Track of the Weekend #118: The Prodigy - “Nasty”

This week’s Track of the Weekend could not be any more different than last week’s. After the calming sounds of Isaac Delusion’s cover of Lou Reed, it’s time to go hardcore, and that means England’s favorite big beat group: The Prodigy. They’ve sold over 25 million records in their long careers, and their new album “The Day Is My Enemy” is due out at the end of March, sure to add heavily to that total. 

Nasty" is like a street brawl between hooligans and the army, or a brick crashing through your living room window. It’ll thump brains at a rave but it also contains a level of melodic cohesion which reinforces why The Prodigy are who they are: it’s pure energy in the form of music. 

Thanks to MoiMateo and Mr. Rien for adding and sharing this across Whyd

Indie Dance Playlist of Reference

image

Continuing in our series of Playlists of References comes an epic banger from Switzerland: Indie Dance. Time to get out your flower crowns, clip on your suspenders, and prepare to Instagram. But first, let’s get the story behind this 400+ track playlist from its curator, Rainer Etzweiler of RCKSTR Mag

When did you start listening to Indie Dance? 

Around 2007/08 when I started DJing and producing music. 

Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Indie Dance started speaking to you? 

A lot, if you count the remixes of pop or indie songs. Almost none if you don’t, there are not too many disco songs with heart-touching/deeply moving lyrics. Disco music is mostly about the simple things and that’s a good thing. 

What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself? 

Usually when I’m out for a run or when I have friends over at my flat. Also before I do a new mixtape, it helps me to pick the right tracks. 

If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite? 

Uhhhhh, that’s not easy. Especially since there are so many. I would go with one of my latest favorites: RAC - “Cheap Sunglasses” feat. Matthew Koma - Viceroy Remix. 

And now, cut loose: 

New Design, New Functionality, New Whyd

We’ve been quietly working on improvements for Whyd which hit the light of day yesterday. We are very proud to show off the new web version of Whyd, which brings the design in line with our iOS app and blog. You probably saw the changes! 

There are some big differences and some subtle changes. The overall design is cleaner, brighter, and largely more modern, eliminating the boxy feel the old version for a flatter design. We brightened the experience from the darker days of black and gray. 

Most importantly, we incorporated the ADD button into the search box, so now you can search for a track directly instead of clicking the button to add a track, then searching for it. Don’t worry, it’s the central feature of Whyd, we wanted to make it better and more intuitive! 

The new version also includes better navigation, with a drop down menu to access your playlists and the hot tracks from any page. We also opened the landing page so that people can see the tracks trending in our community without creating an account. 

In the next few weeks we will also release a new version of the bookmarklet which will let you import multiple tracks/entire playlists from different sources, so you can add everything you want to Whyd! 

We’d love to hear what you think, so tell us how you feel about the new version here: [tony at whyd dot com]

Never stop jamming! 

Your Weekly High Five: 5 Quality Tracks Per Week [Donnemencinq Interview]

Bonjour! When did you create Donnemencinq (Give me five)? Where did the concept come from? Do you give a lot of high fives? 

Hello! Donnemencinq was born in October of last year. I had wanted to launch a cultural project for a long time and instead of launching something too complicated, I prefered to start off with a simple and attractive start: each Monday one playlist with quality musical discoveries. 

The idea comes from two big motivations: my desire to share and my love for music and new sounds. 

Have you ever noticed that you always feel better after a high five? For me, every Monday I give myself a big high five and that guarantees me a successful week! 

You suggest playlist with five tracks each week. Where do you find these tracks? Why only five? 

I follow a lot of artists and labels on Soundcloud and on other social networks. Since I started to use Whyd I also discover more and more tracks thanks to other users’ playlists. 

Only five tracks for a question of quality. If we succeed in publishing five tracks that really make an impression on our visitors then we are already really happy. At the beginning it was a question of selecting one track per work day (from Monday to Friday) and finally we said that it would be even nicer to have a full list from the first day of work. 

Who should listen to your playlists? Tell us about your style of music, is it the same overall or does it change from week to week? 

Our playlists are made for the widest audience possible. Our goal is to make people discover tracks that haven’t been listened to a lot but deserve to be. We also like to bring back a few classics that have been forgotten. It’s important to remain accessible, it has to be a moment of pleasure! 

On the style side, even if we like electro, we pay attention to bringing diversity in our selections. We can go from one style to another very rapidly but we try to keep a certain progression to the flow of the playlist. 

We can we look forward to you in 2015? Do you have plans for world domination?

