

Harmonious Discord 034 KiloWatts - Windsong **Out April 15th**

Jamie Watts aka KiloWatts has a long tenure and impressive body of work contributed to the Harmonious Discord imprint. He has been an integral component to the shaping of our sound over the years and we have in turn watched him become a household name for deep, mind-altering compositions. KiloWatts first appeared on the HD label with a glitched out breaky contribution to our 5th release in early 2004. Since then he has been featured in 3 artist ep’s, 2 remixes, and 1 sampler contribution.

It was to our extreme delight when we heard in early 2012 that KiloWatts was planning on releasing a year long project album focused on a return to his roots as a piano virtuoso. The project first appeared in Kickstarter campaign with a teaser video (see below) and was titled “Acceptitude”. The fans amassed and not only helped Jamie reach his goal but shatter his projections. It is this type of organic fan connection that makes us love artists like KiloWatts.

To celebrate our love for the album we chose one of our favorite tracks. “Windsong” is a hypnotic dream sequence blown away by brisk winds of change. It mixes precise sonic definition with happy accidents in time and space. We enlisted a couple of great artists to present their spin on this selection. Ill76, Vital, and label boss PointBender all bring their unique style to the remix project and with the inclusion of an exclusive new KiloWatts tune this release is guaranteed to bring a fresh breathe to the tech landscape.

Harmonious Discord 034 KiloWatts – Windsong Remixes

1. Windsong

2. Windsong (Vital Remix)

3. Windsong (Ill76 Remix)

4. End of Year (PointBender Remix)

5. Three’s Threes

The original over-arching theme to the “Acceptitude” album was to use a live piano to create musical compositions and marry them with electronic synthesis, effects, and technology manipulation. This created a colliding of analog and digital worlds to create a mosaic of emotions that can only be conveyed by partnering the unpredictability and warmth of analog instruments and the precision and control of a digital environment. These themes dance in and out of the album and regardless of what bpm or genre of music that you are currently on KiloWatts stays true to the methodology throughout. Nestled in the middle of the album is a track with gobs of organic dissonance while keeping a structure that is dance-floor friendly. Windsong mixes romantic piano melodies with middle eastern sounding digital synth manipulations. All are swept into a flurry of delay and reverb washes that increase in intensity and complexity. Our label resident half-step czar, Vital returns to the label with a deep 4/4 rendition of the original. Vital takes the original into late night jazz territory. The calm atmospheres and melodic stabs seem to have a hazey quality as they dance between slowly building percussive elements. This late night excursion intensifies with open hats and introductions of the original piano melody. Following the success of his recent contribution the yearly Discordian Dreaming Sampler, Ill76 is back to showcase a dubbed out warehouse techno tune. He takes a minimal approach keeping the late night attitude in focus with giant sounding dub sweeps and swung percussion that sounds like a mess of fall leaves being shuffled. The introduction of a sharp analog bass-line staples this pieces place in the deep underground. Label front-man PointBender in his infinite defiance decides to pick another hot selection from the “Acceptitude” album and provides a huge space techno revision of the song “End of Year”. PointBender’s take uses the melodic elements but in a techno friendly cadence with real club presence. Short mirrored glitches and big FM bass make this remix stand out among the house standards. We close this project with a very special exclusive contribution from KiloWatts in the form of a breaky/melodic song that you would be hard pressed to identify with any genre. This is what Jamie does best, bend the rules of historic genre classification, and this is why we look forward to many collaborations with him.


Harmonious Discord 034 KiloWatts - Three's Threes

Harmonious Discord Recordings has been the purveyor of offbeat melodies for DJ’s and producers “in-the-know” for over 20 years. Founded in 2001 by Moon Magnet productions front men Sean Anderson, Brad Denton, and David Brown; HD’s aim has been to provide a musical outlet for artists that continue to defy convention at every opportunity. Harmonious Discord’s name was devised to represent a collective rebellion against the sea of mediocre and brainless music polluting the airwaves. Its motto “Cacophony at its Finest” displays the contrast of what some view as noise (or cacophony) and what others view as music. The beauty of music is that it is subjective and the brilliance lies with the listener. We have strived in our 10 year run to combine the innovative and legendary sounds of Jazz and the new and basic sounds of the tech revolution, which is represented in our logo (a martini glass w/ sprocket).

Originally a vinyl only media Harmonious Discord released its first vinyl record in January of 2002 with a premier release by two of Harmonious Discords home-based artists; Ahman (David Brown) and newly added artist Litex (Eric Reeves). The project received warm regards but did not make a huge splash in the electronic music community. It wasn’t till their second release, a techy offbeat two tracker by Austin native Merrick Brown, that HD was written into the books of dance music history. The second release was canned by DJ notables from all over the world and quickly rose to the top of the balance chart. In 2003 we saw another huge hit with the release of Grey’s first HD release titled “Naughty Glances” and the floor filling remix by Seattle’s own Jacob London. The vinyl only production continued until 2007 when Harmonious Discord decided to embrace the digital revolution and joined forces with Beatport, the industries leader in digital distribution. Many years later our family has grown to encompass artists like Chakaharta and Patchen Preston who have forged a solid foundation using Harmonious Discord as their main production outlet. Harmonious Discord has forged onward with digital releases that span multiple genre’s and showcase some of the most forward thinking artists in today’s electronic music landscape.