Levi's® MAX RingTune competition announces top Music Industry judging panel!

• Jazzanova, Germany – Berlin's production and remix outfit behind the Sonar Kollektiv label and Jazzanova Compost Recordings.
• Freddie Cruger, Sweden – owner of record label Homegrown and founder of Swedish Brandy 99. Also known as Red Astaire behind the underground hit “Follow Me”
• Stephen Budd, UK – of Stephen Budd Management who looks after artists like Franz Ferdinand, MJ Cole, Tore Johansson and Arthur Baker.
• Charlie Rapino, Italy – background as Head of A&R at Sony Music Intl, looks after Ennio Morricone, and has worked with artists from Iggy Pop to Kylie,
• Tony Wilson, UK – founder of Factory Records and Hacienda

How do you get in front of this panel?

Create your own digital music with the Levi’s® Mobile Mixer ( MAX ), an application that you download from www.eu.levi.com. Levi's® MAX is a fully spec'd* ( see Coda_Tech_Spec ) music making mobile application that turns your phone into a Mini-Studio.

The competition launches on March 1st 2005 and continues through April. Go to www.eu.levi.com, download MAX to your phone, compose a RingTune with it, and upload your creative efforts to the site to enter.

All entries will be judged by our panel, who will also rate and comment on their favourite tunes. These comments will be placed on the website so that all the budding musicians out there can benefit from the judge's insights.

Taking mobile to vinyl

As a final twist, the winning RingTune will then be taken into a studio, re-mastered by producer outfit Atlantic Conveyor, and pressed onto vinyl as a prize for the creator.
This hybrid RingTune will then also be available for download from eu.levi.com as an MP3 or AAC file, along with the original RingTune.

The clever reader will have noticed that this is the exact reverse of the conventional ‘studio hit-turned-into-ringtone’ which has made the ringtone market bigger than the singles market. We've taken this to the next level, start with the user-created mobile tune and turn it into a studio recording ( which may or may not become a hit! ).

Levi's® MAX allows users to create their own tracks from scratch, select individual instruments from the built-in MIDI library, and compose bar-based songs which they can then save on their phone and use as ring-tones. Unlike other attempts at similar executions on the market, Levi's® MAX is not limited to predefined patterns or sets; just like any real sequencer software, users have full freedom of creativity in terms of composition, instruments, length, and BPM ( Beats Per Minute ).

Technically speaking, Levi's® MAX is a 4-track, 16 voice polyphonic sequencer using the MIDI format. It runs on handsets supporting J2ME/JMI-135* ).

In addition to being a standalone sequencer, users can also upload their tracks to the Levi's® website server, and share them with their friends.

The application is available to download from http://eu.levi.com/max - visit with either your WAP phone or web browser.

( * All recent Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones, and some Siemens, Samsung and Sharp MIDP1/2 phones. )

The Judges:

Jazzanova – Germany

Berlin's Jazzanova collective formed in 1995, after DJing with one another at the Delicious Doughnuts club. Alexander Barck, Class Brieler, Roskow Kretschmann, Stefan Leisering, Axel Reinemer, and Jürgen von Knoblauch shared a common goal of blending their collected inspirations together to create a new, sophisticated sound, with debts owed to nearly every form of dance-oriented music from the past several decades.

Jazzanova got their first major break from BBC disc jockey Gilles Peterson, who played the group's first production, "Fedime's Flight," on his program in 1997. This helped set off a series of remix projects, for the likes of 4hero and Ian Pooley, compiled for the two-disc The Remixes 1997-2000.

That same year Jazzanova teamed up with the Munich-based Compost label to form JCR ( Jazzanova Compost Records ). JCR released material from Koop, Victor Davies, the Underwolves, and Rima while “In Between”, Jazzanova's debut full-length, finally came out in 2002.

Their second album, “Remixed”, was released just a year later and featured remixes of In Between and 12" tracks from peers Kyoto Jazz Massive, Ayro, King Britt, and Bugz in the Attic.

Freddie Cruger - Sweden

Freddie Cruger ( Fredrik Lager ) owns the record label Swedish Brandy 99 and is an active DJ – but he’s probably better known for his recordings as Red Astaire with the underground hit “Follow Me” and Freddie Cruger’s “Running from Love” and “Bap yo head”.

