After scoring Tune Of The Month twice for their track Faith and their Bad Life 1 EP on both Mixmag and DJ Mag, autoKratz are definitely on a roll at the moment – currently reaching a new peak with their latest track Splinters. The list of early supporters reads like a who’s who in electronic dance music, with Mustard Pimp (“YES!”), Don Rimini (“Yeah! Love it!”) and lots of other big names putting their seal of approval on Splinters. Not much to add to that, hit play and forget about Monday!

February has come – and it’s colder than ever: time for another Disco Demons Guest Mix to shake off the cold! After a great start into this series of exclusive guest mixes (mainly thanks to my man Attaque) it’s time for the second episode now!

This month’s mixtape is brought to you by an artist who has been a regular name on this blog from day zero until now, an artist whose tunes I’ve been dropping regularly in my DJ sets as secret peak-time weapons: Clockwork, 20 years young, based out in Los Angeles, currently one of the fastest rising names in electronic dance music. After having been all over the music blogosphere for some years, he recently got massive attention from the likes of Steve Aoki and Felix Cartal, resulting in a mind blowing EP soon to be out on Dim Mak Records. Most definitely one of the names to keep an eye on in 2012 – preferably from a safe distance.

[Tracklist after the jump]

1. Clockwork Intro
2. Sex, Drugs, Rock N Roll (Instrumental Mix)- Tommy Trash
3. Dutchness (Moska Remix)- Mata
4. Mr. Pink (Clockwork Edit)- Clouds
5. Dynamite (Nicky Romero Remix) (Clockwork Edit) – Sidney Samson Ft. Tara McDonald
6. Original Don (La Sape Remix)- Major Lazor
7. Traffic (Original Mix)- NT89 & Burns
8. Crush On You (GTA x LA Riots Remix) (Clockwork’s ‘Crushing’ Edit)
9. Up All Night (Botnek Remix)- Buraka Som Sistema
10. Emergency (Clockwork Remix)- Steve Aoki Ft. Chiddy Bang & Lil’ Jon
11. Be Strong (The Loops of Fury Mix)- Elite Force
12. Polis (Kid Kaio Remix)- Surfing Leons
13. Squad Up (Original Mix)- Clockwork w/ Hello (Acapella)- Martin Solveig & Dragonette
13. Ivory (Original Mix)- Congorock
14. Yo! (Original Mix)- Nom De Strip & Bones
15. XXXX- XXXXXXXXXX
16. Original Don (Flosstradamus Remix)- Major Lazer

With episode #13 Aka Tell´s “Hangover Sessions” starts into a new season and brings us another colorful mixture of the latest clubtunes.

[find the whole article and the tracklist after the jump]

DJing is not only about selecting music but also about handling technical equipment. No matter how well you know your music or how good your feeling for beats is: if you don´t know where to find the “play” button you won´t make it up to David Guetta fame. And if you want to be a real DJ you even need to know more about your gear.
Unfortunately there are times when even the best prepared set and the perfect knowledge of the DJ equipment of your choice won´t help you, because something simply breaks.
I recently had such an unlucky experience when my notebook froze in the middle of the second track of my set. During 4,5 years of DJing with a computer I never underwent anything like that. I am very careful with my equipment, I run my DJ software on a separate system which is in detail optimized for DJing and I extensively test every update of the software at home before I use it in action. The software crashed anyway. After a short moment of orientation I grabbed a CD wallet with backup CDs out of my bag and finished my set without even trying to reanimate my laptop. Being prepared for every likely and unlikely event is an important part of DJing for me, and I was proven right in this case.
After returning home that night I kept thinking about what had happened. I tried to find out what was wrong with my computer and/or it´s software but did not succeed. After some time I had to accept that such things can happen, even if you think you are prepared. As I do not use my computer in clubs that often as I used to (I normally use CDJ-2000, but they were not available at that special night) my first thought was to not use it any more and just spin CDs from the beginning in the future (as this is what I ended up doing anyways). But later I began to think about past DJ equipment fuck-ups from the pre-computer era. And I had to admit that it happened more than one time that a turntable simply stopped spinning in the middle of the set, not the mention the countless times when needles broke. Also sometimes the mixer broke or the whole soundsystem crashed. So DJing always was not only about the music but also about improvising in unexpected situations and simply about being prepared.
I have not decided yet which kind of gear my the weapon of choice for my next sets will be but I came to the conclusion that a small breakdown from time to time is not that big of a catastrophe – as long as you don´t make it one.

