MASAHIRO TAKAHASHI — DREAMIES

In 'Dreamies' we hear an awakening of the world. The slow trickle of water, the unfurling of leaves, the bursting of snowdrops through wet solid soil. It is a soundscape for the thawing of things, a farewell to winter while still on the threshold of its realm, with bare trees sparkling with crystallline fragments of rain.

Created by the Sendai-born, Toronto-based composer and musician Masahiro Takahashi, the track is our first glimpse of his new album, In Another. For this project Takahashi builds on collaborative approach that characterised his previous album Humid Sun (2023), adding a small orchestra's worth of musicians to enact his creative vision.

The result of this – of his "trading Ableton sequences for lead sheets" – is a rich, full sound evolves with an organic quality of live music, an unseen magic in the air. In this musical mapping 'Dreamies' feels like an aestheticised symphonic tuning up, simple and synthesised to begin with, adding textures and different qualities of sound in a veritable sonic buffet, as if filling out the lines of a painting.

But there is also more than just a nod to the embryonic chamber pop that Brian Wilson brought to life on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds — the intricacies and chimes and dynamic progressions of 'Let's Go Away For Awhile', for example, and the lavish layers in the final third of 'You Still Believe In Me'. In this regard, Takahashi's own singular vision and vocal additions in 'Dreamies' feel very kindred.

✧

---

• 🔔 As previously mentioned, 'Dreamies' is taken from Masahiro Takhashi's upcoming album In Another. It's due out 20th March via Telephone Explosion. If you like what you hear you may march yourself over to Bandcamp and pre-order your very own vinyl or digital copy of the album.

---

📠
☟ Masahiro Takahashi Internet Presence ☟
bandcamp ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify ⚘  music

---

⌾

CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON — IF ONLY

'If Only' is deceptively conventional. We have R&B vocals, keys and a groove; structurally, we have verses, pre-choruses, choruses, post-choruses, a bridge. But additions and quirks that elevate this song into a shining beacon of timeless romance, a paragon of bygone pop.

The creation of Toronto-based producer, singer and musician Charlotte Day Wilson, 'If Only' brims with textures that make it a fully-furnished room of a song. Glassy keys glisten, resonating with fireplace warmth, providing a juxtaposition between cold and hot, outer and inner — the yearning heart. Drums tick and bump with subtle kicks and snares, bass bubbles and booms keenly below, while now and then synth vox hop up and down a keyboard following the brassy voicebox fuzz of saxophone melody.

It's a flavourful mix. The approach to thick chorus and almost sparse verses is also a satisfying contrast, as is the cheerful Charlie Brown-esque intro melody against the expressive rising chorus, like the difference between accepting lost love with something like nonchalance, and then the sudden wave of longing reality, a feeling matured.

Day Wilson's lyrics to 'If Only' spell out this ache of loss told in the music. Take the chorus, for example, a play on counterpoint with deep, heart-rending bass, keys and vocals in wondrous syncopation.

And times move slowly without you
Heaven if only you could hold me
and turn it all around

The hopeful prayer-like tone of the chorus then shifts in mood for the final two lines, where clocks have stopped and grief is currency instead of seconds:

Tell me the time comes back
Still stuck in visions of what we had

In this lyrical weaving, her vocal tones add to the song's textural wonderland, alternating between deep silkiness and skipping acrobatics, layers upon layers to give a rich fullness to the sound. It's this overall fullness combined with the classic R&B structure of the song that gives it such timeless mystique.

To this end: Are we listening to this in 2026? Or could we intersperse this with muted crowd appreciation and feel as though we are four fifths of the way through a hazy live concert in 1992, candles lit on the stage, a smoke machine, a collective swoon in the audience as Day Wilson's masterwork sweeps through yet another gorgeously evocative chord change — are we there?

✧

---

• 🔔 The gorgeous 'If Only' is taken from Charlotte Day Wilson's new album Patchwork. You can purchase it digitally over on Bandcamp.

---

📠
☟ Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ tiktok ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia ⚘ spotify

---

⌾

RYAN PLAYGROUND — BETTER OFF ALONE

⌾ LISTEN TO RYAN PLAYGROUND, BETTER OFF ALONE ⌾

---

---

'Better Off Alone' by Alice Deejay lends itself to being covered in some way, whether it's Mark Redito giving it a tropical rework or if it's a nightcore flip by Crapface (real artist name). It's impossibly iconic and instantly recognisable, both in its of-a-certain era (1998) aesthetics and in its simple, titular vocal refrain and melody: "Do you think you're better off alone?"

