🐣 ISAK THOMAS — SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW

⌾ LISTEN TO ISAK THOMAS, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW ⌾

With a feeling like being invited into the worn pages of a diary tinged with VHS static, 'Somewhere, Somehow' beats with a soulful horizontal heart. Sweeps of warped guitar play somewhere between a dripping bleak-empty coastal town and late night psychedelic bedroom introspection as lyrics float by haunted by the shade of a person, all set to the buzz and thump of a disintegrated beat.

"Lo-fi sounds from old jazz standards to acoustic folk and blues has always been a huge inspiration," trackmaker Isak Thomas explains over email, "so I was aiming to bring that nostalgic, scratchy sound to a more accessible platform."

And after a crescendo of crushed guitar sounds and vocals interrupting themselves in mantra form – "I know you from somewhere somehow / I know you from somewhere somehow" – sun breaks through swirling clouds for the final third of the song, the groove changes tack and jagged chord progressions streak in.

Isak Thomas' well dusted time capsule of a track, an opened Pandora's box of desire and apprehension, presents a crowded mind carved into a love letter destined for another realm.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Somewhere, Somehow' by Isak Thomas via iTunes should you wish to do so. Or if Bandcamp is more your thing then you can grab it from there, too.

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☟ Isak Thomas Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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Y/N GUEST MIX 018 :: STONEWALL KLAXON

This mix. It is a wholly original mix. It features only tracks from the artist himself, Mr. Stonewall Klaxon. Obviously, or perhaps not obviously if you're not au fait with Americano historia, this guy is named after Stonewall Jackson, an American Civil War commander. A few potential reasons why: 1. This guy is a Confederate sympathiser (being from Texas and all); 2. Apparently Mr. Jackson was something of a legendary person, why not name yourself after (kinda) him?; 3. Just cos it rhymes; 4. Don't know. Should've asked really shouldn't I?????????? lol oh well. Not the point right now is it.

The point is this is a mix with a difference because it's basically like hearing a Stonewall Klaxon live set. His music is like… really nice. It's beats-heavy, synth-heavy, a waterfallish cascade of electronica set to mostly uptempo rhythms, kind of in a paint-splashed realm between dubstep and footworky stuff, for instance with the white noise watercolour wash and pneumatic drill kicks of his remix of 'TBAE' by urlchild or the hyperactive synth stutterings and finely diced vocals in 'Gary Lazer-Eyes', coupled with the busy explosiveness of 'Neon Swords' and its gurgling vocal samples whose beat seems to hang in the air, and 'Cigarettes', where infra-bass kicks are the gloopy swamp out of which brittle mangrove snares snap and crack.

The mix, which includes samples of Link's sword-swinging shout in Ocarina of Time ('All Of Me') and Navi's "Hey!" ('Neon Swords', the set closer), and a sparkly remix of 'Latch' by Disclosure, pitch-shifting Sam Smith's vocals just ever so slightly, is luscious, the sound equivalent of breakdancing under a canopy of stars, or playing videogames with friends because one of them has a free house and it happens to be a marble-and-gold mansion of a place. Stonewall Klaxon, real name David Andrew Lunson, is 26 currently lives in Austin, Texas, "working as a chef in a restaurant downtown." But cooking skills aside, musicmaking comes first: "Music has always been my passion, and my true priority," he tells me. "I suppose what first inspired me to make music was simply being in the school band and orchestra~ playing euphonium, trombone, and cello."

The rich flavours and dynamics of his sound are, with this information in mind, easily traceable back to this classical and traditional training in music; you can hear the feel-good, triumphal nature of band music in each rousing hit of synth, and in its gentler moments, his music is certainly orchestral, albeit with electronic sounds – the melodies and progressions are so well done, so basically perfect. I've seen reviews of his stuff saying 'Flume-esque' or 'Wave Racer-esque' but you never hear anybody say that any classical music is 'Beethoven-esque' or 'Mozart-esque', really, do you? There is space enough in the music world for true talent and actual hard work to shine through, and it seems as if the gleams of Stonewall Klaxon are just about starting to reach the eyes and ears of the world.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. 0:00 Chords (Excerpt) (Vocals are Frank Zappa)
2. 2:39 Gary Lazer-Eyes
3. 7:27 Spherical
4. 12:07 Cigarettes
5. 15:21 Urlchild - TBAE (Stonewall Klaxon Remix)
6. 20:09 Disclosure - Latch (Stonewall Klaxon Remix)
7. 23:21 All Of Me
8. 26:38 Neon Swords

All tracks by Stonewall Klaxon

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• Hey! Listen! Go download a free copy of the Neon Swords EP, from which most of these songs are taken.

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☟ Stonewall Klaxon Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

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URLCHILD – LIKE YOU ~ FALLING FOR

From this track's first abrasive beats it was kinda sold to me instantly. Then this gnarly vocal sample pops in like a small anthropomorphic whale bouncing around the room after it's crept in through the window, blubbering all the while in hypnotic loops. Wtf, sorry.

Well it's by urlchild (who is 21, from Austin, Texas) and it's called 'Like You ~ Falling For'. I didn't expect it to drop into this really house-flavoured vibe, didn't expect those sharp syncopated piano chords, mainly. These, alongside pulsar whispers of synth that zip in and out of earshot, are the main actual non-percussion sounds that aren't vocal samples, which in endlessly reverbing pitch-shiftedness croon the song's title.

The beat clacks, exploded from underneath with blooping depth charge sub-bass deposits, shifting above with garage-esque hi-hats that provide the fidgety skitter that work for house tracks like this – regular rhythm gets you moving on a basic level; the hi-hats accent this rhythm just so, just so, zapping your limbs into life. And then your brain gets shaken by the dynamic cymbals that crash across the track like haphazard punctuation.

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☟ urlchild Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter

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BLAZ – SINK

Waaaaa! Wows. This is a really cool sound. You fall through a wormhole into the centre of the Earth and come out the other side and realise you're in a different dimension where everything glints towards bioluminescence and in the air there is the aroma of biological immortality achieved through hundreds of years of research on Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish and transdifferentiation. Everyone lives forever and nothing is sacred yet we wonder still why and how everything is as it is. Humanity bulges in our corner of the universe and religion is a fairytale and we are all individualist libertarians.

Anyway, like, that's kinda what I felt when I listened to this track. It's by a person from Austin, Texas, who makes music under the name of Blaz. The track itself is called 'Sink' and, well yeah, it's kinda like sinking. First inspired to make electronic music whilst living in France a few years ago, Blaz calls it "very shiny and digital" and that's it on a basic level. In an email to Y/N, Blaz also shared some background information about the song: "The inspiration for it was old N64 video games... and a desire to take some of the recent PC Music sound, which I love, and twist it into something a little darker and heavier."

From the start, eternal arpeggios stream into your ears like schizoid pulsar stars, glassy galactic fog breathing with it, spiralling towards the main body of the track.

Tumbling fragmented kicks ba-dum-ba-dum-dum beneath, which become a regular beat punctuated with kung-fu-punch snare-claps, occasioned with stark synth chords blasting, which break into a melody towards the end alongside rollicking snares for building up and virtuoso popping sounds in what could be one of the regular favourites at the juke-specialising Club Satellite orbiting the earth (circa 2376), a slowdown retro sample ringing out: "This is how we—" ("—do it," I guess).

• THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD, SO WHY NOT.
• Also check out Blaz's Kirby EP, full of more WALL OF SYNTH sounds.

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☟ Blaz Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter

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