The project is still very young but we already have a lot of ideas. The next steps are: 

- Go to meet artists that have impressed us and interview them

- Create artwork for each playlist from talented photographers and graphic designers

- Present the latest news from artists that we really appreciate

With that, we might not dominate the world, but I’m sure that the simplicity and quality of our site will have a nice place in it! 

So Whyd, give me five! 

Follow Georges from Donnemencinq on Whyd, Like them on Facebook, and check back weekly for their latest playlists!

Track of the Weekend #117: Isaac Delusion - “Take A Walk On The Wild Side” (Lou Reed Cover)

This week will never be forgetten. As we come to terms the startling and tragic events here in Paris, the violent murders of the editorial team and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the police officers who were killed, we have all become Charlie; stuck in a hazy dream mixed between disbelief, sadness, and of defiance, togetherness, and ultimately, comfort. A comfort knowing that extremism and terrorism will not change who we are, will not change what civilization has come to represent, will never, ever threaten the very ideals that stand larger than any single individual. 

The most popular track this tragic week on Whyd comes from the Paris band Isaac Delusion, who describe themselves as “almost like an accident, a dream scrawled blindly in a bedside journal in the early morning hours, so you won’t forget what happened to you while you were asleep.” It’s a cover of Lou Reed’s classic “Take A Walk On The Wild Side,” and it provides the perfect context for Isaac Delusion’s passion for soft, folk vocals. 

The editorial team at Charlie Hebdo certainly walked on the wild side, in fact it’s the only side they ever knew. And they paid the highest price for their defiance. We dedicate this Track of the Weekend to their souls, the brave police officers who tried to protect them, and their mourning families and friends. 

Deep House: Playlist of Reference

image

We’re continuing our mission of providing you with incredible music to listen to, and we have tapped our top music lovers who are experts in certain subgenres of music to feature their playlists in our Playlist of Reference series. To fully appreciate the selection, here is the story behind the playlist, as told by the curator. 

Today we’re featuring the Deep playlist curated by Tis.

When did you start listening to Deep?

Most of my playlists are genre-related and I created Deep in April 2013, mostly to share deep house/deep techno tracks at the beginning by then it evolved to sharing also ambient, peaceful, and mental tracks without “musical genre barriers.”

Did you ever have a moment when you felt like Deep started speaking to you?

I guess that when you want to have a musical background that’s peaceful for the mind, it’s noticeable that after a few tracks you begin to really pay attention to the music and appreciate it.

What are some example situations when you would listen to this playlist yourself?

I mostly listen to this playlist at work, most of the songs don’t have lyrics and are relaxing, so it’s easier to focus.

If you had to choose just one track from this playlist, which one would be your favorite?

One song is hard to choose… let me give you 3!

FCL - “It’s you” (San Soda’s Panorama Bar Acca Version): a great cover of the classic Chicago house track from ESP (1989) and a big souvenir from Berlin afterclubbing.

Visonia - “Lunar Garden” an oniric techno track that I discovered this year, deeply mental. A great voyage for the mind.

Brian Eno: “An Ending (ascent)” because, Brian Eno.  

La Fine Équipe Answers Your Questions: Music as Food, The Process of Collaboration, and Being Connectors of Sound [LONG FORM INTERVIEW]

It’s a cold December evening near Père Lachaise as the door to The Bunker buzzes open. Up a concrete staircase that evokes thoughts of nuclear destruction, voices can be heard. Camera shutters are snapping. Moving up a level it’s clear that the bunker is alive. 

We’re at the studio of La Fine Équipe, winners of the 112th Whyd Track of the Weekend and a group that has started to lift off in the French music scene. Comprised of 4 producers, their styles are varied like gummies in a bag of Haribo. But put together, there is a sugary goodness that is undeniably addictive. And the world is starting to take note. 

Cameras are repacked, hands are shaken, and finally it’s time for the last interview of the day, with Whyd, before the guys can get back to their families and lives. In my hand are fresh questions that we crowd-sourced from the community, from the huge pool of fans that have added, liked and re-added the delicious tracks from “La Boulangerie 3” which came out at the beginning of December, boasting the likes of Fakear, 20syl, Souleance, and more.

Three out of the four of La Fine Équipe sit down in chairs in the studio, backed by monitors and keyboards, known on the stage as oOgo, Mr. Gib, and Chomskey. The fourth, Blanka, is not in town. Considering their busy schedules, it’s already a win to get three of them. They are casually dressed, more comfortable than hipster. The mic clicks on.