The question is asked in such a haunting, slow and repetitive way that it's almost impossible not to be caught up in a daydreaming moment, feeling the melancholy of the vocal. The fact that it's in the second person immediately puts the listener at the receiving end of the interrogation: You, no matter where you read it, is always you (yes, you). It's relative, and relatable.

The choice of how the question is being asked may have been one of picking what fit best, of course, but the interesting thing is that it's not simply "Are you better off alone?" That's a simpler question. Prefacing the question with "Do you think—" automatically elicits a shift to pondering in the one being asked. It forces consideration.

Not only that, but in using the colloquialism "better off", the comparative "better" begs a thing, a situation, which may have been worse — by however many degrees — than being "alone", i.e. together, but perhaps not ideally together. In the unspoken unknown that lingers in the moments before the iconic refrain calls out, there is the feeling of abandonment, a pair divided, and the repeating enquiry is necessarily stacked with emotion.

When we get to the "Talk to me... Oh, talk to me" it becomes clear that we're hearing something like one side of a phone conversation. And it also becomes clear that, in the pleading imperatives and the wordless, tuneful "oo-ooo-oo" that punctuates them, the prior question has gone unanswered, heartbreakingly so.

Needless to say, what was a hit at the time, and which could easily be seen as a simple dancefloor song by a europop group in what is very much a bygone era, has in fact stewed and simmered these past 22 years, fusing its feeling into the memories of all that have heard it. And that's why it's a great song to cover, whatever way you look at it.

Genevieve Ryan Martel aka RYAN Playground brings a decidedly different feel to the song, in her hands it becomes an icy, emo-tinged cover, guitar in glittering arpeggios that summon Brand New at their most downcast sparkling atop a frosty whisper of ambient synth; deep below, a far-off rumble provides not only the bass, but a sense of vague disaster. The vocals, crisp and wonderfully falling into the snowy soundscape, eventually fade, as does the track as a whole, thus ending a version of the original was woven with a similar sense of loss and heartache.

---

• 🔔 Montreal artist RYAN Playground's version of 'Better Off Alone' can be streamed and downloaded on her Bandcamp, along with another Alice Deejay cover, 'I Can See (See It In Your Eyes)'. Both of them make up a two-track release For The Ones Who Need Guitars Anyway; in light of her use of guitars in the covers, it's a pun on the original album that both songs appeared on, Who Needs Guitars Anyway? (2000).

---

---

📠
☟ RYAN Playground Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

---

---

🐣 LEON LOUDER — INKJETS

⌾ LISTEN TO LEON LOUDER, INKJETS ⌾

The interior AI spirit of a vast nowhere machine ascending into the vaulted sky, an imperfect aurora twisting and writhing, flashing and fitting with error messages as circuitboards frazzle and crack back on the ground, 'Inkjets' is a masterpiece of malfunctions created by Canadian producer leon louder.

With modulated synth chords rising up and the gentle pulse of soft synth pingpong boops this dimension of glitch and detached sombre sadness spreads out like a blood stain, sounding very like the soundtrack Twilight Realm from Zelda: Twilight Princess in the process. Muffled crashes and electrical crackling, the far off explosions of processes and the evaporation of data: it is the death of a computer.

Despite the metallic tinkering and clicking, as if this machine is attempting to fix itself, the garbled synth doesn't form words; there's no reassurance. Instead the vox is virtuoso in rivers of hummingbird babbling. At 1:40 there's what sounds like the genuine voice of this digital organism itself, a plaintive imploring purr, before finally the chords thin out into nothingness.

---

• 🔔 The fittingly glitch laden video for leon louder's 'Inkjets' was created by artist Chris Dorland ("who makes paintings with malfunctioning printers," explained Leon).

---

---

📠
☟ leon louder Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ discogs ⚘ spotify

---

---

🐣 RYAN HEMSWORTH — FOUR SEASONS FEAT. NEWAGEMUZIK

Honestly it was a surprise to hear about this. It’s a very UK sound that internet music progeny Ryan Hemsworth has created here, a fusion of pop softness and afrobeats rhythm. Gently clanging icy digital chords summon songs of yesteryear, while columns of sub-bass give it that deeply rumbling contemporary sound; more of that chilly atmosphere comes from that twinkling intricate refrain that Hemsworth casts over the top, like a layer of frost sparkling in the sun. That icy delicacy belies the warmth here, helped not only by the full-bodied nature of the track, but by the smooth vocals of featuring artists, NewAgeMuzik.

