General gossip
Pesto EP001: Deep Discoveries - behind the scenes pt. 3
04 September 2010, 23:48
So, I had the master recordings from the artists and the cover artwork was done. Next on the list were mastering the files, determining the final tracklist/track order, setting up the promo and uploading the finalized release to my distributor.
As every artist has a different setup, a different skill level and (hopefully) a very unique signature sound, it makes sense to group a bunch of tracks in a meaningful order. Some tunes are deep, some are percussive, some are a bit heavy on the treble portion and so on. Once I had made my mind up which tracks Pesto EP001 should consist of, I tried to arrange them in a way that they would feature a nice dramaturgy when listening to them in a row. Similar to a DJ mix or a tune itself, you would have one tune with an intro function (most supposedly the deepest of the bunch), to be followed by the tunes that have higher energy levels. You would also make sure that the tunes were not too far off from each other soundwise, adding bass or treble on one tune while cutting them on another one, for instance.
One could argue that this approach does not make much sense in times of single-track downloads but that's part of the philosophy on Pesto - I want it that way. I'm not offering a collection of tunes that were thrown together in one place indifferently. I want to offer a product that makes sense, that creates a certain atmosphere and evokes certain emotions - a compilation of music I enjoy and think you as a customer would enjoy, as well. I do things with love and dedication and compiling such an EP is no different.
Mastering the tracks
After I had the playlist set, I went to adjust the files soundwise. "In Pieces", the lovely opener of this EP by "Deep In Calm" was well-produced but very low in volume. On the other hand, the solid "One Night Stand" by "Processing Vessel" had already seen a mastering engineer and arrived here in its final state. The term "mastering" (or postproduction) here refers to a process that - very roughly speaking - irons out those differences and gets all tunes on a similar level volume- und soundwise. There are other meanings to that word but that will be a different post here soon.
These days, "mastering" is often misunderstood as "make it as loud as possible" or "make it sound like the big tunes on Beatport". Making a tune screaming loud is no problem from a technical point of view. Seeing it from a musical angle though, you'd still want all those little details to be hearable. This is what gives life to a tune and makes it breathe. When going through 300 new tracks on Beatport though, you are likely to skip those that are lower in volume. Since this is not only limited to electronic music but to recorded music in general (with the exception of classical music and Jazz), a phenomenon called "loudness war" is being encountered since the 1980ies. If you're familiar with Metallica's "Death Magnetic" album, you've just found one of the infamous and questionable "winners" of said war.
What I'm usually aiming at is an RMS level of -6dB but that also highly depends on the source material. Even for somebody who is not familiar with "RMS", "peak level" or "decibel (dB)", it's obvious that a chilled Lounge track has different requirements than a club banger. Keeping this in mind, I started to process the files, listening to and comparing against reference tunes every now and then. When I re-imported the mastered tunes into my "Pesto EP001" playlist, I noticed the tracks would not match when listening in one go. I did a second mastering session, now not paying attention to the EP as a whole rather than individually adjusting the tunes and consequently running into the "Beatport sound" trap: the tunes were loud now but sounded like dog poo - flat and lifeless but in your face like the smell of the former. I suddenly also noticed clicks and pops that hadn't been there before, so I double-checked the source files and they were all fine. The unwanted artefacts were due to beginner mistakes such as wrong settings on my mastering equipment.
I was undecided if I should cry, smash my fist on my keyboard, kick the computer under my desk or do all three things at once. I chose a different option though. After smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, I decided to master the tunes a third time. After all, neither the keyboard nor the computer were to blame - it was solely my fault. As it showed a few days later, this was the right decision and when the artists returned their thoughts on the master, I knew everything was fine.
Reading the above can easily give you the impression that this process takes just minutes. It's not: depending on the source material, finding the right processors and settings may take 15 minutes or more, rendering the files takes some time, cropping them to remove unwanted silence or applying fades takes some more.
As I'm located in a residential area though, I can do these kind of tasks only during daytime when my neighbours are at work. Furthermore, my ears aren't good for mastering in the morning (they are too sensitive then) nor are they late at night. In the end, I'm not a dedicated mastering engineer rather than some kind of one-trick pony. So there's a timeframe of maybe three or four hours in the early afternoon when my hearing is just perfect for mastering duties.
It's also important to work on something totally different when you're stuck since trying to make it happen when the surrounding isn't right is like running against a wall. On top of that, I cannot spend my afternoons with mastering only. I have remix jobs to finish on time, reply to emails, maintain my social networks, buy food and drinks, etc. I had informed the artists of "Deep Discoveries" of the new release date (8th September 2010) and I was determined to not delay it one more time.
Connecting with the world outside
The thing is: there are good points in time to put out a release and there are dates being suboptimal. Beginning of the month would usually be considered a good occasion: people have money to buy music, DJ charts are being compiled, podcasts and mixes are being made, magazines are being printed. If you want your release to develop the most possible friction while keeping an eye on your marketing budget (or while having zero budget except your workforce), these are all points to keep track of.
It's not enough to just put out a great release though. A person I've used to make music with for a couple of years said "good music will sell by itself" or more generalized "a good product will sell by itself". If that actually was true, Coca Cola, Porsche or Apple wouldn't have an advertising budget at all. Nearly everybody knows these brands, yet still, these companies spend millions on advertising and marketing year by year. People will need to know that they can buy your product, they need to know you exist, they need good reasons why they should give you their hard-earned money.
In this niche of the music business Pesto Music operates in, a lot of marketing and actions of "to get known and raise awareness" is done by so-called tastemakers. These can be club and radio DJs, podcasts, blogs, magazines, celebrities (nobody would care about Ke$ha if she had not been supported by - please forgive me - Paris Hilton) and other multiplicators. The more often you come across "Deep Discoveries", the more often you hear people you trust talk about it, the more likely you will go and find out more about this issue and eventually end up buying the music. It's how we humans work - we're following the herd.
What I am doing to achieve this is sending out free copies of the release to the group of people mentioned above prior to the offical release date. It's part of a process called "promotion" and the free copies are therefore called "promos". These guys will listen to the music and reply with their thoughts: if they like it or not (and which track or version is their favourite), if they will use it for their mixes or chart it in their monthly DJ charts.
One DJ including one of the tunes in his or her chart makes a statement to his or her fans: "These 10 tracks are what I think is the best music this month (and this Pesto tune is one of them)". Given that DJ has 1.000 fans in his network, charting a tune equals to 1.000 possible contacts with people who would not have known Pesto before (highly simplified, of course). Do you remember the word "multiplicator" from above? You've just read a possible definition. This goes even further if a couple of DJs start charting a tune on a website such as Resident Advisor: RA compiles monthly charts that compute all contributed Top10s, reaching even more people beyond the group of followers of a certain DJ.
Push that button
Those of you knowing me in person are aware of the fact that Sundays are sacred for me, even though I'm not religious. It's the only day I can spend with my wife, leave the computer off and do something totally different. For you though, dear readers of pesto.de who have waded through this admittedly more technical and geeky part of our behind-the-scenes, I will make an exception.
Tomorrow, you will find here part 4, dealing with the odds of promo mailouts such as messing up background info on artists and being considered a spammer, why I need to convert WAV files to 320kBits and 64kBits, how Pesto saves money by having built a custom promo system and how my narcisstic needs are being satisfied. I will also post some nude pictures of me (I won't and you would not want to see that, but it maintains the tension, doesn't it?).
Pesto EP001: Deep Discoveries - behind the scenes pt. 2
03 September 2010, 11:11
So, after the name was set, I was still undecided about it - I found it a bit too cheap and too obvious. Surely, it was better than simply "Deep Tunes" but it also wasn't something to blow my mind, to get me excited. When I shared my concern with others, they told me they liked many of my concepts - just after I had explained it to them. Apparently, when developing new ideas, I'm usually digging too deep. I'm trying to make up associations and deep links between items that only a person would understand who had gone as deep into the matter as myself.
That's not how marketing works though. Sophisticated concepts are great and can be jaw-dropping but very often, they won't work in the first second. And this very second is crucial when trying to get the attention of fans, listeners and possible customers of Pesto Music. "Deep Discoveries" remained therefore.
Up next was creating the cover artwork and a general identity for the Pesto EP. The graphics should be timeless so that nobody would be tired seeing it after one year. The cover design should look great in fullscreen mode as well as on shops' web pages. While my distributor demands the artwork to be 1440 pixels wide, Beatport displays them at only 80 pixels wide when browsing through their catalogue in list view. To put it differently and to make you imagine better: think of a road sign that's approx. 60cm in diameter such as a speed limit sign (they look like this at least here in Europe):
And now imagine the same sign 18 times smaller. That's the size cover artworks are displayed in Beatport's list view in relation. It's this size (yes, there is a picture below):
Back in the good ol' days of 12" covers, designers could go fully creative on huge areas of carton. Quite obviously, this is not the case with covers for digital downloads. So far, I've designed the digital cover artwork for Pesto myself. You will find that the artwork for the first releases look quite awful, changing for the better beginning with Pesto 005 by Babak Shayan, our very first digital-only release. You can see I wasn't satisfied with the look still and that's why the covers for Pesto singles kept changing until I came to a design that I found functional and decent looking, first introduced with Pesto 013 by Replika.
As much as I love doing as many things myself as I can, I surely also recognized that I'm not a graphic designer. I know a few things about colour rooms, CMYK, contour trapping and the likes but graphics are not my profession. I needed to hire a designer.
As I knew a couple of great creatives, I thought I'd make a contest among some designers (it's called "pitch") and let the best one win. In order to draw more attention to the Pesto EP and the label in general, I had in mind to publish the designers' sketches on the Pesto Music fanpage on Facebook, embed a poll there and let you, the fans and Pesto followers decide. I thought "if 7 designers enter the pitch and each of them sends all their friends to /welikepesto in order to cast their votes, I have countless new fans, raise awareness for both the label and the designers' work, fans are part of the whole process (say crowdsourcing light) and I'll have the best possible design meeting the consent of a majority, the producers get exposed to people who would otherwise have never heard of them - everybody's happy, I will be a millionaire and retire".
Well, those were not exactly my thoughts - but except for the millionaire part, that's how I imagined the whole thing. Wrong!
One of them never got back after sending a reminder when the deadline had passed. Another one went on holidays just to send me a few sketches after returning that did meet not any of the criteria I had written down. The next one suddenly had too many clients (I really want to meet your sales rep - somebody who's able to acquire clients for weeks of work in just a few days, wow!), another one suggested pink covers for housier releases, even though the first drafts hadn't been that bad and another one found the deadline too close (which actually was a proper excuse - I had intended to release the first Pesto EP in early June and the deadline was just two weeks ahead then). Remember the part from above dealing with great concepts that are too difficult to catch up with? Yeah, this pitch was a great idea - it just did not work out.
So eventually, I found the right guy for the job - or better put, he was recommended by one of my buddies here from Cologne (hvala Danilo!). David van Stephold (you will read more about him and find some samples of his work here soon) was the only guy who actually got back with a sketch, explaining what he had in mind and why he designed the artwork the way he did. He's living just around the corner so what could I wish more for?
To be honest, I did not like the artwork that much in the beginning. But the more people I showed it and got great response, the more I understood that again, my concepts (and expectations therefore) were simply too complicated. David's design just made "boom", it clicked with people, they liked it lots.
While all this was in the works, I mailed the artists from the release, announcing release dates that would be delayed again and again. I revised the tracklist, changed the track order, asked the artists for final master recordings (while one of them was writing his university exams at that very moment) until I finally got the artwork and the master recordings.
Next on my list was mastering the tunes, entering them into the distributor's system and into my label software, setting up the promo campaign and making some buzz on my social networks so that people would become aware of our new baby, the Pesto EP. As you can imagine, again, this did not go without minor hiccups and in part 3 of this behind-the-scenes, we will finally arrive at what I'm currently doing for the release that will be out on Beatport excl. the 8th September 2010 if nothing goes wrong (fingers crossed). Tomorrow, you will read why I was mastering "Deep Discoveries" three times, how I messed up some info on an artist and why I nearly smashed my computer but eventually felt very content. Stay tuned.
speed limit sign picture source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maxima_velocidad.png
Pesto EP001: Deep Discoveries - behind the scenes pt. 1
02 September 2010, 01:40
Everything starts with the artists: I know a couple of people whose music I like and whom I'm in touch with on a regular basis. These guys do send me their unreleased music and if I like it, I'll try to sign it to Pesto.
The second group are producers that I haven't been in contact with before and who send me demos. My task here is being a filter: not to judge between good or bad music but to tell if I like a tune or if I don't. Tracks that I'm rejecting might be the favourite of the next A&R or label manager so it's not automatically a sign they're bad ones - I just don't feel them, I don't feel they belong to Pesto, I don't see them on the horizon I envision for the label.
When signing such tunes, I mostly do not have a specific release in mind. Very often, I'm saying to myself "this could be a good one for the next 2.0 compilation" or "this one has great remix potential but does not feel like a Pesto single, let's put it in the 'Pesto EP inbox' playlist".
The third group are producers that start following me on Soundcloud, for instance and I'm checking their profile and listen to their tunes - just to discover true pearls of (mostly) young talents. I will then try to license these tunes for Pesto, as well - usually also not with any specific product in mind.
This is a constant process throughout the year, it's part of my daily business so to say. Another constant in my daily routine is - believe it or not - listening to music. When answering emails, doing administrative things, reading news and blogs, I have music running in the background. Very often, I listen to podcasts and DJ mixes I get sent. On other occasions, I listen to the "inbox" playlist mentioned above in loop mode. Some subconscient process starts then and my mind begins to associate one tune with another, virtually compiling playlists of tunes that match a certain vibe or otherwise belong to each other.
I would then start grouping these tunes in new playlists and try to develop a product that eventually can be bought on all major download stores.
Back in April, I already had a playlist for the first Pesto EP. The playlist consisted of raw tunes - some of them unmastered WAV files, some of them crappy MP3s (that's still good enough to get the picture). I listened to that playlist repeatedly and tried to find a catchy term for what I was listening to. Sure, they all were deep but "Deep Tunes" is not much of a good EP title, now is it? I'm also a fan of twists with language (I'm much better at it in german, believe me) so I went searching for a nice alliteration. Since all of these tunes were not by artists I was already working with, rather than new discoveries, "Deep Discoveries" was the way to go. I asked my wife how she liked the name and a couple of other people, doing market research if you will. They all liked it.
The next steps were designing the cover artwork to give an easily recognizable face to this music and the Pesto EP itself. I would exchange all the paperwork with the artists, asking them to send hi-resolution files of their tracks, infos about themselves so I could use it for promotion, mastering the tracks, speaking with my distribution about the best strategy to place the Pesto EP, and so on. And this is where the trouble started, but that's another story which you will read here tomorrow in part 2 of this little behind-the-scenes write-up.
How to NOT submit a demo to Pesto Music (or in general)
26 June 2010, 17:12
This is quite a long read, please check the main post to read the full article.
