There is a sense of epic landscape swathed in peals of feeling in Australian artist Slow State's 'The Silence We Create' — but it's not something necessarily present from the beginning of the track. Instead, this intertwined emotive, environmental atmosphere comes into gradual focus, beginning with textures jostling with one another, unsure of themselves, hesitant almost, crackling with ghostly static, the rustle of dry leaves. A vocal sample struggles to finish a phrase (the title of the track), cutting itself off.
Gravely bass thumps splash and fizzle into bold tracts of silence, creating a dramatic, heavy portion that shifts the aesthetic from intricate soundscape to something more illustrative, experimental. "[The song] was written for a someone who I shared a memory with," Slow State tells yes/no via email.
"We walked into a sunset on Greenmount Hill, up in Perth City, and as the sun fell the scintillating lights of the city started shimmering. One of those moments you just wish you could grab, you know?" he continues.
The final section of the track — fraught with synth and clanking percussion — begins to mirror the weight of this twilight, the vocal sample on loop and variously pitch-shifted like a reflection of windows beginning to glow in buildings. 'The Silence We Create' is a purposeful setting aside of language, of commentary, in order to be imbued with the drama of the turning earth, the tale of an ending day.
🔔
'The Silence We Create' is taken from Slow State's eponymous SlowState EP, which you can listen to on SoundCloud. The artist himself calls the project "a respite from everything that is far too fast."
He continues: "It's introspective and reflective, but driven with intent. If space is the breath of art, then I believe silence is the breath of sound. I try to capture moments of silence floating in and out like a breath within the pulse.
Space and colour get dribbled around the court like basketballs in karyme's 'Backward Thoughts', a gap in the fence of doziness and warm grass. Chords like the panting of a cosmic dog zoom in before warping away in a woozy procession punctuated by pummelling kicks. This double-tap rapid beat, the scratchy worn pastel tones in the wheeze of synth, adds to the cartoonish frame of 'Backyard Thoughts'. As if that wasn't enough, karyme throws jazzy chiming progressions for optimal haphazard lounge feeling. Part uobtrusive, part mindfully scattered: perfect for the nebulous thoughts and cloudwatching of a lawnside pause.
🔔
'Backyard Thoughts' is taken from karyme's freshly released Backyard Thoughts EP. You can stream it on Bandcamp. The coordinated and clashing artwork was created by Daryosh.
🔔
The Backyard Thoughts EP arrives after Full Cream, an album of squidgy grooves and diagonal beats released by karyme in April 2019.
A stumbling drum machine drops you gently onto the foggy boardwalk between waking and dreaming that Soft Powder aka Andy Szetho creates in the meditative 'I Wonder If You Dream'. More than just an exercise in lo-fi, this is a fantasia of to-and-fro guitar melodies that fracture your heart with pinpricks of recollection and late-night diary entry vocals, all wrapped up in a blanket of comforting synth.
But as much as the thick layers of sound offer comfort, it's a soft entrapment, the warm glow of your bedroom lamp as time seems to lose meaning. Sharper sounds cut through the two-chord march, brightness lancing faintly through bleakness, a detached sadness looking inwards.
Counselled by the sincere refrain of "I wonder if you dream" other lines appear ghostly and welcoming: "sometimes it's just nice to pretend" and "start to feel so distant" summon a passive, modest, but searching melancholy. There's no turmoil here, no great tragedy in the deep pastel crush of Soft Powder's nocturne: but there is personal despair, which is the grandest and most soultrapping of all.
🔔
Incredibly 'I Wonder If You Dream' is Soft Powder's first ever release. It's taken from his debut Shangri-La EP and you can listen to the whole thing over here on his SoundCloud. The nostalgic, lonely cassette cover art, complete with perfect brooding palette, was created by designer John Szetho.
The slowest sway ever swings in the liquid bliss created in the effortless backdrop that ripples in this song’s glorious electrified crystalline flavours, piano chords that fuzz and envelop you warmly in their all-encompassing sound, and resounding chilled guitars lightly tread a line between staccato soul and flighty resolute arpeggios. This is ‘2063’ by Australian producer and singer Milan Ring, a song that is so futuristic nouveau soul that it’s based 45 years from now, referenced in the lyrics too, which speak of 5G (already a thing) and the iPhone 17.
