Jaytech Music Blog

Jaytech Music April / May 2012 News

Wed, 16 May 2012 03:39:01 +0200

Australia Tour :: EDC & More Festivals :: Anjunadeep Pres Jaytech 01 :: Overdrive (2012 Remix) :: Jaytech Music Podcast 052

Anjundeep04 Australian Tour

Bringing the new Anjunadeep04 tour to Australia, Jaytech heads home to his local crowd through the month of May. Making stops in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart, Jaytech will be showcasing tunes from the recently released and critically acclaimed Anjunadeep 04. Don’t miss the opportunity to get up close and personal in these intimate shows, grab your tickets now. Details www.jaytechmusic.com/tour-dates.

Festival madness: EDC, Tomorrowland & Global Gathering

The first round of summer festival announcements is here, with more on the way! Catch Jaytech at EDC in Las Vegas on the 8th of June, with a crowd of 300,000 people across three days and over 100 of the dance music scene’s finest, it’s set to be the biggest EDC yet: http://www.electricdaisycarnival.com/ In Kiev, the Ukraine will play host to a worldwide edition of the famous Global Gathering festival on 14 July. http://www.globalgathering.com/

Finishing up in Boom, Belgium on 27th July, see Jaytech at the one and only Tomorrowland festival. Appearing on the Group Therapy stage alongside his label mates, and with 180,000 tickets sold out in record time, it’s going to be one to remember. http://www.tomorrowland.be/home

Anjunadeep presents Jaytech 01

Showcasing his talents over the last 5 years the soon to be released Anjunadeep presents Jaytech 01 brings together some of his classic tunes like Pepe’s Garden, together with your current progressive favourites. Look out for the pre-release on the Anjunadeep site and check out exclusive 1 hour DJ mix, available from 30 April. http://bit.ly/deep-pres-jaytech

Jaytech - Overdrive (Jaytech 2012 Remix)

As a massive thank you to fans all over the world, Jaytech is giving away an all new remix of his summer ‘11 smash, Overdrive. With a new melodic spin on the original work, the Jaytech 2012 Remix download won’t cost you a dime, just a simple Like on Facebook. Check it now, invite your friends, and tell us what you think! https://www.facebook.com/jaytechofficial

Jaytech Music Podcast: 052

Scouring the dance music world every month to hand select EDM’s best of the best, Jaytech has delivered once again. Showcasing all new tunes from Blend, Matan Caspi, Jarvis and a couple from Max Freegrant, the first hour is rounded out with Jaytech’s all new Atlantic. The guest mix this month comes from German house music superhero Martin Roth. Free mixes every month, subscribe on iTunes new: http://bit.ly/axdqoW

Jimbo's Xmas Beats 2011

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:16:00 +0100

Xmas Beats is a free 60min mix of chillout, deep house and downtempo tunes for your Christmasing pleasure. Merry Xmas!!

October 2011 Gig Report: Brazil & UK

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:38:00 +0200

Just a quick gig update from the last few weeks! On October 7th I made my way down to Brazil for Gatecrasher in Porto Alegre - my most brief Brazil trip yet, being in the country for just over 24 hours before heading back to Europe. Intense!

The lineup was myself, Chris Reece and local DJ heroes André Sarate & Everson K. As I was still getting over a nasty bout of man-flu I spent most of the day sleeping off my long-haul flight, so by the evening I was well-slept and ready to rumble. Arrived at the venue to a packed house, good vibes and lots of really cool people - it was great to see such a good turnout for what was probably my best Brazil gig yet, so thanks to all who came.

Porto Alegre, Brazil

Gatecrasher

Me & Everson K in witty T-shirt faceoff

This weekend just past saw a return to the Gallery @ Ministry of Sound, London, as well as my first ever gig in Manchester at new club Avici White. The Ministry show was a definite highlight, with myself, Mat Zo, Roger Shah and M.I.K.E keeping the crowd full of beans until the early hours of the morning. Dropped my brand new remix of Above & Beyond - Formula Rossa which went down great.. seems my new Berlin studio is doing the trick!