The North London duo bring rich vocals, turned lightly plasma with subtle autotune, to the bumping afrofusion beat, a clatter of percussion that clicks and ticks which give an extra dimension to the familiar swung beat that we hear in African-flavoured music. The vocals, full of raw laid-back soul, giving human heart and character to the technical splendour of the instrumental. But the beat has that cute touch, rounded and miniature in places, and its warm-chilly contrast is a combination that makes this track light and upbeat despite its bass heaviness; the skitter and brightness of ornamentation right next to the sweat and heat of intimate close-quarters rhythms.

---

• 🔔 'Four Seasons' is out already, and it's from Ryan Hemsworth's upcoming new Elsewhere.
• 🔔 The video was directed by London-based Sammy Shoots, and stars Kamo and Prince of NewAgeMuzik, matching the chill vibes of the track itself.

---

---

📠
☟ NewAgeMuzik Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ☟ Ryan Hemsworth Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ resident advisor ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia

---

---

🐣 OURI × MIND BATH — WILD MOTHER

The minimalist space of 'Wild Mother' is as beautiful as the sound itself, and made beautiful in fact by that sound. The two, the presence and absence, work together to create this world of sequential peaks and troughs in texture: the rich and rounded boops of electronic summations feel plastic and colourful, liquid and wobbly, and the spaces between them are greyfully faded, the hanging in the air of static, the constant ache of the unobtrusive glossy column of bass propelling the track through a void.

Two Montreal musicmakers, harpist, cellist and producer Ouri, and Mind Bath – who here provides the vocals – duet: a human heart surrounded by circuitry and conjured abstract shapes. In fact it is more than just this electronicness to it. Scuttled metallic drums set this creeping organic tone, the constant shuffle of percussion texturing the dusty boom of the beat. The voice of Mind Bath croons outward, searching in the brooding intergalactic clatter of the track for meaning; and Ouri's artful construction of objects in aesthetic sultry dancefloor collage.

---

• 🔔
• 🔔 'Wild Mother' is taken from Ouri and Mind Bath's collaborative four-track EP, OURI / MIND BATH, which you can purchase and stream variously via this hyperlink.
• 🔔

---

---

📠
☟ Ouri Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

☟ Mind Bath Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘

---

---

🐣 POOL BOY — OLD DOG NO TRICKS

The first thing here is a sense of familiarity. Though it is new and from a new artist going by the name of Pool Boy, the bassline is a constant refrain of the first four beats of the bassline in 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League. Intentionally, it is an innocent nod to something everybody knows. Unintentionally, it shows the pervasive nature of "classics" of the late 20th century. Either way, there it is; and 'Old Dog No Tricks' continues with a clatter of disco percussion, scathing hi-hats, cool lounge bongos, smart handclaps.

The heaviest element of the track is that bass. Above that close-quarters groove the feel is one of haze and otherworldliness. A constant fog of ethereal synth creeping across the floor; and above that a twinkling cluster of notes hangs in the air. Lead melodies spin like submerged guitar solos, muffled and wavering. Against this mirage of sound, like a disco in a dream, real world noises pour in: birdsong, fresh and innocent, and the wash-crash of the sea, expansive and farsighted—as with the musical elements, it is light and heavy combining.

---

• 🔔 This appears courtesy of London label Coastal Haze as a single ahead of the Pool Boy LP, scheduled for release on 22nd January. You can pre-order it digitally or on cassette from Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The description of the track reads: "Produced overlooking the port of Vancouver but ..who is Pool Boy?!" We have an inkling.

  1) The track itself was reposted by Cyril Hahn.
  2) One SoundCloud comment reads: "At last more music by Cyril!"
  3) Also he is Canadian, and it was produced in/near Vancouver.

  But we shall see.

---

---

📠
☟ Pool Boy Internet Presence ☟
?????

