Plastic Milk SF Feature

Plastic Milk SF (Featured Article) by JM

Toronto-based producer Vangel creates music that will make you want to get your zen on in one track and your dance on in the next. The eclectic producer first made his mark in Canada’s hip-hop scene where his work was described as “beats so gloriously fucked, they make EL-P sound like a more accesible Moby” (Now Magazine). His variety-pack musical leanings shine through in his work where the songs serves as a melting pot of musical genres: jazz, hip-hop, folk..the list goes on. While he grew up playing in his grade school’s band and strings ensemble, attending summer music camp and rehearsing with his city’s symphony orchestra, he realized that playing music wasn’t for him. “I hated playing. I wanted to put it together”. Lucky for us, Vangel is a master at musical collages and “putting it together.”

His days of searching through flea markets for interesting vinyl lead to DJing which eventually resulted in his passion for beats. “I wanted to make beats so bad. I had so many ideas I wanted to try out. I bought a computer, quit my job, and moved home”. For the past four years, Vangel has released a string of instrumental EPs that have won over critics and music-lovers. His work has resulted in comparisons to DJ Shadow and Mr Scruff. Listen to “Eat Your FootLoose” below and enjoy the beautiful soundscapes created by a man whose ear for instrumentation unifies the musical genres and keeps things interesting.-JM

Links and Listen:

MySpace

Download-“Eat Your FootLoose (Live Mix)”-Vangel

Read the article on PMSF here:
http://plastic-milk.com/2009/10/28/vangel-mp3/

Field of Fur, Dirty Inputs & Vangel

Turntable Radio OCT.09 Podcast

Check out the new Turntable Radio Podcast for OCT. 09 by Laurent. It features a few collabo tunes of mine featuring Dj Unkut and ProF from 5&1/4 Records.

You can stream or DOWNLOAD the whole show for FREE here.

Biblio + Live + Personal Character REVIEW

Taken from: Ano Jisho Blog

"Vangel is the kind of person that i just don't meet often enough. he's good at what he does, knows the technical aspects of how he does what he does, knows and knows about the other people that are doing similar things and is just a super nice guy. he was good enough to let me hitch a ride on his mixer in between sets and the rest of the time we talked shop.

I like his approach because he sounds like he has a lot more fun making music than most musicians i've known over the years. vangel's e.p. biblio is available on itunes, emusic, finetunes.net and as a limited edition 5&1/4 inch floppy from 5&1/4 records. the album was pieced together from private and public library collections and recorded with top session musicians. it's a jazz record which you probably wouldn't guess at first if you've heard some of vangel's other work. his live set for ethan's show was more of an improvised breaks and glitch performance.

My favourite tag line for the biblio ep is "cheesy yet serious, like hipster scarves". i'd contest this because i don't think the album is cheesy at all. there might be a hint of st. germaine (and let's be honest, st. germaine gets pretty cheesy at times) here and there but this album has it's own voice. there are samples but i'm happy to say that i dont recognize any of them or they've been replayed to fit the composition. i'm not the foremost authority on jazz but i've listened to too many sample heavy records, sample libraries and everything else to not hear familiar loops on a regular basis. this leads me to a second regular occurrence and that's telegraphing.

Have you ever listened to a song and new what was coming next? i'm sure it's happened at least once and probably more often for some of you but it's kind of disappointing when you can do it at all. some musicians write their songs specifically so the listener can sing a long and has all of their expectations met neatly with no surprises. i can't say i enjoy that often. i like hearing things that don't make sense. i want to know how someone made that noise or what they used to sequence everything. i want them to drop the beat out from under us or change the tempo or blast us with noise or something and biblio did that. it was a fun ride that i just didn't see coming for the majority of the album.

Survey says: go buy this thing now! ok preview it first if you don't trust my word, which you should, then go buy this now."

CLICK BELOW TO BUY.