Please click here to continue ...
Please click here to continue ...
Free DJ mixes (not only) for the weekend 2
17 June 2010, 17:28
In addition to our post from last week, we have three more mixes that contain our current release "Inner Vision" by Replika [Pesto 013] along lots of other great tunes. Here's that:
From a long-time Pesto supporter and host of the "Paradigm" radio show on Frisky Radio comes the first mix. Zach DeVincent (who will also contribute a lovely deep remix for Alankara's upcoming single on Pesto) has invited us to his show a couple of times already and just recently rolled out an updated edition of his radio show - the "Paradigm Deep Sessions" - together with DJane Miss Disk. Here's the second hour of the show:
http://bit.ly/cbfYGP (direct MP3 link, choose "save as" to download)
You should also check out Zach's mix archive page for more free mixes.
After my two stays on Crete last year, I met a couple of very nice peeps and John Sweet is one of them. He runs the "Sweet Reactions" radio show on Traffic FM and is based in Heraklion. Pretty eclectic set so we're sure you like that one, as well. Playing Replika is...umm...sweeeet! Efharisto poly, John!
http://soundcloud.com/sweet-reactions-show/trafficfm-gr-presents-john-sweet-sweet-reactions-radio-show-7-6-10
And we have another long-time friend of Pesto with the name Ricarco Torres we're sure you have already heard of. He's a member of the infamous West Coast Collective DJ team who frequently throw wild parties in the L.A. area. Ricardo has a bunch of really awesome mixes on his page as well as on the WCC page so make sure you check out the other files, as well. Here's Volume 4 of the classy "City Sonar" series.
http://www.westcoastcollective.com/2010/06/city-sonar-vol-4-a-deep-house-experience
Thanks to all jocks for supporting Pesto Music in your mixes!
Free DJ mixes for the weekend
04 June 2010, 15:26
Let's begin with Spain's Nacho Marco, a name you've probably come across if you're into Deep House. This guy knows how it's done and among the great remixes he delivers, he's also the man behind the renowned Loudeast imprint. Here's a link to the latest episode of his Loudeast FM show on mixcloud.com:
http://www.mixcloud.com/nachomarco/loudeast-fm-radioshow-by-nacho-marco/
Then we have France's Yohan Esprada, who has just released a smashing remix for Robert Owen's "Deep Down", a release currently residing at #1 on Traxsource's single charts. Yohan runs radio shows on Paris Deeper One as well as on SSRadio UK. Here's a link to his page, please check out Progression Session #51:
http://www.yohanesprada.com/?page=podcast
Up next, there's Mr. Jones of The Disclosure Project. Hmm...does his name ring some bell? Oh yes, it's the very same Mr. Jones who did our current PestoMix 010. Ch...ch...ch...check this out:
http://www.mixcloud.com/mrjones/mr-jones-june-2010-part-1/
Another long-time supporter of Pesto is HD aka Marc (although he got a bit lazy returning feedback recently - shame on you, Marc...LOL). Marc runs the "House Essentials - The Spirit Of Life" show on SSRadio, here's a deep link to the episode in question (requires free registration to listen & comment OR subscribe to the feed link in order to download the mixes - which is a good idea anyways):
http://ssradiouk.com/2010/05/29/house-essentials-the-spirit-of-life-29th-may-2010/
Straight from Radio Yerevan, umm, no! Straight from another staple of Deep House Ashot Babayan aka "Krummstoff" comes the following mix (please see below for a politically correct justification of the joke on Radio Yerevan). Ashot comes from Yerevan, Armenia and runs "Low Flow Records" - I think it's the only Deep House label from Armenia (if it's not, then it's definitely the best there - literally ALL of their releases hold at least one tune I'm playing for sure!). Well, here's Ashot's mix - also broadcasted via Ibizasonica just a few of days ago:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e6b0jr (not sure how long this link is valid, so better grab it fast!)
Regarding Radio Yerevan: these used to be running gags in times of the Soviet Union (yeah right, in Soviet Russia, gags run you...). Basis of these jokes is the fictual radio station "Radio Yerevan" that answers questions sent in by users. Both questions as well as answers are plain ridiculous and make you laugh your arse off, given you dig this kind of humour. Like stated above, Yerevan these days is more famous for great House musique in the shape of Low Flow Records - in case you were born after 1980, you probably won't understand the jokes at all (please see Iron Curtain in order to brush up your common knowledge then).
Last but not least, we'd like to present you another mix by a good friend of Pesto, published on the blog of another good friend of Pesto. Sounds weird? It's not. Doddi's "All kinds of music" blog has long been residing in our feedreaders as this guy collects some of the very best DJ mix downloads you can find around. As Doddi is not limited to a particular genre, you will find great Deep House mixes as well as super awesome Drum'n'Bass mixes. Any way, he posted a link to a DJ set of our greek mate Nestoras, also including a guest mix by Cadatta in the second hour of the mix. Get it here:
http://doddiblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/nestora-special-guest-cadatta-2deep.html
Of course, there are a lot more DJ mixes available for download, this is just a small fraction. We'll add more mixes here - if you published a mix on your page that hasn't been covered here, send us a message via our contact form and we'll happily update this post.
We're migrating servers, PestoCast temporarily not available
10 May 2010, 17:56
How's that? Well, for nearly three years, we were customers at bluehost.com with our domain pesto-usa.com where all our podcasts, free MP3 downloads and a couple of media files are stored alongside some personal files such as MP3 snippets we send to other labels, demos from artists, promotional files and the likes. Despite the miserable bandwidth these servers provided from time to time, resulting in slow downloads for you, we were quite happy with the hosting service as web space was lots for small bucks.
In April 2009 though, bluehost contacted us with the following message:
Your web hosting account for pesto-usa.com has been deactivated (reason: terms of service violation).Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
Please note that the account was disabled (and therefore pesto-usa.com was unreachable) BEFORE they sent us this short message lacking details, rather than a suspected violation of their TOS. We opened a chat with their support asking what the trouble was all about when they told us that we had illegal MP3s on our servers. We kindly insisted on being a record company and dealing with MP3 files is the nature of our business and got the account unlocked again.
Apart from providers sniffing through our private data, their service just...umm...lacked. Ok, shit happens - so we went on with bluehost.com.
Just recently, we tried to renew our account as usual and due yearly just to find out that our credit card was rejected with "Code 2".
What does "Code 2" mean, we wondered and again opened a support chat. After the "support guy" advised to ask the card issuer what went wrong, we asked for a couple of more possible flaws: bluehost.com demands not only name of card holder, card number, valid till and security code data but also the full address of the holder, which in itself, is quite unusual. So we asked if it made a difference if we said "Cologne" instead of "Köln" (you surely notice the difference, yet it's still the same city - and btw, their forms don't accept +49 or 0049 as country code - only +1 or 001 for the USA is possible) which was answered again with "ask your card issuer" and the chat was closed immediately after that without any "bye" or "have a nice day" or whatever goes along these lines, also known as etiquette, especially towards paying customers.
To make a long story short, we switched the hosting company which also includes having to transfer all the files to our new hoster. So this transfer alone and necessary changes in the DNS settings may result in our audio files being unavailable for a couple of days.
Once everything is set and done, we'll have a brand new PestoMix for you by Mr. Jones of The Disclosure Project.
Thank you for your patience & understanding! Oh, and stay away from bluehost.com if you can...
Say hello to a new release format - the Pesto EP
27 April 2010, 17:03
Back in time, when I was young, slim and naive (I'm only naive these days) and music was pressed in grooves on a thing called vinyl, there were different formats of vinyl records.
You could get 7" singles, 12" maxi singles and 12" albums. Between maxi singles and albums, there also had been a niche called EP (aka extended play). The main difference between a maxi single and an EP used to be the track selection: while you would expect the radio version and some alternate mix on the B-side, 12" singles had an extended or Club mix on the A-side. In short, there were three or four versions of the same track on one piece of wax, sometimes, you'd also find a second tune rather than another remix.
The EP, on the other hand, held different tracks from the same artist or from various artists - a fact that made some people call the EP a "mini album". Please see this Wikipedia article for detailed info on the history of EPs.
Drum roll, please - curtain up, enter the Pesto EP!
You are familiar with our admittedly rare singles, our compilations such as "2.0", "toolbox" and "Beautiful & Timeless" and now is the time to get acquainted with our brand new Pesto EPs. These will feature four or five tracks from various artists (or maybe just one, in case we have five good tunes from one artist). They will sport a whole new design, different from our other releases, which is in the works currently. And they will work around two common problems: when releasing compilations with ten or more tracks, people often just pay attention to the first few tracks and miss the great stuff that comes later on. Especially DJs as buyers are mainly focused on single tracks rather than the whole track list dramaturgy our compilations feature. Another point is that people get easily bored by listening to six or seven different versions of the same tune, making it hard for them to decide which one they like best.
With the Pesto EP, we bring you a format that offers variety style- and sound-wise as different artists will have different vibes. With just five tracks contained, they also surrender to the usual DJ's attention span. And sometimes, an artist sends us a couple of tracks but there's only one that suits the Pesto vibe so it's difficult to compile a single, especially if the track is hard to remix. Should we ditch these artists? Hell no, we want to give exposure to every artist and tune that deserves it - even if it's only just one song!
So last but not least, the Pesto EP is also great news for our artists as they get featured the best way, have their music released quickly rather than having to wait for all the remixers until the single can be done. If there's demand for it, the track can be released along with remixes on a Pesto single later on still.
To say it with the words of a consultant: it's a win-win-win situation - you as our fan and customer, the artist as the supplier and backbone of the Pesto label and us as the label itself will all profit from the Pesto EP. After taking a break releasewise for nearly one year, you can be sure to expect a fireworks of new music from your most favourite label - Pesto Music!
More details to follow soon.
You could get 7" singles, 12" maxi singles and 12" albums. Between maxi singles and albums, there also had been a niche called EP (aka extended play). The main difference between a maxi single and an EP used to be the track selection: while you would expect the radio version and some alternate mix on the B-side, 12" singles had an extended or Club mix on the A-side. In short, there were three or four versions of the same track on one piece of wax, sometimes, you'd also find a second tune rather than another remix.
The EP, on the other hand, held different tracks from the same artist or from various artists - a fact that made some people call the EP a "mini album". Please see this Wikipedia article for detailed info on the history of EPs.
Drum roll, please - curtain up, enter the Pesto EP!
You are familiar with our admittedly rare singles, our compilations such as "2.0", "toolbox" and "Beautiful & Timeless" and now is the time to get acquainted with our brand new Pesto EPs. These will feature four or five tracks from various artists (or maybe just one, in case we have five good tunes from one artist). They will sport a whole new design, different from our other releases, which is in the works currently. And they will work around two common problems: when releasing compilations with ten or more tracks, people often just pay attention to the first few tracks and miss the great stuff that comes later on. Especially DJs as buyers are mainly focused on single tracks rather than the whole track list dramaturgy our compilations feature. Another point is that people get easily bored by listening to six or seven different versions of the same tune, making it hard for them to decide which one they like best.
With the Pesto EP, we bring you a format that offers variety style- and sound-wise as different artists will have different vibes. With just five tracks contained, they also surrender to the usual DJ's attention span. And sometimes, an artist sends us a couple of tracks but there's only one that suits the Pesto vibe so it's difficult to compile a single, especially if the track is hard to remix. Should we ditch these artists? Hell no, we want to give exposure to every artist and tune that deserves it - even if it's only just one song!
So last but not least, the Pesto EP is also great news for our artists as they get featured the best way, have their music released quickly rather than having to wait for all the remixers until the single can be done. If there's demand for it, the track can be released along with remixes on a Pesto single later on still.
To say it with the words of a consultant: it's a win-win-win situation - you as our fan and customer, the artist as the supplier and backbone of the Pesto label and us as the label itself will all profit from the Pesto EP. After taking a break releasewise for nearly one year, you can be sure to expect a fireworks of new music from your most favourite label - Pesto Music!
More details to follow soon.
Why I like David Guetta, Cascade, Ke$ha and the likes
12 March 2010, 21:21
"It's complicated, it always is - that's just the way it goes" - these are the words Kelly Rowland (of former Destiny's Child fame) kicks off her vocal part with in David Guetta's global smash hit "When Love Takes Over". And the meaning of these words also describe one of the main conflicts Dance artists have to face: either make "cool" music for the underground but don't know how to pay your rent or prostitute yourself by making dance music with mass appeal while losing your street credibility at the same time.
Example? I just posted via twitter that I like Cascada's "Evacuate The Dancefloor" and a few minutes later, I had three "friends" less on Facebook.
To tell you honestly, my first touch with electronic music wasn't Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, the artists usually quoted in interviews (although I love Kraftwerk!). My first contact with electronic sounds were with what is called Euro Trash: Technotronic, Capella, Corona - to name but a few. If you are too young to remember (or too ashamed of), here's what I mean:
Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam
Capella - U Got 2 Know
Corona - The Rhythm Of The Night
No doubt, my big brother also had a huge impact on me as he was listening to grey imports from the US at that time. Long before these tunes were breaking in Germany (if they ever did), my bro had the 12" vinyls at home and I used to steal them from his locker and listen to Donna Allen, Princess (produced by the infamous Stock/Aitken/Waterman trio who would be writing the tune for the Rickroll meme years later), Todd Terry and many more Black Music/Dance/Funk artists from the USA's east coast or the UK.
Donna Allen - Serious
Royal House (aka Todd Terry) - Can You Party
Princess - Say I'm Your Number One
So when I was 20, back in 1996, I started making music with Len Faki after having tweaked sounds just for myself for a couple of years. I was introduced to illegal Goa parties, listened to Trance (which wasn't pure plastic back then - anyone remember Sven Väth's label Eye-Q?) and then slowly got into Techno by founding the "monoid" imprint together with Len back in 1997.
I felt I needed to move away from the cheesy Eurodance stuff, reduce melodies to a minimum, focus on groove, beats and "crazy" sounds until Len and me developed the "Lexicon" sound on Plastic City. "Lexicon" was a fusion of House and Techno, still not devoted to melodies but more going into a melodic direction as opposed to the sound we released on monoid. "Lexicon" was anticipated as "the german Daft Punk" back then with support from national celebrities such as Markus Kavka of MTV News who sent a raving email to Plastic City, expressing how much he enjoyed our first album "The Lessons".
But it shouldn't be before 2003 when I went back to my roots and discovered "Trance" and melodies again by forming the Soda Inc. project with Babak Shayan. We fused DeepHouse and Trance - never heard before at that time - and there was just one label believing in what we did called Plastic City. At that time, a lot of my buddies wondered if I was crazy because of the Soda Inc. sound just to find out that in 2005 (when the "Full Moon" album was released, it was also featured on a 2004 single on Shayan Music), we were recognized as the german founders of "NeoTrance". As a commenter puts it on below's YT video: "Amazing sound for a track of year 2004. That was a sound of future progressive-tech house we have today IMHO." This comment was made in March 2010, fyi.