---

---

🐣 ANOMALIE — NO WAY

The Montreal maestro of keyboard Anomalie inducts us once more into his world of virtuosity with 'No Way', a squiffy head-nodding hip hop-influenced track that with its boom-bapping organic drums and their ticking hi-hats gives an aching sway to it all, founding the whole thing on a cartoon sea, all of it bobbing on deep blue waves. And if you thought the regular beat was fine just wait till the little fill at 2:09, all riddly diddly—just one of many ornamentations that make this whole experience pretty opulent in terms of sound.

Alongside that bounce is the star of the show, the keyboard, the motif throughout refraining with all the squishy wah-wah you could imagine, plasticine electric slime giving it an elasticity which, although the track is a slow one, crams your soul full of potential kinetic energy, winding you up like a spring. The vocal sample – "No way…" – adds colour to the groove. The crashing cymbals as the refrain rolls around again, they help, splashing metallically. And it ends with lounge piano, warm and sophisticated, the swank of a fancy restaurant dawning as the wonky squelch of the streets ends.

---

• 🔔 You may download 'No Way' for free if you choose to do such a thing.
• 🔔 Anomalie has a new EP coming out in April 2018, arriving after his debut Métropole EP last year.

---

---

📠
☟ Anomalie Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ spotify

---

---

🐣 ROCHELLE JORDAN — HOW U WANT IT PROD. MACHINEDRUM

Straight away there's this aura of opulence – that soft synth glow – gold fittings and fixtures and chandeliers and mahogany or maybe teak furniture presenting angularity and sweeping curves in delicious alternation. Rich, that's it—there is a high degree of richness embedded at the heart of Rochelle Jordan's 'How U Want It'. Her voice is of course a fabulous part of the track, its shining jewel, its billowing silk streaming through the well oiled machinery of the instrumental, at some points long and silken, and other times her vocals are tongue twisters, rapid-fire trilling lines that end in swooping lilts, itself full-bodied and robust but bringing it all together, lacing it with delicacy.

The all-encompassing solidity of 'How U Want It' comes from its producer Machinedrum, who creates a playground of synth and beats that stutter and somersault in tracts of audaciously empty instrumental hits, priceless vase ornamental rose footwork, clinking and glittering high-pitch and wonky but bumping and thumping with juddering rubbery quakes too. It is this with its sense of playful urgency that Rochelle Jordan's vocal pairs perfectly, similarly agile and acrobatic, making this track a marrying of two virtuoso elements that soar and sizzle. A subversion of classy with its spilling-over decorative feel, this track is feeling out-of-place at a high-society event and knocking over champagne and having fun in the face of imposition.

---

• 🔔 This track is the first release on Machinedrum's newly birthed label IAMSIAM. You can steam it and purchase it variously from most of your favourite services via this hyperlink.

---

---

📠
☟ Rochelle Jordan Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

☟ Machinedrum Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

---

🐣 CYANURA — SPLASH

There is a wholesome realness in this track that makes it difficult to not bring your other senses along for the ride: skin tingles and warms, mouth and tongue seems to anticipate flavours and textures of tasty food, visions of a natural world elsewhere swirl like mists into your mind. Combining the sounds of outside, the sounds of nature with its luscious crunches and the inviting glory of water sloshing and soothing, combining these with the sounds of indoors, the ultimate indside sounds in the form of synths that bleep simple and videogame-esque or resonate rounded and glassy with artificial digital perfection, Vancouver musicmaker cyanura transports us to wherever we most associate these sounds, a lake shore, the ocean, a boat, a riverside, a tropical island—where there's water, there 'splash' is.

With a big emphasis on foley – that is, creating sound effects or in this case instruments by effectively sampling real life sounds – cyanura serves up a bustling collage of percussion that gives this song its rich textural dimensions, that all-senses effect where the clean clicks and clops tapping and popping in the track feel like different hard sweets: it is quite literally delicious. We have the crunch of footsteps, the dry shuffle of sheafing through pages of a book, reverbing finger clicks, distant hi-hats, tiny rolling snares—a percussive playground. It almost overshadows the beautiful plaintive melodies of the track, a modern day pastoral, the childlike nature of it summoning a deep sense of fun and nostalgia associated with fun and the places where it can be had. Idyllic is the word.

---

• 🔔 This beautiful track is cyanura's first to be uploaded so keep an eye on their SoundCloud.

