SXSW is just around the corner. We are doing it big as usual this year! We’re working in conjunction with Dubspot and Terrorbird to bring you two solid nights at Beso Cantina (307 W 5th Street, Austin, TX 78701) feat DJs such as Sammy Bananas, Smalltown, LAZRtag, Jayceeoh, Daedelus, Mexicans With Guns, Bird Peterson and many more. All you have to do is RSVP here: www.gigacrate.com/rsvp Please help us spread the word on your blog, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc…

On to the new jams this week… Murs & 9th Wonder are prepping for their “Fornever” album release at the end of this month with the new single “The Problem Is…”. Mega Ran has a new single “Here We Go Again”. In the blogs section we’ve got a slew of fresh new songs. One of our favs is the new Redman “Money On My Mind”.

As far as dance music, another Floor Bangers has landed … “Volume 90″. Ayres shot us the new Rob Threezy “Let’s Go Ravers” and we got a solid dance joint from ABB Records’ artist G Koop “House of Samurai”. There’s all that and so much more on the site. Dig around and find some goodies!

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The Novation Launchpad is an amazing little device. It’s portable, light and fairly intuitive. Visually, its appealing design becomes even more attractive when in use thanks to the 64 multi-colored, back-lit buttons. It’s a great little controller for a very fair price.

The Launchpad is really a well conceived device, but the biggest advantage—price and portability—is also its biggest limitation. Because the Launchpad does not have faders and knobs, as does the Akai APC 40, I quickly realized it was going to be a little tricky to move at the pace I wanted in certain instances (for example, in an Ableton Live “DJ” set or a live PA set). It can certainly be done, but it is a little clunky to control things like volume and effects at the speed a lot of performers expect with just buttons and menu pages. Some built-in settings are a little worthless for my purposes too—the pan page for example. The fact is you just can’t cram everything into such a portable device. The knobs and faders that are left off the Launchpad would be very nice to have on a controller designed to work with Live but it would fundamentally change the concept and design of the controller.

Despite the size constraints, the Launchpad has some unique and useful features:

The Launchpad has two custom programmable modes—you can set the custom pages to drums or whatever else and get busy. The custom modes are a very nice feature for making beats on the fly, but unfortunately the pads are not velocity sensitive.

The backlit buttons make for a nice visual point of reference not just for the performer, but also for the audience.

You can link up to 6 of these babies and make one massive controller—although I don’t personally get the desirability of this feature.

What I was most impressed with was the unique ways Launchpad can be used—basically you can modify most every aspect of this device. The Launchpad is built for use with Max for Live which lets you build your own synths and instruments with amazing results. There are even step sequencer patches for the Launchpad. It’s like being able to circuit bend a MIDI controller! Very cool.

While the APC 40 has a lot more of the controllability I desire for gigs and in the studio, I certainly will not be getting rid of my Launchpad. The ability to customize the Launchpad coupled with the portability of the device make it really worth the money. It fits right in any backpack or laptop bag and pulls all its power from the computer’s USB making this a great controller for traveling or even just taking to the coffee shop.

We’ve got so many joints this week it’s hard to decide where to start. How about Memphis Bleek’s new jam “Still Ill”? Or maybe your thing is more Gucci Mane “Lemonade” style? Waka Flocka Flame “O Let’s Do It” might tickle your fancy. One of our personal favs this week is Reflection Eternal’s jammy feat some serious heavy weights… J Cole, Mos Def and Jay Electronica “Just Begun”.

On the dance tip, Floor Bangers Vol 86 has landed with joints from Moullinex, Hey Champ, Breakbot and more. DJ Protege has uploaded his latest Remix Pack 8. Religion DJs have uploaded joints off their “Breakin Rulez” release. DJ Platurn has laced us with his latest remix of “Oh Sheila”.

Lastly, there’s tons of new blog songs to sink your teeth into…

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You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about all the Serato NAMM announcements by now (new cartridge, version 2 software, the bridge, Rane Sixty Eight mixer). If you haven’t, hit up our blog for details on all that and more NAMM related stuff.

In the way of music, be sure to check the new B.O.B. “Nothin On You” (one of our personal favs this week). Lupe Fiasco is back with the Neptunes on his new single “I’m Beamin”. Maxwell has dropped his latest “Bad Habits (Remix)”.

As far as dance/club music goes, we’ve got Dave Wrangler’s new remix/mashup compilation “Under the Influence” which is packed with goodies. Floor Bangers Vol 83 is here with some sick tunes from the likes of A1 Bassline, Herve and The White Panda. Calvin Harris sent us his latest “I Created Disco”.

There’s also a slew of sick new blog songs that have just arrived. Make sure you hit up the site and get you some!

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Meet the new 4 channel Rane mixer that has Serato built in. One of the coolest features this mixer has is two USB ports so that transitions between DJs is seamless! Oh and it can control up to 4 virtual turntables (something NI Traktor has done for years). Lastly, it has six internal effects and you can switch between them all while things stay on beat (filter, flanger, phaser, echo, robot and reverb). Apparently you can sub-mix up to six channels into a bus, insert analog effects or even computer effects (via USB), and use beat-synced internal effects on the box. There seems to be alot more to this mixer than initially meets the eye.

This mixer is completely midi assignable and will have ASIO and Core Audio drivers thus enabling you to use it with other programs ie. Cubase, Logic, Ableton etc.

The crossfader has an independent contour adjustment. The line faders have a global contour adjustment. They didn’t see the need to have independent contour adjustments for the line faders. The crossfader is our magnetic fader and the line faders are Bourns faders which are really good.

Street price is slated just under $3,000 and it should be hitting stores shortly.

Here’s the skinny:

• Two independent USB 2.0 High Speed ports, each supporting twenty-two, 32-bit floating-point audio channels at 48 kHz.
• Real-time support for two computers.
• Support for 2, 3 or 4 Virtual Decks on one or two computers.
• Direct control of over 30 Scratch Live Library, Cue and Loop functions.
• Two mic inputs: one with phantom power and one with line-level.
• 3-band full-cut EQ, plus new High-pass / Low-pass Filter.
• Flexible USB recording options, record from any PGM or output.
• Internal universal switching power supply (100-230 VAC)
• Unit size: 14.3″H x 12″W x 4″D (36.4 cm x 30.5 cm x 10.2 cm)
• Weight: 11.3 lb (5.2 kg)
• Shipping Size: 7.75″H x 12.75″W x 19.25″D (19.7 cm x 32.5 cm x 49 cm)
• Weight: 12 lb (5.5 kg)

Unique FlexFx bus:

• Process a sub-mix of up to six audio channels.
• Six internal effects with seamless on-beat switching between effects.
• External analog insert support for legacy hardware effects.
• USB insert support for computer-based effects.

Four full-featured input channels:

• Four stereo Phono/CD inputs of Line, Phono or S/PDIF.
• Four stereo auxiliary inputs.
• Four stereo USB playback options.