Soda Inc. - Full Moon
The following Soda Inc. album titled "Inner Vision" contained our smash hit "Night Fever", a cover version of an old Motown classic with which Kim Wilde proved to be very successful in the 1980ies, too:
Soda Inc. - Night Fever
This is when I discovered that melody and vocal lines aren't cheesy in general. Fuck yeah, people love melodies, people love to sing along (even on cool underground events such as I Love Deep in Budapest, Hungary). Melodies and catchy vocals is what remains in our minds once the music has stopped. Proof? There you go:
Soda Inc. - Night Fever
I Love Deep is surely far from being an event for the broad masses, it's an underground venue with underground people and yet still, they sing along and go crazy as soon as they recognize the tune playing. One could say it's just because we covered a famous tune but it also works with tracks that were 100% from my mind:
Soda Inc. - Cross The Ocean
Soda Inc. - Big Love
So what happened was that I distilled the essence of Pop music and added it to the underground House sound. Soda Inc. lost a lot of fans for doing so, just to gain a whole lotta more fans with the music on "Inner Vision". The very same happened to Hardfloor, kings of Roland's TB-303 when they entered the UK Top10 with an instrumental Acid tune back in the early 1990ies.
Hardfloor - Acperience 1
I mean, were they commercial when entering the charts? Hell no, they just did what they always do but at one moment, people just enjoyed what they did. It's a plain, pure Acid track - no more, no less. But indeed, after Hardfloor was breaking in the UK, AcidHouse was known to a way broader audience than it used to be before.
And this insight takes us back to the original intention noted in the headline: why I like David Guetta, Cascade, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga and all the likes.
They're all not reinventing the wheel - it hardly can be done. But what these artists do is the opposite of what I used to do with Soda Inc. or my Jon Silva project, for example: rather than introducing "commercial" or poppy elements to the underground, they're taking underground to the commercial market.
Here's another example of melting (ie "stealing") pop with dance in the underground realm - also available as a Pesto FreeBee (direct MP3 link):
David Guetta introduces sounds to the global Top10s that were reserved for the underground before. He's bringing Dance music to the attention of the masses. When was the last time you heard a proggy synth bass line in a Top10 tune? See? What's the huge difference between a Deadmau5 tune and "When Love Takes Over"? There is none, except the vocals (and a great PR department behind). You could say David stole many ideas of former underground tunes - and it's true. But he makes way for Dance music in our charts by releasing tunes as David Guetta feat. XYZ but also by co-producing tunes for the Black Eyed Peas. Who would have thought that the USA would step back from Black Music with 50Cent or Beyoncé in favour of a European-influenced fusion of Club/Dance music spiced up with RnB elements just three years ago? I wasn't, but I Got A Feeling;)
Or let's take Cascada - they're from just around the corner, former german capital "Bonn" - and they borrow a lot of ideas from Lady Gaga (on their album, they also steal from Pryda aka Eric Prydz BIG time). But rather than releasing their plastic trance sound from the past, they adopt to the "Zeitgeist" because Lady Gaga made way for these synth lines, beats and aesthetics. And while we can argue if "Evacuate The Dancefloor"" is something brand new (it's not), it's still a great pop song. Very well written and very well executed by blondie Natalie Horler. Check out the original single version:
Cascada - Evacuate The Dancefloor
And here's the "unplugged" version as performed on german public TV:
You'll surely notice that they just wrote an AMAZING, catchy Pop song and that Natalie doesn't require all the autotune magic - in fact, she's a great singer (hell, it's 7:50am and the show is live!).
So, while I still prefer the deeper House sounds from my buddies (and would never play stuff like Cascada on my gigs), I'm convinced that these artists do our scene a huge favour by introducing synthetic dance music to a broad audience. Decide for yourself: would you like to hear more Nickelback and Green Day (hey, I'm not against guitars - Gossip rings my bell big time!) or would you like to see more Dance stuff in the charts? I for one am very clear about this.
If you like this post, please do not hesitate to share it with your friends - I'd love to discuss things with you!
Example? I just posted via twitter that I like Cascada's "Evacuate The Dancefloor" and a few minutes later, I had three "friends" less on Facebook.
To tell you honestly, my first touch with electronic music wasn't Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, the artists usually quoted in interviews (although I love Kraftwerk!). My first contact with electronic sounds were with what is called Euro Trash: Technotronic, Capella, Corona - to name but a few. If you are too young to remember (or too ashamed of), here's what I mean:
Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam
Capella - U Got 2 Know
Corona - The Rhythm Of The Night
No doubt, my big brother also had a huge impact on me as he was listening to grey imports from the US at that time. Long before these tunes were breaking in Germany (if they ever did), my bro had the 12" vinyls at home and I used to steal them from his locker and listen to Donna Allen, Princess (produced by the infamous Stock/Aitken/Waterman trio who would be writing the tune for the Rickroll meme years later), Todd Terry and many more Black Music/Dance/Funk artists from the USA's east coast or the UK.
Donna Allen - Serious
Royal House (aka Todd Terry) - Can You Party
Princess - Say I'm Your Number One
So when I was 20, back in 1996, I started making music with Len Faki after having tweaked sounds just for myself for a couple of years. I was introduced to illegal Goa parties, listened to Trance (which wasn't pure plastic back then - anyone remember Sven Väth's label Eye-Q?) and then slowly got into Techno by founding the "monoid" imprint together with Len back in 1997.
I felt I needed to move away from the cheesy Eurodance stuff, reduce melodies to a minimum, focus on groove, beats and "crazy" sounds until Len and me developed the "Lexicon" sound on Plastic City. "Lexicon" was a fusion of House and Techno, still not devoted to melodies but more going into a melodic direction as opposed to the sound we released on monoid. "Lexicon" was anticipated as "the german Daft Punk" back then with support from national celebrities such as Markus Kavka of MTV News who sent a raving email to Plastic City, expressing how much he enjoyed our first album "The Lessons".
But it shouldn't be before 2003 when I went back to my roots and discovered "Trance" and melodies again by forming the Soda Inc. project with Babak Shayan. We fused DeepHouse and Trance - never heard before at that time - and there was just one label believing in what we did called Plastic City. At that time, a lot of my buddies wondered if I was crazy because of the Soda Inc. sound just to find out that in 2005 (when the "Full Moon" album was released, it was also featured on a 2004 single on Shayan Music), we were recognized as the german founders of "NeoTrance". As a commenter puts it on below's YT video: "Amazing sound for a track of year 2004. That was a sound of future progressive-tech house we have today IMHO." This comment was made in March 2010, fyi.
Soda Inc. - Full Moon
The following Soda Inc. album titled "Inner Vision" contained our smash hit "Night Fever", a cover version of an old Motown classic with which Kim Wilde proved to be very successful in the 1980ies, too:
Soda Inc. - Night Fever
This is when I discovered that melody and vocal lines aren't cheesy in general. Fuck yeah, people love melodies, people love to sing along (even on cool underground events such as I Love Deep in Budapest, Hungary). Melodies and catchy vocals is what remains in our minds once the music has stopped. Proof? There you go:
Soda Inc. - Night Fever
I Love Deep is surely far from being an event for the broad masses, it's an underground venue with underground people and yet still, they sing along and go crazy as soon as they recognize the tune playing. One could say it's just because we covered a famous tune but it also works with tracks that were 100% from my mind:
Soda Inc. - Cross The Ocean
Soda Inc. - Big Love
So what happened was that I distilled the essence of Pop music and added it to the underground House sound. Soda Inc. lost a lot of fans for doing so, just to gain a whole lotta more fans with the music on "Inner Vision". The very same happened to Hardfloor, kings of Roland's TB-303 when they entered the UK Top10 with an instrumental Acid tune back in the early 1990ies.
Hardfloor - Acperience 1
I mean, were they commercial when entering the charts? Hell no, they just did what they always do but at one moment, people just enjoyed what they did. It's a plain, pure Acid track - no more, no less. But indeed, after Hardfloor was breaking in the UK, AcidHouse was known to a way broader audience than it used to be before.
And this insight takes us back to the original intention noted in the headline: why I like David Guetta, Cascade, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga and all the likes.
They're all not reinventing the wheel - it hardly can be done. But what these artists do is the opposite of what I used to do with Soda Inc. or my Jon Silva project, for example: rather than introducing "commercial" or poppy elements to the underground, they're taking underground to the commercial market.
Here's another example of melting (ie "stealing") pop with dance in the underground realm - also available as a Pesto FreeBee (direct MP3 link):
David Guetta introduces sounds to the global Top10s that were reserved for the underground before. He's bringing Dance music to the attention of the masses. When was the last time you heard a proggy synth bass line in a Top10 tune? See? What's the huge difference between a Deadmau5 tune and "When Love Takes Over"? There is none, except the vocals (and a great PR department behind). You could say David stole many ideas of former underground tunes - and it's true. But he makes way for Dance music in our charts by releasing tunes as David Guetta feat. XYZ but also by co-producing tunes for the Black Eyed Peas. Who would have thought that the USA would step back from Black Music with 50Cent or Beyoncé in favour of a European-influenced fusion of Club/Dance music spiced up with RnB elements just three years ago? I wasn't, but I Got A Feeling;)
Or let's take Cascada - they're from just around the corner, former german capital "Bonn" - and they borrow a lot of ideas from Lady Gaga (on their album, they also steal from Pryda aka Eric Prydz BIG time). But rather than releasing their plastic trance sound from the past, they adopt to the "Zeitgeist" because Lady Gaga made way for these synth lines, beats and aesthetics. And while we can argue if "Evacuate The Dancefloor"" is something brand new (it's not), it's still a great pop song. Very well written and very well executed by blondie Natalie Horler. Check out the original single version:
Cascada - Evacuate The Dancefloor
And here's the "unplugged" version as performed on german public TV:
You'll surely notice that they just wrote an AMAZING, catchy Pop song and that Natalie doesn't require all the autotune magic - in fact, she's a great singer (hell, it's 7:50am and the show is live!).
So, while I still prefer the deeper House sounds from my buddies (and would never play stuff like Cascada on my gigs), I'm convinced that these artists do our scene a huge favour by introducing synthetic dance music to a broad audience. Decide for yourself: would you like to hear more Nickelback and Green Day (hey, I'm not against guitars - Gossip rings my bell big time!) or would you like to see more Dance stuff in the charts? I for one am very clear about this.
If you like this post, please do not hesitate to share it with your friends - I'd love to discuss things with you!
West Coast Collective - free download
11 November 2009, 01:59
Oh, and while we are at "free downloads": here's another one you definitely shouldn't miss!
My bro Ricardo Torres of West Coast Collective (WCC) fame has just posted a new mix on his page. WCC Radio is broadcasted via SSRadio UK, the mix is available in AAC and MP3 format.
Contained are lots of hi profile artists such as Jay-J, Yass, Oliver Desmet, Kerri Chandler and lots more.
click here for the download link and a full track list
My bro Ricardo Torres of West Coast Collective (WCC) fame has just posted a new mix on his page. WCC Radio is broadcasted via SSRadio UK, the mix is available in AAC and MP3 format.
Contained are lots of hi profile artists such as Jay-J, Yass, Oliver Desmet, Kerri Chandler and lots more.
click here for the download link and a full track list
Supermercado DJ mixes for download
10 November 2009, 16:55
Long time since our last update here - our bad.
What about some fresh DJ mixes for you to download in order to launch the "more frequent updates" season here on pesto.de again? Aight, here you are.
Esteban Nuñez and Niklas Paus, our Pestoleros from Stockholm have just dropped their Supermercado Autumn 09 mixes and they're well worth a download. Here's CD 1 by Esteban:
01. Oliver Koletzki ft.Juli Holz - Zuckerwatte (David August Mix)
02. Soul Minority - 100% Missing You (Original Mix)
03. Soultourist - Wild Cats (Original Mix)
04. The Pressure, The Quasar - Take Me Over (Gorge Mix)
05. Gamal Kabar - 4 Lally (Original Mix)
06. Doomwork - Fresh (Original Mix)
07. The Mountain People - Mountain008.1 (Original Mix)
08. Steve Lawler - Distrait (Nick Curly & Gorge Mix)
09. Arnaud Le Texier, V-Sexion - Funk some thoughts (Lemos Mix)
10. Bangana - Straight Lines (Kruse & Amp Nurnberg Mix)
11. Ozgur Can - Dust In The Wind (Original Mix)
12. Horacio - Taberna Del Funk (Original Mix)
13. Youandewan - 1988 (Original Mix)
click here to download the mix (direct MP3 link, you may right-click and "save as")
And here is CD 2 by Niklas:
01. Butane - This Is Your Brain On Music
02. Hatikvah - Synchronicity (Chopstick & Johnjon Mix)
03. Oxia - Sun Step (Original Mix)
04. Cascandy - One Front -(Original Mix)
05. Gaiser - Oolooloo
06. Kabale Und Liebe - Lost In Thoughts
07. Sascha Braemer - Puppeteer
08. Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Luechtoorn Remix (Dominik Eulberg Mix)
09. Cascandy - Two Front (Original Mix)
10. Transform - Transformation (Neumann & Styles Mix)
11. Till Von Sein & Tigerskin - I
12. Cagedbaby - Medicine (Radio Slave Medicine For The Soul Mix)
13. Alejandro Mosso - Somebody
14. Timo Maas - Bite The Dust (Simon Baker Mix)
15. Lemos - Kalooo (Arnaud le Texier Mix)
16. Samuel L Session - The Soloist
17. 2Raumwohnung - Wir Werden Sehen (Solomun Vox Mix)
click here to download the mix (direct MP3 link, you may right-click and "save as")
Hope you enjoy and make sure to add the guys on Facebook.
What about some fresh DJ mixes for you to download in order to launch the "more frequent updates" season here on pesto.de again? Aight, here you are.
