Boylston Street is now open. The surviving bombing suspect is being held and closely monitored in a medical facility at Fort Devens. Those how died have been honored gracefully with tributes and send-offs by thousands of people who loved them or traveled many miles just to be there to support their families. The suspects mother is crying foul, accusing the United States government of a conspiracy, but the Russians have on tape a “vague” conversation with her and her other son (who died in the ensuing shootout) with talk of “jihad.”
Boston is in the healing phase. Next year’s Boston Marathon will go on and people will not be afraid to run, in the same way that people are not afraid to go to downtown Manhattan. Our culture celebrates life. We don’t much believe in martyring ourselves, because someone told us that killing others indiscriminitely is the best possible solution to a problem. Americans are far stronger than a bomb in a pressure cooker left on the street by two bumbling terrorists who had no real plan, but were able to get off a minor spectacle that only proves their acts of terror leaves us strong and more united in the face of evil.
As a human being, I will never understand what it’s like to come from some of these countries, where hope is non-existant. Where danger lurks around every corner. Where people are murdered not just because of their political idealogy, but also because of their faith. Where thousands have been exterminated for no reason other than being the wrong color or being on the wrong side of a war.
I’m sure it has to be extremely difficult to know that your extended family was exterminated and that every day, whoever controls your homeland is choking off your ability to live in peace, raise a family and prosper. Once those things are impacted, there is a propensity to lash out. You listen to others tell you how horrible the West is and how Western powers are responsible for killing your extended family or the families of your childhood friends. And, they implore you to take action. While they talk, they hand you the bomb or gun and then you have to decide if what you’re about to do is acceptable. Is it right? Is it just?
For those who see no hope and no way out, they seem to take the road of violence. They turn around and point the finger at the West and say, if you didn’t kill my brother, father or mother, I wouldn’t have killed yours. But, with so many killing on each side, it become hard to determine the justifications for just about anything. It becomes fog in the cloud of war and there is no clear way out.
I know that every situation is relative to the time, place and space we each occupy at a given moment. As a young person growing up on Boston, I felt disenfranchised. I did’t feel like I was worthy of being hired to do just about anything. Most of my early jobs were odd jobs. I had a lot of jobs that were meaningless and I realized while I was doing them that they were just a stop-gap solution to solving the greater problem, which was: what am I going to do with the rest of my life?” Fortunately, I chose music as a career and over the next 23+ years, I built my career in both music and digital media. At one time, I could have turned to crime to make ends meet, but I had learned from my parents the value of hard word. That what you put in is what you got out. Sure, there were times it would be unfair, but to lash out and kill others over my perceived inability to assimilate in my surroundings, whichever they were, was really on me to figure it out. And, figure it out I did. Today, I’m married to a wonderful woman. I have a stable job in my chosen field. And, I am using the knowledge I’ve built up to sustain my career and grow as best I can.
Of course, I didn’t grow up in a war torn country. I can’t understand the dynamics those people face. I’ve talked to some – I remember one guy who used to clean the laundry mat in Brookline, near Coolidge Corner. He told me of fighting in the Lebanese militia. Listening to him tell me his story, I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to see your homeland torn to shreds by tanks and fighter jets dropping bombs and leveling city blocks. How, if you’ve seen these things, are you able to live amongst a civil society, where this type of extreme violence does not exist?
One of the things that I’ve been left with thinking about after the events of the last few weeks, is that there are people who feel so angry about whatever it is that troubles them, they will go to great lengths to be heard or be felt. Those lengths included murdering others in an attempt to raise the profile of an issue or get their way. What’s fascinating, is the fact that these people are choosing to be heard through violence in the belief that if they can get off a shot and kills some Americans, it will make us go way and not get involved in their lives. What it ends up doing, is bring more people into the situation, who then will spend all their days tracking down the people that committed this horrific act. Because we don’t sit still and because we’re super motivated, we will go to the end of the earth to find people who attack us. Osama Bin Laden can attest to this, if he were alive today. He’s not, because we did. It’s that simple.
I want to make it clear that this is not an anti-Muslim post. I have many Muslim friends and I have great respect for their religion. I know that my Muslim friends abhor the violence committed by one of the people in their extended community, in the same way I am angered by Christians who murder abortion clinicians and doctors over their perception of right to life. It bothers me greatly that non-Muslim’s will point the finger at all Muslims and say, “it’s you who is responsible for your brother’s or sister’s crime!,” when that is obviously not the case. What this does, is only raise tensions between our communities. That is not the best way to tackle these issues, because the growing animosity only fuels misplaced justifications of extremists who use the mistrust to fuel new attacks.