The musicmaker herself calls the track “essentially a love song about focusing on the important things and not getting caught up in the negative chatter"—perhaps reflected in the resounding laissez-faire swirl of the instrumental. "But it also plays upon the telepathic connection I believe we can have with our loved ones," Milan Ring continues. "Like when you think of someone right before they call.”
And the lyrics that spin this story of farflung temporal love get delivered in aching soulful lines of vocal, merging with the sultry atmosphere of the trarck, or else they’re sent into the air of this world in rapid syllable clusters, laid-back and intoxicated-feeling and popping out thanks to the multiple layers here, and to the poised minimalism here, the bump of the beat dancing with negative space; it’s this dual aroma softly soulful vs. snappy and angular, that gives ‘2063’ its delicious stylistic blend that draws you into its otherworld of foresight and connected minds.
🔔
'2063' by Milan Ring can be streamed and purchased variously from the options at the other end of this hyperlink.
The fluid sound of this track gives such a feeling of weightlessness, of floating on the gently swaying surface of the sea, or some turquoise pool under some powder blue sky and the sun tzzzang white light in it. Those keys, so luscious, start proceedings, liquid in their glossy clocking tones - or are they like boiled sweets, or are they like shellac? But it’s the kicks, those booming muffled robust thuds that reverberate deep in your ribcage, like pebble drops on a still pond surface and the ripples from that: the water droplet, evolved. The dust physicality of the snare, like palm fronds clacking together, leaves sheafing and scratching each other, as well as those gorgeous organic hi-hats, splendid in their minutely imperfect timing, tick tick like the living ambience of tropical shorelines and lakesides.
Born of the brain belonging to Australian beatmaker Cabu, ‘Try’ bumps along, a chill anthem of fluidity and glittering delicacy, joined by the voice of Rome-based singer LILI N, whose crisp tone - augmented by satisfying subtle layers of low pitch-shifts - seems to crackle amongst the clouded softness of the song. That tender heart of ‘Try’ is founded on fleshy sub-bass that engines along, an echo of the vocal melody and a whole gloop of sound that reflects the chill bubbly atmosphere below the surface of water as much as the trickling greenery above the glassy surface - the opposite, practically, to the higher pitched musicbox-esque plucked string sounds that zip tumbling in the hook.
It's very simple: just a few elements make up this incredibly beautiful track. Together they merge into a veil of soothing sound that has this indomitable relaxing atmosphere, helped by the satin synth chords that follow the bass. Yet it's not all about being this straight-up "chill" track; the hook melody isn't exactly all brimming with upbeatness - in fact, in its descending melody, and crossed with the root bass, it feels despondent and, especially in the last two bars of that synth refrain, somewhat conflicted, somewhere between cheery and despairing.
Ah~~ The rhythm of it, the laid-back swing, the crooning clarity of the vocals, the luscious opulence of the gemstone keys that light up this track, how it is all like a paradisical garden: the dual worlds of outer beauty and inner intensity.
"Change reality…" The vocal sample in this track is a fitting one, breaking through its hypnotic heart with foggy delay and reverb like an interdimensional mantra and suggesting this most wild and fantastical of notions. It fits alright, suiting the fluttering synth of the track, the way it phases in and out, the glassy sounds that fold into the track like sugar into a delicious batter for the brain. Like rain, hi-hats seem to fall golden and white-noise pitter-patter, chilled rather than agitated.
Summoned by Australian musicmaker Fantastic Man, these sounds are the thinner spiritual elements of 'Reality Change', the veil of somnolent heavy-eyed air, the spirit of sunset-gazers, leg-crossers and cocktail-drinkers, a Balearic fantasia. At the same time, acid synth wiggles in, urgent and silly and elastic; and the booming bounce of bass and the unrelenting kicks ground this rave-wise into something earthly, the visceral anchor for its flights of fancy; at its core, these two retro styles inhabiting the same groove.
