I am always looking for good music, so what could be better than good music coming to me?

Ellie from Kentucky-based Indietronic band Fair Heron sent me some of their songs to share with you, and since their stuff is cool I am happy to feature them here.

Their sound is both melodic and progressive and reminds me a bit of Fever Ray or Ninca Leece. While I would normally say that this is more for listening than for dancing, Ellie told me that their live shows are “generally pretty dancey”. So I guess that’s one more reason for promoting them: To get them to tour internationally so that I can see them live.

Here are some songs from their “Now Carla EP” for download:

Fair Heron – Digi Quilt

Fair Heron – This Is My Mogley

Fair Heron – Empathetic As A Ghost

And by the way, if you play in a band, produce electronic music are if you are a DJ and you think your style fits to what I usually feature here, just drop me a line through the contact page.

This mix was created in a way that is similar to how I cook: Start with a few basic ingredients. Take your time. Start adding spices. Taste. Add more spices. Repeat tasting and adding spices until taste is good.

If you like slow and dirty grooves, then you will like this!

Nerditional information: With only around 118 BPM, this mix is slower than most club music. However, I don’t think it lacks energy. It just has a different groove.

When I started selecting tracks for this mix, I remembered Westbam’s “Loud&Slow” label that he started in the late 90s. The label didn’t really live long, but I still like the idea behind this: To explore the slower grooves in electronic music and show that you don’t always have to go hard and fast to make people dance.

Maybe that idea just came a little early. Most of the tracks in this mix were released in recent years, like the awesome “Cooler Coleur” by the Crookers and Yelle. While the Crookers have become very successful producers in the last few years, probably not too many people have heard of french singer Yelle – which is a shame because she plays such a pleasant and energetic Electropop sound that you don’t have to understand the vocals which are typically in French.

paniq from Hamburg is in this mix with a great rework of the Knight Rider theme. I was a huge Knight Rider fan when I was a kid and that track reminded me of that.

By the way, he runs a project called “The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet” right now in which he tries to get an album financed in advance through web-based fundraising. The donation deadline hasn’t run out yet, but paniq already collected all the money he needed to produce the album. Respect! And even more respect for releasing so much great music under a Creative Commons license!

Tracklist:

1. paniq – Psy Rider
2. Crookers feat. Yelle – Cooler Couleur (Junkie XL Remix)
3. ACDC – Back in Black (Dirty Funker Powerpack Vocal Mix)
4. Daft Punk vs. Gorillaz – 19-2000 Funk
5. Midfield General – Disco Sirens (Chicken Lips Dub)
6. Westbam meets Can – …and more
7. Plastique De Reve – Lost In The City
8. Filthy Dukes – This Rhythm
9. Munk – Back Down (Cut Copy Jackmaster Remix)
10. Drums of Death – DODFUCKSUPANESCOTTUNE

Many electronic music lovers scoff at pop music for being superficial and cheesy. However, I think there is nothing wrong with good pop music. Big emotions can sometimes only be expressed with epic melodies – and after listening to this mix, I hope you’ll agree.

Nerditional information:
The Knife is probably one of the most interesting bands in the past few years. Their combination of alien soundscapes, unique vocals and an incomparable stage presence is miles ahead of most electronic producers.

IAMX is a band that I once discovered by accident during a festival. Their dark synth-pop sound would certainly qualify them for a Goth festival, but they still seem to appeal to a broader crowd. They are one of the reasons why I believe that “normal” electronic music and the darker flavors (Dark Wave/EBM/Industrial) are not that much different.

“Voyage Voyage” by Desireless is quite an old track (released in 1987), but I felt it just fit very well with the overall flavor of this mix. It seems that epic synth-pop was a huge thing in the 80s , and it’s good to see that this is still alive.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video for “Papillon” by the Editors!

Tracklist:

1. Digitalfoxglove feat. Freak You – Beasts And Flowers
2. The Knife – Pass This On (Dahlbäck Remix)
3. Editors – Papillon
4. Desireless – Voyage Voyage (Euro Remix)
5. Simian Mobile Disco – Audacity Of Huge
6. Sneaky Sound System – It’s Not My Problem (Thin White Duke Remix)
7. La Roux – I’m Not Your Toy (Jack Beats Remix)
8. IAMX – Spit It Out (Designer Drugs Remix)
9. College Feat. Anoraak – Fantasy Park (Moulinex Remix)
10. Daft Punk – Digital Love (Algeronics Remix)
11. Dragonette – Pick Up The Phone (Arithmatix! Remix)
12. The Killers – Mr Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont’s Thin White Duke Remix)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jliba/3934321280/ // CC-by-sa

I recently visited Chris Summer in his studio in a small town near Cologne. We spent a fun evening together over a few beers and pizza, and of course we talked about and listened to a lot of good music.

I didn’t really do a formal interview, but over the course of that evening I learned a lot about Chris Summer, and I think this is worth sharing.

Talking about sharing: Here is a bangin’ DJ set that he gave me to share with you.

Tracklist:

1. Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT Remix) – Metric
2. Poison Lips – Vitalic
3. Don’t go – Puzique
4. Cheap and Cheerfull (SebastiAn mix) – The Kills
5. Look what you have done to me – Voodoo Chilli
6. En direct de la côte (Alavi Rerox) – TEPR
7. Almost Cut my Hair – Cassius
8. Easy Love – MSTRKRFT
9. Allthegirls ( Yuksek Remix) – Siriusmo
10. Gimme what you got (Pull the Trigger)[Alex Metric Mix] – Black Daniel
11. Nil By Mouth (Knightlive Remix) – Bag Raiders
12. Boys & Girls (Les Petits Pilous Remix) [feat. Dragonette] – Martin Solveig
13. Caller – Alex Metric
14. Escape – The Toxic Avenger
15. Sunburnt – Das Glow
16. Won’t You Listen To What The DJ’s Spinning! – Deee-Lite

Chris Summer is a really relaxed and friendly guy, and it is hard to imagine that the first party he organized ended in disaster:

“I was still at school, and I had organized a party for my schoolmates and some alumni. It seemed to go really well at first: A lot of people showed up, a band played, and everybody was in a good mood. I started my set at around 10pm, and I hadn’t even played my second record when a few idiots started a fight and I had to stop the party.”