Rocking the Box, complete with shiny new tour visuals!

View from Mainstage

Mat Zo!

Speaking of Berlin studio, I’m going to be locked away in there for the next few weeks finishing off some exciting projects, including our upcoming Anjunadeep 04 CD (sorry label guys - thanks to me this has been 2011’s worst-kept secret!) so keep an eye out for some tasty new samples coming soon. Don’t forget you’ll also be hearing a new original from me called “Overdrive” on the forthcoming Anjunabeats Volume 9 compilation. Niyeeece :)

Much love

Jimbo

Anjunabeats Nerdism: Producer Q&A

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:14:00 +0200

I recently caught up with some of my favourite Anjuna artists for a quick chat to pick their brains about music production: Andrew Bayer, Jono Grant of Above & Beyond, Norwegian hero Boom Jinx, and Soundprank from Canada. Check it out:

ANDREW BAYER

Who inspires you production-wise that nobody would expect of you?

I worship J Dilla. “Donuts” is one of the best albums in the history of electronic music, and I will never finish studying it. The production is outrageous. It’s composition, sampling, and DJ culture all wrapped up into 40 minutes of genius. Besides Dilla, I’d have to say Alva Noto. “Xerrox Volume 2” is another one of my favorite albums of all time. The way in which he sculpts tones and soundscapes into an overall composition is god-like.

What has been the biggest breakthrough for you in the way you produce music?

Every six months or so I try to learn a completely new production technique or composition tool. The one time I decided to learn how to use granular synthesis and write a hip hop track, I walked away with Nexus 6, which was the catalyst to “It’s Artificial”. Last October I was bored and decided to teach myself how to sample, and now I have this ridiculous hour-long piece of music featuring samples of tons of my favorite music. It’s something I really encourage people to do. It took months of working up the courage to jump in head first, but once you do you learn a whole lot about yourself.

What’s your absolute essential plug-in and why?

DMG Equality. Such an incredible workhorse EQ. I used the stock EQ in Logic for years and never really questioned it. Matt Lange turned me on to Equality and I am so thankful for it. A sh*tty EQ on one channel is OK, but if you have that EQ on 30+ tracks, the degradation of the audio signal adds up over time and you’re left with a disgusting and blurry mess that no one wants to clean up.

What would you say is signature production technique of yours?

I like manipulating the downbeat. In traditional music, the downbeat is the most important aspect of rhythm as it tells the listener where they are in the music. It’s the home base for the ear. If you mess with it a bit, it loses the listener ever so slightly, and pricks his or her ear and keeps things interesting. Leaving out the drums on the downbeat, or sometimes for even a full bar can really add an interesting rhythmic aspect to a piece of music.

How do you think the overall quality of dance music today could be improved?

Over compression of tracks has gotten unbearable. I acknowledge that I do over compress my material, sure. But some people are taking it to a whole new level. It’s gotten to the point where I physically can’t listen to some tracks I buy because they are so over compressed. If people eased off a bit, music would be so much more interesting (and not painful!)

JONO GRANT

Who inspires you production-wise that nobody would expect of you?

Probably other music outside of dance music. I take influences from other styles, as I think this is the key to keeping things fresh. It’s important to cross pollenate genres and styles to create new sounds.

What has been the biggest breakthrough for you in the way you produce music?

I think the biggest recent breakthrough was changing monitors in the studio a couple of years ago. It’s like the difference between wearing glasses that enable you to see clearly versus ones that blur your vision!

What’s your absolute essential plug-in and why?

A boring one, but I would say the EQuality EQ plugin from DMG Audio purely because it’s a good “to-go” eq that is used on nearly every channel in the mix at the moment.

What would you say is signature production technique of yours?

