The 23rd Annual Shambhala Music Festival is happening this year between July 22-25. That’s right – the festival is 23 years old. This West Coast institution has become a household name for festival-goers around the world due to its consistently great lineups and friendly atmosphere. No wonder it continues to be so popular, and is probably older than a lot of its attendees! There is some kind of secret sauce that keeps both fans and a variety of internationally renowned artists coming back year after year. Besides the great location – a picturesque ranch in Salmo, B.C. (known as ‘The Farm’ by the ‘Farmily’) – you’ve also got what, by all accounts, is an electrifying place that cross-pollinates music and culture in a big way.

“That festival has opened my eyes…There’s nothing quite like it.”  – Chali 2na

To get in the proper mood, we have a FUXWITHIT playlist ready to go featuring a curation of artists on this year’s lineup. If you are hitting up Shambhala, or just want to live vicariously through your headphones, here are some of our top picks for 2022!

Oh, and if this playlist has triggered incurable FOMO, you can still buy tickets HERE.

The post Get Ready For The Festival Or Live Vicariously Through Our Shambhala 2022 Playlist appeared first on FUXWITHIT.

From the start, Thelem is on fire with his engulfing sounds. The shaking title track works brilliantly as an introduction and is swiftly followed by ‘Dusted’ featuring Onhell, a blistering cut with super sharp rhythms. ‘Tuck It’ surges into action with a quicker tempo and strong dynamics, before ‘Lights Out’ ricochets with deep, dark thuds as the EP’s final addition.

You can hit play on each of these wicked tracks now – check out the stream here.

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Sampling, or the practice of re-purposing recorded audio began in early hiphop production. When samplers first came on to the market, they were standalone hardware units (as opposed to a piece of software, which you would be much more likely to find today). In theory, their operation was very simple; record any audio into the unit via a tape deck, record player or other source of audio, save it to the digital memory internal to the sampler, and then trigger the ‘sampled’ audio using buttons found on the sampler. As technology progressed, the memory capacity of samplers increased and features that allowed users to manipulate or edit the original audio were introduced. Now, over 30 years later, this same process is still in use, with the ability to layer, manipulate and modulate being constantly expanded upon. The possibilities of sampling are endless, and the practice itself has enabled a new generation of songwriters and producers by making the process of creating music much more accessible, especially to those with no formal musical training or knowledge.

The vast majority of drums (and many other sounds) on classic hiphop beats were created from producers sampling individual drum hits (kick, snare, hi hats, etc.) from old funk and soul recordings. This captured the organic sound of the drum and allowed producers to then tap out a new beat to a rhythm of their choosing. Drum samples were often captured during the ‘break’ part of the source song. A break is a small section of music, commonly found in 60’s & 70’s funk and soul songs, in which the entire bands stops playing for 4-16 bars while the drums play a solo, hence the term break-beat; a beat played by a drummer in the break section of a song. These sections were usually a spot to highlight the drummers skills and allow them some space for variation, often adding accents or additional rhythms to the foundation of their beat. These sections were chosen to sample from for the obvious reason that the drums were the only instrument playing and it was easy to capture a clean hit without any other instruments interfering.

Check out this list of the Top 10 Most Samples Drum Breaks Of All Time from whosampled.com

Currently, the practice of sampling, manipulating and re-purposing audio is at the heart of most digital music production. Not only for its ease and simplicity, but also for the creative freedom is allows for. In the past, musicians were limited, in a physical sense, as to what they could play on their instrument. A trumpet player can only sustain a note for as long as their lungs will allow them to exhale, and a drummer can only play as fast as their limbs are capable of moving. Sampling takes away many of these limitations, allowing for beautifully unnatural sounds and rhythms to be created through processes of manipulation and reprogramming, respectively.

