Italian frame drum maestro Gianluca Baldo died Saturday, August 9. He was 47. Baldo was a frame drum specialist, a painter and also the organizer of the Frame Drummers Meeting in Barcelona (Spain). "Gianluca was a very fine artist and a very fine human being, whose first phrase at any encounter was always "how can I help you?," says Canadian ethnomusicologist Judith cohen. Gianluca Baldo was born in Verona (Italy) on July 7th, 1961. He was always very close to music. When he was 12 Baldo started studying guitar. In his own words: "Over the years I played different percussion instruments without any regular education, since 2004, when thanks to Juan Luis Castao I discovered frame drums. I have been lucky enough to start studying with Glen Velez, the main reference for what concerns modern frame drumming." "I also studied frame drums techniques with Zohar Fresco, ghatam with Ghatam Suresh, kanjira with Ganesh Kumar, tamburello and tammorra techniques with Paolo Cimmino and Andrea Piccioni, percussion

Minimalism can sometimes re-appear as the strangest thing. On the face of it, it will appear simple, understated, almost in danger of losing an audience to its complete lack of, well, anything. Underneath that surface, though, lurk the myriad ideas and idiosyncrasies of the artist and viewer/listener themselves. And as the minimal tag creeps back [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Heartthrob - Dear Painter, Paint Me (M-Nus/Inertia)", url: "http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/?p=2133" });

This is the debut full-length release from Berlin-based Heartthrob aka Jesse Siminski. With Dear Painter, Paint Me, Siminski has assembled a remarkable collection of emotionally-charged, provocative, humorous, self-reflective techno tracks that continue the upward trajectory that started with the ubiquitous Baby Kate 12" and his genre-busting collaboration with Gaiser. As the title suggests (borrowed from a series of paintings by Martin Kippenberger), Heartthrob is a musician who wears his heart on his sleeve, and a maverick musician even within the M_nus ranks, focusing intently on the melodic, harmonic and tonal aspects of his music while openly railing against the "redundant percussive techno stuff" that currently clogs dancefloors. But that's not to say he lets up on the beats for a second, in fact, his tracks are equally characterized by a deep understanding of the formal and conceptual ideas that define and shape the M_nus sound. Add to that the mischievous time signatures, a penchant for the dramatic a

Update to the Update!: Music Theft So some drama related to this track: There's a fella by the name of Brandon Harrod who created a project call Laromlab. The label Mushpot Records picked him up and put some effort into promoting him. It was through such a promo company that I received info about this track. I dug it (very much in fact) and posted it here to Hellthy as Laromlab's "Nightdrive." And I just recently saw that Brandom posted a comment on this post (see below). It wasn't very clear what he meant at first. I thought the track title was just mislabeled. A little more clicking and I see his "confession." If the hoax isn't itself a hoax this is what happened: Brandon, a painter who was trying to make music unsuccessfully decided to take other people's songs and pass them off as his own. And it seems it was good, obscure stuff that got him some attention. But eventually he was found out. So I looked up DMA-SC (Mathieu Stempell) who is the real creator behind this track - and I find he has some fanta