My 2012 in review :-) Here comes 2013 !

So 2012 draws to a close and hope y’all had a good one, let’s make 2013 an even better one !

Looking back at the year for me I have to say it was an interesting one in terms of the different areas I’m involved in.

Some of the highlights for me:

February I remixed the track ‘Push It To The Limit’ by Paul Engemann from the Scarface soundtrack and got to meet & interview one of my all time heroes DJ Sneak.

Also during February we started work building the XLR-Radio studios, a job we had envisaged taking a few weeks but it took a lot longer !

April I worked on a remix of the song ‘Shine’ by Sabriye a singer originally from Turkey now living in the United States. That remix came about from a discussion on Twitter with Sabriye about her new song and in the end I produced two remixes each with a very different flavor.

May Went in the mix again on my buddy Paul Webb’s show ‘Balance’ on Spin South West FM, incidentally check out his show each and every Friday night 9.45pm – 12.45am for the latest club sounds.

June The big one for June was the launch of XLR-Radio after months of preparation.  A variety of bands and DJs played for launch day and a lot of fun was had by all. We launched XLR in the two bars beneath our studios, The Blind Pig & Dr John’s.

Also in June from a production side of things it was mash up time again and I decided to go for something completely different.  I took the track ‘Honky Tonk Angels’ by Kitty Wells (from the Devil’s Reject’s soundtrack) for a spin, giving it a country hip-hop vibe. Mashing up the video also as always was a lot of fun.

July – November

It was all XLR work, 7 days a week ! No time for anything else … Due to the sheer amount of work inolved in keeping the station on the air as November came around it was decided to put the station on hold for the time being with a look to a relaunch in early 2013.

December Entered the Snow Patrol, ‘Fallen Empires’ remix competition and my entry appeared online on December 17th, fingers crossed now on the outcome.  I’ll have to wait until late January to find out how that goes…something to look forward to I guess !? It was a pleasure to work on the track whatever the outcome and look forward to getting involved in more of these competitions in 2013.

Also in December I started working on the new album from Austin, Texas singer-songwriter Kevin Brown’s new album ‘Big Moon In The Sky’. I’ll be producing this album putting my twist on his already established sound, the first track ‘The Trail’ I posted online towards the end of December. This is another project I’m looking forward to getting into early 2013.

December was a busy month, as the world didn’t end and we were all still here on the 22nd I re-joined Paul Webb on Spin South West for another mix to close out the year.

Throughout the year..

A variety of other things happened throughout the year including DJing for The Special Olympics fundraiser on O'Connell St, Limerick and Gay Pride 2012 @ Home, Baker Place, Limerick.  I played these along with a variety of other gigs including a new dance night which kicked off late in the year in Charlie Chaplin's which looks set to be one to watch for 2013.

I also did a interviews for a few different documentaries relating to DJing & Music Production and kicked off a new regular radio show on XLR 'The Temple' which will return in 2013.

So there you have it..that sums it up for me in terms of music production & DJing ! Here is to an even more productive 2013!! Let's do this !

The fintanmoloney9436.live-website.com/ stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Knife Party Mixmag Mix – ‘Clever Title Like Deadmau5 Would Use’ Mix

When it comes to producers Knife Party, The Australian duo who form part of Pendulum really blew me away this year. So much so in fact that I’ve named ‘Internet Friends’ as my dance track of 2012..its epic and never get tired of hearing it.  Check out anything by these guys, its all awesome electro / dubstep goodness.  Their Soundcloud page is a great place to listen to them, they are also on Spotify with all their productions on there.  They have a new EP on the way for early 2013 and frankly I cannot wait to hear it.  Meanwhile if you want a good idea of how they sound a bunch of their own tracks and other club bangers are contained on this mix they did for the November ‘2012 edition of Mixmag magazine.

Turn it up loud and enjoy, maybe warn your neighbors / flatmates in advance… this is what I’m talkin’ about 😉

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/68550101″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

‘Balance’ Mix – Spin South West, Dec 2012

Friday December 21st I was back on the ‘Balance’ show with Paul Webb on Spin South West FM for a guest mix slot.  Kicking off gangsta house style I worked my way up to some of the full on electro bangers of the moment with my current remix of Snow Patrol ‘Fallen Empires’ in the middle.

The full track listing and download are on house-mixes.com, you can find the official mix page here

Snow Patrol ‘Fallen Empires’ (Fintan’s Run To The Fire Remix)

So recently Shure sponsored a remix competition giving producers a chance to rework Snow Patrol’s track ‘Fallen Empires’ which is the title track from their latest album. Really enjoyed working on this project and I’m really pleased with how my take on it came out. It was quite a challenge taking on the full vocal track and giving it my Electro House twist while trying to keep the overall vibe in the track intact.

The original clocks in at 147 BPM and here I take it down to 129.7 BPM to bring it more in line tempo wise to the material I play when DJing. The stems (original song parts) supplied were of the highest audio quality (24Bit / 96Khz) and I think you can really hear that in the production as I kept the whole project at that high rate. Previously every other track I’ve worked on I’ve used the standard studio rate of 16Bit / 48Khz but I think from here on in I’ll be working at the higher rate.

