SCOOBERT DOOBERT — TAKE A BREATH

⌾ LISTEN TO SCOOBERT DOOBERT, TAKE A BREATH ⌾

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Called an “anti-anxiety” song by its creator, ‘Take A Breath’ by San Diego-based musicmaker Scoobert Doobert positively glistens with calm. Chorused guitars splash in wobbly arpeggios above an easy lope of groovesome bass, all underpinned by drums that crunch without being harsh. A sunny, psychedelic ambience exudes from the soft but lightly crisped sounds at work here.

The track was inspired by “this one time that I had sleep paralysis,” Scoobert Doobert says, and features lyrics that document the fear, and the outlandish imagery (Goku from Dragonball flying around the room, anyone?), that can arise in the strangest moments between sleep and waking. And so 'Take A Breath' feels as down-to-earth in its storytelling as it does existential in aesthetic.

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• 🔔 Listen to more Scoobert Doobert over on SoundCloud.

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🐣 RALLY CLUB — TWELVE TATTOOS

⊚ LISTEN TO RALLY CLUB, TWELVE TATTOOS ⊚

Conversational lyricism weaves through the sunny strumming jangle of Rally Club's 'Twelve Tattoos', the effect basically feels like climbing inside the head of its female protagonist. Her observations and thoughts sprinkle the lyrics, whilst she's also described her in third person from the point of view of the singer.

The chorus, with its hook-laden far-off broken radio vocals, mentions this explicitly: "I gotta feeling that I’m seeing what she’s looking through / cause she talks in her sleep, she talks about being with you."

The sparkle of its chords feel like starfish washed up on the beach, the breeze shunting clouds across a cool blue sky, the tinny bump of the drums skittering in coastal somersaults. There's this surf feel, with these effortless vocal harmonies that feel Beach Boys crossed with beat poet – or West Coast Weapon-era Brand New – as you can see from Rally Club's opening gambit:

"She looked pretty even keeled if you looked from afar. Her makeup barely covered up her blatant reactions to songs as she mumbled the words if she knew them at all.

She looked pretty damn full from all the meals in her car; the times she spent driving chasing constant attractions added up and the math in her head was getting harder to solve."

There is this delicious wordy detail in the strings of words that whirl around, rhythmically solid and pulsing with the bounce easy scansion. Even the ABCABC (bones, palate, remind her / known, mallet, behind her) rhyme scheme feels poetically sound.

Next to the detail, the words remain methodically cryptic; lines like "Twelve tattoos in the entire home, the perfect situation to display on the surface" and "A polished reputation, could it really be worthless? she thought as she filled in all the cracks in the living room wall" – as well as the sad "nobody found the letters she was leaving behind her" – mix everyday minutiae with mystery.

And then besides the airy detached jangle, there's this angular guitar riff that jumps in loaded with chorus; the sort of glitzy, towering thing you'd expect from some early metal band, but with a lovely lack of distortion. Besides the superficial everyday of the protagonist, the light strumming, there's the inner turmoil of what she's actually going through, displayed in the mild aggression of the thumping riff sections: clutching at reality and trying to make sense of it.

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• 🔔 Feel free to stream or purchase this Rally Club track on their Bandcamp or the single release it appears on, Space / Twelve Tattoos'.
• 🔔 The fun hand-drawn video is by Nathan Henning.

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🐣 TSUKI — LAPSE

As if it wasn't enough to treat us to such a stunning display of textured beat - as if those gorgeous handclaps, delicious organic flesh-and-boiled-sweets sort of texture to it, the streaming liquid sounds on loop gently swaying from left to right, the treble of it rising and falling like that warm state on the cusp of sleep and waking life, the shuffling grit of the let's-dance shakers, the delicate clockwork toy hi-hats, the tambourine's sparkling shiver; as if all that weren't enough, TSUKI had to go and make 'Lapse' even more beautiful, a vessel of delicate decay. (In fact, there is a feel to it that's reminiscent of the percussion in the Gerudo Valley theme from Zelda: Ocarina of Time).

The synths in this track, soft like silky smoke, like tea diffusing in boiling water, croon out a gentle repeating melody, this worn-down moderately decayed texture combining with the unexpected high notes in the pattern to give it a sense of tired-eyed drama. A feeling of watching the world from a window. Slow chords join in, warm and fuzzy, as a new lead melody wiggles in, crooning its spectral heartache, a friendly ghost seeped through your door leaning on your wall sighing beyond belief trembling from the cold; there's love in the warbling melody here, lost love, found love, a feeling of seeing someone passed just once more. But fleeting: in the ceaseless handclaps of the beat there is a sense of motion, or continuation—time rolls on in spite of what your heart has lost.

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• 🔔 This lovely morsel of music appears on this year's WINTER WINDS vol. 5, an annual compilation by collective SVNSET WAVES meant for the chilly weather of winter. It can be purchased and streamed over at their Bandcamp.

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🐣 MEISHI SMILE, LLLL & U-PISTOL — ALWAYS FEAT. CALENDULA

We heard from a pairing of Tokyo producer LLLL and Manila-based artist U-Pistol quite recently, on the happysad trance-pop-gaze of 'Falling', but now the musicmaking team extends, including Zoom Lens label boss Meishi Smile as well as sometime vocal collaborator Calendula lending their voices to a brand new song: 'Always,' — with a comma, like an unfinished sentence, the miasmic spirit of it hanging there unformed, waiting for the right words to emerge.