🔔
This is from Fantastic Man's P.M.T.C. 12" (featuring 'Reality Change' alongside one other track, 'Cool Waters'), released 8th January 2018 via Superconscious Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp for a certain amount of currency.
Opening the email that contained the story behind Touch Sensitive's masterwork in electropop, 'Pizza Guy' – the song that burst into our consciousnesses in 2013, re-released two years later to even wider appreciation – was disarmingly exciting. It's a funny story actually.
"My friend and former band mate from Van She started a night called Pizza Party and he never invited me to play which is understandable because we lived in each other pockets," he writes, "But at the time I was disappointed so in a fit of rage when I was bouncing it to send to Future Classic I called it 'Pizza Guy'." Don't worry, he and Nick (Routledge) can laugh about it now. Originally an instrumental, he told us how it went through "so many different versions" and finally became non-instrumental: "A friend of mine (who went on to become a global superstar) cut up a vocal from an undisclosed location and that's kind of it."
And even though the song isn't this romantic tale of a struggling real-life pizza guy, we can still live vicariously through the video for the track which features Touch Sensitive as the eponymous purveyor of pizza.
Between then and now the Australian musicmaker has dropped a string of singles, including the glistening bouncy 'Slowments', and finally his debut album has appeared: Visions. Funnily enough the album opens with a self-referential track called 'First Slice', a dreamified snippet of 'Pizza Guy', and if that wasn't enough of a nod the "official visualizer" has the producer walk over to a table, open a box and pull out a slice of pizza that he nonchalantly munches as he gazes out a window—the majority of the album tracks do also come with visuals, including the album's piano-thumping lead single, 'Lay Down', which "went through 50 versions," we are told. Elsewhere on the album Harriet Brown features on two songs, there's an instrumental called 'The Mystery Of Cats', and glorious tape warp on 'You're My Last Chance (Interlude)'. Visions glitters and clacks, glows warm and textured with classic synthesiser sounds.
But with the album release behind him by about two weeks now, Touch Sensitive was finally able to sit down with a slice of pizza and a kitten curled up next to him and answer our world famous Lazy Interview questions. Read on, dear reader, read on.
🐤
w h o a r e y o u ? w h e r e a r e y o u f r o m ? w h a t d o y o u d o ?
My name is Michael Di Francesco, I'm from Sydney Australia and I make and play music.
h o w d i d y o u s t a r t c r e a t i n g m u s i c ?
I played in bands at school then studied it at university then I discovered Daft Punk so I sold my double bass and went halves with a friend in a TR909 and an EMU sampler, after that we went crazy collecting records etc. etc. I also spent many years playing in cover bands and doing whatever session gigs I could, I got to play with some cool people most of whom are/became my friends.
h o w w o u l d y o u d e s c r i b e y o u r s o u n d ?
Not sure but I'm constantly trying to make it better and break out of harmonic and rhythmic habits, that's the greatest challenge for me anyway. It can always be better. But by better I don't mean technically or rather sonically, the combination of the elements.
i s t h e r e a p e r f e c t t i m e a n d p l a c e f o r l i s t e n i n g t o y o u r m u s i c ?
Maybe driving, I'm not sure.
„
If anyone likes anything you do it's nice and if it made people happy that makes me happy
”
w h a t i n s p i r e s y o u m o s t w h e n m a k i n g a t r a c k ?
A sound, something that just happened, a couple of words or a phrase.
w h a t i s y o u r m o s t m e m o r a b l e m u s i c a l e x p e r i e n c e ?
I got to do a session with Snoop once, that was pretty cool, also had the privilege of playing with Jamie Liddell many years ago, that was cool too, some of the best ones are in a friends studio or at home.
w h a t a r e y o u r f a v o u r i t e t h r e e s o n g s a t t h e m o m e n t ?
w h o d o y o u m o s t a d m i r e i n t h e m u s i c w o r l d ?
Anybody that finishes stuff and puts it out.
i n y o u r o p i n i o n , w h a t i s t h e f u t u r e o f m u s i c ?
