Tobtok - Savannah

Building on the emotional last post about losing friends that are close, our friend Tobtok has something to celebrate: one year of being cancer-free. As we all know, or try to forget, tragedy could strike at any moment. Some will fall, and some will be left standing. That's why, as someone with a close one battling the big C, Tobtok's anniversary is so inspirational. We're thankful for his freebie gift to mark this celebration, and let's all look forward to many more celebration gifts to come from Tobias!



As a bonus, Tobtok's remix of the upcoming Years & Years single on Kitsuné premiered on awesome YouTube channel Majestic a couple of days ago.

Tomas Barfod: "Any day above ground is a good day"

Thanks to our fellow friend blog Golden Scissors I got the opportunity to hear the Danish producer Tomas Barfod's latest piece of art "Happy" featuring Eddie Chacon. This tune is about the friends that Tomas has lost during his only 35 years life. With that in mind this tune becomes even bigger. This is how Tomas himself describes the making of "Happy":

“The lyrics to Happy came about differently than any song I have written before. One day while driving in Los Angeles with my wife we were talking about a person’s natural disposition. She labeled me an eternal optimist. I thought about that for a second before I replied that this world is hard on artists. In my 35 year music career starting in the late 70′s in San Francisco and leading up until now that I had seen so many of my great musician friends slip away due to aids, drugs, car accidents, suicide and even santaria but that I had decided I was gonna be happy. My wife was moved by this and insisted I make a song out of it. 

 I’ve attended many funerals in my life and I always think the same thing: Any day above ground is a good day.”

The last sentence in this story is such a strong vision of how you should look at your life! It's not only of course just living YOLO, but it is a reminder to cherish every day and take care of the ones that you love and care about. Live and love!



"Happy" is taken from Tomas' upcoming EP "Pulsing" out next month on Secretly Canadian and in the beginning of January we could hear the title track for the EP featuring Swedish singer Nina Kinert. Pre-order the EP here.



Tomas and Nina made another piece of beauty two years ago in "November Skies".



The best remix that saw the light back then was the one by Jerome LOL.



With this post I want to say thank you to Golden Scissors for the finding but especially to Tomas Barfod for his talent in making brilliant tunes and for his vision of living his life. Big inspiration! Big love!

Kill Them With Colour remix

It was actually two years since we last wrote about the Toronto-based duo Kill Them With Colour. We were onto these guys in their early start when they were more into nu disco. Since then they have moved themselves towards house and made themselves a name and remixed tons of tunes and released an album. Kill Them With Colour have gone big!

Today I had to bring them back to Tracasseur with this bass house remix of the young rising future star Jonah McGowan. Sweet remix as usual from the Canadians and it comes as a free download.

Tracasseur Guest Tape #6: Kings of the Universe

Here's the last instalment of our "monthly mixtape thing" series called Tracasseur Guest Tapes. I already commented the "monthly" description when we posted the last one a little over a month ago. Of course you don't get rid of such a quippy byline, but I guess we could put the word monthly within quotation marks or something.

We have written about Stockholm duo and friends Kings of the Universe before. We really like their production of retro acid house, and I even put their Mercury remix on my Best of 2013 list. This mix is made by Funky Loffe (Mr. Givenchy tee) on a setup with two CDJ800s and two SL1200s, and basically is a collection of their favourite tracks of 2013. A KOTU Best of 2013 of sorts. Take it away Loffe!



Here's the tracklist:

Jamie O'Reilly - F*ck All Y'all (Funk Butcher Remix)
Henrik Bergqvist - Spin
Murat Tepeli - Forever (Prosumer's Hold Me Touch Me Remix)
James Johnston - What You Do To Me
SE62 - True Force
ItaloJohnson - Untitled B1 [ITJ07]
Serge & Tyrell - Pump-O-Matic
Leon Vynehall - Step Or Stone (Breath Or Bone)
George FitzGerald - Every Inch (Deetron Remix)
Jovonn - Garage Shelter (Tuff City Kids Remix)

New stuff from Clancy

Mixmag premiered Clancy's latest track only a couple of hours ago. Because we're good friends with Clancy we wanted to support his latest one also by giving you the track here at Tracasseur too. Love this new one!

Anoraak - Behind Your Shades (Cyclist Edit)

Good old Anoraak released "Chronotropic" late last year. Nice to have him back we thought. Today the EP "Behind Your Shades" was released on Grand Blanc. Cyclist has made a really nice edit included on the EP that should reach your ears. Buy the release over at iTunes.



The original tune is also a nice one.