From the extensive introduction – a building of excitement with twinkling lights (reminiscent of the marimba arpeggio on The Who's 'Baba O'Riley') above a propellant house beat, exploding into the spaced apart synth chord hits synced with the drums this triumphal showstarting prelude quality to them – from this a spark for the rest of the track is lit.

Calendula's vocal sings quietly but swims in close-to-your-ear intimacy, vocodered layering courtesy of Meishi Smile giving the lyrics a futuristic feel, a sense of distance that fits the lyrical content of two people grasping at mirages of each other as they drift apart in their relationship, the present hammering down in the crashing snares of the beat; U-Pistol's vocals croon the story in juxtaposing upbeat pop fashion: "Slowly we've become two entities / used to be as one, which was you and me."

The track goes through a zippy synth solo, a progression that oozes positivity, heightening the feeling of this song as something "happy", the glitter and soft focus of a cherished memory, before reaching its coda; everything quietens down, the chords summon this sunset melancholy, the happiness of knowing that it happened, looking back, twinned with the all too real feeling of loss. It is romantic, sentimental, looking tentatively ahead, evocative of days gone by, the closing credits of your life.

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GO TO SPOTIFY AND STREAM THE TRACK AND ALL THE REMIXES OF IT* BY CLICKING THIS HYPERLINK

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🔔 The track is out today (!) on a partnering of Zoom Lens and Maltine Records. *It also comes with remixes by: Kristofferson (slow gossamer synths and bass above a house beat in a nebulous reworking); パソコン音楽クラブ (a synth heavy remix with a barrage of footwork-ish beats bumping the track along); ANAMANAGUCHI (faithful to the original, though even more a pogosticking dancefloor of noisy pop); Yoshino Yoshikawa (hefty and cute at the same time with clonking percussive elements and a tumbling beat); Sayohimebou (clattering experimental breakcore remix that fulfils our desire for speed and noise and glitch). Purchase it all as a nice bundle over here.

🔔 The artwork for 'Always' was created by FANGRRLZ, and it really evokes not only the spirit but the content of the song: with melancholy yet neon lighting it reflects the bittersweet feeling, the setting of the Japanese train with its sort of end-credits placement, the way the couple sits in different positions facing away from each other, their face sadly reflected in the windows of the train. Plus an easter egg—the Maltine logo as a sticker stuck below the seat on the right; and the girl is wearing a Zoom Lens badge. It's perfect.

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☟ Calendula Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 EMOTEGI — GNAW

The druggish quality of 'gnaw' by California resident and musicmaker emotegi, this sort of staring forward heavy eyes mildly imploding brain, is achieved with a number of ways throughout the track. The variation of the vocal samples is one thing: they switch from pitch-shifted to barely audible to scratchy and unnaturally refraining. The glitch, how the fizzing crackling electronics cackle in the stuttering circuitry, vocals like viruses.

We stumble into a relatively minimalist section that drips with the orange-lit façade and exhaust coated bricks of Grime, the bass synth bulldozing its way down in depth charge pulses, and the beat hurtling on with plunging clusters of abrasive handclaps, soft kicks joining the murk, and the melody a refraining spook on loop. (The vocal sounds around 1:40-ish like it comes from 'Finder's Keepers'—but it's doubtful.) And then later, to end the dark journey of this oozing computerised simulation, the kicks fall in a house pattern before falling away into uneasy slumber.

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• 🔔 As you can see above, emotegi's 'gnaw' is a free download, so why not.
• 🔔 The track was shared via Tsundere Fan Club, a collective and showcase founded by a few SoundCloud producers, including Irish musicmaker Harmful Logic, the person who gave us YES/NO Guest Mix 009.

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🐣 GEO — FOR YOU

There it is, that liquid sound, that trickling water, the jagged trajectory of a countryside rill becolumned with rocks and pebbles and clear as glass, all of it glistening atop and refracted below, glinting glinting, overhanging plants, the gnarl of ancient trees, flowers, heather, stone and water, angular and fluid. And it's all created with percussion, plumes of percussive sound that jingles and rat-tat-tats metallic and clinking, all light and lo-fi, a constant trundle, close to haunting with the vintage crackle infused in this textured tapestry. Romantically titled 'For You' this wildly ornamental piece of sound bedecked in silver and gold and iridescent gems was created by LA-based producer GEO, sultry and splendrous, smooth and shivering.

The clanking evolves into more woody sounds, clopping clonking robust hollow tick-tockings lashed together with sharp sheafing hi-hats, blessings of percussion that make the skin quiver, hairs tightening in their follicles on the nape of your neck. As if that wasn't enough, bass with a beautiful thick rounded tone scoops out the underlayers of the track and fills it with slow bubbles of groove for a slow-jam feel, soon joined by warm piano chords that lock in with the bassline, play with organic power the hot sighs of a beating heart. Vocals lifted from somewhere paint in silken soothing brushstrokes crooning romance. Little squelchy bleeps act all playful with soft melodies and synth peals soar into the sky. Streaming and flowing riverine and pastoral, here is that sonnet of sound, that melodious pouring forth of emotions, something beautiful carved for a beloved someone.

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• 🔔 You can find GEO's stunning 'For You' on Hype Machine and give it some love if you like.

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☟ GEO Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 11:37 — FALCON

A juddering twang of a synth bass, halfway between doinging a ruler on a table and the crundering of a plectrum picked bass guitar, a sort of synthesised bass vibraslap, and it pops out with groove that sits simply in the bottom layers of this bitesized track called 'Falcon' from newcomer 11:37—this enigmatic name is taken, the musicmaker says in the track's description, from their time of birth. Although in this digital setting, something they wrote calls to mind a DIY ethic that is often overlooked when it comes to SoundCloud producers: "Saw no need to draw it out," they said, "because if the Ramones can keep it short and sweet why can't I."

