Marco Resmann and Simon Baker will headline Top Notch's next installment at Home Sydney, set to go down later this month.

After debuting in January with Claude VonStroke, the team at Top Notch have decided to keep things varied for their February show, enlisting a host of house and techno names. Marco Resmann heads up the evening's entertainment, bringing his melodic minimal house sounds to Home, while bumpy tech-house will be provided by "Plastik" man Simon Baker, with Australian exports Shades Of Grey set to chip in with a live set. Making the most of the remaining summer weather, the party is set to happen on Home's outdoor terrace, getting underway at a healthy midday and kicking on through to 10pm. Local support acts will include Ben Dunlop, Andrew Wowk and Claire Morgan.

Buzzin' Fly will host their first Plastic People party of the year on Friday 26th February.

The night will be special cause for celebration, as the label will release their 50th single—Stimming, Julia Biel and label boss Ben Watt's "Bright Star"—four days earlier. The 12-inch will be a strictly limited edition release with no repress, including a poster, lyric sheet, and gold foil blocking on the gatefold sleeve. For the event, Watt himself will take to the controls alongside his longtime partner-in-crime Chris Woodward, with the duo playing for the entire six hour duration of the evening. Watt is known for his extended sets, and the assembled crowd should expect to take a journey through his trademark mix of electronic disco, deep house and melodic techno when he gets on the decks.

The ticket allocation that was available directly through RA Tickets has now sold out, but we have been informed by the Buzzin' Fly team that 50 tickets are available to purchase on the door. However, fans are urged to get down as early as possible to ensure their entry to the bash.

Jan Jelinek will continue to showcase his fondness for collaboration on his forthcoming album with Masayoshi Fujita, AKA El Fog.

Fujita cites his first musical passion as Bon Jovi, and even found himself making a pilgrimage to poodle rock's spiritual home of the USA for a year before moving back to Japan to study film. He's now based in Berlin, producing downtempo and ambient material as El Fog that bears no resemblance to his hair metal origins. One of his trademarks is the modification of his instruments, taking his vibraphone and placing strips of foil and metal to affect the reverberations made when it is struck. He continues to experiment with these techniques on Bird, Lake, Objects, which will see a release on Jelinek's own Faitiche imprint.

The pair have combined to create a spacious and atmospheric piece of work, with Jelinek himself commenting that, "these tracks seem rather introspective, cautious even – and reflect the recording situation: deliberately pared down, reduced to a single microphone in space and a separate track for all other instruments, each movement and action is chronicled by the treacherous mike." This means that aural artifacts such as fire engines, footsteps and street noise have leaked into the final mix, with both musicians incorporating the live ambient sounds into their improvisational playing.

Tracklist
01. Undercurrent
02. Workshop For Modernity
03. I'll Change Your Life
04. Waltz (A Lonely Crowd)
05. Stripped To RM
06. IA_AI

Faitiche will release Bird, Lake, Objects on March 26th, 2010.

Letsmix.com's Next Generation DJ contest has been the subject of online controversy recently, as its emphasis on self-promotional skills has left many participants feeling wrongfully snubbed.

The contest—which received over 3,000 entries—aims to reward "mixing skills as well as entrepreneurial drive," but it seems the latter quality carries more value than many contestants expected. The rules are fairly simple: amateur DJs upload their best mix in MP3 format, and Let's Mix! posts them online with built-in widgets to tally plays and ratings. Competitors then set forth to garner as many ratings as possible from whomever they can find, often taking advantage of social networking devices such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. At the end of January, the top 100 competitors with the best average ratings advance into Stage 2. These finalists will now craft a second mix, which will be judged by a jury of industry specialists, including Deadmau5's global manager Dean Wilson, Sebastian Ingrosso, David Waxman of Ultra Records, Beatport founder and CEO Jonas Tempel, Mark Grotefeld of Pioneer, and DJ Mag editor-in-chief Ben Murphy. Each contestant's final standing will be determined by a combination of the jury's opinion and the average rating of the participant's mix.

