Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance - April 2020 Newsletter where we give you awesome Earthlings a run down of the latest goings on from our orbiting EMAlien Mothership!
Firstly though, we extend our well wishes to everyone in regard to the Coronavirus pandemic. Please stay safe and follow the guidelines of your respective countries. We also want to say thank you to all the health workers caring for the sick and everyone looking after the more vulnerable - you are all legends! As for EMA, a big thanks to all of you for the continued support and sharing all the good vibes on Twitter! It's been another EMAzing month with Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 2 being released on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, more mixes on our EMA DJ Mix Series and we have a more in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Tripjacker! Let's dive in! EMA Community
We reached another couple of milestones this month as 4,000 of you awesome people are now following our EMA Twitter account and we have over 150 releases now through our community run Electronic Alliance Records label! Seems like you legends can't get enough of the music so we're just going to have to release more tunes for you! Here's a full run down:
Once again, a big thank you to everyone for the continued support and sharing our music! And of course, a big shout 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 fresh as possible! We've also added the Apple Music and Hearthis platforms to our rotation 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 another debutante in our Featured Playlist section this month in the form of Primaudia Record who requested some dark ambient tracks from the EMAliens to create the "EMA Darkside Anthems" Spotify playlist here. If you wanted to take a trip to the dark side then there's over 30 tracks for you to enjoy here:
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the cool vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Miss EfeMBy and Radio Dark Tunnel. We have a 1 hour slot after Efemby's Techno Diaries on Wednesday evenings from 17:00-20:00 UTC where our EMAliens showcase their mixing talents along with a host of cool electronic music ranging from downtempo to house to drum and bass. Feel free to stream the latest mixes 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. 2
After launching the Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 1 to celebrate our 1 year anniversary, we thought we'd release new compilations of this series every quarter and Vol. 2 was a blockbuster! There is a bit of a theme going with this release but you'll have to see if you can figure it out! One of our Co-Founders, Nicky Havey, wrote a comprehensive review taking you through all 20 releases by genre for you to enjoy!
Thanks to all the EMAliens who got on board with this release and to all the support from you awesome followers who have got involved with it and continue to share it on the socials! Here's the Spotify playlist in all its glory: Featured Artist - Tripjacker
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 quizzing Discord "High Flyer" - Tripjacker! We sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about the artist (digitally of course) and this is what happened!
Hey Mr Tripjacker, EMAzing achievement getting to the High Flyer status in our Discord! Now it's time for us to unravel a bit more of the "tripstery"... (I'll see myself out)! So can you tell us about the man behind Tripjacker? How did you get involved in music?
Hi Nicky! I’m an electronic artist and producer from Massachusetts.
Music has always been a big part of my life. I grew up in a musical household and there was always oldies and classic rock playing. We had a piano and I could play by ear by the time I was tall enough to reach the keys. As a kid and a teenager, I couldn’t walk by the piano without stopping to play. I was in a rock band in high school and I played music regularly until I joined the workforce and started a family.
I didn’t do anything with music for several years but even though I wasn’t playing, music was still very important to me. I listened to music all the time and went to a ton of concerts. I listen to almost everything except country music and most modern popular music. My music collection is pretty eclectic and you’ll find Frank Sinatra right next to Simple Minds right next to Sick of it All. My all-time favorite bands include Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative, The Cure, Operation Ivy, Led Zeppelin and New Order. My favorite electronic artists are Underworld, Crystal Castles, Phantogram and Chemical Brothers. The genres I listen to the most are indie hip-hop, 80s new wave and classic rock.
A few years ago, I started making beats on a tablet on an app called Pocketband, and I ended up making several songs (it was a really powerful little app). I then learned a DAW called Acid and I made a few dozen songs that I never released. The music was pretty good but I didn’t know much about mixing or mastering, so those songs will probably never see the light of day. I sometimes think about going back and remastering them, but I’d rather move forward instead of looking back.
Another producer strongly recommended that I learn Ableton Live. I’ve been working in Ableton for the last couple of years and I love it. I still have a lot to learn, but my production skills have greatly improved over the past year. I’ve spent countless hours in the studio working on my craft.
Seems we must never mention Country Music around you as well haha! Despite your break, it sounds like you've come back pretty strongly and to great effect. With that variety of musical influences you mentioned, how does that come through with the type of music you make?
I make electronic music that probably doesn’t fit neatly into any specific subgenre. I tend to use big beats along with lots of synths and arps, and I like to chop up vocals and vocal effects. I create whatever comes into my head and I’m not looking to conform to any particular style. I’d probably have more commercial appeal if I stuck to one style, but I’m not interested in doing that.
Nice one and whatever works best for you, stick to it! It sounds like each new track is an exciting adventure with all these different styles, maybe we can call it "genre-fluid"! Speaking of tracks, what releases or projects have you got going on? You had a release on the Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 2 compilation as well didn't you?
Yeah, I’ve released five singles in 2020, including Escape My Algorithm on the latest EMA compilation album. I have several other tracks finished or nearly finished, and I plan to release some of them this year. I’m going to stick with singles for the foreseeable future, as it took me 18 months to finish my Ghosted album. It was a huge time commitment and I don’t know that albums make sense for me at this point. I’m really looking forward to getting vocals from Sketch tha Cataclysm for the upcoming EMA hip hop fusion project. I’ve been a fan of his for years, and it’s dope to be working with him.
Yeah there's definitely a different concept with albums and telling the story isn't there but both singles and albums have their merit for sure! Great to see you have a few projects on the go, looks like there's plenty to look forward to in the future! So the final question is how did you get involved or hear about EMA and EAR?
I’m pretty active on Twitter, and I randomly responded to a Tweet from the wonderful Miss Efemby. I didn’t know her at the time, but she was looking for tracks for a playlist. I sent her a track and she included it in the playlist, and then Bufinjer reached out to me and told me about EMA. The rest is history, and I’m very happy I joined the group. It’s introduced me to some great artists and great people and it has really pushed me to create better music.
I’ve made my best music since joining EMA, and that’s not a coincidence. There’s so much talent in the group that I felt I had to step up my game in order to earn my place. EMA has also opened the door for some really fun collabs. I did a remix for Skeebo, teamed up with Simon Irvine on a track, teamed up with TRiP on another one and Eonlake remixed one of my tracks. I’m open to doing additional collabs down the road when I’m back in the studio.
Ah man, thanks for the kind words and being a part of it all! We love having you around and can't wait to see what those collabs bring, it's been great getting to find out more about you. Take care and catch you on the Mothership again soon!
Although Tripjacker is taking a little break at the moment, rest assured, he'll be back with a bounce but in the meantime, you can follow him by clicking on the icons below and check his website here.
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)
1 Comment
5/2/2020 07:04:09 am
Hi, nice work keeping this going and great to find out more about trip!
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