The producer keeps it bright and textured, adding shakers and shimmering tambourine hits as well as delicious wet handclaps and a gleaming chime that glomps into the distance, all before the main body of the track begins beset with a parade of pitch-shifted vocals. Wordlessly these call out rhythmically jumping octaves, skipping and dancing through the columns of thudding bass kicks and tight snares that punctuate the streaming glittering mist of reverb from those vocals, the ticker tape of hi-hats and sheafing cymbal whooshes subtly detailing the beat. Here in 11:37's debut track there is expansiveness, attention to fine-tuning the track's ingredients, sort of like the eponymous soaring falcon zooming in on the minutiae of the landscape with its keen vision.

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• 🔔 You can show early support for 11:37 and 'Falcon' on iTunes if you want.

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☟ 11:37 Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 EMMIT FENN — FEATHERS

The cyclical nature of this, the mid-level arpeggio of the left hand, the gentle piano paints a picture of cool melancholy, chilly and lonely, the melody expressing a certain amount of distress in its ascending refrain, its title 'Feathers' suggesting a fragility that is certainly effused from this brief piece of music, allusions to hesitation and hang-ups in its subtle slices of tempo rubato, all of it light, never heavy or strong, a floating atmosphere like feathers fallen from a bird now flitting in the air, the broken beauty of that vague loss visible in the song's delicate nature.

Created by California-located pianist and composer Emmit Fenn, 'Feathers' is very filmic. It conjures images of stark angular buildings on a night sky, no nature but cold clouds and the birds who fly under them from rooftop to rooftop, dropping feathers like snow across the anonymous cityscape. There is the feeling of being alone here, of looking out across a sea of souls and being distant to every single one of them, the baroque changes to minor chords and its fluttering trills reflecting a sense of teetering despair, calm and soft but inwardly harbouring a streaming cycle of doubts and worries.

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• 🔔 Recently Emmit Fenn released his Prologue EP via TH3RD BRAIN. You can listen to it on SoundCloud if you want.

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🐣 SCOOBERT DOOBERT — MY SCOOBERT SNACK

This track has a very melting away feeling, the quality of chocolate bars split in half to reveal oozing caramel and various other fillings gloop their way down, the soundtrack for filming an ad for the latest and greatest chocolate bar, the gooey fable of this track, its undeniable sweetness and slacker gluttony, the delicate elegance of it like the gold foil that coils off eager to get your greedy mitts further into the confectionary. That is at least sort of what this track sounds like. The laid-back beat, clacking snares and chilled tapping of hi-hats, the occasional bodyslam of a kick drum full-bodied and thudding, gives 'My Scoobert Snack' the wonky foundation that it needs to continue in that vein, bass guitar blaring deep pockets of robust rumble for that extra horizontal funk.

The Encinitas, California-based multi-instrumental musicmaker Scoobert Doobert has centred the sleepy haphazardly creeping entirety of this track on the guitar however—which is named Scoobert and which may or may not be perceived as a dog also. So there's that: this crunching liquid heavily effected low wah-wah crooning from the guitar, strains of soulful sound that evoke slouching chill, hefty compared to the tiptoeing glassy arpeggios, the dawning glitter of an electric piano, the single synth string rising putting poignancy and sprinkling spookiness into the midst of this half-stoned reverie, the holding-back-laughter giggliness of it, the rising tension sauntering sleepily downstairs, a journey to the fridge in the middle of the night.

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• 🔔 The video for this track – presumably also created by Scoobert Doobert is spliced together snippets of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! made so it looks like the characters are singing the guitar. After a few seconds in this clip really does become the essence of this song.

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🐣 NEBULAMIGO — DISTANCE

The ripples on the surface of a body of water glittering crystalline sheen more like molten metal than water, the guitar arpeggio that bounces with a misty pallor summoning these gleaming scenes gurgling with reverb each string glinting with indie jangle into a traversable rip tide of thudding uptempo kicks, and caught in the momentum tumble somersault into the wash of haze and hallowed heavenly harmonies that fly and fall with far-off warmth, heavily effected later in the track bubblesome and wobbly, all the time with the bass so lean and rounded and rolling forward with semaphore fills and flourishes, stretching to meet the jogging pace of the beat.

The tick-tick-tick of metallic sharp hi-hats alternates between the kicks and the lo-fi dull thud snare hits and the rimshot accoutrement that adds textured tangle to the beat, a simple complication that adds an air of technicality to the proceedings. How the veil of dreampop falls away from 'Distance' nearer to the two-minute mark, rapid garage post-punk palm-muted chords judder silkily and takataka hi-hat rattle and a nocturnal slice of guitar noodling lends itself again to this pace, the speed of the track, Nebulamigo making it breezy but intense and only in a somnolent summery sort of way, all the kinetic energy of pogosticking but with such swathes of sunny lethargy imbued in it, the pallid bleach of sunlight its washed out halo.

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• 🔔 'Distance' is taken from the Long Beach, California band's recently released Talk in Roses EP. The six-track digital offering can be downloaded for a paltry $4 if you would like to do such a thing.