Esteban Nuñez and Niklas Paus, our Pestoleros from Stockholm have just dropped their Supermercado Autumn 09 mixes and they're well worth a download. Here's CD 1 by Esteban:
01. Oliver Koletzki ft.Juli Holz - Zuckerwatte (David August Mix)
02. Soul Minority - 100% Missing You (Original Mix)
03. Soultourist - Wild Cats (Original Mix)
04. The Pressure, The Quasar - Take Me Over (Gorge Mix)
05. Gamal Kabar - 4 Lally (Original Mix)
06. Doomwork - Fresh (Original Mix)
07. The Mountain People - Mountain008.1 (Original Mix)
08. Steve Lawler - Distrait (Nick Curly & Gorge Mix)
09. Arnaud Le Texier, V-Sexion - Funk some thoughts (Lemos Mix)
10. Bangana - Straight Lines (Kruse & Amp Nurnberg Mix)
11. Ozgur Can - Dust In The Wind (Original Mix)
12. Horacio - Taberna Del Funk (Original Mix)
13. Youandewan - 1988 (Original Mix)
click here to download the mix (direct MP3 link, you may right-click and "save as")
And here is CD 2 by Niklas:
01. Butane - This Is Your Brain On Music
02. Hatikvah - Synchronicity (Chopstick & Johnjon Mix)
03. Oxia - Sun Step (Original Mix)
04. Cascandy - One Front -(Original Mix)
05. Gaiser - Oolooloo
06. Kabale Und Liebe - Lost In Thoughts
07. Sascha Braemer - Puppeteer
08. Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Luechtoorn Remix (Dominik Eulberg Mix)
09. Cascandy - Two Front (Original Mix)
10. Transform - Transformation (Neumann & Styles Mix)
11. Till Von Sein & Tigerskin - I
12. Cagedbaby - Medicine (Radio Slave Medicine For The Soul Mix)
13. Alejandro Mosso - Somebody
14. Timo Maas - Bite The Dust (Simon Baker Mix)
15. Lemos - Kalooo (Arnaud le Texier Mix)
16. Samuel L Session - The Soloist
17. 2Raumwohnung - Wir Werden Sehen (Solomun Vox Mix)
click here to download the mix (direct MP3 link, you may right-click and "save as")
Hope you enjoy and make sure to add the guys on Facebook.
Label showcase on Proton Radio
31 July 2009, 20:23
And another one you shouldn't miss:
Proton Radio has a Pesto label showcase since 27th July. You can tune in a 1-hour mix containing lots tracks from our compilation "2.0 - A Jar Of Fresh Pesto". Check it out & have a nice weekend (yeah yeah, you're missing the weekend vibe, right?)! ;)
Proton Radio has a Pesto label showcase since 27th July. You can tune in a 1-hour mix containing lots tracks from our compilation "2.0 - A Jar Of Fresh Pesto". Check it out & have a nice weekend (yeah yeah, you're missing the weekend vibe, right?)! ;)
Submitting your demo to Pesto Music
10 July 2009, 09:51
If you ever wanted to submit your tracks to Pesto Music, you would have different ways of doing so.
Many use our contact form and paste links to their demos there, some use yousendit, others contact us via our profile pages on social networks such as Facebook, twitter or myspace. We also accept CDs but with regards to the environment, we invite you to not involve a piece of plastic. There is just one no-go: attaching MP3 files to emails. These emails do not only clutter our mailbox but also increase the size of the mailbox file (and yes, it does have a limit). These emails go straight to the bin.
Today, we are adding another way of submitting your killer tunes: our dropbox on Soundcloud! It's free, easy to use, you can connect with other artists and labels and it looks pretty nice. We have added the Soundcloud dropbox to our imprint page (where you find our general demo submission policy).
For this news post, we had a copy made ;)
Send us your track
And now keep the smashers coming!
Many use our contact form and paste links to their demos there, some use yousendit, others contact us via our profile pages on social networks such as Facebook, twitter or myspace. We also accept CDs but with regards to the environment, we invite you to not involve a piece of plastic. There is just one no-go: attaching MP3 files to emails. These emails do not only clutter our mailbox but also increase the size of the mailbox file (and yes, it does have a limit). These emails go straight to the bin.
Today, we are adding another way of submitting your killer tunes: our dropbox on Soundcloud! It's free, easy to use, you can connect with other artists and labels and it looks pretty nice. We have added the Soundcloud dropbox to our imprint page (where you find our general demo submission policy).
For this news post, we had a copy made ;)
Send us your track
And now keep the smashers coming!
PestoTV on YouTube in Top 100 of "most viewed musicians" [update: now on #34]
28 May 2009, 18:15
Yessss - we have just been awarded by YouTube: PestoTV, our YouTube channel made it on #87 #44 #34 of the most viewed music profiles in Germany! Thank you for viewing and your support!
Releases section & RSS feed finally updated
26 May 2009, 17:30
After fixing our RSS-related issues, we have finally added our "toolbox: one" release to our catalogue page and the according RSS feed.
PestoCast doesn't update on iTunes, RSS feed lacks updates [update2]
26 May 2009, 16:59
We have just noticed that our RSS feed does not update properly, therefore PestoCasts and FreeBees are missing on iTunes, too. The whole trouble seems to be related to Feedburner (aqcuired by Google last year), the service we use to publish our original RSS feed.
We are working to fix this issue asap - sorry for the inconvenience & thanks for understanding!
[update1: It seems that a specific iTunes tag is causing the problem. This tag is used to tell iTunes that the web address for an RSS feed has changed. Apparently, doing so causes major hiccups at Feedburner. We’re testing a couple of things now - please excuse if you receive a couple of "updates“ with the same content.]
[update2: After messing around with XML code, Feedburner (ok, meanwhile the name makes sense) and some tweaking in RapidWeaver, the Pesto RSS feed seems to be back to work. We just checked the feed source as well as the Feedburner version and they all update properly, iTunes reveals our latest downloadable "Pesto FreeBee #5". We're happy now, after losing just one day of work...aaaaarrrrghhhh)]
We are working to fix this issue asap - sorry for the inconvenience & thanks for understanding!
[update1: It seems that a specific iTunes tag is causing the problem. This tag is used to tell iTunes that the web address for an RSS feed has changed. Apparently, doing so causes major hiccups at Feedburner. We’re testing a couple of things now - please excuse if you receive a couple of "updates“ with the same content.]
[update2: After messing around with XML code, Feedburner (ok, meanwhile the name makes sense) and some tweaking in RapidWeaver, the Pesto RSS feed seems to be back to work. We just checked the feed source as well as the Feedburner version and they all update properly, iTunes reveals our latest downloadable "Pesto FreeBee #5". We're happy now, after losing just one day of work...aaaaarrrrghhhh)]
Why follow Pesto Music on Twitter?
22 May 2009, 18:00
Usually, when an article is posted on pesto.de, it contains not just links to some pages or the plain YouTube video. When we post something in our "classic xyz tune" section for example, we'll supply you with background info, links to more sources of information (such as discogs.com, for instance) and so on and so forth.
Doing all this research takes time. In general, an article posted on pesto.de requires approx. 30 minutes of research and fine tuning of the words at least.
We use twitter to broadcast infos that are either not worth an update of our web site (because it's too little content or they're just small bits), because they're not related to what we publish here (see trials around piratebay or german civil rights) or because they are of a certain urgency and need to be published *instantly* rather than two hours later (no, we're not referring to Patrick Swayze's pre-death).
Every once in a while, we "recycle" our twitter stream and take out the most newsworthy things to post them in a dedicated news post here on pesto.de. This is just the cream of the crop, the sugar on top, find another rhyme on -op. Yet still, there are a couple of net news to be found on our twitter stream so it totally makes sense to follow us in order to get the latest DJ mixes, videos and articles we've filtered out of the net for you.
Sometimes, we just receive links to DJ mixes. After asking the respective DJ for permission, we post the download link on twitter but not here. Here are two examples: Replika and Mike Starr, both part of our upcoming "2.0" compilation just sent a link to their friends - we make it publically available in order to promote those artists.
So, get on twitter, follow us, tell your friends to do so, too and we'll all be happy. Well - ish...hehehe. Of course, you could also just visit our web site and see what we have posted but we feel better with you as a follower.
Use the board, young Skywalker!
Doing all this research takes time. In general, an article posted on pesto.de requires approx. 30 minutes of research and fine tuning of the words at least.
We use twitter to broadcast infos that are either not worth an update of our web site (because it's too little content or they're just small bits), because they're not related to what we publish here (see trials around piratebay or german civil rights) or because they are of a certain urgency and need to be published *instantly* rather than two hours later (no, we're not referring to Patrick Swayze's pre-death).
Every once in a while, we "recycle" our twitter stream and take out the most newsworthy things to post them in a dedicated news post here on pesto.de. This is just the cream of the crop, the sugar on top, find another rhyme on -op. Yet still, there are a couple of net news to be found on our twitter stream so it totally makes sense to follow us in order to get the latest DJ mixes, videos and articles we've filtered out of the net for you.
Sometimes, we just receive links to DJ mixes. After asking the respective DJ for permission, we post the download link on twitter but not here. Here are two examples: Replika and Mike Starr, both part of our upcoming "2.0" compilation just sent a link to their friends - we make it publically available in order to promote those artists.
So, get on twitter, follow us, tell your friends to do so, too and we'll all be happy. Well - ish...hehehe. Of course, you could also just visit our web site and see what we have posted but we feel better with you as a follower.
Use the board, young Skywalker!
pesto.de is looking for guest authors
15 May 2009, 09:32
Are you a music professional, a promoter, a gear junkie or run a radio station? Or maybe you are just a music addict, a fan and connaisseur? If you have something to say that you would like to share with the rest of us, here's your chance to do so on pesto.de.
We are looking for guest authors both on a regular and one-off basis. If you run a blog and would like to syndicate your content or just publish a single article, we would be very interested in publishing your work here. Articles have to be written in english language but we also accept texts written in german and will translate them for you.
Content we are specifically interested in covers how-to posts (say production advise, DJ tutorials, social media, etc.), background info (aka "behind the scenes" things) or general thoughts about certain aspects of working in the creative business. Yes, that means pieces on video editing (or directing - we love shorts!), copywriting or photography will fit the bill perfectly well.
You can get in touch with us by using our contact form. Please say "guest author" or similar in the subject field. Once we have received your message, we will get back to you with more details. If you read pesto.de regularly and are missing posts about a special topic, you can also send us a message and share your thoughts with us or leave a comment on the Pesto community (requires free sign-up).
We are looking for guest authors both on a regular and one-off basis. If you run a blog and would like to syndicate your content or just publish a single article, we would be very interested in publishing your work here. Articles have to be written in english language but we also accept texts written in german and will translate them for you.
Content we are specifically interested in covers how-to posts (say production advise, DJ tutorials, social media, etc.), background info (aka "behind the scenes" things) or general thoughts about certain aspects of working in the creative business. Yes, that means pieces on video editing (or directing - we love shorts!), copywriting or photography will fit the bill perfectly well.
You can get in touch with us by using our contact form. Please say "guest author" or similar in the subject field. Once we have received your message, we will get back to you with more details. If you read pesto.de regularly and are missing posts about a special topic, you can also send us a message and share your thoughts with us or leave a comment on the Pesto community (requires free sign-up).
43folders.com: follow-up on Kutiman's YT mashups
12 March 2009, 18:33
Remember the awesome YouTube mashups by Kutiman we posted just a few days ago? Merlin Mann at 43folders.com has some thoughts about this one and the future of the entertainment industry in general.
Quoting from Merlin's post:
Read the full article here
Use the board, young Skywalker!
Quoting from Merlin's post:
Unsolicited tip for media company c-levels: if your reaction to this crate of magic is “Hm. I wonder how we’d go about suing someone who ‘did this’ with our IP?” instead of, “Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,” it’s probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.
Read the full article here
Use the board, young Skywalker!
Sales statistics: where our fans come from
12 March 2009, 17:56
I have to admit that I am a big fan of statistics. Not because they reveal some ground-breaking information (oh, sometimes, they even do) or because I particularly like these pie graphs (I haven't studied economy - those guys seem to have a weakness for colourful diagrams) but because they sometimes contain a message that would be hidden otherwise.
Especially, when comparing or correlating two kinds of statistic data, one can find fruitful insights (or leave you clueless).
When looking at the sales of Pesto Music (without Traxx and Clear Rec. sales), the ten best selling territories are:
01. USA (ok, could have told you that without looking into the records)
02. Germany (this surprises me now, seems there are more deepheads around than what I thought)
03. UK (would have guessed this one on #02)
04. Canada (another surprise, yet I know Canadians have a great taste in music plus have great artists themselves)
05. France (you French guys just love melody and music, don't you? I mean, who invented the chanson, after all?!)
06. Spain (this really suprises me - Spain used to be among our least selling countries but this has changed when going digital. ¡Gracias!)
07. Japan (oh yeah, Japan has not only a vivid scene but also some really bad-ass artists!)
08. Italy (yeah, we love you too - hint: check our name...haha)
09. Australia (we knew there was something beyond kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef - Australia is among the highest movers in this list)
10. Switzerland (man, there's Da Funk, Replika, C&M Production to name but a few. Zurich is Europe's #1 city when it comes to clubs per inhabitants!)
Interestingly, the volume of downloads sold in the USA is approx. five times the volume of Germany's sales. The other territories sell more or less the same volume, this is also true for countries on position 11 and below: The Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal, Mexico, Poland and Denmark.
Now, let's take a look at where our web site visitors come from:
01. USA
02. Germany
03. Italy
04. Russia
05. Hungary
06. Switzerland
07. UK
08. Poland
09. Sweden
10. Australia
Similar phenomenon here as described above: we have pretty much the same number of unique visitors from Poland, Sweden, Australia and from the countries following on #11 and below. These countries are: The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, Georgia, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Mexico, Ukraine and Turkey.
Visits from the USA make up three times of the number of visitors from Germany.
How would you interprete that data? Italians are more web-affin then British but British spend more money online? Russians are just downloading free stuff (oh, not only them, by the way) but buy less or have trouble getting music online? Would also be interesting to relate the sales data to the number of inhabitants of the respective country: compare the relatively small Denmark (approx. 5.5 million ppl [1] ) to Poland (approx. 38 million ppl [2] ) - the gross domestic product per capita (i.e. per head) is approx. 38.000US$ in Denmark, in Poland it's 18.000US$ per annum [data quoted from Wikipedia], yet still, they sell similar volumes.
I'd like to hear your opinions and comments, so feel free to follow the link at the end of this post (signing up for the Pesto community is really free & easy but required to post on the board). If you'd like to know where your particular country is on the list, you are invited to ask that in the Pesto community, too - I'll be happy to sort those numbers out for you!
Use the board, young Skywalker!
Especially, when comparing or correlating two kinds of statistic data, one can find fruitful insights (or leave you clueless).
When looking at the sales of Pesto Music (without Traxx and Clear Rec. sales), the ten best selling territories are:
01. USA (ok, could have told you that without looking into the records)
02. Germany (this surprises me now, seems there are more deepheads around than what I thought)
03. UK (would have guessed this one on #02)
04. Canada (another surprise, yet I know Canadians have a great taste in music plus have great artists themselves)
05. France (you French guys just love melody and music, don't you? I mean, who invented the chanson, after all?!)
06. Spain (this really suprises me - Spain used to be among our least selling countries but this has changed when going digital. ¡Gracias!)
07. Japan (oh yeah, Japan has not only a vivid scene but also some really bad-ass artists!)
08. Italy (yeah, we love you too - hint: check our name...haha)
09. Australia (we knew there was something beyond kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef - Australia is among the highest movers in this list)
10. Switzerland (man, there's Da Funk, Replika, C&M Production to name but a few. Zurich is Europe's #1 city when it comes to clubs per inhabitants!)