The following interview is translated from French, and their stage names dissolve into their real names: Hugo, Vincent, and Mathieu. All photos property of Whyd. Interviewer in BOLD

Your music is shared quite often by the Whyd community. I sent an email to the music lovers who have shared your tracks, asking them if they have questions for you. They got back to me with a few questions that I’m happy to ask you, so here we go! 

Your individual styles are rather different, who are your major influences? What about inspiration? Could be artists, moments, genres?   

Hugo: I’ve listened to a little bit of everything, and I was very quickly drawn towards soul and jazz, but what really gave me the desire to create music was hip hop, around 1996. The first track that I heard that really got me, as an adolescent on a high school trip, was by Cypress Hill. A friend had it on a cassette on the bus. 

Mathieu: It’s the same for me, hip hop, and DJ Crush and DJ Shadow. That was huge for me, incredible. I didn’t know all of the samples that they used, so it was really hip hop and then the sources of hip hop, I would go searching for vinyls, in antique markets, record shops, online, looking for the hard to find discs. We had a scratch group at the very beginning and afterwards we evolved into making our own music. 

Vincent: My family was very into music. We were always listening to it, I started playing music with my brother and after that I met people who were playing hip hop and I loved it, so we started to make music together. I love cinematic music, soundtracks, the composers, there is a link to that and hip hop too: you can find everything in the libraries of film soundtracks. 

Yeah, I think that the theme to Jurassic Park is one of the best songs ever! 

Hugo: We play that when we play at festivals! 

Mathieu

If you had to choose a favorite contemporary artist, who would it be? 

Hugo: Every time we are asked this question it’s impossible to find one. It’s like restaurants. You know a ton of great places to eat, but when someone asks you, you can’t think of one! 

Maybe it doesn’t have to be from this moment. I just discovered Mel Tormé, who is nothing new, but he’s new to me and that’s what I’m listening to right now. 

Vincent: Serge Gainsbourg, he’s French and he truly knew how to make good songs. He was varied in his styles, and was so interesting for being able to recover classic melodies. 

Have you ever tried to remix him?

Vincent: Yes, of course, just for fun. He had a great sense of rhythm, a way of capturing music, he was really focused on the sound, not just making a song to say something quickly. 

Mathieu: Danger Mouse, just awesome. When he got together with Jack White and Norah Jones it was just super. I believe that when he does a project it’s really well done, even if artistically there might be others who can be stronger, he is extremely consistent.  

Have you ever tried to remix him?

Mathieu: No, but “Danger Doom” was absolutely something I put into my DJ sets. Scratching with it, but for pleasure, and fun. 

Hugo: I can’t really answer, there are so many artists in my head, but one that comes to mind without really thinking about it is Flying Lotus, very complete, an artist that pushes the envelope very far. You will always discover something new, he’s big right now. 

Hugo

For the creation of La Boulangerie 3, I noticed that each track was made by a different beatmaker. Do you work together or separately? 

Hugo: There are no rules, we compare it to making food. We invite a chef, a “cuisinier,” and we ask them to give us a recipe. Since we had already made La Boulangerie 1 and 2, they had an idea of what we were asking for. There were examples where someone takes the track from beginning to end almost completely by themselves. It’s the same with the artists, some of them gave us “ready to eat” plates, while others gave us just the ingredients. 

So you guys are really the connectors of sound, are there not rules about who adds what?

Vincent: We have habits about how we work, but we are all producers. 

Mathieu: We go back and forth a lot, we make everyone listen. 

Is there someone who gets their way more than the others in the La Fine Équipe? I mean, you have very different styles! Does anyone have the final word? 

Vincent: There has to be a “chef d’orchestre,” otherwise we couldn’t get things done, because we are also a label so there is marketing, etc. 

Hugo: We’ve been working together for a while rather easily, our decisions are generally taken together. We try to make good tracks, and since there are different styles, each person knows how to help in their regard. Sometimes there are tracks that are more electronic, or hip hop, so they fall under different members. There are so many tracks in this project because we want to include all aspects of everyone.  

So you focus on making a good track first, and then you rework it.

Hugo: Yeah exactly, we work on the train, during commutes, everywhere.

Vincent

You guys do interviews all the time now, you’ve been working together for a while, and you’ve gotten to this level now where you’re working with big acts. Do you think this style of production is sustainable? Is it an advantage? Meaning to make a track and try to classify it later? 

Hugo: Well, in any case it’s how we work. Do this, do that, we tried all those things, but we are not really careerists, we are in this for the music, we are lucky that it works, and we have the ability to be free. Our character is anti-rules.

Vincent: We are more from the Myspace generation. Today on Soundcloud there is so much music from new young producers, that people really want to wait until they have a great track to publish. 