The crisp treble and punch in the bass is what its all about peeps 😀

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71546890″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Sample Hip Hop Doc 2012 by Jeff Lent

Over the summer I and a few other Irish producers were involved in a short documentary on the use of sampling in music production. The documentary was produced by Limerick director / editor / producer Jeff Lent and was filmed at a variety of locations around Ireland.  Jeff put this together for a College project and recently released it on YouTube so now I can feature it here 🙂

Documentary:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/1DTmyZs9vZ0]

 

The track of mine featured in my segments is called ‘Ya Don’t’:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ghqyZXYVQ-0]

 

XLR-Radio launched June 30th, 2012

XLR covers a wide variety of music which is not catered for on existing local radio stations and we offer support for local artists and DJs to get their music or sets heard alongside International artists and DJs. Our music policy is primarily based around an Indie – Electro – Hip Hop – Dance format with specialist shows taking over in the evenings.

XLR broadcasts from 31 Thomas Street, Limerick City in Ireland.  Along with XLR in the building you can also find a photography studio (Ken Coleman), a tattoo parlour (High on Ink by Ulrich Hueber) and two bars: The Blind Pig and Dr Johns.

XLR is proud to offer personality driven radio, something we feel is sorely lacking in the current radio market in Limerick. Our shows will be built around the individual musical tastes and personalities of our presenters. We feel it is vital that each presenter has a platform to showcase their knowledge and genuine love for their style of music.

XLR boasts a line-up of presenters and contributors all with a background in many aspects of the Limerick music scene, from prominent local musicians, club DJs, journalists, bloggers, and Internet TV personalities along with established radio presenters.

The music policy of the station will primarily focus on Indie – Electro – Hip Hop – Dance outside of which specialist shows will include Metal, Rock, Ska and more.

XLR’s music policy will reflect the style and range of music enjoyed in the Limerick today. We will play the music you hear in the clubs, the bands you go to see live.  The station will do its upmost to seek out the newest trends emerging in the local scene. The station intends to be the real soundtrack to Limerick City.

The management team at XLR have 30 years of radio experience combined in both terrestrial FM radio and online radio markets and bring this in to all areas of what we do to ensure that the listener is always no. 1.

XLR is unique in having the highest sound quality in Ireland for an internet based station due to the superior nature of our AAC sound encoding, multiband compression and stereo enhancement. This offers crystal clear top end and well-rounded bottom end on the bass.  Which when either delivered over a large speaker system or a mobile phone speaker or headphones always sounds good.

The full schedule of shows and presenters will be announced soon on-air, on our website, Facebook and Twitter pages.

As part of our launch daytime in the studiio we had Ray Fennelly (Live 95FM, Regional Hospital Radio, Wired FM, RLO), Enda Caldwell (XFM London, Today FM, FM104, Radio Luxemburg, Spin Dublin, Atlantic 252) along with XLR presenters. On the decks spinning live in Dr John’s we had Phil Wade, Deep Pete and Greenwood and downstairs live in The Blind Pig we had the Crow Black Chicken album launch. All of which was carried live on the day.

XLR can be heard on our website and mobile website, via the free tuneIn radio app on iPhone/Pad/iPod, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Samsung Bada & Palm devices. XLR can also be accessed on Google TV and Yahoo TV on your Smart TV via tunein.  Dedicated XLR apps for iPhone/iPad/iPod and Android are currently in development and slated for a mid-August release.

To keep up to date with everything XLR you can access our website: www.xlr-radio.com our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/xlr.radio and our Twitter page: www.twitter.com/xlr_radio.

For all press related enquiries please contact ray@xlr-radio.com (Schedules / Advertising / Daytime Manager) or fintan@xlr-radio.com (Head of Music & I.T. / Evening Manager). For requests or info related to the current show on-air please contact studio@xlr-radio.com

Kitty Wells – ‘Honky Tonk Angels’ (Fintan’s Rejected Devil’s Remix)

Some of the best ideas for remixes seem to come up late at night at parties !  Late at night / early morning we were listening to random old songs and ‘Honky Tonk Angels’ by Kitty Wells came on.  The suggestion was made to me that this would be a good one to remix so of course I decided to give it a go recently.   I had no idea where I was going to take this 50’s country track but from the early stages I decided my usual Electro / House sound wouldn’t work here.  So instead (and nicely timed for the Summer) I went with a country / hip hop vibe very different from my usual remixes.  So kick back and open up a few cold ones and chill to this one 🙂

The original was  featured on the ‘Devil’s Rejects” soundtrack, one of my favourite Horror movies of all time, directed by Rob Zombie.

YouTube link:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/PfjNHh8zrCw]

‘Balance’ Mix – Spin South West, May 2012

Friday May 11th I was back on the ‘Balance’ show with Paul Webb on Spin South West FM for a guest mix slot.  Plenty of bass as usual here so turn it up loud and watch out for your speakers exploding lol.

Download

The full track listing is on house-mixes.com, you can find it here

Erdem Kinay feat. Sabriye ‘Shine’ Fintan’s remixes

Recently over on Twitter I was contacted by Sabriye Togar about her new single ‘Shine’.  I thought the original had lots of remix potential so we discussed me remixing it. I ended up doing two versions, one is more dark electro sounding and one is more commercial club sounding. It was a fun and challenging project to work on and enjoyed it as I thought the vocal was very strong.

‘Shine’ (Fintan’s Girl In The Shadows Remix)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb9p8iHxN0Q]

‘Shine’ (Fintan’s Club 18-30 Remix)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7my6ZtAFcA]

‘Shine’ (Original)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7yFryxtXXo]

Both of my remixes can be downloaded from my Soundcloud page in full quality for free.

http://soundcloud.com/fintan_moloney