Interestingly, the volume of downloads sold in the USA is approx. five times the volume of Germany's sales. The other territories sell more or less the same volume, this is also true for countries on position 11 and below: The Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal, Mexico, Poland and Denmark.
Now, let's take a look at where our web site visitors come from:
01. USA
02. Germany
03. Italy
04. Russia
05. Hungary
06. Switzerland
07. UK
08. Poland
09. Sweden
10. Australia
Similar phenomenon here as described above: we have pretty much the same number of unique visitors from Poland, Sweden, Australia and from the countries following on #11 and below. These countries are: The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, Georgia, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Mexico, Ukraine and Turkey.
Visits from the USA make up three times of the number of visitors from Germany.
How would you interprete that data? Italians are more web-affin then British but British spend more money online? Russians are just downloading free stuff (oh, not only them, by the way) but buy less or have trouble getting music online? Would also be interesting to relate the sales data to the number of inhabitants of the respective country: compare the relatively small Denmark (approx. 5.5 million ppl [1] ) to Poland (approx. 38 million ppl [2] ) - the gross domestic product per capita (i.e. per head) is approx. 38.000US$ in Denmark, in Poland it's 18.000US$ per annum [data quoted from Wikipedia], yet still, they sell similar volumes.
I'd like to hear your opinions and comments, so feel free to follow the link at the end of this post (signing up for the Pesto community is really free & easy but required to post on the board). If you'd like to know where your particular country is on the list, you are invited to ask that in the Pesto community, too - I'll be happy to sort those numbers out for you!
Use the board, young Skywalker!
No YouTube music vids for Brits
11 March 2009, 11:51
Paidcontent.co.uk has an article that sheds some light on the fact that YouTube is blocking the audio part of some of the posted videos for UK viewers. Patrick Walker, EMEA region head of YouTube said that the Google-owned company would lose money on every music video it serves if they accepted the rates proposed by the PRS, a UK collecting society.
From Paid Content's page:
Read more on paidcontent.co.uk
Read the PRS entry on Wikipedia
Use the board, young Skywalker!
From Paid Content's page:
In its first arrangement with a royalty society, YouTube in 2007 signed a special deal with PRS in which it agreed to pay a flat, advance fee to carry 10 million pieces of music. But the deal has expired and Walker pulled the tracks last night rather than renew at new rates. After PRS highlighted Google’s $5.7 billion Q408 revenue, Walker told me: “We’ve built a service that we’ve invested millions in ... to suggest that, because Google’s a big company, we should just suck it and pay a ridiculous rate is not something that we’re going to stand by.”
Read more on paidcontent.co.uk
Read the PRS entry on Wikipedia
Use the board, young Skywalker!
Beatportal.com launches label and artist wiki
06 March 2009, 14:54
It is beyond our knowledge why artwork and artists appearing on the label have to be entered manually as Beatport's database should provide those connections - at least, it works within their shop. Yet still it's neat to have a dedicated wiki.
We will fill the gaps with content but we're also inviting you to add your rating (five out of five headphones, of course...hehe), missing artist connections and comments to our wiki page. You might also declare yourself a fan and show some love for Pesto. You will need to log in to do so but if you already have an account on Beatport, you can use those credentials.
So far, we experienced the whole thing to be a bit buggy still - connecting artists to the label only works every now and then, for instance. But we are sure these minor issues will be ironed out within brief and might be due to our configuration.
related links:
Pesto Music on Beatport
Pesto Music on Beatportal's wiki page
Use the board, young Skywalker!
The Daily Show on Twitter
04 March 2009, 10:40
Just two days ago, we told you about our twitter thingy going on here. The Daily Show on Comedy Central now has a nice vid about all the hype.
See yourself here.
See yourself here.
Follow us on twitter!
02 March 2009, 20:50
We will now make use of twitter more often, especially in order to share small bits & pieces that are not worth of posting a whole news article here on pesto.de. Twitter will fill the gap between longer reads on our site and one-liners containing just a link. Take, for instance, a good tune we heard on last.fm and we'd just like to share that one with you - twitter is ideal to do so.
You can follow us here: http://twitter.com/Pestomusic
If you feel you'd like to talk about twitter or microblogging in general, post your profile, etc. - you can do so in the Pesto Community.
We're back!
02 March 2009, 18:41
After a long period of absence due to major computer hiccups (with the machine eventually dying - R.I.P. my beloved Apple G4!), we're finally back with updates!
Been through a nightmare with the computer here: first I thought I had faulty memory installed (replaced it, then after two weeks the machine would do weird things again), then I suspected the hard drive (same story after two weeks), was looking on eBay for a used G4 and finally found one from a very nice british guy. Thanks to the Euro/Pound Sterling conversion rate, the "new" machine was quite a steal. I have to add that I have to maintain quite some PCI equipment here and really did not want buy a new MacPro.
The trouble didn't end here as I could not recover my backups. What I am doing now is copying back each and every file individually - thanks goodness I have a backup at all! You can surely imagine that after eight years of use, my old system was quite a mess. I got along with it well as it was kind of grown organically and Apple's Spotlight technology makes it easy to handle the chaos of 1TB (yes, that's TeraBytes) for a messie like me.
With huge relief, I can say that I am coming towards the end of the recovery process after I have recovered all my software licenses and files. There are remix projects, productions and administrative tasks piling up here and you cannot imagine how happy I am to be finally able to make music again!
Not only did I use the idle time to complain about how bad the computer gods punished me but I made up my mind and am finally introducing some changes to pesto.de.
You will see much more frequent updates in the future as I will turn this page away from a simple promotion and announcement platform to a more personalized "blog-style" page. Hence, I will post cool/odd/interesting finds from the interwebs such as good reads, Youtube vids, software tips, production tutorials, you name it.
You will also find our PestoCasts and Pesto FreeBees reanimated as well as our radio show. I also noticed that the Pesto community has got somewhat silent recently, so expect some changes with regard to that one, too. I'm thinking of discussions related to certain posts here on pesto.de in addition to the DJ mixes posted there by our fans and supporters.
Last but not least, we will also have new releases that were scheduled for January and February finally on the way to you. More details here soon (you'll find a small hint in our new header already).
Finally, let me thank you for bearing with us and being patient. You won't regret it!;)
Jost Gerischer aka Jon Silva, Pesto Music
Been through a nightmare with the computer here: first I thought I had faulty memory installed (replaced it, then after two weeks the machine would do weird things again), then I suspected the hard drive (same story after two weeks), was looking on eBay for a used G4 and finally found one from a very nice british guy. Thanks to the Euro/Pound Sterling conversion rate, the "new" machine was quite a steal. I have to add that I have to maintain quite some PCI equipment here and really did not want buy a new MacPro.
The trouble didn't end here as I could not recover my backups. What I am doing now is copying back each and every file individually - thanks goodness I have a backup at all! You can surely imagine that after eight years of use, my old system was quite a mess. I got along with it well as it was kind of grown organically and Apple's Spotlight technology makes it easy to handle the chaos of 1TB (yes, that's TeraBytes) for a messie like me.
With huge relief, I can say that I am coming towards the end of the recovery process after I have recovered all my software licenses and files. There are remix projects, productions and administrative tasks piling up here and you cannot imagine how happy I am to be finally able to make music again!
Not only did I use the idle time to complain about how bad the computer gods punished me but I made up my mind and am finally introducing some changes to pesto.de.
You will see much more frequent updates in the future as I will turn this page away from a simple promotion and announcement platform to a more personalized "blog-style" page. Hence, I will post cool/odd/interesting finds from the interwebs such as good reads, Youtube vids, software tips, production tutorials, you name it.
You will also find our PestoCasts and Pesto FreeBees reanimated as well as our radio show. I also noticed that the Pesto community has got somewhat silent recently, so expect some changes with regard to that one, too. I'm thinking of discussions related to certain posts here on pesto.de in addition to the DJ mixes posted there by our fans and supporters.
Last but not least, we will also have new releases that were scheduled for January and February finally on the way to you. More details here soon (you'll find a small hint in our new header already).
Finally, let me thank you for bearing with us and being patient. You won't regret it!;)
Jost Gerischer aka Jon Silva, Pesto Music
Say hello to Clear Recordings - the new Pesto sublabel! [repost]
12 December 2008, 03:40
Check out the video teaser:
More details soon here on pesto.de - to be released exclusively on stompy.com in brief!
Subscribe to PestoTV, our youtube channel and leave a comment.
Pesto best sellers: the Top 10 of 2008
11 December 2008, 17:21
It's this time of the year when you find "The 10 best/crappiest/whatever..." lists all around.
We won't stay behind and proudly present our best selling tunes in 2008. Please note that not all sales are fully accounted yet. So, for example, the remixes of Sandra Lima's "Higher" on Pesto 011R are not showing up for that reason. We will update this list once we have all sales details for 2008. Here we go:
01. Rucyl - Love In War (Pete Gust KID Remix)
02. Jon Silva - Aegean (Original)
03. From P60 feat. Virág - New Way (Jon Silva's New Dub)
04. From P60 feat. Virág - New Way (The Mulder's Light's On Dub)
05. Tina Valen - Discotime (Original)
06. Phonic Funk - On Top (Original)
07. Khaan - Pegasos (The Mulder's XX-File Remixx)
08. Replika - Loveletter (Original)
09. Sandra Lima - Higher (Jay-J's Shifted Remix)
10. Cloudsteppers - Make Me Shine (Original)
As you can see, most of the tunes are from our last "2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists" compilation, but also our singles performed quite well. You can get these tunes (and all the other great music on Pesto and Traxx) in your favourite online store.
We won't stay behind and proudly present our best selling tunes in 2008. Please note that not all sales are fully accounted yet. So, for example, the remixes of Sandra Lima's "Higher" on Pesto 011R are not showing up for that reason. We will update this list once we have all sales details for 2008. Here we go:
01. Rucyl - Love In War (Pete Gust KID Remix)
02. Jon Silva - Aegean (Original)
03. From P60 feat. Virág - New Way (Jon Silva's New Dub)
04. From P60 feat. Virág - New Way (The Mulder's Light's On Dub)
05. Tina Valen - Discotime (Original)
06. Phonic Funk - On Top (Original)
07. Khaan - Pegasos (The Mulder's XX-File Remixx)
08. Replika - Loveletter (Original)
09. Sandra Lima - Higher (Jay-J's Shifted Remix)
10. Cloudsteppers - Make Me Shine (Original)
As you can see, most of the tunes are from our last "2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists" compilation, but also our singles performed quite well. You can get these tunes (and all the other great music on Pesto and Traxx) in your favourite online store.
off topic: Monty Python Youtube channel
24 November 2008, 14:00
We here at Pesto Music are huge Monty Python fans, among many other great british comedians. So from time to time, we need a good laugh during our work breaks and are more than delighted to see the launch of Monty Pythons very own channel on Youtube. Check this out - it's priceless!
Pesto 012: Cloudsteppers - Make Me Shine/New MP3s added to player!
21 November 2008, 00:13
"Make Me Shine" was already introduced on our "2.0" compilation earlier this year with great success and now comes with a diverse pack of arse-kicking remixes.
Besides the jazzy "Deep Mix" and a slightly altered "Dub Mix", we are proud to have remix support from Urban Torque's Scope aka Ric McClelland, The Disclosure Project with a beautifully atmospheric mix, Chris Udoh with a slightly edgier rework and Pesto's inhouse variants in the shape of the mid-1990ies-ish "Bedroom Beach Remix" and the Soda Inc.-esque remix by Jon Silva.
Check out our MP3 player in the sidebar and preview Pesto 012 already today! Release date will be 12th December 2008, so you have some time to fall in love with this great DeepHouse bomb.
Facelift & new features on pesto.de [update]
04 November 2008, 15:22
Besides the obvious facelift, we also rearranged some of the content and added new features to make pesto.de an even more popular source of entertainment and information. Here's a roundup of what we did, going from the top of the page downwards:
Layout: We left the era of "web 2.0" gloss, no more reflections on our logo, less eye candy and a more graphical approach. We believe that this makes the information more accessible and furthermore concentrates on what's important: content. We are now using a centered layout still but broadened the whole content area as widescreen formats become more and more standard. Additionally, this allows for a better separation of the main content and the sidebar content.
The submenus used to be below the navigation tabs and could have been overseen pretty easily. These submenus can now be found on top of the sidebar, making it easier for you to access these pages and subscribe to our email newsletter for instance or perform a search on the site.
The navigation itself remains more or less untouched on top of the page but is less colourful. As we have grown up and gained more self esteem, we don't need that huge logo anymore (just kidding) but rather sport a new header that relates to our artists or releases. You will see this header to be exchanged by a different picture every now and then. In case you haven't noticed, it's Sandra Lima - the performer of our current releases Pesto 011 and 011R.
Regarding the news archive, we also switched from a monthly archive to an annual one. All older posts are still there in the respective year - don't forget you can still search for posts by using the categories or by performing a search.
Features: You will find two new features on the news page. The obvious one is our "current releases" player which allows you to listen to our - you guessed it - current releases. This player will be updated before the actual release so pesto.de will be the unique place to preview our upcoming releases long before they're available anywhere else. In connection with our brand new Releases feed, this will be a killer feature for anybody haunting after the latest and greatest tracks.
We also rearranged the content of the former "about" section and renamed it to simply "pesto". This section has been stripped content-wise - "artists" and "catalogue" were joined into one single section - but we have added functionality to make the new "catalogue" area a great research tool. Releases are categorized by label and type of release (single or longplay), each entry uses tags for the artists featured and allows to search for all releases with a specific artist/remixer. You can also use the tag cloud to do so. Each post's publishing date reflects the release date. By subscribing to the Releases feed, you'll always be up to date regarding the new stuff on Pesto and its sublabels. On top of that, you can also have related news items displayed. Isn't that cool?
A word about sublabels: you probably noticed the "Clear" entry - expect more news these days!;)
[update: links from within the RSS feed were broken - this is now fixed]
Today's 808 day!
08 August 2008, 15:11
Say hello to Roland's TR-808, an analogue drum machine from 1981 that has been playing an essential role in HipHop, Acid and House let alone Electro music until today. Despite Whitney Houston using the 808's cowbell in her "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", a lot of tunes or even whole bands wouldn't exist without this machine. Take Afrika Bambaata's "Planet Rock" or the Two Live Crew, for example. For the mature ones among us, let's not forget about "808 State", youngsters should check this out.
Even "The Mulder's Deepest Remix" of Sandra Lima's Higher, our current release on Pesto, uses the 808's cowbell.
Too bad, we did not think of March 3rd 2003 in order to celebrate a TB-303 day. But hey, mark September 9th next year in your calendar to praise the Queen of House drums, Roland's TR-909!
Some footage found via different sources (thanks to Music Thing and de:bug magazine):
Back from Bulgaria
29 May 2008, 09:56
It's done - after 8,000 kilometres, 25 gigs in 5 weeks, lots of new friends and fans, countless Gin Tonics and OCB papers, I have returned to the "normal" life.
