The album format, in the world of Electronic Dance Music is most often a self-defeating gesture. There is, traditionally, little need for a long-players worth of club bangers and too often artists who try their hands awkwardly at variation and deeper meaning find they have too little experience and come up short, or even empty. Not so with JIN CHOI's A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE. A true artist album, where the artist has so much to communicate that it didn't even fit on a single CD. All told, 14 songs of emotion using the dance music idiom, but meaning much more. CHOI's previous work with ARCHIPEL, LESSIZMORE, CONTEXTERRIOR and his own PRIVATE GOLD imprint have brought this subtle yet forceful sound into a view, but with WHALES there has been extra care afforded to create a vivid multicolored and multifaceted sonic picture for the public to enjoy in places other than just the dancefloor. The album encompasses such disparate genre influences as ambient soundscapes (album opener DON'T LOOK INSIDE), 60s soul (SHE'S GOT GOLD), 80s neon disco soundtracks (eponymous cut A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE), smoky and moody blue-note jazz (CIRCLES-DARK MIX), and his often played with tough yet subtle minimalist (but not minimal) house excursions. Truth be told, to pick just a few songs to highlight the album would be a fallacy, as they all fit together into a larger whole. A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE is an album that says so much without saying it through a bullhorn. Full of shrouded emotion teased out of detail, in unlikely forms and places. A treatise on a subject that must be close to the artist's heart but is left up to interpretation by the listener. Nothing is forced, but a lot is gained. My interpretation: that one can hear the events lived in JIN's life over the time since he moved to bustling Berlin and changes were abound. At times melancholic and at times hopeful, at times subdued and at times ecstatic.
A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE is a proper album by a proper artist. Drink it in.
Tracklisting
01. Don't Look Inside
02. Godspeed Soul
03. She's Got Gold
04. A Thousand Whales Of Love
05. The Hour Glass
06. Amber & Gold
07. Brother Ash, Sister Dust
08. There Must Be Ways
09. Love & Soil
10. Solstice
11. In The Dark
12. Circles (Inhale Mix) - Digital Bonus Track
13. Stealing Gold - Digital Bonus Track
14. Circles (Exhale Mix) - Digital Bonus Track
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Jin Choi is a musician, producer, DJ and live artist based in Berlin, Germany. Equally focused on groove and melodic structures, his music fuses electronic and naturalistic sounds to move the head and body. Once coined modern minimal, Choi's productions are equal parts emotion, melody and rhythm. "Full Range" is his first release on Serialism Records. In a recent interview, Choi described himself as a Burial loving music-nerd who is simply trying to create his own musical language. He has released on Lessizmore, Contexterrior, RomanPhoto & Archipel, to name a few. For SER10, he joins forces with Maceo Plex (aka Maetrik, the moniker he saves for his darker techno productions) to do just that. Most known for his recent revered deep-house single, "Vibe Your Love" on Crosstown, Plex makes the release the perfect late-night tool. First up is "Full Range", a dubby tech-house number with ominous and increasingly glitchy repetitive vocals that remind the listener of what Choi seems to already know - "music is the universal language, music is no longer irrelevant". Next, "Half Baked", the EP's star, manages to perfectly fuse industrial sounds with melody making a blissed-out, deep- house track. Mysterious squeaks, hisses and factorial inner workings provide the backdrop while warm time-stretched freestyle vocals guide us through the production. Maceo's Deep Remix is around 9-minutes of Chicago house inspired sounds layered with snappy high hats and emotive chords. More

UPC 827170388185 release date 04.11.2013
Tracklist EP: A1. Awake At Night B1. Resonate
It has been too long since PRIVATE GOLD has seen fit to unleash the audio dragon to dropkick our listening holes. But unleash they finally have, in the guise of ex-Cologne enfant terrible, DASO. DASO is a longtime associate of the PRIVATE GOLD family, and it was only a matter of time before he poked his head out of his new Berlin cave to spray the landscape with some much needed fire. At once both cleansing and bringing new growth... A-side "AWAKE AT NIGHT" spreads it's reptile wings to block out the full moon, chugging along and swooping and swaying on superb bass tone coupled with stringy pads and vocal samples that eventually give way to the quintessential vocoded vocal line. Normal sad robot vocals be damned, this is a sad mecha-monster plaintively letting you in on what it's like to live, awake at night. B-side "RESONATE" doesn't go the usual way of lower energy, instead choosing to up the ante with a more direct to your ass push. Forceful whilst still retaining a certain beauty, the interweaving pads, accents, and buried samples give way to a distorted lead line that is bathed in fire. This is a phoenix rising from the ashes. Once again PRIVATE GOLD brings something new and exciting to the world of dance music.

