mawone

To everyone who has ever supported me by buying or downloading my music, hipping other people to what I do, and giving all of this overwhelmingly positive feedback - thank you. I appreciate it. It's really cool to hear that I don't just do it for myself, and it means a lot to get noticed when all of this oversaturation and the adhd nature of internet listenership does its best to hinder it.

Now, let's set some goals for 2012. 'Last time I did this, I managed to complete and release all three of those projects in a matter of months. I want to see if I could knock all of the following records out over the course of this year:  

Maw- - Leave The Flow LP

This will be my fourth full-lenght album, and I guess you could say it's the 'main' release out of all four listed. It's about the idea of separating oneself from the wavelength that everyone else seems to occupy, and attempting to feel more alive through doing that. It's also a giant reference to a certain universe that the people close to me will probably catch. I will do my best to have it break this pattern of short records I've been guilty of for the last couple of months.

Maw- - Osaka Finale EP

You knew it was coming, don't front. This will be the final trip by way of rail to the Kansai region. Mainly because I'm starting to run out of rail lines to use as reference points for the tracklists.

Maw- - Hanja(Sukje)

More South-Korean shit. As you might've guessed, this indeed is what follows after the "end of Part 1"-outro on the Hangul album. It's a continuation that picks right where the previous album left off, so I'll design it so that you can just enque the music to follow the first release and it'll become this one 20 track full-lenght album.

Maw- - Radio Panda: 2nd Broadcast

This one will be the goodie bag with no plot, no theme, and no bullshit. Just like the first one. Beats, remixes, remixstrumentals, skits, interludes, quarterludes, thirderludes, and found sounds.

So, to the 2013 me, please let us know how all of this went down. I know you can do it. Just make it knock. TOUGH.

Edit: You can follow me on twitter now: http://twitter.com/mawpanda

And on that note, I'm outta this.

Peace peace peace to you and yours.
Maw-

Maw- - Hangul(Gangui)

Stream and download here: http://mawone.bandcamp.com/
Or just download directly from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?3g7pdku6kax1o2p

Tracklist:

1. Annyeonghaseyo
2. Riot!!!!
3. Paran Haneul
4. Jigeum Neomu 1
5. Yeogiseo
6. Nunibusyeo
7. Jigeum Neomu 2
8. Hyeong
9. Hangul(Gangui)
10. Jigeum Neomu 3 / End Of Act I


Counting from the 1974 EP and including Radio Panda, this seems to be my 10th release. Hooray!

This project follows a format I've been meaning to mess with for a while. I always wanted to explore some spot on the the worldwide spectrum of music that doesn't get nearly enough exposure for all of the soul and funk it has. And seeing how Madlib, Oh No, Onra and a bunch of other people have touched on India,Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Vietnam, China and various parts of Africa, I figured that since no-one has(at least to my knowledge) messed with the South-Korean psychedelic rock movement, then maybe I would have something good to offer if I put together a project exclusively sampling it.

And that's what it ended up being, Hangul(Gangui) is the first part of a small series of works that cull from the aforementioned music phenomenon. I limited my source material(bar most of the drums of course) to the late 60's and early 70's South-Korean psych&garage rock, and also the psychedelic stylings of the many pop singers under the creative wing of Shing Joong Huyn. This was of course mostly because of the compatability of a psych rock groove and what I'm trying to do with my beats rhythmically, but that time frame also holds by far the most appeal to me in basically any sort of music; the material draws it's own parallells to what I was into before I found myself listening to something like Kim Jung Mi and San Ul Lim.
Of course, I was fascinated with the music at first due to it's obscurity, but as I started to listen more closely, I found myself becoming enamored with the true spirit and core of it. There are dirty, loose and playful grooves and phrases and at times the singing is completely and utterly unbridled. The musicians and producers tended to put more weight and texture on sonics their American counterparts wouldn't have, and the korean singing flows differently than your bog standard english does. Those subtle differences in approach(and with the obvious ubiquitious Trot influence) succeed in making the music carry this odd funk throughout. It's unlike anything anyone is making now, that's for sure.

The album I made out of all of this is a short one, since it's only the first part. I didn't want to have the music too far-removed from the sonics of the originals, even though the chopping and layering obviously turned the music into something completely different composition-wise. I wanted to have the textures and subtleties of the music well-represented on the album, and I made sure that every track had a good punch to it. It ended up being a great opportunity to apply some new layering / mixing-techniques I had discovered with the Osaka Part Two EP a few months earlier. 
Plus since a lot of the source material was originally recorded from extra dirty vinyl(as is the case with Riot!!!), I felt that the endgame of working on this project was an exceptionally good challenge in mixing.