Hugo: Yeah but there are people who post songs everyday too on Soundcloud. 

But it’s true, in the Myspace days, there was no Garageband, not everyone had Ableton. But now it’s a different thing. 

Vincent: Because there are so many songs, there isn’t a lot of quality, so instead of posting they hold off. It has to be perfect because they know that there is so much stuff. 

Mathieu: Since we are a bit older we also knew the idea of the album, to tell a story, like a filmmaker.  

There might be a contradiction there. Since you say that you work on a track, trying just to make good tracks, but then you say that the album format is important, a story, like a film. But how can you make a film with 12 tracks created for their own individual sake? 

Mathieu: It’s not contradictory in the sense that you make tracks. It’s you who makes them, and over a period of time you are going to have consistency. Sure, you can have fun making little tracks, but the idea is that I want to make music, and today I’m trying to express this emotion, so I have a style that runs between. If you release 40 tracks in a year, I’m sure that you will have at least 20 that are actually telling the same story. And it’s in that form that you make an album. 

I understand, it’s the artist that comes out, even if we want to do 5 different things, we just end up doing the same thing 5 different ways. 

Mathieu: A painter who does pointillism, he is still going to want to do other things, but you are going to find coherent elements in his style. The “file conducteur.”

How did you have the idea of La Boulangerie? I’m sure it’s a question that you get often, but who chooses the names for the songs? Is it you or the artists?  

The first Boulangerie was an homage to J Dilla, the beatmaker from Detroit who released an album called “Donuts” shortly before he died. We would’ve called our album “Croissant” but Boulangerie was larger, it opens up more possibilities, from naming the tracks to graphics, etc. It was much more exciting. 

It’s true that it’s a warm image, going on Sunday morning to get your baguette, it’s welcoming. 

Hugo: We also think about consuming music like we consume food, and this concept was full of different morsels: sweets, salty, the pleasure of eating. 

Plus for French people you will find a lot of fans of the Boulangerie… Second to last question, when will you go to Tours? 

When you invite us! Plus we have some great friends there, Chill Bump for example, our friends that we go on tour with so yeah, with pleasure! 

When you aren’t making music, what do you do for fun? 

Vincent: We work on the label.

Hugo: Go out, go to clubs, go to restaurants, eat, drink. 

Mathieu: I’m a sound engineer so I work on that, I’ve got my geek side. Plus my family. 

Hugo: Plus there is Blanka, who has a studio and spends a lot of time there, and he has a project called Jukebox Champions. They do hip hop instrumentals. 

Thanks guys! And a big thanks to every one from the Whyd community that sent in their questions for La Fine Équipe! Never stop jamming! 

Track of the Weekend #116: Mark Ronson - “Uptown Funk” feat. Bruno Mars

The first track of the weekend of 2015, and it’s a marker of how we’ve come. When Whyd first began, we feared the day that Bruno Mars - known for his incredibly commercialized mainstream pop songs that included “Grenade,” a low point for the human race; “Marry Me” the song which says very clearly and repeatedly “We’re looking for something dumb to do, hey baby, I think I wanna marry you.” (people actually use this song to propose to their significant others…); followed by “Lighters” which furthered lowered the bar so low that it had no choice but to start coming back up again - would trend on Whyd. For that to happen, it would mean that the mainstream was beginning to adopt Whyd in large numbers. As you can probably imagine by this point, that’s where we are today. Let’s just call this moment bittersweet. 

Mark Ronson has been working with Bruno Mars for a long time, and if you look at his production credits, he’s worked with basically everyone else too. “Uptown Funk" is exactly what you would expect: energetic, some funky dance moves, all taking place above Central Park. The man deserves our respect, and this track will definitely add an extra step to your weekend festivities. 

Thanks to Vietman for getting it to us! 

  • January, 2 2015

May 2015 Be Your Best Year Yet

Never Stop Jamming

Your New Year’s Eve Party Playlist

How important is a good New Year’s Eve playlist? Well, NYE is not like other parties. Everyone is obliged to party. Everyone has expectations. It’s not your birthday, where your loved ones surround you to celebrate you. It’s something completely different, and everyone wants, no, NEEDS, to have a great time. 

You need up-beat music that can drive people, you need some classic tracks that people recognize, mixed in with some recent hits, but they can’t lag and they can’t let up. You want people to feel like the new year is all about hope and potential. You want people to forget about themselves, let the champagne roll down their throats and just, fucking, dance. 

Here’s our last gift to you in 2014, enjoy, and never stop jamming!