This Saturday Feb 4th Vice and music streaming service Rdio are taking over Bondi’s Beach Road Hotel and cramming it full of bands including Das Racist, Canyons, Alpine, Collarbones and Jonti with DJ sets from Twin Shadow & Austra.

Better yet it’s a free gig – you just need to win one of the 300 double passes, which also give you a free 7-day trial on Rdio.

I would totally be there if I wasn’t going to be going hard in the paint to Twin Shadow at Laneway Melbourne. That’s a thing, yeah?

Head to rdio.vice.com to enter.

Not in Sydney? No big deal. Enter for the chance to be flown (with three mates) to the show and get put up in a hotel room.

Based on the relatively rotten time I had at Future (not enough technos!), I’m curious to see what Creamfields 2011 will hold. Stereosonic was actually great fun, and really slickly produced this year so hopes are high.

If you’ve not caught the memo, here’s the skinny:
Deadmau5 (possibly with that ridiculous live LED rig in tow…)
Martin Solveig
Skrillex
Chuckie
Simon Patterson
Gabriel & Dresden (yes plz!)
Wynter Gordon P/A
Hi Tek Soul:Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May (YES PLZ)
Bingo Players
Skazi
Surkin (yes plz)
Dada Life
Umek (yezz plzzz)
Nadastrom (yes plz)
Round Table Knights (boooom)
Sandwell District
Tim Green (booooooooom x 2)
Bart Claessen
Mumbai Science

It’s taking off around the country in April.

We’ve got TWO DOUBLE PASSES to the festival to giveaway – if you want to get your hands on them please send to music@electrorash.com your FAVOURITE ULTIMATE ALL TIME TECHNO B4NG0R TRACK

Points will be added for judicious sidechain and lethal, Gesaffestein-style cowbell runs. Super bonus points for bang0rz I’ve never heard before.

To sweeten the deal – each winner will receive 2 x copies of the One Love Sonic Boom Box CD, which features a disc mixed by Acid Jacks that very boxish and booming and sonic-like. In the best possible fashion.

Submissions by YouTube or SoundCloud link please.

Drop some heat on me. Lets do it.

-Mandu

If you weren’t lucky enough to pick up a ticket to this year’s Laneway Festival extravaganza of hipness, you can stream all of that goodness live via YouTube. Virgin Mobile will be streaming Yeasayer, Beach House and Two Door Cinema Club will live on Feb 6 over at http://www.youtube.com/sessions

I, for one, have to work on Feb 6th so will definitely be streaming the flip out of Beach House.

As an extra little goodie, we’ve got 2 x tickets to Yeasayer at the Virgin Mobile Metro in Sydney to giveaway. The gig is on Monday Feb 7th, there’ll be dope-ass canapes and a free bevvy or two for the winner as well.

Just drop a note to music@electrorash.com with the very best internet LOL you can muster.

He/she who elicits the greatest LOL from the judges (me) will get their names on the door for the gig. Music related LOLs are preferable, but any video of someone falling over or getting hit by an inanimate object are also valid

Winner will be announced Monday morning

Get into it.

-Mandu

We got these 2x ticket bad boys thanks to the good people at Etc Etc and Harbour Party NYE

The big boys of forward thinking electro-house, Digitalism, will be there, as will Riva Starr and Dennis Ferrer. No big deal.

We got two tickets to give away, just jump through this link, fill out the teeny, tiny form, make me EFFIN’ LOL and you and your gay lover can be there, front of stage, getting well pissed, listening to Digitalism and watching fireworks while they LITERALLY EXPLODE RIGHT ABOVE YOUR HEAD.

I’m not taking the tickets cause i’ll be chewing my neck off at Van Buuren in Melbourne, so you might as well grab them.

Digitalism – you know who they are:

1.Blitz by etcetcAu

2.Stratosphere by etcetcAu

ENTER HERE

-Mandu

Our Melbourne mates the Strobe crew are throwing another one of their irregular slam dances at Prince with Bagraiders, Ajax and Beni.

It’s tomorrow night, and we’ve got a mad double pass to giveaway.

Riddle us this:
What’s the most amazing thing that happened in 1928.

Answer that makes us go ‘hmm, that’s interesting’ the most gets the puppies.
All answers in by midday AEST Friday 16th July – no buts – send them to
music@electrorash.com

-Electrorash

Update: Congrats to Luke Mesanko who scored the pass

Since then artists like Erol Alkan, Aeroplane, Sinden and Fake Blood have all gushed embarrassingly about how much they love this three-piece from Adelaide.

In March they announced a national tour but for some reason they didn’t manage to include a Melbourne show so I’m thankful to the tastemakers at Animals Dancing for making this show a reality. It’s this Saturday the 17th of April at the Mercat Cross, 456 Queen St in Melbourne.

