The Swiss - Movements (Brennan Green edit)

This is NYC DJ Brennan Green's edit of the original Swiss release 'Movements'
A thankyou to all the Swiss fans

The Swiss - Movements (Brennan Green edit)


also, check this video of Connie from Sneaky getting up to do a song she wrote with the guys

REALLY REVEAL Vol. 4: ARITHMATIX!

Join me, known ARITHMATIX! fanboy Roland, as I direct some fairly pedestrian interview questions towards top-shelf individual of anthemic proportions ARITHMATIX! about why he is so great and what he's doing at the moment:

We’ve seen your post-romantic side in Van She, had our 4ams 4am’d by your Van She Tech output and felt the silky feel of your inner dimension with Touch Sensitive, where is Arithmatix going to end up?

Somewhere between 90 and 130bpm, I think it's good to vary in tempo plus it's a challenge to make things swing at slower tempos. Guitar solos are well and good but it's not until you slow things down that you are able to separate the men from the boys, I guess low-med tempo disco.

Should we be expecting an eventual live show?

It's funny "live" these days is not live at all, it's more "real time". I think that a guy triggering scenes in Ableton is boring unless they are dressed in Dior leather suits and robot helmets.

How about an EP?

Yeah I just finished a remix for the Future Classic label and I'm working on stuff in between other stuff…

What gear have you currently got on high rotation in the studio? Is the Memorymoog+ still at the forefront?

I love your attention to detail, there are raging debates on the net as to what's more stable; a + or a standard, but mine has been fine apart from a couple of issues here and there. High rotation: the Dave Smith PEK is always turned on and so is the Studio Electronics Code 8 which is sort of like a CS80, Oberheim, Moog and Arp in one box. I also love my MPC3000LE with the Vailixi OS from Mansell Labs but at the end of the day all this gear means nothing if you don't have an idea but sounds to inspire you to play a certain thing or a certain way so...

Yourself being someone who owns and adores a significant slice of the Prelude catalogue in a world where people come up to the booth and request Bloody Beetroots, is the tightrope between perceived DJ snobbery and your own enjoyment a difficult one to walk?

Haha no not really, whenever that happens I just play a Shazam track. Something becomes pop when it becomes popular.

It’s widely acknowledged that you’re a stylish individual – forever on the front foot but never flash in the pan. With so many looks in such little time, where do you draw your inspiration from?

My uncle Francesco Di Francesco is a tailor and the most stylish man on the planet, he wears white, drives a white car and lives in a white house.

At present, who are you feeling?

Helen Neville on the weekends and anything by Claudio Simonetti.

Do you have any other projects or collaborations planned at the moment or do you have enough on your plate right now with everything you’ve got on your plate at the moment?

Yeah always doing different things otherwise it becomes stale, doing another Van She record between that and whatever other activities occur, the plate is full. Maybe a small plate with a few good things as opposed to a massive bowl of shit is the way to go.

The Swiss at the Enmore

The Swiss absolutely tore it up at the Enmore (supporting Ladyhawke) on Saturday night. I have some pretty rough Blackberry videos but coolhandluque on YouTube seems to have done alright with what I am going to guess was a rectangular silver digital camera. It starts off with the end of the current version of "Manthem" before blooming into the summertime wonder of "Bubble Bath".

Prior to "Bubble Bath", Connie Mitchell joined the boutique disco trio that we all love to love on stage and did a pretty solid job of grabbing the bull by the horns and knocking it out of the park.

Pop Muzik

One of the coolest "dont care" pop songs of all time, put out by M in 1979 has been re-released for its 30th anniversary. There's like 50 billion remixes by heaps of awesome legends like Devo & Cage & Aviary. And this 10 minute mega-jam by Todd Terje.

M - Pop Muzik (Todd Terje remix)

check them all out here

REALLY REVEAL Vol. 3: Spruce Lee aka Toni Toni Lee

In case you're unaware, Australia's most satisfying DJ has just released his debut EP (the first release on the much anticipated Sounds of Goodgod label) and it's pretty incredible. On this audiovisionary outing Spruce Lee has taken a Bobby Digitalian approach to solo output and slid into the persona of Toni Toni Lee - club king, lounge legend and sultry producer (which is, to be honest, not really much of a departure from reality). I can very easily imagine Toni Toni Lee programming drums in an alter ego supergroup also featuring Jamie Starr and Devin Dazzle on keys and filters respectively.

A few days after his mindblinding EP launch party marathon jam set we had some email dialogue regarding drum machines and West German mixing desks with Spruce to get a sniff behind the curtain on the EP and this is it:

Killer EP, thank you. Is it something that you've been letting marinate for a while or quite a recent effort in terms of writing and production?

It's kind of a combination of both, there's some tracks on there that I've had floating around for a couple of months in various forms and a few that are less than two weeks old.

It's pretty all over the place, ranging from G-House to a bundle of other hyphenated genres that I could invent names for - were you aiming for that sort of variation from the beginning or did it just happen?

Well I guess you could say that this EP is sort of summing up what I've been doing in the past with my remixes, DJing and club production and pointing to the new direction I want to head in as "Toni Toni Lee". I had so much different unfinished material to draw on and I guess this was like a "cleaning out the musical closet" in a way so I can move on to something more cohesive. Saying that, I do like that there is a lot of diversity to the record and I think it kind of shows elements of a lot of digging I've been doing into the history of dance music because I missed a lot of it growing up.