That question might be easier for a listener to answer! I would say we have more musical signatures than production signatures, perhaps?

How do you think the overall quality of dance music today could be improved?

I think producers should learn each tool in the studio properly. Today’s software provides a lot of options for very little money - a lot more options than I started with. This is brilliant, but there is a downside which is that it’s quite possible to never fully learn each individual part of the virtual studio because there are so many options from the get-go!

BOOM JINX

Who inspires you production-wise that nobody would expect of you?

Amon Tobin.

What has been the biggest breakthrough for you in the way you produce music?

Flexible routing is up there.

What’s your absolute essential plug-in and why?

Battery, just because it’s my go-to plug-in for drums and one-shot samples.

What would you say is signature production technique of yours?

Parallel compression or layering sounds beyond recognition.

How do you think the overall quality of dance music today could be improved?

Better mixing, more attention to detail and more musical depth.

SOUNDPRANK

Who inspires you production-wise that nobody would expect of you?

I draw inspiration from so many angles and different things in real life that it’s hard for me to specifically give a single person credit. I would say that I draw inspiration from film music, jazz, and electronic music such as ambient, drum’n’bass or house. In terms of film music it’s very much a matter of individual tracks, however Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman come to mind when I go to mention favourites.

What has been the biggest breakthrough for you in the way you produce music?

The biggest breakthrough for me has been learning to channel my creativity and effectively focus that into a track. The more I produce the better I am able to do this and it helps me to recapitulate what I’m hearing in my mind’s eye into the track.

What’s your absolute essential plug-in and why?

I’ve recently changed my tracking and mixing setup to incorporate Nebula3 technology. It models hardware processors and consoles to the point where sonically they are like-for-like between the digital form and the hardware it’s replicating. It’s very intensive from a computational standpoint but the sonic results continue to blow me away with my latest work. I now approach mixing a track more similarly to analog style mixing where things need to be gain-staged, and a signal usually doesn’t sound good past -18db unless I want to run a hot channel, just like with vintage analog line inputs and processing stages.

What would you say is signature production technique of yours?

I love to sample a synth or sample and run processing on it until I re-sample it and then reprocess until it gives me a sound that is very unique and interesting. This is usually how I make alot of the background action in my tracks as well as many synth sounds.

How do you think the overall quality of dance music today could be improved?

One thing I miss from today’s music compared to music say 10 years ago is that there seems to be much less thought put into the musical layout and originality of a track. I’m hearing so many recycled sounds and ideas in today’s music that it’s less often that I’ll hear a track and be totally excited to listen to something I’ve never heard before. I love to hear a track and not be able to place sounds immediately because it means the producer has taken the time to really make every part of the track unique and bespoke for that track. I really appreciate such attention to detail as it’s what gives a producer his/her unique sound.

Group Therapy Tour Round-up: Part 2

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:15:00 +0200

The party rages on.. having just wrapped up the Group Therapy tour in America I’m now back in Australia for a few weeks doing my own Anjunadeep tour. I will never be able to describe just how epic the USA was this time around.. we visited over 30 US and Canadian cities in the space of six weeks and suffice to say we rocked out across the whole continent!

Guvernment, Toronto

Some notable highlights from the second leg of the tour include House of Blues in Chicago, Guvernment in Toronto (wow!!) and Glow in Washington DC. Glow was an especially cool experience, as the layout had changed completely from the last time I was there and the view from the new booth is incredible. We also got to play some smaller gigs in places like Grande Prairie, Canada, which do not see frequent dance events, and that was a cool experience in itself as well.

A lot of people have been asking how you handle such a big trip without collapsing from exhaustion, and for me it came down to three things: use the hotel gym whenever you can, take a day off booze every now and then (people offer it to us every day), and learn to turn every moment you’re sitting still into a little power nap. Seriously, I’m becoming the king of getting a 2.5 minute micro sleep while waiting to board a plane.

