Intelepaths is a collaboration of the talented woman, ill-esha, and the homie, Unlimited Gravity. The two of them have had their own success working on their solo projects but a handful of events unfolded to have them work together on this new union.
They’ve put together a few tracks together that I’ve heard and blessed to be sharing this debut track. They’ve chosen Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me. The vocals Elysha put down on this one are incredible. If you haven’t heard of ill-esha sing live yet you’re missing out. Now add Ronnie dropping some vocals in the background of the chorus. The vibe and energy is just a small tease to what they have in store. I had to pleasure of playing one of their new tunes at Emissions this past week-end and hope everyone who hasn’t left to Symbiosis could grab this one. Freak Like Me is the perfect tune for any set. Who doesn’t want to find a freak out there =D
One of the things that Intelepaths reminds me about is how there is no limit to what you can do music. The EDM scene consist of instrumentals for the most part. The two of them bring so many pieces of the puzzle together to create a new blend of EDM. The vibes aren’t as focused on the dancefloor as much and creating beautiful music with good energy. Ever since I’ve been talking to Elysha about this collab I find such positivity and love behind it. Don’t expect crushing bangers with insane drops. Intelepaths represents the art of playing live set with live vocals, beatboxing, looping, and free styling organic sounds. The true experience is seeing to joining forces of both of them in a live set environment.
There is a small EP that is in the works but there are no official dates as of now. What I’ve heard so far is fantastic and always get excited to share the music they’ve both created together. It’s great to hear tracks that include original vocals from both a man and woman.
There’s much more ahead for these two. Elysha relocation to the States has opened the door to a lot more shows and availability to work with other artist. Ronnie is finishing up school and ready to show everyone what he has been working on and accomplished with his MHSM family. Expect a lot of new things from both of them working together and on their own. This isn’t the last you’ll hear of this.
Enjoy the first official Intelepaths tracks here from AfroMonk.com <3
I am honored and privileged to bring word on Afro Monk Record’s Debut Release. Futexture “The Science of How Things Unfold” combines top-notch production, with out of this world arrangements and the creativity to bring the listener to a higher dimension. No matter if you call this release IDM, FutureBass or Downtempo, Futexture, aka Danny Krantz, has taken the more sonically diverse elements of our genres and brought us a complete piece of work that will entertain the mind and tickle the ears. My first listen to this release was done after a long day kicked back with the cans on and a bit of a mood enhancer. Not only did the music grab a hold of me but it provided energetic boost to my whole body. Some would say thats just the herb, but thats what pure quality music should do to all of us! You should not just hear it, but experience it. I must congratulate both Futexture for such an amazing album that is sure to make quite a name for him, but also the founder of this blog, Mr. JM aka Afromonk for pushing through and bringing us his first debut release on the brand new record label. Now, with no more bullshit from me, I bring you the music!
I hope to hear Futexture’s sounds being dropped in the wee hours of the morning all summer long. Pick up this release Addictech!
One of the main motivating factors for me getting involved with Afromonk was to actively take part in the amazing community of talented individuals behind this music we all love. When I talked to the folks over at Be Green Records about their upcoming 2012 Benefit release I knew this was the kind of project I had to get behind. Not only am I excited to listen to this compilation of talented producers, but I love Be Green’s vision, that when we collaborate with our friends we can create the change we need in this world. He are a few words from the folks over at Be Green Records/Glitch FM.
“Music and art has enriched each of our lives so much, we have chosen to use it as a medium to do positive things. By collaborating with like minded individuals, we are able to do so much more as a community and to give back to the world around us. Focusing on feeding, clothing, sheltering, and providing medical care for those most in need, is our primary intention. We believe we can achieve this when we all come together.”
“Be the Change you wish to see in the World,” is one of the most inspiring quotes the creators of Be Green Records have ever been influenced by. And personally, through meeting countless individuals who want to help and just don’t know what they as one person can do, is the inspiration for this album. Many people gathered together, each doing just a little, does affect huge change, and since we are all passionate about music – we thought this would be the best way we could benefit from both worlds.
Also, looks like they are still taking submissions from producers and visionary artists. Get involved! Look for this release on the summer Solstice 2012.
