SLUGABED – I LUV U & I MISS U

It's beats galore here, a deft command of lounge-feeling groove, continues with this tumbling beat and then drops into a deeper gorge of sound, heavier, pummelling with punches of bass, percussion strewn about, some of it woody and scuttling, some jangling, crunching. A distant feel with soft tropical sounds playing sweet glittering melodies over breaths of synth, and awkwardly slanted with metallic cutting sounds. It's as wonky and robust as it is light and spacey, and it's fascinating how much slugabed can put into one track without it transitioning into complete difference.

Later in the song its title becomes clear. 'I love you... and I miss you... and I really want you to call me back' spoken over the phone, despairing and crooning like an aching ghost in the dead blank loneliness of night. The faraway exotica of the broken beat echoes this distance, this bobbling mantra of beats and reflecting the unease and sadness of whoever might be saying these words and feeling these things. At the same time, the seeming disconnect between the vocal sample and the sometimes happy-go-lucky sounds breathing throughout might be illustrative of someone who, upon hearing the words, doesn't care all that much. It's open to interpretation.

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• This track is a free download, which is lovely isn't it.
• Also, you know slugabed right? If you don't, he is called Greg I think, he's been making music for five maybe more years, he's from London, and he runs a fun label by the name of Activia Benz.

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JONAH BASEBALL – WORLD SERIES

Man I don't know a lot about baseball or anything like that but this track by Jonah Baseball sure is really cool. It's called 'World Series' and it I guess effuses the same final boss / colosseum tournament at Dressrosa in One Piece that the World Series must have. Actually it's more of a journey of sound that I suppose is inspired by the World Series, the romance and the history of it all, the uninterrupted majesty of legacies made and broken.

See, I don't know anything about it but I got a bit of borrowed nostalgia for something I've never experienced from this track. It must be a good track. An electronic symphony to baseball in like five parts, it begins with the ominous mystery and nervous tension that stepping up to the plate must produce. Wiggly chords and synth vox make misty atmospheres over a snappy, jangling beat, with each snare hit like a baseball being hit out the park.

Then the track rears up on its hind legs and goes nuts, destructed almost brassy bass swaggering like a giant, descending into super-crunch distortion after a sweeping, almost cosmic breakdown. Then we talk a relaxed walk to the rhythm of a beautifully skittering beat with accented hi-hats, emerging from the previous crunchy madness into a refreshing world of soft, jazzy chords, joined by thin mists of synth and a playful squelchy lead melody, a reminder that it's not all drama in sport but it's fun and romantic, too. A many-tens-of-thousand-strong crowd cheers at the end.

Jonah Baseball, who is from America and basically makes music + loves baseball, has worked some real magic with his music, leaping into conceptual storytelling and producing a mini symphony with distinct movements containing their own energies and moods.

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• 'World Series' arrives courtesy of London producer Slugabed's label Activia Benz + is number 4 in their Singles Club series.

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MORGAN HISLOP – BRIGHT AS THE MOON, BUT DARKENED BY THE DRAMA

The third release as part of Singles Club on Slugabed's brilliantly named Activia Benz label, this is 'Bright As The Moon, But Darkened By The Drama' by a musicmaker named Morgan Hislop (also the drummer for futuo-R&B outfit Tropics) whose intergalactic track 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts' – released as a standalone single on cool label Astro Nautico – we wrote about earlier this year.

The wonky hook of the track is a pitch-shifted vocal sample, chopped to catchy rhythm, appearing throughout in varying forms of iteration, and stands out amidst the bustling fluid beat of the track. Half-dakly cosmic and half-retro-minded, the track features as many ambient washes of sound as it does robust piano chords and sunny joyful synth jollities; at one point the beat feels as if it could have been lifted from an early '90s hip hop track; at other times, it is heavily accented and future-facing with trilling snares and stuttering plasma-vision synth.

It also features English artist James Bright aka Hairy Hands on vocals, whose words arrive stoned and chewed up with echoing harmonies of hazy sound, with phantomatic ad-libs sounding like a giant cat's purr in places, suiting the bliss and clatter of Mr Hislop's unplaceable style. Someone else suggested it sounded like "Aphex Twin gone pop" and in some ways – with the samples and bristling beat – they're not entirely wrong.

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☟ Morgan Hislop Social Media Presence ☟
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