No surprises with my favorite club tunes this month: Gesaffelstein did a monster of a remix of Erol Alkan and Boys Noize´s “Lemonade” (though I decided to go with the Light Year & The Finger Prince Remix in my mix, as it fits better), Mumbai Science started their “The Unified Theory” series, Modek released a great single and a great remix EP, my mates Beef Theatre released a banger track called “President Evil” and S*X from Austria released “Smash” with an outstanding Trash Junk remix.
Oh, and I really dig the work of doctr from the Netherlands, wo had an enormous output recently.

Aka Tell´s Hangover Sessions is a series of monthly dj mixes. For one hour Aka spins the tracks that he loved most, that influenced him or about that he really had to say some words during the last few weeks. Every mix is accompanied by an article on discodemons.net in which he is disclosing thoughts, stories and anecdotes about that mix, the last month and DJing in general.
Aka Tell is a member of the electro house act A.G.Trio. Together with Andy Korg he heads the austrian electro house label Etage Noir Special. He has been active as a DJ for more than 10 years. Aka Tell lives in Vienna, Austria.

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TRACKLIST HANGOVER SESSIONS #13

Bowski – Poppies
Donovans – Rise, Fall
Jaymo & Andy George – Aquarium
In Flagranti – Nonplusultra (Sex Schon Remix)
Doctr – Krente Pap
Azari & Ill – Indigo (SCNTST Remix)
Da Fresh – Lucky Number
Aerotronic – Massacre (Noise Invaders Remix)
Sei A – Flux (Martyn´s Electromagnetic Mix)
roeVy – Valac (Henzel & Disco Nova Remix)
Modek – Willow
Mumbai Science – Researchers
Modek – Goose Offender (Keith & Supabeatz Remix)
Leila K – Open Sesame (Doctr Bootleg)
Mr Jones – Armory (Ben Sims Remix)
Obi Blanche – 72 Hours (NT89 Remix)
Erol Alkan & Boys Noize – Lemonade (Light Year & The Finger Prince Remix)
Maxime Dangles – In Memory Of A Prophet
Blaze Tripp – Vertigo (Hostage Remix)
————————-

contact Aka Tell: 4k4t3ll@gmail.com
Hangover Sessions on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/at/podcast//id448165251
cover-pic by mnd_ – backlab.at

I have always loved this song but found it hard to play it out in the clubs due to its tempo – so here’s an edit of it for you all to hammer out in your DJ sets! I’ve pushed the tempo a bit, rearranged parts of the original to create more build-ups, added extra drums and fx, a new bassline plus a completely new synth hookline, and generally fattened it up a bit for the club. Hope you like it, constructive feedback much appreciated!

Big thank you goes out to my German buddies The Teenage Mutants who did a great job on mastering the track – if you don’t know them, check out their stuff on SoundCloud! Shout outs also to Cedric aka Big_C, Moneo, Lorenz from l0r3nz music and Thomas aka DJ Len from dancendancen.com for helping me out with feedback here! Also, don’t forget to check out the original and the music video by the The Glitch Mob, it’s nothing but amazing!

The Glitch Mob – We Can Make The World Stop (Disco Demons Edit)

Over the past few years, a lot of new ways to make your tunes heard by music bloggers and freelance writers have come up, with SoundCloud clearly leading the pack today. However, both blogs and artists/labels are still using emails a lot to discover new music or make their music heard, resulting in hundreds of emails flooding music bloggers’ inboxes every day. Lots of amazing music is often hidden beneath a pile of emails that are not even close to being relevant to our blogs, which makes it very hard for us to dig up the real gems. Unfortunately, a lot of artists, labels and PR agencies make it very frustrating and even harder for us to spot the music that’s really worth writing about by making thoughtless mistakes when sending their music to us.

I am aware of the fact that there are similar posts out there, with tips and guidelines on how to make your music heard and get the message home – for a good example check out this article by Tim from The Blue Walrus. There are also lots of great articles on how to fail at promoting music online (thanks to Tiana from Ride The Tempo for tweeting that article my way), written by frustrated bloggers. However, here’s a very subjective and personal list of DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to contacting music blogs about your music. Many thanks to Josh from Goldroom, Mel from Melismatic, Lorenz from l0r3nz music, Hot Biscuit and Lance from Remix86, Surrounding Sounds, Tracasseur and everyone else for telling me their points of view, adding some aspects to this list that I probably wouldn’t have thought about.