---

---

📠
☟ cyanura Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter

---

---

🐣 JOANNE POLLOCK — EXPECT ME

The space in this track makes all of its sounds feel so wonderful, the breathing space between the experimental hits of digitised synth and beats allowing the tapestry of noises to make their impact and help create this sense of voidsome expanse, of space-anchored clusters of free-floating alien matter, this entity that exists in its own location and in its own time with no references to anything but the silence that frames it and punctuates its tumbling sentences and phrases. Listening to 'Expect Me' is like satisfying a craving: same way your stomach growls your ears yearn and for things such as this, these are tasty treats, Canadian singer and musicmaker Joanne Pollock spreading a controlled cacophony of booms, clacks, ticks, tings, trickling icy overdriven percussion.

Adjoining sounds range wonderfully, wildly, high-pitched synth twinkling, traditional warm chords, bops and beeps all bloopsome, squashed columns of sub-bass heavy and rumbling, gleaming otherworldly, so much of it unconventional and unusual all broken and fragmented abstract and collage-like, noises cut and pasted for maximum atmosphere evoking impact, her voice wandering amidst the thickets layered and just lightly airbrushed with reverb with this human quality that bridges the dimension where this icy music exists and your mind, part of you perishing as the poetry proceeds. How a sense of space sets this so far from the here and now, from your situation, reminiscent of nothing but instead Joanne Pollock's unique universe of sound.

---

• 🔔 This is taken from Joanne Pollock's album Stranger, out now via Venetian Snares-owned Timesig, a Planet Mu imprint.
• 🔔 The fittingly abstract and alternate-world-summoning, very water-themed video for 'Expect Me' was directed by Desiree Deleau alongside Joanne herself.

---

---

📠
☟ Joanne Pollock Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ youtube ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

---

🐣 ANOMALIE — NEW SPACE

Wow there is nothing quite like listening to something that is instantly loveable, but not just that but more like completely coursing through veins from the first few seconds, literally merging with your blood cells and sailing the capillary network to your heart with all the calories and cholesterol and electric energy of it all. That is 'New Space' by Montreal-based keyboardist and producer Anomalie. Citing everything from J Dilla and George Gershwin to Daft Punk and Skrillex, as well as his classical background and jazz study, the musicmaker explains the track and the EP its taken from: "basically a melting pot of all my major influences while featuring the keyboard as the centrepiece."

And as the central tenet of this track the virtuoso keyboard canters gloriously throughout, displaying effortless glassy lounge chords that tremolo blissful while underpinned with fuzzy texture basslines, a whirl of bold colour set to a lush crackling raw organic beat that shuffles with hip-hop breeziness and bright metallic zing. Keys drip-drop with pliant cuteness, flowerbuds popping open with cartoon vigour, so easy so easy Anomalie creates this ultimate VGM-leaning instrumental odyssey, a tantalising teeter between lounge horizontality and the hyperactive funk dynamism of jazz, the composition jumping jostling atmospheres, stable instability bursting at the seams.

---

• 🔔 This comes from Anomalie's debut Métropole EP, out now on Lowtemp Music. You can buy it digitally over on Bandcamp for CAD$3.99.

---

---

📠
☟ Anomalie Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ spotify

---

---

🌭 FIREWOOD POETRY — SKIN

This music spreads out beautifully, like a waterfall, like watching water spill from a vessel onto the floor in slow-motion, the gradual coursing-through-veins feeling of warmth, of gentle-handed bliss, a gradual shiver through the body. And just as liquids fit the space they're in, the spillage unfurls and seeks all available channels and carvings and gouges and forms expeditionary rivulets that snake and wind along the earth. The atmosphere in 'Skin' by Canadian producer Firewood Poetry is one of searching, one of blankness becoming unblank, of unknown becoming known.

Fractional fears skitter and creep as the percussion ebbs and flows sharply textured, a grainy crackle like a geiger counter spits and stutters familiar throughout the track; totems of half-knowledge loom in the mild glower of the gloom, that sub-bass outlining indistinct far-off forms; a thin stream of ambient synth materialises and goes through a process of dissolving and then solidifying again; snippets of soulful saxophone exhibit almost sultry longing, illustrate carnal humanity; and the vocals, soaked in reverb, resonate past what we can hear, lilting heartfully, with a rich tone, and are on occasion spun backwards; it is a tract of esoteric flavours, a soundscape that dazzles and bewitches, the spice of occult in the cooling sub sandwich of trip-hop angularity.

