"...I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films -- these things matter. Call me shallow, but it's the fuckin' truth."
Sorry for the shit quality, but this is the only video with the full eight minute version.
“Barry White turned into such iconic figure that it’s odd to hear his beginnings on his 1973 debut I’ve Got So Much to Give. In a sense, his sound is fully formed — there’s no mistaking his velvet baritone or his lush, string-draped surrounding, particularly on the album’s closing “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” a song so seductive it set the pace for the rest of his career. Still, behind that creamy drapery it’s possible to hear a strong debt to Isaac Hayes throughout I’ve Got So Much to Give, particularly when the whole affair opens a slow, steady, eight-minute crawl through “Standing in the Shadows of Love” that strips all the bounciness out of the Supremes original, just like how all of Hayes reworkings of ‘60s pop hits turned the hit versions inside out on Hot Buttered Soul. Barry may be following in Isaac’s footsteps, but he winds up on his own path, one that isn’t quite as ambitious, one that is fairly hellbent on romance to the exclusion of everything else. Compared to what White did later, I’ve Got So Much to Give does display a fair amount of extraneous frills — this is all about sex, but there are shifting textures and moods, it’s more serious about its seduction because White’s reputation as a loverman is not secure — which makes it a richer, more interesting record than much of his body of work, perhaps containing some dead ends, but being all the more captivating for its slight touch of messiness.”
“Braindance is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres, e.g traditional, classical, electronic music, popular, modern, industrial, ambient, hip hop, electro, house, techno, breakbeat, hardcore, ragga, garage, drum and bass, etc.”
“Orbital have always been more groove oriented than the bulk of their ambient peers. On In Sides, the duo has incorporated elements of trip-hop and jungle, and the result is more melancholic than the housed-out bliss of Orbital’s earlier work.
Blame it on brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll’s ever-expanding discontent. While their last album, 1994’s Snivilisation, had them lashing out at a corrupt society, In Sides is about more personal politics, culling inspiration from environmental issues (“P.E.T.R.O.L.”), young war casualties (“Adnan’s”) and a dead friend (“The Girl With the Sun in Her Head”). Given such dire material, it’s fitting that the most danceable track is a 24-minute musing on aliens and the potential escape they symbolize. A limited-edition bonus disc includes several remixes and a 28-minute version of “The Box,” a spooky, noirish epic that sounds like Orbital’s homage to Portishead.
Elsewhere, it’s just Orbital conjuring images and words with rhythms and sounds, and making jungle’s fragmented break beats seem as graceful as the bossa nova.”
“Nautilis is Texan electronic music artist Skyler McGlothlin. His music is released primarily through the UK based Planet Mu label. While studying at the University of North Texas, he experimented with different musical elements and focused on an Advanced Audio and Multimedia degree. His work on a Leafcutter John remix competition brought him the attention of planet-mu owner Mike Paradinas.
His debut album Are you an Axolotl was released in 2002 to critical acclaim. The album contains a mixture of very melodic DSP-driven sounds mixed in with elements of hip-hop and jazz. This was quickly followed by his second full-length album Sketches. This album was also warmly received and breaking into several “top 10 of 2002” lists.
2004-2006, Skyler turned his attention to a more hip-hop oriented sound. Released on the Florida-based Merck label, “Breakspiracy Theories” is the first effort under Skyler’s “Malcom Kipe” alias. The album plays with old-school beats, scratching and features several MCs. In 2007, Nautilis remixed E.Stonji’s “Con.trst” on a Binary Dilemma 12 record of the same name.
2006-2009 Skyler has been playing guitar in the band Shapes Have Fangs. Shave Have Fangs was chosen to back Sky Saxon of the seeds for his performances during his brief time in Austin, Texas. Shapes has released a split 7” with Business Deal Records and is planning to release a full length album in 2010. Shapes Have Fangs members Skyler McGlothlin and Dustin Coffey are responsible for Laguna Studio. Laguna Studio is the recording studio / practice space of Shapes Have Fangs. Laguna has also recorded Woven Bones, Finally Punk, Christian Bland & the Revelators, The Fleshlights, Cavedweller, John Wesley Coleman, and Cry Blood Apache. The studio is quickly becoming a staple in the Austin, Texas area. They use traditional analog recording techniques and are interested in documenting music made by their friends.”
“I wrote this around the time of the end of Merck in the interest of explaining a little bit about Merck and the state of electronic music/IDM that you all may not have known before. I hope that you all can understand better the industry side of why we have decided to end the label, and what is going on behind the scenes with a lot of record labels. There are still a fair amount of personal reasons on top of these that have caused us to decide to move on to something else, but at the end of the day you run a record label to sell music, so thats #1 priority.
Merck Records does make money, I’ve paid out over $40,000 in cash to artists since the label started, as well as providing artists with hundreds of copies of releases to sell and give away.
We released 12 cds and 12 vinyls for each calender year 2003 and 2004, the same as much bigger labels than us were doing. For 2005 we decided to slow it down to roughly half that and do 6 cds and 10 vinyls to make things a little easier on us. We did roughly the same for 2006, our final year.
Before 2004 most all of our releases were pressed in quantities of 1000 and most are still in print. In 2004 we started to get better distribution and began pressing 2000 of most new cds and ALL of those cds are still in print (though we have sold more than 1000 of some of them).
Based on those figures you can understand that the income from running a small record label is not large enough to support personal housing, food, etc., much less a label office and staff expenses. On top of that I drive a crappy car and have crappy insurance, so if i break my leg, somebody’s album isn’t coming out.