Reading this list (that mainly consist of DON’Ts, to be honest), one might get the impression that we music bloggers are an elitist group of musical snobs who think of ourselves as aristocratic tastemakers who graciously lower themselves to posting about your music. Even if that might be true to some extent, we still do not have any illusions about blogs needing artists just as much as artists need blogs.

If some of these “rules” might sound harsh to you, please keep in mind that we’re confronted with people making the same mistakes over and over again on a daily basis. All these guidelines below are rather common sense than definite rules made up by music bloggers. Obviously, following them will not guarantee to get your music posted to the front pages of every blog you email – they are just a guide to help avoiding common mistakes that upset us and therefore will lower the chance of your music getting the attention it deserves.

Step 1: The Subject Line

We get hundreds of emails on a daily basis. Needless to say, we only pick out the ones that we think are important to us. The subject line of your email is the first thing we see, and it’s also what makes us decide if we actually open your email and read it. Be creative, descriptive, brief but on point – and respect a few simple rules:

• Addressing us with our blog’s name (or even better: our own name) in the subject line drastically raises the chances of your email being read.
• Another magic word is “exclusive“. Every blogger loves exclusive content. Only use it if you really have exclusive content for us, though: If we open an email that is promising us exclusive content only to find 142 other email addresses in the CC, we’ll feel fooled.
• Using these ∆ or these ▲ in your email’s subject line will make us think you’re a 14 year old kid (or even worse, a hipster fashion victim), rather than a professional artist or label executive. Same goes for these:  ♥ ♪ ♫ ★ – and whatever else was cool 10 years ago.
• Putting the genre in the subject line makes it a lot easier for us to pick out what is actually of relevance for our blogs, instead of wasting lots of time going through the endless flood of emails. No need for bizarre sub genres here – just tell us if it’s electro, metal or hip-hop.
• Pro tip: If it’s that time of the year again, don’t put the word “Christmas” or anything related in the subject line when emailing music bloggers. Trust me: just don’t.

[Continue reading after the jump!]

Step 2: The Email

Keeping these simple key points in mind when writing your subject line and actually having content that might be relevant to the particular blog you’re emailing is no absolute guarantee for having your email opened and read, but it will make it stand out against all the others in our inboxes, and most probably we’re going to open it. Now that you have our full attention, don’t ruin it:

• Never ever use the opening line “Hello Blogger” – you want us to take the time to listen to your music, so you should at least take the time to write the name of the blog here.
• If you still think sending out mass emails is a great idea, never ever (let me repeat: NEVER EVER) put all the 250 blog email addresses you got from another idiot doing the same thing before in the CC field. Even though these are our public email addresses, and even though sometimes hitting the Reply All button to send out greetings to our fellow bloggers can be fun – as a matter of fact, this is the most stupid and unprofessional thing you can do. Period.
• Don’t start your emails with “Introducing XYY” if said artist has been blogged the shit out of for weeks, or even months. We’re music bloggers, after all.
• If you tell us “you love our blog and have been following it for years, and think this might fit in very well” and then send us some gangster rap tracks even though we’ve been blogging about electronic dance music from day one – how stupid do you think we actually are? This is definitely one of the quickest ways to get on a music blogger’s email blacklist.
• If the first three lines of your email are basically a list of other blogs that have already posted about your track, how big you think our motivation is to do a feature on something you’ve obviously sent out to a gazillion of other blogs before letting us know about it?
• If you’re an upcoming producer and new to the scene, don’t blatantly oversell your own stuff. A few lines on who you are and what your music sounds like is enough – let the music speak for itself!
• Same goes for the expression “banger“: With every second email’s subject line praising its inside to be the new banger to end all bangers, this word’s meaning has changed from describing a song that truly makes your head explode to indicating a mediocre, crappily produced dubstep bootleg – face the truth.

