3 new summer work-in-progress tracks

Summer is here!

...Which can make it hard to stay productive at times, as the warm weather and blue skies seem to command you to go outside, as if it were your God-given duty and obligation to nature to go and get a nice red sunburn as soon as temperatures rise above 30°C.

I have however (more or less) been keeping up my strict "make at least 1 track a week"-policy, which is something I started doing recently in an effort to stay in (musical) shape. It also allows me to spam Anders with MP3s every week, and he in turns sends back his ideas - a process that will hopefully speed up the completion of a new album!

Here is a sampling of 3 work-in-progress tracks that have come out of it so far:

Old Dusty Morn

Work in progress: Old Dusty Morn by subdelay

Weidlinger

Work in progress: Weidlinger by subdelay

Nimyst

Work in progress: Nimyst by subdelay

Music we like: Best electronic albums of the past 5 years

When we're not busy working on our own stuff, we do spend a lot of time listening to other people's music, which also serves as a constant source of inspiration for what we do in Sub Delay. Below I have collected what I (that would be me, Jens) find to be the best electronic full-length albums released in the past 5 years. These are basically 100% my picks so maybe Anders will tell you about his some day!

2006: Trentemøller - The Last Resort

Strangely enough, even though I bought this years ago, I only realized just how good fellow Dane Anders Trentemøller's debut album is, when I started listening to it again recently! But there is certainly no question about it, The Last Resort is a production tour de force, with every song oozing sound quality and attention to detail.

- "The Last Resort" on Amazon.com

2007: Dubfire - Global Underground Taipei

Despite releases from old favorites like Underworld and The Chemical Brothers, 2007 didn't really contain a lot of musical highlights for me personally (unless I'm forgetting something!), but this quality DJ mix album from Dubfire of Deep Dish certainly had me dancing on trains and sidewalks (mentally) for a while and has maintained a permanent spot in the limited 16 gigabytes of memory on my iPhone for some time now.

- "Global Underground 031: Taipei" on Amazon.com

2008: Helios - Eingya

Ok, so this is cheating a bit. Eingya was actually released in 2006, but as far as I know didn't see the light of day in Japan until the Tokyo-based Zankyo Records picked it up and released it over here. This album, as well as Helios' other productions, is ridiculously beautiful and the organic sounding songs are great for chilling out to in a noisy metropolis like Tokyo.

- "Eingya" on Amazon.com

2009: Moderat - Moderat

Although I more or less randomly picked this up after only casually listening to it at a Tower Records store, every subsequent play through has just made me love this incredible album more and more. In fact, Moderat are one of the first bands to get me really excited about electronic music in a long time, and although 2009 saw other great releases from the likes of Röyksopp and Deadmau5, this album will remain my pick for the best electronic album of 2009 as well as being one of my favorite albums of all time!

- "Moderat" on Amazon.com

2010: The Chemical Brothers - Further

It is only June and I just bought this about a week ago, but I am pretty sure that this will end up as one of the best electronic releases of this year. Although I honestly was a little bit disappointed by their previous effort, Further has 100% restored my faith in The Chemical Brothers, who surely are the The Beatles of electronic music, both in terms of sound and the amount of consistently awesome productions they do! I love hearing the warm, retro synth sounds on their albums and listening to their music always makes me wish I had more analogue gear than I do (...which is NONE by the way!)

- "Further" on Amazon.com</p?

That's it for now! Also of course, if you're into electronic music make sure to check out our albums below. Not sure if they qualify as "best albums" but still, you might hear something you like!

Low Ground (2009)

Zonelet (2006)

Live at Enyen (2003)

Subsidence (2002)

B-side: Progpop

For every track that makes it onto an album, there are about a dozen half-finished, work-in-progress, abandoned creations that never see the light of day. Among these are even a few more or less completely finished songs, that for various reasons just didn't cut it when it came to compiling an album.

One of these is "Progpop" (we never thought of a proper title!) which fell through the cracks while we were working on Low Ground.

