Melting Pot 05: Kettel

Kettel is Reimer Eising (born 1982), a self-described “elixir-brewing, camping-loving and musicmaking sorcerer-to-be.” He is well-known for his playful, spontaneous melodies and organic folk sounds similar to Aphex Twin, Jega, and Plaid.
He has also collaborated on several projects of various remixes and compilations on his many record labels.

Melting Pot 04: Wontime

Wontime has always been a constant and a key player in the Belgian drum & bass scene. He is all about the best tunes and super skills. Music wise anything goes, but it’s got to be funky! Wontime is known for spinning faster than his shadow and for making it look easy. He comes equipped with more than fifteen years of dj experience under the belt, and he knows how to make it count! Over the years Wontime has been spotted countless times behind the decks of nearly all of the big and small drum & bass events our country has ever known. He has performed next to all the international top drum and bass dj’s. ‘When you come across a spot where the grass doesn’t grow anymore, chances are Wontime has been reported spinning there sometime in the past’. Get out from behind your computer and check him out live, seeing and hearing is believing!

Melting Pot 02: Four Tet

Kieran Hebden was born in London to a South African-born Indian mother and a sociology lecturer father.  He attended Elliott School in Putney, where he formed the band Fridge with classmates Adem Ilhan and Sam Jeffers. The band signed a recording contract when Hebden was 15, and released their first album in March 1997.

Hebden began releasing material as Four Tet in 1998 with the 36 minute, 25 second single Thirtysixtwentyfive on Trevor Jackson's Output Recordings label. Later that year, he released a second single, the jazz-influenced "Misnomer". 1999's Dialogue, again on Output, was Four Tet's first full-length album release and fused hip hop drum lines with dissonant jazz samples. This was followed by the double A-side single "Glasshead"/"Calamine", which was to be Four Tet's last release on Output.

In late 1999, Warp Records released Warp 10 + 3: Remixes, a tenth-anniversary compilation of remixes of Warp tracks; Hebden contributed a remix of the opening track of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. This relatively high-profile exposure attracted new interest in Four Tet from fans of electronica and intelligent dance music, genres in which the Warp brand has a preeminent status.

In 2001, Four Tet's second album Pause was released on Domino Records and found Hebden using more folk and electronic samples, which was quickly dubbed "folktronica" by the media and press in an attempt to label the style (often also applied to artists such as Isan and Gravenhurst). Rounds was released in May 2003. It was Hebden's most ambitious album to date, incorporating diverse samples such as the mandolin on "Spirit Fingers" and a rubber duck on the closing track "Slow Jam". Three singles were released from the album: "She Moves She", "As Serious as Your Life", and "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth". This last single was released as an EP featuring remixes by electronica duo Icarus and Isambard Khroustaliov along with additional Four Tet tracks "I've Got Viking in Me" and "All the Chimers". An accompanying DVD featured all of Four Tet's videos to date. In addition, the closing track "Slow Jam" was featured in a U.S. Nike commercial in 2001 and 2002; Hebden edited the track on the back of the bus with his laptop while on a tour with Fridge.

At the beginning of 2003, Four Tet opened for Radiohead on their European tour. A remix of the song "Scatterbrain" from Radiohead's sixth studio album Hail to the Thief was released in November 2003 as a B-side to the single "2 + 2 = 5" and later included on their 2004 EP COM LAG (2plus2isfive). Furthermore, Hebden was among the people thanked by Radiohead in the booklet accompanying their 2007 In Rainbows "discbox" release.

A live album named Live in Copenhagen 30th March 2004 was released in April 2004 as a limited edition, available exclusively from the Domino Records website.

In March and April 2005, Four Tet performed two shows of improvisational music, in collaboration with jazz drummer Steve Reid, in Paris and London. He also appears on Steve Reid Ensemble 2005 album Spirit Walk. This collaboration was extended into a series of international tours, and the release of two albums, The Exchange Session Vol. 1 and The Exchange Session Vol. 2 over the course of 2005 and 2006.