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It's time for class once again. Students, take out your notepads, er, laptops. Today's lesson is how to spin subtlety, emotion, and intelligence into slices of smooth groove. Our coursework consists of the original of DISORDER VS. DISASTER on PRIVATE GOLD. Some of you may have gathered through the syllabus that DISORDER VS. DISASTER is in fact written by intellectual strongmen CESARE MARCHESE (of recent published work on VAKANT and DUMB-UNIT) and his co-author CESAR MERVEILLE (of the CADENZA university). We will also focus on the peer reviews, in fact re-interpretations, by renowned sonic experimenter BRUNO PRONSATO (THESONGSAYS) and head of this very department JIN CHOI. The thesis presented herein posits that through teasing ones heartstrings while simultaneously stimulating various parts of the brain, one can be brought to locomotion: in the layman's terms - to dance. The original's insistent organ chords mix with scattershot brushed snare rolls and a bevy of various, seemingly random percussion… loose and almost falling apart before the below 100hz bass creeps in, finally bringing about the traditionalist kick and hi-hat combo at 2 minutes and turning it into an ephemeral train chugging along a winding track. While the PRONSATO version chooses to stick with the kick from square one, it is by no means a stodgy, traditional affair. Fluid body movement brought about by delayed bits of melody, strong and percussive bass and the interplay of smeared shakers and his oft-repeated wet claps. But it's the unintelligible vocals and moody sine wave that eventually prove the theory. Brain first, but with body together. Lastly, CHOI gives us the straight bull. Without resorting to tricks, he twists the words of the two CES' into his easily recognizable powerhouse style. Crushed rim shots mixed with a bevy of cymbal play and a plaintive wail sits on top of a pushing low end. The most body interpretation of the three, but never lacking in brains where it uses brawn. If these three examples haven't shown you, perhaps you should transfer out of my class.

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The album format, in the world of Electronic Dance Music is most often a self-defeating gesture. There is, traditionally, little need for a long-players worth of club bangers and too often artists who try their hands awkwardly at variation and deeper meaning find they have too little experience and come up short, or even empty. Not so with JIN CHOI's A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE. A true artist album, where the artist has so much to communicate that it didn't even fit on a single CD. All told, 14 songs of emotion using the dance music idiom, but meaning much more. CHOI's previous work with ARCHIPEL, LESSIZMORE, CONTEXTERRIOR and his own PRIVATE GOLD imprint have brought this subtle yet forceful sound into a view, but with WHALES there has been extra care afforded to create a vivid multicolored and multifaceted sonic picture for the public to enjoy in places other than just the dancefloor. The album encompasses such disparate genre influences as ambient soundscapes (album opener DON'T LOOK INSIDE), 60s soul (SHE'S GOT GOLD), 80s neon disco soundtracks (eponymous cut A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE), smoky and moody blue-note jazz (CIRCLES-DARK MIX), and his often played with tough yet subtle minimalist (but not minimal) house excursions. Truth be told, to pick just a few songs to highlight the album would be a fallacy, as they all fit together into a larger whole. A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE is an album that says so much without saying it through a bullhorn. Full of shrouded emotion teased out of detail, in unlikely forms and places. A treatise on a subject that must be close to the artist's heart but is left up to interpretation by the listener. Nothing is forced, but a lot is gained. My interpretation: that one can hear the events lived in JIN's life over the time since he moved to bustling Berlin and changes were abound. At times melancholic and at times hopeful, at times subdued and at times ecstatic.
A THOUSAND WHALES OF LOVE is a proper album by a proper artist. Drink it in.