---

• 🔔 You can download 'Skin' by clicky-clicking on this link.

---

---

📠
☟ Firewood Poetry Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ tumblr ⚘ google+ ⚘ instagram

---

---

🐣 MEN I TRUST — YOU DESERVE THIS

It's the atmosphere here, the atmosphere whipped up with the warm synth chords, their heavenly modulation, the uncomplicated simplicity of it, the watery refrain of the guitar thin and tactile above the thick haze of the track, and then there's the swaying motion of it, the slow oscillation as the sharp clipped snares and hi-hats tick-tocking finely against the amorphous bed of velvet sounds and the aching slow-slow jwang of the bass. There is a feeling of the comfort, detached but comfortable. Alone and a part. The vocals linger with their layers languid and lost in dislocated dreamlike longing.

Created by Montreal-based three-person musical unit ("Jessy, Dragos and Emma") Men I Trust, 'You Deserve This' contains within it something very akin to the insta-nostalgia conjured by the homely wilderness of the Twin Peaks theme by Angelo Badalamenti, rich but not extravagant, universal but not cold, not meant for you but nor for anyone in particular. It is a wandering feeling, formless, a freefall into this cyclical formula, the feeling of going around and around without realising it, the seamless repetition of sound, the sparse groove, the ascending-descending melody, slowly softly slowly softly up and down the stairs, head full of chill, heart full of warmth.

---

• 🔔 'You Deserve This' can be downloaded for free from Men I Trust's Bandcamp.

---

---

📠
☟ Men I Trust Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ tumblr ⚘ instagram ⚘ songkick

---

---

🐣 SMTHN — INTERFERENCE [初演 • PREMIERE]

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

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

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

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

---

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

---

---

📠
☟ smthn Internet Presence ☟
• SoundCloud •

---

---

WOSX – CHUVA

How vapourwave has evolved since it popped up a few years ago. One label intent and determined to continue the story of this genre, and of all forms of vapour (minus "-wave" suffix, plus "hard-" prefix, etc.) is Dream Catalogue – literally a pick-your-own of artists making sounds, images and ideals to select from and "install" into your mind. Not literally, but figuratively at least, since losing yourself in a lot of this label's output is not a difficult thing: it's all about imagination, dreaming. Not least in the highly evocative 'Chuva' by wosX.

Abrasive synth brass paints plaintive melody lines melting into one another, summoning a humid sort of sadness and longing; this continues for the whole track, swooping and groaning with damaged majesty. wosX weaves percussion into the mix, sharp metallic rattling, woodblock cowbell clopping, eventually erupt with thundering drum ('chuva' means rain in Portuguese) into a house beat thumping along amidst the drama. Vague whisperings and far-off vox tantalise in the neardistance.

It's nocturnal, but not exclusively so, akin in mood to the dark exoticism of John Talabot's 2012 debut album, ƒIN. For me this worked out well: it soundtracked a bus ride through jungle-thronged hills and heavy skies from Taipei to Luodong, mingling easily with the grand landscape.

---

• wosX - pronounced "wossex" - is formerly known as Wolfenstein OS X and is from Montreal.
• This comes from wosX's latest album, Brasil World Cup 2034, out now on Dream Catalogue.

---

---

☟ wosX's Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • YouTube

---

---

PENDER STREET STEPPERS – THE GLASS CITY

This is a lovely and super delicious meal of music arriving courtesy of Vancouver-located production duo Jack Juston and Liam Butler, better known as the musical entity that they engineer and inhabit, Pender Street Steppers. It's called 'The Glass City' and usually with names such as this I'm just completely besotted with them because they conjure sceneries for the imagination that can then be soundtracked with the music once it's actually playing.

But I found out that "City of Glass" is a nickname for Vancouver (one of many, according to Wikipedia), coming from the title of a Douglas Coupland book of the same name, referring to the mainly steel-and-glass nature of the city's architecture.

BUT ENOUGH OF THIS.

The track itself 'The Glass City' is a not over-complicated yet totally bustling journey, moving along in a progressive fashion, picking up and dropping different elements as it slides glisteningly and blissfully along.

