Sunday 30 April 2017

🐣 OLYMPÍA — FRUST

The sentiment of this one is loneliness, distance, the soft heart of this song left out in the cold. There is something in the way the guitar calls out, virtually tempo rubato, out of time with the sharp beat—it appears grieving and sorrowful, lapsing on rhythm and sounding more expressive as a result, natural in its mournful ache. This is the emotive centrepiece of 'Frust' (like 'frustration' + 'frost'?) by Manila musicmaker Olympía; these soaring solo guitar snippets could well work against their synthetic counterparts in the track but in fact exhibit raw feeling juxtaposed against the smooth, glitching electronics.

Whilst the echoing guitar tells its emotive tale, an intricate bed of beats spreads out, with rapid-fire thumping kicks, ticking hi-hats, delayed snare clusters and a stark click that reverbs into the downcast gloom of the frosty track. Plaintive synth chords clonk percussively muted and warm: a smooth foundation for the shards of bristling beat, the squirling needles of the guitar. Wordless vocals from Olympía add to this sense of softness. But conversely the spectre of glitch, abrasive and disruptive, pockmarks the tranquil sadness of 'Frust', preying on its chill sense of regretful acceptance – blurry at 00:31, crackling mechanical from 00:43, occasional throughout – peace disturbed by the disquiet provoked in the mind by overflowing emotions that attach one human being to another.


  • 🔔 You can find Olympía's own back catalogue of music on her SoundCloud, alongside songs she's featured on with fellow Manila artists like aries and crwn.


📠
Olympía Internet Presence ☟
facebooksoundcloudinstagram


Friday 28 April 2017

🐣 LEELEK — 騰雲幫

This morsel of music by Taipei trackcrafter LeeLek is a buffet of beats, one dish after another flies through the jagged peaks of hard experimental electronica and each one is delicious. We start with stuttering chords over bristling brassy percussion, move into the sway of a beat that towers over and swaggers forward, powerful kicks spun throughout with webs of menacing sharp chords, soar a into section that laserbeams forward with serious electro bassline pulsing below, fall into a patch of arpeggiating melodies where the kicks rapid-fire wild and rhythmic. Segment after segment it's a barrage of continuous excitement.

But as much as it employs unstinting swathes of clear synthetic sound, the modulating synth chords, hefty dollops of acid bass, thin twangs of melody, the stomp-clap shuffling hi-hat beat itself, there is also an organic side to '騰雲幫' (which means, like... soaring cloud society? or something? maybe) where stringed pluckings glitter mutedly and where gongs crash and metallic percussion crackles and sheafs and where golden flutes glide painting pictures of gentler things than the beat alone summons. This is a duelling dance track where it's future vs. traditional, electronic vs. natural, but the clash and contrast weaves together into this monster that's part-lion dance, part-dark rave.


  • 🔔 This track arrives on the compilation WAREHOUSE curated by Taipei creative collective, UnderU (available on Bandcamp). As the title may suggest, it's filled with pieces like this one, fit for a big old abandoned warehouse, to make you "dance and lose control." It is the antithesis to previously released compilation, GREENHOUSE, much more chill, which "brings you to a space where you can enjoy the sunshine while you photosynthesize with flowers and plants."


📠
LeeLek Internet Presence ☟
facebooksoundcloud


🐣 TOFUBEATS — WHAT YOU GOT

Summoning funky house of the past and packaging it in the polish and pizzazz of present day production, Japanese DJ, producer and all-round musicmaker tofubeats offers up the interminable bodymover that is 'WHAT YOU GOT'. Thudding kicks bump the track along its way, accompanied by disco-flavoured percussion, a twanging synth playing its elastic melody before rich robust piano chords hop into the mix with a hop, adding to the addictive rhythm, and then the groove comes together when the popping bass slides in with a vroooom at 01:24. This is the buckle-up moment. It dances along, vocals sleek with subtle autotune, snippets of brass piling on the celebratory vibe—uplifting is an understatement.

About a third of the way through we have a break in the house rhythms when the track receives a trap-leaning enrichment with vocodered vocals from YOUNG JUJU from Tokyo crew KANDYTOWN, alive in a whirl of smooth plasma synths and pugilistic snare rolls. A veritable gift of variation before the groovesome jubilation continues, jumping and leaping till the end jam-packed with more triumphal brass, with splashy peals of electric guitar solo decorating, with layers of what sounds like everyone – mainly including singer-songwriter sugar me – lending their voice to this decidedly bustling brightly coloured party-you-never-wanna-leave atmosphere. The feeling is feel-good, as the video will illustrate.