Although breakdancing at a tender age Cruger’s first break in the music business was working weekends at the legendary import record store, Space, in Stockholm. This led to significant investments in records, drum machines, turntables, and hanging out at Mats ( Mad Mats ) studio so he could start developing - scratching/mixing, making beats and loops layers.

In 1995 he went to NY to mix two songs for French singer China Moses album, mixed in Battery studios by Bob Power ( Tribe Called Quest, The Roots ). Since then he’s worked with people like Baz Baz, La Nata ( France ), ADL, Desmond Foster, Linn, Swing Fly, Bas.

Stephen Budd - UK

A roadie in the late 1970’s ( for Motorhead... ) Budd went into artist management throughout the 1980s for acts including Heaven 17. Founded Stephen Budd Management in 1988 representing producers, now including Rick Nowels, Tore Johansson, Mark Wallis, MJ Cole, and Arthur Baker. Artists he looks after include Dido, Franz Ferdinand, Jamelia, Shaznay, Estelle, Manic Street Preachers.

Stephen is a director of the Channelfly group which includes Barfly Clubs, The Fly Magazine and SuperVision artist management - started by Stephen and Paul Craig in 2001 – looking after acts like Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and Junior Senior.

Also owns Pollination Music Publishing ( recently signing Paul Oakenfold ), is a founder / council member of the Music Managers Forum and created the successful ‘Passport :Back To The Bars’ project, featuring major artists incl. The Cure, David Gray etc playing in the Barfly Clubs for charity.

Charlie Rapino – Italy

Rapino started in the music industry when as a freshly made lawyer started promoting gigs, by bringing people like Iggy Pop, Patti Smith etc to a radical Italian university crowd.

After working at the notorious Record Plant NYC and breathing the house scene, he formed the Rapino Brothers, with Marco Rapino, moved to London in 1990 and never looked back. There they took the decade by storm, producing and recording popstatic records. After their first hit with Kym Mazelle's "Love Me The Right Way", masterminded Take That's first hit and seemed to produce, mix and fix every major pop act during the 1990s, from Kylie to Primal Scream.
In 1997, Rapino was the "on air" producer to the mother of all pop idols: "Get your act together" on BBC1, followed by "Full Frontal" on Channel 4. In 1999, Rapino became A&R Director for Sony Music International until 2004.

His energy doesn’t diminish, currently Rapino divides his time between being a management consultant for Ennio Morricone, consulting for Rolling Stone magazine, soundtrack work, acting as a production consultant for movies, fixing Iggy Pop to do the voice-overs on the Driver 3 video game, and still signing and managing acts to his joint venture label with Sony, Stud Records ( sic ).

Tony Wilson - UK

Manchester 1976: Cambridge educated Tony Wilson, Granada TV presenter, is at a Sex Pistols gig. Totally inspired by this pivotal moment in music history, he launched Factory Records, once the home of Joy Division ( who went on to become New Order ) and the Happy Mondays.

In 1982 the label launched one of the most famous dance clubs in the world, The Hacienda - a mecca for clubbers as famous as the likes of Studio 54. In the early 1990’s, Wilson alongside his partner Yvette Livesey established ‘In The City’, the UK’s annual music industry convention, whose unsigned live showcases have included then-unknowns - Oasis, The Chemical Brothers, Coldplay and The Darkness.

He has recently started F4 Records, the forth incarnation of Factory Records with the first release coming from Moss Side rap collective Raw-T.

The Producers:

Atlantic Conveyor – UK
Atlantic Conveyor is the brainchild of two producers, Tubbs and Steve “Chopper” Harris. They represent the yin and the yang of electronic music:Tubbs is the fiercely underground downbeat producer signed to Exceptional Records, whilst Steve is the man behind the top ten chart-worriers “The Stuntmasterz”.
Combined they create music that’s unpredictable and often extraordinary, fusing the fundamentals of dub, soul, disco and leftfield electronics.
“Nasty Things” from last year’s “Fantastic Incidents E.P” became one of Gilles Peterson’s biggest tunes of 2004, receiving four ( specialist ) plays in five days from DJ’s as varied as Radio One’s Zane Lowe and Rob Da Bank.

Norman Jay proclaimed their EP “All Killer, No Filler” a modern soul classic. Acclaim like this has led to Gilles Peterson proclaiming them “one of the top five UK producers to watch in 2005”. Their follow-up, “The Crown” is set for release February 25th.