I think it's an exciting time on so many levels but also it's a bit sad at times because most of the time music is not all about music, there are so many contributing factors, there are amazing players and performers all over the world who don't get the accolades or recognition they deserve. On the other hand with the technology we have now it's easier to find these people and message them direct.
w h a t ' s t h e f u t u r e o f y o u r m u s i c – w h a t d o y o u h o p e t o d o n e x t ?
Not sure but not the same as last time. I just pulled my studio apart so time will tell.
w h a t i s m o s t i m p o r t a n t t o y o u ?
The Rhodes Chroma from a materialistic perspective but as a human being probably coffee and good manners.
🍃
🔔
Touch Sensitive's debut album Visions is out now on Australian label Future Classic. You will find streaming options on this hyperlink, whilst over here is a more physical offering in the form of a vinyl, CD and merch bundle.
The crunch of it, the frustrated clenched fists broil of it, the distorted decay of it all and veiled with a haunted corridor of wobbling ambient sounds to create this negative miasma clouding over the robust solidity of the mechanical swampsome sounds at the foundation, the emptiness that this track summons is vast and uncompromising. Sydney-based artist Isserley returns as the formidable force that we saw in 'Advent', her seemingly small childlike voice poised as it swoops disjointedly around the room, a glinting tone like a silvery flash in the dark, growling walls of synth bass fuzzing and pushing on your spirit, helping the musicmaker to illustrate the blocky angst at the heart of 'Privilege'.
"Sadness doesn't discriminate at all,"Isserley writes in a message to yes/no, "and it always angers me when people assume that if you have money or a certain superficial quality, that life is inherently perfect."
Throughout the song she slurs in slow measured lines, monotone for the most part and sometimes dipping down to a low mutter, a drugged vacant quality as the languishing speaker attempts to tell themselves they have a secret weapon in privilege—the classic overcompensation of an unhappy soul. Isserley explains further: "The song is essentially a collage of miscellaneous misanthropy, nihilism and sarcasm directed towards the attitude that just because some people don't suffer the same problem as you, they're not suffering at all."
Indeed it begins, "I sit here waiting for the end of my suffering…" and the lyrics later ask, "But how can I be something, when I am surrounded by people who make me feel nothing?" — always the scuttled abrasive beat, the bruising calamitous synth, the soundtrack to dying inside.
🔔
'Privilege' is part of a new cycle of songs by Isserley—will or won't there be a new release? Either way if you like this go check her 2016 album Messeson Bandcamp.
This is the sound of dopamine acrostics, the sound of wondrous sultry nights permeated with loneliness, the sound of the gargantuan grey of rainy mornings, the intensity and power of distraction, the chimes of loss, the jostling gongs of creativity—it is many things. 'Hey Ho' is all about texture, from the curved angularity of metallic percussion and the bright clinking strings of a sampled East Asian instrument, to the insectoid crinkling trickle crackle like white noise and the smooth satin of oscar oscar's voice itself folding its falsetto through the diverse soundscape. Texture, and the variety of it, sets this track ablaze with lightning intrigue.
The noise that stands out the most in this slow bopping refreshing sluice of sound is that soft clonk of marimba, each note in the chord deliciously minutely out of time with others, producing a low-key audio instrumental version of a light slurring voice, just ever so slightly off, the reverb luscious, the sound so very organic, so very human: it's no wonder that this noise is often left to its own devices in the track, cradled between thudding kicks and tight snapping snares. The second half of the track is more about the samples, truncated snippets of oscar oscar's vocal like avian ad libs, as the song reaches its dissolution into its simplest elements towards the end, languorous and nocturnally downtrod as it began.
🔔
The dark and dramatically lit photography that graces the artwork for this track, and very suitably, is by fellow Brisbanite and photographer Bruce Truong. The Korean script says oseuka oseuka—oscar oscar.