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MARK REDITO – 3AM APOLOGIES

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee… and more specifically, it tolls for Spazzkid. Hear the clanging knell kneading the air like vast clouds rolling through valleys, the ding dang dong of another musicmaking moniker moored at the banks of the ever-flowing river, never to plough through waves again.

But don't worry, Mark Redito is still around. After much consideration, the man himself decided to shed his Spazzkid moniker and just stick with his irl birth name. Specifically, aside from artistic growth, new directions and feeling as if what he's making now is quite different to what he's making now, it's to do with the offensiveness of the very name "Spazzkid", and "undergoing scrutiny" because of it – even if he was originally just named after a band.

"After careful research into the various uses of the word “spaz” as a derogatory term," he writes via email. "I no longer feel comfortable representing my music and art with a term that has the power to hurt a large group of people. While it was never my intention to offend anyone, I owe every person aggrieved by my old moniker a heartfelt apology, and this is just that. I’m sorry."

To mark (haha) this change we have a new track, heralding the turning of a page to a new chapter in the story that is the music of Mark Redito. It surfaced on Ryan Hemsworth-run, friends-only, not-a-label-but-a-SoundCloud-platform Secret Songs and it's called '3am Apologies'.

The first thing that sprang to mind whilst listening to this was festival music. Not any old festival music, but traditional music from the Japanese festival of Obon (or just Bon), held in summertime across Japan to honour the dead. What took me there? The swaying feel and dizzyily offbeat melodies of '3am Apologies' match those of the music that goes with bon odori i.e. "bon dance" – I say the music, but there are as many different variations of this dance as there are major regions and cities in Japan; perhaps it's akin to the awa odori of Tokushima on Shikoku, or maybe it's closer to Kagoshima's ohara bushi. Either way, there's a fair spot of considered delirium at work in '3am Apologies', which made me think of Bon.

Added to this inebriated festival atmosphere is a heavily swaggering dub-flavoured rhythm, further highlighting a decidedly beat-themed foray for the first venture as Mark Redito, and ornamented with countless drum ad-libs that roll and rollick with virtuosic energy, yet that feel blissfully restrained by the slow, oozingly oscillating rhythm. Swathes of fizzing synth cushion piercing lines of melody, all of it rising together in a richly layered crescendo that takes previous elements and arranges them in a model of harmony, each part slotting where it should having been individually introduced earlier on. Mark sings on the track, too, his voice sprinkled with emotion and far-off, as if a dream or previous introspection being reflected upon.

We dream with him, in the giddy ambience and half-crazed steadiness of '3am Apologies', swept along by sheets of synth – sometimes airy and ethereal, sometimes buzzing and intense – bouncing onward with the skillfully-crafted elastic organic beats as if being jostled through a crowd.

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• Check out the YES/NO Lazy Interview with Mark Redito, back when he was Spazzkid.

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☟ Mark Redito Social Media Presence ☟
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MEISHI SMILE – BLANK OCEAN

Meishi Smile has shared a song via Ryan Hemsworth friends-only-not-a-label Secret Songs. Who is Meishi Smile? I hear you cry. Don't worry. His real name is Garrett Yim and he is from California and he makes music so sweet you'll want to cry, so bleakly sad that you'll want to smile. At the beginning of last year he released his debut album, LUST, which I really enjoyed – a high-energy whirlwind of J-pop flavours that was as wistful and introverted as it was all-encompassing and euphoric. A lovely mix, in short. Oh and he is also the head of alternative pop label/collective, Zoom Lens.

Anyway, the track is called 'Blank Ocean' (the title alone is the first tearjerker – even that speaks to me) and it's really good, basically. The intro is a real killer, a 27-second gradual slide into the track's candy-coloured bounce featuring cold, fizzing synth with hints of the Amen-style breaks. The main body of this track is all breakbeats, with zithery plucked instruments plaintively echoing the melody of the vocals, which are vocodered to good effect, almost as a detachment from the true emotion of what they're singing.

Mr. Meishi Smile has kindly provided the lyrics and with lines like, "let's end our lives in a sentimental way / let's echo our youth like death in poetry," the fearsome despair and hopelessness at the heart of this song become more evident.

In true Meishi style, he's also added some brilliant pan flute sounds, the hollow quirky sound of them conjuring the otherworldliness of one of his influences, the soundtrack of Bomberman 64. Add to this the blooping (almost like Sonic jumping circa 1991) synth hook and breezy guitar chords, and you have a whole lot of disparate and perhaps even conflicting elements.

But Meishi Smile weaves them all together with a finesse that not only results in a well-crafted piece of sugary and emotive pop, but that also, in its loud and bustling way, harks back to Meishi's roots in harsh noise music. Top marks!

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• Meishi Smile made a guest mix for YES/NO last year – Valentine's Day-themed, too! It's really good! Go listen! And download it~!
• Also I interviewed Mr. Meishi for Red Bull Music Academy magazine regarding Zoom Lens. Go read!

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☟ Meishi Smile Social Media Presence ☟
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LIQUID SUNSHINE – BE NICE

Woo. Here is some new music from a guy called Hosh'ki Tsunoda, a Japanese producer currently making music in Costa Mesa, California. Oh yeah his musicmaking name is Liquid Sunshine, and the music he makes is prettttttty close to this moniker: liquid shots of actual sun, blended up (blent up?) UV, drinking the sun and all the confusing physics and superheat that goes along with it. Complicated space stuff, y'knoooowww. He actually does describe himself as a "Cosmic beat maker" so…

Annnnyway, his new track is called 'Be Nice' (good message) and it's a mixture of understated, sweaty euphoria and wobbly, wonk-laden hip hop, using shoegazing phasers and a whole host of other FX to paint a multi-flavoured soup of rising/falling swirling synth, grinding bloops, seesawing squeals, dappled light glittering and beachside breezes on the melted façade of a hot afternoon.

