Regular readers know that I have been on somewhat of a quest for the last nine months, trying to re-fill my iPod with completely new bands and music after years and years of not following contemporary music at all (stupid sad middle-ager that I am). As a result, I've been learning all kinds of things about the contemporary indie scene and especially online distribution that I didn't realize before; for example, I've learned that within the global community of electronica fans, one of the things that's become really popular online is the classic one-hour DJ beat-mix set, often called a "deck" recording because of it sounding like it was recorded straight from a danceclub's DJ booth while the DJ is actually spinning. Back in the '80s, when I was a clubhopping speed-freak kid myself, my friends and I would treasure the third-generation cassettes we would occasionally get our hands on, showcasing our favorite local DJs spinning music that was next to impossible to track down in retail outlets; I'm endlessly tickled that this long-form style of entertainment has moved into the realm of MP3s and blogs, and that it's now so easy to get one's hands on these "mix-tapes" and thus listen to a whole plethora of cool electronic music (a lot of which, let's face it, is fairly disposable stuff, making the transitory mix-tape format even more apt).

And of all the blogs and podcasts I now follow when it comes to this kind of stuff, one of the ones I enjoy the most is called modyfier, run by a woman out of San Francisco who prefers not to use her real name online. She sponsors a series of electronic mix-tapes there called Process, which have the added bonus of also containing essays from the DJs themselves, explaining the steps that went into putting that mix together; the main benefit, though, and the reason I like the series so much, is that the woman running modyfier simply has a good ear for music, and all the DJs she invites to be a part of the series are extra-complex and talented ones. Because that's the other thing about mix-tapes that we electronica fans like, the thing we like about beat-mixing in the first place; that when done right, the extra samples and the scratching and the deft interplay between two songs as they segue becomes a creative creature unto itself, with that DJ creating a 60-minute artistic project on their own that is different and better than simply a collection of those individual songs.

This is a hard thing to get exactly right, and modyfier does a great job at picking just those artists who do know how to get it right; it makes all the Process mixes smarter and more fascinating and simply more entertaining than many of the other more generic electronic mixes found online. I encourage all you fans of the genre to stop by the modyfier website when you get the chance.

P.S. And speaking of interesting paradigms, for those who don't know (like me until just a few months ago), the contemporary electronic scene is one of the first parts of the music industry to almost entirely give up on the concept of making money from the recorded music itself; most electronic musicians now, I've discovered, freely make their work available to DJs and "mashup artists" at no cost, with the DJs releasing their re-mixes and mix-tapes to the public for free as well. How all these people generate revenue, then, is by getting hired by giant clubs and festivals around the world to actually show up and spin or perform; the bigger your reputation, the higher a fee you can command, which is why these artists are so dedicated to getting their work out there for free in the first place. It's an interesting way to think of the arts, albeit admittedly not feasible for every situation out there.