For me, the bombing and subsequent shutdown of Boston by the governor, Deval Patrick, reminds me of a time growing up when a felon escaped from prison, which I vaguely remember as being Walpole State Prison (I could be wrong). I’d come home from school that day only to be told by the police to hurry up and get to my apartment and lock all the doors and windows. They were looking for the convict and thought he might be holed up somewhere in our apartment complex. While many in Boston complain about the order to lockdown Boston, I remember thinking that it was better for me to be in the house and let the police find the escaped convict, then be outside and a possible target.
Growing up in Allston/Brighton (the carjacking happened near Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton) with connections in Cambridge (I worked at a record store a few yards from the Mobil station where the carjacking victim had escaped to) and Watertown (as a teen, I worked at the Arsenal Mall and my sister’s in-laws are from Watertown), I followed the police chase that night on scanner app for my iPhone. It was fascinating, yet scary to listen to, because I knew every street announced by officers over the stream. I was able to visualize exactly where they were as the chase and subsequent shootout transpired.
From the moment my wife told me that an MIT officer had been shot, I knew it was the bombing suspects. I can’t remember ever hearing of an MIT police officer being shot in the line of duty. Maybe it’s happened before and I just never knew about it, but this time and only a few days after the bombing, something told me that the bombing suspects had shot him and were about to embark on a night of terror. I immediately downloaded the scanner app and we tuned in, listening to the events unfold until well past 2 am. Of course, I was worried for my family, but I knew that they all wouldn’t be near the shootout location. My sister and her daughter do live about a mile or so away. I’m glad the suspects didn’t get that far.
It’s a testament to the bravery of the Boston Police, MBTA SWAT team, Cambridge Police and, of course, those brave Watertown Police officers who rarely ever see this kind of action, that they were able to capture the suspect. The bombings were horrific and the aftermath sad, given those who died and others who lost limbs or were severely physically injured or emotionally scarred. Having seen 9/11 happen myself, I can sympathize with my Boston sisters and brothers. What I know is that these things, despite their ugliness, will make everyone in Boston a bit more appreciative of their lives and their commitments to each other. It will strengthen resolve like it did for my friends after 9/11. We all will go on, not forgetting or living in fear, but facing realization that life is just not the same. We’ll be vigilant, but not afraid to walk, run, crawl or wheel ourselves to the finish line. For the Boston Maraton is a Boston institution that cannot be defeated by two crazed individuals who turned to violence over discourse and evil over good. One has lost his life for it, as he should. The other may lose his, as he should as well. While I don’t believe in the death penalty, I do reserve the right to believe for special cases – this is one of them.
So, one of my DJ friends on Facebook, Curtis Atchinson, posted a YouTube video on Facebook today of a DJ on day-time TV somewhere in Russia or the Ukraine spinning CDs while a singer performs the backing vocals to a track. If you look closely, there are NO WIRES attaching the Pioneer CD decks to the mixer. Nor is their any electricity going to ANYTHING!
This is just plan fraudulent! It makes Milli Vanilli look like the Rolling Stones. One of the most egregious, fraudulent DJ sets I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes.
Okay, so maybe it’s a day-time TV show. Maybe they didn’t outlets nearby. Maybe some set designer was too concerned about wires that would clutter the front of the set. Really? They couldn’t plug anything in?
We’ll never know if this DJ has any talent whatsoever, but he’ll have a lot of explaining to do when this video takes off virally across the web and his DJ career is ruined, because no one will ever trust that he’s actually playing the music at his gigs.
Of course, she’s lip-syncing too. Fraudulent bliss, for sure.
Okay, so I’ve read Phillip Sherburne’s piece and many of the comments from DJs, Producers and others who ask some very good questions about streaming and cite many reasons why the quality of dance music seems to be suffering. Sherburne writes that today’s dance music producer is so frazzled between DJ gigs and travel, they have no time to write quality music. Is that true? I don’t know, but what I do know is that music production is vastly different today than it once was.
No longer are you stuck in a studio for a 15-hour session or back-to-back all-nighters. You can get stems from others contributing to your production or vocals from your singer in your DropBox, then drop them into your Ableton production on that 19-hour flight to Singapore. Sure, you’re not stuck in your home studio, but your hotel room, flight or limo ride have replaced the studio as the defacto production environment.
