The electronic music festival has arrived on the college campus. Tonight's Electric Love Fest (ELF) is UCLA's first event of its kind (and hopefully a regular mainstay). ELF brings the atmosphere of other enormous Los Angeles events such as the pre-Halloween Monster Massive and the New Year's Eve celebration Together as One, and fits it into a campus hall. This event features local up-and-coming musical stylings of Jakkmode, UCLA's very own Color, and Universoul Religion.

To get a taste of these up and coming mixmasters, check out these links and listen:

The big news on the software front had to be the announcement of Live 8 and Max for Live. This is a huge step forward in marrying to traditions of software creation. Live 8 has some nice incremental advantages to version 7, but the real innovation here is the support of Max for Live. Now composers from the programmatic and algorithmic front can take advantage of the Ableton workflow and easy to use signal chain. I'm very excited to get my hands on this software!

This year's NAMM kicked off Today to large crowds and an endless sea of recording gear, instruments, and software. Companies like Serato, Ableton, Stanton, Numark, Akai, Bias and Presonus were all showing off their latest offerings. I was there to cover the Trade show for Remixin. There will be lots of photos and videos coming over the next few days.

2008 was a fun year for us, lots of great parties and great music. here's a quick rundown of our favorites. best wishes to everyone for the new year.

hercules & love affair - blind
the whitest boy alive - golden cage (fred falke rmx)
mgmt - kids (soulwax rmx)
tiga & zytherius - sunglasses at night (alter ego rmx)
santogold - l.e.s. artistes (ooh ee rmx)
boys noize - oh! (a-trak rmx)
kaiser chiefs - never miss a beat (cut copy rmx)
m.i.a. - paper planes (dfa rmx)
the juan maclean - happy house
fred ventura - when i let you down (alden tyrell rmx)