Crumping on Clouds, the new full length album by Metrognome:Falcotronik, comes out February 17th!
Think Tank – Hack #1 Remixes
March 25, 2010
In 2000, Glow Records released a 12″ remix EP of Think Tank’s “Hack #1″ in the UK only. This 12″ includes a remix by Will White of the Propellerheads. Read more about this release and how to get a copy here:
http://atiwygwylei.blogspot.com/2010/03/think-tank-hack-1-remixes-12.html
Paul Robb Answers Questions From Twitter
March 23, 2010
@JoshGrillsItAll: How many variations of “A Knife and A Fork” are there- including those from ThinkTank?
Q&A with Think Tank
March 17, 2010
Q&A with Think Tank’s Paul Robb on Some Assembly Required:
http://www.some-assembly-required.net/blog/2009/08/think-tank_15.html
THINK TANK: The Crusher
August 22, 2007
Think Tank is back with new digital EP release, The Crusher.
THINK TANK: Diabolical! – Available Now
August 4, 2007
Diabolical!, the latest digital release by Think Tank, is on sale now.
THINK TANK: Mandroid & Skullbuggery available April 23
March 12, 2007
That’s right, kiddies! Mandroid and Skullbuggery will be available on iTunes, Napster and elsewhere on April 23, 2007. Digital only. The way it was meant to be.
Headtrip – Volume 2. Issue 3.
June 15, 1997
Note from HAKATAK International President-for-life Paul Robb:
What Shall It Benefit a Man, If He Gain the Whole World and Lose His Own Soul?
Well, kiddies, seems like Papa has pulled it off again. Even as you read this, Brother Sun Sister Moon is finalizing a six album deal with Virgin Records America, and their subsidiary, U-Ground. The hope is for a single or an EP in the Fall, with a remixed, revamped version of The Great Game to follow in early 1998.
What does this mean for HAKATAK International? Damned if I know. But I will tell you this: running a record company sucks! What I have discovered is that record companies exist to sell records. Elementary, you say. But for a namby-pamby sensitive artistic type such as Yours Truly, it comes as a rude awakening. I mean, as far as the business side is concerned, HAKATAK may as well be selling screwdrivers or catalytic converters. I guess that’s why record company people call it “product”.
Now in case anyone indie-types start shouting “sell-out,” let me remind you that my first band was INFORMATION SOCIETY, not exactly a world-renowned hotbed of credibility. As a matter-of-fact, Kurt Harland is in the middle of a multi-year process of trying to turn InSoc into a credibility band. At least I think that’s what he’s doing…At any rate, unless you’re talking to someone from the Mentors, don’t believe anyone who says they’d rather be on an indie; it’s all hype. Although, there are some groups, like THINK TANK, that could never be major-label material, so the indie world is just fine.
Speaking of which, the TANK is still selling and still getting decent airplay, and Mandroid recently entered the PROGRESSIVE dance charts. But something tells me TT will be a side project from now on (you know how us artistes love to have side projects).
Both PJR and HAKATAK will be moving to L.A. in September, the one city in the world I swore I would never inhabit. So we’ll be changing our corporate motto from: “It ain’t where you’re from, It’s where you’re at.” The new motto will be: ” It ain’t where you’re from OR where you’re at, it’s where you’re hoping to be after you get the hell out of Los Angeles.”
As a parting shot, here is my assessment of the current state of the world of electronic music:
INDUSTRIAL: A dead horse, getting deader by the minute. Various offshoots of techno have co-opted and improved on all the decent parts of industrial, leaving a warmed-over and pallid version of heavy metal behind. I personally feel that EBM never really had its day in court as a viable style, but I think it’s a little late now…
ELECTRONICA: As a press-hyped label, this word doesn’t bother me that much. But as someone pointed out in one of the newsgroups, people don’t really talk about Guitarica, do they?
DRUM & BASS: I’m sorry, but I can’t stand this stuff. Some of my friends keep telling me I just haven’t heard the good D&B, but in my mind, this style was invented by DJ’s, for DJ’s, and paranoid music writers, always afraid of not seeming to be in the know, have jumped on the band wagon.
GOTH: Somebody please wake me up when it’s 2000, so we can finish this fin de siecle shit for a few decades. My girlfriend Ramona was listening to Sisters of Mercy in 1987. I think Goth hit its peak about the same time as industrial. I still like to check out the little goth-girls in black capes, though.
TRIP HOP: As a practitioner of the genre, I prefer the term Downtempo, but at least Trip Hop acknowledges the debt to Hip Hop. For anyone who cares, it’s my opinion that Hip Hop is the foremost contribution by America to world culture since its only other contribution of note, Jazz. In the year 2525 (if the earth is still alive), Hip Hop will be classed next to Tango as one of the most important and vital musical expressions of the twentieth century. Hip Hop was and is revolutionary music of the masses, less in its content than in its very structure. I mean, let’s be honest, Hip Hop DJ’s invented sampling before there were samplers. Scratching is analog sampling, folks, and the subversive use of sampled material in Hip Hop is far ahead of anything being done in Techno or Industrial. And for me, Trip Hop is nothing more than some white people who don’t have a feel for rapping, making Hip Hop music and then singing (or sampling) over the top of the same beats.