📠
tofubeats Internet Presence ☟
Facebooksoundcloudbandcampofficial sitetwitteryoutubemyspace


Wednesday 26 April 2017

🌏 VISITS — GUANGZHOU

Entering China through Guangzhou is like lowering yourself slowly into a hot bath. Not a city designed for tourists – you won't find terracotta warriors or Great Walls here – a few days spent walking the streets of this modern-day city reveals a shade of China somewhere between Hong Kong and what lies beyond.
✏️
  1. BEIJING ROAD
  2. GRAND BUDDHA TEMPLE
  3. SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL
  4. THINGS THAT ARE TASTY

Chinese enough to whet your appetite for the wonders ahead, yet, thanks to its long history of contact with and subjugation by the West and its position in the extreme south of China, Guangzhou is somewhat surprisingly multicultural and doesn't flinch at foreigners. The trepidation we felt in crossing the border from Hong Kong dissipated almost instantly.

We made our first China travel mistake/oversight on our first night in the country, we booked a place near the international-airport-sized Guangzhou South Railway Station after unwittingly thinking that a railway station would be in its namesake city but, as we found out, this was not the case at all. Our family-run hotel in the sticks advertised itself as being 200m from the railway station. It turned out that even the hotel was more like 1000m away from the station, which itself was already over 20km outside the city centre in Panyu District. The owner of the hotel was very eager to point out that we could still see the station in the distance from the hotel. Rather than be frustrated with being slightly hoodwinked on our first foray into Chinese hotels, we took it upon ourselves to explore the small town which would welcome us for three nights. What probably used to be a small city in its own right has been and continues to be slowly encroached on by Guangzhou's expansion. Dazhoucun (大洲村) is now but an island in a sea of wide, weirdly empty highways whirling around the Goliath of the newly built steely soulless transit hub that dominates the skyline. Like a last stand against the march of the ever-looming city in its gargantuan progress, locals live out their lives in the alleys and lanes between the old bricked walls of crumbling buildings. Children play barefoot in the street and old ladies give welcoming smiles, even a banana or two, simply for finding you in their town. The strange neo-suburb of the city was far from its grim decaying appearance; we'd arrived apprehensively, but found the warm soul of this place alive with friendliness and family, offering up a window into the daily routine of everyday Cantonese people. From this strange suburb it took 40 minutes on Subway Line 2 (one of 10) on the massive metro (184 stations) to travel into the heart of Guangzhou. We popped up out of Gongyuanqian Station and into the daylight of a pleasantly pedestrianised shopping street bursting with busy Saturday afternoon activity. A strange strange sense of uneasy familiarity washed over us as we began to peruse the shops of Beijing Road. The Saturday scene was scarily reminiscent of a weekend high-street in Middle-England, curious parallels of red-bricked streets, groups of teenage friends messing around outside chain shops that sold the latest trends at cut prices. Balloons were handed to children and decorations for the latest festival blew in the wind above our heads. This was a high street on steroids. Lairy, loud, pumped-up. We started to play with the idea that China wasn't so big and scary after all, until we realised that at each end the street was guarded by egregious gun toting soldiers and an armoured vehicle for back up. It was on this shopping trip that we discovered Miniso. A variety store that's a perfect rip-off of Uniqlo and Muji, it purveys products that neither sells: makeup, toys, electrical do-dahs and helpful thingamajigs. You can snap up a lot of things for not a lot of money. After five minutes inside this bargain boutique we somehow had armfuls of stuff: sandals, a cap, a tote bag, deodorant, a nail kit, face wash. An attentive assistant gave us a basket. Our rational sides intervened and we enacted a swift exit. Miniso's owners insist this place is truly Japanese and not a Chinese rip-off. Honest.