Tracklisting
01. Don't Look Inside
02. Godspeed Soul
03. She's Got Gold
04. A Thousand Whales Of Love
05. The Hour Glass
06. Amber & Gold
07. Brother Ash, Sister Dust
08. There Must Be Ways
09. Love & Soil
10. Solstice
11. In The Dark
12. Circles (Inhale Mix) - Digital Bonus Track
13. Stealing Gold - Digital Bonus Track
14. Circles (Exhale Mix) - Digital Bonus Track
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Welcome to the employee canteen at the offices of PRIVATE GOLD, would you like to have a seat? Take a load off, you've been working too hard. The kitchen has prepared some very special dishes for you this time around. Executive chef TOLGA FIDAN (best known for his incredible releases on VAKANT) provides the freshest ingredients to make the three entreés we have on the menu. Firstly, DOUBLE EDGE SWORD (Original Mix) does what Tolga does best: tease your psychedelic taste-buds. A meaty, umami flavored 80s electrofunk bassline anchors some wonderful call and response vocals asking you if you want to dance, telling you this song will make you dance whether you like it or not, and reminding you that all that's wanted is to use your imagination. Subtly placed chimes, pianos and synth hits are like a family passed down seasoning blend that makes the dish entirely unique. If the Brothers Johnson took ketamine and thought they turned into your dinner, this is what it would sound like.
Secondly PERLON's SAMMY DEE provides what amounts to a perfect clean remix course to re-whet the appetite and reset the taste-buds. A reductionist exploration of sharp and concise textures, sounds and flavors, it grooves while remaining taut and stretched (ULTRASTRETCHed, if you will). Hints of citrus, acidic berries, chili and the occasional full on root vegetable texture… all together not unlike a funky ass sorbet.
Finally we have label boss JIN CHOI pulling out all the bombastic stops. Pulling the flavor/sound that cut through the original mix (a vocal snippet that has been fully sautéed in weirdness) and putting it center stage, he then amps up the party aspect in his remake, adding some champagne and caviar audio touches that sound to the ears like big ass synth melodies. PRIVATE GOLD cannot stop with the magic and I'm guessing this one will leave everyone sated and happy.
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With PRIVATE GOLD's newest offering the inimitable Cologne producer MARTIN BEUME has really taken a huge and achingly beautiful step in his songwriting and production. Some might know him from releases with CONNAISEUR or BRUT! Records, but this record is miles higher… Wisps of detail adorn each song like edible gold flake on a luscious chocolate ganache cake. Synths flutter and glide like summer butterflies and even the percussion is precious and clean. This is not to say it is only good for home listening. Lead off track "SOLID RUBBER" has a tough and sexy deep house sway with echoes of Brazilian bossa nova laid over its more traditionalist Chicago House and Jazz. "LSDEEP", has the full dirt stomp necessary for a forbidden tryst, but sneaks in smart samples and emotional filter washes to add unexpected depth. At 105bpm, you might not expect "WIP CATCH" to fucking groooooove the way it does, but trust me kids, things are getting slower as we are getting older. And it feels great. Soaring orchestral strings married with perfectly cut vocal samples are sure to get the more adventurous DJs hypnotizing dancefloors like musical svengalis. And when you thought it was all over, AXEL BOMAN turns in an amazing remix in his instantly recognizable non-traditional style. This dude is a lothario. All hip shake and cooing come-ons, it's a reduced house gem that slinks its way into your pants. PRIVATE GOLD continues to bring intelligent, emotional dance music to a barren wasteland of cookie cutter clones. PG003 builds a castle on the foundation of the first two records released.
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With age comes maturity, or that is at least what one would normaly think. Together the three men (Jin Choi, Walker Barnard & Tolga Fidan) associated with Private Gold's second release, the "I'm Just the Rain" EP, clock in at over 100 years… and yet this release is all thrusting crotches and wriggling teen lust man-booties. Only kidding, the songs on this release are nothing if not mature. Sure the aforementioned sex is there. In the cooing vocals, stompy bass and 60s psych of the contrapuntal guitar of the eponymous I'm Just The Rain or in the Jimmy Edgar-like funk and grind of Revolution For The Lovers. But what you notice after a few listens is, that these great dancefloor tracks are well thought out, that every little sound or slap, every tiny swish or sample is lovingly placed there. As if you could imagine that the studio is a leather upholstered room, where the men discussed Foucault and sipped a lovely sherry (a favorite of Jin Choi's). Tolga's Remix does exactly what it should, bringing the originals drive up into the 21st century. All squishy percussion and layered vocals, it will satisfy those looking for something more obviously cerebral, while still wanting people to move. The arrangement also recalls 80s pop songs, seeming to give it a subconscious verse/chorus/verse and longing romantic feel. Private Gold brings another unique and special baby into the world with the "I'm Just The Rain EP", and it's bound to be a hit.
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