With the cancelation of live events for the foreseeable future, the rave community has been facing serious withdrawals. No hypnotizing light shows to get lost in, no desert playground to run around in, and no trading kandi with strangers.

In an attempt to comfort the EDM community, famous event organizer Insomniac, whose festivals include the Electric Daisy Carnival, has been hosting virtual raves.

But, it may have done little to soothe a raver's EDM heart.

Ravers aching to get back into the scene pulled up to Insomniac and Restless Beats' “Park ‘N Rave” event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports in Chandler, Arizona on June 26 and 27.

In a way, this socially distanced version of raving seems more luxurious than it is traditionally. One guest described her experience on edmmaniac.com saying,

“Our personal dance floor was ample space for us to set up our viewing station. We were allowed to bring our own lawn chairs, blow up couches, air beds, and beer pong tables. As a grandma raver, being able to chill from time to time between sets without leaving my group or having to walk away from the stage was awesome. Guests were also encouraged to bring decorations, so many personalized their space with tapestries, flowers, Christmas lights, totems, and flags that made it feel like a camping festival. There was so much space for flow arts! I saw so many hoopers, levi wanders, glovers, and staffers doing their thing without being afraid to run into people!

Being able to bring our own food and alcohol was a real game changer!

Legendary musical force Andrew Weatherhall -- who produced Primal Scream's seminal album Screamadelica, famously remixed the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Meat Beat Manifesto, and as a DJ helped turn the world on to acid house -- has died. He was 56 and suffered a pulmonary embolism. From The Guardian:

Following a young adulthood in the post-punk scene, Weatherall became a key figure in countercultural – and occasionally mainstream – British music after becoming one of the key DJs in the acid house movement of the late 1980s. He was recruited by Danny Rampling to play at London nightclub Shoom, and soon founded the record label Boy’s Own Recordings and the production outfit Bocca Juniors.

Further musical projects included the group the Sabres of Paradise, which splintered into the duo Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood, though perhaps his most famous musical work was with Primal Scream on their breakthrough 1991 album Screamadelica. By taking the band’s anthemic songwriting and adding samples, loops and the euphoric energy of Ibiza, Weatherall’s production made the album one of the most celebrated of the 1990s....

He spoke of the eternal appeal of DJing in a 2016 Guardian interview: “It’s quite vampyric, DJing. You’re never going to have that feeling of hearing that record for the first time again, but if you look into the eyes of someone who’s hearing it for the first time, it’s a nice vicarious feeling. But it’s not selfish. I think I’ve never lost that thing I had when I was 12 years old and inviting my mates round to my house.

I'm glad he came prepared with a hand towel to ensure a good grip on the railing.

I can't help but imagine him in a dance-off with the footloose and fancy-free fellow made famous by this classic clip:

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A post shared by Total Frat Move (@totalfratmove) on Jul 18, 2018 at 2:17pm PDT

Greta Thunberg's Joan of Arc-grade tongue-lashing to the world's leaders at the UN makes for some incredible mashup possibilities: it's not merely that her excellent delivery lent itself to death metal, but also her use of the phrase "right here, right now," was tailor-made for insertion into Fatboy Slim's track of the same name -- hence Fatboy Slim himself playing Twitter user David Scott's remix at a gig in Gateshead. Read the rest

EDM whiz Tycho has once again gifted his Burning Man sunrise DJ set by posting it for us to listen to on SoundCloud.

Happy to present this year's sunrise set, live from the Dusty Rhino in Black Rock City on Thursday, August 29th, 2019. Thank you all for taking the time to share in this moment, it's truly a highlight for me to spend this morning with you each year ? Big thanks and love to the Dusty Rhino crew...

2019 tracks:

Van Halen - 1984 Boards of Canada - Alpha and Omega Tycho - Japan (Instrumental) Muddy Monk & Jimmy Whoo - Divine Bakradze - Quiet Loop Karol XVII & MB Valence - Aqua Tycho - Easy Tigerskin - This Place Is Empty Without You Octavian - Lightning (Ross from Friends Remix) Bonobo - Linked Kiasmos - Drawn Tycho - Into The Woods Letherette - After Dawn Four Tet - Evening Side (Oneohtrix Point Never Edit) You Man - Birdcage Icarus - October Photay - Illusion Of Seclusion <<>> Westerman - Roads Tourist - Elixir Bicep - Opal (Four Tet Remix) Maribou State - Turnmills Tycho - Jetty B. Traits NorthShore Tycho - Pink & Blue (Instrumental) Chrome Sparks - The Meaning of Love Tycho - Weather

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A post shared by Tycho / Scott Hansen (@tychomusic) on Aug 23, 2019 at 7:58pm PDT

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‪Happy to present this year's sunrise DJ set live from the Dusty Rhino in Black Rock City, Thursday, August 29th, 2019 🌞 Thank you all for taking the time to share in this moment, it's truly a highlight for me to spend this morning with you each year 🙏‬ ‪Listen at link in profile 🔊

A post shared by Tycho / Scott Hansen (@tychomusic) on Sep 2, 2019 at 7:36am PDT

screenshot via @Tychomusic

Tycho's 2018 DJ set

(Kottke) Read the rest

In 1986, Chicago's local TV news discovered the city's pioneering house music scene, featuring the likes of Farley "Jackmaster" Funk and Steve "Silk" Hurley. From this groove came the groove of all grooves.

