Nov
2008

Remixes - The Archives (2001-2006)

This is a one-page overview of some of the remixes that I made before the re-launch of the website and that I still consider worthy of sharing with the public.

Evoke2006 Theme - Loozas “Züge schrubben” Remix (2006)

Evoke has a theme each year and a contest about remixing that theme. In 2006 I finally could use an old Buddy-Rich-Sample waiting for ages on my harddrive to make this remix. I made 5th place with this one.

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Download: looza_-_zuge_schrubben.mp3

Vitaxin - “Music Under Pressure” (Looza Remix) (2006)

Vitaxin posted a track called “under pressure” at the Renoise-Board which somehow made me want to remix it because of its astonishing bassline at one point of the track.
I ended up with a very warm minimal-techno-ish approach to the whole thing.

Original: vitaxin - music under pressure

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Remix: vitaxin - music under pressure (loozas remix)

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Download: vitaxin_-_music_under_pressure_(loozas_remix).mp3

Gabriel Ananda - “Ihre persönliche Glücksmelodie” (Looza Remixes) (2006)

Made for a remix competition which I didn’t win. :)
The whole thing was abit of an experiment, I made the first remix mostly under the influence of alcohol, the second while being stoned which in turn lead to two different remixes, one being for a glossy, shiny big club, the second one more for a dark, moody basement. Hence the names.

Because of copyright-reasons I can’t offer you to stream the full tracks, only a small snippet.

Gabriel Ananda - “Ihre persönliche Glücksmelodie” (Loozas Wodka and Red Bull Remix)

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Gabriel Ananda - “Ihre persönliche Glücksmelodie” (Loozas Weed and Chocolate Remix)

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Machine Drum - “Disa Bling” (Loozas Disa Destruction Remix) (2006)

This Remix got published on M3rck Records, please check CD/Vinyl-Releases.

Nine Inch Nails - “Only” (Loozas Nailing The Floor Remix) (2006)

Trent Reznor was so kind to release the tracks of this song on Acidplanet and call it a Remix-Competition.
I got in very late and was in the middle of doing the remix when I checked the page and realized that about 3000 people had taken part so far, at that point I kinda lost interest and simply wrapped the thing up. But its still a nice little floorsmasher, if anyone would play it, that is.

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Download: NiN_-_only_(loozas_nailing_the_floor_remix).mp3

Good Guy Mikesh - “Drum Into My Life” (Loozas Remix) (2005)

Good Guy Mikesh is a singer/producer from Leipzig/Germany who is doing very interesting clubmusic featuring is own vocals.
Back a few years ago when he was still trying to find is sound he asked me to do a remix based on an early version of “Drum Into My Life”, which I did.

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Download: good_guy_mikesh_-_drum_into_my_life_(loozas_remix).mp3

Krii - “Neo” (Looza Remix) (2004)

A previously unreleased remix for my old labelmate from tokydawnrecords, Krii. The track itself is actually not very good, some people describe it as being way too “full”, but I still love the drumwork very much.

Original: Krii - Neo

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Remix: Krii - Neo (Looza Remix)

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Download: krii_-_neo_(loozas_remix).mp3

Fräuleinwunder - “Nie Monoton” (Loozas Lumbago Remix) (2003)

This Remix got published on Universal Jazz Records, please check CD/Vinyl-Releases.

The Caine - “Controlfreak” (Loozas Puzzle Remix) (2001)

Remix for local rockband “The Caine”.
The most interesting thing of their track was the bassline, so it became the center of the song, with a nice high-resonance lowpass on it to make it sound “bubbly”.
The vocal had to be infamous “mickey-mouse-style” since back then there was no proper pitch-shifting avaiable.
Done in Madtracker 2 and released on the “Der Elektronische Sonntag” Compilation.

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Download: the_caine_-_controlfreak_(loozas_puzzle_remix).mp3

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Nov
2008

SquareSaw

SquareSaw is a little project about remixing old gametunes, mainly from the C64, but also NES/SNES.

This project started under a different name and got quite far in a very short time, including a few livegigs and such, but the whole thing came to a grinding halt due to different reasons.

There are still plans for the future and a shitload of Samples/Sourcefiles to work with, but at the moment all there is are some pretty amazing tracks and a Myspace-Page that you can use to make friends.

