Sonic Walker

On July 11th 2009, a specially equipped off-road vehicle packed full of educational materials and clothing to donate directly to local Mongolian children in need of help, will depart on a ten thousand mile drive from London to Mongolia. Crossing Europe, central Asia and culminating with a dash across the mighty Gobi Desert, the venture is part of a unique fund raising initiative dreamt up by Alastair Sloan and Thomas MacThomas they call the Mongolian Mixtape Marathon.

Facing an incredible 800 hours driving, the team is appealing for help from the world’s DJs. In order to keep their spirits lifted and their focus sharp the duo intend listening to dance music non-stop all the way and need the nations DJs from all over the world to get involved, donating a mixtape to this non-stop, intercontinental playlist; the Mongolian Mixtape Marathon.

Raising money for Save The Children and in association with The Mongolia Charity Rally, organized by UK registered charity Go Help, each DJ will be asked to pledge a one hour mix of their favourite tunes and also make a small donation. Contributing DJs so far include Krafty Kuts, Brodinski, Ben & Lex, NAPT, Jaimie Fanatic, Miles Dyson, Nick Thayer and The Young Punx. Plus AC Slater, A1 Bassline, Aquasky, Foamo, Trevor Loveys, and The Rogue Element.

At the end of this epic journey the vehicle used will be donated to a local farming community and all DJ mixes pledged will be made available to stream or download from www.mongolianmixtapemarathon.com for at least one year as downloadable podcasts.

Sascha Müller is back with the 3rd episode of the ‘Acid Is The Only Drug’ mix series. This one is called the ‘Tribetoolz vs. Säurebad edition’ and features wicked acid house tracks from these netlabels. Turn up your speakers and dance to the sound of the 303!

Tracklist and download

The new mix from sea.envy features the Canadian netlabel Diplomatik. Originally created as a platform for innovation in recording art and as a resource for djs, live acts, bloggers, podcasters, non-commercial radio and internet radio, Diplomatik is an internationally based digital electronic music label/netlabel founded in late 2007. Some of their releases are openly and indefinitely distributed under a creative commons license in high quality mp3 format, while others are exclusively available through digital download services like Beatport, iTunes and Juno.

Tracklist and download

Last week I spent two days at the first Cologne Commons conference and festival. Cologne Commons was an intense experience with interesting discussions and great music. It was great to meet some netaudio artists and other people who run Netlabels themselves.

Highlights were the live performances of Entertainment For The Braindead and Comfort Fit on Friday. Between 3 and 4 am I played my DJ set with a mixture of electro, breakbeats, techno and house. Below you can find the playlist. The Cologne Commons crew did a great job in organizing this event, and I would like to thank them for inviting me.

I recently got involved with video again and just released my second music video featuring the track ‘Ein Bild von Dir’ by Gleichschalter [broque018]. Using Creative Commons licensed music in a video turned out to be a bit more complicated than expected. According to a document published by Creative Commons, one can not use music under a No Derivative Works (ND) license. In case of my music videos I got permission, and for some other videos I used music with an Attribution (BY) or Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license. Most netlabels featured here on Sonic Walker publish their work under a No Derivative Works (ND) license and since mp3 files usually don’t carry any license information, it is not easy to search for music by license type. A good place to find music which you can use and remix is Jamendo. On Jamendo one can search by artist, album, tags etc. in combination with the desired CC license (example).

Gleichschalter - Ein Bild von Dir from Harald Walker on Vimeo.

If you are interested in creating and sharing your own netaudio videos you can add them to the Netaudio Group on Vimeo.