Going to DEMF is fun not only for seeing all the music, but for all the records and other paraphernalia you can get. As I mentioned in my other post about the festival, the lack of new records by Detroit artists in time for the festival was apparent even days before the festival began but…

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Difficulties ranging from no press passes to my knee problems to my iPhone inexplicably not getting the internet in any consistent manner at Hart Plaza led to no live blogging of the festival. I would say that I am disappointed about that, but really I spent far less time at the festival this year than…

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So things got off to a silly start yesterday. What began as a sore knee when I woke up turned into debilitating pain by last night. When I still couldn’t walk this morning, I went to the hospital to get it looked at. The diagnosis is still unclear (they said it could be arthritis or…

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We’re about to roll out of the Burgh on our way to Detroit in just a few minutes. Despite no love on the press pass tip, we will be providing our coverage of DEMF 08 to you starting tonight and continuing through late Monday night. I will try to provide a substantial post every day,…

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This past weekend marked the first ISM related event, in collaboration with Still City. Much thanks to Rick Wilhite for coming down to Pittsburgh and blowing it up for us on Saturday night over at AVA. He demonstrated that Detroit style perfectly, playing everything from dubbed out techno on Styrax Leaves to Candido’s “Thousand Finger…

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When I first started really getting into deep house, there were a few names that were as good as gold for me: Theo Parrish, Moodymann, Morgan Geist, and Rick Wade. While the rest of those guys have all achieved a pretty large amount of fame, Rick Wade has remained something of a secret amongst deep…

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Finally the spring semester is over! Only one more year of this school nonsense, then I too can join the great American workforce. Or something. Now, it’s time for some spring cleaning! First things first, we have a couple changes here at ISM that should make things slightly better for everyone. The most immediately useful…

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In a stroke of good luck for us here at ISM, we are proud to present you with a live set from Stewart Walker from just a few nights ago. You can thank our man in the cornfields Kent aka Chaircrusher for this one, as well as the hosting he does for all of our…

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Here at ISM, we are huge fans of genre-defying eclecticism. Not the ironic “Kenny G mixed into 3 Six Mafia” kind of thing, we like people who can use different styles of music to tell a story, to set a mood. We may primarily be a soulful dance music blog, but we are also music…

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Continuing our ridiculous run of guest mixes is a new joint by our man Scott over at Trackwerk. They have been on a ridiculous roll themselves recently, dropping dope mixes from DJHistory.com forum cats like Richard Carnage, Jaz, Jitterbug, Solid State, and more. It’s a who’s who of online record nerds laying down ridiculous shit…

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We are very pleased to offer up a new guest mix by Juju & Jordash! On this mix, ISM’s boys in Amsterdam come through with a nice, relaxed selection of atmospheric joints ranging in genre from jazz to ambient to krautrock to techno. They really nailed my current mood, abstract and deep. JJ+J also recently…

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I love going to Detroit, there’s so many good people and places it’s impossible to get to see them all. I did manage to sneak in a quick record buying binge on Saturday afternoon, though, and these are some of the people and places I saw on my hunt…….. The first thing I do as…

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The semester is winding down quickly, which means lots of insanity on my part and explains our relative quiet of late. Last weekend we celebrated my man Tony’s last free time before joining the navy. Friday night, myself, Chris Schubert, Tony, and Brother Mike rocked out the Alto Lounge, bringing back memories of the golden…

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I can remember the first time I heard a record on DFA. It was Morgan Geist’s remix of The Rapture’s “House Of Jealous Lovers”. My man Jwan played it for me at his house all the way back in 2002 when it dropped, and I was feeling it because Morgan is generally the man. So…

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There is a popular misconception that soulful dance music has to include Rhodes keys, vocals, jazz saxophone samples, etc. This is not really what it is all about, it is about personal expression. Thomas Brinkmann has always been a supporter of good music (I remember seeing him talking about Moodymann in a guest review in…

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Our homie Steve over at Little White Earbuds dropped a nice story on RA about the effect of MP3 blogs. As you can see from our links section, we link to quite a few MP3 blogs. The main difference in what I look for in an MP3 blog is that they are putting up old,…

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When I first heard Waajeed’s music years ago, I liked what he was doing but at the same time I felt like he was something of a J Dilla knock-off. They were boys, so that didn’t necessarily bother me. Then my man Selecta dropped his remix of Troubleman’s “Without You” (which featured on my recent…

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It’s been a while since I picked up a solo Pépé Bradock record. Almost 4 years, to be exact (and I know that “Distorted Echoes” is not really considered one of his “classics”, though I think it is way underrated), broken up only by the excellent collaborative 10″ “Unicorn/Cheval” (which I used on my “Cold…

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His “Black Tekno” mix has been a bit of a hit for us, so we have one more little tidbit lined up from the man like Noleian Reusse. This one was online a while back, but it features some of my all time favorite dance songs edited up and mashed together into a hot half…

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