Behind the glossy shopfronts of the globalised high-street, the small backstreets of the city provide a uniquely Chinese shopping experience. Lines of lanes run off the main shopping district, informally divided into shops selling identical things. It's as if one person set up an underwear shop and ten others thought it was a good idea. Litters of lingerie sellers make way for belts, buckles and alterations; further down clusters of jewellers, pyjama shops, and then shops selling medals, trophies and flags, after a few more steps curtains and lighting make an appearance. This informal classification of shops is an insight into Guangzhou's mercantile heart, beating as it has been for hundreds of years as a gateway into China—it was, after all, a major terminus on the maritime Silk Road. A further stumble through the city streets led us to the Grand Buddha Temple. At around 5pm we stood silently alongside locals and watched the early evening ceremony take place in a hot and smoky Buddha hall. Drums, chanting, bells and wafting incense created an enchanting trance-like atmosphere in which half-an-hour easily slipped away and we left to walk the backstreets again, this time in a haze of calm.

Sunday morning was also a time for religious observation. We followed Guangzhou's West African community, dressed in their Sunday best, towards to welcoming doors of Sacred Heart Cathedral (耶稣圣心主教座堂). Built in 1863 the alien building looms over old city lanes where people with disabilities wait with bowls held out for a charitable donations by churchgoers. Inside the French-commissioned cathedral, an international array of cultures gathered to spend their Sunday morning celebrating their Catholic religion. Clusters of curious domestic tourists poked their heads through the buildings old wooden doors driven by blatant intrigue. Vibrant, solemn singing resonated in the cavernous space, mingled with an uplifting sense of community, and rewarded our time spent sitting in the heat of the hall, trying to fit in. Here we perceived a more global Guangzhou than we had imagined. Guangzhou is Number Three in the list of China's gigantic megacities. Rather than a grey polluted mass of concrete that you might expect from a Chinese metropolis, away from what the world so often presents as "China", we found a spirited cross-section of life we hadn't expected. The Metro system was clean. Signs were in English. People were happy to help us—surprisingly this included the military police, and a non-military police guy actually phoned our hotel for us on his mobile when we couldn't find it. We saw a girl wearing a "Yeezy for President" tee while she sipped on bubble tea in the subway. Yeah so, the military police can look a bit scary, some people smoked inside, a lady changed her child's nappy on the station floor, there are no benches to sit on in the station, a woman helped her kid piss in the middle of the shopping street (thankfully into a drain). But that shows no lack of culture, just a different one to the one we live in.

A warming toe-dip into the wildness of China, Guangzhou is an endearing mixture of recognisable shopping habits, unforeseen religion, history and family life that we realise we could never properly investigate with two days' urban trudge.

THINGS THAT ARE TASTY
🍟 Hong Kong restaurant
Our first meal in China was eaten in the relative safety of a Hong Kong restaurant that we came across in the upper floors of a mall off Beijing Road. An English menu and relatable but exotic food combinations like scrambled egg on toast with a bowl of macaroni in chicken broth on the side saved us from getting too hangry. The coffee was awful but the food and price were decent. The ice-creams looked immense. Definitely a popular local spot. The teenage staff giggled nervously when serving us, pushing each other forward to try out their best English.
🍕 85 Degrees
An old Taiwanese favorite, this chain makes tasty baked good and sandwiches with good coffee and good prices as well as a place to sit and regroup. Some of their weird food combos are classically Asia-does-French-bakeries, however having said that we would happily chow down on their version of French toast right now.
🍔 Mango tea
Dehydrated and tired from a day’s pavement pounding a tea shop appears when you need it most, just before you get on the metro on the way home. This one was at Gongyuanqian Station, but the name escapes us. The Mango ice tea was immensely refreshing: it is like tea-flavoured mango juice or mango-flavoured ice tea—whichever way you look at it, it's tasty.

🛏

We stayed at Guangzhou South Railway Station Number One Hotel (booking.com; around CNY115/£15 per night). Far out of the city centre, this hotel is not recommended for those wanting to soak in Guangzhou's buzz. But if you are looking for an unusual experience where you can learn about China's strange suburbs then you could give this place a go. The hotel is clean, cheap and friendly. Do note, as we mentioned above, that you need to call the hotel somehow when you arrive at Guangzhou South Railway Station. And also do note that the hotel is not 200m from this giant landmark, and every time you want to get into the city you've gotta traverse a big open spaghetti highway and some neglected subways to get across them. But we managed.