The Do Lab does it right as always! This years line up looks incredible! I can’t wait to see all your faces and see all my friends on the West Coast. You will find the AfroMonk.com family there in full force! I’ve bolded all the acts i’m most excited about!
We will have more coverage as time progresses!
Much Love to The Do Lab and everyone part of this event
I’ve been working on a new project for 2012 and it’s about time I share it with you all! The past few months I’ve become a bit more critical than usual. Bass music hasn’t been doing what it use to do for me. My relocation back home to Miami has changed a lot of things especially my life style. When I lived in Texas I was always out with friends, partying, DJing, traveling, etc… Now I spend most of my time relaxing enjoying the ocean breeze on my balcony. My nights consist of digging for more music and that peaceful state of mind. I’ve grown up and feel like an adult. Music now plays a different role for me now.
It’s not that I’m disappearing now but expect much of my focus to go in this new direction. Lounge Temple is ultimately Afro Monk 2.0 with its primary genres being downtempo, trip-hop, and future bass. It’s a lot more laid back and lounge like.
Not only will the site be something new i’ll be exploring but also have a supporting weekly lounge night here in Miami. I’ve been offered an industry night at The Stage here in Miami. It offers a great environment as well as chance to start something entirely different from your typical club rave night. Gooddroid and I will be playing lounge music ever Sunday night! Chilled Out Sundays starts up February 19th, 2012!
So most of you don’t know me or have interacted briefly via the crazy digital world so you might be thinking who cares what this guy thinks! This year has once again been a major transitional year for me music wise. I have played so many different genres of music over the year that it amazes me where my musical journey will take me. Ever sense becoming involved with Afromonk my experience has been heighten. Thanks to demo submissions, JM recommendations, and all my letters to artists in our community I have had an average of 5-10 releases, tracks, or mixes in my mailbox a day! Overwhelming, but I love it! I am really finding the sounds I like and what works for the crowds I play for. I thank JM a million times over for the opportunity. So Here is my list of tracks and releases that I loved for 2011. It was a hard choice thinking back to music I loved in January of the year and not just picking things that Im super hyped on right now. My tastes have changed a lot, but I felt it best to honor the songs I listened to the most, rocked the parties, and will keep me dancing for years to come. Hope you enjoy, and If you think Im missing the boat and should have your tracks on my list for 2012 all I can say is submit them to the site and educate me. I love this journey of discover of new sounds!
Being newer to this community of creative musicians I would have a hard time coming up with lists of my favorite new producers and events. This year my highlight was Decimal Festival in my town of Seattle where I got to catch a lot of the sounds and beats that had been on constant repeat around my home. I’m really hoping to make it to some of the other large festivals around this country next year. Lighting in a Bottle is my top choice for next summer. I just need an invite to camp with some new friends and would love to start getting to know all you people face to face instead of in the virtual world. This world we live in is pretty amazing and inspires me each and every day. Pretty excited about the coming year and all that it will bring. Wish you all the best for the last days of 2011 and lets ring the new year in with some bass!
Top 5 Best Releases
1. The Weeknd – House of Ballons
2. Robot Koch – The Other Side
3. Tycho – Dive
4. Thriftworks – Zen Zero
5. Tokimonsta – Creature Dreams
The way I came up with the list for this year was thinking to myself which albums did I listen to the most and can think off the top of my head as standing out. The Weeknd has been my obsession and biggest inspiration to my transformation into sexy bump n grid live sets. Tycho makes some of the greatest music to just drive/work too. Dive represents one of those timeless LPs that will never get old and pick me uppers when music seems to get dull. Robot Koch’s The Other Side is one of the most incredible albums that took me away into a dreamland and thought to myself why has no one talked about this release. I listen to it on a daily basis since I got it. Thriftworks is one of my secret weapons when playing to a crowd. Zen Zero is one of the fullest albums out there this year in my opinion. Tokimonsta stole my heart when she released Creature Dreams. I always somewhat enjoyed her music but never LOVED it but she sealed the deal on the Creature Dreams release. These are not as hype or heavy dance floor albums but encompass what I listen to on a regular basis.
