Nineteen Ninety Never

If you’ve been in Toronto for the past years, you’ve probably noticed that the city has some serious electronic talent.

Part of that talent includes some of the city’s finest music blogs:

Salacious Sound posts some great party tracks on a very regular basis, and they’re often the first place I read about tours coming to Toronto. A recent post they wrote stakes the claim that Toronto might just be the Remix Capital of the World, and I think the might just be right.

Here’s a couple of choice tracks from Toronto artists they posted recently:

Autoerotique - Gladiator (Torro Torro Remix)

Barletta - Panther (Torro Torro’s SalaciousSound Remix)

As a bonus, their History of Electro series kicked off the other day, and promises to be a great series of posts.

Pugged Not Thugged is a blog that I’ve only been reading for a few weeks now, but I already like it a lot, especially the fact that there were the first place I heard the O-God Ducksauce remix:

Ducksauce - Barbara Streisand (O-God Remix)

ElectroTO is like a shrine to the city’s finest electro. In their “What’s Good Wednesday,” posts the blog’s writers Trackson and The Vamp give everyone a good heads up on the city’s best parties. The image at the top of this post comes from them (thanks, guys), and is one of the better redesigns of the Jay’s logo that I’ve ever seen. Close seconds are the one where the Blue Jay looks like an uzi and one I’ve seen of the Blue Jay wearing headphones.

A recent fave from ElectroTO:

Jesse Rose - Where Were You Last Night

Plus, ElectroTO has some wicked t-shirts available for sale.

Torontette has been blogging her little heart out for the past couple of months and while her tunes of choice aren’t always the pumping electro I prefer, she’s still got a feel for the city.

I especially like the Van Schie tracks she had up recently:

Matt Van Schie - Saturday Night (GLOVES Remix)

Finally, this blog post is dedicated to the memory of The Curb Crawlers - the first music blog I started reading (single tear rolling down my cheek) and despite having folded up shop, still one of the internet’s finest pieces of HTML and CSS.

What are your favorite T-dots artists or blogs? Hook me up with some new stuff to listen to.

I don’t know what is more awesome about that panel - the fact that Dracula has a castle on the moon, or that he also appears to be in fairly regular contact with Dr. Doom.

The panel is from an issue of Captain Britain where the two super villains team up to take over Britain. I’m sure good eventually triumphs, but Victor and Vlad make for a pretty dangerous combo.

You know what kind of music goes with Vampiric Moon Castles? Fake Blood. And it’s even better mixed with sugary female electro vocals.

That’s why I love these track that Its Overture and Brand X dropped me last week.

Its Overture - 100% Fake Blood ((Crystal Waters (Risk One Remix) vs. Little Boots (Fake Blood Remix))

Brand X - Banging On Mars (Fake Blood versus Rye Rye)

One of the best parts about having this blog is that people send me their music all of the time. While some of it ends up being pretty terrible, some of is just a different kind of genius.

An example of this type of genius is Alex Kresovich - he sent me an entire album of hip-hop remixed with the soundtrack from Goldeneye 64.

That’s right - not one song. An entire album.

Wu-Tang - Gravel Pit (Alex Kresovich Gold’N'Fly Remix)

Jay-z - Pray (Alex Kresovich Gold’N'Fly Remix)

2pac - Holler If You Hear Me (Alex Kresovich Gold’N'Fly Remix)

While I never really got that into Goldeneye, I’ve got a ton of respect for Alex for putting this together.

Download the entire album at GoldNFly.com.

I used to be really into designing t-shirts. I’d spend a morning sketching the design then (lacking a scanner), I’d take a picture with a digital camera and edit the image in photo shop. Next, I’d print it out on thick paper, cut that into a stencil and paint it onto shirts with a roller brush. It was a pretty labor intensive process, and some of those designs never actually made it into shirt form.

Fortunately, my girl got one actually printed on a shirt for me after snagging the design off of an earlier post I wrote (that’s her sexy ass modeling it above).

Expect more t-shirt designs, both new and from the archives here soon on 199X.

In the meantime, some bloody good tracks:

Jinder - Youth Blood (Bubblegum Sci-Fi Remix) (via GottaDanceDirty)

DRLKT Freddie - Blood

Sharam Jey - In My Blood (Jaimie Fanatic Mix) (via Technocolorkids)

Miike Snow - Animal (Fake Blood Remix)

I’ve been a big fan of The Girls Can Hear Us ever since Audioporn mentioned that they sound like another of my favorite artists, Scotty Dynamo.