All the while kicks sub-boom their slow way along, texturised claps like slapping gravel-filled puddles of water, dynamic build-ups with steady loudening snare rolls, bursting with low-key energy. Crackles and tropical percussion whisper in the quieter moments, just one of many layers of this richly bustling track.

This arrives as the first single from Tsunoda's upcoming EP (dunno what it's called yet, sorry), out 15th October, courtesy of internationalist netlabel, Rootnote Collective, arriving as the first volume – Vol 1.0 – in their The Rooted Arts series, an "exclusive SoundCloud project" aiming to showcase music from a wide range of artists, stemming from a weariness of the current "homogenization of a singular sound." Go for it, I say!

• Please (if u liked this stuff) go have a listen to his other two EPs, his debut, liquid.sunset, off the back of which performing at Shibuya-based online venue, 2.5D, and the slightly more recent Voices EP.

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Y/N GUEST MIX 016 :: USHUA X NA RADHI

It's that time again. Someone donates a hefty portion of their time in order to create a nice little mix for anybody who wants to hear it. There is no exclusivity here, no whatever, we just asked whether Ushua would wanna make a mix for YES/NO or not and he said yes. Here we are. Recently this LA-based producer remixed a track by Jaust called 'Feel The Smoke Rise' with some seriously pugilistic footwork zing. Other than that, there's not much else to say.

With the mix he was gonna put together, he said he wanted to represent or at least showcase his collective, Na Radhi (like Ulzzang Pistol did with his mix a couple of months back). I learnt that "Na radhi" means "with pleasure" in Swahili; "We like to take that thought into our production and just make music we enjoy listening to ourselves," explains Ushua. "Our goal as a collective is to release as much good content as possible and grow." Alongside fellow member, Lo Key Dst, they want to connect with other likeminded musicmakers, release their creations and collaborate with them.

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We have studios set up where we live so it's our goal to create as much as possible. Bedroom producers as most would say.

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A recent discovery will also be the debut release for the collective-slash-label: "Forthcoming on Na Radhi our debut will feature DJ Unlimited Breadsticks' Grissinni Ghost EP," Ushua tells me. "We met him over the internet and he wanted to put out a release, and Lo Key and I remixed a track also." It's this combo of connectivity and communication that seems to be at the heart of this collective – it is rooted wholly in the internet: a tool for deep, wide searches on SoundCloud for new & unique music, and a way to share these and other things. "Lo Key and I bounce ideas off each other with different aspects of our production. We help each other grow as artists which is a really good thing," says Ushua. "Having similar influences in beats and other types of music, always good to trade files with someone who has a good iTunes..."

His mix is a testament to all things big and beautiful in a world built with bricks of trap and footwork, from the quasi-religious experience of Fatima Al Qadiri's track 'Szechuan', where traditional Chinese sounds meet a kind of mystical grime from under the ground in some desert somewhere, to the synth-soaked breakbeats-in-space of Lockah and Eloq's coproduction, 'Jupiter', and everything in between – Young Triforce Cat Baron's heartbreaking 'Usagi Sadness' and the clever electronic chill of the actually brilliant 'Dayum' by cln.

Ushua talks about it. "The mix is a wide variety of styles from halftime to footwork/cinematic and everything in between, much like Na Radhi there is a nice variety spanning all types of influences and genres," he says. "There are [also] a couple unreleased bootlegs/reworks and a recent release from Na Radhi's Old Ransom for ILoveMakonnen."

But I think you've probably read enough for now. Big thanks to Ushua. Please enjoy the mix.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. Ringatone - I'm Sprung (Joey Edit)
2. Vybz Kartel - My Crew
3. Ushua – SeanDaWhite (Demo)
4. dd elle – Kind 2 U (Demo)
5. Mr. Carmack - Extra
6. Young Triforce Cat Baron – Usagi Sadness
7. Ba-kuura – Dream Sim
8. ILoveMakonnen – I Mix My (Ushua Adn Edit)
9. Fatima Al Qadiri – Szechuan
10. Arnold – IDC
11. cln – Dayum
12. DJ Paypal X Ticklish – Worst Behavior
13. DJ Unlimited Breadsticks – ??? (Ushua X Lo Key Dst Remix) Forthcoming on Na Radhi
14. Lockah & Eloq – Jupiter
15. Ryan Hemsworth – Weird Life (Druid Cloak Remix)
16. Jagged Edge – He Can't Love You (Ticklish Reboot)
17. T-Pain – Drankin' Patna (Ushua Remix)
18. ILoveMakonnen – Club Going Up on a Tuesday (Old Ransom Bootleg)

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HOT FLASH HEAT WAVE – DIRTY DREAMER (XXX)

There's a reason why this kind of music never really took off, or in fact wasn't even born out of a cold country. Well, actually, who knows the actual direct correlation, but basically it's very sunny music and it is & will be eternally associated with California. Which is where this four piece, Hot Flash Heat Wave, come from – specifically, San Francisco.

But location-schmocation, right? 'Dirty Dreamer (XXX)' is a lo-fi nu-doo-wop coastal groove, claps and stabs of golden guitar following a timeless pattern that is soaked in nostalgic americana. Vocals cut through in distorted serrations of sound, a who-the-fuck-cares lassitude simmering within, even though it's filled with hum-along hooks. Speaking of which, dig that bright guitar lick that pops up as a pre-verse treat, utterly dripping with cool.