Urulu - Play Something With Words EP

One of my early favourite of 2014, three weeks in, is released in a couple of weeks. Urulu's "Play Something With Words" EP (out on Manucci's Mistress) includes the incredibly soulful and funky garage track "Believer" that just gets me in such a great mood. Obviously, it includes three other good tracks, but it's "Believer" that is the stand out track. As a little bonus to add to the mystique, read Urulu's little short story about his encounter with Algorithm Man, that accompanied the promo material.

Pick up "Play Something With Words" over at Juno. Oh, and happy birthday Taylor!

Daroc & Joypopp

Our friend Daroc released a new track one month ago named "Volute Club". A really good one that have been stuck in a queue due to our best of lists. But finally it's time to post Daroc's new one during our waiting for his upcoming debut album, said to be released late 2014.



A while ago people didn't know that Daroc was the producer behind Joypopp. Now that's not a secret any more and we also like to present the latest Joypopp tune "D Day". Both this track and the Daroc track are on the compilation "Le Burgundy Paris L'album". You can buy the release over at iTunes.

New one from Years & Years

Nice new eargasm from Years & Years. They are back with a new EP "Real" out February 17 on Kitsuné.



Also check this remix on "Traps" from their latest EP by Armeria.

Pat Lok ft. Bear Mountain - Same Hearts

So, this happened today. Pat Lok released his new EP "Same Hearts". It's released on Holographic People and features, apart from lovely vocals from Bear Mountain, remixes by Oxford, Shelby Grey and Ride the Universe. My favourite of the remixes is the percussive 80's funk of Ride the Universe - glad to see the boys being in good form - but I still prefer the original which is available for free with a simple click on the like button on Pat's Facebook page.

Our Top 100 selection of the best tracks from 2013 on Spotify

Finally we have our Top 100 list ready over at Spotify. It's a fine selection of great producers and bands. Some more well-known, some not known at all. We hope you will dig the list as much as we do, because this is our finest selection. Enjoy!

[Free download] Dillon Francis + Chordashian

We still have some tidying away of 2013 to do, like in the last post, but here's the first track of 2014. NYC duo Chordashian has beefed up Dillon Francis' "Without You", featuring Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, into a deep club house track. Head over to Hypemachine to help the guys chart, why dontcha! I mean, it's the least you can do since they're giving it away for free on their Facebook page.

Passerine + GLOVES

So, I've had this track from back in November on repeat the last couple of days. Our old friend GLOVES has made a very nice housey nu disco remix of Passerine's "Paris Morning". Nice groove and thundering bass aside, what really sets it alight is the wonderful harmonies of those chords.



The original R'n'B dub is a nice song too.

Daniel's best of 2013

First off, since this is my first official post, I shall start with saying hello and nice to meet you! You might know me from pictures on Facebook and such, thinking what the hell is that eighties porn star looking guy doing with the Tracasseur duo. Well, news flash, we are a trio and apparently I am the worst blogger you've had the pleasure of never meeting. But all good things must come to a start, and here’s a starter for a love story; my best of 2013. So, witty introductions put aside, here is a somewhat late personal summary of the past year.

2013 has been fantastic in many ways for me, and musically all of us have really been moving into deeper and harder music, which I for one love! I think one major reason for this is that we've been playing more pure dance floors, but also generally the producers and artists we like are doing the same transition; harder, better, faster, stronger. My list is a bit of a mash up, much like myself; there are tunes in it that I've never played on gigs – as well as bangers that I honestly only would play on a smashing dance floor at 4 am. So if Jonas is up and Sebastian is down, I'm to the left, the right, above and below and somewhere in the middle. It doesn't make sense to me either, so here’s the damn list already!

#1. Chris Malinchak - So Good to Me (MK Remix)

I must admit, I didn't hear this until late may, and I remember walking home late from a gig at F12 in Stockholm, and just listening to it over and over again. Fell in love with that night, and still I get a warm and happy sensation listening to it. Might be an obvious #1, but music doesn't always have to slim to be good. And as a conclusion; Chris Malinchak is awesome, and Marc Kinchen (MK) with the remix – it is truly a godlike combination. I must also admit that I've been playing the MK (dub III) remix of “Look Right Through” like a freak this year, but as you might know it’s from late 2012. So I thought, what the heck, with this as #1 they both get credit!




#2. Urban Cone - New York (Oliver Nelson Remix)

Swedes, swedes and nothing but house producing/playing swedes. By now you should definitely have heard about Urban Cone. You might even remember our posts about them, and both Jonas and me had the Vinjette remix of "Déjà Vu" as personal favourites of 2012 (that was before I was making official “on the internet lists”). And while speaking of that song – another swede did a remix on it, namely Oliver Nelson and here we tie together all the loose ends with this year's #2, a song I played on the beach the entire summer. A nice original tune, but at the hands of Oliver Nelson – summer in liquid form.




