News Round-Up: 21/3/14

15 years of Defected Records, NI releases Traktor Audio 2 and a Chemical Brother dismayed at Rolling Stone’s EDM list.

Defected celebrates 15 years in house music. Established in London in 1999, Defected celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with an ambitious global tour and the opening of its first ever record store and exhibition space.  Find out more here.

The 50 most important people in EDM. Rolling Stone publishes a highly dubious list, to the dismay of Chemical Brother Ed Simons, who summed up his thoughts in this tweet.

Absolutely priceless that 50 most powerful people in EDM list

— ed simons (@eddychemical) March 18, 2014

A New Model for Music: Big Bands, Big Brands. The New York Times reports on the current state of the music industry, explaining why artists and festivals are increasingly having to team up with big brands in order to survive.

Record Store Day 2014 frustration. Kudos Distribution, who’ve had over 20 manufacturing jobs come grinding to a halt until pressing plants can finish pressing “umpteen thousand Oasis LP re-issues, Abba 7”s and REM Box sets”, express concerns that the event “has been appropriated by major labels and larger indies to the extent that smaller labels who push vinyl sales for the other 364 days of the year are effectively penalised”. Read more here.

New Duende Native plugins from SSL. Solid State Logic announces three new Duende Native plugins to complement their existing range. X-Saturator & X-ValveComp bring analogue saturation and distortion emulation to your DAW and X-Phase delivers high-precision, frequency-specific phase correction. SSL are also migrating their whole Duende Native plugin collection to the iLok copy protection system, and have announced a summer release for AAX versions of the entire suite. Read more here.

SoundToys emulates retro Lexicon. Inspired by Lexicon’s early digital delay unit, the Prime Time, which was well loved by artists throughout the 80s, SoundToys capture its highly distinctive sonic imprint for use on sounds within your DAW. Check out Little PrimalTap, their new plugin emulation demonstrated below and here.

NI releases Traktor Audio 2, an ultra-compact iOS-ready DJ soundcard, which is built for the road with premium audio quality and is “slim enough to fit into your pocket”. Check it out here.

Nektar Panorama integrates with Bitwig Studio. MIDI controller makers Nektar Technology announce the deep integration of their Panorama series of controllers with forthcoming DAW Bitwig Studio, which is released on the 26th of March.  The integration enables Nektar’s P1, P4 or P6 to control the Bitwig Studio’s mixer, instruments, effects, transport plus clip and scene launching. Watch a quick demo below.

Why Reference matters. CDR, whose events offer music makers the opportunity hear their tracks played in a club environment over a superb soundsystem (alumni include Maya Jane Coles and Sbtrkt), give a run down on the importance of solid reference in the mixing process here.

XOSAR talks musical conjuring.  Rush Hour‘s House Of Music magazine interviews the electronic music producer and neuropsychologist XOSAR about her releases on the label, soundtracking scenes in life and how she conjures magic when she creates music. Read it here.

KiNK, making “Under Destruction”. Watch a video capturing the Bulgarian producer at work with his modular synthesiser collection on his debut album, which is released on Macro Records in May, below.

Dizzee heights. A Dizzee Rascal platform game: ccollect Air Force 1s as you make it to the top! Play here.

Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature revamped. Alongside his music, Sound Signature’s website now features a blog of Theo’s “thoughts, ideas, stories, observations, dreams and theoretical questions” here.

Clean and taped 606 samples free. Bedroom Producers Blog provides a set of cleanly recorded Roland TR-606 analogue drum machine samples and an additional set of those driven through tape and resampled. The mix is 100% dry except for a transparent limiter on the master channel. Hear them demonstrated below and download here.