Step 3: The Music

Once we’ve openend your email and maybe read a few lines, we’ll check out the music you sent over (that is, if you haven’t made us hate you by now by violating the above rules). At that point, it’s mainly your creative musical output that makes us decide whether to do a post about your music or not – obviously, I can not tell you how to make music that bloggers actually like. Still, there are a few things you should not forget about concerning the music you send to us:

• Please, please, please: never ever send 320kbps mp3 files (or any big files) attached to an email. With you being the reason why we have to buy more storage on Gmail, we probably hate you before even checking out our track, and chances are high that your email is sent straight to the trash.
• We get hundreds of emails every day. While we try to read all of them, please understand that we actually can’t respond to every single one – there’s just not enough hours in the day. If we don’t reply to your email (because we’re obviously not feeling your track), do not keep sending it again and again. And if there’s an mp3 filed attached to every single email you keep re-sending, we’ll hate you even more.
• Why on earth would you want to send us MediaFire links and force us to actually download your music before we can listen to it? Or even worse, host your tracks on some fishy file hosting site? We’re living in the 21st century – go use SoundCloud, like everyone else does.
• Please don’t make us look for a SoundCloud link in two pages of press release sheet blabla. We open the email, read one or two lines, if we like what we read we click on the SoundCloud link and press play. If it takes more than 5 seconds to go there, we’ve probably already skipped to the next email.
• If you’re offering a free download on your SoundCloud (which is great – who doesn’t love free stuff?!), please make it a 320kbps mp3 file with clean ID3 tags. No 128kbps files: I’d rather have no download at all, as I’m happy when I see it’s a free download, only to be disappointed a second later when I find out its 128k only. No wave files: Please don’t make us download 60 megabytes just for one track, we don’t need the 16-bit wave file you got back from mastering. If you think somebody does, put a link in the comments.
• Don’t you ever send links to promo pages that start auto-playing music at high volume as soon as you open the page! These are tactics used by spammers, not professional people working in the music business.
• Pay With A Tweet is a cool service to allow your fans to download your music for free while helping you to build your fanbase, but please don’t use it when contacting bloggers. We don’t want to tweet a link to your website just to be able to check out your track, neither do we want to like your Facebook page and invite all our friends to get a download.
• Let’s just say there’s a certain limit to how many remixes a song needs, some kind of point at which the world just doesn’t need another remix of Coldplay’s “Clocks” or Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep“. Why don’t you dig up a cool underground band or singer to remix, rather than remixing a song that no one can stand anymore?
• Bonus advice from Aerotronic: “Make damn sure your music doesn’t clip.”

Step 4: Blog Love

If you stick to the above rules plus we actually like your music, we’ll probably do a blog post on it. Now that you got what you wanted, there are some more DOs and DONTs you should keep in mind after your song got posted, to make everyone happy :

• If we post up your music and reply to your email to tell you how much we like your stuff and to send you a link to the blog post – and you don’t even reply to say thanks, we’ll most likely never ever read your emails again. Didn’t your parents teach you to say thank you?
• It’s not hard to make a music blogger happy. We do you a favor by posting your music, so why don’t you do us a favor in return? We all love traffic, so we’ll love you forever if you like our Facebook post about the blog post, tweet the article and/or post a link on your Facebook page (with an @link back to our page for some extra bonus love).
• If you decide to make a song available just for streaming, no problem. An artist has got to make a living, and you can’t do that by giving away all your music for free. We understand that. Do you sense a big “but” coming? You’re right, here it is:
  But: if we do a blog post on your song, tell our readers how much we love it, hell, even tell them to go buy it and include buy links to iTunes and then ask you if there’s a chance of getting a promo download of the song, just for our personal listening pleasure, and you say no and send us the buy links – you can be 100% sure that we’ll never ever again even open an email you send to us.
  We’re giving you free exposure to a huge audience we’ve built over the years, and when we ask you for a song that is 1.49€ on BeatPort, you say no and tell us to go and buy it? That’s probably the simplest yet most effective way to say fuck you straight into a bloggers face – and we’ll certainly not forget about it.

Having said that, feel free to send me an email about your music.
Any thoughts and comments on this article appreciated.
 

Jhameel – Human Condition (Sharooz Remix)

Gramophonedzie – Number One (Groove Delight Remix)

Tristan Garner vs. Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano – Raven Lethal Industry (Imanos Mash-Up)

KC & The Sunshine Band – That’s The Way (I Like It) (beeFOWL Remix)

Staygold – Backseat (Rimer London Remix)

Fred Falke – 808 PM At The Beach (Venice Beach Remix)

Michael Jackson – Thriller (Aylen Remix) (DivKid Re-Edit)

Carl Carlton – She’s A Bad Mama Jama (Funk Manchu Remix)

The Rapture – How Deep Is Your Love (Mistereric Remix)

Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Pictures (GZUS Remix)

Remember La Felix? After receiving massive blog love and Top 3 on The Hype Machine Charts for his amazing remix of Aloe Blacc’s I Need A Dollar, he’s done it again: His latest work is nothing but a showdown between two of the probably most influential producer duos in modern electronic dance music: Daft Punk vs. Justice, robots vs. rockstars, pyramid vs. cross. Work it harder, make it better, do it faster – and show this guy some love on Facebook!