His fourth studio album Everything Ecstatic was released on Domino on 23 May 2005. The video for the lead single, "Smile Around the Face", features actor Mark Heap. On 7 November 2005, Domino released a DVD version of Everything Ecstatic featuring video clips for each track of the album plus a CD with new material, titled Everything Ecstatic Part 2, which was later made available as an individual EP.

Hebden has also remixed, under the Four Tet name, tracks by a wide range of artists including Tegan And Sara, Madvillain, Andrew Bird, Bloc Party, Super Furry Animals, Beth Orton, Badly Drawn Boy, CYNE, The Notwist, Boom Bip, Battles, Kings of Convenience, Lars Horntveth, Bonobo, Rothko, The xx, Thom Yorke and Radiohead. On 25 September 2006, Domino Records released Remixes, a two-disc compilation of Four Tet remixes. The first disc contains twelve Four Tet remixes selected by Hebden, with the second disc comprising of every official remix to date (both by Hebden himself and by other artists) of Four Tet tracks, many of which had previously been available on vinyl only. A new EP, Ringer, was released on 21 April 2008.

In 2008, Hebden collaborated with composer David Arnold to write "Crawl, End Crawl", the song used for the end credits of the film Quantum of Solace.

In 2009, Hebden worked on a secret collaboration with Burial. The two track 12" was released with a plain black cover with no liner notes or details contained on the vinyl, other than the artists' names and the track titles: "Moth" and "Wolf Cub".

In November 2009, details of the fifth full-length Four Tet album were released. Entitled There Is Love in You and released on 25 January 2010, the album was preceded by a limited edition release of the 12" single "Love Cry".

Melting Pot 01: Sickboy

The tradition of combining perversity and playfulness into a true soundclash has never left post-modern music alone, acting as culture vultures ramping their way through carcasses of crispy produced megabits to vigour sampling of smirky headlines. Sickboy has more than upped the ante with this hairsplitting slab of digitized breakestral chaos, never suggesting melodies or functional rhythms it draws from but juggling without remorse on the dividing line between acceptability and grimy flavoured cynism. Crucially it's not the neglect of human consciousness, it 's the utter impulsive sheer excitement that blends in with a deliberate throwback of mostorted needle-sharping. Imagine a dedicated Manowar maniac with the 'wimps & posers leave the hall' principle, incarnated in a sparkling aural torturous display of mashed-up breakbeat galore. Gonna clear rooms quicker than a megaton fire alert with music that'll stir up any godforsaken industrial pigeonhole with a whirlwind…

Not only has Sickboy become one of the best recognized names in breakcore all over Europe, but he keeps improving his production by big steps with every releases. Following the "Musical Therapy" breakthrough from his noisy and dark past, "Times Infinity" speeds things again, and see this musician present a much more up-beat, party-oriented and mashed-up album, in which he evens uses some 8bits or old school breaks influences. A hard-as-concrete but definitely joyful and colorful great breakcore album. The force is strong with this one.

While Sickboy has made a name for himself with noisy, aggressive, and not-so-serious breakcore, this new album sees him taking a big step forward. Rather than throwing in your face a wall of breaks and noise, Sickboy's "Musical Therapy" slows things down, add quite a lot of melodies and sample, resulting in something which is somewhat reminiscent of of Kid606's "Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You". Less clich?, more mature, accessible and catchy than before, here's in my opinion the best Sickboy material so far. Recommended.

Sickboy's exhilarating, enthusiastic and insane-as-ever fifth full length album features this musician's most infectious, catchiest and most efficient material. While the noise might be gone for good, Sickboy's new clothes are of the colourful party kind. Mixing old school rave, new school electro, breaks and madness, Sickboy hits the nail on its head and invites everybody to play, rave and party non-stop. Refreshing!