(v)
(v_i)
(version_industries)

caspar was recently interviewed for monocle magazine. here’s an excerpt from the piece -

describe your work with bands.
i am responsible for visually creating their sound. i get images in my head from listening to their music and create everything from sleeves, posters and videos to documentaries. i only work with bands i like.

is art more influential in the music business now?
record labels have faded. bands work with us on artwork and we in turn can become a catalyst for them working with each other. it’s a creative nucleus. we all talk online but it’s as though we’re meeting up in a bar. it’s unusual that so many bands are grouped around us, linked by interest in our design ethic rather than necessarily sharing a musical theme. i’m treated like a band member – i’ve even gone on tour.

we’d like to thank belinda bamber for conducting such a wonderful interview, and of course joshua simpson for taking the great photographs.

you can read the rest of the interview here. the magazine itself is in stores now.

this is something new we’ve been working on with SONOIO. stay tuned.

hello again.

i’ve also listed a few of my favourite tracks from this month to check out.

so far this month:

richard skelton – grange
richard skelton – marking time – type records

richard skelton’s seminal ‘marking time’ finally gets a re-release on type records. this is an album of great, haunting beauty & has been a really effecting listen over the last year or so. richard’s music mainly consists of the interplay between bowed piano, strings, piano & location recording ambiance. richard runs his own label, sustain release, that put’s out bespoke cd packages to order for all his personal & side project releases. it’s worth checking out the packaging at his website, here. the thought that goes into the design is so spot on with the music he creates.

clint mansell – welcome to lunar industries (three year stretch….)
clint mansell – moon sountrack – black records

clint mansell’s soundtrack to film, moon has just come out here in the uk. the film however has not. bloody typical. same thing happened with darren aronofsky’s, the fountain. the only upshot of this was that i could fully immerse myself in the music before seeing the film & i felt this really helped with the emotional impact that the fountain managed to deliver. it’s also good that the others at the new york arm of version industries that have seen moon, are good at keeping spoilers to themselves!

floating points – j&w beat
floating points – j&w beat e.p – planet-mu

brand new signing to planet-mu, floating points has already been tearing things up with his ‘love me like this’ e.p from earlier in the year. this is an awesome two track e.p that weaves heavy melodic synth work into the already label established dubstep sound. tight drum work & a wicked hook on the first track made me pick this one as my last track of the month.

so that’s it for this month! next month they’ll be another bunch of other tracks that i think deserve some respect (i’m looking at you already, falty dl!)

the second site from our ongoing collaboration with nashville’s grandvista music is now live. it’s the new online home of shelean newman, a singer also from tennessee who we’ve had the great pleasure of working with over the last month or so. dig in.

hello again.

another month, another load of great tracks that hit all the right spots. what makes this post a little bit different to my last is that i will be sharing a piece of my current personal musical output with you.

for those that don’t know, i mainly make electronic based music under the moniker, accelra. i’ve been making music for as long as i remember but really started getting in the production side of things around ’97. since then i’ve shared bills with artists such as venetian snares, ital tek, datach’i, doormouse, global goon & many others. i thought it would be nice to share one of my recent unreleased tracks as a special treat.

also i have collected a few choice cuts from this month & beyond that i think kick-start the summer sound for this year.

so far this month:

boxcutter – sidetrak
boxcutter – acrecibo message – planet-mu

the first track from boxcutter’s brand new album on planet-mu. this for me sums everything boxcutter does sonically within one track. i also recommend checking out his last two releases, glyphic & oneiric for more passionate, melody driven dubstep.

georgia’s horse – as it stops raining (various production mix)
various production/georgia’s horse – as it stops raining ep – fire records

blinding new collaboration between the ever resourceful various production and their fellow label mates on fire records. this track harkens back to the cross genre clash of various’ debut album ‘the world is gone’. great stuff. strong sleeve design from artist david bray, a long time collaborater with various production.

mark pritchard – ?
mark pritchard – ? ep – ho hum

after delivering an excellent full length under his other pseudonym, harmonic 313 on warp records recently, mark pritchard is back again with a more ambient focused release. stunning use of space in the opening track ‘?’.

greetings.

my name is gavin & i create all the audio & music (original & remix) work here at version. i’ve decided to come out of the woodwork and share a few things about my music (personal & work related) and highlight a few of my favourite tracks right now. i’m going to make this a regular thing so you’ll get a chance to listen to a lot of my unreleased personal music alongside my odd tangential music production thoughts (ie. general moaning).

here we go…

i’ve just got up and running on logic pro 8 from my halcyon days on modplug tracker. I’ve always found it difficult to pull myself away from the comforting vertical step editing and move into the more daw related environments of logic, pro tools, cubase & sonar. after a brief stint with nuendo in which I managed to loose half a years worth of personal work to a glitch, i felt I had been burned enough. luckily logic is great! (touch wood)

i had one friend recently describe the programming pattern editor in modplug as that of entering mindless data into an excel spreadsheet. no amount of explanation of step gate sequencing of individual samples helped move his opinion. i see no problem entering hex values to make music, i mean we do it to control colours on a website!

anyway. i hope to be able to share a few personal music projects over some of my updates, that aren’t the client ones you might have heard if you’ve visited some of our recent websites (such as house of jackie brown).

so far this month:

toasty – the knowledge (untold remix)
hfrmx001ii – hotflush recordings

untold’s awesome remix of the already wicked original, released back in 2004. it’s also worth checking out the other remix of ‘the knowledge’ by vex’d on the previous remix ep.

faunts – feel.love.thinking.of
faunts – feel.love.thinking.of – friendly fire recordings

the opening title track to their second album. i really got into these guys after hearing their epic 80′s synth workout “m4” on the end credits of the mass effect game.

jamie vex’d – radiant industry
jamie vex’d – in system travel ep – planet-mu

the first official release from one half of vex’d on planet-mu. this for me is the standout track from his ep.

la roux – in for the kll (skream’s “let’s get ravey” mix)
la roux – in for the kill – polydor

it’s not often that a remix outdoes the original but I think skream has managed it.

next time I’ll post one of my new tracks once my new reference headphones have broken in!