Hello everyone and welcome back to the Electronic Music Alliance October 2020 Newsletter - your monthly update on the latest goings on from the EMAlien Mothership!
We send our well wishes to everyone in regard to the global Coronavirus pandemic and want to say thank you to everyone caring for the sick and the more vulnerable - you are all legends! Please Keep looking after each other and stay safe. Thanks to everyone for getting involved with EMA and sharing all the good vibes on our Twitter page! We've been keeping busy with more releases on the community run Electronic Alliance Records label, the DJ Mixes and our now once monthly playlists! In addition to this we also had our special Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 4 compilation which we'll have more details about later and, as always, the cherry on top is our in depth look at this month's Featured Artist, Electrostatic Nightmare Disco! Alright, let's crack open this newsletter and see what's going on under the hood of the Mothership! EMA Community
As always, a very warm welcome to all you new followers and members and thanks to everyone who continues to follow our EMA and EAR Twitter! Here's a quick summary of how things are looking for EMA and EAR:
Once again, another service engineer call out required to upgrade our mothership and accommodate all you awesome folks but it's well worth it of course! The next milestone of 100 playlists is so close now! As always a big thanks to our EMAliens on the Mothership making it a fun place to be! Featured Playlist
We are focusing more on the stories behind the tunes shared by the EMAliens in our monthly playlist now so if you missed this season's Soundcloud Playlist and the tales of the tracks, then you can catch up on the blog here. The playlist features 11 melodic beats of various genres in electronic music from this talented lot and it's well worth re-sharing the glory in our Featured Playlist section this month!
Our playlists will now be kept live so make sure you follow them as the tracks will be updated every 3 months like how we are doing our Apple Music playlist. Keep a look out on our Twitter pages for when the tracks are rotated.
EMA DJ Mixes
We have continued the good vibes from the EMA DJ Mix Series each week thanks to Radio Dark Tunnel. Our 1 hour slot is on 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:
Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 4 - October 23rd 2020
The 4th volume of our EMA wide compilation called "Future Sounds Anthology" saw 15 tracks from 15 EMAliens come together in an assortment of vibes from chill to "thrill" as genres range from downtempo to Drum & Bass! The theme this month was something a little darker being Halloween season and there's something for everyone, undead or otherwise, in this release!
We Initially launched Vol. 1 on the 1 year anniversary of EMA as a special compilation but we decided to keep that tradition going every quarter in 2020. Our plans will be changing with it moving forward though as we will just be doing the compilation once per year starting with the next one on the 2nd year anniversary of EMA around 2nd of January 2021.
The Spotify playlist is below for your streaming pleasure of Vol. 4 and it's available to download on our Beatport page! Electronic Alliance Records
Our community run label Electronic Alliance Records continues to grow 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:
Featured Artist
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 the "Cuddly Bear", Mr. Electrostatic Nightmare Disco! We digitally sent Nicky Havey over to find out more about this cheeky chappy and this is what happened!
Hey hey Mr E.N.D! I hope you're all good and we're all looking forward to hearing more from you here as our Featured Artist this month! So, who is the mysterious and majestic Electrostatic Nightmare Disco? How did you got involved with music? I started listening to music a million years ago on a stone age hi-fi tower system belonging to my sister. She had a taste in music that definitely influenced me and the first album that I listened to on repeat was Reproduction by Human League. Creepy as ya Nan in a nighty but awesome and all those weird synthesizer noises. I asked for one for Xmas, what I got was the cheapest Clavinet (copy) on the market. Basically a fan that blew through a keyboard making notes that sounded like a melodica and was impossible to be Gary Numan on. I continued listening to electronic music throughout my early years while badgering my parents for a synthesizer and when I turned 13 I bagged a two keyboard organ with about 7 preset sounds for my birthday. So to please them I took organ lessons above a keyboard shop but at least I could play the real synths while I was there, but that was it for my music making days.
Listening wise, I evolved through the electronic genres going from the synth pop to electro to hip hop to house to rave to techno to baggy old Manchester before discovering Orbital and deciding that it didn't get better than that and that's pretty much where my taste is at these days, although I have expanded to other artists.
I didn't think about making music again till 2013 when I was stuck in hospital for a long time and to keep myself amused I bought an iPad, mainly as an alternative to the Kindle I'd got bored of, and discovered Garageband. Synths, drum machines and everything in between I couldn't believe it. I diddled and dabbled and made some rubbish that I thought was awesome (some would say nowt's changed there) and uploaded to Youtube my first ever track which was a ravey remix of the theme from Moon.
You used to be able to upload to Youtube directly from GB so I "released" several albums getting a little better every time but sound-wise they were terrible as I hadn't heard of mastering. They were going up raw, no mixing, no mastering, no plug ins. I needed something else so I bit the bullet and shelled out for Ableton. This was another revelation to me and after initially being daunted by it I started to learn how to work it.
Youtube was a big help in the early days but I think I'm just about getting the hang of it now. I also discovered you could buy VST synths and that was awesome. The best thing about being an adult is buying stuff you couldn't get as a kid so I finally got my first synth aged 48. About this time I started listening to a radio station on Facebook called Kindcrime. It was all dark hard industrial Techno and I loved it immensely. I'd always loved Techno but this was gorgeous horrible stuff and that's what I wanted to make so off I set to make my mark in dark sweaty basement clubs. And here we are present day.
Aha, so that's how you came to find the dark side! I'm really glad you managed to keep yourself entertained whilst in hospital and even more so that you're out and making your tunes! It's always cool to see how your productions and style changes over time from the first to where you are now - hopefully there'll be many more to come! So with all these influences growing up, what is the style of music you make now?
I make techno music predominantly, usually dark brooding industrial, all heavy bass drums and tinny hats, but I'll occasionally head off into other fields. All that gloominess sends you a bit blind and you wander off into melodic, minimal even trancey genres. I also do a bit of trip hop and downbeat. Really a jack of all master of none but mostly it's industrial techno I'm known for.
Well, it's always good to have some variety in moods to keep things interesting and glad to hear you have a "go-to" with the industrial techno! I'm sure our techno fans would love to know what releases you have coming up, can you shed some more light on that?
I'm always working on new releases. My latest track is on Future Sounds Anthology Vol. 04 and soon I'll be compiling the follow up to last Christmases Evolution:Year One with (surprisingly) Evolution:Year Two, a comp of my fave releases this year plus new versions and new tracks. After that I'll continue with a Techno series follow up to Techno Addict which reached 10 editions and a natural end earlier his year. I make 2 radio shows on Radio-Dark-Tunnel.net, an hour long techno mix on Friday nights 7.30 to 8.30 uk time (before the EMA mix) and a 2 hour techno show on Sunday nights 7.00 to 9.00.
Awesome man, great to see you're keeping yourself busy! And our final question as always is, how did you find out about EMA and come to be a part of it all?
I have no idea. I think I got lost and wandered in and you lot were kind enough to do me a cup of tea and a sandwich. Or it could have been a post on a certain websites FB group inviting people to join which I did. I was very shy at first but I think I'm coming out of my shell a bit lately. You're all very nice young people. Haha! Well, we're glad you took the plunge and decided to join in the merriment on the Mothership mate and thanks for sharing your story with us! I'm sure we'll all be on the lookout for your latest tunes! You can follow Electrostatic Nightmare Disco on the links below:
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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