Got your balance right?

September Equinox is a time of balance when “day and night are equal”, well almost equal. It marks the beginning of winter preparations and is a time to respect the impending dark while giving thanks to the sunlight.

Spinning some tunes in celebration

To celebrate the sun crossing the celestial equator I am playing a selection of Dub, Ragga, Dubstep, Drum & Bass at Equinox, Phnom Penh tonight. The party starts at 9pm and runs until late. So, if you’re up for getting your pagan wiggle on, spacing out to some deep bass or just kicking back and relaxing, come on down and have some fun. Big shout out to Hipparchus (Greek astronomer and mathematician), have a happy Moon festival. 中秋節

Swarm Intelligence – ‘On the edge’ EP

Originally from Ireland, Berlin based Simon Hayes has a fetish for the musically obscene. Expect a twisted mega-mash of grime, industrial Techno and jungle when he hits the Technics. On the production side his ability to fuse grimey deep bass with neck-snapping Electro and distorted Techno is second to none.

It gives us great pleasure to release this debut EP from Swarm Intelligence on Invisible Agent. Click here to go to the release page

Simon Hayes a.k.a Swarm Intelligence delivers a fusion of bass heavy Dubstep, driving Electro and distorted Techno. Exclusive to the Juno download store for the next few days. Be prepared.

We all know tagging is important, right?  After observing a friend spend endless hours submerged in iTunes, meticulously tagging and rating their music collection track by track, I realized I was naive to think most online music distributors tag their files correctly. You know your digital life is a mess when you see files called ‘Track 01.mp3′ only to open it up and reveal the tag displays ‘track 1 – unknown artist’. Never fear, I am going to explain what tagging is and a suggest a tool you can use to make your life easier.

What are ID3 tags?

Tags allow useful information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information to be stored within a music file. To keep things simple, I am going to deal with ID3 Version 1 tags. Don’t worry, it’s not overly complicated. Type 1 tags are the most basic, but most common and useful tags. Here is a list of the fields available with ID3 Version 1 tags:

• Title – The name of the track
• Artist – The artist’s name
• Album – The album or EP name
• Year – The year of release
• Comment – A note about the music
• Track – Track number
• Genre – The type of music, chosen from a set list covering most genres

Why should I tag my music collection?

There are a number of reasons to tag your files. Your music player is capable of searching by tag, so if you’re in the mood for some Jazz, it will list all the tracks in your collection that have Jazz stored in the Genre field. If you wish to promote indie record labels, your friend’s garage band or a Netlabel you can use programs like Audioscrobbler a free online service that tracks your listening habits by reading ID3 tags and displays your top artists and recent tracks for all to see and share. Independent record labels or producers will get a little more exposure as their play count increases and depending on the service they might even be paid a few cents for each play.

How do I tag my MP3 files?

A multitude of tagging software exists. I highly recommend EasyTag. EasyTAG is a utility for viewing and editing tags for MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey’s Audio and WavPack files. The intuitive interface makes tagging easier under Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and Windows. You can add images to files and its built-in CDDB support and powerful file renaming utility are a breeze. Better still, it’s well maintained and is completely free.

How to use EasyTag?

The EasyTag main window is split into two parts: a file browser on the left, and the tag editor on the right. When you select a directory EasyTag automatically scans each file within the directory. You have the choice of selecting one or more files to edit. This is a powerful feature as you can edit a particular tag field for multiple files at the same time. You can preview your changes before saving. Check out the EasyTag help or documentation for more details.

EasyTag is powerful tool for keeping your music collection in order, enabling you to find your favorite tracks quickly and access all the information about them. A tagged music collection is a happy music collection.