More slapdashery arrives towards the end of the track, where a guitar solo breezes in a virtuosic tangle, something so totally satisfying about that sound: the perfect excitedly euphoric crescendo to a track seemingly inspired by swift, raucous romances.

• If you liked this, you should most definitely check out the very recently released self-titled Hot Flash Heat Wave EP, where you'll find this and four more tracks of the same quality calibre.

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WOOLFY – CITY LIGHTS EP

Waking up waking up is difficult especially on a Monday morning soooo why not go on a disco odyssey for 8 minutes 11 seconds? And this ain't no sweaty throwback New York dopamine-enhanced disco club disco, this is like the slow jam of disco, slo-disco, and as such it's perfect for a brain that doesn't want anything faster right now. Perfect for a brain that like, wants to wake up, but not suddenly, and definitely not anytime soon; this kind of quasi-sleep in the early morning is quite nice its own horrible little way.

And what track pray tell am I chatting about? Well, it's come aaall the way from LA and it's by a guy named Woolfy (real name Simon James) and the track is called '17' which is one of those Great Ages – others being 18, 19, 21, 23, 27 or something (this is what happens when you write early in the morning, you make shit up) – that everyone loves so much. Anyway, like I said earlier this is like slo-disco, slo-house, chilled kinda sound, and it reminded me of the sort of sounds I heard once on one of German (Munich) label Permanent Vacation's If This Is House I Want My Money Back compilations – there've only been two so far so it's one of those – which is funny cause this other track at least ostensibly has something to do with Perm Vac. After some reading, I've found that he first released music under his alter-alias Woolfy vs Projections (his The Astral Projections of Starlight album) on Permanent Vacation, so there you go.

Anyway, it comes from his newly released (14th April) City Lights EP which features two original tracks and two remixes. Here you go it's right below uh so you can listen to it.

At the beginning and at the heart of '17' the main riff is provided quite unusually by a ukelele or mandolin or something, a little toy-esque riff that gives the track a cutesy earthiness, grounding it something entirely different from what the funkily popping slightly slap-bassline and rich piano chords will have you believe. Combine this with misty swooshing tides of synth, scattered tumblings of lead blips and ever-so-often saw-wave chord stutterings, you have quite the soundscape – a mix of Del Mar flavours, coastal indie pop and late-night lounge music. Glassy organ solos enhance the atmosphere, draping it in classy inebriation; and that's not to mention the singing, which talks of some kind of romance and being 17 years old ("And when you grow up grow up to be the woman that you are / you're gonna appreciate the fact that I / kept myself away / cause you were seventeen"). Ghostly, synth-punk vocals reverbing into space with the slacker refrain that mentions sex, cigarettes, Ford Cortinas (¿¿¿ or am I deaf ???): "Couldn't care less."

It comes as the late-late-night sequel song to the first track of the EP, the eponymous 'City Lights'. It's a nicely bouncy track, a slapdash acoustic guitar riff being the foundation of the track, packed with organic percussion like shakers and gently muffled kicks and this one fluid sound that sounds like a cross between a delayed sample of water simultaneously dripping into and draining out of a sink, and tasty woodblock cloppings. This roots-indie flavour is strengthened by two additional things: a xylophone that gives the track a airily cute appeal, and of course the vocals which appear endearingly unpolished and campfiery. In fact, campfire is very much the vibe here. A beach campfire. WHICH is strange considering the song's title and its lyrics: it's about city lights. Being in the city. So in some ways, instead of making "the city" out to be this archetypal hazy, scary, hard-edged, blocky place, the magnitude of its impact is brought down a peg or two thanks to Woolfy's treatment of it – it becomes pretty and quaint, essentially having been observed from a different angle. The finishing refrain, "We live to love you…" – a perfect sing-along – tops it off as a lovesong, the so-often-done love-letter to a city, but with a refreshingly down-to-earth difference.

But wait there's more! Two remixes of '17' grace this EP, too. One by fellow LA-ppl Split Secs is a slow-builder into a synth odyssey, sawtooth boops bouncing along with retro intent in place of the more organic bassline of the original. The vocals, reverbing and dreamy before, are now much trippier, blasting off into the void with heavy delay and reverb like a weird cloud passing above. Synth lead roars into life and explodes with the same trajectory as a cosmic boiling kettle amidst the warm chords and popping clusters of melody. Francis Inferno Orchestra, from Melbourne, makes it a more intense ride, however, with clearer synths playing cosmically over the hard pulse of kicks, waves of phased-out sound blanketing it all. The second half of the track is pockmarked with laser-like synths and a mash of sounds from crashing disco hi-hats and cymbals to booming toms and thickening chords. Both remixes do different things, one is low-key and the other is imbued with much more of a sense of head-spinnery than the other, but both are excellent treatments of the original.

Soooo yeah that was Woolfy. And it will maybe (maybe) surprise you to learn that this has graced your ears today courtesy of Australian label Future Classic, who've been putting out great stuff for ages, wonderfully diverse all the way from the surgical synth of Charles Murdoch to the Drive-inspired sounds of Touch Sensitive, and this most recent release with Woolfy (his debut with the label) continues a much-loved series of sounds with dance/electronic-leanings that ooze originality as much as they do quality and loveable quirks.

