Artist of the Day: Casino Versus Japan

Casino Versus Japan is the recording name for Erik Kowalski (born May 5, 1973), a United States-based electronic musician from Lexington, Kentucky by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who produces intelligent dance music (IDM for short) with baroque melodies and distorted trip-hop beats.

As a young boy in Wisconsin he recorded episodes of television series Miami Vice, sampling Jan Hammer’s music, later collecting them, and playing them over the backdrop of other musical genres. After a brief stint with model railroading such experiments with tape grew less obvious. Samples were collected from a range of sources, and eventually mixed with meagre homespun recordings. Later attending Lincoln High School in Manitowoc, Kowalski would often be found playing the grand piano in the empty auditorium rather than attending class, slowly teaching himself chord progressions. During this same period, he also learned the basics of other instruments including guitar and drums in an effort to put together simple songs. By then, other influences began to take hold (Last.fm, 2010).

You can listen to Casino Versus Japan's music at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Casino+Versus+Japan



Released Albums:
Casino Versus Japan - Go Hawaii
Casino Versus Japan - Whole Numbers Plays The Basics
Casino Versus Japan - Casino Versus Japan
Casino Versus Japan - Hitori + Kaiso 1998 - 2001
Casino Versus Japan - Night On Tape

Reference: (2010). Casino Versus Japan. Last.fm. Retrieved from
http://www.last.fm/music/Casino+Versus+Japan

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Artist of the Day: Mux Mool

“I know it’s electronic music,” Brian Lindgren says, “but sometimes I feel like an old-timey traveling musician with an M-Audio Trigger Finger instead of a guitar.” As Mux Mool, Lindgren has been criss-crossing the country by himself for years, collecting records, loops, and samples, and rocking parties in towns both large and boondock-small. Lindgren is a self-confessed nerd to the bone, an incurable doodler, a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan; he lives on energy drinks and barely sleeps, spending his days working on music and his nights absorbing Internet memes by the hard-drive load. Mux Mool’s homespun electro hip-hop is the product of an introverted mind, an extroverted imagination, and a bottomless cultural appetite.

Lindgren’s life in music began in Minnesota with a cheap toy sampling keyboard (“I remember being so fascinated by how much a sound changed when you dropped it down several octaves”). Flash forward a few years (and more than a few keyboards), and the teenage Lindgren began recreating his favorite sounds—Dilla’s stutter-step beats, classic video-game music, abstract electronic noise—using software and digital effects, glazing them with tape hiss and vinyl static. An early Mux Mool track, the slinky strut of “Lost and Found,” was discovered by Moodgadget Records and released on their Rorschach Suite compilation, eventually finding its way onto iTunes’ Best of 2006 Electronic list. A string of EPs, tracks, and remixes followed, including the song-a-day project Drum EP, the grimy talkbox anthem “Night Court” on the Ghostly International/[Adult Swim] comp Ghostly Swim in 2007, and the Ritalin-fueled “Ballad of Gloria Featherbottom” on 2009’s Moodgadget-curated Nocturnal Suite on Ghostly. Mux Mool’s 2010 full-length debut, SKULLTASTE, is the culmination of years of toil and experimentation, gathering Lindgren’s myriad talents and obsessions into one gloriously sprawling document.

As for where he got that name, Lindgren offers up an oddly telling story: he was dubbed Mux Mool by a band he admired, after he posted a blog on MySpace soliciting fans to submit names for his project. “Mux is short for ‘multiplexing,’ which is the streaming of many types of information through one channel,” he explains, “and Chac-Mool is an ancient Meso-American statue of a reclining man.” A technologically complex breed of synthesis and a timeless piece of indigenous art. Sounds about right (Last.fm, 2010). 

You can listen to Mux Mool's music at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Mux+Mool


Released Albums:
Mux Mool - Just Saying Is All
Mux Mool - Drum Ep
Mux Mool - Viking Funeral Ep
Mux Mool - Skulltaste

Reference:
(2010). Mux Mool. Last.fm. Retrieved from http://www.last.fm/music/Mux+Mool

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