Justice vs. Daft Punk – Helix (La Felix Remix)

Even though work is definitely the last thing I want to hear about right now, this is still the perfect track for lazy Monday evenings, no need to say more. If you like what you hear: The 2 Bears‘ debut album Be Strong was released today and is available on iTunes (and probably everywhere else), just saying.

The 2 Bears – Work (St Etienne Remix)

The Offender – Nerdjacker (Original Mix)

Boys Noize just uploaded his 2009 BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix to his SoundCloud, including the complete massive tracklist: Almost two hours, 47 tracks, mixed on vinyl only. Stay tuned for the interview I did with him about his new collaboration with Mr Oizo, Handbraekes.

Tracklist after the jump!

1. Kenny Larkin “Rubbernotes” (Plus 8 Records)
2. DJ Funk “F** U Later” (Dancemania)
3. Boc Productions “Fall In Love” (Alan Braxe Remix) (Chez Records)
4. Fanton “Faithful” (Source)
5. Gene Farris “Disco Heaven” (Ian Pooley Mix 2) (Force Inc.)
5. Unknown Artist “Me And My Peoples Eyes” (White Lable)
6. Tres Demented “Brainfreeze” (Planet E)
7. Kenlou 4 “Mack Daddy Shoot” (MAW)
7. Ian Pooley “The Allnighter” (NRK)
7. Neon Lights “House Of Funk” (Jinxx Records)
8. Zongamin “Spiral” (XL)
9. Sylvester “Baby, Let’s Trip Out” (Secret Mixes Fixes Vol.9)
10. We’re Lofty Volt “Alter Flaw” (RVNG Intl.)
11. In Flagranti “I’m Sorry, I’m Terribly Sensitive” (Codek)
12. Kiki “Gas” (Bpitch Control)
13. Cassius “La Mouch” (DJ Falcon Vs. Harry Choo Choo Romeo Edit) (Virgin)
14. DJ Duke” Bonus” (Big Big Trax)
15. Dave Angel “Tokyo Stealth Fighter” (Carl Craig Remx) (4th & Broadway)
16. Matias Aguayo “Bo Jack” (Instrumental) (Comeme)
17. Errorsmith “Stiff Neck” (Errorsmith)
18. Feadz “Lisborg Error” (Ed Banger)
19. Plasticman “Hypokondriak” (Minus)
20. Ricardo Villalobos “Dexter” (Playhouse)
21. Sweet Light “Mecaniques Remontees” (Freak N Chic)
22. Cajmere “Come” (Green Velvet Mix) (Cajual Records)
23. Paul Jacobs “Motocross Madness” (Aquarius Records)
24. Geoffrey Williams “Sex Life” (Armand Van Helden Remix) (Hands On )Records
25. Like A Time “Like 6″ (Like Records)
26. Thomas Bangalter “What To Do” (Roule)
27. Daft Punk “Burnin’” (Ian Pooley Remix) (Virgin)
28. CZR “Chicago Southside” (International House Records)
29. Hugo Moya “Move” (Relief Records)
30. Track Stars “Horns & Bass” (Wanted Records)
31. Jeff Mills “The Bells” (Axis Records)
32. Dustin Zahn “Stranger” (Rekids)
33. Speedy J “Lee Mitten Menu” (Novamute)
34. Modeselektor “Turn Deaf” (Bpitch Control)
35. Rheingold “Dreiklangsdimensionen” (Welt Rekord / EMI)
36. Soundhack “Soundhack” (Soundhack)
37. Ben Klock “Goodly Sin” (Robert Hood Remix) (Ostgut Ton)
38. Theo Parrish “Lake Shore Drive” (Sound Signature)
39. Untold “Stop What You Are Doing” (Hemlock)
40. Feadz “On All Forth” (Bpitch Control)
41. DJ Godfather “Unknown” (Databass)
42. Ghetto Classics Vol 2 “Aceler8″ (Dance Mania)
43. Benga “Go Tell Them” (Tempa)
44. Benga” Night” (Tempa)
45. Untold “I Cant Stop” (Hessle Audio)
46. Rude 66 “Die Stärke Der Vernichteten Schläge” (Bunker)
47. DJ Koze “Don’t Feed The Cat” (Kompakt)