Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance June 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
Firstly, we extend our well wishes to everyone in regard to the Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Of course, a big thank you for the continued support and sharing all the good vibes on Twitter! It's been another EMAzing month, although how are we in June already?? Time is FLYING almost as fast as our Mothership! With releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, more mixes on our EMA DJ Mix Series and an in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Eonlake - there's plenty of things to whet your appetite in this newsletter so let's check it out! EMA Community
Welcome to all the new followers and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter as we have reached another milestone with over 2,500 following the label account! We've been steadily adding to the playlists and release catalog in June as well and here's a full run down of how things have shaped up this past month:
As always a big thanks to our EMAliens on the Mothership, keeping everyone's spirits up and making it a fun place to be!
Regular Playlists
We have our regular weekly EMA curated playlists going across various streaming platforms featuring tracks no older than 3 months from our members, keeping things as new as possible! We've also added the Apple Music and Hearthis platforms to our rotation, which are regularly updated so there's no shortage of places where you can find our music. Here's a little reminder of our schedule:
Featured Playlist
We have a Featured Playlist debutante this month as ØLSKXX has summoned the EMAliens inner gamer, sharing his "Gaming with the Electronic Music Alliance" playlist with us here! With tunes to play your video games to, there's plenty of cool vibes to enhance your gaming experience - enjoy!
EMA DJ Mixes
Although Miss EfeMBy is on a short break (and we wish her well), we have continued the cool vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot has moved to Friday evenings from 19:00-20:00 UTC for the time being, where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes from our Mixcloud page below:
Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow with some more releases this month from our EMAliens who have been beaming their beats down from the Mothership! Make sure you follow us on our Beatport page for the latest releases. Wrap your EARs around these:
Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 3 - July 3rd
Warm up the cockles as we are going to be releasing another EMA special with our "Future Sounds Anthology" reaching its 3rd volume on the 3rd of July! We Initially launched Vol. 1 on the 1 year anniversary of EMA as a special compilation but decided to keep that tradition going every quarter and we are pleased to say we have another epic installment for you with a slightly "summery" theme to the tunes!
Keep a look out on our Twitter pages for this as you won't want to miss it! 11:11 Invasion - July 11th (TBC)
Another little teaser we want to tell you about is our 11:11 compilation which is loosely set for the 11th July as a release date. 11 EMAliens, 11 MCs and rappers have come together to bring this pile driver of a release so keep your eyes and EARs peeled as we bring this one to you as well - loads to look forward to in July!
Featured Artist - Eonlake
Each month the "Featured Artist" section of our newsletter gives us a chance to find out more about one of our EMAliens and this time round, we're going to be shining the spotlight on Discord "High Flyer" - Eonlake! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about this legend and this is what happened!
Hey hey Mr Lake! Congratulations on chatting your way in to DJ Overlord's mighty "High Flyer" rank in our Discord! We're all looking forward to finding out more about you here! So, who is the mysterious "Mr Lake" aka eonlake? Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved with music?
Hi Nicky! Well… My name is Howard Fox, and I’m a Londoner originally, now living in Staffordshire. I come from a musical family on my mother’s side and I started playing drums at school at about the age of 13 because they had lessons available.
I loved it immediately and got my own kit about a year later. At college I did music and music technology while playing in a few dodgy rock bands at venues around North London. Music tech got me into sound engineering and the bands fell by the wayside a bit when I got a job as a tape op in a recording studio, which ultimately led to engineering and producing for the next 10 years. I fell in love with the whole music recording and production thing along with equipment and technology, while discovering electronic and dance music along the way. Some of my main influences come from this time- both live bands and electronic acts and a lot of the time I gravitated towards Berlin school stuff Like Tangerine Dream, loved bands that had guitar and loops and synths like Curve, Garbage and the Jesus and Mary Chain, and also more underground acts like Eat Static, System 7, Banco de Gaia, Hallucinogen, X-Dream, Cydonia, Transwave and all sorts of Psy-Trance, techno, drum and bass and chillout people of the time.
More recently my influences have been more post rock and post classical – Hammock, Nils Frahm, Helios, Goldmund and there are people like Orbital, Royksopp and Jon Hopkins that have always been big influences on me, though I’ve no interest in duplicating anyone else’s sound, more developing my own sound that is distinctive in the same way that they have.
Ultimately I left engineering and production to pursue a more lucrative life, my dream always to set up a small studio at home to explore my own music rather than spending all my time working on other people’s, which led in the end to my current incarnation as Eonlake. I don’t have many nicknames though to be honest (at least to my face that is haha)- most people call me Foxy!
Haha! Well, I think we should start calling you the fantastic Mr Fox after hearing more about your background! Quite a lot of different influences and sounds coming through and it's good that you've used all those skills you've picked up to begin exploring your own music - must have learned a lot over the years! So what would you say is the kind of music you make with all this exploration you have done?
That’s a tricky one, because like a number of EMA artists I try not to conform to a specific genre, or even group of genres but do what suits me, although I do have a mission. The music I love most is either evocative, emotive or hypnotic in some respect and the idea with Eonlake was to explore all the influences and aesthetics I love that relate to that, in order to produce music that is interesting and textural while retaining some human quality and speaking to the human condition and what it means to be alive here at this time.