A few classic jungle/breakbeat tracks:

At some point, producers started sampling and speeding up entire drum phrases (for example, 2 bars of drumming looped to play continuously, rather than just a single hit), bringing a hiphop swing to faster drum and bass style tracks. This was the first step towards creating the ‘breakbeat’ sound in modern dance music that is most synonymous with jungle, and is found in many other subgenres related to drum and bass music. Breakbeat music, which is not so much a genre as it is a classification of music that utilizes this particular sound or style (kind of like 808s with trap and rap), generally features fast paced beats, usually using a drum and bass rhythm pattern, with plenty of groove or slightly off-time hits to give the song a more lifelike feel than is found in other similar genres.

By utilizing samples taken from actual drummers instead of programming drum hits on a time-locked grid, the imperfect, ‘human’ element of performance is infused into the sound. Audio is considerably sped up or ‘timestretched’ (a process that allows for audio to be played at a higher speed without the pitch changing), and heavily edited and re-sequenced, creating a beautiful imperfection in the fast-paced rhythms that simply could not be programmed into a machine. Eventually, the sampling, looping and editing of drum phrases was replaced by sampling each individual beat within the phrase. This allows each sample to be reordered and triggered whenever the person programming the beat desires, lending itself to creating extremely dense, heavily engineered beats that would make any drummer blush. English writer Kodwo Eshun once described jungle and breakbeat music as “rhythmic psychedelia”.

A few modern examples of impressive breakbeat sequencing to follow…

One of the most popular and widely sampled drum breaks of all time is from a song called ‘Amen, Brother’ by The Winstons, with honourable mentions going to James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ and The Honey Drippers ‘Impeach The President’. The drums and break in ‘Amen, Brother’ have been sampled almost 2000 times according to whosampled.com, making it the most widely sampled break ever, with no compensation having been offered to its creators until very recently. Due to a statute of limitations of only three years for copyright infringement in the US, The Winstons had no recourse when almost 30 years later, they found out their song had been repeatedly sampled. While I am usually one to side with technological progress and creative freedom when it comes to issues of sampling and copyright infringement, this is one case where I believe some recognition and compensation is rightfully deserved. The members of The Winstons are far from rich, having disbanded years ago, and their (albeit unintentional) contribution to music has helped spawn entire genres and subgenres of extremely progressive and creative music. Though they may not have a legal right to financially benefit from their music being used in this way, its widespread and repeated use has touched enough people that it inspired two British DJ’s to do something about it.

In November of 2015, The Winstons frontman Richard Spencer was awarded £24,000 thanks to a GoFundMe campaign started by Martyn Webster and Steve Theobald. The campaign, which relied solely on donations from individuals far exceeded its goal of just £1000, and was received with much gratitude by Spencer who has spent some of his years since The Winstons attending University and working in the Washington Transit System. Upon receiving the money he stated, “The young man who played that drumbeat, Gregory Coleman, died homeless and broke in Atlanta, Georgia,” highlighting the importance of this offering. The campaign to compensate the band has since been reopened after word spread and further interest was expressed in donating to this cause. You can find the campaign’s Facebook page HERE.

Like many other stories of creative contribution, the importance of the Amen Break took the passing of time and right perspective to show all that it had to offer to the art of music. Who could have known in 1969 that a 10 second drum loop would later inspire a new era of producers and creators to invent entirely new genres of music? No one. No one at the time could have known how music technology would develop, and how it would be utilized to further push creativity and enable the possibilities of performance past the limitations of a human player.

The marriage of technology and music is certainly a good thing, and like anything else that technology affects (which is essentially everything), there is no sense in fighting its progress. This unfortunately means that some will be left out while others reap the rewards of the communal artistic effort. Such is life. It is important to remember however that true creative contributions are not easily forgotten. Though The Winstons as a group never got to enjoy the success of their contribution in a traditional sense, they are now cemented in their rightful and unique place in the history of the development of music. They are honoured on a regular basis at drum and bass shows around the world, and any artist should be extremely proud to reach this level of artistic achievement. It is unfortunate that this achievement does not bring with it any financial benefit, however I believe it to be a sign of the strong importance of art in peoples lives that individuals would band together to raise awareness and money to prove to these creators, who have certainly suffered for their art, that their journey was important, impactful and amounted to be something far bigger than they could have ever imagined.