There is something instantly classic in this track, something that is instantly gratifying, a dose of familiarity with just enough unfamiliar infused, a sound an atmosphere that virtually lives in our collective memories with the easy sway afforded by the clean bouncing syncopated synth bass throughout, with the clonking stabs of piano chord that summon a resurging era of yesteryear, kicking up dust and giving this track the raw organic feel that effuses from real instruments like that, the sweating bodies hot skin real life humans on the other side of the speakers, a sense of sensual reality also rising from those vocals: "Why don't we lay down for a while?" The poetry in this simplicity is too much to bear: the electric charge behind those words, what it suggests as a situation, what preceded, what follows, it quivers carnally.
Australian musicmaker Touch Sensitive has certainly evoked something in 'Lay Down', that is for sure. Lyrically, because language is what we understand, but also in the warm crowded varying layers of the vocal, the aching reminiscence of the melody, the repetition of "lay down for a while" calling to mind some unnamable nostalgia—and then that shivering falsetto. And next to all this human organicity is of course the synthetic, the neon chords that fade in and out towards the end, the French touch splat and thud of the beat, the construction of it all, its artificiality, desperate desire for closeness in closed quarters, in private, spinning mantra-like in this track that both suits and evokes public dancing places, where you are alone in a crowd, an internal juxtaposition that combined with its timeless retro appeal gives 'Lay Down' a sense of tragic beauty, a yearn for something that was never there.
🔔
The very fitting video for 'Lay Down', decidedly of a different era with its flashing fonts and collages of dancing 3DCGI objects and imagery – and directly inspired by Prince's lyric video for 'Sign 'O The Times' – was directed by Lost Art with the 3D bits created by Melbourne-based Adam Parata.
🔔
'Lay Down' is the latest single by Touch Sensitive released by Sydney-based record label Future Classic. You can purchase and stream the track variously if you click upon this link right here.
There is something beautiful in the attention to detail placed at the heart of this track, the little things we've their way through the luscious thickets of percussion, the ambient glistening, the robust groove that gloops underneath the breezy lounge feel that helps this track recline with ease. 'Mineral' is imbued with a boom-bap flavoured offbeat rhythm that trickles through in bass-vacuumed tracts of head-nodding percussion, a pre-chorus that settles in before the dual vocals of Kate Gurren and Sally Latter – Brisbane duo comprising OKBadlands – entwine and soar together in rich harmony, cymbals stream metallic. Below it all, deep bass scoops out a wholly legible pulse, a soft intimate sound that feels leviathan heartbeat, undeniable groove.
But aside from these ornate buttress foundations, the beat having been somewhat crafted by fellow Brisbanite Max Byrne (aka Golden Vessel), the duo create upper tier sounds that feel good enough to eat, lush flavours at work in things as simple as the little keyboard melody that glosses glassily at the intro and post-chorus areas, the high-pitched synth pings that mimic the vocal occasionally, the pulsar flutter of thin synth golden thread in the verse, the glitter in the chorus, and easily how silken smooth the vocals spiral with reverb adding to the sense of space afforded by the minimalism of the track, how open and expansive it feels yet how close-up and personal: intimacy, and its hopes for continuation indefinitely.
🔔
See more of OKBadlands' back catalogue on SoundCloud.
The sample here instantly calls to mind something high-altitude, something with the vast expansiveness of light blue skies, of thick cotton wool clouds like continents curling through the sky with wisps and breakaways like islands, constantly shifting and breezing through the cool upper air of the world, that string sound really soaring above it all. Brisbane's very own Liam.M sends that sound up, lets it fly, loosens it from its cage early on and adds extra glitter for a the gleaming sun glints that shine blindingly on airplane wings and the on the peaks that float on gargantuan cloudscapes. In 'Drifting' this brightness is the main thing: what else do you see above the clouds but the white blaring twinkle of our closest star?
This is set on a bristling blanket of beats, a dense tract of luscious percussive sounds that feel like hardboiled sweets punctuated by the flutter of the sidechained kick that helps give the gleaming fog of sound above a sense of structural dynamism, sentences that speak another language that you can sort of understand, all the while shakers and hi-hats sheaf and shuffle, snares clack and click and snap, occasional dynamic slow drumrolls. The swirling opulence of this track is a satisfying flavour, a gorgeous texture like walking into a room where everything is a reflective sparkling surface—and underpinned by this solid beat that's decorated with as much flare it just becomes this jewelbox of sound, rhythm and light.