As for the tracks, the best ones are:

Last Ninja 3 Intro Remix (C64)

Quite an amazing track that I am still very proud of, I think I managed to blend the C64-Sounds very nicely together with a Dub-inspired approach and made a really flowing hypnotic tune.

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Maniac Mansion Remix (C64)

The insane theme of Maniac Mansion in an instrumental hiphop-context.

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Turrican Level 5 Background Music Remix (C64)

The original track is really astonishing, it appears to be originally written for a speedmetal-band or similar, it’s just amazing powerchord-progressions all the way with a bassline and drums on the second voice (third voice is reserved for ingame-FX). I made a nice little D&B-Smasher out of this.

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Super Mario 2 Character Select Screen Remix (NES)

And finally the tune that was most fun to do. Most people probably never heard this one because you usually just select your character and start the game. For this I went back to a concept of mine that I have been doing for several projects so far and that I like to call “PC-Punk”. The Drums and Guitars are VST-Plugins, the Bassguitar has been recorded. Really nice little smasher.

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Filed as: Music, Sideprojects, Squaresaw. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark
Nov
2008

Mindcolors (2006)

An interactive picture/sound/space art-installation dealing with the fact that art usually changes with the (physical) viewpoint of the recipient. The Installation has a built-in camera that analyses the movement and position of people watching it and generates colours, shapes and an ambient soundtrack out of that data.

The original concept was done by Matthias H.  Risse (aka “Xenon”), Markus Wessollek, Benedikt Brandhofer, three art-students from the artschool Bielefeld.

Matthias asked me concerning the audio-part, the goal being a loopable 4-track soundscape which would be fun to play with. I came up with a ambient soundscape that was divided into four parts parts named C-M-Y-K based on frequencies.

There is a german website about this installation and a promotional video that you can watch.

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Nov
2008

Unterdruck (late 90s)

Unterdruck was a project of mine which focused on some of the ideas of repitive/minimal music on a sound-basis (instead of compositional repetition/ minimalism).
The general idea is that the human mind starts to “wander” when you confront it with a monotone but frequency-rich soundscape and in the end creates its own variation of the actual sound being played.

It was based on the software Audiomulch which was one of the first programs that introduced modularity aswell as a very great sounding granular synthesizer. Also that was the first time I ever went into “Automation”, at the end I had two analogue joysticks hooked up to the PC to control my audiomulch-patches.
Since that music was so far away from my Looza-Music at that time I chose another name for it - Unterdruck means “under pressure” aswell as “low pressure” in german.

“Unterdruck” went quite far, I actually had quite a fanbase back at mp3.com aswell as some radiocoverage.
There was also one livegig in the art-college where I was studying at the time, which amazingly also had a totally unforseen twist: I had a small presentation at the beginning that explained the background of the whole project and I forgot to turn the beamer off when the music started. Thus the beamer projected a black square on a wall in a completely dark room for the entire time the gig went (~30 min), the amazing thing was that afterwards quite a few people actually asked about the “faintly visible visuals” that were shown during the gig… the punchline being ofcourse that there were no visuals.

However, when Renoise came around it enabled me to do my Sounddesign and my “normal” music in one program and thus “Unterdruck” as a project died.

Also, maybe these tracks are quite boring to todays standard, but back then this was really sophisticated shit. :)

Apart from some recordings and snippets that I keep in my samplelibrary for future use one complete thing that has survived is the “Fragmentation EP” which you can listen to or download.

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Download: unterdruck_-_fragmentation_ep.zip

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Nov
2008

CD/DVD-Releases

Machine Drum - “Mergerz & Acquisitionz” - 2CD - M3rck Records (2006)
Machine Drum - Disa Bling (Loozas Deconstruction Remix)

M3rck Records released a 2CD-Set containing remixes of tracks originally done by Machine Drum, I am featured with a remix of his track “Disa Bling”.

It was quite a challenge to remix that track since his futuristic electro-hiphop does not really offer any melodic lines or chords that you can use to build a new track, so after a few tries I decided not to remix his song but rather remix his style of making music. The track contains some of his samples, rhythm and bassline and is basically built around a line of “fake scratches”. I popped a few records on my turntable and started scratching and pounding on my punch-in button, after a few minutes I had a wav file full of small scratch-snippets, I did cut them into pieces (using the wonderful waveknife-software) and then built a scratch-line using randomly chosen sample-snippets from that session.
I very much like that track and as I heard Machine Drum does too.