Let’s talk about quality, which has and will always be subjective. Every time a new genre explodes, those in the industry and beyond will – after a short period of time – run out and decry their genre as having sold out or find reasons to say, in this case, the dance music they once held dear is being impacted by forces that render much of it utter crap. This isn’t news. It’s been happening since the day I started DJing in 1979 and it still continues today. It’s fueled by the ease of being able to post your comments in Internet forums, on blogs and through email list serves. It never fails to amaze me how many people jump on the bandwagon in these discussions, because it becomes less about what is really going on and more about a big bitch session on how “I’m no longer making the money I once was.” Boohoo! Cry me a river. Somehow and someway, all these external factors have killed the gold goose that puts money in the pockets of DJs, producers and record industry. Next they’ll be blaming Iranian hackers for inserting a bug into Ableton Live 8.
Yes, downloading has severely disrupted the recording industry. There is no doubt about that. The sales that once lined label pockets and fueled artists careers is one quarter of what it once was. What does that tell you? Maybe the price you thought you were setting for your music was overinflated in the first place. Maybe now that digital has disrupted the market, we can truly see that what we were all paying for music was probably not realistic. It was like the Real Estate bubble, where so many where paying so much for homes, when the value of those homes wasn’t really the value at all. But artists refuse to hear it, because they somehow believe that what they do is on some higher level. Some higher plane in the stratosphere above our peasant heads. They think their art is worth more than someone else’s, when in fact, their art is a thread in the fabric of the same pop canvas as 100 other artists. When its hard to get your art, it becomes more valuable. When it’s easy to get your art, it becomes less valuable. I don’t have to buy that original photograph for $1,000 from the nature photographer down the street to hang on my living room wall, I can simply buy a $49 framed piece from World Market that will suffice. The value in art is subjective and relative – period!
Someone commented in the Spin thread that they had put a lot of time and effort into their art and they haven’t made a penny back. Well, there are hundreds of other artists making money. I know, because I buy Beatport tracks every month for my mixes and for my 8tracks.com playlists. Someone is getting paid or they wouldn’t be doing it and Beatport wouldn’t have a former Amazon executive as its CEO. If it’s not you, then is your music all that good in the first place? Does anyone really care about what you release? Didn’t you demo your tracks before you put them out there with some DJs to see if they would fly?
I’m a DJ and (not yet!) a producer, but I’m actually studying and will make a go of it at some point. Regardless, I own Netmix.com. I don’t put as much love into it as I used to. Revenue from ads has gone to a trickle, but I still do it because I love it. All those people that find it for free through Google; are they stealing my art or simply finding my words and compensating me in another way. Paying me with this thing called reputation? I’m putting it out there to build reputation in the hopes that one day, I’ll be hired by someone as an expert in my field, thereby generating revenue based on my knowledge and ability to sell my skill set through words. Someone will actually pay me for what I know, in the same way someone will hire a musician or artist for a gig or put them on a recording.
Today, reputation is currency and why many artists now put their music on SoundCloud, which really is the new radio. Here’s a service that has 140M active users worldwide, yet artists are putting their music on the service and literally paying for storage! But, you don’t hear a peep from artists about how SoundCloud is ripping them off, yet all artists attack Pandora for not paying enough. Ha! How does this make sense? I can’t figure it out.
Now, if you were assuming SoundCloud pays artists through SoundExchange, you would be wrong, because SoundCloud offers full interactivity, which SoundExchange doesn’t collect for. SoundExchange only collects for artists on non-interactive services like Pandora, Rdio, 8tracks and others. So, artists are paying SoundCloud, but not getting paid on the mechanical license they gave to SoundCloud, simply because it’s cool to be on SoundCloud in the same way it’s cool to be on radio!
Artists need SoundCloud to post their music and share their tracks in social media. When those tracks go viral in Facebook and they can be played directly in a Facebook status update, you don’t hear artists complaining, but they want every penny from Spotify. Remember, they’re giving their music away for free, but complaining that their download revenue suffers. Another anomaly? I think not. They are doing to themselves what they did in the past – they gave the most popular technology free reign to use their music with full interactivity without getting paid in return. Makes you wonder, right? Me too. They actually pay SoundCloud to host these files!