I'm quite pleased with the structure and sequencing of the album as well, since it doesn't really have any spots where it could bog down too much, while still refraining from cutting things short where they don't need to be. I didn't want to make this album an exception in me fighting against your standard verse-chorus-verse-end-structure of your typical song, so what you get here is a section by section-sort of thing, where moving to the next part also signals the end of that particular song. I feel like it's the best way to present a project like this, since the crux of it has so much more to do with textures and compact grooves than your average user-friendly compositions.

So that's that for this one. I'm super happy to have completed this project as I promised myself late last year, and I'm looking forward to delivering part two soon enough.

And oh yeah, please check out my partner Espe( http://essu.deviantart.com/ ) who made the most fitting and best cover art possible for this project. I was truly floored when I got my hands on the finished piece to use, and I'm truly blessed to have such a talented person providing exceptional visual representation for my projects.

Once again, here's the download link for the album: http://www.mediafire.com/?3g7pdku6kax1o2p

Please enjoy,

Maw-

Maw- - Osaka Part Two EP

Download the album here, as usual with the Osaka series: http://clevelandtapes.com/album/osaka-part-two-ep

1. Tokaido Shinkansen(Arrival Line)
2. Shin-Sekai Episode
3. Shinsaibashi Episode
4. Tohoku(Comment)
5. Hiroki's Oath Pts. 1 & 2 / Higashi-Mikuni(Break Line)
6. Chiisai Na Hana(Comment)
7. Honshu
8. Tokaido Shinkansen(Departure Line)

Wow, this is my 8th actual release and my fifth EP. Where to start.

I think I tried to approach this project as something that would permanently elevate my ability, since I wasn't happy with all of the things I was doing on my earlier records and I wanted to just step my craft up and take it further. I'm always fighting all sorts of sonic mud since I don't have anything resembling a proper home studio, so my monitoring is not exactly spot-on. I'm working with what I have which is not a whole lot. Still, I think I managed to make something presentable in a very compact time frame. I say this because I don't think I've ever managed to start, complete, mix down and release a project this fast ever. I think the closest I've ever gotten would be the Panda Ride LP, which was almost an automated process, but I think that was because it was such a healing album to make and I think it will always harbor halcyon magic that takes me back. I also wasn't aware of a lot of things I am now, so I wasn't that critical over what to keep and what to discard as far as material for future projects.

As far as the theme of the album goes, I think this one is a fitting continuation of the first part since it tries to communicate the same thing as the earlier one but from a slightly different stance. Where as the first EP had a very mellow, dusty soundscape and a more desperate cry for peace and understanding, this one sort of has it the other way around. It has a perkier, punchier rhythm and a clearer soundscape but it's less enthusiastic with pausing to give commentary on communication between human beings(which is the gist of this whole project). Rather, this album concernes itself with the textures of Osaka and the digital-spirited allure of modern Japan. It tries to find harmony within the bustle and soul within irregular patterns, and the comments it makes are more about the importance of just pausing and taking it all in, instead of pausing solely to comment and attempt to influence the flow of things.

I went with a decidely more soulful edge this time around, since I didn't want to repeat the jazz-based haze of the first record. I think it paid off since the chopping became more fluid and it had more logical spots to place all sorts of little vocal samples, screams and yelps to help punctuate what I'm doing to the groove. There's also a more clear-headed approach to just chopping things at a higher pitch, which helps bring everything out a little more and encourages me to have it just a few BPM's quicker(no time stretching!) so as to not let the rhythm get sleepy. Plus I feel that the drumwork is now more deserving of it's surface spot in the mix since I tried to program and chop everything in it's right place, use the right sounds and hurt my brain with the compressor to get that thrust and slam to work properly with the intentionally shaky ghost notes and hats.

As for the structure of the release, at first I was a little concerned that it would morph into the same mold as the first one... and it sort of did too! But I realized that it's not a bad thing, since it IS a continuation and since the first EP had this song-cycle railway entry/exit, it was only natural to have it here as well. I really love how my partner represented this in the cover art too!
Then of course, there's the brevity of the record, which serves as a statement of it's own to how people don't really like to sit down and listen to anything these days unless it delivers some immediate gratification. I felt that by making it shorter, it won't be user-friendly and easily digestible(I don't like that sort of stuff at all) but rather more inviting for repeated listens and vocal by it's very form of the glaring problem that we have in our world of people never having time for each other.