• Grab this if u like it from iTunes now or just stream it forever on SoundCloud
• Or hang on if you like vinyls it exists in 10" form too

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MEISHI SMILE – LUST

Oh goddd this like everything else has taken ages to actually get from my ears to my brain to my fingers to the keyboard. It was released over a month ago. What is "it"? God damn— it's Meishi Smile with his debut album Lust. Yes indeed it's "The 1st Album" – there can never be another one by Meishi Smile, no no nope. This is the 1st album and it always will be.

But what is it like? Lust is essentially a mix of rough and smooth, a mix of harsh self-berating distortion and endless reverb free-floating out into the gulf of digital voids, all beset with J-pop sensibilities; it's sugar-coated white noise, it's dance music for bedroom dwellers and indoors inclined individuals, it's idealised. Within its 8 tracks, there are many moments where it soars past the boundaries of euphoria with a post-Balearic furore, too happy to be real; a gentle, dream-induced kind of EDM, not the type you'd hear in a massive tent at a festival, but the type that takes you away to weird worlds in the middle of the lonely nights.

Opener 'AJS' perhaps embodies this EDM style most clearly, keeping all the tropes of the so-called genre – like multiple drops and trance-like melodies skirling away in hookish fashion; likewise, 'Honey' drops in with octave-skipping bassline and clean-cut fast-paced synth melodies. However, here is a quirk of the album: the vocoder. There is something retro about the vocoder, yet in its very nature it IS a modern device. It is at odds with itself. But this works perfectly for Meishi Smile. The vocoder appears as a mainstay of 'Pale', which alongside its icicle-esque synth glistenings gives the track an atmosphere of coldness, of chill in the nominal sense. It's also in the chilled atmosphere of the next track, 'Still' – looping vocoders battling high-register hollow synth and wide washes of dreamy chords.

These chilled vibes start the proceedings on 'Heart', a song that moves between swaying seabed ambience and bouncing electro-dance; thick synth bass grooves in a pop mood and the vocoder seems here to be "singing" more than anywhere else. It's a song of slow and fast. That slowness, however, is portrayed so much better on the almost-surprise track 'Ai' – this one sounds like a super-reverbed and super-distorted version of the kind of slo-house synthpop that the infamous Drive soundtrack popularised with artists like College and Kavinsky (in this instance, more by the former than the latter). It reeks of nocturnal stylings, a simple melody and a steady, driving beat fogged by reverb and underpinned by formative rows of saw-wave bass jounce.

That's in direct contrast to the happy-happy pop of previous track 'Summer Blue', a foray into something maybe you'd find on a videogame – squelchy bass, simple but very effective synth raining down in showers of 8-bit bleepery with an overriding melody played by synth lead and vocoder, syncopated toytronic chords in lieu of house piano for extra oomph. This is in direct contrast to the closer and most crazy of all tracks, 'Tears'. Meishi Smile mysteriously describes it on SoundCloud: "Dedicated to the one who was lost." And indeed, in title and in its near-happy hardcore extreme distortion, this aims to reflect not the moroseness, the lassitude, of being sad, but the fury and frustration of sadness, wholly up-tempo yet down-beat, tear-like droplets of synth raining down amidst the whirlwind haze of twisted grey noise synth.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. There are remixes. KOSMO KAT keeps 'Summer Blue' close to the original, adding touches here and there – percussion, a sunset-conjuring breakdown, droplet sample – for what is 'Summer Blue V2' basically. 'Heart' retains its washes of sound, yet is given a gentle touch of officious industry by Uio Loi, and la pumpkin turns it into an almost beatless slice of bassy experimentalism with added instruments, with the original melodies picked out and spotlighted. mus.hiba does likewise with 'Pale', extracting the song from its up-tempo frame and giving it a semi-trap makeover with added 80s synth melody and waves of trance synth. My favourite, I think, is gigandect's redoing of 'Honey' – now essentially a chiptune number, completely overrun with glorious bleeps, from its low-low buzzing bass all the way up to its fluid telephonic melody.

Phew. Well, this ain't conventional dance music; Meishi Smile ain't conventional. This is dance music hazed over with influences from videogame music to shoegaze and beyond, dreams converging like clouds to rain down startling reworkings of various recollections, feelings, and recollections of feelings. It's icy and robotic, but this cybernetic feel exudes nostalgia and emotion with subtle effortlessness; behind a mist of idealised sounds, just as anybody URL is veiled by idealised monikers and titles, Meishi Smile is there with boundless feeling.

• Get Lust for 10USD by clicky-clickin over here
• Listen to the truly awesome guest mix that Meishi Smile made for YES/NO

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SUMMER TWINS FORGET ME (ROLLERGIRL REMIX) [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Hello how is it all going? Well I hope. Now that we've done away with the pleasantries, let's get down to business shall we? The nitty-gritty. The crunch. Whatever you call it: let's do it. And by that I mean, I'm about to start writing about some music that I have found so hold onto your hats, tuck your shirts in, finish the food that's already on your plate and do everything else you need to do in order to read words with your eyes. You ok? No, neither am I.

So, what do we have here? We have Summer Twins – oh! That rings a bell. Yes it does because I wrote about Summer Twins at the beginning of Summer. I wrote about two of their songs, 'I'm No Good' & 'Forget Me' – they're a duo (twins actually) who specialise in creating retro-Americana sounds, full of surf-rock twang and doo-wop 60s prom night romance. It's nice, generally gentle stuff. But here marks a change: enter Rollergirl. Yes, Rollergirl. He – or at least I think it's a he (???) – has remixed Summer Twins' beach-friendly tune 'Forget Me' and it sounds pretty much very different from the original I'd say.