The Girls Can Hears Us! (conveniently shorted as TGCHU) have the sort of self-aware hilarity that I like in my electropop-rap, and the catchy beats also make for pretty good gym music.

Now, just in time for summer, TGCHU are going to drop their debut album and all of the songs sound pretty good. Even better is that the boys are fans of giving some of their tracks away for free, and hooked me up with a couple for posting here.

The Girls Can Hears Us - Every Day

The Girls Can Hear Us - All I Know

Silver Medallion - Slave (The Girls Can Hears Us Remix)

To stay posted on when their album comes out, hit up TGCHU.com. Bide your time until then with a couple of other TGCHU tracks I’ve posted here and here.

Monarchy’s Black the Color of My Heart is probably one of the most beautiful songs that I’ve heard in the past while.

The lyrics are of the epic variety, but can still evoke a ton of feeling, and that drum sounds like a heartbeat throughout the song. Its the kind of stuff you can read sci-fi to on a cold day, dance to as you smile at your girl in the club or catch yourself trying to sing along to as you walk down the street.

They’ve definitely got a sound that’s like the best of The Golden Filter and Empire of the Sun: spacey and futuristic, but with enough warmth to remind you that you’re still human.

Monarchy - Black the Color of My Heart

Monarchy - Gold in the Fire

Monarchy - Gold in the Fire (Screendeath Remix)

The Golden Filter - Hide Me (Clock Opera Remix)

I also posted a remix Monarchy did of Ellie Goulding a little while ago.

I don’t have a lot more information Monarchy, but The Golden Filter’s new album is available for order, and if you buy the CD or vinyl you have a chance of getting a personalized Polaroid photo from the band.

Image via Sci-Fi-O-Rama

They might be one-note wonders with nothing more than a few well-received demo tracks to their name, but I’ve been digging Sleigh Bells. As Jane Bang has found (pictured on the shirt above from T.I.T.S clothing), they’re going to make for great remix fodder.

Sleigh Bells - Beach Girls

Sleigh Bells - Crown on the Ground (Jane Bang Remix)

More sick shirts on 199X

As I Tweeted earlier, this trailer for The Electro Wars (a documentary about electronic music) has me absolutely stoked about the state of music today. From the film’s decription:

“It seems that every other day a new remix is popping up on the blogosphere, how does this affect marketing for other independent artists? Do they welcome the remixes or oppose them? Is music overload possible? What will eventually happen when all these budding producers grab a hold of a Pro Tools tutorial and develop their own remixes week in and week out? Will the remix itself become obsolete? Will original tracks have to step up to the forefront rather than recede into the background? Themes of this nature are explored in the film.”

The trailer seems to answer most of these questions, and all the artists interviewed seem to agree that it doesn’t matter what category music is in anymore, and that it is all amazing and all in one stream, and that there is a place for everything.

Anyways, here’s a few tracks from the soundtrack:

Blende - Iratus

Skream - Midnight Request Line

Toxic Avenger - Toxic is Dead

Props to Vogelspand, Squeegie and The Blue Walrus for the tracks

The Electro Wars website

The Electro Wars on Twitter

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how much I loved the design of the Gotta Dance Dirty website, and the guy who made it, Falco, left me a comment to say I should check out his site.

It turns out he does design work for a whole bunch of artists, and seeing his graphics for Bubblegum Sci Fi made me want to give them a listen.

Here’s a couple of their sci-fi-tastic remixes that I picked up from around the web:

Chromeo - Night by Night (Bubblegum Sci Fi Remix)

Passion Pit - The Reeling (Bubblegum Sci Fi Remix)

Check out Falco’s website for more, and let me know if you think Bubblegum Sci Fi got their name from The Bubblegum Crisis. Either way, I totally think The Knight Sabers would be an equally bad-ass band or DJ name.

It has been a while since I last heard from NONEWYORK, and that’s why I was so excited when they sent me an email the other day with a couple of new tracks.

Born in Blood is a slower track from what I think they normally do. Its dark and full to the brim with dub and samples from Dexter.

Their refix of Rusko’s Cali Anthem is also a solid track, and the Tupac sample really cements the California feel. In fact, it even inspired me to add a California category to this blog.

NONEWYORK - Born In Blood

Rusko - Cali Anthem (NONEWYORK Refix)

The NONEWYORK boys are featured on Bay Area Bass Vol 1 and you can grab the whole thing here. They are also NONEWYORK_BASS on Twitter, and they’ve also got some mean bass on their MySpace page.

You can also find a couple of other tracks by them on 199X here and here.

The image above is from the The Descent, probably one of my favorite horror movies. Its full of blood and claustrophobic terror.