For more, check out this comprehensive video about the Amen Break.

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DJ Lukey and Jelacee @ CODA in Toronto

Jelacee and DJ Lukey, the lads that comprise the London-based production & DJ duo, pride themselves on their ability to read a room. They know the ins and outs of music – both theirs and others’ – on a level that raises the art of production to a sixth sense.

“We perform in the way of like, energy – so we’ll make sure that if we want you to be here you’ll be here, if we want you to be there you’ll be there. […] We just wanna redirect that negative energy and turn it into positive energy, to get it out of you so that by the time it comes to next week you’re like, ‘Aight cool, I’m fresh again – let’s go.’”

Like many artists, Stööki Sound has a give-and-take relationship with the necessary evil of simplified labeling that is a by-product of cataloguing and promoting music:

“We don’t really classify our selves as like, trap artists. We’re trap-esque, where we take elements from trap but then we take elements from grime and we take elements from here and there and there. We’re not sure what to call it, really […] nobody knows what it is.”

On the topic of how they continue developing a sound that is already unique, Jelacee continues:

“We’re still developing our sound and still progressing, so this year the sound’s gonna be different, but you’re still gonna know like, oh yeah – Stööki Sound made that. We’re always staying in that same realm but expanding that realm, and trying to introduce people to different sounds and introduce ourselves to different sounds as well.”

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The Stööki movement began when DJ Lukey created custom screenprinted t-shirt-and-jewelry combos the summer he graduated from graphic design school. Early showcases introduced Stööki to the public through workshop-like-pop-ups that urged people to call upon their eyes, ears, and hands to interact with multimedia art. The idea was to produce art that extended itself as an experience, inviting the viewer in to add their point of view.

And what’s more participatory than a dance floor?

Raging face at CODA

Last Thursday night, under the synchronized ceiling lights of CODA in Toronto, the lads of Stööki Sound delivered on their vision.

Local genre-agnostic favorite HRMXNY warmed the crowd up to a low-medium frenzy. His opening set dipped into the realms of bass-y house and techno rhythms that spiced up an otherwise (appropriately) trapped-out vibe. Drake cuts abounded.

HRMXNY @CODA

When Stööki Sound took over the decks, a brief lull occurred due to issues porting the duo’s Macbook Air into the Pioneer deck system. This resolved when Jelacee made use of the two gold-plated USB keys he keeps on a chain around his neck – backups of his music library (“These are my saving grace; nobody can ever tell me I can’t play”). The duo then proceeded to play an off-the-cuff DJ set, which, though unplanned, was a damn good harbinger of sweat, screwface, and trap arms.

Stööki Sound @ CODA

Over the course of the hour-and-change set, there were very few tracks whose creators were easily identified; everything was a remix, an edit, or a mashup that spanned genres and tempos while maintaining an impressively consistent vibe. Dark, raw, grimy; however you name it, there were reworks of everything from Drizzy’s ‘Know Yourself’ to the duo’s take on Missy’s ‘Work It’. Rhythmic treats included banging four-to-the-floor instrumentals followed by a melodic and anticlimactic mix of ‘Mosh Pit’. The show peaked twice during raging mosh pits, both incited by Jelacee himself.

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Stööki Sound strives to cross borders and is spearheading a movement for which a word does not yet exist –drawing on multiple aesthetics (light and sound, energy and feeling) to inform its meaning.

For the niche of trap-and-UK bass lovers congregated under the flashing ceiling lights of CODA last Thursday, Stööki Sound delivered – and participated in – an authentic sensory experience that will only serve to further build out their movement in the underbelly of Toronto’s rave and rap scenes.

