Artist Features: A blog highlighting the artists we are currently featuring.
You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Artist Features: A blog highlighting the artists we are currently featuring.
You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Artist Features: A blog highlighting the artists we are currently featuring.
You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
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Our mission at Ableton is to support artists on their musical journey. When we launched the website in 2002, we chose to focus on contemporary electronic music because this is where our hearts lie, and this is where we felt we could contribute something unique. In many ways, our tastes have not changed much since then. We are still fascinated by all kinds of experimental electronic music, but we are also curious about all styles of music that inspire artists who use Ableton Live.
In recent years we have enjoyed getting to know more musicians who use Live in a wide variety of ways-to compose music for ballet, film and theater projects; to perform live with singers and songwriters; as part of jazz ensembles; in DJ sets; and even as part of classical orchestras. These musicians often find it hard to describe what they do, because there is no common language for such experiments. This inspired us to launch the Artist Features section, which aims to give a voice to a diverse range of artists, focusing on their creative process rather than a particular genre or style.
We hope you find the stories interesting – and if you have an inspiring story to tell yourself, please let us know!
Oftentimes we find ourselves premiering a new song, announcing a tour and writing about the artist’s career all at once. In this effort to give a thorough introduction or update, we often fall short in our ability to really describe the music itself.
So, rather than write another artist feature this week, I’d like to talk about the music itself. We’ve been featuring Pitchfork Festival artists all summer long and have had a number of great premieres–from Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle” to Savages’ “Shut Up”.
Below are songs that I’ve personally fallen in love with this festival season. They’re not all electronic–in fact they’re mostly not–but they’re all experimental in their own way: from the way they twist genre conventions to the sounds they use to evoke certain moods.
“Pleasure Pressure Point” by Factory Floor (from their album Factory Floor out 9/10 on DFA)
We are excited to feature the music of and interview with electronic music artist from Ottawa Canada, Adam Feingold. Adam is a brilliant and innovative electronic musician who has been producing compelling electronic music since 2005 – with three albums and five EPs. Since then he has developed an ever-evolving sound that has been described by Exclaim! magazine as “Prolific, but never repetitive”. His latest album (released in 2014) is entitled “Equal Distance”
In this interview Adam tells us about his new album, his creative process, operating the label “Soft Phase”, graphic design and more…
You have just released your new album entitled “Equal Distance”. What was your creative process like for this new release? Were there any particular instruments or sounds that you used on this album that you haven’t used before?
It was pretty much just my usual process at this point: I make a bunch of tracks, pick the ones I like, and then sequence them into an album when they’re all done. It usually takes me a while to finish them because it’s really hard for me to know if something is done or not, so I often work on the same track
To celebrate the release of their second album, Jeopardy, we asked Sweden’s finest synth-pop duo Niki & The Dove to talk us through five key tracks from their record collection.
We asked Malmo synth-pop duo Niki & The Dove to talk us through five key tracks from their record collections.
The duo, comprising vocalist Malin Dahlstrom and producer Gustaf Karlof, told us about the music that has shaped them as artists and people.
“It’s difficult to pick just five tracks,” they admitted. “But these are some of our favorite songs that helped us get where we are today.”
The best electronic music of the year so far. It’s true that we’ve barely scratched the surface of 2016, but there has already been a bounty of awesome music. Below, find our favorite albums and tracks from the first quarter of the year.
The best electronic music released this week. Every week, our editors publish a list of their favorite new tracks, which you can stream here on our site or via our SoundCloud playlist. This week’s selections include a new track from FKA Twigs’ upcoming record, plus cuts from DJ Shadow, The Avalanches and more.
The best electronic music in the history of forever. We’ve been publishing lists of our favorite electronic tracks for years now — but this is an entirely different beast. Below, you’ll find a list of our top 100 favorite tracks — single greatest moments in electronic music history, as chosen by us.
Famous DJs share their personal stories in this ad campaign for Absolut Vodka
Experimental electronic music is a diverse and unique genre of music. It includes a wide range of artists, including popular acts such as Boards Of Canada and Aphex Twin, as well as more obscure artists like The Caretaker and William Basinski.
The term experimental electronic music is generally used to describe music that uses synthesizers, samplers, effects units, computers, and other modern electronics to create original new sounds in ways that are not usually possible with traditional musical instruments.
Experimental electronic music originated from the work of early 20th-century composers such as Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen who experimented with new musical instruments and recording technologies. Composers like Pierre Schaeffer developed musique concrète by manipulating recordings of everyday sounds on reel-to-reel tape machines. In the 1950s, John Cage explored the use of chance operations in his compositions, while Electronic Music Studios in the UK developed an analog synthesizer capable of producing complex sounds with a degree of control over things like pitch and timbre that was not possible using traditional musical instruments.
In the 1970s, electronic instrumentation became widely available to composers at all levels of experience. In addition to its use in avant-garde music