Monster Loop has been selected to participate in a Microsoft promotion called “Playlist Seven” and we want your help! 50 songs (all different genres) were just posted at http://www.reverbnation.com/playlist7 You can go to this link and download 7 of the songs. The 7 most popular, based on downloads, are permanently featured by Microsoft. To prevent artists and friends from boosting stats, you have to become a fan of Microsoft. Basically, you just follow the link in this email, click the Facebook icon, and become a fan. Don’t worry – they’ll leave you alone otherwise, it’s simply to prevent voter fraud – no spam.
Our song, “Transcendental Sonata” – an electronic dance remake of Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor “Quasi una fantasia”, Op. 27, No. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1801 – is up now and will be up all week. One interesting part (well, to us), is… we get paid! We’ve already been paid a nominal fee for participation, but if we’re among the top 7 this week, we get paid substantially more. So please, download our song. As of this writing we are ranked #6 out of 50 contenders. We look at it this way, we’re not filthy capitalists, we enjoy the idea of having Bill Gates pay for our equipment.
Ciao for now!
Patrick & William of Monster Loop
Not too long ago, the members of Monster Loop recall a time back when we were young dj punks that finding good electronic music created in America was… how should one put it? a challenge. In fact, this member recalls playing a 9-hour dj set in northern California that featured only ONE track produced by an American artist. Nine hours! What was going on then?
Taste in music is, of course, relative. We recall carting around album bins filled with vinyl produced in Germany, produced in Belgium, in France, in the UK, hell, even Romania (and one helluva track it was – Robitiko Rejekto!)… and so forth and so on…and nary an American artist in the cue. Well, there was the acid house section in case the evening got weird (dj rule 1 – be prepared for strange, strange will happen). That section was loaded with some great American artists such as Phuture (DJ Pierre – creator of “Acid Traxx”). But even DJ Pierre was, purportedly, more awed by the UK techno scene, allegedly stating that it was there that he, for the first time, felt truly appreciated.
Several explanations for this phenomenon have been offered. Some claim that, just at the time electronic music was starting to take off in the U.S., the Seattle rock scene kicked in (yes, Nirvana, et. al.), effectively crushing the growth of techno in America at that time. Similarly, some say – and we tend to agree – that Americans are a tad too wedded to the concept of music as guitar, unable to move past the idea that music does not necessarily have to be created by an ensemble of guitarists and a drummer wearing faded tshirts and weathered jeans, gesticulating wildly behind a gyrating singer yelling about his/her particular neurosis. Geez, try therapy kid, it’s worth it. Perhaps this is overly critical – something we’re wary of doing, but it seems to us that this concept has become antiquated.
But times do change – ultimately the western world begrudgingly accepted the fact that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around, and ultimately Americans began to accept that electronic music was a vehicle that allowed them to hear five trillion more variations of sound than under other, more traditional, vehicles of sound (and let’s face it, that’s all an instrument is). And now we can proudly state that electronic music is alive and kicking in America. And, on that note, we offer for your enjoyment the following tracks, all made in the USA. Okay, so we included one of our own. We didn’t want to miss out on this one. Incidentally, the tracks are made by, in order, Burro Music (Texas), Aligning Minds (Maryland), Gregor (Illinois), Monster Loop (Georgia), C’Mongrooves (Florida), and Suremy (California).
