All My Favorites

Alexey Sonar, co-founder of Intricate Records and one of the most remarkable artists of the label, is finally ready to present his latest work after the success of previous singles - «Flying Spirals», «Freedom», «Guestlist» and «Blacklist», oh his home imprint. This time Alexey presents his latest work «All Again». «The title of the track musically emblematizes my return to melodic progressive – a style which pleasant both for listening in any ambience and joyfully dancing in the clubs, – Alexey explains. – The remixers added their special touch, new colours to the reworks and covered almost all aspects of classic and modern progressive music ». A very remarkable remix was made by Envotion trio, Maastricht-based Dutch project by Hugo Alberts, Laurens Alberts and Stijn Halfens. Because of this particular union, Envotion’s creative work is frequently instantiated by triplicity of views on one and the same subject, and you can feel it in the remix Envotion did for Alexey. Hugo, Laurens and Stijn significantly lowered the tempo and moved «All Again» in the direction of progressive combined with cutting-edge nu disco sound with a lot of sunny summer mood inside. Hungarian musician Andor Kovács did a remix under his alias MDK — Andor’s version is, in contrary, more dancefloor-friendly and heavyweight because of broken beats — all together, this is a totally different point of view on «All Again», the label’s followers as well as clubbers and listeners will be able to hear the result very soon.

Alexey Sonar - All Again (Envotion Remix)

Taken from the alum 'Goodbye'.

How to describe Ulrich Schnauss's music? Let's see. It's shoegazing heroes. Slowdive headlining a rave. It's krautrock plunging headlong into the celestial raptures of the Cocteau Twins. It's U2 if Brian Eno had ousted Bono and commandeered the band in 1985. It's Balearic with a view of the Baltic instead of the Mediterranean. It's art-techno for the heart as well as the head. It's stadium chillout, as immense as a festival field and as intimate as a bedroom. It's celebration and catharsis. It's vapour trails and meteor showers. And it's very, very good.
 
So far, the quietly spoken German who creates this music has operated beneath the radar. His first two albums, 2001's Far Away Trains Passing By and 2003's A Strangely Isolated Place, worked their way into record collections by stealth. People heard tracks played by Rob Da Bank or Tom Middleton, or chanced upon him on stage at the Big Chill or Bestival, or heard about him from friends. However they discovered him, they were hooked. XFM's Lauren Laverne called A Strangely Isolated Place "a life changer everyone I have forced to buy it loves it."
 
Ulrich's third album, Goodbye, is his first for Independiente. It is also the end of a chapter in his sound. "I see these three albums as moving closer to something I wanted to do right from the beginning but didn't quite manage," he says. "Merging songwriting and indie elements with electronic music. I've tried to take all the ideas to the maximum."
 
So the ambient tracks are more spacious, the songs more memorable, the multi-layered, guitar-heavy tracks more ragingly psychedelic. Just listen to the obliterating rush of Medusa, or the cloudbusting dream-pop of Stars (performed by long-time collaborator Judith Beck). At times, there are over 100 different audio tracks playing simultaneously: a tower of song. No wonder Goodbye has taken three solid years of in the studio.
 
If Ulrich hailed from somewhere less boring, things might have been different. Fortunately, he was born in 1977 in Kiel, an unprepossessing city on Germany's Baltic coast best known for its naval base. It seemed to the young Ulrich as if everything important was happening elsewhere.
 
He explains, "I was talking to Andrew Sherriff from Chapterhouse and he told me that being from Reading had a significant influence because the place was so shit that you had to create beautiful music to get out of that state of mind. I'd say the same thing for me. Kiel is probably the most boring, ugly place in the world. The whole city is grey concrete. Places like that inspire you to create something that elevates you out of reality for a few minutes."
 

Bands didn't tend to play in Kiel, but at least the NME arrived regularly at the train station, albeit four weeks late, and the british forces radio station was good. Around 1990, Ulrich discovered electronic music and shoegazing simultaneously: the Orb alongside My Bloody Valentine, 808 State next to Ride, Shades Of Rhythm beside Slowdive. He also followed up every artist namechecked by LFO in their 1991 single What Is House?: Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, YMO His core ideas about music were forged there and then.
 