#3. Haze-M and Cucumbers - Lady

Ok, so this is one of the late entries on the list, and to be honest I was away for the better parts of November and December, and when I got home, played five or six gigs in two weeks time. We all know what that means; scouring all available sources for new music. This one ended up on the “might play” list and after getting 2:24 minutes in, I was hooked, and it climbed, or should I say cozied it’s way up, to the number three spot. A great collaboration from Russia (Cucumbers) and Germany (Haze-M), released on Sleazy Deep. This is guaranteed something that both Sebastian and me like. Make way for #3!




#4. The Veterans - Will Make It Back Home

So, The Veterans official Soundcloud page has 12 followers and only two songs are posted on it. “Driving All Night”, has 27 plays, while “Will Make It Back Home” has around 800. They’re not on Facebook (trying googling veterans, lol), and overall they seem to be hard to pinpoint, nevertheless, this tune hooked me good and I know Lussan from LPP also love it. The information given from the record label, Red Eleven, is; “The Veterans are a fresh German project, even we don't know much about. What we know is, that these guys really can create cool music.” Well, I for one totally agree with all of that, and especially the part about the cool music. Cool Enough for #4




#5. Haim - If I Could Change Your Mind

I must admit that the first time I really noticed Haim was when the totally awesome Dan Lissvik (all time Tracasseur favourite) did the remix of "Forever". I got Haim's free EP early 2012, ingenious move making it free btw, but back then I didn't really feel they had an unique sound, until the release of the album “Days Are Gone”. The song listed here as #5 sends me back to the 80’s and I just feel that song could easily have been included on something like the “Streets Of Fire” soundtrack, epic flic btw. Haim is currently climbing lists all over the world, and obviously they've climbed mine as well. #5 is a proof they’re here to stay, and I for one am glad for that.




#6. Josh Butler - Got a Feeling (Bontan Remix / Pleasurekraft Edit)

Well, Jonas has this as his #5, and we agree to agree that this is a proper killer remix by Bontan and Pleasurekraft on Josh Butler, and we got the feeling! We played it, everyone played it and everyone loved and still love it. One short anecdote; I was in a bar on the other side of the world (from a swedes point of view at least) and the DJ played this, let’s just say that we bonded and had shots and danced our asses off. 





#7. Todd Terje - Strandbar (Disko)

So this popped up in the early days of summer, and it soon become one of our most played tracks, I think we usually used it to raise the tempo, like the staring tune of the dance floor build. Funny story about the name of the tune is that in Norwegian “strandbar” means beach bar, and the name “Strandbar” derives from when Norwegian national radio referred to “Inspector Norse”, another great track by Terje, as background music at a beach bar. So, although Norwegian radio hosts don’t seem to know about good music, we’re glad Terje is here to give us this; everything BUT background music. Strandbar ftw!




#8. Nervo - Hold On (Fred Falke Remix)

Alright, number eight, with emphasis on the somewhat forgotten magical touch of Fred Falke. I mean the Nervo twins are doing their thing and they seem to be faring pretty well (understatement), but the original version of “Hold On” would never come close to my top list, had it not been for this brilliant remix by one of France’s finest; Fred Falke. I for one miss him and hope he’ll make a proper comeback in 2014. Hold on!




#9. Jorge Montia and Coqui Selection - Pump This Party

So when this year started I pretty much didn't have a clue about neither of these two, Jorge Montia and Coqui Selection. They have both done tons of collaborations (that list would be a novel), and although I'm not a huge fan of everything, but when I found this little gem on Hype Machine in the start of the summer I got really exited. Since then I've been playing this banger late night, dance floor, shots for everyone – style. It really does the job, people love it and it does pump that party!




#10. Le Youth - C O O L (Ben Pearce Remix)

Pretty much fresh off the bat, Wes James currently in LA, got some massive attention earlier in 2013 for the original "C O O L". I for one had been playing P. Diddy's version of Cassie's original “Me & U” some time (yes, I also run a little hip hop club business on the side). I must admit I made the same noise I always make when I hear old guilty pleasures in a modern beat. Jonas went with the original, I’ll go for the version that’s a bit easier to play in clubs, the Ben Pearce remix. Have at you! And keep your eyes pealed for Le Youth, there is more to come, check out his Soundcloud!

#11. Groovebox - Brooklyn

#12. Warmdue Project - King Of My Castle (Crazibiza Remix)

#13. Nora En Pure - Norma Jean

#14. Breach feat. Andreya Triana - Everything You Never Had (We Had It All) (Extended Club Version)

#15. Follow Me - Somethin' Bout You (Rogue Vogue Remix)


#16. Sugar Hill - Feeling For You

#17. French Horn Rebellion & Viceroy - Friday Nights (Bronx Night Dub)

#18. ATFC & The Cube Guys - Work

#19. Dusky - Careless

#20. Monkey Safari - Home