Bulgaria was quite an experience for me and it was good to have Jovan of Relaxators Dance Company as my host, guide and - above all - as a friend. Never before, I have played so many parties in a row. 8,000km do not seem such a huge number, but let me tell you that leaving the highways in Bulgaria can take you on really unusual roads. We encountered road holes more than 1 metre in diameter and 30 centimetres deep. As Bulgaria has quite some mountains, going 50km on winding roads may take 1.5hrs or more. At this time of the year, everything is green and blooming. Passing places with different elevation, we experienced different stages of spring. From wild beauty in the Rhodopes, over huge plains to the Black Sea coast - Bulgaria is quite a pittoresque country with countless shades and, last but not least, lovely people. As they told me, I have been to more places than probably most of the bulgarian residents have.
The parties were very different: from lousy gigs on a Monday (hey, people will have to work - sure), over huge and classy venues inside a rotten city to one party that was very special. It's been quite a while ago that I met such a raving audience like in Shumen's Mamagaya. By far, the party in Shumen was not only the highlight of this tour but it also made its way into my personal top 10 of the greatest gigs ever! To say it with Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back!"
Special thanks goes to Jovan who booked and organized this whole SeeMe tour - we've spent these five weeks together without stepping on each other's nerves, rather than enjoying the "rock'n'roll" life! It was simply amazing! If you are looking for somebody who knows the Balkans (and the right people), especially in Bulgaria, who has a very professional approach and who is a cool guy to hang out with at the same time, you should get in touch with him. Needless to say that this tour led to a new and intensified cooperation between Pesto and RDC - more details here in brief.
So finally, let me take the chance to thank all you people for being your guest and for giving me the time of my life. Blagodarja Bulgaria! :)
PS: try to listen to other music than Progressive and look up the term "warm-up" in a dictionary...hehehe
PPS: I have around two hours of footage that needs to be edited. I hope I can show you the "documentary", which is in memory of Uncle Mitko, very soon here.
Bulgaria was quite an experience for me and it was good to have Jovan of Relaxators Dance Company as my host, guide and - above all - as a friend. Never before, I have played so many parties in a row. 8,000km do not seem such a huge number, but let me tell you that leaving the highways in Bulgaria can take you on really unusual roads. We encountered road holes more than 1 metre in diameter and 30 centimetres deep. As Bulgaria has quite some mountains, going 50km on winding roads may take 1.5hrs or more. At this time of the year, everything is green and blooming. Passing places with different elevation, we experienced different stages of spring. From wild beauty in the Rhodopes, over huge plains to the Black Sea coast - Bulgaria is quite a pittoresque country with countless shades and, last but not least, lovely people. As they told me, I have been to more places than probably most of the bulgarian residents have.
The parties were very different: from lousy gigs on a Monday (hey, people will have to work - sure), over huge and classy venues inside a rotten city to one party that was very special. It's been quite a while ago that I met such a raving audience like in Shumen's Mamagaya. By far, the party in Shumen was not only the highlight of this tour but it also made its way into my personal top 10 of the greatest gigs ever! To say it with Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back!"
Special thanks goes to Jovan who booked and organized this whole SeeMe tour - we've spent these five weeks together without stepping on each other's nerves, rather than enjoying the "rock'n'roll" life! It was simply amazing! If you are looking for somebody who knows the Balkans (and the right people), especially in Bulgaria, who has a very professional approach and who is a cool guy to hang out with at the same time, you should get in touch with him. Needless to say that this tour led to a new and intensified cooperation between Pesto and RDC - more details here in brief.
So finally, let me take the chance to thank all you people for being your guest and for giving me the time of my life. Blagodarja Bulgaria! :)
PS: try to listen to other music than Progressive and look up the term "warm-up" in a dictionary...hehehe
PPS: I have around two hours of footage that needs to be edited. I hope I can show you the "documentary", which is in memory of Uncle Mitko, very soon here.
New partner: Raunchy Rhythms Radio
10 April 2008, 00:31
Raunchy Rhythms Radio created by station Owner Andy B around just over a year ago, a self confessed house music lover & bedroom DJ having never played out to a large audience himself, our aim is to provide an online radio station not only for the big boys in the industry but also the relatively unknown DJs a chance to broadcast their DJ mixing skills across the world wide web for all the house music lover’s out there 24 hours a day.
You can find our website at http://www.raunchyrhythms.com which is constantly being updated on a daily basis with new content, mixes and the latest news with what’s going on within the industry. One of interesting and unique points about our website has to be the ‘’Request’’ page. All our mixsets are available for requesting instantly via this page.
For instance if you would like to listen to and queue ‘’ DJ Jon Silva- PestoMix 006’’ then click the red ‘’request’’ button on the right hand side of the page opposite this mix and this mix will automatically be added to our playlist for broadcasting, it’s as simple as that !
We are always looking for fresh talented house DJ mixes to play on our radio station so please feel free to get in contact with us either via the Pesto Music Community Forum, our website contact page or direct at admin[at]raunchyrhythms.com.
Welcome to Raunchy Rhythms Radio!
"2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists" goes Platinum in german album charts
01 April 2008, 03:10
Today, we're proud to announce that after entering the german album charts on #3 last week, we already sold so many copies that the release was awarded with "Platinum" status. This equals to 500.000 sold copies. As digital downloads are accounted for the official german charts since not so long ago, we're particularly happy to be the first independent label that reached this status!
"2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists"
is available on your favourite online store:
Beatport
Juno Download
Traxsource
Trackitdown
Play It Tonight
DJDownload
iTunes store
1st a PR ill
Defected, Pesto and the copyrights
27 March 2008, 15:09
Last night was quite a hot one as the posts about pulling Ricardo Torres' PestoMix off got you (and me) really upset. Well, the dust has settled and today, I received a message from Tony Garvey, Head of Promotions at Defected. I'm still unsure if they will keep to "seek compensation for this illegal usage" but Tony's email reads very reasonable and nice.
Please find his message including my replies (italic) below:
Hi Tony,
Thanks a lot for your prompt reply! Please find my answers below.
Fully agree with you here.
I do second that!
That's exactly what happened now. There is no Defected material left in the PestoMix and the new version has been posted. If Ellie had sent me a message asking to take the tunes off, I would have done it (and, in fact, did) - it was rather the "we will seek for compensation" thingy that got me quite upset. I'm sure it wasn't some standard email that's being sent out whenever you become aware of "copyright infringement" as she used the contact form on pesto.de. I do understand your point of view here (as I expressed in my reply to Ellie) but we reap what we sow. Therefore I had to comment on that as much as Ricardo and many others had to.
Okay, that's at least a guideline for a possible future use of Defected products, especially for those who are not in direct touch with you.
That's great and highly appreciated! Pesto does the same btw with the Pesto FreeBees. Though our artists may not be as established (yet) as the ones mentioned;)
I have a different point of view on that one (especially as we're talking not just about copyrights but DJ culture as a whole). But as I replied to Ellie yesterday. I do see your point and indeed, I do accept it. Yet still, it's not that the law forces you to act like that - that's totally up to your decision. And sorry for repeating myself here but I want to be very clear about that: I do accept your decision. :)
And my guess is that people are aware of that fact and that is what gets them so upset. Like said above, I do understand your point completely but the image you leave with "normal" people (i.e. not working in the music business) is like you're behaving like a Major. And sueing your clients is not considered a good business model (I'm not saying you're doing so but it APPEARS like that). So it's pure surprise that one of the "good boys" apparently turned "bad" (from my and their perspective).
Tony, after Ellie's message got me so upset, I'm glad to read your mail. You sound very calm and reasonable and as I said before, it never was my intention to point the finger on Defected for the way they're doing their business. An easy message (without the threatening part) would have done the job. I'm furthermore glad to having received such a quick reply from you that's putting things straight in a very nice way - thanks a lot for that!
In order to be fair, I suggest I'm publishing this correspondence between you and me (without the personal information, of course) so the House lovers out there can relax or at least decide on their own which point of view they will take.
cheers...Jost
Please find his message including my replies (italic) below:
Hi Tony,
Thanks a lot for your prompt reply! Please find my answers below.
Hey Jost - hope you are well, We have had a few direct email as I guess you have sent out a mail to your members. I understand the promotional value of podcasts as we ourselves have a very successful one that has around 50'000 subscribbers - and it is not the intention to quash anyone's love for House music, on the contrary we are trying to bring the sound to as many new ears as possible. As you know the music industry as a whole is in decline, yet the accessibility of music is possible the strongest it has ever been due to the digital revolution, but unfortunately the 2 aren't working in tandem - people are hearing about music, but not buying it in the same percentage.
Fully agree with you here.
We are a business and yes our business is Music but we have to protect our catalogue and the rights on behalf of our Artists whom spend time and money recording it.
I do second that!
It is true that we can't chase everybody who uploads music or mixes, but where we have to opportunity we do ask them to remove its unauthorized usage (Ricardo could very easily remove the 2 tracks requested, replace them with 2 new tracks and the podcast need never of suffered).
That's exactly what happened now. There is no Defected material left in the PestoMix and the new version has been posted. If Ellie had sent me a message asking to take the tunes off, I would have done it (and, in fact, did) - it was rather the "we will seek for compensation" thingy that got me quite upset. I'm sure it wasn't some standard email that's being sent out whenever you become aware of "copyright infringement" as she used the contact form on pesto.de. I do understand your point of view here (as I expressed in my reply to Ellie) but we reap what we sow. Therefore I had to comment on that as much as Ricardo and many others had to.
There have been occasion we do allow tracks to be used, but this is with prior approval and the understanding of exactly where it is going and to whom it is targeting, something we would use in conjunction with the promotion of a release - remember I am a promoter of Music and I look at ALL opportunities.
Okay, that's at least a guideline for a possible future use of Defected products, especially for those who are not in direct touch with you.
We do also give away free music - 3 free downloads in the coming weeks for Fish Go Deep, DJ Fudge and Charles Webster, all very established producers.
That's great and highly appreciated! Pesto does the same btw with the Pesto FreeBees. Though our artists may not be as established (yet) as the ones mentioned;)
I think that we are being unjustifiable targeted for just taking care of our business as the law dictates.
I have a different point of view on that one (especially as we're talking not just about copyrights but DJ culture as a whole). But as I replied to Ellie yesterday. I do see your point and indeed, I do accept it. Yet still, it's not that the law forces you to act like that - that's totally up to your decision. And sorry for repeating myself here but I want to be very clear about that: I do accept your decision. :)
We are a small company that has a big reputation and it is our music and hard work that has created that not money.
And my guess is that people are aware of that fact and that is what gets them so upset. Like said above, I do understand your point completely but the image you leave with "normal" people (i.e. not working in the music business) is like you're behaving like a Major. And sueing your clients is not considered a good business model (I'm not saying you're doing so but it APPEARS like that). So it's pure surprise that one of the "good boys" apparently turned "bad" (from my and their perspective).
Once again it is not our desire to turn anyone off who has supported our label over the years, but the current climate is very different than it was even 2 years ago and the reason we are still here is because we care and we work hard.Hopefully you now understand a little of the story from our end, I am happy to discuss directly and will entertain any opportunities for us both to work together as ultimately we all have the same love and goals
Tony, after Ellie's message got me so upset, I'm glad to read your mail. You sound very calm and reasonable and as I said before, it never was my intention to point the finger on Defected for the way they're doing their business. An easy message (without the threatening part) would have done the job. I'm furthermore glad to having received such a quick reply from you that's putting things straight in a very nice way - thanks a lot for that!
In order to be fair, I suggest I'm publishing this correspondence between you and me (without the personal information, of course) so the House lovers out there can relax or at least decide on their own which point of view they will take.
cheers...Jost
Best Regards#TG
Traxsource: Miami Insider Tips
25 March 2008, 19:02
Although we are not attending this year's Winter Music Conference in Miami, we will be very present there as we got an amazing offer by one of the world's leading download stores Traxsource. Here's what the buzz is all about:
We're proud to announce that From P60's "New Way" (Jon Silva's Filthy Remix) will be part of this exclusive showcase!
"Traxsource has created a unique promotional opportunity for this years Miami conference. We have created alliances with 80+ key retail establishments in and around Miami Beach (complete listings here). Traxsource will showcase only the Hottest Content we have across our main genres by providing DJ mixed CDs which identify Traxsource as the source to these establishments for playback during the week of Conference."
We're proud to announce that From P60's "New Way" (Jon Silva's Filthy Remix) will be part of this exclusive showcase!
Share This! [update]
14 March 2008, 23:57
First of all, we stripped off the code to make the pages load quicker. You will surely notice that even on slower connections, the page now loads way snappier. As a result, we don't have the tag cloud anymore but only few visitors were using this feature.
We also got rid of the advertisement. Although the number of visitors implies that at least the hosting costs could be covered, the number of clicks on the ads was too low to justify cluttering the page. In the end, we wouldn't click on "Buy the best Trance & Techno records here" either. ;)
The third item is an additional feature called "ShareThis™" which makes it easier for you to share news on pesto.de with your friends. You can use this to post our content on your social networks such as Myspace and Facebook, you can easily add the news to your bookmark service such as del.icio.us or post it to your blog . "ShareThis™" also allows you to send news items via email or even SMS. So now you can express your excitement about a new release or a great PestoMix by sending your friends a message. Neat, innit?
[update: if you click on the "ShareThis™" button below, you will only be able to send a link to this page, but not the specific news item. Workaround: clicking on "Permalink" below the headline opens only that very news item, enabling you to include a link pointing directly to the respective post rather than the whole news page.]
You can try the feature by clicking below.
Winter Music Conference
13 March 2008, 21:33
While everybody else is warming up for Miami and pushing out WMC samplers, we at Pesto will refrain from doing so. We prefer supplying you with excellent single releases on both Pesto and Traxx. "What's cooking?" you may ask - our answer will be an amazing release by Sandra Lima called "Higher".
Some of you might have heard the tune already but we'll release it in brand new versions and the "Higher" release will come with a huge bunch of remixes by some of the world's most famous artists. Pesto 011 includes remixes by House music's legend Jay-J and the usual suspects Jon Silva aka The Mulder. Pesto 011R will feature an amazing set of remixes by currently one of the hottest producers named Justin Michael, Thomas White of Natural Rhythm and West Coast Collective's very own Torin Rea plus a few more goodies.
Pesto 011 and 011R will be a true cross-Atlantic coop offering the very best in Deep House that's available on the planet right now. And, of course, we'll stick with the tradition of giving you the Pesto FreeBees, our hi quality MP3 downloads that you'll get for free. This time, we'll even offer you two free versions to download alongside the release of Pesto 011 and 011R.
On our sublabel Traxx Recordings, there's more hawtness coming your way: we're proud to announce that highly sought-after producer Da Funk from Switzerland's Acryl Music is having his debut on Traxx. After his "Electronic Love" on PestoLP002 (2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists) founds its way into the CD sleeves of countless top DJs from all over, Da Funk returns with another smasher. "Roasted" will be one of the tunes to watch out for this spring and it's surely going to be one of this year's Eivissa staples. Traxx 005 will also come with a nice set of remixes - read more about them here in brief.