Can you give me a bit of a breakdown regarding some of the gear used on the EP? What other gems make the magic happen beyond the LinnDrum?

I don't have a LinnDrum! I wish I did, it's actually a Sequential [Circuits] DrumTraks 1984 machine, which I love. I think it's on most of the tracks on the EP and it has a very early Prince sound to it, particularly the clap. I also use a Roland JX-3P extensively throughout the EP and I think it's the only outboard synth I used. "Overflow" is completely Jx-3P and the drumtracks and maybe a few external drum samples here and there. The JX is a really underrated analog synth. I use an old West German 70s desk which had awesome EQ on it and nice warm pre-amps for tracking. On some tracks I've used an old budget tape delay that runs off 8 track tapes! It makes some pretty cool delays. Everything that wasn't outboard was sampled, recorded, mixed and arranged in Ableton Live.

Is it you playing and sequencing everything on The Intercom or did some friends get involved?

Beyond any samples all the synthersiser and drum machine programming, playing and sequencing is me. I love drum sequencing. The only person who contributed to the EP was Jimmy Sing and he helped with some of the arrangment and acted as "Executive Producer" seeing as Sounds of Goodgod is his label. But i recorded, mixed, arranged, sequenced, programmed and mastered the whole thing.

Are there things that you can't do right now which you really wish you could? (eg: personally I [Roland] would like to be able to write a bassline that doesn't bore people into a black hole of depressive indifference)

Yes! I wish i could play keyboards like a demon and not have to edit my lines!!! I've been listening to a lot of Dam-Funk and older 80s boogie and funk and the keyboard playing on those records is just phenomenal. I'm gonna start taking lessons so I can step my game up.

Is Toni Toni Lee your Long Beach Ziggy Stardust?

Hahaah I guess you could say that. That is a fair assessment.

What's next?

Next is more Toni Toni Lee! Finishing this record has got my debut out of the way and now I can move forward with a more cohesive sound and style. Saying that, I'm also gonna get back in the studio with Catcall to finish some long overdue tracks and also I wanna get some more work happening with Killaqueenz and K1. I really wanna just get some interesting shit happening locally.

tracks

visual "the music got me"
thompson twins "sugar daddy" (shep pettibone's velvet rail dub)
lifelike "the cult"
nicolas makelberge "dying in africa"
andre cymone "livin' in the new wave"

classics

Here are some old songs you should definitely get involved with

Arthur Russell - Get Around To It

CAN - I Want More

Claudja Barry - Love For The Sake Of Love

mixtape teaser

I did this mini-mix for Loot & Plunder's saturday night show on Nova FM. I'm about to add a whole lot more songs to it and make it a full hour or so. But in the meantime you can listen to this:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/66557877eafc686c/

Late Night Tuff Guy

A belated congratulations to Adelaide's best kept secret HMC and Lightspeed Recordings for hitting the top of the Juno disco chart.

The release is the fantastic Late Night Tuff Guy edits vol. 1 - go check it out and cop it for yourself if you fancy yourself as a DJ

The Swiss in the studio

These are some shots from back in June when we traveled to Sydney to record the upcoming EP at the awesome Linear Studio.



Sid & Donnie working hard


The guys tracking (all live cos they're a real band!)




Sid can't play bass without dancing


Important conversations about snare sound (like it's fleetwood mac)


Donnie at the helm

The Swiss update

The EP is almost finished now and it's mental. I can't wait for everyone to hear it. Our best buddy, Donnie Sloan is putting the finishing touches on it in between working with Kylie and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

The guys are real busy for the next minute with two of them playing as the Empire of The Sun backing band for Parklife and then the Ladyhawke national support in November.

Make sure you become a fan on facebook so you don't miss out on upcoming news and wicked other stuff.

http://facebook.com/theswisspage

louis

tony

regarding 2007

Louis mentioning his lifestyle in 2007 reminded me of the time he was in town with Damn Arms when they were supporting Midnight Juggernauts and we DJ'd at the afterparty and were met with levels of success.

It was in a ballroom dancing hall. In the first photo I am just unzipping my pink canvas Ikea cd wallet prior to doors / pre-set. In the second photo I am zipping up my pink canvas Ikea cd wallet as either Tim & Yama or Juggers are coming on / post-set.



Thanks to Zonk for the photos.

G.L.O.V.E.S

Since Damn Arms dissolved last year the boys have all gone on to be very busy. Ben joined Cut Copy, Simon joined the Lost Valentinos, Tim moved to Tokyo to run a club night at Le Baron, make disco and eat loads of rice. But the topic of this post is Yama, he's been flat out with his producer/DJ alter ego "GLOVES".

I spent a large part of 2007 tour managing Damn Arms (we did laps of Australia with Cut Copy, Klaxons, Midnight Juggernauts and loads more). We all got to know each other quite well and wound up being pretty physically and mentally wrecked by pretty much 6 months of non-stop partying together. So whenever I get to see any of them I get pretty excited. This weekend, Yama is coming down to Adelaide to DJ and celebrate the release of his single "PYX" on Bang Gang 12 inches.

Make sure you get to see him play and ask him about the time we left Simon asleep on a plane cos he smelt like booze so bad.

GLOVES - Pyx (Strip Steve Paradise Dub)