Below, two classics of the genre:

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

A new study reveals that the Skrillex track "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" reduces mosquitos' success in foraging, host attack, and sexual activities of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika fever, Mayaro, and other nasty diseases. According to the researchers from the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and their colleagues, it's all about that bass. From their scientific paper published in the journal Acta Tropica:

Sound and its reception are crucial for reproduction, survival, and population maintenance of many animals. In insects, low-frequency vibrations facilitate sexual interactions, whereas noise disrupts the perception of signals from conspecifics and hosts. Despite evidence that mosquitoes respond to sound frequencies beyond fundamental ranges, including songs, and that males and females need to struggle to harmonize their flight tones, the behavioral impacts of music as control targets remain unexplored. In this study, we examined the effects of electronic music (Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex) on foraging, host attack, and sexual activities of the dengue vector Aedes aegypti. Adults were presented with two sound environments (music-off or music-on). Discrepancies in visitation, blood feeding, and copulation patterns were compared between environments with and without music. Ae. aegypti females maintained in the music-off environment initiated host visits earlier than those in the music-on environment. They visited the host significantly less often in the music-on than the music-off condition. Females exposed to music attacked hosts much later than their non-exposed peers. The occurrence of blood feeding activity was lower when music was being played. Adults exposed to music copulated far less often than their counterparts kept in an environment where there was no music.

Enjoy Tycho's sunrise DJ set from the Dusty Rhino at Burning Man, August 30, 2018. Track list below the audio embed.

Fila Brazillia - A Zed And Two L's King Of Woolworths - Bakerloo (Main Titles) Squarepusher - Iambic 5 Poetry DJ Krust - Soul In Motion Aphex Twin - IZ-US Tycho - Adrift PFM - One & Only Art Feynman - Slow Down Weval - Thinking Of Glue70 - Til You Say Com Truise - Flightwave Melanie De Biasio - Afro Blue James Holden - 10101 Voyage - Dynamic Weval - It'll Be Just Fine Roman Flügel - 9 Years (DJ Koze Remix) Jon Hopkins - Emerald Rush

Pluko - l o v e Aleksandir - Yamaha Chrome Sparks - Moonraker Kölsch & Tiga - HAL Bicep - Glue Original Mix Chrome Sparks - All There Is Tycho - Awake

Ben Cartwright-Cox observed that he could modulate the bass frequencies in electronic dance music/dubstep in a way that was easy to detect with a signal processor and inaudible to his unaided ears, so he wrote some code to hide messages in the wubwubwub. Read the rest

Alex AKA Yaxu writes, "I co-founded the Algorave movement. Now I'm working on an album of live-coded algorave-style music." Read the rest

You might could also try Gangstagrass. Read the rest

Jarre tapped the whistleblower for vocals on "Exit," a track from Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise, a new electronic music album that drops in three weeks. Read the rest

Perhaps the first effective strategy in America's decades long war on drugs, after 2 recent teen deaths, Los Angeles County is considering banning all EDM festivals.

Via MyNewsLA:

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to explore banning raves on county property while examining security and safety measures at the music/dance festivals following the weekend deaths of two women at the HARD Summer music festival at the Pomona fairgrounds, apparently from drug overdoses.

Seriously, they don't come deeper and harder than this. [via r/videos]

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Having belatedly discovered the Electro Swing genre, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. My wife brought home a link to Caravan Palace's "Clash" (from their 2012 album Panic), which is pretty much perfect in its ability to hit all my sweet spots: Django/Grapelli-ish picking, megaphone singing, Andrews Sisters harmonies, Herbie Hancock glitch-tunes, and just enough dubstep to be interesting (but not enough to be annoying). Read the rest

Remember early-nineties Belgian techno of the sort that (Mike Shallcross quipped, as quoted on the wikies) was "tough, metallic tracks...with harsh, discordant synth lines that sounded like distressed Hoovers?" If you're having a hard time trying to recreate the sound from that description, try this.

This is Belgium Part Two: Cherry Moon On Valium has discovered a cheap and effective way to breathe new life into those old 12 inches: just slow them down to 115bpm, and voila (gesluierd): the intervening decades telescope down to nothing in an eyeblink. Read the rest