Last fall I went to Australia and visited a juvenile jail with the Heaps Decent organization to encourage the kids to make music. You can read my full blog post about it here. We actually came up with a song that day, which I produced with them, and it’s just been released.

Here’s what the Heaps Decent blog had to say:

In September last year, A-Trak came to Australia with the Parklife tour. While he was here he joined Heaps Decent in Wagga Wagga, NSW where we took him to Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre for a day of music making with the young artists inside the centre.

Nina and Levins had spent the week beforehand running workshops at the centre, writing lyrics and practising flow and mic control. When A-Trak arrived at Shepherd’s Park, the school within Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre, everyone was ready to make something awesome.

‘Anywhere But Here’ is the product of our day spent recording with A-Trak. The four boys you can hear on the track wrote their own raps, as did MC Huz, a volunteer from Riverina Community College who joined us on the day. Some of the other boys played didgeridoo and made wild noises, which A-Trak sampled and used as the base for the beat.

While we are offering this for free and encourage you to spread the word by sharing the song, we please ask that you consider making a donation to Heaps Decent so that we can continue running great workshops like this one. Click here to make a donation, it’s really easy and we really appreciate any amount you can afford!

Grab the song below… and please make a donation!

Heaps Decent feat MC Huz & The Riverina Crew - Anywhere But Here (Produced by A-Trak) by Heaps Decent

Brand new disco-house track from Portugal’s own Rockets (previously known as Discorockets) from the Discotexas collective. If you’re not familiar with him, look up his song “Running”, it’s dope too!

DOWNLOAD: The Kid with the Goofy Skateboard (right-click, save-as)

For those of you who only know the name Zombie Nation from “Kernkraft 400″, um, you’re way off. But it’s OK, I’m not mad at you. You can do you homework now. Here, I’ll help you. “Kernkraft” was actually a remix of a remix of a remix that ZN had nothing to do with and it couldn’t be further from his sound.

You might know Zombie Nation as Tiga’s partner in ZZT. Or you might know his alias John Starlight. But what you should really get into is his albums. This year’s Zombielicious is one of my favorite albums of the year and a big source of inspiration for me. He’s a producer from Germany who mixes analog gear and spacey effects with chopped up samples on his MPC to make rich, spooky tracks.

He’s coming to tour America soon and out of the goodness of his zombie heart he’s giving away this mix of 25 tracks from all his albums.

Download the mix on zombienation.com.

Tracklist after the jump.

(more…)

Seriously, you need this in your life. I love a good 2-parted track. Siriusmo is my favorite producer of the year, and if you don’t know how I feel about Chromeo then I don’t know what you’re doing on this blog. The combination is everything I hoped it would be! Recommended.

Also if you’re in NY this Friday don’t miss Chromeo live at Brooklyn Bowl! More info on the FG blog.

Have fun, kiddos.

UPDATE: link re-upped

Brother from another mother Mehdi made a very useful edit of Erol Alkan & Boys Noize’s seizure-inducing “Death Suite”. Here it is, courtesy of the Boys Noize Recs blog!

Erol Alkan & Boys Noize - Death Suite (DJ Mehdi Simple Acid Edit) (right-click save-as)

While we’re on the topic of Mehdipedia, here’s a new Karmaloop interview:

The next issue of Mixmag will have our good friend and longtime supporter Annie Mac on the cover. Armand and I made the covermount CD (as Duck Sauce). All disco house! New and old. Fun times.

Here’s a preview: the first 3 songs of the mix…

Duck Sauce Mixmag preview

Preview Tracklisting:

1. His Majesty Andre – Spades
2. Mr. Oizo – Gay Dentist (JFK edit)
3. Armand Van Helden & DJ Sneak – Psychic Bounty Killaz

Once in a while I get a little nugget of gold in my inbox. This is too good to be true. He sounds like Tator Chip!

President Bell - The Child Support Song DOWNLOAD

I gotta give props to KevinNottingham.com, their/his Diggin’ In Da Crates section is a SERIOUS load of original samples both by producer (Dilla, Kanye, Just Blaze) and by artist/album.

Complete samples from Joe Budden’s “Mood Music” 2 AND 3??? hehehe…. No but seriously there’s plenty of goldmines. It’s one thing to make a list of samples but you can download everything here.

I got a brother and his name is Gizmo Chromeo.

Soooo Chromeo did the next DJ Kicks compilation and here’s the kicker (pun intended): they covered The Eagles classic “I Can’t Tell You Why”. You gotta hear this.

Head on over to www.chromeo-djkicks.com and grab the freebie!