To say that I’m excited by this show is a massive understatement.

Tickets via Moshtix or roll the dice on the door and supports from stablemate Knightlife, the supremely talented Andee Frost and Otologic.

To win a double pass to the show drop us a line at music@electrorash.com with the first word that comes to mind when you think of the word “swiss”. Make sure you include “The Swiss” in the subject line!

xox
Ned

P.S. Here is a mix put together especially for the show and to get you in the mood. Listen tonight, listen every night, it’ll be alright.

[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/animals-dancing/animals-dancing-swiss-mini-mix" params="show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ff0063" width="100%" height="81" ]

Are coming to town! Not quite Santa, but pretty close. That is, if Santa delivered pre-wrapped rock solid beats and rode a sleigh made of tech-electro stylings! Yeah!

Well, that was a clumsy analogy.

So, those mighty purveyors of party at Strobe have managed to finagle both Boy 8-Bit and Feadz to play the same massive evening this Melbourne Cup Eve at Billboard. That oddly glossy, yet strangely endearing underground den of iniquity. Also, Cup Eve is November 2nd. In case you’ve missed it somehow. I mean, I find it as testicle-retractingly boring as the next man, but still. That shit is everywhere.

I can’t imagine either act need too much introduction, suffice to say that Boy 8-Bit has been one of the most diverse and consistent producers to emerge from the electro scene while Feadz could perhaps best be described as Ed Banger’s ghetto-tech-house wonder boy. Rather excitingly though, we have a DOUBLE PASS to give away to this sure to be party of catastrophic proportions. Both first and second release tickets have sold out, leaving only the $39 final round left, meaning you have the chance to save $78 whole dollaz and centz by simply emailing us at music@electrorash.com and explaining in 5 words or less your bestest, most dancefloor destroying dance move. 5 words.

Just to sweeten the deal, here be some music. From the B8B (not an accepted acronym) side of things we have ‘The Cricket Scores’, a slice of curiously melodic, yet crunchy granola-d funk off his 2008 Suspense is Killing Me EP. Recently heard on Modeselektor’s pretty cranking Body Language 8 Mix. Well worth checking out.

Boy 8-Bit – The Cricket Scores

And Feadz-wise, here be another stonking slab of Modeselektor delight, his take on Happy Birthday! stand-out track ‘Sucker Pin’. It’s a relentless stomper to begin with, but Feadz really takes it up a notch, folding the original synth-line back over itself while filling it with reams of build ups and party-house samples. Pretty great, and a sure sign of what to expect.

Modeselektor – Suckerpin (Feadz Remix)

-luke

P.S. If you’re wondering, that picture comes off Boy 8-Bit’s Myspace. If someone has actually created a Village People of dogs, I will shit myself with happiness.

Hold up the crazy train and lock up your pets and the fragile elderly, because the Bag Raiders are coming and they are a, um, menace to, uh, pets… and the fragile elderly…

When I began that sentence I thought that I’d come up with a better way to finish it. I really did.

Sigh.

The Bag Raiders! Mighty scions of Australian electro! Purveyors of pounding house music! Potential petty thieves! Since 2006 the Bag Raiders have gone from being iconic early adopters of the Australian electro scene to being the remixers de jure of 2007 blog house to being Modular signed, national radio played, internationally touring dance party kings. It’s been a solid few years, really.

Most recently though, they’ve taken a break from remixing in order to drop their new single, and first release for Modular, the gentle, sunny and oh so Cut Copy ‘Shooting Stars’. It’s a fair cry from their usual balls-to-the-wall electro stylings (see, for example, previous singles ‘Turbo Love’ and, of course, ‘Fun Punch’), but it’s a lovely, Balearic piece of pop nonetheless and is being well rewarded with radio play from, well, pretty much everywhere. In support of the release they’re touring all around the country and, most pressingly for our purposes, find themselves at Roxanne this Friday, ripping the club apart with none other than the mighty Ajax. The DJ, not the cleaning product. It probably goes without saying though that this party will be rather massive.

Tickets are $20 from Moshtix, BUT we here at Electrorash have a double ticket to give away to one lucky reader who can tell us in five words or less what the best thing they’ve ever raided is. Answers to music@electrorash.com with the subject line Bag Raiders. Natch.

But if you need further temptation, then here’s Kris Menace’s remix of Shooting Stars, which pretty much just picks up the sun-drenched vibe of the original and takes it to its logical, sunset-at-the-beach-with-all-your-friends conclusion. Really lovely.

