“Heligoland” will be Massive Attack’s first new album since 100th Window in 2003.

The release date is February 8 2010.

Tracklisting:

01. Pray For Rain
02. Babel
03. Splitting The Atom
04. Girl I Love You
05. Psyche
06. Flat Of The Blade
07. Paradise Circus
08. Rush Minute
09. Saturday Come Slow
10. Atlas Air

Featured vocalists are Horace, Martina Topley Bird, Damon Albarn, Guy Garvey, Hope Sandoval, Robert and Grant.

I’m looking forward to February 2010 – new album and a gig at Hammersmith Apollo.

Able10 celebrates 10 years of Ableton and to celebrate there’s free upgrades, special offers etc. plus some free Live Packs from artists such as Adam Freeland, Apparat, Swayzak and several others.

These Live Packs need the latest version of Ableton, which is 8.0.9.

There doesn’t seem to be that much in 8.0.9 as is shown at http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=128509 
but I’ve downloaded it and its all worked nicely so far.

Only just started using it but the new Apple Magic Mouse works really well in everyday use.

But tonight I also found that the addition of the horizontal scroll makes it excellent in music software such as Ableton, particularly in the Arrangement view.

Arrangement View in Ableton

Using it, you can instantly scroll through your arrangement rather than having to use the ruler at the top or, like in other music software, the scroll bars.

Its only a small thing, but makes hell of a difference.

Will be interesting to see the other uses people can find for the multi touch capability of the Magic Mouse.

Found this new resource whilst looking at the Loop Masters website.

Lots to look at on there, including some good Ableton video tutorials from Rob Jones. The vids are good, but get rid of the beard mate.

http://www.looptv.net/looptv

Ableton Tutorials – http://www.looptv.net/archives/878

hybridized.org is a highly recommended site, if you’re into extended DJ mixes, from the likes of Nick Warren, Jody Wisternoff, Hybrid, nuBreed, Shiloh, Way Out West, James Warren etc.

The downloads are free and you can also subscribe for a small amount, to get faster downloads etc and you can also order DVDs loaded with the mixes.

Updates are fairly regular, with most artists adding 1 or more mix per month.

My personal faves are the Nick Warren mixes for dance music and the James Warren mixes for a more laidback, cinematic or chillout vibe. Checkout James Warren’s Celluloid mix, great work.

According to the website blurb it ‘can play and record loops, change scale and key, transpose, alter tempo, program beats, create arrangements, switch and layer multiple sounds, all while the musician is performing live on stage’.

Check out the videos below for more info.

Stumbled upon alatest.com / alatest.co.uk  recently whilst looking at some reviews of music gear.

Its a site that collects together all the product reviews for all sorts of products and saves you messing around searching through google.

Its quite a new site but already seems to be working well.

Check this example link for M-Audio AV-40 speakers.

Managed to fix a problem thats been bugging me for a while, the problem being missing presets in Ableton Live 8. This seems to have occurred somewhere down the line with upgrades this year from Ableton Live 6 – 7 – 8.

Most of the presets for Simpler were missing as were some others.

Tried the Repair Library option in Ableton, but that didnt change anything Simpler-related.

So, after a bit of a Google and some forum reading, managed to find the following solution:-

-  checked the actual Library structure and found the following:
Simpler was found in
Library/Presets/Simpler   (full range of presets info in here)
and
LibraryPresets//Instruments/Simpler  (list of presets showing up in Ableton)

- I copied the presets from Library/Presets/Simpler to  LibraryPresets//Instruments/Simpler  and these all then showed up in Ableton.

Result!

Note: I also did  a backup of whole library first

Have only just started using it, so only using the default setup but you can customise it as much as you want, with labels, colours etc. Can get a grid of up to 8×8 but I haven’t experimented with that yet, but 4×4 works well.

Highly recomended.

Below is some video of it in action, being used by DJ Fantom.

Ableton Launchpad

Looks cool in the videos too, I like the way you can quickly set it to control the Mixer settings with one button press and then control the mixer faders. And it can also be used as a drum pad trigger, directly linked to Ableton’s Drum Racks.

More info: DV247

Price: £149