🔔
'Drifting' can be downloaded for free via Toneden.
This track is movement in groovesome proportions, wholly kinetic and body-shaking with its impatient shakers and other shuffling elements of percussion with hi-hats and drumstick clacks and abrasive snare thwacks, giving the impression of movement unabated. And whilst the drums twist and turn with roly-poly energy, nervous and stifling, that groovesomeness pops out from below, a tumble of bass notes polished with slight distortion, clusters of bassline phrases that speak out with undeniable funk—Melbourne-based Australian musicmaker On-Ly carves out these layers of rhythm in 'Puce' with satisfying contrast: the robust kicks and bass; the shivering chatter of high-register percussion.
However, this building-blocks boom and shake of the beat and its accoutrements – a very real-life, very angular buildings, empty roads with streetlights' dim gazes, hard and brickish sort of sound – is juxtaposed with the emoting jazz fancy of the instrumental that whirls around those breezy nocturnal judderings. Tremolo keys chime and weave glimmering, stamping the air with clouds of warm lounge-leaning chords, twinkling virtuoso, whilst a synth refrain beset with peals of reverb plays occasional solos, both elements presenting a resounding sense of space and distance. Like parallel city Moonside in Earthbound there is a sense of elsewhere infused in 'Puce', a glittering warren of instrumental noises tinged with dreamlike flavours turn this into a sort of somnolent noir scene, a cocktail bar on the other side.
🔔
'Puce' is taken from On-Ly's recently released The Purple LP, which can be listened to and downloaded over on Bandcamp.
🔔
The title of the track refers to a colour, a sort of brownish purple. Dictionary.com defines it thusly:
"brownish-purple," 1787, from French puce "flea-color; flea," from Latin pucilem (nominative pulex) "flea," from PIE *plou- "flea" (cf. Sanskrit plusih, Greek psylla, Old Church Slavonic blucha, Lithuanian blusa, Armenian lu "flea"). That it could be generally recognized as a color seems a testimony to our ancestors' intimacy with vermin.
'Time Passing' – one of the more diminutive tracks among this selection of seventeen – is as good as any a place to start off this odyssey of beats. Fluttering whooshes like the track's just landed on your windowsill and will start cooing to you at any moment, it arrives with decayed instrumental sample, glitchified percussion with hi-hats that fizz, kicks that thud with MegaDrive distinction. 404 Funeral is a selection of vignettes that feel like this. 'U Got It Going On', one of the more wobbling tracks in this series of seventeen, feels decayed, suffocated by age and warped beyond recognition, with elements that feel similarly bitcrushed; 'Squash' feels like a flood, fifty-two seconds of mashed beats and samples that feels like a luscious rainstick of sound.
Paisley's new stream of lo-fi creations – "made well over a year ago" – does go beyond just tape cassette decay and crackling nostalgia. The retro VGM sound to some of the percussion is matched by a sharp and delicious outpourings of drum sounds, like on 'What's Your Name' where behind snippets of Japanese dialogue a hi-hat dimly ticks with rounded flavours, and by the real-life drum-kit's-next-door feel beat in 'Lost My Suica'; here the outdoors noises, the singing birds of evening and the whir of insects, are evocative of the track's eponymous story: losing a Suica card (one of Japan's numerous, regional travelcards) means walking through the pseudo-suburbs that blossom between Tokyo's main hubs, thus hearing the city differently—here is where the titles of these tracks meet their content perfectly, a contemporary urban idyll. Indeed with this in mind the album's title could refer to the organicity of these tracks, embedded in the real world: '404' refers to a missing webpage and the 'funeral' part, well, netdeath: becoming a web ghost.