Bag Raiders – Shooting Stars (Kris Menace Remix)

Although I’ll always remember the Bag Raiders, because they were responsible for one of the first pieces of music I ever picked up from the early music blog scene, their funky but cryptic 8-bit rendering of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Daft Punk is Playing at My House’, which was named, aptly enough, ‘Daft Punk is Playing on My Nintendo’. It’s hard to know how many people ever actually heard it, so I’m including it here for curiosities sake, but I’m sure we can all agree they’ve gone on to bigger and better things…

Bag Raiders – Daft Punk is Playing on My Nintendo

Yes, curious…

-luke

Following on from his rather large Splendour in the Grass campaign, (youtube “Yuksek Splendour” and you’ll know what I mean) Yuksek is bringing his batshit mental electro stylings to ol’ Melbourne town this Sunday the 2nd of August. And if you’re from up north (i.e. Brisbane), you can catch him at Lickit this Friday the 31st.

His new “Away from the Sea” album features the Triple J fave single “Tonight” and also features collaborations with Chromeo, Amanda Blank and Shit Disco. He also has a fairly intimidating array of remixes behind him, having covered Phoenix, AutoKratz, Peaches, Ghostface Killah and a shitload more.

Rather excitingly, Electrorash has been given four double passes to giveaway: two for Melbourne and two for Brissy. If you’re keen to get your hands on these tickets (and goddamit, you should be) send an email describing in 5 words or less what you would “Yuksek” for them to music@electrorash.com.

Failing that, tix for the Melbourne gig can be bought here and Brisbane can be picked up
here.

-blake

Every time I look at the title of this blog, my mind flies back to the heady days of 2007; the year when electro first exploded into the mainstream, propelled forward on a wave of stomping house beats spliced with synth-rock and electroclash sensibilities. I remember thinking at the time how amazing it was that good dance music had managed to recapture melody from the all-consuming shit-mouth that was anthem trance and disco house. After all this time mired in the subwoofer, there was melody. Melody was going to save us all.

And then I’m back in the present and I think to myself ‘thank Christ, bass is back’. It was like we all hit 2008, got halfway through and realised that dance music without bass is, well Top 40 really. And we’re better than that. Fidget, kuduru, UK funky, dubstep, bassline, ghettotech – they all seem to be on a mission to bring dance music back to the dark, dirty and booty-shaking subterranean chambers where it belongs. And Melbourne promoters Strobe are welcoming it with open arms. After tearing Melbourne to shreds back in February with a Proxy/Thomas von Party double header, Strobe are taking it up a notch this Friday the 22nd with a decidedly massive triple bill featuring Jesse Rose, Zombie Disco Squad and Oliver $. And we have tickets to give away to it. See the bottom for details.

Jesse Rose should need little introduction by now. The man was one of the major players in the fidget scene when it swept the world early last year (and apparently one of the guys who coined the term as a joke in the first place), and nowadays finds himself at the forefront of this new brigade of bass-heavy house music mercenaries. Currently signed to the genre-defining Dubsided label, he’s recently completed an Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 (available here) and has a brand new album due out the day after the party. It’s called ‘What Do You Do If I Don’t?’, and best of all you get a free copy of the CD with entry. It’s stomping, surprisingly jazzy and pretty awesome, and you can check out a track that is all three of those things below.

Jesse Rose – Touch My Horn

Zombie Disco Squad are one of the pioneers of the so-called (and potentially racist…) Zulu house sound. Melding fidget with baile, bmore, hip-hop and African tribal funk, the ZDS boys push a relentless, mind-destroying brand of house music that oscillates wildly between clipped hip-hop samples, quirky synth stabs and pounding house beats. They’re just about to drop their new double A-side ‘Esperanto’/'Eurovision’ on Jesse Rose’s own Made To Play imprint and I assure you, it is reliably massive:

Zombie Disco Squad – Eurovision

And, finally, Oliver $. I must admit that up until recently I hadn’t really heard of the man, but he’s doing big things in Berlin at the moment and has a fairly esteemed position as one of Jesse Rose’s primary proteges. Straddling the fine line between booty house and minimal, Oliver $ is being championed by both sides of the spectrum due to his unique and decidedly understated approach to making some of the funkier dance music of the last year. Dubstep worthy bass, snatched vocal samples and bouncing kicks. This is just, in a phrase, fucking cool.

Oliver $ – Watcha Gonna Do

It’s all happening this Friday, May 22 at Billboards in Melbourne. Tickets are $45 and can be purchased from Moshtix and Ticketek. I can thoroughly recommend it. I’m almost positive this party is going to be batshit mental.

Even better though, we here at Electrorash have a double pass to give away to one oooooooh so lucky reader. How awesome? So awesome. Simply send an email to music@electrorash.com with STROBE in the subject line, and tell us in 10 words or less how you’re going to deal with the coming zombie invasion (the real zombies, not the Disco Squad). Get onto it! I’ll see you there.

-luke