"For me that was the magic of those days," he says. "You couldn't say if a band was electronic or rock. I'm not interested in purist ideas. I like it when things you don't expect merge and mix and something new comes out of it."
 
And because he never got to see his heroes in the flesh, they maintained an aura of mystery and wonder. "You make up your own idea of how things are. For me that whole early '90s scene was something I imagined, like a fairy tale - an alternative reality to what I was experiencing."
 
Ulrich worked as a psychiatric nurse as part of his national service. After that, he moved to Berlin, where he tried in vain to become accepted by the electronic scene. "I felt really isolated. I desperately tried to integrate but it just didn't work. I was trying to marry what I wanted to do with what was trendy at the time and I always ended up with a foul compromise. So I thought I might as well do what I want to do."
 
After a few years of watered down, pseudonymous productions which he'd rather you didn't seek out, Ulrich released Far Away Trains Passing By on the dauntingly hip City Centre Offices label. He was amazed they even wanted to release it; more amazed still when it became a cult success. With its abundant charm and unabashed optimism, it was the most pleasantly surprising electronic debut since Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children.
Its more rock-influenced successor, A Strangely Isolated Place, received an even warmer response, from critics and other musicians alike. It led to Ulrich remixing some of his shoegazing heroes (Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, and Mark Gardener of Ride), as well as Depeche Mode, Justin Robertson, Lunz (Hans-Joachim Roedelius), and Longview.
 
Tired of the Berlin scene, Ulrich moved back to Kiel to make Goodbye. Most of his schoolfriends had moved away, so he didn't have to worry about distractions. His last two album titles spoke of isolation, but was that the pain of enforced loneliness or the comfort of voluntary solitude? Goodbye is equally ambivalent. "Emotionally, I find farewell situations interesting," he says. "Saying goodbye can be tragic or hopeful."
 
Like its predecessors, Goodbye constructs its own world, vast and vivid. When he's making music, Ulrich sees colours: one song might be red, another blue. Next time, he wants to "record an album based on more traditional electronic music structures - which could enable me to merge all these different influences beyond recognition". Meanwhile, this is the album he's been moving towards for over a decade: a sonic tour de force, an alternative reality, a life-changer.

Ulrich Schnauss - Stars

Release date: September 6th, 2010
Label: Enhanced Progressive

ASOT 469 Tune Of The Week! Arty's seen a phenomenal rise in the short 14 months since we gave him his debut release on Enhanced Progressive. "Man Of The Moment" is a term often used, but we feel there is absolutely no other way of describing the young Russian right now. Since his remix of Ferry Tayle & Static Blue's Trapeze and Tritonal's Utopia, Arty has been the producer everyone wants, and subsequent remixes for the likes of the scenes biggest names, Above & Beyond, Kyau & Albert and Paul van Dyk, and his Beatport No. 1 remix of D-Mad on Enhanced Progressive has cemented his position at the top of the newcomers from the past year. Back on Enhanced Progressive with another brilliant Original, Arty turns out two versions of Twilight Tonight. The Original Mix falls in a similar vein to that of his last two EP's on Enhanced, whilst the Arty Remode vamps up the atmosphere with Arty's trademark power chords with rich pads and synths sending the emotion into orbit. Remixes come from two of Enhanced Prog's favourites, MoodFreak and D-Mad. MoodFreak makes a welcome return after a lengthy hiatus, and he doesn't disappoint as he pushes the track towards the progressive house pigeonhole with his sparkly synths and groovy bottom end. D-Mad rips up the rulebook and goes for an entirely fresh approach from his usual style, combining stabby synths and bleepy melodies with the wonkiest bassline we've heard in a while! Essential stuff from the Man Of The Moment!

Buy on Beatport

Arty – Twilight Tonight (Arty Remode)

A patchwork of sounds and music from classic Disney films!

The Trouble | Pogo

Happy New Year-2005-by Shawn Hightower

Using samples from Alice In Wonderland (1951). Enjoy kiddos.