So there, that's some stuff to mull over, perhaps as you listen to the album.
I sincerely hope that you enjoy what I've put together here, I myself wholeheartedly believe it to be my best-sounding effort to date.
Please enjoy,

Once again, here's the link to get the album for free: http://clevelandtapes.com/album/osaka-part-two-ep

one love
Maw-

My avatar permits me to deploy childish wordplay at opportune moments. It's the law.

It's been way too long since I've updated anything on here! Hello world, I hope the day finds you well. Since we last spoke I wouldn't be all too surprised if the number of people checking for my stuff has seriously dwindled but I guess ditching all this social media networking jibber jabber does that to you. No matter, I've been layin' in the cut with a whole bunch of good stuff just waiting to be finished(which I am in the process of doing).

I'm actually going to put out three different solo projects in the following couple of months. Here they are:

Radio Panda EXPANDED(Dec. 2011)

The 68 people that went ahead and checked out the Radio Panda Vol. 2 will be familiar with most of the material on this one already. It's my first actual mixtape release which I decided to make more official by separating it into individual tracks and making a few changes into the content. It's still a collection of beats, remixes and original breaks with me on the boards the whole time directing the show. It runs for about 30 minutes and it's quite compilation-y because the basis behind this project is to provide a good introductory collection of works to be the first thing people would run into should they search for my music and find my bandcamp page.

Osaka Part 2 EP(Dec. 2011?)

A return trip to Nihon. If you're familiar with the first one you already know what it is. As the suite reached it's end on my last proper full LP , this next one will have a flow less concerned with thematic continuity and more with the individual imagery of each track. This time I also wanted to ditch the jazz tip and go in with a more soulful edge. What it does have in common with the first one is the musique concrete song-cycle and obviously the digital-eastern influence as far as certain chord changes and groove phrasing goes. Expect this one to arrive some time around Xmas/NY.

Untitled Korean Project(???. 201?)


----

So that's what's gonna be poppin' in the near future if all goes well.
Here's the important linkage stuff once more:

My bandcamp page with most of my discography: http://mawone.bandcamp.com/
My soundcloud with all sorts of stuff, like singular tracks and dj mixes: http://soundcloud.com/maw1
Like me on facebook(FUCK FACEBOOK THO) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maw/204593179559350
My twitter : N/A for now

If you want to reach me, just leave a comment on here or on soundcloud or shoot a mail to Theofficialmaw (at) gmail.com !

Peace unity love and blah and paws to ally'all.

Oh, and whoever's sleeping on my musics... OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE! Get up on that shit!

One.

Get my new music!

http://soundcloud.com/maw1/radio-maw-vol-2

To celebrate my 22nd birthday this week, I assembled this mixtape full
of whatever I feel like playing for about 30 minutes or so. Comprised
of new original solo material, scraps from ongoing projects, remixes,
original sample breaks, random interludes and skits this mix marks the
second volume in the Radio Maw- series which explore unconventional
releases as sort of side dishes to what my main solo material is all
about. Please enjoy, it's a little all over the place but hell it's my
birthday. I'm a do what I wanna.

Tracklist:

(00.00) 1. Maw- - Intro / Black Soul Pt. 1

(02:30) 2. Maw- - Black Soul Pt. 2

(05.27) 3. OG sample record break

(06:23) 4. Maw- - Momo's Invocation(Grow Up)

(08:50) 5. OG sample record break

(09:23) 6. Bush Babees - Remember We(Maw- Remix)

(12:23) 7. Maw- - Interlude: North Dock

(13:10) 8. Skit(Do I Look Like A F#%?¤in' Jukebox???)

(13:52) 9. Maw- - Momo's Room

(15:57) 10. Maw- - Interlude: Purposeful Obscurity

(16:17) 11. Jeru The Damaja - Ya Playin' Yaself(Maw- Remix)

(18:39) 12. OG sample record break

(19:37) 13. Maw- - Yesterday(J Dilla Cover)

(21:46) 14. OG sample record break

(22:09) 15. OG sample record break

(23:13) 16. Dutchmin - Surrounded(Maw- Remix)

(26:16) 17. Outro(That's Not Cool)

Once again, here's the link where you can listen, review and download this thing: http://soundcloud.com/maw1/radio-maw-vol-2

I hope you enjoy!
Peace, uno!

