BRAQUEBERRY BLAQUE WON

When the right song comes along, you know - you just know. Yeah well it doesn't always happen that way. It doesn't always turn out the way it does in the movies. Sometimes you think it's the right song and the right song comes along and is all fine for a while and then the right song becomes the wrong song. What am I talking about?

Now that we've got that out the way, I'd like to introduce Braqueberry. Braqueberry is... well, I actually don't know anything about the person behind the name. (Red Bull Music Academy graduate, granted.) Only that, judging by the video they've released, they may or may not be familiar with the amazing game Another World, which was not only amazing but probably the only game I know that is simultaneously cool and actually-going-to-cry-ly frustrating. The video is rife with scenes from the game that have also been edited to include some ladies in bikinis - normal. The video also quite interestingly includes footage of early music making software - fun. But enough of the video.

Let's talk about the actual actual song which is called bizarrely 'Blaque Won'. It comes from Braqueberry's new and debut EP, WEMEN (out now). But seriously, every time I see the word 'braqueberry' it makes me want to laugh, so when I type it I almost do actually laugh. I don't mean that in a nasty way: spellings just make me laugh. I actually and literally love the name. Anyway: Watch & listen.

A kind of drum machine, I guess, is what you're first treated to, alongside what sounds like a shoe squeaking along a newly polished wooden floor. But what comes next is a madly distorted synth that seems to have undergone some intensive bitcrushing, that's for sure, and I love it. It's so brazenly crackly and rough that it's difficult not to love, like a weird and scruffy dog with endearing qualities. Atonal instrument samples flash in and out above the gravelly bass and clash slightly to create an even weirder atmosphere than there was before. It's a completely jarring song, an oddity of a song you could say, but it's truly marvellous.

The difference between this and something that you would be genuinely weirded out by is that this song is only made to sound weird - it isn't inherently weird. It's been specially concocted to have a certain old-school analogue electro noise-freak sound. And I love that. Greatly. But what I am most looking forward to is what might happen to the sound after this first EP - is it a permanent fixture, a heart-deep love of this sound that will never change, or merely the basis for something even better?

PS. Check out the "traditional chinese rip edit" on Youku = more sound compression + (even) more video degradation. lol.

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