See more from VISITS in China:
GuilinYangshuoGuiyangKunming

Train travel



Tuesday 25 April 2017

🐣 PAOLA MAURICIO — CONSENT TO THIS

Arriving from Manila today is this solemn march of a track, this synth-heavy lament of longing, 'Consent To This'. Twinkling from its sombre and wholehearted beginnings, a moody VGM-flavoured intro with synth leads that lance into the distance, the song builds into loftier emotive heights where fizzing chords swell over the tumbling overdriven kicks and clacking snare hits, firework ornamentation with shivering metallics, the voice of Paolo Mauricio vaulting up into the ether and gliding on this dreamy bed of sound.

Those vocals drift throughout, slow, earnest, carrying their silky lilt over the various decorations to the beat – the additions and subtractions of hi-hats, the fluttering high pitch synth like blinking stars, the smooth flutey sounds in the last especially bristling chorus, the energised drum fill at 02:58, aaaah, the whole thing – over all of this exceptional soundscape swaying slo-mo and sleepy. All the elements come together perfectly, Mauricio's voice weaving through the aching bumps of the beat and the sultry swathes of synth draped over them, a beautiful sculpture.




📠
Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudTwitter


Monday 24 April 2017

🐣 CUESTA LOEB — GRASS IT GROWS

'Grass It Grows'? Well, the title of this "anthem to self-acceptance and individualism" can be explained by Cuesta Loeb, its creator. "No one tells grass how to grow," she says. "It just does, free of any force or pressure." The lyrics in the song are wonderful, speaking of grass that isn't under obligation "to be tall and green", and "travelling at the speed of me" amongst other things. It's an individualistic song alright, but written with simplicity, adorned only with this analogy of grass growing, a quality that impacts and aids its message of freedom.

And aside from the lyrics, how it's done, the sludgy bass underpinning palm-muted guitars in a basic riff, the slackeresque melodies, the dripping distortion, the fuzzy chorus, the combined dreamy lo-fi pop grunge of it all, where Weezer meets Warpaint—it's how it's done. Cristina Cuesta Loeb's voice range from the track's softly spoken verses to singalong chorus, the vocals firstly sidling and coy before launching into a sky of sound, layered and rich and uplifting, suiting both the instrumental and the journey of the song's words: from the innocuous grass on the ground, a leap up into the boundless feeling of freedom. W-o-w.


  • 🔔 The supreme loveliness of 'Grass It Grows' is taken from Cuesta Loeb's EP, out later this year.


📠
Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudTwitterInstagramSpotify


🐣 INVERNESS — CAN'T KEEP US

A symphony of electronic excitement, this is 'Can't Keep Us' by inverness, a musicmaker from both NYC and Honolulu if you can imagine such a thing. The track bursts in with fizzy syncopated chords and puttylike vox elastic and bendy, similar to a sped-up lava lamp, and it continues to burst into dynamic spurts of synth and blasting bundles of kicks with a delicious thump to them, footwork rhythm underpinning with its addictive bumps the rainbow flavours of the instrumental.

It's busy and bustling, ornamented with snippets of celebratory brass, a pinch of Amen break, a telephone ringing, the song's titular vocal sample, thickets of luscious percussion, clicks and clacks and claps and tuned-down snare hits, some parts veritably spilling over the sides with rapid-fire stuttering synth chords. But it's never too busy and bustling. There is enough space between the sound, enough quiet amidst the loud, that this inverness track can deliver its kinetic energy without any of it getting lost, this colourful and precise display of sound, like watching the interiors of atoms playing alongside cartoons within a glass case.




📠
inverness Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudSnapchatSpotifyTwitterSongkickYouTubeInstagram


🐣 CLAESONS — ACOUSTIC PUNK

With a title like 'Acoustic Punk' you might imagine something like a cross between gentle acoustic music and the noise of punk. If that is what you imagined whilst reading that sentence then, well, it's correct. This track by Swedish music unit Claesons is a combo of these two ideals, a bright blend of acoustic—no, almost chamber music, classical-style, new and experimental; of this, and of something closer to the quirky DIY of garage indie than punk. It's a mix of rough and smooth, beauty and energy.

The plucked guitar that begins the track teeters on mournful and in the same cyclical style as that guitar piece Romance, you know the one, cello solemn beneath, but soon leads into a thumping beat punctuated by the occasional crash of a cymbal, the main vocal floats in slurring and soaring, other voices haunt chorally above, all in all a sound like a cold gale, something internal externalised. The outro appears, long and languorous, a pinging guitar melody, soft piano, yet struck like distant lightning with peals of distorted guitar, disappearing into the vapour.