By: Sally L and Kevin G

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For the first installment of this series, I want to talk about a genre that has been steadily growing in popularity since the early 2000s in Europe and the UK especially, but remains mostly under-the-radar in North America; Grime. I will admit that when I first encountered this music years ago, I was off-put by the the rapping style; my sensitive North American ears being accustomed to hearing only a small variety of American dialects in rap music. After giving it some time and digging to find a few tracks that really did it for me, my opinion has completely changed. In the same way that American rappers use their local vernacular to stylize their own flow, grime music takes this practice to an international level. Paired with the permeation of dub music and Jamaican culture into British arts, I now see that there is a huge sub-genre of rap music that many in North America are missing out on. If you are a fan of rap and bass music as separate entities, grime may have something to offer you. Blending bass music production with a wide variety of rap styles, grime is an often overlooked genre that deserves more attention. With current artists like Skepta and Stormzy‘s names ringing out across Europe, I would think it’s just a matter of time before this truly grimy blend of bass and UK and European-style rap starts to gain momentum on the other side of the Atlantic.

To highlight the weight grime has to throw around, I turn to two big influences on the genre; a collaboration between well-known English producer The Bug and legendary grime MCs, Flowdan and Killa P. I first heard this track in a Zeds Dead mix years ago and looking back now, realize it was the primer I needed to be more open to exploring this genre in the future. With a MASSIVE beat courtesy of The Bug, proving that the influence of Jamaican culture on English music is still as prevalent as ever, Flowdan and Killa P utilize much Jamaican patois to flow their way through the song. ‘Skeng’ (meaning a knife or blade) is a heavy track with both a beat and vocals that individually could make a song complete. Released on The Bug’s album London Zoo in 2008 under Bonobo’s Ninja Tune label, this track has some serious power. Both The Bug and Flowdan are legends of the genre in their own right, and this track remains in my opinion, one of the best grime tracks out there.

For more check out THIS VIDEO of Flowdan tearing it up on RINSE FM‘s THE GRIME SHOW

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Where these two experiences split tracks, though, is in the near-fanatical reverence of the dubstep crowd towards one thing: Bass. And there was plenty of it at NXT LVL, last Friday’s brain-bender hosted by the venerable Toronto Bass Community, with local talent Hydee and ZWZ opening up for international acts Must Die!, Eptic, and dubstep OG SKisM.

Instead of describing the hectic experience to you, I made a short video. The music is loud and the footage is poorly-lit and grainy, ends abruptly, and frankly doesn’t make much sense… which is exactly what it was like to be there.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG1Q-ZOkfsU&vq=hd720&w=560&h=315]

For more TBC events – and healthy discussions of all things bass – check out their facebook page.

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Early last spring unknown Twerk/Trap duo TWRK set the internet on fire, dropping 3 huge tracks out of nowhere within the span of week. They first posted their remix to Diplo & Lazerdisk Party Sex – Set It Off, followed by their bootleg of Koreless – MTI, and then released their own track Living Room (feat. Dan Gerous). The latter features a chopped vocal sample from Snoop Dogg’s 90’s classic Gin & Juice and samples from Eve’s – Let Me Blow Your Mind. The way they combined the two samples with their signature bouncy (100 bpm) sound is upbeat, infectious and refreshing. Three back-to-back impressive releases had everyone wondering who the hell TWRK was? It was later revealed that TWRK is the collaborative effort of Benzi & Dj Esentrik.

Building on their success they did a remix for UZ and CRNKN and collaborated with 4KORNERS. TWRK soon became well known for their ability to sample rap tracks and flip them into booty shaking bangers. One of the best examples (and my favourite tracks from them) is when they flipped Juvenile’s – Nolia Clap to create NOLIA (see below). Another huge stand out track for TWRK is their smash BaDINGA! Where they flipped K7’s – Come Baby Come (the original video is a must watch. It feature choreographed dance numbers by a rap group).

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TWRK closed the year off strong doing a Diplo and Friends mix, a remix for Diplo’s revolution EP, a Wiz Khalifa Remix, and remix of Kanye West’s classic hit ‘Flashing Lights’. The Kanye remix is beautifully done keeping it just true enough to the original while adding heavy bass and their signature bouncy sound. 2013 was massive year for TWRK and we look forward to having our minds blown by their upcoming efforts. If you like what you heard follow them on Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud or just be sure to check back here.

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