Although it had been featured in a couple of live performances and we even had a mastered version of it done ready for CD production, we decided to leave it off the album for various reasons:

• Busy vocalist We wanted to redo the vocals done by Marie Jørgensen, since they had originally been recorded only as a draft to work from. Sadly, we had a hard time finding a day to match Marie's busy schedule and before we knew, it months had passed and all the other songs had already been finished... Bonus fact: Eventually we ended up using some of the additional lyrics we had written for the song on the track New Skies.
• Never thought of a chorus Only the verses in Progpop contain vocals (partly related to the issue mentioned above!) so the chorus ended up being entirely instrumental, based around a lead made from the sound of a...reversed flute was it??
• Too long The track is almost 8 minutes long!
• Just didn't fit in As we were figuring out the track order for the album, we would every time end up having nowhere to put Progpop, and I guess we eventually just decided that it didn't fit in with the other songs.

In any case, you can listen to this track now, and optionally add it to your version of Low Ground should you think it deserved a better fate! ;)

Work in progress: Gentle

Sometimes making music can be really hard...

Depending on the track it might take you no more than a couple of hours to produce something that sounds decent, or it might take weeks and weeks (sometimes months, years!) of going through countless permutations of the same song, deleting complete arrangements and starting over again and again before you come up with a satisfactory result.

The track we are currently working on unfortunately falls in the latter category...Under the working title "Gentle" the song first came to life in Anders' home studio, where Anders produced a couple of initial drafts:

Version 1 First draft was based on a simple bouncy drum groove:

Gentle - Version A by subdelay

Version 2 Second version was more ambient with huge strings making up the bulk of the arrangement:

Gentle - Version B by subdelay

Version 3 Third version Anders returned to a more rhythmical groove:

Gentle - Version C by subdelay

...and this was the point where Anders felt he'd...had enough and decided to pass the track on to me. I personally really liked the first two versions and wanted to combine them somehow, but sadly a lot of the original elements where lost due to computer trouble, so I went to work with whatever was left and began adding some new elements.

Version 4 My first draft was a breakbeat driven affair which worked fairly well in the verse but sounded terrible once it got to the chorus:

Gentle - Version D by subdelay

Version 5 My second draft, the current version which...I am still not quite sure how I feel about! :/ It does have a "Sub Delay"-sound to it I guess (to the point of being "samey"??):

Gentle - Version E by subdelay

...Meh. Back to work!

Work in progress: Copenhagen Jam Session

Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to actually be in the same room, Anders and I cooked up this little dub-like track during my visit to Copenhagen last year. Copenhagen Jam Session by subdelay

Everything was basically improvised live on two computers running in sync (set up in Anders' living room). Although we started out having lots and lots of parts playing together all at once, after a bit of weeding out we came up with this rather sparsely instrumentated version.

Since this was done on two separate computers, we ended up each taking home "half" of the track (like one of those spy movies where two people hold a master key in order to prevent the accidental launching of a ballistic missile), but recently I finally got a chance to merge everything back together (missiles away!).

Whether this will ever be developed into a full length track is yet uncertain...comments are welcome! :)

All Sub Delay albums now available as CDs!

With the proof copy of Subsidence having just arrived this morning, all Sub Delay albums have finally been transferred to CD and are available for purchase now!

I find it hard to believe that we have actually been able to complete 4 full-length albums and are now working on our 5th! And all this without ever making a dime...:P Well, it's been a fun ride so far. Who knows, maybe someday we will actually be able to play that concert at Wembley Stadium we have been planning since elementary school.

In the meantime, the CDs look awesome and are a great way to get a cool Sub Delay keepsake and support us at the same time, so head on over to the album section and grab a disc (or four)!

Zonelet CDs now available!

The album "Zonelet" is now available in CD format including full color artwork and a 4-page booklet!

Marking Sub Delay's first full-length instrumental album, the CD can be purchased directly from Amazon's CreateSpace from today. Set to follow are the rest of Sub Delay's discography and of course the long-awaited new album so stay tuned!

Sub Delay 3.1 released!

Hurray! The new version of www.subdelay.com I wrote about a while back is finally done. Visually I have kept it in the same style as the previous version so the overall feel of the site should be familiar, albeit with a few notable changes: All music is free

Yep. All of it. Full-length streams and downloadable 192 kps mp3 versions of all tracks are now available for free. Tracks can be downloaded individually or as an album package complete with full-color artwork. I encourage everyone to download and share the free mp3s with as many people as possible! Of course, for those who care a little bit about sound quality, high quality 320 kps and FLAC versions are also available as paid downloads, with CDs going to become available soon.