The track appears as “looza+chimerical child” on the final CD because that was the time that Pinicchio managed to conceal that he is a total prick, all he did was abit of mastering on the final result, his contribution to the track itself is nil.

The CD is sold out meanwhile, but you might have a chance to get it somewhere second-hand, it’s really a great package.

Check the Discogs-Page.

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VA - “Practice Avoiding Mistakes” - CD + 2LP - Tokyo Dawn Records (2003)
Looza - Known

The first physical release of Tokyo Dawn Records… Alot of sweat went into this one.

This record had been cooking for over two years until we were finally able to release it. The reason was mostly that we wanted a worldwide distribution and a proper deal for this baby, something that took quite some time to work out. After negotiating with different labels we got a great distribution deal in the end end, the thing was scheduled for production and release, then it took another four months because there were some problems with the CD-Production-Company. Finally the record was released, loads of very favourable reviews started to pour in, but somehow the sales didn’t really go off. In hindsight we just had bad luck and released that record at exactly the time when P2P really became a common practice, big websites and computer-magazines wrote articles explaining exactly how to download music from the internet, no one was buying anything anymore, ways of online-distribution (like beatport or iTunes) were not invented yet and the record-industry was really beginning to freak out. (A mistake we couldn’t really avoid.)

My track on this record is “Known” and to be honest it’s not really a good one. At the time I spent most of my time for Tokyo Dawn with A&R, Promotion and other organizational tasks. Also that was the time that my music was beginning to drift away from the style TDR was famous for and I often found myself producing music that would not really fit into the style of the label. But I had to be on that record, so I brushed up an old beat of mine, got some scratches from DJ Opossum and I had my contribution, but one that really falls flat compared to the other tracks. (A mistake I should have avoided.)

My (much) bigger contribution to this project was the layout, I got some very astonishing artwork from Bram Nelson and spent alot of time on the printdesign and the typography. Unfortunately printdesign was relatively new for me at that time (I had done mostly screendesign so far) and I didn’t really know what I was doing. (I learned from these mistakes and avoided them later). It was also alot of fun to insert hidden messages in the artwork. :)

The record itself turned out to be a “slow burner”, it sold very steadily over the past years and alot of record-shops all over the world always have a few copies in stock simply because they know these copies will sell eventually. As far as I know there is a fourth pressing meanwhile and you can get it from almost anywhere, amazon definately has the CD and the Vinyl-Edition.

Check the Discogs-Page.

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Fräuleinwunder - “The Vinyl Variations” - 12″ - Universal Jazz (2003)
Fräuleinwunder - Nie Monoton (Loozas Lumbago Remix)

Basically a very unpleasant experience. “Fräuleinwunder” was a Sideproject of some members of Dephazz and I have to say that Dephazz is generally nothing I listen to, I don’t like those fake brazil-nujazz-beats. Prymer had made the contact to them and they wanted a Collectors-Remix-EP based on the original CD.

I had the feeling that they gave me the recordings that originally went into the trashcan, I got a load of rather unusable vocalrecordings (obviously all outtakes) aswell as one french-horn-line and spent the first days looking for usable vocal-portions and reassembling a proper vocaltrack. The original itself was quite boring, based on a F-Major/G-Major chord change through the entire song. After I had finished and uploaded the remix I never got any “thank you” email or a comment (let alone any money) and to top it all off I had to purchase my own copy from WOM.
Apart from that I had a heavy Lumbago (google ?) while doing that remix (hence the name) and should have stayed in bed instead.

The remix itself was re-produced from scratch, using some interesting techniques. For example the guitar you hear is a sampled loop in a totally different tempo that was pitchshifted to fit the chords and then chopped with a gater to get a rhythm. The Piano in the middle part is also some sampled loop that got pitchshifted around to fit to the track.

The record was released as a 500 pcs. limited edition and was sold out almost instantly, I am not sure if you can get it on ebay or somewhere else, but probably not.

Check the Discogs-Page.

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Filed as: CD/DVD-Releases, Music. Comments (0) Share/Save/Bookmark