It's finally done and it's finally here: 

http://soundcloud.com/maw1/radio-maw-vol-1-the

The official description thing:
This mix of beats, remixes, interludes, preludes, quarterludes and basement junk is the fruit of the labor brought upon an innocent beatsmith by a horde of message board inhabitants. The first volume of Radio Maw sees our hero making beats out of the submissions of whoever felt like linking a song to be sampled and processed into a beat by the man himself. Approximately 24 minutes of questionably mixed basement hip hop! Free! The original thread is here(in finnish) with all of the original contributions of the original contributors(or co-producers, if you will.) :

http://www.basso.fi/keskustelu/68138/maw-anna-sampylamatsku-niin-vaannan-siita-trakin

The real deal:
This was a colossally challenging project to fit in a busy schedule so for clarity's sake and for maximum enjoyment I didn't force every submitted track into it's own beat, but rather tried to make an interesting mix by relegating some of the tracks to 'spice'-status to embellish the music made out of the songs that I managed to get a hold of in good quality(and that had at least some meat in them to work with). It's still all over the place mix-wise because some of the songs that made it onto this project aren't necessarily stellar sample material sonically. I sincerely hope it doesn't detract from the enjoyment and bounce too much though!

This tracklist is really intended for the eyes of the original participants only so they can pinpoint the usage of their submissions - the soundcloud site has a more condensed one without the extra info.

Detailed Tracklist(with annotations as to what has been used and where):

1. Intro / Rocks My Soul
- Main chops and loops: Man Made - Man Made

2. Interlude(This)

3. Kefka Flip
- Main chops: A blend between Kefka's Theme and The Edge

4. Outkast - Elevators Remix
- Bassline chops: Syksy
- Guitary synth / Synthy guitar: Starless
- Reversed dirty strings: Aimon Virsi

5. Karma
- Main guitar chops & low vocals: Karma Police

6. Interlude(Sound)
- Transitional beat: The Edge
- Small horn samples within: Starless

7. Work Hard
- Main chops and vocal samples: Winterlude

8. Planet Asia & Madlib - Definition Of ILL Remix
- Main chops, vocals, bass guitar etc.: Dark Star

9. The Hardways
- Bassline: I Am The Resurrection
- Vocal samples and keys: Kom Hem
- Stuttering Guitar: Myrskyn Jälkeen

10. One For Blu
- Main chops / piano: Strange Meadow Lark
- All horns and strings: Haunted Palace Theme
- Mangled hook guitar: Cayman Islands

11. Interlude(Maw)

12. Common - Dooinit Remix
- Main chops: Ghost Of Love
- Hook guitar: Cayman Islands
- Dual vocal melodies on hook: Myrskyn Jälkeen

13. Down On Me / Outro
- Main chops and vocals : I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

In this episode, we get to immerse ourselves into the geeky backstory of what Maw's new album Let Me Know If You Ever Get There is all about.
Real talk shall unfold itself as follows...



I rarely make the effort to parse my records to listeners since I feel that music should not have to be explained, rather, it should be heard and felt and it should be able to communicate and express its ideas without any extramusical intervention by whoever made it. This time, however, I felt like I wanted to provide a little more content to egg any quasi-interested ears on to checking out this stuff - I'm proud of what I've done and I ain't funnin': This is my most serious record yet.
But not in an exclusively personal sense. My previous albums have been quite the emotional soapboxes, what with all of the already emotionally charged music pausing intermittently to make way for whatever far out statement I felt like making - mainly built out of all of those edits of people I respect saying things I can mold into something I want to communicate to others. The albums Panda Ride, Panda EX-Chapter, Panda END-Chapter, and the actual culmination of the emotional introspection that is the Osaka EP, were(and are) essentially different takes on love and acceptance among people in general. It plays like a thematical quadrilogy, beginning from exposing one's hopes, dreams and flaws to others, and then progressing towards the numb state of mind born out of the realization that people rarely do care, and ending with the acceptance of such a social climate and moving on with one's life.
It's evident in a lot of the songs and almost in all of the little skits and interludes I peppered the compositions with. It was all made during a time of my life when I was kind of lonely and people around me seemed quite indifferent towards me, so that obviously translated into the music as the core message of it all.

This new one though - it's quite a far cry from all of that.