Victor Hugo once said that music "expresses that which cannot be said and upon which it is impossible to be silent", and I wanted what I do to capture musically some of the inexpressible yet universal and compelling themes of life and how they feel, while also being relatively free to explore that in whatever tempo or style felt natural and maintaining my own identity throughout.
What comes out I think always sounds like me, and is often characterised by lots of layers and harmonic, atmospheric spaces punctuated with stabs of melody and bleeps, with anything from mid paced layered beats to none at all at a much lower tempo depending on how I feel. My most recent output has been deep ambient tracks intended for me to relax and try and connect to something still within, but there’s always something else bubbling in the background and I tend to mix things up to some degree regularly.
Wow, beautifully put and after listening to a few of your tunes on the EMA playlists, I can definitely say there are some lovely atmospherics. In fact, I listened in to Deepstate Volume 1 as I have been working on a few blogs recently - great music to help focus on what you're doing! Maybe you can tell us more about this series or any other releases or collaborations like the recent remix of "No Return" from Trip Jacker?
My most recent release was the Deepstate Volume One EP of 3 ambient drone based tracks which were largely improvised over 10 days. It was very helpful for me to do (it was intended as music therapy for myself in the fist instance) and I learned a fair bit about doing things differently as a result. I felt there was more to explore there, so I’ve done two more with a third in progress for Deepstate Volume Two although they are a little different this time.
As you mentioned, I also had the great pleasure of remixing the talented and prolific Trip Jacker’s track No Return, which was an Electronic Alliance exclusive track on our Future Sounds Anthology Volume 1- the track really spoke to me when I heard it and inspired all sorts of things in my head, so I asked him if he’d let me have a go at it, which he kindly did.
It was great fun to start something in full flow like that which was a new experience as Eonlake and I did go a bit crazy with it, but I like the result as it retains some of the character of the original Trip Jacker sound and song’s mood but with a different angle and journey. Fortunately he liked it so we released it on EAR! (You never know if you take someone’s song in another direction how it will go over!) It seems to have been well received so we’re already collaborating on a new track which I’m very happy about and is proving to be just as much fun if not more.
Besides that, I’m working on a remix for our awesome founder DaveyHub too, which seems to have taken on a life of it’s own immediately- I’m not going to say too much about that one but I think it will be out second half of July with a host of EMA artists remixing the excellent original, so I’m proud to be part of that release- I think it’s going to be an absolute belter.
I also have 4 tracks of regular Eonlake output to put the finishing touches to, a couple of which will likely be released in the next few months around everything else so lots to keep me busy.
That's some serious output you've been giving to the world in recent months and I'm also going to be attempting a remix on Davey's original which I need to get the rocket boosters on to get working on it! Seems that Team Snail here is travelling at light speed and we're looking forward to hearing those releases over the next few weeks! As always, we love to know how folks come to be a part of EMA so how did you hear about and get involved with the community?
Pure providence really- I wasn’t looking to join anything or meet other artists, I just saw a tweet about EMA looking for members and asked a few questions out of curiosity. It felt right so I joined, and feel very strongly now it was meant to be- it’s an awesome group of people who are talented, open minded, supportive, creative and fun although slightly cracked in many cases mentioning no names!
I’ve been inspired by their attitudes, drive and collaboration and have no doubt I’m a better me as a result- their value and benefit has been highlighted a lot by the craziness that has become our reality in 2020. There is a strong sense of unity, community and support as well as brother/sisterhood which is a welcome support of late. Best thing I did.
Ah man, thanks for kind words and we're really glad you followed your curiosity and joined the merriment aboard the EMA Mothership! There's definitely a lot of inspiration to find and plenty of support from everyone, thank you for being a part of it and we're happy you've benefited from it too!
Be sure to follow Eonlake through one of the profiles on his LinkTree here or you can click the icons below to go to his most active sites:
We hope you have enjoyed this month’s newsletter, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
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Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community on YouTube – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments! Artists Featured
Trip Jacker
ØLSKXX Stick Up Boys Empty Sea Hegstraction Eonlake Electrostatic Nightmare Disco Gribbles The Restless Natives DevAstral Nicky Havey HootGun Cylotron Awaking the Elements Bufinjer Primaudia Record Downard Spiral Mantra mAncient
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community for SoundCloud – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments! Artists Featured
Primaudia Record
Gribbles HEGstraction Cylotron Stick Up Boys Rico Pundrich mAncient Awaking The Elements Electrostatio Nightmare Disco TRiPmusic Andrew Gabriel The Restless Natives Bufinjer
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey)
Greetings everyone and welcome back to another weekly showcase from the Electronic Music Alliance!
Each week on our blog, we bring you a selection of the freshest tracks from our members, specially chosen by one of our founders. This time round, it’s Bufinjer curating the playlist with music submitted by the EMA community on Spotify – have a listen below and let us know what you think in the comments. Artists Featured
Kindly Spoken Thieves
Trip Jacker Eonlake Hegstraction DevAstral Electrostatic Nightmare Disco Skyline Tigers Gribbles Awaking the Elements Andrew Gabriel Skaarl iconDARK The Restless Natives Skeebo ØLSKXX Cylotron Stick Up Boys James Black Nicky Havey Bufinjer
We hope you enjoy this week’s selection, let us know in the comments below and catch you soon for the next one!
Yours EMA (Bufinjer, DaveyHub & Nicky Havey) |
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