So, it was actually pretty chilled out most of the time. Driving around California instead of flying helped, as did having a few days off in gorgeous Toronto. In addition to myself and whichever two Above & Beyond guys were there at the time, we also had travelling with us lighting wizard Neil and tour manager Seamus, so it was a great little crew everywhere we went. I also managed to get some work done on some new tunes, thanks to Paavo lending me his tiny little Genelec speakers in the evenings before gigs.

Showbox, Seattle

Over the next few weeks I’ll be wrapping up my Australia tour, returning to Europe to play Tomorrowland in Belgium and Dance Valley in The Netherlands, I’ll also be ducking across to California to give a production seminar at Pyramind and play the Audiotistic Festival. Last but not least, there’s a return to Ibiza on the cards and then the Electric Zoo Festival in New York as we move into September.

Once all that craziness is out of the way it’s back to Australia in mid September for the Group Therapy Tour (this will so awesome it will surely be the death of me :) crazy stuff! I am very lucky to be able to play so many cool dates this summer, and I am ever grateful to all the people who work so hard to get me on board so that I may make noise at people.

My album is coming along well, hopefully should have the entire thing done and dusted very soon. Some downtime in Australia has really allowed for some progress on it at long last. More info on that soon. Last but not least, Jaytech Music Podcast 043 will be out in just over a weeks time featuring new tracks from Suspect 44, Cid Inc and Mat Zo, as well as a guest mix from Kobana. Keep an eye out!

Lots of love

Jimbo Jaytech

Glow @ Fur, Washington DC

Bleu, Detroit

House of Blues, Chicago

Group Therapy Tour Round-up: Part 1

Thu, 12 May 2011 01:05:00 +0200

It’s been a slew of excellent parties lately in the USA for the Group Therapy tour! Boston, St Louis, Charlotte, NYC, Orlando, Tampa and New Orleans: between all the shows and flying, I also found time to traipse through NY’s Central Park, get chased by an angry tornado and sit under the stars with the crabs in Florida.

I’ve been performing as opening act for Above & Beyond for a couple of years now, so am well accustomed to the level of craziness their tours often bring, and this one was no exception. Joining Paavo and Jono for the first week, things kicked off nicely with a packed show at Boston’s Royale, a theatre-style club with a mezzanine level overlooking the main stage. Though it was my first time visiting America’s “Most American” City, I sadly did not have time to see much as it was straight back to the airport the next morning.

Arriving in St Louis, my hotel room service dinner got cut short when I heard a loud siren in the city outside, which turned out to be a tornado warning! I had never experienced this kind of thing before, so wasn’t really sure what to do. Then a voice came over the hotel PA telling everyone to get down to the basement quickly. At this stage I was a little bit freaked out, but when I got downstairs I found Jono, whose room service experience had also been disrupted.

We were told there was a tornado headed right for us and to stay put until further updates. It was a strange feeling having to basically sit there and wait it out in a basement unable to really do anything, but after about 45 minutes we got the all clear that the storm had passed. So, crisis averted, and off to the party at Europe (the club), whose turnout seemed completely unaffected by the earlier weather. Completely rammed, great atmosphere, balloons!

After finishing my set and watching A&B’s intro I was then told by Michael the promoter that I needed to go and pack my stuff and check out right away. It turned out that the earlier tornado had actually hit the St Louis airport, and all flights were cancelled for the weekend. As a result, the only way to get to our New York show the next day was to drive overnight to Chicago and fly from there. So, after the show we all crammed into an SUV and hit the road. Rather than try and get some sleep I stayed up in the back of the car with Paavo and lighting maestro Neil, talking about nerdy stuff as we drank cheap roadside coffee and made our way to the airport in Chicago.