Some of you might have heard the tune already but we'll release it in brand new versions and the "Higher" release will come with a huge bunch of remixes by some of the world's most famous artists. Pesto 011 includes remixes by House music's legend Jay-J and the usual suspects Jon Silva aka The Mulder. Pesto 011R will feature an amazing set of remixes by currently one of the hottest producers named Justin Michael, Thomas White of Natural Rhythm and West Coast Collective's very own Torin Rea plus a few more goodies.
Pesto 011 and 011R will be a true cross-Atlantic coop offering the very best in Deep House that's available on the planet right now. And, of course, we'll stick with the tradition of giving you the Pesto FreeBees, our hi quality MP3 downloads that you'll get for free. This time, we'll even offer you two free versions to download alongside the release of Pesto 011 and 011R.
On our sublabel Traxx Recordings, there's more hawtness coming your way: we're proud to announce that highly sought-after producer Da Funk from Switzerland's Acryl Music is having his debut on Traxx. After his "Electronic Love" on PestoLP002 (2.0 - The Next Generation Of Pesto Artists) founds its way into the CD sleeves of countless top DJs from all over, Da Funk returns with another smasher. "Roasted" will be one of the tunes to watch out for this spring and it's surely going to be one of this year's Eivissa staples. Traxx 005 will also come with a nice set of remixes - read more about them here in brief.
One year of Pesto Community
13 February 2008, 17:35
Last Monday, the 11th of February 2008, we had a reason to celebrate: our Pesto Community, the forum board for Pesto fans turned one year.
Although 83 registered members may not seem such a huge number, it's the hard core of Pesto addicts that posted nearly 500 articles within that year. The majority of those posts were DJ mixes of excellent quality. Taking a look at the server statistics though, the number of non-registered users embracing the possibilty to download hi quality Deep House mixes is an estimated 300 times higher. Our contributors come from all over the globe and have the same vibe in common.
Due to the cross-promotion of the community on last.fm, myspace and other social networking sites, the Pesto Community has established itself as a reliable source for House heads seeking for first class DJ mixes, a place to communicate with people thinking alike and a forum to exchange thoughts and compliments.
What's next there? You might have heard of the PestoMix guest slot competition that's running until 20th February 2008. In the future, the community will be the place to discover more talent and we'll make sure that more DJ talent gets heard. We'll also launch a section in brief that is going to deal with the technical side of things: production tutorials, mix tricks, software recommendations - whatever comes to your mind. We'll have more exclusives and previews on upcoming stuff for registered members. Please keep in mind that registering for the community is free, fast and I can assure you that your email adresses are as safe with us as on any other form you can complete on the Pesto pages. We hate spam as much as you!
On behalf of Pesto Music and all its affiliated artists, let me take the chance to thank you for contributing and for making the Pesto Community such a nice place! So many of you have supported our artists in their mixes and your support is priceless and greatly appreciated!
Many happy returns to the Pesto Community!
Jon Silva/Jost Gerischer, Pesto Music
Although 83 registered members may not seem such a huge number, it's the hard core of Pesto addicts that posted nearly 500 articles within that year. The majority of those posts were DJ mixes of excellent quality. Taking a look at the server statistics though, the number of non-registered users embracing the possibilty to download hi quality Deep House mixes is an estimated 300 times higher. Our contributors come from all over the globe and have the same vibe in common.
Due to the cross-promotion of the community on last.fm, myspace and other social networking sites, the Pesto Community has established itself as a reliable source for House heads seeking for first class DJ mixes, a place to communicate with people thinking alike and a forum to exchange thoughts and compliments.
What's next there? You might have heard of the PestoMix guest slot competition that's running until 20th February 2008. In the future, the community will be the place to discover more talent and we'll make sure that more DJ talent gets heard. We'll also launch a section in brief that is going to deal with the technical side of things: production tutorials, mix tricks, software recommendations - whatever comes to your mind. We'll have more exclusives and previews on upcoming stuff for registered members. Please keep in mind that registering for the community is free, fast and I can assure you that your email adresses are as safe with us as on any other form you can complete on the Pesto pages. We hate spam as much as you!
On behalf of Pesto Music and all its affiliated artists, let me take the chance to thank you for contributing and for making the Pesto Community such a nice place! So many of you have supported our artists in their mixes and your support is priceless and greatly appreciated!
Many happy returns to the Pesto Community!
Jon Silva/Jost Gerischer, Pesto Music
Randy Seidman heavily features Jon Silva on Shake Down podcast!
07 February 2008, 00:29
Check out this beautiful DJ mix by California Pestolero Randy Seidman. Roughly one third of his track list consists of Jon's productions or remixes.
1. Jon Silva - I Want U (Deeper & Deeper Mix) [Pesto]
2. Cristian Paduraru - Sharing Transparently (Jon Silva Deep House Mix) [Christian Records]
3. Soda Inc. - Night Fever (Jon Silva’s Babe-A-Pella) [Plastic City]
4. Manuel Tur - Acorado [Freerange]
5. D Fow - Impulse Response [Revolucion Records]
6. Lukas Greenberg - Le Soir (Original) [Plastic City Play}
7. Da Funk - Devotion (Jon Silva’s Spiked Heel Dub) [Acryl Music]
8. Da Funk - Devotion (Jon Silva’s White Island Mix) [Acryl Music]
9. Logiztik Sound - Crazy People [Plastik Park]
10. Jeff Bennett - Instant Need [Kung Fu Dub]
11. Rob Mooney - Toothpick [Bass For Breakfast]
12. Dousk - Hammer [Vapour]
13. Gareth Emery - More Than Anything [Curve Recordings]
14. Unkown
15. Retroid - Daybreak [FeralCode Records]
16. Presslaboys - Taste My Body [Presslab Records]
17. Mercurio - X-Cream [Flow Records]
We're not only proud that the Shake Down podcast is one of the larger ones with a subscriber base of 30,000+. But also the fact that Randy names Jon as one of his favourite producers makes us pretty happy! Thank you so much for your massive support, Randy!
check out the Shake Down podcast
visit Randy's myspace
visit Randy's homepage
1. Jon Silva - I Want U (Deeper & Deeper Mix) [Pesto]
2. Cristian Paduraru - Sharing Transparently (Jon Silva Deep House Mix) [Christian Records]
3. Soda Inc. - Night Fever (Jon Silva’s Babe-A-Pella) [Plastic City]
4. Manuel Tur - Acorado [Freerange]
5. D Fow - Impulse Response [Revolucion Records]
6. Lukas Greenberg - Le Soir (Original) [Plastic City Play}
7. Da Funk - Devotion (Jon Silva’s Spiked Heel Dub) [Acryl Music]
8. Da Funk - Devotion (Jon Silva’s White Island Mix) [Acryl Music]
9. Logiztik Sound - Crazy People [Plastik Park]
10. Jeff Bennett - Instant Need [Kung Fu Dub]
11. Rob Mooney - Toothpick [Bass For Breakfast]
12. Dousk - Hammer [Vapour]
13. Gareth Emery - More Than Anything [Curve Recordings]
14. Unkown
15. Retroid - Daybreak [FeralCode Records]
16. Presslaboys - Taste My Body [Presslab Records]
17. Mercurio - X-Cream [Flow Records]
We're not only proud that the Shake Down podcast is one of the larger ones with a subscriber base of 30,000+. But also the fact that Randy names Jon as one of his favourite producers makes us pretty happy! Thank you so much for your massive support, Randy!
check out the Shake Down podcast
visit Randy's myspace
visit Randy's homepage
R.I.P. Ron Murphy
14 January 2008, 18:50
Ron Murphy, co-founder and head of National Sound Corporation (NSC) is dead.
He's said to have cut all major Detroit records from the early 1990ies and thus having had a great impact on the sound and production of renowned artists such as Mike Banks, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin among many others.
In an interview with german De:Bug mag (german language), he's giving insights on how "Uncle Ron" (as the artists mentioned used to call him) tought his "students" about the secrets of a proper mixdown and mastering.
Since being a creative head, he was seeking for new ways in vinyl cutting so he was offering cutting the platter from the inside, where the label sticker is, to the outside of the record. Both Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin rejected when finally Kevin Saunderson agreed to cut the vinyl this way for a release on Network.
A similar thing happened when Jeff Mills came over to have something special for his "Rings around Saturn" cutting session. As Jeff's tunes were 134BPM, it was possible to cut a seemless loop ( a tempo of 133,3BPM is required to that on a 33rpm record). This was the first time the world saw a seemless revolution on a vinyl record.
Ron Murphy, who said about himself he'd never danced in his whole life, has to be appreciated as one of Detroit's most influential guys. He's one of those guys behind the scenes, yet incredibly important for shaping a whole era of electronic music of which the effects remain until today when you're downloading the latest stuff.
Rest in peace, Ron Murphy!
He's said to have cut all major Detroit records from the early 1990ies and thus having had a great impact on the sound and production of renowned artists such as Mike Banks, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin among many others.
In an interview with german De:Bug mag (german language), he's giving insights on how "Uncle Ron" (as the artists mentioned used to call him) tought his "students" about the secrets of a proper mixdown and mastering.
Since being a creative head, he was seeking for new ways in vinyl cutting so he was offering cutting the platter from the inside, where the label sticker is, to the outside of the record. Both Jeff Mills and Richie Hawtin rejected when finally Kevin Saunderson agreed to cut the vinyl this way for a release on Network.
A similar thing happened when Jeff Mills came over to have something special for his "Rings around Saturn" cutting session. As Jeff's tunes were 134BPM, it was possible to cut a seemless loop ( a tempo of 133,3BPM is required to that on a 33rpm record). This was the first time the world saw a seemless revolution on a vinyl record.
Ron Murphy, who said about himself he'd never danced in his whole life, has to be appreciated as one of Detroit's most influential guys. He's one of those guys behind the scenes, yet incredibly important for shaping a whole era of electronic music of which the effects remain until today when you're downloading the latest stuff.
Rest in peace, Ron Murphy!
Pesto Music installs "Officer" label software
07 January 2008, 23:25
"Officer" is the highly acclaimed piece of software so many other labels use for their daily business such as Cocoon, Force Inc., Infracom, Kanzleramt, Lado, Neuton, Paul van Dyk, Peppermint Jam, Phazz-A-Delic, Pulver Records, Toca Records, Vienna Scientists just to name a few from Officer's impressive clients list.
This customized database on a Filemaker basis allows us to manage all revenue streams, distribute money to our artists, administrate third party licenses (such as CD compilations of other labels) and above all, it's the backup of both Pesto Music's and traxx Recordings' music catalogue (and future sublabels *hint*). It allows us to spend less time with numbers, passing on the income straight to our artists and kicking the arses of those who are late with their payments. It's also a great tool for statistics and future marketing strategies - to put it short: it does everything we need (and what we've been doing already) while saving us a huge amount of time so we can focus on the creative work!
We're proud "Officers" from now on!:)
Saying bye to 2007, saying hi to 2008!
01 January 2008, 05:04
As I was thinking about the things that should be said in this article, I went on a personal review trying to recall what the last year was about so I was going through the posts of 2007.
I also found the bulletin that was published for last NYE and I read about the aims and remembered the hopes, fears and my mindset in general from back then.
Let's see what turned reality, what hasn't yet and what the plans are for 2008.
Quoting from last year's post:
"This year is coming to an end and for us, it was one full of changes - one of them being this web site you're just looking at. 2007 will be an exciting year for Pesto and all the people involved with it as a lot of stuff is to be released."
2007 was indeed another year full of changes (I guess change is one of the few constants in my life) and yes, it was exciting, indeed. The redesigned Pesto page was quite a success and, as many people stated, an appreciated source for information, entertainment and new music. The number of unique visitors tripled compared to the highest number of unique visitors of the former page and remains growing on a constantly high level. The number of our RSS and email newsletter subscriptions are constantly increasing, so is the number of downloads of our PestoMix, PestoCast and Pesto FreeBees stuff.
I would have loved to see more releases in 2007 - there were only four of them on Pesto - but that year also saw the birth of the Traxx sublabel and I was busy doing remixes like never before. So I don't complain, especially since both the Traxx releases and the remixes went down pretty well. On top of that, we also released our first digital longplayer "Vic Music presents: Beautiful & Timeless Vol. 1" - a compilation that had been released as a CD before and that attracted a lot of music lovers already. Furthermore, I was also experimenting with the new digital format as Pesto was limited to a total of four tracks per release back in the vinyl days. The new medium offers new possibilities but also new occasions to screw up.
As a side effect, I had gigs in numerous countries, some of which I visited for the first time such as Morocco, Sweden or (the former yugoslavian republic of) Macedonia. I met a lot of lovely people, made new friends all over and discovered that everywhere I went, people already knew about us or instantly got hooked on the Pesto vibe. Very encouraging.
Another source of inspiration has been the vivid Pesto community: so many people contributed excellent DJ mixes in order to share them with the rest of you. Many of my office hours were sweetened by the flavour of DeepHouse from our fellow Pestoleros and I just highly recommend signing up for the Pesto forum as there are a couple of goodies exclusively available to registered members only.
2007 also meant a growth of the Pesto family regarding artists: we already saw a couple of remixers such as Nikola Gala, Da Funk, El Farouki, Khaan or Kellyyss just to name a few. But we will also see (and first of all hear) the next generation of Pesto artists on our "2.0" compilation which is about to be out by 8th of January. Some of that work has been cooking on the stove for ages in order to mature and get better and better (Sandra Lima and Robin Rush - you hear me?), other stuff is brand new yet equally kicking - Tina Valen, Cloudsteppers, Phonic Funk, Quell, Rucyl, Pete Gust and Replika are names you already might be familiar with if you're following our PestoMixes or they might sound totally fresh to you. Either way, those will be names to watch out for in 2008 if you're serious about House music and these ladies and gentlemen contribute massive tunes to the Pesto catalogue.
Consequently, 2008 will see more frequent releases - both singles and compilations. I finally installed an infrastructure that allows me to focus on the creative side of things rather than spending my time doing administrative work. This will give me more space to discover new talents, develop new products and increase the release rate in general while keeping the quality level you'd expect from Pesto Music.
Last but not least, the passed year held a lot of support for Pesto from industry professionals: club and radio DJs were heavily playing our stuff, it got supported on CD compilations, web sites were writing reviews, tunes got featured in DJ mixes and podcasts by renowned artists, the download shops also seemed to appreciate our efforts.