  • 🔔 This is from Claesons album V.V.V.V.V., due for release on 28th April via Swedish label Lamour.


📠
Claesons Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudwebsite


🐣 SUPER MAGIC HATS — SEASHELL FEAT. MAYUMI

Here is an end of the day song from Super Magic Hats, a bittersweet what-a-lovely-time-we've-had-but-how-sad-it's-over kind of song, a song draped in gentle electronics and set on a bed of chill. In order to fully realise this feeling of melancholic euphoria the song features Tokyo-based singer Mayumi (aka GrayNightly, aka Chelsea Terrace) whose breathy vocal whispers plaintive and echoing through the synthetics, an illustration of a person alone in the world painted by the instrumental.

A genuine Balearic sunset sound exudes from the track, a slow sunset winding into the hazy indigo of dusk: the soothing just slightly abrasive pulse of the bass, the slow melody pinging into the distance with delay and reverb setting it timeless in space, the later arpeggios, all of it a well defined melt of tranquilising sounds. At the same time swells of emotion crest with the track's amplitude, with additions to the beat – syncopated snares, rapid hi-hats – with combinations of the two weaving together for subtle dynamics, a gradual rise and fade from the day to dark with memories in tow. 'Seashell' is the transition to twilight, the voice of Mayumi leading the way like a guiding spirit.




📠
Super Magic Hats Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudBandcampofficial siteTwitterYouTubeSongKick

Mayumi Internet Presence ☟
SoundCloudFacebookTwitterBandcamp



Monday 17 April 2017

🐣 THE NEON DESIRE — SCORCHED

Intense is the beginning of 'Scorched', this journey of a track by Toronto soundmaker The Neon Desire: sludgy bass synth croaks and growls menacingly beneath the one-note yarn of ear-satisfying synth, soaring high and circling above the bubbling lava below, rising and falling but always airborne. The beat swaggers slowly, loping muffled thumping kicks and hip-hop flavoured snares, with beeps and boops flickering in the midst of the jagged heated atmosphere.

But it is this track's numerous transitions that give it real depth. The melody, beat and even the mood of this surprising piece of music change at every one. From 2:12, for instance, trance synths needle in spiny and threatening, freakish swirling sounds storming in as the beat double-times and thumps, joined by warming glassy chords at 2:36. A minute later the vibe turns chiptune with staccato chords bouncing along; a plaintive synth-flute melody begins to play softly. All through these transitions and later ones, the growling bass still curls underneath, the volcanic landscape still there tumbling and crumbling, its many facets, from molten magma to fertile fields, illustrated throughout the track.


  • 🔔 This track is from The Neon Desire's recent self-released EP Deepest Blue, which you can purchase from Bandcamp.


📠
The Neon Desire Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudBandcampTwitter


Sunday 16 April 2017

🐣 BELS LONTANO — SMOKKR

In here is chill, in the haze of 'Smokkr', the impressive debut upload by Bels Lontano. Chiming cascades of harp swirling and dancing like sun glints on rippling water, shining and icy above the occasional bass making subtle forays into the foreground, warm and slow, whilst longed out stretches of synth wheel around above the plateau of tumbling offbeat downtempo bumping kicks and clacking snares, slicing through the smoothness and ultrachillment of it all.

Vocal samples ornament the track, calling out wordless and pitch-shifted into the nebula of sound, and simple arpeggios of synth boop and bleep. And with hidden, well executed complexity: as someone points out in the SoundCloud comments, the time signature changes with a break in the track, catching you off-guard but keeping the groove of the track intact, a wonderful execution of dynamic without obvious change. It's beautiful, crafted like someone's baked an incredibly delicious cake, as robust and substantial as it is delicately decorated, as good to look at as it is to taste.


  • 🔔 So this is Bels Lontano's first upload, debut and utter fresh. And if this is anything to go by, there is more goodness to arrive. Keep your eyes peeled.


📠
Bels Lontano Internet Presence ☟
SoundCloudTwitterInstagram


Saturday 15 April 2017

🐣 DJUSTIN — NEW PRESET

All along the quivering carapace is beset with jabbering angular synth like the ebbflow throttle of an alien machine, driving and forceful. The thud of the beat keeps time with electro sensibilities, the French touch thump-thwack clacking in the backdrop as the track tacks along its overcast path. It's a hearty potion of cold electronics, brightened by the ghostly vocals which seem apart and drifting above the slow gallop mechanics.