Top 5 Best Songs
1. NastyNasty – Sweety Bodies
2. Kastle – Walking Away
3. The Weeknd – Wicked Games
4. Antenitas – Los Bandidos Cosmicos (Nico Luminous Remix)
5. ill-esha – Only Fair (Gladkill remix)
Top 5 Underrated Releases
1. Robot Koch – The Other Side
2. Shigeto – Full Circle Remixes
3. B. Bravo – Kiss ‘n’ Tell
4. Knowa Knowone – Sound Paintings
5. Chris B – Whats Your Fantasy
I mentioned that the Robot Koch album was rarely talked about this year and man did it go under the radar. It’s just beautiful and feel like all of you should take a listen to it. Shigeto is one of my greatest finds last year and the Full Circles release was mind blowing and just when thought it couldn’t get better it did this year with a remix version with some of the most talented in the game. B. Bravo is one of the most listened to artist in my entire library. I’ve been following his work for quite some time now and he doesn’t get enough attention in my book but I know he will over the next few years. Knowa Knowone has always been on my radar but never really put anything out that captured me till this year and take it might have been the same for many of you. His release Sound Paintings put him back on my map of an artist to keep an eye on. Chris B’s Whats Your Fantasy is one of those album I’ll never forget talking about with Simplify head hancho about before it got released and explained to him that was so glad to see Chris was finally putting out an official release. Simplify has now become one of the biggest labels in the bass scene and feel like despite the overall feel the labels puts out this was their best one.
Top 5 New Producers
1. Quitter
2. The Human Experience
3. Slidecamp
4. Guttstar
5. Lo Bounce
There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Quitter is the hottest new sound that brings back memories of that hip-hop/beats/bass mixed into a high quality product. Absolutely love the direction they’ve started with. Can’t go wrong with a NastyNasty + So What collab. The Human Experience caught my attention last year and really inspired me. His new release this year almost made it to the most underrated list but overall I feel like he’ll be making quite a stir soon as he just was in Europe doing a tour. Slidecamp is another astonishing project that Boreta and Comma have put together that blew my mind. I truly hope we’ll see more from them and not just another abandoned project from another Glitch Mob member. Guttstar is the new Joker for me. I first heard his music and thought to myself this guy is the purple king. He’s also in the SEO business and instantly connected. He’s got much ahead of him in the coming years. Lo Bounce has been working hard all year pumping out some of the biggest bangers of the year in my eyes. His Me & U remix that was exclusive to Afromonk.com always gets play time in any of my live sets since I received it.
Top 5 Events
1. Lightning in a Bottle
2. SXSW
3. Emissions
4. Sonic Bloom
5. Art Outside
Lightning in a Bottle is one of those magical events where some of the biggest names come together and express themselves in art, music, dance, and more. It’s commonly described as the closest thing to Burning Man out of all the festivals. I know that till the end of my life I’ll be going to LIB. This past year had so many incredible memories and being backstage with some of my close friends that I only get to see during these festivals makes it that much better. SXSW this year was complete madness. Austin is where the event takes place and mainly focuses on bands and live music but this year it seems like electronic showcases were the spotlight to many. The amount of talent and people around this year made it one of the best weeks of my life. I’m quite sad that I no longer live in Texas but think I’m going to skip out on WMC this year and just fly to ATX for SXSW instead. Man too think I played at 5 different showcases last year is insane. Emissions this year was one of the best line ups of all the festivals. If you heard of that one festival that it snowed and screwed up a lot of things up that’s Emissions. It’s a shame because it was setup to be one of the best showcases all season. I assure you that next years will be one for the books. Despite the snow I had a great time and was one of those extremely intimate festivals where all the talent is walking around freely and not separated from everyone else. My favorite memory of the year was when I first arrived and was by main stage checking out the booth and having Jasper hugging me and being like hey whats up! It’s just one of those events where everyone is there just hanging out like one big family. This year I was fortunate to visit Colorado for Sonic Bloom. I hadn’t ever been since I started getting involved into the scene. Sonic Bloom was a dream becoming reality. I expected to get such a warm welcome from everyone there. I got to meet so many friends in person after communicating with them via online for years. The lineup was stellar and was able to interact with everyone with my press pass and even got invited to play on one of the side stages. Overall a wonderful experience and great community in attendance since such a large portion of the scene lives in Colorado. Art Outside is a small homegrown festival in Texas. I was proudly invited to go play at it. It was a honor to play alongside such talented people as well as a great farewell to Texas. I found out a few days before Art Outside that I would be relocating back to Miami so it was that last hoopla in Texas. I’ll be sure to make it a point to return next year and recommend you all to give it a chance if looking to try out a new festival you have never out too.