So 'Sunday' is chilled, samples like colours melting into each other stream along with a sleepy feel. In 'Until Next Time' the music wobbles rapidly like eyes welling up, the samples plaintive, painting the thoughts you have after a goodbye. But it's not all rose-tinted: 'I Need an Adult' seems to signify, with its exorbitant trap-infused beat and dramatic icy tones, a twinge of despair, a sense of longing exuding from its cold booms. Amidst the warped pianos that sound like television in black-and-white with no remote controls, rotary dial telephones, floorboards and gas lighting, there is more. Stand-out and yes/no favourite '1992' sounds like a joint right out of Earthbound, 'Battle Against a Machine' to be exact, with its huge gloopy constructivist beat and cold-sleek sampling; 'Nobody' makes groovesome use of a funk sample, 'Doomed' weaves in MF Doom—'One For Rex' glosses futuristic with hollow synth melodies.
404 Funeral skips along for just twenty-one minutes of your time, each track just over or just under a minute long. But it is that exact brevity which makes Paisley's morsels of music so delectable. To conjure a feeling through music, any feeling, is impressive, but to do it in a matter of never much more than 100 seconds feels wonderful, a bagful of gems, a batch of cookies, sketches, a pile of postcards that etch images for us, evoke comfort or love or adventure or relaxation, that temporally, spatially send us elsewhere: time passing.
🔔
You can download 404 Funeral in all its glory from Bandcamp for a mere $3USD. Tokyo-based Paisley has also put the album on YouTube for streaming purposes.
We slide down this archaic manuscript of sound with the warm vintage crackle and the plink-plink-plink that speeds up into a dusty pulsar and becomes a constant, we slide and reach the end where we fly off a ramp and hurtle with a rushing whoosh into a vacancyof sky that's littered with a luscious collage of sounds looming and lilting. This is 'Lacunae' by Sydney producer Mookhi, a dose of sound that's intricate and intense, a tapestry of gleaming sounds from pealing violins and rivers of soft synth and flighty chimes, to harp sounds and robust piano, all in a plume of textured smoke, nebulous and narcotic swirling and diving and curling and writhing through a slalom of percussion that thumps with heartbeat bass and shines with sharp hi-hat sheafs and scathing abrasive virtuoso snares.
The dynamics of 'Lacunae' lie in its expert transitions: the beginning, the ramp and take-off, the initial swaying rhythm pockmarked with the reeling snare rolls and wide wheeling atmosphere with those three chords blasting out mistily, an expansive feeling; and then the mid-section where sampled voices and crunching outdoors found sounds jostle like snippets of memory; and then the sounds multiply and grow richer and resonate with wild gentleness; and it ends with those plink-plinking parts, just as it started. By this rise in intensity as it progresses, it's noticeable that crucially this track is marked by an urgency to go forward, with that persistent sample continuous from the beginning, with the impatient snare rolls, the increase in the thicketing sounds, yet it is veiled by a fog of the past – the quality of some of the sounds, the archaic record player crackle, the nostalgic warmth of it – so that the future though seemingly close at hand is out of reach.
🔔
Earlier this year Mookhi aka Olympia Henshaw released a quite well received project in the form of her Lost & Found EP. You can listen to that over on her SoundCloud.
🔔
'Lacunae' is the plural of lacuna which means like a gap or unfilled space. It comes from Latin where it means hole or pit and is actually the diminutive form of lacus—that's lake.
The rich sheen of sounds at work in 'Ton' by Brisbane-based musicmaker Liam.M is a soothing reflection of chilled fluffycloud skies, calm coastal drives as the sun retreats beyond the sea, beyond the beach. Almost melancholy in its end-of-day majesty, the track seems to soar with emotive spectres of shimmering sound amidst thickets of synth, vocals rear up and call plaintively into an indigo sunset, a café del mar-esque special, drops of white sun glitter-glitter on sliding waves as people take their reclining position in readiness for the onset of dusk—the bummed-out-ness of light leaving vs. the beauty of that occurrence. Day/Night. Life/Death.
