THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!!!!

This is your last chance to win tickets for Jamie Lidell tonght at the El Rey. Not your last chance ever….but your last chance of….the next few months? You can enter to win by emailing contest@dimmak.com…or if you are generally as unlucky as I am….you can buy them here….you have 10 minutes…HAHA!

Matt Bayles is sweet and gentle person…

Hey, this is Matthew Solberg. I play the guitar in From Monument to Masses. FMTM is actually the longest standing band on Dim Mak’s roster… I think that’s partly because Steve and Michael like us… but also partly because we take over two years on average to produce a record. We’re like a glacier. No other label would have the patience for us. We’re almost 8 years old as a band and we’re now recording our 4th album. Sometimes I don’t know whether to be proud of that fact, or indignant. Either way, I am ecstatic about our new record that’s finally in the pipeline. We just finished a grueling 8-day marathon of tracking, composing on the fly, problem solving, and enjoying the pleasant and agreeable personality of our engineer/co-producer Matt Bayles at John Vanderslice’s studio in SF, Tiny Telephone

The first meeting we ever had with Dim Mak about this record, which took place about five months ago, we tossed around names of potential engineers. Engineering FMTM is a tall order because our songs are long and densely layered, and all three of us tend to be perfectionists about our music. We wanted to be sure to push our sound to a higher level on this one. Bayles’ name came up as one option, but honestly, we figured he was out of our league. Couple months later, when we felt ready to book studio time, we wrote to Matt’s manager; she got right back to us and was like “yeah, Matt’s a fan of yours and would love to do it.” We all shat an eggroll. We started talking to him on the phone about the project, and we could tell right away that we were going to get along with him cuz he had the three P’s: Positivity, Professionalism, and Patience. We were like, dude… we’re a good band, but we wrote the majority of this record over the internet, we haven’t been practicing, and we argue over details a lot… so we’re going to seem like sucky amateurs to you for the first few days… and he was like, dudes… believe me, no matter how bad you think you are; I’ve dealt with worse.

Bayles should be in the business of band making. He sees exactly what a bands strengths and weaknesses are right away, and he challenges everyone to simply be a BETTER band. If you’re stressing about tiny details, he gets you to see the bigger picture. If you’re just looking at the big picture and fucking up little details, he lets you know and gets you to stop fucking up. He hears what you’re supposed to sound like, and then he takes you there. He is always on time. It seems that any project he accepts he believes in thoroughly and will see it through to the end come hell or high water. Right now, I am waiting to download our rough mixes… and I’m vibrating with enthusiasm. We’re scheduled to fly up to Seattle to do the final mix with him at the end of June. For the next month, FMTM’s job is basically to find & edit the spoken word samples & other sounds in order to imbue the album with thoughts, meanings, and atmosphere. We’re having a lot of discussions about where we want to take the record thematically - and once we’ve done that, we can name the songs and announce an album title.

Here’s a picture of the guitars I used to record this album. L-R they are a 1992 Model 650A, a 2006 Model 650D (which belongs to my girlfriend Robin), and a 1973 Model 480.

STAFF PICKS FT. BRYNNE WALKER, NEW MEDIA

It is time again for our special Staff Pick blog post where Dim Mak’s full-time, part-time, intern and external staff and close friends rummage through the Dim Mak back catalog and bring some of their favorite tracks to the forefront. This week’s “Staff Picker” is Brynne Walker, New Media. She shares two track picks with us…Battles “Dance” 

“I don’t even know where to begin here but I like this song because its so freewheeling and loosely structured. Its important to take a break on occasion from conventional song formats and the stuff you here all the time at the club and on the radio and listen to something like this. If there were a section for like Indie…Electronic…Jazz…Alternative… this song would probably be in that section. This song is a collage of beats and organ bits and guitar parts and all other kinds of shizzz that are just winging it all over the place and still everything comes back to the same beat. I wish I saw this band at Coachella, instead of powering down vodka like there was no tomorrow, but thats another story for another time….” Whitey “Leave Them All Behind” “I love Whitey, and feel free to make whatever associations to that statement that you need to make.  I cant find many things to dislike about a band comprising of snappily dressed and well groomed English gentleman with intrinsically cool music. I love the pace of this song and the energy, but the thing is like Whitey and most of its songs, it doesn’t try to pull anything off, it just does. It just works. Its cool. You and I are of lesser coolness….but we deal with it somehow. Its the Kate Moss outfit of songs and I love listening to it while I’m on the Elliptical Machine at the gym which is definitely not cool at all and maybe you didn’t wanna know…“

DOWNLOAD - Battles - Dance 

DOWNLOAD - Whitey “Leave Them All Behind”  

BANGKOK YARD SALE TAKEOVER!

Dim Mak At Echoplex This Friday!

WIN TICKETS TO KATE NASH!!!!

Win tickets to The NME Tour with KATE NASH and The Trachteberg Slideshow Players May 14th @ The Henry Fonda! Email contest@dimmak.com with the subject KATE NASH to enter! Winners selected at random! Click HERE to buy tickets!!

STAFF PICKS FT. ANDREW HUANG, ACCT MANAGER FOR DIM MAK COLLECTION

We return this week with our special Staff Pick blog post where Dim Mak’s full-time, part-time, intern and external staff and close friends rummage through the Dim Mak back catalog and tell us about some of their favorite tracks. This week’s spotlight is on Andrew Huang, Account Manager for Dim Mak Collections. He shares two track picks with us… Grafiti’s “What Is The Problem?” - I don’t know if a lot of people realized this was the doing of Mike Skinner (aka The Streets), but I love The Streets and I love this track and I wish he kept putting out more songs under this alias. It’s The Streets gone house/breaks. I guess it was too Euro for American listeners. What IS the problem?! Automato “Walk Into Light” A DFA-produced live hip-hop group? You don’t say! Another underrated band from the Dim Mak vaults. If I had to come up with a white version of The Roots (i.e. live-based/organic hip-hop band) I would vote Automato at the top of the list. The idea of bringing hip-hop sounds, which relies so much on found and synthetic sounds (not to generalize hip-hop, I love the genre), to an instrument-focused aesthetic might not work with most people, but it works for these guys. Great song.

HARD Summer 08 Video

Take a look at who is playing at HARD Summer 08 . . .  Get your tickets now !!! Before the discount goes the way of the dinosaur! ! ! - for tickets click the title link and enter DIMMAK for a $10 discount . . . tell your friends. . .

Last Day to Vote!!!

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