Last Thursday, the test presses of my label’s first release came in the mail. A listen through the whole record on my studio monitors revealed no pressing flaws or any other problems, so I tried it out at my Saturday night gig playing records with Jwan Allen and Noleian Reusse. Everything sounded good, and it…

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My label’s first release is finishing its own tour of house and techno’s birthplaces (mastering just outside Chicago at Prairie Cat, plating just outside NYC at Mastercraft) at Archer Record Pressing in Detroit. The plates were shipped to Archer, who then attatch them to the press. These plates act as stampers. A chunk of vinyl…

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Movement 2009 – Electronic Music Festivals | Detroit May 23rd-25 Well that is enough to make me want to blow chunks all over my keyboard. If you want to listen to music that sounds suspiciously like trance being played by all sorts of white guys from all over the world (with DJ Minx as the…

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I know we’ve talked about him more than enough considering how few records he has released, but this new 7″ by Dam-Funk under his Wavelength alias is his best release so far. Dropping on a sublabel of Peoples Potential Unlimited (a great boogie reissue label whose catalog includes the fantastic “Danger Zone” by Midnight Express…

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Domu is one of those bad-ass deejays in the style that we love here at ISM. I can remember when he played in Pittsburgh back in early ’04 he was dropping James Brown, classic disco, Amp Dog Knights’ “I’m Doing Fine”, broken beats, and jazz records all over the place in a fresh style. Then…

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Our man Jacob Arnold over at the excellent Gridface blog has been doing a bang up job of digging into Chicago’s house scene past and present. Check his historical interviews with Merwyn Sanders of Virgo Four fame and Stacey Collins who worked the door at the Music Box back in the days of Ron Hardy…

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Juju and Jordash are on quite a hot streak right now. First off, their recent white label release on the new Dekmantel label is number one on Rush Hour’s House Sales Chart this week, and for good reason: it’s a bad as hell 12″. “Blue Meanies” is more of a straightforward dancefloor banger than you…

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The next step after the master lacquer has been cut is for the lacquer to be plated. Plating is an electro-chemical process that deposits nickel onto a thin layer of liquid silver solution that is first applied to the lacquer. This process is being done for this record at Mastercraft Metal Finishing in New Jersey….

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In a move to be more on top of things, we present to you a recording from this past Sunday night’s Rehab with Scott Ferguson in the mix. Download the mix from Scott here. This one features lots of deephouse and disco, including some unreleased tunes and edits, as well as some material forthcoming on…

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I mentioned in a post last week that I was starting a label and would be documenting each step of the process here. This post will establish the background and the first crucial decision: mastering. I’m gonna keep this stuff really general for now, the label name, artist name, and sound samples and things like…

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Today you get a two-for-one on guest mixes, one each from Scott Ferguson and Keith Kemp of Ferrispark Records. Keith’s mix is a mix from last year on the now defunct New Detroit Radio netradio station. This mix features a bunch of classic funky Detroit tracks mixed up meta-style. You can check Keith’s personal site…

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I saw this video on Philip Sherburne’s blog yesterday, and let’s just say that it rubbed me the wrong way. This isn’t meant to diss Mr. Sherburne, though he obviously has ties to the people making this “documentary”, but what a steaming pile of horseshit. That guy talking about finding someone to bring techno “legitimacy”…

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As I have noted here before, school has been killing me for the last month. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be graduating in just under two weeks which means I will finally have time to getting around to all the ISM things I have had in the works. In the meantime, I have only…

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Jez is the man behind one of my favorite blogs, Inner Sounds. He is always digging up nice little gems in all styles which he shares with his readers. The great mp3 blog Donnaslut also hosted a few of his picks a little while back, so you know his shit is tight. We love us…

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So yeah, my spring break trip to Chicago may or may not have resembled the above picture, I’ll leave that to you to figure out. On the real though, I had a good time chilling with my boy Noleian Reusse and crew at Transamoeba Studios. I’m gonna do a full post on the trip where…

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Early on in our site’s existence, I made a post about a house mix from a Pittsburgh legend Trevor Combee, better known as The Instigator. In that post, I went on and on about this ridiculous set he played at a party my friends and I threw back in December ’99. I will now cheekily…

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When ISM started, I honestly had no idea how many people would even care. I didn’t have Site Meter installed from the jump off, so I can’t say exactly how many people viewed us in the first couple weeks of our existence. Since the Omar-S interview was up our first day, I imagine nearly all…

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The recent Omar-S interview I did for RA kicked up a good bit of dirt all over the interwebs dance discussion areas. The comments on the interview itself are pretty widely varied, with plenty of the kind of moronic reaction you would expect from people who can’t stand to hear something that comes from outside…

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I’ve been a bit quiet around here recently due to school actually requiring me to WRITE this semester (is it insane to miss EE classes?!?!!) combined with the quick turnaround on the Omar-S interview that just got me kind of sick of writing for a bit. But that didn’t stop me from buying a ridiculous…

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It was about a year and a half ago when we kicked this blog off with an exclusive interview with Omar-S. At that time, he was blowing up the underground left and right. Our interview with him was the first one out there, and I think any readership that we got initially can be traced…

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