Double Mauler - Post Digital Reality Live Mix

Michael Stumpf is a college student at Brown University.  He's also an avid blogger over at Hands In The Dark and a frequent contributor to the Not In Kansas show on Brown's Student Radio station.  Under his Double Mauler moniker, Stumpf curated a mix for Not In Kansas' most recent show and was kind enough to share it with me through SoundCloud.  Dude did a wonderful job picking out some of the best forward-thinking electronic tracks floating around the blogosphere as of late and deserves just as much credit for mixing them together to sound so cohesive.  Features Burial, DJ Nate, Forest Spirits, Phaseone and Zomby, among others.  Check the mix immediately below and the tracklist after the jump.

MP3 - Various Artists - Double Mauler's Post Digital Reality Live Mix

new Forest Spirits - EP

Behold, Forest Spirits' debut EP is upon us. Available for free download at bandcamp, the EP consists of seven songs, five of which are brand new and two that you may have heard if you follow Forest Spirits closely.  All are brilliant.  I described Forest Spirits' Summer Sleep/Storm Clouds single as "dreamstep": that applies to the EP as well, though the songs are a bit livelier.  I like the fact that artist Liam Richardson has the EP tagged as "ambient" and "electronica" as two separate entries, because while this is electronically generated music that has ambient elements, it is far too engaged, even jittery, to be "ambient electronica."  A subtle but important difference.  Stream the swirling, Soca-synth jam "A Diet Of Seeds" and the 2-step, 8-bit bouncer "All You Could Do" below; grab the rest of the excellent EP here.

MP3: Forest Spirits - A Diet Of Seeds
MP3: Forest Spirits - All You Could Do  

new Forest Spirits - "Soda Spooks"

Brand new track from Auckland's Forest Spirits, the first we've heard since last year's excellent Summer Sleep/Storm Clouds release.  Taut with a giddy, fidgety beat, a constantly repeating female vocal sample and melodic synth tones and tweaks, "Soda Spooks" is a freshly-oiled robot fumbling about, or The Postal Service on Prozac.  Follow Forest Spirits on bandcamp. 

Forest Spirits - Soda Spooks

Forest Spirits

Forest Spirits is one Liam Fitzpatrick, a twenty-something college student from Auckland, New Zealand. If his glitchy, dubbed-out hip-hop beats belong to Los Angeles or London, his sampling skills are entirely his own, unique in style and yet universally appealing in their dream-like quality. With "Summer Sleep," we're being romanced by a French girl, bumping to an 808 beat even as we travel down Avenue Gustave Eiffel in a Peugeot 403 - a mash-up so misconstrued in time and place only deep R.E.M. sleep could reconcile it.  Likewise, even with "Storm Clouds" on the horizon, we're dreaming old-school Disney, our cartoon caricatures unconcerned as they twirl umbrellas and skip across a sun-swept field. Beautifully evocative, fantasy-filled, even romanticized beats. Dreamstep? I think so.

Forest Spirits - Summer Sleep
Forest Spirits - Storm Clouds

Follow Forest Spirits here.

Props to Rose Quartz for pointing me in his direction.