TECHNO: Like Hip Hop, Techno will survive, but most vitally in its hundreds of micro-styles. Like, Electronica, Techno doesn’t so much describe a style of music so much as a means of producing that music. I mean, do the Orb, Autechre, and Gabber really belong to the same genre? At the moment, the hottest techno groups (at least in the States) are only techno in name, anyway. The Prodigy is Pop-Punk with loops, and the Chemical Brothers are sped-up Hip Hop.
HOUSE: Disco will never die.
And In Conclusion
Just let me say that this is still Frank’s world.
Headtrip – Volume 2. Issue 1.
February 1, 1997
The Sound of One Key Clicking
Random ramblings form HAKATAK president-for-life PJR
So MTV has now decided that electronic music is cool. Oh goody. Now they’ll take a handful of easily accessible groups (Chemical Brothers and Prodigy come to mind), anoint them with their holy cablecast ointment, and singlehandedly make an entire genre seem calculated and obsolete like that awful offal from Seattle, grunge. I mean the whole music industry, from MTV president Judy McGrath, to the guy who empties the wastebaskets at Twin Tone proclaims like a mantra that dance music is “back.” Does this mean I can’t listen to DJ Krush anymore? It almost makes ya wanna take up Rockabilly or something.
Don’t get me wrong, I was among the anointed back in the InSoc days, and it can make life very sweet…for about a year. And that’s my big fear; now that us formerly scorned and ignored electronic-types are the flavor of the month, how long can it be before there’s a new flavor? Ahh, the bittersweet cycle of ignore, embrace, co-opt, discard that has become the hallmark of pop culture.
Of course the cynical will point out that I’m just sour-graping it, because I didn’t get HAKATAK off the ground soon enough to get one of those $10,000,000 distribution deals like Astralwerks or City of Angels. And that’s true, too. But what I’m really afraid of is a record store so awash with mediocre techno compilations and horrible 70’s fusion marketed as “Acid Jazz,” that the average tongue-pierced kid can’t find the good stuff, like ours.
Oh well, if you’re gonna make a career for yourself in the music biz, you’ve got to believe that quality will win in the end. (You know, like Alanis Morisette.)
BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON
HAKATAK’s sophomore effort makes its debut February 25. Featuring the incredible voice of Barbara Cohen, Brother Sun Sister Moon is an otherworldly stew of trip hop, techno, and ambient. Deeper than space beats and bass courtesy of PJR collide head on with the singer the St. Paul Pioneer Press described as “dark, melodramatic, intense, desire-filled and dangerous,” while the Minneapolis Star Tribune states, “Barbara Cohen is one of the strongest voices in all popular music…”
Two years in the making (really), The Great Game will be our first stab at full blown pop success. Things are going well, if initial reviews are any indication. (See the Reviews [link] page.) BSSM is already getting airplay on Rev 105 [link?], the grooviest major market radio station in the country.
Brother Sun Sister Moon will be playing a live set during their CD release party at the Fine Line in Minneapolis on Saturday March 8. Stop by and see what trip hop show is all about.
HAKATAK will also be releasing a limited edition vinyl EP from Brother Sun Sister Moon. Called Way Down Deep, the EP contains six tracks, including two new remixes of the trippy burner “Nicosia,” and the dark dubstramental “Laudanum,” which is unavailable elsewhere.
Also, the Brother Sun Sister Moon record kicks off our Boombastica imprint, which is the room in the HAKATAK mansion devoted to all things slow, low, and deep. (See Headtrip Vol. 1 Issue 3 for more details.)
THINK TANK
Think Tank continues to confound the nattering nabobs of negativism, moving up the PROGRESSIVE chart to #6. There continues to be confusion among genre-dolts everywhere, however, as to whether Think Tank is Industrial or Techno. Hmmm. Maybe we should let MTV decide. Look for a profile of Think Tank in an upcoming issue of Alternative Press.
Dissonance
The self-titled full-length debut from Dissonance is mixed, mastered and slated for an April 10 release. Electrical tape manufacturers everywhere will be rejoicing when Cat and David unveil their new show at a CD release party in Dallas sometime in April. (Those who’ve seen Cat Hall perform will know what I’m talking about.) Check out the “Groups” page for a link to the new Dissonance website.
Dissonance will be the first release under HAKATAK’s new Ecstatika imprint. This is the imprint reserved for those who feel that white noise has been underrated as an element in modern music.
Minneapolis: Electronic Music Mecca?
We were informed by Phil Vanderwerken of L.E.D recently that Minneapolis has five (count ‘em) groups in the top 75 of the national club charts (according to Progressive). They are: Think Tank (#6), L.E.D. (#8), Psykosonik (#57), Haloblack (#58), and Superstitch (#73). Not bad for a one horse town…
PJR: Music Industry Insider
Beginning with the new Spring issue, Yours Truly will be contributing a regular column to the new revamped Interface magazine. The column, called “Wirehead,” will focus on music technology, and begins with a series of four articles on low budget recording (a subject I am, alas, very familiar with). Other “Insider” contributors include Chris Randall of Sister Machine Gun, Chase of Re-Constriction Records, and others. Be on the lookout; Interface has been one of my favorite reads, and with the new format and staff, the new improved version promises to be even better.
Think Tank Releases “MANDROID” EP
October 1, 1996
HAKATAK International is pleased to announce the October 22 release of the newest salvo from THINK TANK’s arsenal: MANDROID. This impressive work combines elements minimalism, serialism, and 12-tone musics to create an unsettling sonic experience that may someday stand beside the works of Ives, Stockhausen, and Cage as a classic of twentieth century experimentalism in the academic tradition.