Let Me Know If You Ever Get There was born out of me having way too much to say - you'll find all sorts of throwdowns on a variety of subjects from releasing music free of charge, being scathingly anti-radio, people ignoring the black origins and foundation of popular music in general, all the way to referencing the recent radiation leak in Japan and what one leaves behind when they die. Musically it tries to be the same way as well, a lot of the tracks try to fit as much as they can into as short of a time frame as possible. I actually ended up removing a few songs completely because they weren't dense enough, and I went ahead and added parts or even whole separate beats to almost all of the tracks to make them more multi-faceted and to just generally change it up here and there.
The music is also meant to have this constant momentum and propulsion throughout. I didn't want to put a single fadeout or an orchestral stab ending to any of the songs, because I didn't want to give any of the musical ideas presented to have enough downtime to just wind down and die. I wanted a constant rotation of things, which is as much an attempt to just deliver more content as it is a statement on what looks like the slow but sure ADD-ifying of the consumption of music and media in the information age.

The album is filled with little(and not so little) stylistic nods to sources of inspiration - Ehime is an obvious nod to J Dilla's genius behind Donuts, and the first beat on the Momo's Starship triptych is my take on the source break Madlib used on one of my absolute all-time favorite beats ever from him. The record is also a congestion of sequels(not exactly intentional), since most of the material either builds on something previously heard on the album, or it's a continuation from something I did before on a earlier record. For example Another Island, which is indeed a second part of the track Island off of my debut album Concrete Preservation. Momo's Starship(and the whole concept of 'Momo') is something that I always build upon album after album, and I promise to explain what it means exactly some time. It's quite complex.

I'm taking the liberty to paste here something I wrote down regarding the title of this album, should anyone ever ask of it:

"The title derives from how I feel like communication has become this tug-of-war of interest and attention, and I find myself enstranged from an environment that exhibits this so openly. That's why it's called 'Let Me Know If You Ever Get There'. It's like, 'allright, fuck all this shit, I'm leaving all of this silliness behind me. Let me know when you people are satisfied with the attention you have gotten and want to come along as well'. It's like what my mom and probably your mom too used to say - get a move on if things get to becoming totally and utterly ridiculous. It's a waste of time trying to bicker through pettyfog when you could be doing productive things outside of all of the anger and frustration that surrounds you. "


So there you have it. Or at least some of it! If I ever get involved in any sort of deeper dialogue about anything I've ever done, you can count on me discussing it here unabridged. I truly hope I didn't come across as one of those rambling artists but whoever linked you here probably warned you that this right here is going to be some geeky shit.
I also truly hope that you enjoy this album, and perhaps my previous works as well - I appreciate all of the support I've already gotten, from my fellow artists and from all of the awesome listeners and fans who take the time support this music and spread the good word. 

You can stream the album in full here(there's also a download link in the description): http://mawone.bandcamp.com/

Or you can just download the entire album as a .zip for free from this link: http://www.mediafire.com/?c977xtf1c2skptl
UPDATE: This is the new and improved final version of the record.

I'm out,

Peace,
Niko / Maw!

This is Meiso by DJ Krush.

It's one of my favorite albums ever made.

It has a song called OCE-9504.

It sounds like this:



Why am I bringing this up?

Well, for the longest time this track weirded me out and, at times, kind of gave me the creeps. I felt like there's something being expressed here that has some deep darkness to it. Something you wouldn't really want to know about. The baby noises and the shearing of kitchenware at the very end were unsettling for me, for some reason. It was just so ominous, even though I have enjoyed the track as an integral part of the record.

Today, however, I solved the mystery for myself.

I found an explanation from DJ Krush himself, and it reads as follows:

“Krush”: That track has a real interesting episode. I did a preproduction for that track in Tokyo, and at first I wanted to make it a real warm, nostalgic type of track, like a merry-go-round type of thing. But then I came over to do the recording in New York last year, and right in the middle of the recording, one morning I woke up in my hotel room and there was the Oklahoma explosion. It came on the TV, and I saw all these kids, all bloody, and firemen getting them out of the building. And I thought to myself, I can’t just make a happy song. So I went to all the record shops, looking for the records I wanted to use, getting CDs and records that have baby voices. And it turned out to be that type of track.

So it doesn't take a genius to realize that OCE-9504 stands for Oklahoma City Explosion, April(the 4th month) 1995, the location and time of the explosion. Krush mentions it later in that particular interview.

What nobody mentions though is that OCE-9504 is a SKU(stock-keeping unit), a kind of serial code to this particular compliance sign:




This fucked me up.

Seriously.