Around %50 of our releases were sold in Japan, so the size of the scene you think the U.S./Europe has, divide that in half, the US is only buying 100-250 copies of our cds at most, same for Europe. The rest are going to Japan. The Japanese have the highest per square foot real estate costs, but yet they are the ones buying the most physical copies of music releases (vinyl on top of that!). So the big secret you all don’t know, is that without Japan, a lot of the indie labels you know and love, would be a lot worse off or not exist. So thank Japan for helping keep a lot of the music you love, coming out. There’s a reason every Warp album comes out in Japan 3 weeks before the rest of the world and has a bonus track on it.
In recent times, the European music market, that was the birthplace and incubator of a lot of electronic music, has taken a decent sized downturn and a lot of distributors are focusing more on pushing a lot of copies of one release or focusing only on more profitable genres, instead of actually doing the job of a distributor, which is to supply a lot of copies of a lot of releases.
MP3′s have definitely had a good and bad effect on the label, of course they help to spread our music around to people who haven’t heard it before. The problem comes when people use it as a substitute for a real copy of the cd or a legitimate mp3 purchase. As Machinedrum said in a recent interview and as I’ve experienced personally multiple times, we meet many people who swear Merck is one of their favorite labels and they love all our stuff, then when asked what cds/vinyls they own, they either own NOTHING or only a couple releases. Thats not support, and although we appreciate their enthusiasm, they are not the kind of fans that breed a healthy scene.”
“Under the guise of Moomin, Sebastian Genz emerged only late last year, appearing alongside his pal Oskar Offermann for the 12-inch titled Hardmood/Joe McDaddy. This year, his career has been moving ahead in leaps and bounds. There were three singles, and now this, a rather sharp full-length. Like Christopher Rau and John Roberts before him, Moomin’s debut is a pensive one. It’s a not a mood he pursues to exclusion, however. Small bursts of jubilance counter-weight the periods of introspection, creating a balanced result.”
“British film music composer Roy Budd was born in London on March 14, 1947; a child prodigy, he taught himself to play piano by ear, later mastering the Wurlitzer organ as well. Making his London Coliseum debut at the age of six, by 12 Budd was regularly appearing on television, also performing for the royal family at the London Palladium; as a teen he formed a jazz trio with bassist Pete Morgan and drummer Chris Karan, quitting school at 16 to play professionally. While in residence at the London club the Bull’s Head, Budd was befriended by composer Jack Fishman, who helped him land a record contract with Pye Records; his debut single, 1965’s “Birth of the Budd,” was followed two years later by the full-length Pick Yourself Up!! This Is Roy Budd. In the wake of 1968’s Roy Budd at Newport, he made his first foray into film composition with his soundtrack to 1970’s Soldier Blue; later that same year, Budd completed arguably his most celebrated score, for Mike Hodges’ cult favorite Get Carter. He remained one of the busiest composers in British film throughout the decade, scoring well over two dozen pictures including 1971’s Kidnapped, 1973’s The Stone Killer and 1978’s The Wild Geese; Budd also continued making solo recordings, in 1976 issuing Everything’s Coming Up Roses: The Musical World of Stephen Sondheim. The hectic pace clearly took its toll, however, and shortly after completing a new symphonic score for the 1925 silent adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, Budd died suddenly on August 7, 1993 at the age of just 46.”
“Singer Norma Jean Wright recorded both under her own name and as Norma Jean — not to be confused with the same-named country singer.The Elyria, OH, native first came to fame as a vocalist with Chic. Chic leaders Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards produced her debut single “Saturday” in summer 1978. Her self-titled LP, produced by Rodgers and Edwards, was released by Bearsville Records in July 1978. The follow-ups were a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party” and the title track single from her next LP, High Society, from late 1979.”
“Long-running funk outfit L.T.D. — Love, Togetherness and Devotion — was formed in Greensboro, NC in 1968 by keyboardist Jimmie “J.D.” Davis and bassist Abraham “Onion” Miller, both former backing musicians for the great Sam and Dave. Upon relocating to New York City, the twosome recruited guitarist Johnny McGhee, horn player Carle Vickers, saxophonists Arthur “Lorenzo” Carnegie, Toby Wynn and Abraham Miller, and trombonist Jake Riley, Jr. Vocalist/drummer Jeffrey Osborne also signed on before the group settled in Los Angeles, where Osborne’s brother, keyboardist Billy Osborne joined the lineup as well. L.T.D. signed with the A&M label to issue their 1974 debut Love, Togetherness and Devotion. On their third LP, 1976’s Love to the World, the group scored their first Top 20 pop hit, “Love Ballad.” The follow-up, 1977’s Something to Love, included the Top Five smash “(Every Time I Turn Around) Back in Love Again,” and four years later L.T.D. returned to the Top 40 once again with “Shine On.” However, Osborne then exited to pursue a solo career, and despite the additions of vocalists Leslie Wilson and Andre Ray, the band’s commercial fortunes dimmed. In the wake of 1981’s Love Magic, L.T.D. disbanded, but during the early ’90s McGhee reformed the group, with 1999’s Marry You featuring vocalists Greg Henneghan, Nakeisha Turner and Ronnie Henson, bassist Terry Gamble, keyboardist Ryan Cooper, drummer Jay Nichols and percussionist Mamadi Nyasuma.”
“Owned and operated by Gabe Koch, based in Miami, Florida, US. Started in January 2000, ended in January 2007, Merck Records was home to many artists producing experimental electronic music in many styles, including IDM, hip-hop, ambient, and indie. The music has a generally upbeat and melodic feel to it, technical, but not overly cerebral. Obvious influences are early UK labels like Warp, Skam, and Rephlex, as well as all the early Miami electronic labels.
In January 2007, Merck reached the end of its release schedule with a total of 51 CD releases and 50 vinyl releases. The label is still selling its catalogue online but is no longer releasing any new material.”