And finally you, our fans and biggest supporters, the music lovers, the ones that don't buy the Beatport Top10 in order to play the same shit as everybody else, the people that make all this Pesto thing possible - you supported our artists, Pesto and Traxx as labels, you supported our vibe! I would personally like to thank you for believing in us, in our goals and in our philosophy - the recognition and support coming from your side is priceless and I - speaking for all Pesto and Traxx artists here - can't express how much your support is appreciated. We love you! :)
For the new year, my wishes for all of us are love, happiness, peace of mind, health, success and as much wealth a decent life requires. Let's all go further, make our wildest dreams come true and be happy humans vibing on the same wavelength.
Take good care of yourself, stay well and stay with us because you'll enjoy being part of the Pesto family in 2008 and beyond!
Sincerely yours...Jon Silva/Jost Gerischer
Pesto Music drops DRM
15 November 2007, 04:11
We consider DRM or "Digital Rights Management" first of all a euphemism as it's not managing anything rather than restricting the user (that's you, our buyers and fans) in the way she or he is entitled to use the downloaded music.
Opposed to organizations like the IFPI and similar, we do not consider our clients criminals. File sharing is a reality as much as copying 12" albums on compact cassettes was a reality back in the 1980ies. We're not encouraging you to share your purchased Pesto and Traxx files on filesharing systems (except our FreeBees), but if somebody does, we can't help about it. We rather focus on new music instead of filing lawsuits.
We just think that by putting out great music, supporting our fans with free downloads and other goodies, we will attract the buyers that appreciate our work, people that understand that supporting new and upcoming talents costs some time, money and much more idealism.
Last but not least, we won't increase the prices for the DRM-free titles. :)
Feel free to share your thoughts about DRM in general in our comments' section.
We're hiring! Pesto is looking for instrumentalists
28 September 2007, 15:45
For our current and future productions we are looking for bass players, guitarists and percussionists to coop with. It doesn't really matter where you're based, but you should be able to record your takes on your side in a decent quality and have a broadband connection to the internet in order to upload hi-res files such as WAV or AIFF.
Further requirements are:
- you should be a nice person;)
- you're familiar with the use of email and instant messengers
- your instrument is of decent quality, so is the rest of your equipment. Hum is only acceptable in very small doses
- you feel at home in anything Funk/Soul/Disco (you don't need to wear bellbottoms, okay?)
- you can play just by listening (although we might provide sheets, if requested)
- you're fast in recording your stuff
- you're reliable deadline-wise
- other details have to be negotiated
We're not asking you to do the job for free, money and payment issues will be discussed on a private basis though. We're especially looking for people that are willing and wanting to establish a constant relationship. We cannot offer you recording equipment or hire a studio for you - you need to be able to record the stuff at your place without any extra costs (i.e. studio rent).
We need your help for recordings of our own artists, for the production of sample packs, as well as for remix jobs and even solo releases with your performances are not off the stove.
If this sounds interesting to you, please get in touch via our contact form, supplying your full name, email addy and, if possible a link to a demo of yours. If you have further questions, do not hestitate to ask them.
Looking forward to hear from you:)
Further requirements are:
- you should be a nice person;)
- you're familiar with the use of email and instant messengers
- your instrument is of decent quality, so is the rest of your equipment. Hum is only acceptable in very small doses
- you feel at home in anything Funk/Soul/Disco (you don't need to wear bellbottoms, okay?)
- you can play just by listening (although we might provide sheets, if requested)
- you're fast in recording your stuff
- you're reliable deadline-wise
- other details have to be negotiated
We're not asking you to do the job for free, money and payment issues will be discussed on a private basis though. We're especially looking for people that are willing and wanting to establish a constant relationship. We cannot offer you recording equipment or hire a studio for you - you need to be able to record the stuff at your place without any extra costs (i.e. studio rent).
We need your help for recordings of our own artists, for the production of sample packs, as well as for remix jobs and even solo releases with your performances are not off the stove.
If this sounds interesting to you, please get in touch via our contact form, supplying your full name, email addy and, if possible a link to a demo of yours. If you have further questions, do not hestitate to ask them.
Looking forward to hear from you:)
Pesto TV - visit our channel on youtube.com
18 September 2007, 06:10
A message to our friends from Greece
01 September 2007, 18:45
The tragedy that was shown on the media is surely just scratching the surface, considering the many casualties the burning forests in Greece had caused. Seeing families lose their homes, the foundations of their existence and above all losing their beloved ones makes me feel really sad. Fires have been harming people and the environment in so many countries I have been visiting this summer, among them Croatia, Montenegro, FYR of Macedonia and many more and two things remain in my mind:
who are those that start the fires in order to "create" new ground to build e.g. hotels and what is their mindset? And why do we have apparently incapable governments that are supposed to end this? I feel ashamed when I read that Germany sent four (yes, that's 4!) helicopters to Greece to help fighting the fires.
Let me tell you that I'm with you on my mind - regardless in which country suffering from this you reside!
Yours, Jon Silva
PS: I'm aware of the fact that pesto.de is a web site covering music - some things though should not remain unsaid.
I like to move it, move it!
28 April 2007, 02:59
No news for such a long time - there must be a special matter!?
True indeed, there is: just lately, the Pesto Music headquarters have moved. We're still located in Cologne but moved closer to the city now. More details will follow soon, including our new postal address.
To all those who worried: yes, we're all fine and the show will go on!
Expect a bunch of news bulletins by end of next week when the dust has settled over here.
Greetings from your Pesto crew!
True indeed, there is: just lately, the Pesto Music headquarters have moved. We're still located in Cologne but moved closer to the city now. More details will follow soon, including our new postal address.
To all those who worried: yes, we're all fine and the show will go on!
Expect a bunch of news bulletins by end of next week when the dust has settled over here.
Greetings from your Pesto crew!
There IS something going on!
12 April 2007, 21:47
Finally, Traxx, a sublabel of Pesto has been launched just today. Traxx is a label dedicated to DJ tools, more techy stuff and progressive club choons.
The motto of Traxx is "Traxxx, not songs". The first release will be "Traxx" by "Traxx" (what a statement, eh?) and the promos are available to a selected circle of DJs from today. We already got some hot feedback in, so expect a lot to happen on Traxx.
Visit the Traxx home page and the myspace profile.
repost: Where are you from?
22 March 2007, 11:58
We'd love to know where you come from and our server stats already tell us something about that fact.
Why don't you add yourself to our Frappr map - maybe you find out that there are Pestoleros living just around the corner?
Why don't you add yourself to our Frappr map - maybe you find out that there are Pestoleros living just around the corner?
Meet us on last.fm
20 March 2007, 10:32
One of the first social networks we joined though was last.fm. We liked the idea of sharing your musical taste and get recommendations for music to discover. This process may vary in its success, but nevertheless it already led us to music that would have been a shame to have missed.
You can download your free copy of Audioscrobbler, the plugin that will transmit the music you listen to based on its MP3 tags. Needless to say that you can support Pesto by listening to our music (which you do anyways - but why not tell the world?).
Here's a brief roundup of what they say about themselves:
Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler music engine. More than ten million times a day, Last.fm users "scrobble" their tracks to our servers, helping to collectively build the world's largest social music platform.Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.Founded by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, we are a London-based company with a music-obsessed team of developers and creative professionals from around the world.It's never been this easy to share your taste and discover new music. Welcome to the social music revolution.
We may offer free downloads to last.fm users exclusively (as we did in the past) so it's not too bad of an idea to sign up. Here's a link to their charts with free MP3 downloads of any genre.
Check out our last.fm page
This is last.fm's home page
Audioscrobbler and last.fm player downloads
(we use the plugin for iTunes, by the way)
Save our internet radio - follow up
17 March 2007, 13:00
Refering to our news bulletin from yesterday, Peter Krin of createdigitalmusic.com has interviewed Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. Pandora is an internet radio station that adopts to your personal taste and musical preferences and by analyzing what you like or dislike suggests new music to you that might be of interest, as well.
The interview gives quite some insight on the actual debate RIAA vs. the audience. The article also offers links to more background information on that issue.
Interview with Tim Westergren on createdigitalmusic
The interview gives quite some insight on the actual debate RIAA vs. the audience. The article also offers links to more background information on that issue.
Interview with Tim Westergren on createdigitalmusic
US citizens: Save our internet radio!
16 March 2007, 17:43
From www.savourinternetradio.com:
"On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.
There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener per month in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners."
What does that mean? We think, the RIAA is actively seeking to kick indie radios off the market (or have them move to Cayman Islands). The only stations that will afford the rates requested are the major players, the stations that pollute you with Top40 crap and "the greatest hits of the 80ies and 90ies" already. Do we need that? Definitely not!
If you live in the USA, act up and make your voice heard: write to your congress representative. There are more options, so make sure you visit Save our Internet Radio and follow the links there. Other links related to this topic:
savourinternetradio.com
congress.org
"On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.
There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener per month in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners."
What does that mean? We think, the RIAA is actively seeking to kick indie radios off the market (or have them move to Cayman Islands). The only stations that will afford the rates requested are the major players, the stations that pollute you with Top40 crap and "the greatest hits of the 80ies and 90ies" already. Do we need that? Definitely not!
If you live in the USA, act up and make your voice heard: write to your congress representative. There are more options, so make sure you visit Save our Internet Radio and follow the links there. Other links related to this topic:
savourinternetradio.com
congress.org
Ricardo Torres at Miami's WMC 2007
14 March 2007, 14:20
Well, this is not the case, so here is the actual information - this time including line up and eFlyer though. The Shifted Music party will take place in "Dek23", a location that will see its official opening after the WMC actually.
If you like sexy DeepHouse (and we assume so since you're a visitor of this page), you should make sure not to miss that one if you're attending WMC.
Main Room
Jay-J (Shifted Music)
Jamie Lewis (Purple Music, Indeependent)
Ron Carroll (Body Music)
Mark Grant (Blackstone)
Albert Cabrera (Albert Cabrera Productions)
Scott Wozniak (Large, Defected)
Random Soul (Shifted Music, Salted Music, Australia)
Under the Stars
Sarah Main (Pacha, Ibiza)
Neil Aline (Chez Music)
Rob Paine (Worship, Shakedown, Solomonic Sound, Phillly)
Luis Baro (XM-The Move)
Mason Rothert (Thump Radio, XM-The Move)
Ricardo Torres (West Coast Collective)
Location
DEK23 - 655 Washington Ave.
Miami, FL 33139
Admission
20$/10$ with conference badge
Click here to see the eFlyer
Ricardo Torres supports Pesto
08 March 2007, 14:47
He's got a new mix online that starts with "Love In War". You can find his latest DJ mix named "Looking West" (so are we...hehehe) in the mixes section on Ricardo's web site.
Ricardo was also invited to play alongside his personal hero and very good friend Jay-J on the Shifted label party at Miami's Winter Music Conference this year. People attending WMC this year should make sure to check out his set and the ones of the other House icons on Saturday, the 24th of March at Miami's Bash. Besides Jay-J and Ricardo Torres, the line up also offers Chicago's Marc Grant, Heather, Random Soul from Australia and some other surprises.
Also make sure to check out the latest West Coast Collective mix on Shameless Sessions (SSRadio UK) featuring Kevin Christopher and Ricardo Torres. The show also includes an exclusive interview with Pestolera Sandra Lima who will have "Higher" released on Pesto soon.
Jon Silva DJ set on Kiss FM Ukraine
08 March 2007, 13:37
The show will be broadcasted tomorrow, the 9th of March 2007.
As they have just launched the Deepology Digital label, it's well worth it to visit the Deepology page for more details.
Jon Silva DJ set on danceradio.gr
01 March 2007, 13:54
As the name implies, danceradio.gr is a dance focused radio station based in Greece, offering DJ mixes and the finest in electronic music 24/7. You can tune in to their stream via their web site here.
Since mid June 2006, the weekly webradio-show of the Locked Groove DJs team hits your radio with the most up to date dance music. The Locked Groove DJs are: Chris Niteshake, mr. Stelio K, Jan LaRoque, Jimlem & Giorgio El. Every Thursday from 20:00 to 22:00 (greek time) danceradio.gr broadcasts sets by the residents of the team as well as exclusive guest mixes by recognized international DJs.
The Jon Silva set will be broadcasted tonight between 09:00pm and 11:00pm CET (08:00pm to 10:00pm greek time).
Click here to see the eFlyer!
Soda Inc. mix show on Frisky Radio
12 February 2007, 11:52
Thanks to Emanuel Phaz who invited Soda Inc. to a guest mix on his Transport show!
The show will be broadcasted tonight at midnight GMT (01:00am CET), so make sure you have coffee on stock and enjoy the blast. You can still sleep tomorrow.
The show will be broadcasted tonight at midnight GMT (01:00am CET), so make sure you have coffee on stock and enjoy the blast. You can still sleep tomorrow.
Pesto Community
11 February 2007, 13:55
We have installed a forum board for our users to interact.
We have sections for Acryl Music, Shayan-Music and Soda Inc., as well. Post links to your MP3s demos or snippets, talk about software, podcasts, DJ mixes, radio shows, etc. Other labels are welcome to post their news releases!
Please see here: http://pesto.informe.com
We have sections for Acryl Music, Shayan-Music and Soda Inc., as well. Post links to your MP3s demos or snippets, talk about software, podcasts, DJ mixes, radio shows, etc. Other labels are welcome to post their news releases!
Please see here: http://pesto.informe.com
Newsletter back online
04 February 2007, 19:16
Those among you that visited our former website will surely remember our newsletter sign-up box.
The functionality is back, but we tweaked it a little. Please see our PestoNews subscription manager. Today, we also sent out the first issue of our newsletter, so check your inbox in case you're subscribed. We will take the chance and ask for some feedback here:
The functionality is back, but we tweaked it a little. Please see our PestoNews subscription manager. Today, we also sent out the first issue of our newsletter, so check your inbox in case you're subscribed. We will take the chance and ask for some feedback here:
Our new merchandise shop is online
07 December 2006, 12:53
It's been awaited long but finally, you are able to buy wearables for Pestoleras, Pestoleros and Pestolinis (what the heck does THAT mean?) in our merchandise shop.
Choose from several styles for females, males and kids. Besides a large range of different tops, we also have caps, lanyards and even string tangas (oh yes, preferably for females) with a Pesto logo. They all come at very reasonable prices - for our international customers, the shop is completely in english language.
Have a look at the Pesto merchandising here! (opens in new window)
Choose from several styles for females, males and kids. Besides a large range of different tops, we also have caps, lanyards and even string tangas (oh yes, preferably for females) with a Pesto logo. They all come at very reasonable prices - for our international customers, the shop is completely in english language.
Have a look at the Pesto merchandising here! (opens in new window)
Website relaunch
06 December 2006, 04:18
It has been done finally - the new Pesto website is up and running. There might still be a few bugs or typos here and there and missing content, but this will be fixed in brief. Thanks to all the people that visited the beta pages and helped me a lot with their critique and suggestions - you know who you are!
Please feel free to leave a comment or send your feedback via the contact form.
Much love...Jon Silva, Pesto Music
Please feel free to leave a comment or send your feedback via the contact form.
Much love...Jon Silva, Pesto Music