Madeon Mixing It Up for Annie Mac
June 26, 2012 5:49 AM   Subscribe

18-year-old French dance music phenom Madeon had his first break with his contest-winning remix of "The Island" by Pendulum and exploded after the viral success of the Ableton-enabled YouTube performance of his sample-fest "Pop Culture".

Apparently, 39 tracks in three and a half minutes just wasn't enough. He's just recorded a 95-tracks-sampling, five minute minimix for Annie Mac's show on Radio 1.
posted by beaucoupkevin (29 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
...is it supposed to be quite so heavily compressed and brickwalled? Because the everything else fading up and down as the bass drum hits come in and out is really ruining this for me :(
posted by Dysk at 6:03 AM on June 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


gosh that was torture
posted by robbyrobs at 6:15 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


The sound quality is indeed really poor. I doubt Madeon was using Redbook/lossless files to begin with. Not to mention the bulk of the music he sampled is compressed with little to no dynamic range to begin with.

That said, he gets points for effort!
posted by gen at 6:20 AM on June 26, 2012


Nice enough, but I didn't get through the whole thing. Am I missing something here?
posted by unliteral at 6:21 AM on June 26, 2012


It's a really neat idea, but it felt like he was prioritising quantity over quality. Pop Culture's a better song.

On the other hand, if you think about it as a full DJ set somehow compressed down into 5 minutes, it gets quite fun.
posted by Magnakai at 6:27 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


meh, it all sounds a bit Pete Tong to me
posted by fistynuts at 6:31 AM on June 26, 2012


gen, using compressed source material shouldn't do that, it's quite clearly compression on this track after it was finished. I really hope that's just cause this is an internet radio rip or something...
posted by Dysk at 6:39 AM on June 26, 2012


Dysk: if one uses compressed source material to begin with, why wouldn't a mix be compressed as well?
posted by gen at 6:46 AM on June 26, 2012


gen: Because the problem here isn't limited dynamic range, it's the pumping when the kick hits; the whole mix is probably going through a master buss limiter and the level of the kick is ducking the rest of the program. Sometimes pumping can be a desired effect, but that's probably not the case here (the release is too fast to be musical).
posted by uncleozzy at 6:53 AM on June 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


I don't understand what is going on here, technologically. But I like the music. Thanks!
posted by jph at 6:58 AM on June 26, 2012


Thought I recognized this guy from somewhere - he got his fifteen minutes with the anime community last year. The Internet can be a small place sometimes, it seems.
posted by fifthrider at 7:04 AM on June 26, 2012


Yeah. I've been following this guy on SoundCloud ever since someone linked to Pop Culture on MetaFilter last year.

For an 18-year-old, he's an impressively good producer, with a surprisingly unique sound. France certainly has a knack for churning out really great electronic musicians.

Also, dance music is popular in the US now. After years and years of listening to trashy eurodance, to the chagrin of all my friends, I seriously didn't see that one coming.
posted by schmod at 7:16 AM on June 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Don't forget Nathan Barnett's dance videos!

Pop Music

Que Veux Tu
posted by rebent at 7:19 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


uncleozzy: "gen: Because the problem here isn't limited dynamic range, it's the pumping when the kick hits; the whole mix is probably going through a master buss limiter and the level of the kick is ducking the rest of the program. Sometimes pumping can be a desired effect, but that's probably not the case here (the release is too fast to be musical)."

ok, so one of my (would be) favorite albums has a problem with, as you say, pumping.

Do you think it would be worth contacting the artist and saying - hey, how about some better files? I have them in Flac, but the pumping is still there.
posted by rebent at 7:35 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


There are three genuinely talented younger producers of dance music I can think of off the top of my head and Madeon is one of them. The other two are Porter Robinson and Zedd who both manage to put out similarly buoyant tracks really capturing the zeitgeist going on as french house, dubstep, progressive and electro all battle it out over what will be genre tenants of complextro (or whatever the next evolution of EDM is). Its real popcorn munching stuff to someone like myself.

Although not a younger artist, also I have a great deal of respect for Feed Me who similarly has a unique take on this transformation. . . maintaining a sort of left field cheekiness to his work moderated by the technical implementation of a seasoned pro.
posted by I've wasted my life at 8:08 AM on June 26, 2012 [5 favorites]


Do you think it would be worth contacting the artist

Nah, it's a matter of how the album was mastered.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:48 AM on June 26, 2012


Do you think it would be worth contacting the artist and saying - hey, how about some better files? I have them in Flac, but the pumping is still there.

"Compression" in terms of audio has two different meanings. The pumping Dysk was referring to is called dynamic range compression. Using FLAC eliminates artifacts from data compression.
posted by Uncle Ira at 9:31 AM on June 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


gen: Dysk: if one uses compressed source material to begin with, why wouldn't a mix be compressed as well?

Because you put the compressed sources in at different volumes. In fact, if your sources are compressed, you should get a nice even volume out of them, not the huge volume dips I hear whenever the bass drum hits. That'd have to be compression on the final assembled track.

(uncleozzy probably put it better, but there you go :P)
posted by Dysk at 9:58 AM on June 26, 2012


Vive le Beiber!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:22 AM on June 26, 2012


I love this shit. I will take this stuff over any sort of "regular" house music ever.

Do you think it would be worth contacting the artist and saying - hey, how about some better files? I have them in Flac, but the pumping is still there.

lol.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:54 AM on June 26, 2012


I've been listening to mashups, mixtapes, sets, and other dance/production oriented music for about ten years now, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me that it's finally in the mainstream in a big way (not least of which because I've never been ahead of any other musical trend, and it's pretty satisfying to hear from people that I got them into this stuff in college, before it was cool with the circles I run in). This track will probably sound pretty dated in 10 years, but this is where pop music is at right now and all this hate is pretty futile.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:25 AM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


Thanks for the extra links I've wasted my life, this is some great upbeat material. Any tips on how best to discover even more similar stuff?
posted by pahalial at 11:57 AM on June 26, 2012


This is a PERFECT example to use in proving most pop tunes are really all alike. They're all basically the same, with very minor variations from one another.
posted by Vibrissae at 12:07 PM on June 26, 2012


This is the first time I've seen the Novation Launchpad.
Kinda reminds me of a cross between the Chess Challenger 7 and Simon.
(But sounds better!)
posted by MtDewd at 12:17 PM on June 26, 2012


Kinda reminds me of a cross between the Chess Challenger 7 and Simon.

That, and the unholy love child of a monome and an MPC. In a good way.
posted by fifthrider at 12:52 PM on June 26, 2012


They're all basically the same, with very minor variations from one another.

And yet we can distinguish between millions of songs and can name specific details (composer, performer, etc.) from only one or two bars. Funny.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:28 PM on June 26, 2012


Whenever I see people on those Live controllers, all I can think of is Enik trying to open a time gateway so Marshall, Will, and Holly can finally get home.
posted by sonascope at 1:33 PM on June 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


Well that was lovely. It's way different than Pop Culture, but I like the ebb and flow of it.
posted by CipherSwarm at 12:02 AM on June 27, 2012


I didn't like the live thing at all, but that "Island" remix is awesome. Thanks for the post.
posted by mmoncur at 3:22 AM on June 28, 2012


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