And into 'New Preset', by Stockholm-based Djustin, like welcome shards of sun on hard cold land, into the track arrive javelins of synth ablaze with uplifting light, lancing above the dark lurch of the beat and bass below, illuminating these lonely electronics like flashing lamps, the thin-air lustre of love or something like it, friendliness even, a new sheen of life. Dynamics of light and dark are wonderfully illustrated here, with thin synth juxtaposing thick, changes in key and the vocals ascending like the sun above clouds.


  • 🔔 Djustin is Rose Suau and Johan Angergård.
  • 🔔 'New Preset' is taken from Voyagers which is the duo's new album out 7th May on Swedish label Labrador Records.


📠
Djustin Internet Presence ☟
Facebookofficial siteTwitter


Friday 14 April 2017

🐣 MACHINEDRUM — U BETTA

Starting out on a gently fizzing backdrop, muffled vocal samples that reverb into infinite space, and percussive marimba clonks, LA musicmaker Machinedrum continues to carve out an energetic space in this dynamo of a track 'U Betta'. It's so named for the vocal samples that wobble and cascade throughout, otherdimensional and multifaceted sometimes and lucid at others. Mellow sections with delicate noises – where wide open spaces are ornamented with ascending guitar that warbles in spaghetti western dust and desertification – contrast with lasershot parts of maximalist intensity.

These segments are raked by plasma beam synths that cut into the enormity of space, left intact for the most part and utilised dynamically by Machinedrum as he pockmarks the void with rollicking booming drums, and siphoning into it the glare of the synths, thin and iridescent above and columning robustly below like some futuristic machine, these sounds interchanging with smooth cloudy synthetic vox that rise up in a robotic call-and-response between hard and smooth. All the while glassy chiming and pizzicato strings adorn these synthetic theatrics, ornamenting the surrealistic mirror surfaces and intergalactic noir feel of the track.


  • 🔔 Machinedrum released Human Energy in September of last year. You can listen to some selections from the album on SoundCloud.


📠
Machinedrum Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudofficial siteTwitterInstagram


Wednesday 12 April 2017

🐣 SMTHN — INTERFERENCE [初演 • PREMIERE]

Something special arrives today. It's literally draped in pulchritude, a slo-mo slam-dunk, homerun into a deep cloudless blue, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l, do you get it? smthn graces us with 'interference', freshly farmed, just juiced, poured up and here it is in this milkshake glass of a site—here, you can taste it. The track has already been wrapped in superlatives but let's give it some more.

This soundular item bumps and bubbles, contrasting pools deep with calm where a sparse beat staggers along, all mellow sub and drip-drop, where a vocal sample urges plaintively "I'll be the one for you", contrasting this with segments where the kick thumps hard booming and the hi-hats t--t--t-t-ttt-tt-tick and the snare snaps and the synth flutters like a nervous heartbeat, the sliced vocal stutters and pops. It all feels somewhat frosty, like being able to see your breath on a school morning in winter.

The clarion call of the synths is difficult to ignore, the agility of their alterations, the bass-to-treble slide into the chorus like an awakening, exciting, instantly addictive; on the other hand: the gorgeous room to breathe throughout gives the song a precious delicate feel, as if the sounds created do not wish to say more than they feel they deserve, echoing the statement made by that aching vocal again and again.

What is said, in this case, is as valuable as what isn't said, and the spaces between the luscious noises that vibrate in this vessel are bristling with energy and emotion, like the silence after a secret whisper.


  • 🔔 smthn is a new new musicmaker, having uploaded just two tracks to SoundCloud. Listen to 'pale', also emotive, icy, breathy—another beautiful exercise in sound and silence.
  • 🔔 Both 'pale' and 'interference' are available to download for free. Do it and play it to your friends and tell them it's smthn.