Trouble began cropping up last week when competitors noticed something odd about the finalists: some of their mixes had received far more ratings than plays, meaning that the bulk of their high scores came from people who had not actually heard any of their mixing. In one case, a DJ advanced into Stage 2 with over 400 ratings and fewer than fifty listens, meaning that only about 10% of his high ratings came from people who had actually heard his mix. Many contestants found this unfair, and some suggested that scores like these should be considered "inaccurate," as they could not have been based on any assessment of the DJ's mixing skills. They made their opinions known on Facebook and the Let's Mix! forum, but to little effect. Neither the rules nor the technology of the competition prohibited listeners from rating mixes without hearing them, so scores were considered legitimate even in cases where the rating-to-listens ratio was extremely lopsided.

Reached for comment in his office, Ola Sars of Tonium, the company behind Let's Mix!, stood by the results of the contest. He explained that the Next Generation DJ contest intends to reward both mixing skills and self-promotion technique, the latter of which is a very important part of being a professional DJ. "Those DJs that went out and got hundreds of ratings on their mix," said Sars, "they definitely have entrepreneurial drive." He admits that the contest could have been improved by requiring listeners to hear some portion of a mix before submitting a rating, but also points out that only several of the 100 finalists have strange rating patterns. Furthermore, Sars says the staff at Let's Mix! had been extremely rigorous in preventing any form of cheating, and that none of the current finalists has broken the rules in any way.

Despite the unrest among those left behind, The Next Generation DJ contest will continue as planned. Winners will be chosen on February 20th, and prizes include gigs at this year's Winter Music Conference in Miami (with hotels and flights included), PR and management contracts, and a variety of DJ equipment such as Pioneer CDJ-2000s and 60GB Pacemakers.

This piece has been amended to reflect the fact that Deadmau5 will not be judging the competition. It will instead be his global manager Dean Wilson. We regret the error.

Crosstown Rebels will bring their Get Lost party to the WMC for the fifth year running in March.

Label boss Damian Lazarus made a move from his London base to Los Angeles at the start of last year, but also has a long-running relationship with the East Coast, throwing some of the WMC's most talked about after parties on an annual basis. This year's event is set to be one of his biggest yet, kicking off at 5am on the Saturday morning of the festival and cruising all the way through until 7pm that evening. Deniz Kurtel, Glimpse, Seth Troxler, Jamie Jones and Butane will all be there to represent the label's current crop of artists, while there'll also be plenty of appearances from Lazarus' close friends on the house and techno scene.

Wolf + Lamb affiliates Lee Foss, Soul Clap, Shaun Reeves and Lee Curtiss (the latter of which will be performing live) will all be showing off their respective takes on modern house music, with the UK being represented by Leftroom boss Matt Tolfrey, Mr C and ex-Peace Division man Clive Henry, who'll be going back-to-back with Parisian tech-houser Dyed Soundorom.Konrad Black and Ryan Crosson complete the action-packed festivities at Miami's Electric Pickle club. You can be sure that the bash will be a popular spot for both all-night clubbers and the fresh faced afternoon ravers.

Tickets for Crosstown Rebels' 5th birthday bash are now available to purchase via RA Tickets.

Pantha Du Prince has been named as one of the main electronic acts for this year's Field Day event in London's Victoria Park.

The single day festival has proved a popular day out for both the capital's indie kids and dance music fans, selling out its ticket allocation in each of its three previous years. French synth-rock quintet Phoenix have been announced as the main stage headliners, while Caribou will make the trip over from Canada to showcase the aqueous dance music of his Swim LP. Max Tundra will be on hand to demonstrate his infectious lo-fi karaoke antics, and edgy Cologne-based electronic trio Mouse On Mars—now unshackled from their Mark E. Smith-fronted Von Südenfed outfit—are likely to be performing fresh material given their three year break from any releases.