Blog & Twitter aggregation

Anything posted on the blog, Facebook or Twitter related to Sub Delay will be aggregated and shown on the site so you can also stay up to date with the latest Sub Delay news.

New artwork & albums

As mentioned, we are consolidating all our music under the name "Sub Delay" and the artwork for the albums has been redone to reflect this fact. The two Zonelet EPs have been combined into one full-length album including a new track "Inlet". Also, album covers are now embedded into the audio files so they look great when played in iTunes or on your iPod/iPhone/iThing.

iPhone optimized interface

I love my iPhone just as much as the next guy so it only seemed natural that the new site should support this format. Accessing the site with an iPhone or iPod Touch will present you with an optimized interface that takes advantage of the device's touch screen capabilities.

No more Flash

A bit ironic given it seems like only days ago I was writing about implementing the site using Flex, but even though a working Flash version was almost completed, after a while I realized that it would be much more efficient to do the whole thing in good old HTML (thus the 3.1 version number).

If you haven't done so already go and check out the new site (and music!) at www.subdelay.com (if the new version doesn't show up at first try refreshing your browser a few times).

Mmmm....CD....

Freesscape live

Went to see Freesscape play live at a pub in Ebisu yesterday. First time we actually talked in person (I'm featuring their music on my website). Emi and Hiro, great people, great music.

Sub Delay 2.0

Bit of shameless promotion: The new improved version of Sub Delay is now online at www.subdelay.com. Although content-wise not much has changed yet, the framework of the site has been changed making it easier for us to update it in the future.

Introducing: Sub Delay

Together with my friend Anders I am starting a new online label/music shop, which also explains why I have been neglecting this page since I have been busy working on the new site.The site will officially open this Friday (16th) and the countdown has already begun at www.subdelay.com.

Deep Dish in Japan (again)

09 Dec 2005  Tokyo, Japan  @ Air - Official 'George is On' tour date. 
10 Dec 2005  Tokyo, Japan  @ Ageha - Official 'George is On' tour date. 

Hopefully I will be able to catch them on the 10th, after meeting with some friends in Yokohama that day.

YESSSSS!!!

I just happened to check Deep Dish's DJ schedule today and realized...They're coming to Tokyo tomorrow!!! Wuhuuuu!!

Mandolin concert

The university festival is still going on this week, and a friend of mine made me go see a mandolin concert in building 8 which was actually surprisingly good, even though I for some reason can't help laughing when I hear the words "mandolin concert".

Lexicon Avenue

Var på Womb i går for at se (høre) Lexicon Avenue. Nedenfor er nogle still-billeder fra en video jeg tog med mobilen (lige inden en vagt stoppede mig, hvorfor er det nu forbudt?). Næste måned kommer Sasha også til Japan, måske man skulle overveje at se det? Umftikka umftikka umftikka umftikka.

DJ Balvig

Well, så er halvanden times internet radio overstået, tusind tak til dem der gad at lytte på mit DJ-set! Lytterskaren var helt oppe p? 5 mennesker, Danmarks Radio watch out! (Men tæller JohnTheLamer og ManAtArms for 1 eller 2?) Det var egentlig rigtig hyggeligt at vide at folk hjemme i Danmark (og en enkelt i Korea) lyttede til musik jeg spillede på den anden af jorden imens de studerede, var på arbejde, spillede Starcraft eller blot hyggede. :D Jeg prøver nok en gang til en anden gang, skulle nogen være interesserede, og der vil naturligvis også næste gang som denne modtages ønsker over Messenger. :)

Internet Radio

Jeg afprøver i dag internet-radio ved at spille et lille DJ-set klokken 20:30 japansk tid (13:30 dansk tid) her fra min bærbare i min lejlighed. Hvis nogen er interesserede kan de klikke ind her (kræver Winamp eller lignende) omkring sendetidspunktet. Hvor godt det kommer til at køre/lyde ved jeg ikke, men det vil tiden vise.

Blade Runner

Jeg h?rte en sang i dag kaldet "Bladerunner". Den gik vist nogenlunde s?dan her: "You may be a replicant but maybe so am I. I know I should kill you, but I'm so hot for you". Fjollet.

Rock against Bush

Vol.1? Hvor laenge mon de kan malke det koncept...