With the advancement of DJing technology over the past decade, these days, at least technically speaking, anyone can step up behind the booth and play music. Which is why it is important for up and coming artists to be able to produce their own music as this is what will set them apart from the thousands of other guys and girls out there who want to rise in the ranks to become a peak-set slayer.

Enter the Riot Squad: not only are they hungry and ambitious to become A-list DJs, but they can also produce a pretty mean tune. Its been said before that although big dancefloor songs are often slated as being throw-away, they’re often the hardest to produce, which is why we tip our hats to Mike Kelly and Kyle Maclean for the monster they produced at the studio. ‘Millenium’ is a gnarly, filthy, bass-face banger and we hope its a sign that these guys are on the up and up.

Riot Squad – Millenium by Red Bull Studio CT

Technorati Tags: Red Bull Studio, Cape Town, Riot Squad, Millenium

Liver hooked us up with a new one from him! Some nice distorted, wobbly basslines… It’s no wonder he has been destroying so many parties over the last month! Catch him at Rocking The Daisies this weekend!

[DL] Liver - POW!

POW! by theLiver

^5!

Technorati Tags: Liver, POW, Cape Town, Rocking The Daisies

Sparrow are a new and exciting electro duo out of Cape Town, South Africa. Comprised of Gareth H. Graham and Gavin Gilowey, they bring an interesting blend of electro house, pounding drum beats and orchestral swells to the Cape Town scene. You can find them in our Artists page here!

They are currently working on pulling together tracks for their debut EP, as well as working on their Podcast series of DJ Mixes, “Get Shitfaced & Dance” (Which we will be linking you to soon!).

Grab two grinding tracks below and practice in your room.

Download – Sparrow - Girl's Noise (Instrumental Version)
Download – Sparrow - No Justice

Sparrow – Girl’s Noise (Instrumental Version) by garethgraham

Sparrow – No Justice by garethgraham

Excellent!
^5!

Technorati Tags: Sparrow, Gareth H. Graham, Gavin Gilowey, Cape Town, Girls Noise, No Justice, Get Shitfaced & Dance

Steve Elsworth, aka Audiophile 021, is the head engineer at the Red Bull Studio in Cape Town and he is only part human. His human half is the friendly get-along guy that everyone knows and respects. You know the type; a stand-up chap, with a constant smile on his dial always willing to extend a helping hand.

But his other half is pure robot, automaton if you will, pulsing with mechanical energy, a stream of consciousness at several thousand megs a second and a river of our favorite energy juice flowing and pumping through his system. How else would he be able to have held down a 20 hour recording session for the Skillz That Paid the Billz project (more info on this to follow)? How else would he be able to spend his days in the studio from seven in the morning to seven at night, engineering sessions, and then head off to clubs and bars like Waiting Room and Fiction to play sets of downtempo dub and bashing minimal tech? And how else would he be able to produce “Triola”, downloadable below, a piece of genre-morphing swinging digital dub tech?

Audiophile 021 – Triola by Red Bull Studio CT

Then onto the Red Bull Music Academy Radio. “Electro” and “Minimal” have often been seen as opposites or even enemy genres, but both have their roots in the rich history of techno. Check out this radio show with the godfather of minimal, Richie Hawtin:

Technorati Tags: Red Bull Music Studios, Audiophile, Steve Elsworth, Cape Town

Something a little different for our readers today… Here is a mobile application that I thought would be worthwhile sharing with all of you.

FOUND, powered by Le Cool, is a free mobile service that is available to all of you that have Nokia handsets. Basically what it does is keep you in the know of all the rad cultural stuff your city has to offer. The application has recently been launched in South Africa, specifically for Johannesburg,  Durban and Cape Town and is also currently available for Sydney, Dubai, Vienna, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Paris, Moscow and Istanbul for the rest of the world.

Read more about app after the jump!

I downloaded the application and ran it on my Nokia for roughly a week just to see what kind of content the application would link me to. I set my location to Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town over various days just to see what it had to offer for the available South African cities .

The app itself is very slick looking and worked awesomely in both vertical and horizontal orientation which is always nice. FOUND loads up to it’s home screen  and shows you up and coming events / restaurants / films depending on how you set it up (you can set three categories that it filters content from). The user interface is nice and simple with the screen being left uncluttered by menus and unnecessary things. I’ll run you through my experience of each of the categories FOUND allows you to browse through.

“Culture” is the first option on the list and surprisingly always had a lot of content to choose from. Market theatre square happenings, fashion week, comedy nights, art fairs and a bunch of theatres showcasing various plays and performances, wine tours, city tours and even (for some strange reason) the odd ball entry of the Vida e caffe Greenside.

“Eating” contains a whole bunch of eateries ranging from bakeries to cafes to full blown gourmet restaurants offering the urbanite looking for a bite to eat a whole bunch of classy options. Each eatery has a rough guide on the price, hours and a little write up on the place. The list is fairly comprehensive and provides a nice guide to check out when you can’t decide on where to go.

“Film” provides a pretty comprehensive list of films that are being released as well as what is already showing. The Cape Town listing even includes the Labia Theatre which is pretty cool. The prices and times of the films is also available with a short summary of what the specific film is about.

“Music” seems to be pretty full in the Cape Town listing having entries ranging from jazz to acoustic sets to tango evenings. Durban and Johannesburg turned up very little over the week, which was a bit disappointing.

“Nightlife” was disappointing all round. Le Cool provides some pretty unusual club happenings for the cities in other countries but for the South African version it seems to only be big corporate events with the odd smaller party or club being hardly featuring. It would be nice to see even smaller events listed here to give some variety from the mainstream events that dominate here.