One Mushroom Too Many (Club Mix)

Get Ready was made when the war began between the U.S. and Iraq. I had a very bad feeling, so I advised everyone to "get ready".

Get Ready-by Shawn

Cast Away - Lost In You (Talamanca Remix)

Snow For Me was done in 2000, and  is one of my all time favorite creations. I will never forget that day it snowed so bad, my job was closed, so I was off all day and stayed home making music. And I made this tune to express how I felt that day.

Photo of Lyra by Kindnessgirl

Snow For Me-by Shawn Hightower

I can only hope that you will enjoy this tune I made nearly 15 years ago. I'm sorry to say, but this is just me and the MTV-Music Generator, with a few special audio samples. I made this in January of 2000, and just remembered it the other day. Poor quality and it sounds distorted because it is a copy from a mix CD I found it on.

Where's Prince-by Shawn Hightower

Made in 2001 with the MTV-Music Generator.

Images-by Shawn

Okay, here's a little tune I made back in the Summer of 2003, using the MTV-Music Generator.
(I'm pretty sure it was 2003, but may have been 2004.)

Summer of Tower by Shawn Hightower

Music I made in the days of the Mtv Music Generator, when I was pretending to make music.

The Great Pretender-by Shawn Hightower

Beatport - http://po.st/CDTDClubMix

ANJ346D
Release Date: 10th July 2015

Fresh from Breaking Bad on the Main Stage of Electric Daisy Carnival (which saw Bryan Cranston resurrect his infamous Walter White character on stage with the band in front of 80,000 people), UK trio Above & Beyond release their latest single 'Counting Down The Days'. 

Taken from their Billboard dance number #1 album 'We Are All We Need', 'Counting Down The Days' is also Above & Beyond’s first track to feature the vocals of former Mercury Music awards nominee Gemma Hayes. 

"We first came across Gemma through a bootleg mix that found its way on to our Group Therapy radio show ," said the band's Jono Grant. "Coming from a folk background, her voice has an honesty and emotion to it that really stood out from the pack and felt a perfect match for this song co-written with Victoria Horn." 

Set against a laidback summer groove, Gemma's hazy vocal tones perfectly capture the melancholia of the drifting relationship on the Radio Edit. 

A tried and tested favourite from their headline sets across the globe everywhere from the L.A. Forum to London's Brixton Academy, Above & Beyond's Club Mix is a high energy affair that showcases the immediacy and emotion of a peak time A&B set in style. 

Beatport

Above & Beyond feat. Gemma Hayes - Counting Down The Days(Above & Beyond Club Mix)

Promo Only DJ Tool sampling Freddie Hubbard's 'Little Sunflower' and Jason Jinx's 'Bring Back That Feeling'!

Played & Supported by Richy Ahmed, John Digweed, Hot Since 82, Riva Starr, Yousef, Chus & Ceballos, Sante & Sidney Charles, Anja Schneider, Josh Butler, Bontan, Waifs & Strays, Toni Varga (Elrow), De La Swing (Elrow)...

Free Download

Montel - Burnt Sunflower

ALPHA 9 collab with Spencer Brown “No Going Back” is out now 🌹🌹

Stream it here: https://anjunabeats.lnk.to/A9SBNGBtw

www.instagram.com/artymusic
www.twitter.com/arty_music
www.facebook.com/artymusic

Steam or Download

ALPHA 9 x Spencer Brown - No Going Back

Loser (Arons Reprise Mix)

Alpha 9 - Come Home (Original Mix)

Been a huge fan of this duo since day one..that's a humble bootleg of one of their tunes..

Pet Shop Boys - Home And Dry (Gai Barone Patternized Bootleg)

http://www.beatport.com/track/purple-original-mix/3154918

Roald Velden - Purple (Original Mix)

Hello and thank you for coming here to Mastertower Productions. Just so you know, this is not a production company. Mastertower was a comic book character once tried to create, when I was a kid. Then I just decided to keep using his name for things that I produce. But at one time it was a dream. So in a way, I am dreaming that I am helping artists produce more by listening and sharing their art with others. Because most of the time, it's the first time experiencing it. Just like the first time I heard Arty, or William Orbit, or London Grammar.