📠
smthn Internet Presence ☟
SoundCloud


🐣 BLANK — HOLD ON

Short but undeniably sweet is this addictive slice of sound from musicmaker Blank. Not only is it dynamic in its bouncy slides between loud and quiet, bobbing around and positively jostling, but its clearly defined intro and outro, as well as the carefully crafted mood of the track, mark it out as something that deserves some attention. As such, it begins with innocent VGM-style synths, thin and small, setting a scene of distant homeliness as the the track appears to wind up and bubble ominously as if charging up a laser. And then it snaps into life with bustling thickets of percussion and smooth syncopated chords, footwork-flavour, and bulging bass menaces beneath it all, vocal samples "I'll run away" coming in chopped and strewn around.

And the next section, it's wonderful. It's a drop, of course it's a drop, it's been built-up and we freefall into this wide mouth of supercharged synths and whiplash rhythms that make it a dynamo of power and ear-satisfying amplitude. The neon chords strike at your veins, enter, and blast around your body, their tone one not of the overjoyousness but instead panic and frustration—and that's what makes it interesting. More of the brooding bass and again into this synth section, where the chords are wider, higher, thicker than before—before we reach the outro, where darkness seems to have fallen and home feels further off than it did before. The track feels precious in its simultaneous playfulness and maturity, in the sugary sounds that paint a picture of bitterer things.


  • 🔔 This comes from Agari Vol. 006, a compilation by Sola, the sub-collective by collective Daruma. 'Agari' (上がり) in Japanese means 'rising'.


📠
Blank Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudInstagramSpotifyTwitterSnapchat


Tuesday 11 April 2017

🐣 ISSERLEY — ADVENT

Do you remember the music for the Big Boo's Haunt from Super Mario 64? It's this that literally sets the scene for the level being as frightening as it was and is. This cold synth sound like a freezing gale gives a sense of abandonment and isolation, of adverse weather conditions that go hand-in-hand with things like haunted houses. And it's also how 'Advent' by 22-year-old Australian musicmaker Isserley begins, along with a handful of sub-bass kicks that drag us into this dark pool of lust and self-doubt.

Raspy hi-hats cut in, a sparse two-note piano melody plinks with hefty reverb before turning into something more horrorfully cyclical with more notes, creeping, inescapable. All the while, Isserley talks in aching absent monotone, quiet and breathy against the bass, effusing an ominous atmosphere. And then it hits: a moment of buzzing intensity saws through this, dense synths droning and crashing towards the end, the beat turning busier and rattling sharply like gunfire. The contrast between this heavy blast of brash sound and the small voice of the artist herself is stark, and enough to prove frankly mesmerising. Similarly it's an illustration of surface-level brooding calm and inner turmoil, stillness and the storm beneath.


  • 🔔 Check out Isserley's 2016 album Messes, where you'll find tracks like the sludgy 'Daddy' and 'Deep Throat', which has a decidedly more industrial feel than 'Advent', with its ticking percussion, atonal synths crushed and grinding, simmering with its chopped and decaying vocal samples.
  • 🔔 Aside from producing her own music, it turns out she's been utilising her sound for other projects. "I've been doing scoring for horror movies lately too," Isserley told YES/NO, "I'm scoring some of the new Silent Hill movie!"
  • 🔔 Isserley is the second project of Roxxi Wallace, who is formerly of formerly existing duo, Girlflesh.


📠
Isserley Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudBandcamp


Monday 10 April 2017

🐣 YOUNG SUMMER — PAUSED PARADE (LINDSAY LOWEND REMIX)

Whilst Lindsay Lowend originally became known for the now seminal Wind Fish EP, his sound has continued to evolve since his VGM and juke infusion impacted on the nebulous infancy of internet music. Different styles effuse into the world from the mind of Tony Mendez, for instance this smart and snappy track from last year, and such is the case with this recent remix of fellow Washington-D.C.-er Young Summer's 'Paused Parade'.

The original track is a slinky number cradled in the arms of jazz with haphazard cymbal licks and flashes of crystalline piano. Lindsay Lowend transforms it into something else entirely, lifting the vocals and brushing them like watercolour strokes over a bold bustling backdrop grounded on thudding kicks that roll along a rumbling wobbly bedrock of bass.

It's a frenzy of juddering stabs of clanking chords and simple synth melody played that rifles along a few notes, ornamented with rasping metallic hi-hats and the occasional sparkle of electronics that sounds like a chime sweep, a subtle nudge away from the song's dark and vacant feel into higher more heavenly climes.




📠
Young Summer Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudofficial siteTwitterWikipedia

Lindsay Lowend Internet Presence ☟
FacebookSoundCloudVimeo