Let’s address the streaming issue. Yes, it take an exponential number of streams to make back the same amount of money for few singles sold. Since terrestrial radio negotiated themselves out of paying artists (not songwriters, but the performers themselves) for the public performance of music, all artists were happy to get their songs on the radio license free and payment free. If also happened to be the songwriter, they got paid a royalty for that too. Generally, performance on the radio translated into sales for the label and touring opportunities for the artist. The artist was never content with that model, but they never banded together like they’ve done against Internet radio to demand that terrestrial radio pay them. Well, I think that’s about to change, but the fact is, terrestrial radio hasn’t paid since radio was invented!
How much revenue did artists and their estates lose? Billions of dollars. Radio was so powerful that if you even tried to stand-up to the industry, you’d be blacklisted to never be played again. Fortunately, today radio has competiton – the Internet, which is giving more power to the artist, but yet the artist wants to suck everything out of only the Internet services, but not institute rates on terrestrial radio or increase the fees of Satellite providers, who pay 8x less than Pandora.
On today’s Internet or Satellite radio, all artists actually get paid something. That is definitely an advancement. Now, just because all artists get paid something doesn’t mean that the cut of revenue should be so high that the Internet company cannot do business. Let’s remember that with terrestrial radio, you have one feed and only 24-hours in a day. Yes, with digital radio, you can now split the signal and have 3 feeds, which triples the number of songs the station might play. But the station can only play a fixed number of songs depending on the track times. On Internet radio like Pandora, you can have 1M people listening to 1M individual streams containing 24-hours of music. When you think about what it takes to ensure that much more music is available (quadrupling the music staff) to the system and then hiring the right people (engineers, product managers, information designers) to ensure that they system works across the web, mobile, satellite and cable radio, you see the costs increase.
Remember, these people are not warehouse stock pickers or order takers, they are professionals; many with degrees from top tier universities or colleges and they have salary, 401K and health benefits. In order to retain these kinds of workers to build these services, it’s a large capital investment. Much larger than just hiring a few DJs to make some promo calls. Most labels can function with 5 or 10 people and the rest is outsourced to an accountant, attorney, promo reps and street teams. Internet companies need highly skilled developers who cost $95K to $150K or more a year.
Yes, I know. The argument would then be: “well, why shouldn’t the artist make that kind of money? The same money as a developer!” It’s because the developer comes to work from 40-hours a week (or longer in many cases) and builds a product that serves tens of millions of people. The revenue from those services fund those salaries, in the same way record labels hire their staff. Let’s remember though, the cost is much higher to retain highly skilled workers with advanced programming capability. It’s not the same as hiring a DJ to call 100 radio stations.
In the same way that an artist is paid $10,000 for a show, a developer is paid $10,000 over 2 weeks. Writing code today is certainly much more stable than a music tour. But, when your a top artist, you surely are making far more than a developer ever would, unless that developer is the CTO or founder of the Internet company. They could very weel become as popular as the artist in the public’s view. Shouldn’t the Internet company executive or developer who spent years of their life investing in themselves and their futures reap some profit as well? Same as an artist finally earning platinum status and touring with stops at the LA Coliseum and Wembley Stadium?
Artists forget this. They think Internet companies like Pandora were born overnight and somehow, every employee is rich and the Internet company is screwing them. Well, if that’s the case, then why does Pandora pay between 50% and 58% of their revenues depending on the quarter directly to artists? That’s right, Pandora is paying over 50% to artists. Spotify even more and that service is almost wholly owned by the major labels and venture capital firms. The rest has to go to salaries, overhead, business development, customer support, research and development and other costs to build the business. When you have 200+ employees, that’s far different than having a record label with 10 people. How many businesses in the world pay 50% of their revenues to their suppliers?
In an Internet business, customer support alone is a cost that no record label ever needed. How many people could ever get an answer from a record label if they had an issue with an artist website? Probably none. And how many artist websites built by labels have you ever seen updated after the first album release? Forget about it. Hardly any. You have to actually put bodies in a chair to answer customer complaints and solve problems. That, in itself, is an expense most people on Spin thread forget. Then, you have to have system administrators to make sure the servers bounce streams around the world, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. This isn’t Romper Room or Sesame Street. It’s very serious work that takes highly skilled, expensive workers to maintain. Maybe costs decrease over time as Internet technologies become easier to use for the general population, but right now, that’s not the case. Websites and mobile apps are constantly evolving – almost like releasing new parts to the same album week after week. People don’t see this. They just see stuff work and they think it appears out of thin air. That’s the human condition; if you can’t see it, you don’t know that it exists, but if it exists in a way you can touch it yourself, then and only then will you understand it.
