel of the finest quality music known.

"Large streams from little fountain flow, tall oaks from little acorns grow."

Honestly, what could possibly go wrong?