By the time we arrived at the hotel in rainy New York I caught a couple of hours sleep, had dinner with some friends then headed straight to the Best Buy Theatre, which I was surprised to discover was actually right near the middle of Times Square. As soon as I came on stage the place was already full and the atmosphere was electric - so good to be back! I played a mix of Deep:03 tracks, underground tracks and a couple of brand new originals from myself, all went down great. Finishing with a new Soundprank track, I then hung out with some friends from my home town Canberra, who were on holiday in NY at the time.

The last time I was in New York I saw nothing, as I arrived in the evening and flew out the next morning. This time I was much luckier, having 3 days off to hang out with friends and really check out the city. We went to a broadway show, wandered through Central Park, and ate amazing food (not to mention chocolate for Easter!) After a really refreshing 3 days off it was time to get back on the road again.

Next gig on the tour was Phoenix in Charlotte. Playing right from the start of the night, the first half of my set was to a slowly filling up audience, but by the time I finished the place was rammed and going crazy. Was a real pleasure to meet Eric aka Eleven.five whose tunes I have been rocking on my podcasts lately. The next day we headed to Orlando, where I had an insightful chat about dance music in the USA with DJ/Producer Kevin Focus and Cat from Insomniac Events.

Roxy in Orlando was a great event space with a big grid of LCD screens above and on either side of the booth. When I arrived the place was already busy and there were some techno vibes happening, so I began my set with some techier records of mine, before heading into Anjunadeep territory. Afterwards came Tony from Above & Beyond, who was playing solo on this particular night, rocking the crowd until the police came and sternly told everyone to go home. Good times!

Tampa’s “The Amphitheater” is a very large venue space in a party district known as Ybor (as in eee-bore) that had recently reopened after a long hiatus. Another mezzanine style club, the booth was quite high up over the crowd. The view from up there was great, with about 2000 people rocking out down below. After my set I stuck around for a while, downing Jaeger shots with the aforementioned Cat Insomniac and business partner Jeff. Staying at the Grand Hyatt, we had a cool little villa next to a nature reserve, with a walkway that led down to the ocean. I went for a wander at night down through the mangroves and came to a pier out over the water, where I sat with some very cute looking crabs under an amazing view of the starry night sky. I must have sat there for about an hour I think.

Above: Señor Pinceycakes, a common crab of Florida

Last gig of the trip was New Orleans, at Ampersand. I had played there once before, during Mardi Gras (one of the craziest weekends of my life by the way.) This time round was a real step up though - lighting and sound was way better, and I think the fact that it was a dedicated event rather than an extension of Mardi Gras made a big difference. We had a really good crowd that night, it was a great way to finish off this leg of the tour. With my duties finished I bailed pretty quickly as I had four consecutive flights the next morning to get home.

So, with part one of the Group Therapy tour out of the way, it’s time for the next round of dates. The next month is going to be the busiest yet, with twenty-something shows in the space of 30 days. It’s going to be mental! For all you west-coast Americans, looking forward to seeing you all again over the next few weeks :)

Lots of love

Jimbo Jaytech

Above & Beyond present The Group Therapy Stages

Wed, 11 May 2011 17:18:00 +0200

As part of the global tour for their much anticipated second artist album, Above & Beyond will be hosting a number of ‘Group Therapy’ stages at the biggest dance festivals in Europe this summer. Handpicking their favourite DJs and artists for each stage, Above & Beyond will also be playing extended sets at each event - showcasing the cutting-edge sounds of the ‘Group Therapy’ album.

Visit: http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/grouptherapystages/

Miami Music Week 2011 Report

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:28:00 +0200

Thanks to everyone who came and supported the beats in Miami for WMC/Ultra this year. In between all the cocktails, Brazilian BBQ and bodacious babes there was also time for a rocking Anjunabeats party, a rave in a clothes store (courtesy of Armani Exchange) and the Positronic yacht party. Fun in the sun, and that’s only the half of it..

