And The Envelope Please...

I just want to say at this juncture that this was exceedingly difficult. In order to keep from exhibiting any favoritism for people I know, I removed the names and numbered all the tracks, 1 through 92. I then put them on a spare iPod, so they were the only tracks on that device, and used the star rating system to get the final list.

I ended up with 17 five-star tracks, and the last few days I’ve been experimenting with flow and different combinations, and I think I ended up with 10 that are all forward-looking tracks that are mildly experimental (or wildly, in two cases) and give a good cross-section of the electronic music scene, without being too genre-specific. There is only one track in the ten that anyone would immediately ascribe a specific genre to, but as that genre is deep house, it’s all good. Because deep house is the best electronic music genre, as everyone knows. And even with that context, it still manages to push the envelope, in both production and songwriting.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit the following: I made my own submission at the beginning of the process, but by the end, I didn’t think that my own could hang with any 10 of the 17 I chose from the other submissions, so I did a new one. Since I’m the one that has to do all the hard work here, I hope you won’t begrudge me that bit of license.

So, with that mea culpa out of the way, here’s the list, and this is in no order at this point. It is just the ten tracks I selected. There are physical constraints to how the LP is constructed, and that will inform the final track listing.

1. Ancient Young - Silica Resonance
2. Milkfish - It’s Happening Too Late
3. Bitmud - All The Beauty Is Gone
4. Chris Randall - Compilator
5. Goldbaby - Ten OP
6. Jukebox - Objects In The Mirror…
7. Pauk - Here She Comes
8. Russian Corvette - Pattern Recognition
9. Sabama - Doublethink
10. Anodize - Bismuth

If you’re on that list, I’ll be contacting you about getting a master to me and how we’ll be moving forward. If you’re not on that list, and you plan on putting your track out in any of the various platforms we do such things, hold off for a little bit, as I have seven alternates, and I want to make sure these tracks are all good to go before moving to the next step.

Anyhow, congratulations to the other nine, and to all of you. Now comes the hard part.