The last time I asked for some help I was overwhelmed and ended up not really being good about responses. This time I promise I’ll answer every e-mail promptly and in timely manner (I hope). Please first off I’d like to say this site will continue to stay operational. Tara and Ed have been the best of help I could ask for. A huge thank you goes out to the entire fan base of the site and for all the support over the years! It’s time to build something new and I need some help.
I’ve been talking quite a bit about launching a new project/website for a while now. It originally was going to be Glitchhop.com but too be honest I feel like afromonk.com accomplishes what I want in that respect. It’s hard to not become jaded by all the talk of brostep, Skrillex, EDM, etc… It’s worn on me already and tired of people not understanding that all this exposure is probably doing more harm than good for the community. I’ve decided to take a step back from bass music while I haven’t pissed off many friends and still have the contacts I have.
What I’m looking for is a designer and a developer. The designer wouldn’t have too difficult of a job as I like plain and simple designs. It would be something sleek and clean. Just take a look at this site and Glitchhop.com. The major task would be developing a full blown theme or customizing it to my liking. Depending on what sort of responses I get for a developer would dictate the CMS that it would be on. I’m more inclined to something like Joomla vs WordPress at this point. Developers I’m looking for someone who would preferably be good with Joomla or any CMS that isn’t WordPress… Hell, if you can develop a custom CMS that would be even more ideal but that’s a bit extreme and know that don’t really have a budget for something like that. I’d essentially want some built into the backend that would have mandatory fields to fill in that would be part of a big database. It’d be easy to populate and display all the different categories in each field. Imagine an advanced interface where you can choose multiple categories at once for each specific field filled in for each post. If you think you can do this with WordPress I’m open to it but would love to stay away from that platform.
I haven’t gone into much detail about all this but I please contact me if you are interested so we can discuss more. Designers please links to your portfolio would help tremendously or any example sites that you’d base this design off of. Developers all I ask for is being able to put a good amount of work into this and not something that would take you over a month to turn around on. Proper recognition would be given and depending on the level of design and developer payment may be arranged.
I look forward to hearing from you. I couldn’t have been more overwhelmed by the response I got from the last call to action for writers. Please send me an e-mail directly to me if interested.
I’m looking forward to working on this new project in 2012 and assure you most of you will love it.
Female vocals take tracks to a whole new level. My true passion is Trip-Hop mainly due to the fact that I melt when I hear solid vocals from a woman. I’ll even go as far as saying that some tracks would never live up to their full potential if wasn’t for the vocals.
Rayne, is one of the few female vocalist that I don’t think you might know about. Truth is the point of this post is specifically to put her on the radar because I was informed that she wasn’t getting credit for her vocals on an upcoming release by June Miller. The track is even the titled track for the release. The music industry has a way of forgetting to mention things in all the mess and decided to put this together.
As far as it goes as what I think I’ll keep quite and not raise my voice. I’ll just let the vocals on this one do the work. Rayne’s vocals are the closest thing I’ve heard to timeless trip-hop that I love on a drum and bass track. The track goes hand in hand with her voice on this one perfectly.
Rayne and I randomly became familiar with each other before I left Miami for Dallas. Over the past year we’ve become close friends and I have to say never have come across such a sweet girl with one of the most incredible personalities out there. She really does give me faith for humanity. Now that I’m back in Miami she shortly left for LA unfortunately. She’s one of those good people that you hate to see people take advantage of because their so nice. I couldn’t believe it when she told me they weren’t putting her name on the track and haven’t responded to any forms of contact. This one is for you. I don’t post much drum & bass but man this is one of those few tracks that just hit the soul and majority of it is because of her stunning vocals.
Afro Monk
May 16th by Afro Monk 
Tags: freak like me cover, ill-esha, intelepaths, intelepaths freak like me, MHSM, Unlimited Gravity
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