This disaster didn’t remain the last in Chris’s DJ career: Fire extinguisher abuse, broken arms and retarded drugheads are just a few of the obstacles he encountered at parties. However, his love for music kept driving him and with more than 10 years experience in DJing and producing, Chris Summer certainly knows what he is doing.

“I got hooked to electronic music in the early 90s, but I have tried out lots of different styles since then. For example, I was the DJ and beat producer for a HipHop project for quite a while. I really liked turntablism, but my beats were always a little too electronic for the MCs, and their vocals were a little too much gangster-style for me. I even produced the music for a cinema ad once that  ran nationwide, but I always kept coming back to electronic music.”

Apart from a few commercial releases and remixes, Chris Summer is an active member of the Creative Commons (CC) community. The idea behind Creative Commons is to release music under a license that makes it legal to share and build upon those releases.

“I stumbled over the CC community when I was looking for some nice vocal samples. I was surprised how much great material you can find, and I think that CC releases are a great way to connect and promote yourself. For example, I had very positive feedback on my CC releases from all over the world, and it really blew me away to know that people from Australia or the USA liked my stuff and even played in their radio shows. However, I still release some of my music under commercial licenses. Being a multimedia producer, I just have to live off of something, and if I put in a lot of effort into producing a track and do commercial mastering and all that, I just can’t give it away for free.”

Even though Chris clearly enjoys DJing, he wants to focus on producing music in the near future.

Apart from an upcoming release on Puuhh Records, his network and experience seems to start paying off.

“I got to know some really great musicians, and I am planning remixes and productions with them right now. For example, I got to know a really great singer from a Cologne-based Rock band. She is used to a totally different style of singing than what you hear on most electronic music releases and I think this could become a very interesting collaboration.”

I got to know Madame Summit through an online forum that we both are members of. She was looking for like-minded DJs, and it turned out that we did share quite a few views on how good music is supposed to sound like.

Asking her to do a feature for Sweet Headache was pretty much a no-brainer, and I am happy to present an exclusive DJ set by Madame Summit:

Tracklist:

1. T.Raumschmiere – 111 kg DNA
2. Zoot Woman – Lonley by Your Side
3. Datarock – Robots in Disquise
4. Punks jump up – Dance to Our Disco (headman club mix)
5. Le Tigre – After Dark (Morel’s pink noise dup mix)
6. Zombie Nation – Worth it Part 1
7. The virgin – Rich Girl (le castle vania’s rmx)
8. Reverend & the Makers – Silencee is talking (Alex Metric rmx)
9. Bloc Party – One More Time (Alex Metric rmx)
10. Miike – Animal (Fake Blood rmx)
11. Gossip – Heavy Cross (Yuksek rmx)
12. Malente – Music Forever
13. Justice vs. Simian – We Are Your Friends
14. Fakebeat – Jellyfish
15. Plastique de Reve – Lost in the City

“I started as an Indie Rock DJ in 2007. I had organizied a party back then, and the DJ I had booked for the event didn’t show up. I didn’t want to cancel the event, so I just took over, and people really liked it. That got me interested in DJing, and I started applying for other parties and clubs after that.”

While Indie Rock was her first love, it didn’t stay her last. Madame Summit is still well-known for great guitar-tunes, but also got a taste for electronic music, especially Indietronic or rough distorted electronic sounds.

“I had this vision of really mixing songs into each other, but that doesn’t work too well with most Rock songs. However, I found most typical Techno tracks too boring, so I am glad to have found a kind of music that’s in between Rock and electronic music. I just like to have different styles in a set. Most Indie DJs just stick to a certain style, but that would be too boring for me.”

Having found her very own style, she also likes to combine different genres in a unique way. While most Rock DJs do not mix songs at all on the one hand and most electronic DJs try to blend tracks as seamlessly as possible, Madame Summit has found her own way of combining different genres.

“I do know how to mix songs seamlessly, but I sometimes find clearly audible breaks between songs interesting. I also like using samples to fill the gap between two radically different songs, like alarm sounds or dog bark. I love it when people stop for a second, listen and then continue dancing. Confusing people can be a lot of fun – both for me and for my audience.”

It’s no coincidence that she names The Prodigy, The Whip, MSTRKRFT and Boysnoize as her favorites. These artists also influence her beginning activities as a producer.

“I want to play music that makes people want to tear their clothes off. I am just starting to produce my own music, but this is definitely something that I want to pursue further.”

Madame Summit is a resident DJ at Blue Shell (Cologne) and Emergency (Münster).

Ninca Leece delivers a very nice blend of electronic pop music with a strong House flavor. On her debut solo album “There Is No One Else When I Lay Down and Dream“, she gives a very impressive demonstration on how electronic music can sound both relaxing and danceable at the same time. This also reflects in the selection of her sounds: Spacey string sounds meet dry synths, with occasional appearances of mild distortion.

Ninca is originally from Rennes (France) and now lives in Berlin. Considering that France is currently my favorite country for electronic music (apart from the UK, but that’s a different story) and Berlin is the electronic music capitol  of Germany, it’s not really surprising that her music resonates with me.

Her concert videos also look really nice, so it’s probably a good idea to see her live on stage.