Let’s talk about sales. Artist bitch that digital download distributors are getting 40%. Why shouldn’t they? They build the infrastructure, do the promotion and marketing of select tracks on the service, maintain the servers and employ customer service reps to help your fans buy your music. Labels got you for more than that and never offered the same level of service!
I say, you don’t have to sell your music on iTunes, Amazon or anywhere else for that matter. You can totally control your music today and set up your own download store. But, you know why you don’t do it? Because you’d rather be where everyone else is – on Beatport, Audio Jelly, DJ Download, iTunes, Amazon, etc. You fear that if you’re not there, you won’t sell. Well, guess what? You won’t sell, because you simply don’t sell if no one knows about you. Putting your music on these services does not mean instant success. You still have to market and promote your brand and ask your fans to buy your music. They can do that on your website today just as easy as they can get it on iTunes.
You can set up a simple WordPress site and use the Cart66 shopping plug to sell digital downloads direct to fan, where you keep all the money. It’ll cost you $20 a month for a hosting account. If you want your WordPress site to look more like an artist’s site than having the default WordPress theme, you can have some local kid design it for you and an offshore developer code it for under $500. Then, you can sell your stuff direct through Etsy, Ebay or even Amazon. Or, you can use the same Cart66 plugin to sell your T-Shirts and other merch direct to fan. There is no reason that you can’t, other than you a) don’t feel like doing it, and b) think you need to be where everyone else is. Guess what? You can still be where everyone else is and still drive fans to your own website to buy your music, so stop putting your music on SoundCloud for free! Maybe a 1:20-second low quality sample, but not the entire track!
My last two points on the thread:
1. If you produce using digital audio workstations like Ableton Live 8, but don’t ever force yourself into creating a live show, then that’s your own fault. If you want to just be the guy/girl in your bedroom making tracks and you aren’t creative or resourceful enough to build a live performance, then stop whining about how you’re missing out on touring revenue. Again. It’s your own fault! Figure it out. There are plenty of others who do. Just ask Imogen Heap.
2. We have all known for many years that dance music will never get played on the radio, as long as most tracks are 4+ minutes long and have no vocals. Radio only plays 3-minute songs with vocals! Rarely does an instrumental track get nationwide radio airplay. Maybe if you’re Kenny G or Dave Brubeck you’ll get some love. If you’re a dance music artist, producer or combination of both, you have to learn how to make pop music with vocals if you want to have a financially successful career. You only have to look as far as Kaskade, Calvin Harris or David Guetta to see that without vocals, you’ve got a longer road to climb. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the underground. Tech-house is my favorite genre right now. There are a ton of tech-house tracks now sans vocals, but there are also a few lately that are off-the-hook! If you’re not producing tracks with vocals then you’re always going to be in the underground and never the mainstream.
Okay, so your sales have dried up, but you’re still an amazing artist and people clamor for your music or rush the red velvet rope to see you. Where’s the revenue if its not in the stream? It’s in sync licensing. If you’re a dance music artist, there is probably no better time than the present to be able to license your music for film, television and video games. Yes, you have to get off your ass and do some networking and business development. You have to find the music supervisors and get your music into their hands. I know a lot of folks who have placements. It’s not easy, but it’s their if you want it bad enough.
What I find fascinating is that artists will pay promoters, agents, managers, bookers, street teams, designers, developers and anyone else for that matter to get their music out there and generate brand identity and awareness, but when it comes to payments from Internet radio, they find it unfair. Today, you have to do a little more. You have to go back to the drawing board and reinvent the wheel. We all know it sucks, but this is what the world has come to. Either you can go on Spin.com and decry the death of the quality of dance music and waste everyone’s time, as well as your own. Or, you can get up off your ass and do something about it. You can be more than whatever the media pundits write and the commenters confirm. You can drive yourself beyond that. I just look at the amazing success of Calvin Harris and say – it is possible!
As for quality, the industry veterans and other blowhards will always decry the death of dance music and say that it sucks, but every year we seem to go to the show, download the music, write on the blogs and do all the other things that keep us in the game. Maybe…just maybe, we can all be a little more positive. We can all put a spring in our step. We can all look toward the future and help guide others instead of continuing to fuel the oh, so negative “EDM is dead” or “dance music today sucks” debate. There’s lots of good stuff out there, you just gotta know where to look. Stop crying and get moving!
