lasercave | fine tangible and intangible media

Welcome to my Lasercave blog, “Basic Beats.” I intend to post things I’ve been making and working on here. Since I’m working from home and being mostly unemployed these days I have a lot of time to work on my “projects.” To remain motivated these days in my stoned-out, existential-crisis ridden life I’ve been spurring myself on to create one thing a day that I could get at least a Creative Commons license on at some point. It doesn’t really have to be much. A computer beat, the beginnings of a song, progress in band practice, a photoshop project, a mix for a friend. It’s probably bad for my end game, because a lot of the time I don’t go back to a project I started, but this has helped me a bit keep some creative focus and helps give me a sense of what I want to be doing in the near future with my life. Lasercave has already been a venue for some of my stuff (podcasts, video w/ Jade and Unsettling of America chapter coming soon) so I figure that this “Basic Beats” thing is just an extension of what Tim and everyone already have going on here.

Also, I think I’m gonna start a mixtape club on this page. Of course it’s not gonna be a “mixtape” club for real because MP3s are so many degrees removed from cassettes but I’ll give you downloadable .zip files with playlists and colorful homemade pictures. Think of the .zip as a gift similar to a mixtape. You open it up and it’s a little package of goodies with a bunch of songs and colorful album art. I’ll probably write an accompanying blog post sincerely trying to figure out what it is I like about the music I put on each mix.
Sometimes the mixes will be themed and other times it’ll just be songs that I like or have been listening to recently. I intend to get back into producing longer format mashups and mixes like the 2 Bowlpack B podcasts but right now my version of Ableton Live 5 (the software that makes it all possible) isn’t working on this computer.

So anyways, I figured I’d provide a first mix for this site launch. This “Vol. 1″ is focused mostly on electronic dance music that, abashedly, I admit I love. Most of this stuff is very stripped down, meticulously produced music, constructed from what sometimes sounds like an intentionally minimal pallette of digital sounds. I guess it’s House Music, but who really cares? I wanted to do something more generic and accessible for this mix so if this isn’t your cup of tea forgive me. I intend to do more accessible comps in the future. Anyways, enjoy.

http://www.verzend.be/v/7462215/Basic_Beats_01.zip.html

If there are any problems accessing this link let me know.

-Jeffrey