The beat propels us forward, a driving simply thudding beat with snare fills that smash their way through the slow motion momentum of the track. It's augmented and ornamented by luscious delicious percussion clanks and clatters throughout, clop-clicking like parts of a machine, which at 01:45 join the glimmer phasing brightness of the track and its softly booming bass, the beat falling away, the sound alone washing its atoning atmosphere over your ears. The rifling synth sounds, that hi-pitched golden element, is key in its wonderfulness, sounding like an enhanced sort of stringed Mediterranean instrument, helping to set the scene for this rustic organic slice of sound, this super-chilled yet well grounded illustration of beauty and its passing, and the mono no aware sense of pathos, the welling-eyes happy-sadness in that very thought.
🔔
More from the "20 year old producer and Music Tech student" can be found over at his SoundCloud.
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.
🔔
This track is taken from Wish, the Super Magic Hats album released 15th March this year via Tokyo label PROGRESSIVE FOrM. It is possible to purchase it online.
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.
This tasty morsel is by Tim Shiel; 'Tangerine' is the title of it. Through the clunking clatter of rapid fire percussion samples, banging and clacking and cutting with the additional flare of razor-sharp cymbal, you can instantly imagine this track as a living-and-breathing entity, something played by many people with mostly live instruments; hear the pounding robust 4/4 house thud of the kick drum, the subtleties of the ticking hi-hat. Even the bass feels "real", rumbling and rough-edged, undulating like lungs expanding and contracting.
Add to this the twists and turns of hypnotic reed instrument singing out of the flowing mist of the track, and bouts of intensification, where ghostly breeze synth whirls up and around, thickening the mist, howling with the added jangles of percussion, the raging whirr of the bass chopping through the air; add all this, and hear how it pours from your headphones or speakers, how it fills the air with spirit and passion, and feel how at the same time it is a lifeless wonder, a cold uncaged monster born of circuitry.
It may seem obvious but I revel in it, so let's talk about it anyway: strange, but amazing, how a soul can inhabit a machine, and how something so clearly "electronic" can feel so organic you can practically feel its pulse hot and streaming in your heart.
Tim Shiel is from Melbourne, Australia, and aside from making music he also has a radio show called Something More on Double J / triple j.
Oooo-eeeeee, wow, so, this is supremely pretty. More than that it's scene-conjuring, evocative, heartbreaking, heartwarming, tear-inducing, smile-making – it's 'Mega Drive' by Becky Sui Zhen aka Sui Zhen (aka DJ Susan), a musicmaker and all-round atmosphere creator from Melbourne, Australia.
'Mega Drive' seems to call out from an unplaceable, nonexistent retro-futuristic crevasse deep in the music world – there is something otherworldly about it, a gracious gentle delicacy achieved by the mix of plaintive, unthreatening keyboard-demo beat and the endearing vocals, like insubstantial wisps of clouds making their way across a splashed-orange sunset sky, or like friendly ghosts trying to make contact. The very title is a conjuring of nostalgia: the Sega Mega Drive: symbol of lost youth for a generation torn between the analogue and the digital age.
Synth strings follow the vocal melody somewhat with effortless simplicity, still that beat gently blooping with its semi-tropical snips of sharp percussion, decayed bass rolling itself around the bottom end of the track with a reserved attitude, wobbling slightly like the blurred edges of memories that make you laugh and cry, the whole thing pockmarked with indistinct shouts of "hey!" rising up as if somebody's trying to wake you up from a dream.
The aesthetic Sui Zhen has employed here is one that seeps into your spirit, cradles your sense of self with a forlorn feeling, effuses the reverie of the past from a chasm of abstract memories. It's like… the sense of unutterable longing for childhood and all its beautiful accoutrements, its comfort and its wonder and the sense of time being elongated into a fantasy future as yet undisturbed and waiting to be discovered, happy days of innocence and simplicity. That's how I understand it anyway.
'Mega Drive' is taken from Sui Zhen's very very recent EP, Body Reset, a beautiful collection of introspective songs much in the same vein as this one, exploring "the resetting of both body and mind" and "influenced as much by late nights in Koenji, Tokyo as at an onsen/sauna in the mountains of Nagano," and released by boutique Tokyo-based label eskers.