Myself and good buddy Jeera (pictured above) hit a snag when we arrived in Miami to find our hotel had totally shafted us with our booking and didn’t tell us. We’d lost the room for Friday and Saturday night, and they were trying to put us in a roach motel miles away from Miami Beach. Lame! We opted instead to stay with our friend Angie from LA, who luckily was in town with a big group of people and had sofa beds we could crash on.

Thanks Angie!!

Thursday daytime we headed over to the Sirius/XM Lounge where I did a radio interview and caught up quickly with Above & Beyond, before heading back to the hotel to catch a quick disco nap in preparation for the night’s party. The venue was slated to be much bigger than last year’s, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Ice Palace is basically as it sounds, a palatial building with outdoor gardens and two big rooms inside. We slipped past the queues and came into the main room to find Gabriel & Dresden rocking the house. Unfortunately we had arrived too late for Jody Wisternoff’s set but a quick peep into the Anjunadeep room saw Desyn Masiello warming things up nicely.

Jody Wisternoff, Jacob Henry & Soundprank

I headed out to the VIP area, where I met label buddy Soundprank, who had flown down from the nether regions of Canada for the occasion, as well as Silk Digital label boss Jacob Henry. It’s always great to meet the people who you’ve been hanging out with online for ages but never actually met in the flesh. Ducked back out to the main room to see A&B rocking their new single “Sun and Moon,” then it was time to get ready to go play. From 2am until close James Grant and myself played the Deep room to a very appreciative audience, an hour each then back to back. Awesome!! After much partying on Thursday night it was time to get a couple hours sleep in preparation for our Friday clothes store rave. See below for video.

After my instore the Anjunabeats team and all involved got together at Texas de Brazil for a great night of BBQ action. Originally the plan was to follow Jody to the Hope Recordings party but a full belly and a day of drinking got the better of me, so I decided to call it quits instead. To finish the weekend off, Jeera and I hit the James Zabiela & Positronic yacht party with Lynn from Vision Nightclub in Chicago. I got mega sunburnt, Zabs played a great show and the setting was gorgeous. Vid courtesy of Dodisman:

All in all an excellent week, really looking forward to doing it all again bigger and better next year. Next time I’ll try not to get so burnt as well. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen, kids!

- Jimbo

Epic sunburn

Anjunadeep 100 Collaborations EP out now!

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:29:00 +0100

Our “Collaborations EP” has just been released on Anjunadeep, featuring my new track with Soundprank (cheekily titled Pranktech :) We’ve been meaning to do a collaboration for a while now and this new track is definitely a nice fusion of both of our sounds.

You can hear “Pranktech” in Jaytech Music Podcast 039. For more details on the release click here

New single Paradox / Djembe out April 2011

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0100

The new single from yours truly drops April 2011, featuring my track Djembe from the Anjunadeep:03 compilation, as well as a brand new progressive monster called Paradox. Excitement!

Check out the previews here:

Anjunadeep 03: first week round-up!

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:45:00 +0100

Anjunadeep:03 has been out for a week and so far it’s been a great success! We got loads of good press including a 4 star review from DJ Mag, the CD also went #1 on the iTunes Dance Albums charts in the US on day one of release. It’s been months of hard work and countless hours of tune-sifting and hair out-pulling (well, James G would have been pulling his hair out if he had any) but it’s all paid off.

To tie in with the release of the comp we had an excellent launch party at Ministry of Sound in London, then I set off on tour to India to promote the CD in Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. If you haven’t checked out the CD already, you can do so here: http://www.anjunadeep.com/anjunadeep-03-mixed-by-jaytech-and-james-grant/

In a few weeks it’s off to Miami to have the proper full-blown launch party there at Ice Palace. Here’s the details for the Anjunadeep room:

March 24th
9.30pm – late

John Dahlback
Jaytech
Jody Wisternoff (Way Out West)
Desyn Masiello
Electrobios
James Grant

Hope to see you there!

Jimbo

MOS London

James G looking very excited

Huuuuuaaaaaaaaa!

Hyderabad