10-Year Blogoversary!

Whoa! Time flies... It has been 10 years since first post!

Let me present some stats for Music Miner, in order to extract meaningful insights.

I was 100% certain that the vast majority of tracks (presented by Music Miner) would originate from the 90's. It is absolutely my favorite era in terms of electronic music. The tracks from the mid-00's follow in second place (although I remember that during my teen years which were aligned with that period I was still listening music from the 90's). The third place belongs to the first period of electronic dance music (80's). My main reason to trace back tunes from that era was to gain fundamental knowledge in music genres that emerged during that decade. Furthermore, the last time period produced the smallest output, but this fact can be justified:

- During the first years of Music Miner I was mostly listening to music from previous periods than contemporary tracks.
- I was disillusioned with the state of trance music, which was my favorite music genre (trancecracker spotted!)

In terms of tracks per music genre, I expected the results a little worse (i.e. lacking diversity). Obviously, Trance and House are the prominent genres (almost a tie), with Techno coming third. However, other genres were also presented, with smaller contribution. I believe that during the last years I was exposed at a higher level in other music realms, leading to blog posts spanning different music styles.

Drilling down to music styles, Trance / Techno / Progressive House are cited largely. I am positively surprised that Electro made it to the Top-5. It is a music style that I need to dig in deeper for more obscurities (since the majority of them were known tracks). Another future goal would be to produce more output for other styles, especially Leftfield, Future Jazz & IDM.

The country breakdown presents the Great Powers of Electronic Music (for my ears at least); UK, USA & Germany. Although tracks from different countries were presented, one may notice that Dutch music was never my preference (even Belgians had greater contribution!). One thing that I am skeptical though is if I should have focused more on Greek music or not (the last years have been very productive and interesting).


Finally, you may find below a nice visual with the labels tagged in this blog via a non-stat manner!

What would be the future plans and status of Music Miner?  One could only wonder...

Tune #104: Gigi Flag - Nymphomaniac

The cosmic disco era of the 80's is worth digging, in order to find hidden gems like the following track:

GIGI FLAG - NYMPHOMANIAC (INSTRUMENTAL VERSION)



Gigi Flag was an one-off alias of Italo-Belgian bassist Gino Malisan. During the first half of the 70's, he was one of the core members (along with his brother Tony) of Esperanto, a Belgo-English band associated with progressive rock music. The band released three studio albums under A&M Records from 1973 until 1975, when the record company decided not to renew their contract. The large maintenance costs (expensive technical equipment, large number of musicians and technical staff) and the reduction of vinyl production due to oil crisis of '73 led to band's demise.

Gino Malisan continued to work as a producer for a limited number of disco/funk compositions from the late 70's to the mid 80's. One of them was Nymphomaniac under his alias Gigi Flag. The space synths and funky bass elements constitute a fine example of cosmic boogie track.

The original vocal version of the track can be characterized X-rated, for obvious reasons...

GIGI FLAG - NYMPHOMANIAC (SEX VERSION)


Many years later, Davide Armour & Philippe Mascerano performed a re-edit of the track, naming it "It's So Exciting (High Jingo Love Love Rework)", through their Boys From Patagonia project.

BOYS FROM PATAGONIA - IT'S SO EXCITING (HIGH JINGO LOVE LOVE REWORK)


The re-edit was released in 2012 by International Feel Recordings, an indie label of Mark Barrott. Additionally, the A-side of the release featured Rimini '80, a re-edit of another old track (Joël Fajerman ‎- Racines Synthétiques). If I am not mistaken, the latter was featured in some ALFOS sets of late Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston.

Since the 2012 re-edit is largely based on the original track, I hope that credits were given to the original composer.

Fun fact: Nymphomaniac was included in Greek LP Disco In, featuring on cover the ultimate Greek femme fatale of the eighties, Vina Asiki!

Label Realm: cuttinG edGe music

Guerilla Records was a seminal label which was set up by William Orbit and Richard O' Dell in 1990. The co-founders had already a business relationship from mid 80's when the former was managed by the latter. The label's name originated from Orbit's studio, which was obviously called Guerilla. It championed the progressive house genre with releases by React 2 Rhythm, D.O.P., Bass-O-Matic (one of William Orbit's early aliases) and The Drum Club, presenting the hottest sound in UK during the first half of the 90's. The label's trademark was the camo sleeve of the releases (designed by graphic artist Steve Cook), which was aligned with the militaristic name. Unfortunately, the output of the company ended abruptly at its peak, with the last release in 1994 (I can only assume that the two guys did not get aligned about the label's future status). Currently, the company exists with a differentiated name (Guerilla Recordings) for licensing matters of back catalog (owned by indie giant Ministry Of Sound).

Good Looking Records was founded in 1992 by Danny Williamson (a.k.a. LTJ Bukem) and is one of the most influential labels in jungle/drum 'n' bass music (along with Metalheadz & Moving Shadow). Bukem created the label in order to release his first production 'Demon's Theme', one of the first dnb tracks. According to the owner of Basement Records (Basement Phil), the track was initially planned to be released in his label, but Danny later decided to invest in a new label, whose distribution was assisted by Phil. GLR's specialties were intelligent liquid dnb productions, curated by essential players (besides Bukem), such as PFM, Artemis and Seba. Logical Progression & Earth compilations can be used an an introductory material for the label. Last traces of the company (even presence in social media) are detected in 2014, indicating its inactive status.

Global Underground needs no introduction for EDM listeners of late 90's - early 00's. The label presented the classic 2-CD mix compilations by famous DJs of the era (Sasha, John Digweed, Paul Oakenfold, Dave Seaman, Danny Tenaglia), influenced by their actual DJ sets in a specific city (even Athens got its release by Danny T!). The GU City CDs became the best selling mix compilation series of the period. Initially, it was conceived by Boxed label (maybe GU should have been included in letter B...), but a few years later a separate company was created with the same name. The last years a revival of the series appeared, with the latest installment assigned to aspiring DJ Patrice Bäumel (supposedly in Berlin city).