OurStage

Icesixxx is an electronica artist, based out of Belgium. I will have to confess, I did not expect much from the album he sent me called MeKaNiKaLZ, but when I listened to it (all of last week) I have to say: this guy is really good. You can check out (and download) some of his song off myspace. He even offers MeKaNiKaLZ (his debut album) via a torrent. I asked him to tell a little about him and how he got into music: I'm a 34 years old guy. I come from a musicians family: my parents had an instruments shop in the little city of Verviers, Belgium. So, there's always been a lot of music and musicians at home. At my teens, the feeling to create music was strong. I did several rock bands as singer. But after several years of hard work, including tens of shows, recording sessions, the ego of my musicals partners made the band to split. I was a little bit confused then. On the side of all this, I've been a stage technician for a decade. So what takes me to electronic music? First, as I have always listened to all kind of music and, taking lessons of my past experiences, I wanted to explore new horizons. Daft Punk and The Prodigy pushed me to do it. Secondly, the envy to control the whole process of making music. I don't have to ask permission to change things in a tune, or have to call each other to make an arrangement for rehearsal. Thirdly, I always have been a computer geek. I've always been in recording and mixing software. I really started five years ago learning new music production softwares like Cubase, Reason, Ableton Live. It was a revelation for me. So many possibilities, a kind of absolute freedom of creation. - Icesixxx Of all the songs on the album, the most recognizeable track is "Pacman's Revenge", which uses that famous 8-bit music from the video game. He loops the sampled music and added a few other arrangement and it sort of becomes a dance song - simply addictive. "MeKaNiKaLZ" the title song has a very nice build up. It keeps building until you hear this violin part. I would've chosen "SweetMood" as the song of choice, but I asked him to pick his favorite song he said it was "CommodoreSixxx". So that's the song that I've chose to represent this article. I would recommend that you listen to these songs with good headphones, because there are a lot of complex layers of sound. Look for Icesixxx's remixes on other artists, including "When Angels Sleep" remix for a Bulgarian/Belgian band called Jailhouse Chili. MeKaNiKaLZ is available now - for free.