Hit the trail today around Salem Lake in Winston-Salem, NC. It’s a nice red with some low hills, a few straight aways and challenging turns. It was a beautiful day for a ride. Cool early on in the high 50′s, but climbed into the low 70′s by early afternoon.
The map below shows my route, distance, time and speed. I’ve been using this great app for my iPhone called SportTracker. Instead of having to attach a meter to my handlebar and front tire, the app keeps track of your position and reports your stats the SportTracker website over your mobile connection. You can check your progress using the app and you can pause and then resume if you take a break. SportTracker has a community with whom you can share your stats, or you can publish each ride’s details into social media through Facebook, Twitter and other partner integrations.
[iframe src='http://www.sports-tracker.com/widgets/wdgt_workout.html?username=TonyZeoli&workout_key=6roep437h48g5313' style='background-color: transparent;' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' width='100%' height='400']
You know electronic dance music (otherwise known as EDM) has truly hit the mainstream when big brands get into bed with DJs who are rock stars, rock stars who are simply rock stars, or a mash-up of both. Big brands have been down with EDM for some time. Red Bull was practically invented for nightclubs and Absolut has always done cool stuff with the genre for years. Of course, those brands had a vested interest in club culture, because that’s where their products are generally consumed.
For their “See What Unfolds” campaign, Trident, a division of Kraft Foods and makers of the popular chewing gum of the same name, virtually unfolded (pun intended) a YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, which put rock star DJ, Steve Aoki together with true 80′s rock stars, Duran Duran.
Trident Gum Twitter Page
First, let’s put aside the fact that gum is a virtual anathema to nightclubs. For as long as we can remember, nightclubs have pleaded with punters to leave their gum at home, lest they have to peel the sticky stuff off of the underside of champagne soaked tables. Well, maybe Trident didn’t get that message, but that’s okay. We know big brands don’t really do their homework when it comes to the fine details. Chalk it up to a rookie mistake. Sort of like Justin Bieber’s publicist pitching a scoop on the teen pop-star to XXL Magazine.
It all started on June 13, when Trident published a Tweet on their Twitter account @tridentgum announcing tickets for the first in a series of national “See What Unfolds” events at Brooklyn’s Terminal 5.
Make sure you’re among the first to know when tickets are released for Steve Aoki and “See What Unfolds Live”! ow.ly/byCwY
— Trident® Gum (@tridentgum) June 13, 2012
After an hour of Aoki warming up the crowd, Trident tweeted Duran Duran’s appearance on stage.
In preparation for the campaign with Aoki and Duran Duran, Trident put the superstars together in the studio, where they collaborated on an updated remix of the classic, “Hungry Like The Wolf.” The resulting New York Werewolf Mix stays true to the vocal integrity of the original, while soaring, epic Trance-oriented stabs instantly transform the song into something you might hear in a peak-our set at a summer EDM festival.
To spur viral action on the campaign, the video above was released on YouTube and that track was made available as a free download from Trident’s Facebook page.
Click image for Free Download of Hungry Like The Wolf – The New York Werewolf Mix
Fans could remix the video using the radio version of the .mp3 and footage and images available for download at Genero.TV. Winners were announced on June 27th.
See the full story in Ad Age here: http://bit.ly/KLa5qh
One of my favorite producers of late, Maya Jane Coles, is a rising start in the house music arena. She’s been tagged on a number of lists:
- ‘Producer of the Year 2011′ by DJ Mag
- ‘Best Breakthrough DJ 2011′ by Mixmag
- Debuted at No. 9 on the Resident Advisor ’2011 DJ Poll’
- ‘Best Newcomer 2011′ at the Ibiza DJ Awards 2011
Here’s her latest track, Watcher, take from a Dogmatic Records EP. This track is a throwback to early Strictly Rhythm, Nervous, and King Street deep house tracks. It’s impossible for me to say whether Maya was actually influenced by these labels, given her relatively young age and the fact that she produced Hip-Hop and Drum’n'Bass earlier in her career. But, I can’t imagine from hearing this track that she wasn’t influenced in some way by early house pioneers to create this melodic and soulful, deep house experience.
You can buy it here on Beatport.
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tonyzeoli : Such a tragedy. No one deserves to be killed for who they are. This thug hunted down a gay man and shot him in cold blood on a street in the West Village. Just horrific that anyone would hate another human being so much that they resort to shooting someone in the face.
(Sun May 19, 1:18 pm).