The final category to choose from is “Recommended” which is a decent overview of all the categories selecting some pretty rad items to do in a week. Think “I’ll totally use this when I go there for holiday again”!

No matter what category you choose an item from, it always shows you a price range so you know what to expect, a write up on the specific entry and has three nifty buttons to click on… You can show the specific place using your GPS and Ovi maps on your phone, send the details of the event / restaurant / place to a friend via sms / email or you can jump to the item in questions website and get more information there. There are also little surprises in each entry in terms of free give aways etc.

All in all the FOUND application is definitely something to check out, even if it’s just to help you decide on what to eat that night! FOUND is a powerful app that integrates brilliantly with your phone and makes use of the features available to it awesomely. Hopefully as time goes by more and more interesting and unusual options for parties and music will show up in the service although only time will tell.

If you are a Nokia user, go check it out at:
http://store.ovi.com/content/77A4CEB3483AE760E040050A8732252F

And let us know what you think of the app!

^5!

Technorati Tags: FOUND, Le Cool, Nokia, Ovi, Mobile, South Africa, Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town

CoDeC sent me this electro Rock and Roller so I thought I would share it with y’all. It’s a pretty awesome tune, well put together synths and a grinding tune. Love that!

I am also busy with crafting a new look for electrotrash so stay tuned in the next month for a new look and hopefully an easier to use site! If you have any suggestions please drop us a line in the Contact box!

^5!

Technorati Tags: CoDeC, Subliminal Control, Gerald Van Wyk

Hey Electrotrash heads. Some time back you may have read a blog post about the Red Bull Music Studios down in Cape Town.

Following on from that I’d like to introduce a regular Electrotrash post to do with the RB studios. As many people would agree, Cape Town is a hub of mad electronica, being the hometown of African Dope and the mid 2000 wave of brilliant glitch-hop courtesy of the Real Estates, Waddy Jones, Considerate Builders Scheme and many more.

There are a whole new wave of beat-smiths, emcees and DJs coming up the ranks and over the past months I’ve gotten into the rhythm of getting these guys into the Red Bull Studios to make music. Of course they’re all pretty amped to get stuck in, cause we have some sweet noise making artillery down here.

And it doesn’t stop in Cape Town. Of course anyone familiar with this blog will know that cities like Pretoria, Joburg and Durban have their fair share of sonic-manipulating genius. We’re going to endeavour to get as many mad music makers from around the country into the studio to bring the noise.

All the music coming out of the studio will be available on the exclusive Red Bull Studio blog at www.redbullstudioza.com. Of course the blog is just starting out, whereas Electrotrash is the online hub for local electronica, being around since before some of the artists on here even knew what an oscillator was. This column will be a roundup of the great electronic music coming out of the Red Bull Studios in Cape Town and wherever possible I’ll make sure to get exclusive content onto Electrotrash for all your downloading pleasure.

Kicking things off is this Dubstep remix of DJ MX’s “Like I See You” featuring song bird Black Porcelain. While the original is a rolling South African house number, not really in line with Electrotrash’s vibe, the remix is a dark, asthmatic juggernaut that fits in perfectly with the meteorically rising Dubstep scene in Cape Town.

DJ MX feat. Black Porcelain – Like I See You (Darkstep Remix) – Soundcloud link, 13.8MB

These tracks were recorded and produced during the Red Bull Music Academy Taster some months back at the studios. The taster, dubbed ‘A Third World Perspective’ saw 20 music minds from around South Africa come together to share knowledge with music greats such as Sipho Hotstix and Trevor Jackson for three days. To find out more about the taster, and to get the lowdown on the studios in general, head over to the Red Bull Studio Cape Town blog here – www.redbullstudioza.com

Before I leave I would like to introduce one last musical innovation courtesy of the world’s biggest energy drink: Red Bull Music Academy Radio. An internet radio station, RBMA Radio has a catalogue on some of the most incredible artists making music in the world, I kid you not. As an example you can see this playlist embedded into this post below which you can actually simply play off this post.

RBMA Player Code:

A banging electrified mix from Crookers, a one on one Dubstep session featuring Benga and Skream and a live recording of electro-pop king, M83 should be enough to make you head over to www.redbullmusicacademyradio.com to see what the deal is for yourselves.

Otherwise keep an eye out on Electrotrash as well as the studio blog for more Red Bull Studio Cape Town freshness in the weeks to come.

Richard the Third

It’s always great to get a new artist on the site, especially when it’s someone from a band you have always liked! Myrid Ambre is Stephen Timm from The Buckfever Underground, and although really different (this time it’s ambient electronica) it’s still pretty awesome!

Grab a sample track below and read more about Myrid Ambre here!

Stephen has told me that the first person to guess who is doing the main vocals on the track will get a FREE copy of his album. So anybody, everybody, anywhere in the world… leave a comment below with your guess (when you leave the comment you have to leave an email address – we will contact you on that!) and if you are the first person to guess correctly, a free CD is yours!

If you are in Cape Town on Wednesday 28 October, go on down to Mabu Vinyl (2 Rheede Street, Gardens, Cape Town) and watch Myrid Ambre perform live! It starts at 6PM and there will be free stuff!

Technorati Tags: myrid ambre, stephen timm, cape town, buckfever underground, ambient electronica

Cape Town is a remix machine at the moment with awesome remixes of tracks coming out regularly! The latest addition to that growing list is an awesome electro take on the indie rockers Desmond & The Tutu’s track Pictures by CoDeC.

Let us know what you think!

Technorati Tags: CoDeC, desmond & the tutus, pictures, remix, cape town

Monday morning… load this one up on your iPod for your drive to work… A brand, spanking new Haezer track, “Lui Die Klok” is a super rad, intelligent electro track that is easier on the ears than his other stuff!

Give it a listen and let us know what you think!