Revellers looking for more of a straightforward house and techno fix can anticipate the aforementioned Pantha Du Prince as well as a DJ set from Border Community boss James Holden, while the dubstep fraternity will be represented by Bristol-based synth addict Joker, who'll be appearing alongside his regular mic man, MC Nomad. Fellow electronic instrument enthusiasts Silver Apples will also perform a mix of new tracks and their classic late-'60s psychedelia material.

Attendees of previous Field Day events have registered their dissatisfaction with the volume levels on many of the stages in Victoria Park, but only time will tell if the festival's organisers have been able to pump things up a little for this July's installment.

Longtime techno DJ and producer Christian Smith will release his debut album this Spring on Tronic.

Entitled Director's Cut, the album will be Smith's first ever full-length release, though the Swedish producer has been making singles, EPs and mix compilations since 1996. Smith is known for his pounding, big room techno sound, and made waves two years ago with the larger-than-life peak time track "Total Departure," released on Adam Beyer's Drumcode label. On Director's Cut, Smith goes for a slightly funkier, more atmospheric sound, with only one one enormous banger: "Break it Down." The album was produced and recorded in Sao Paulo Brazil, where Smith is currently based.

Tracklist
01. Higienopolis
02. Omniscience
03. Pressure Point
04. Interlude
05. Beluga
06. I Wanna Step Away
07. Tribute to Principle
08. Break it Down
09. Indecent Exposure
10. Milky Way

Tronic will release Christian Smith's Director's Cut in late March, 2010.

Marcel Dettmann has released details of his debut album, which is simply titled Dettmann.

Following in the footsteps of labelmates Ben Klock, Shed, Prosumer & Murat Tepeli and Luke Slater, Dettmann will be the fifth Ostgut member to unleash a full artist album, having previously collaborated with Klock on 2007's Scenario double pack. We're yet to hear exactly what the album sounds like, but we're promised plenty of stripped back but powerful MDR-esque moments along with a counterbalance of deeper material, including the two intro and outro tracks that bookend the record. Marcel himself is also being coy about specific details, but hints that it won't be a strictly dance floor record. "I like music with a depth that I can feel. There is no formula for that. It could be a concept album or one that makes use of various styles." The album will be preceded by a Dettmann Remixed 12-inch, featuring Norman Nodge mixes of "Shift" and "Unrest," and Wincent Kunth's takes on "Vertigo" and "Wound Up."

Tracklist
01. Quasi (Intro)
02. Argon
03. Screen
04. Motive
05. Drawing
06. Reticle
07. Irritant
08. Captivate
09. Silex
10. Home
11. Viscous
12. Taris (Outro)

Ostgut Ton will release Dettmann on April 26th, 2010.

The Prodigy are set to take time out from their upcoming Future Music Festival schedule, playing arena-sized shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

The English trio, returning to Australia for the fist time since January 2009, will take their live show to Sydney's Hordern Pavilion and Melbourne's Hicense Arena for consecutive Wednesday and Thursday night performances. The following weekend will see the rave icons complete the remaining Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide legs of the traveling Future Music Festival, where they share the bill with Booka Shade, Sven Vath and Dubfire.

The International Music Summit will take place in Ibiza for the third year running in 2010, right on the eve of the white isle's famous opening parties.

The IMS will feature panels, interviews and keynote speeches by some of the most influential figures in electronic music today, including many big name DJs. Pacha resident David Guetta will join Cadenza boss Luciano and Erick Morillo from Subliminal Records for a panel discussion moderated by Pete Tong. At another event, Skream and Busy P will join BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac to outline their vision of electronic music's future. The weekend's keynote address will be from Mark Ronson, the massively successful DJ and producer, who's remixed the likes of Jay-Z, Outkast, and Moby. Speakers from Beatport, Ministry of Sound, KCRW, MP7 and Resident Advisor have also been confirmed.

The conference will conclude with a Grand Finale party at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Dalt Vila, which will be free for conference attendees, but open to the public as well. Headliners have yet to be announced, but previous years have seen Basement Jaxx, Rob da Bank and Pete Tong all take to the decks.