Preserving the twinkling melody of the original, the remix instantly puffs out its chest in bold and ballsy fashion – this is pretty much indie dance at its dirtiest and fuzziest. The bass flaps like a loose telegraph wire powered by people's dancing feet as a thumping kick and crashing hi-hat create an uptempo disco groove. By the end of the song, the sound is a veritable explosion of gloriously live-sounding instruments, everything half-distorted and super-powered with the sound of someone basically "going for it" on the drums and everything else, punching out the sound with glorious gusto.

The vocals are like the only part of this song that's kept wholly intact. At first it was kind of strange hearing the soft tones of the Chelsea and Justine Brown – the "twin" parts of Summer Twins – but then it allowed the remix to remain true to the California sun-pop vibe of the original, whilst still being able to turn up the roughness on the other elements to the track.

Rollergirl's self-titled debut album is out and has been out for a month courtesy of Nah Collective. And you can also download it from Rollergirl's Bandcamp (below).

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TONI WILLZ HYPEBEAST [FREE DOWNLOAD]

This is sounding so very sublime this morning. It's pretty cold outside, well, it's cold, like 1°C outside, but the sun is bright, coming in through the windows, hitting its edges and making long angles of light on the walls. For some reason, a nice fresh slice of rap goes with this kind of morning just as perfectly as next-to-frozen apple juice and a bowl of your favourite cereal. Ya it's a beautiful sleepy morning and this song 'HypeBeast' matches up just perfectly.

But who has made this lovely tune? It comes from 20-year-old Los Angeles-based rapper Toni Willz and producer AbJo, purveyor of smooth sounds and fine beats. Put these two elements together and you get something pretty magical – it's an exercise in a chilled out, horizontal vibe augmented with a few hits of nostalgic skate-rap's easy-peasy no-sweat attitude. I urge you to treat your ears to this right now.

With laid-back liquid precision, the sounds of the track flow out in a head-nodding medley of boom-bap flavoured drums combined with shiftling glitch-induced percussion and unrecognisable snippet samples that ripple in slow-motion kickflip aesthetic, backed up by subtle, glassy bass. It's wholly fresh yet summons the spirit of the ever-present endless summer – the kind of thing that oozes effortlessly out of sunny places like California. Field recorded conversations about being a "hypebeast" raise up like a kind of cultural backdrop for the song, and it certainly works in placing the song, i.e. giving it even more of a sense of coming from a place in space and time.

Toni Willz exhales his bars with nonchalant confidence, sticking with a po-faced low-register tone that flutters just around the same note for the whole song – exudes a certain swagger. His words defame "hypebeasts", presumably rappers completely wrapped up in hype and celebrity, citing himself as a contrast as someone who just lives their life and raps. For instance "All these new waves form like the ocean / No more one hit wonders, we need true devotion" – "In just reality you learn a life-lesson: true rappers live, hypebeasts go to heaven." The point is made with his "new Nirvana flow" making religious metaphors throughout, ultimately coming across with untouchable poetic lilt as someone who will continue to rap with consistent ear-pleasing quality.

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SHELF NUNNY & ERIKO TOYODA ABOUT THE BOY

What's in a name? Sometimes quite a lot. Sometimes literally nothing. Sometimes a little in-between these two things, when there's a spot of retroactive continuity going into explanations of names and stuff. But something like Shelf Nunny... I'm not sure. Say it out loud. Shelf Nunny. It's a fine name, a strong name. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be rude or if it isn't and— actually, I shouldn't get held up on this. It's a name and that's that.

So anyway, Shelf Nunny - real name Christian Gunning - is a producer from Santa Cruz, California, and he makes richly intricate glitchy beats. He's part of a collective called Sleepy Beach, who released his Dream Album EP earlier this year. It's nice to belong to a collective. I mean, a) there's a sense of belonging, which is pretty invaluable if you ask me and b) there's a shared sense of inspiration and each other's success.

This time, Shelf Nunny has teamed up with singer and trackmaker Eriko Toyoda for a seemingly long-ish-term collaboration. The second of their tracks together is called 'About The Boy' and it sounds a little something like this... (you have to press play).

From delicate beginnings - Shelf Nunny providing insectoid sampling of string pluckings and Eriko offering up the beautiful layered mist of her voice - the track enters, by way of snare patterns, into an increasingly busy and intricate world of sound. The percussion is wonderfully alive and dynamic: kicks thud like heartbeats, the snare hits crash like a crystal ball dropping into a box of wooden beads, woodblock ticks count time. Low synths accompany the glitching that characterises the song. But everything changes at around 1:45. A saw-wave bassline cuts in from nowhere, making wild runs beneath the ever heavenward vocals of Eriko, ushering in hi-hat rolls and winding toy percussion noises to join in, too.

By the end, we're left with a lonely beach of sounds. A glitchy crackling of samples gradually muffles and disappears under the weight of the organ melody, which coos and croons plaintively until they too fade out into nothing. It's an intensely pretty song, combining dynamic elements to present an out-of-body-experience of a song, with Eriko's distinctive voice guiding your spirit through the general background radiation of the unphysical world, its dripping percussive noises and quaint, quirky musical twists and turns in the form of Shelf Nunny's mastery of sound. The track teeters on the border between outright experimental glitch beatsmithing and leftfield pop loveliness and who needs it to fall either side? It is what it is: a really nice song.

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