Organic drums with super-subtle delicate feather-touch hi-hats and punchy kicks, punctuated with the occasional muffled tom fill, are the foundation for the track, with plenty of percussion jumping in to add extra spice and flavour to the mix: güiros (or scrapers if you want) provide a flush of white-noise-esque insectoid chattering of humid crepuscularity, lassitudinal open hi-hat sounds shuffle with a sleepy-disco feel, gloriously crafted handclaps alternate with and lock into satisfying snare hits. It's all there.

Add to this the founding lounge-leaning chords of soft electronic piano, caressing your ears like sunlight on skin, syncopated spheroid bloops of synth bass, and slightly disorienting, seemingly directionless gentle rapid-fire horn sounds, and you've got yourself a winner of a track, something fit for the blissful afternoons of summer, and something very worthy of associated with that real-life El Dorado of chilled-out house music, Café del Mar. 8:46 minutes of understated rapture.

It arrives in vinyl form as a single on collective/label Mood Hut (of which Pender Street Steppers are a part). The B side is another very, very tasty number called 'Golden Garden' (place names again – name of a Vietnamese restaurant in Vancouver says Google), a slower track with a steady beat and a definitive groove in the form of bulging peals of bass, all of it veiled with ultra-chill soft synth chords, a 100% atmospheric flute fluttering in towards – listen to a snippet of that below.

---

• You can buy 'The Glass City'/'Golden Garden' courtesy of Mood Hut.

---

---

☟ Pender Street Steppers Social Media Presence ☟
• SoundCloud •

---

---

TSHORTS – AQUARIUS FLEX

I found this in my neverending list of things to write about today and I remembered how… unplaceable it is. It's totally experimental and you know from the first computerised vocal drop that you're in for a treat: "Fuck actual music, listen to TSHORTS," it says. Ok, you think, I'll do that for now.

A plaintive synth melody repeats for most of this track with the same feeling as a little fish innocently swimming around a coral reef, imbued with submarine mystery: no thoughts in mind except going about its business. 'Aquarius Flex' isn't all about that cutesy, vacant innocence though. Not at all. Because you've got to take Canadian producer TSHORTS' collage of beats into account: an 808-flavoured series of shimmering rhythm changing hi-hats, pitch-shifted snare rolls and clusters of kicks – I mean, if we keep going with the whole fish-in-the-sea thing, then these beats represent the disordered uniformity of coral structures, a natural and irregular brutalism in miniature.

And there you are, a pair of eyes looking from above, the sea warping your vision, refractions and ripples making it difficult to see – flitting, barely perceived objects dart around: the rapid-fire, frenetic synth chords of 'Aquarius Flex', and the sometimes woozy, half-intoxicated version of the melody that appears sometimes.

The track is also a game of two halves. More like two-thirds and one-third, but there's no epithet for that; soon we burst into a world of robust, truncated bass gently and elastically stretched in pitch sometimes, and following an unpredictable kick pattern, a minimalist seascape far away from the coral colony where the wide ocean beckons and bloops with unknown, unfathomable sights and sounds.

---

• TSHORTS' 'Aquarius Flex' was released on DESKPOP, "a new label for fun and experimental music," and arrived with a remix of the track by label curator FLOOR BABA.

---

---

☟ TSHORTS Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter • Ello

---

---

DOT ROTTEN – CHECK ME OUT

I do believe this is the first time I've written about Dot Rotten. He's a grime artist who's been floating around for a while now, probably most notably getting nominated for BBC's Sound of 2012 list. If you don't know (i.e. you've never lived in the UK) his name is a pun of a character from a London-based soap opera called EastEnders – you must've heard of it – whose name is Dot Cotton. She's about 500 years old and smokes a lot.

Anyway, my ears were on like, red alert or whatever when I heard this new-ish song from Dot Rotten. It was new when I first heard it, around a month ago, on Charlie Sloth's Saturday night show on BBC Radio 1/1Xtra. It's called 'Check Me Out' and it's real cool. But the one I heard on the radio also featured fellow grime MC JME and now I can not find it anywhere. Please, if you can find it, or if you know where to find it and you see this message washed up on the shores of the internet in months or years to come, please direct me to the Dot Rotten x JME version. Thank you.

'Check Me Out' is dark and narcotic, a lazy haze conjured by Canadian producer Sevn Thomas. Bubbles of growling synth switch in the grime style between a repeated few notes, a muffled crunch that accompanies fittingly directionless bleeps which echo into the darkness. Fragmented percussion features lone snares for the verses before rattling hi-hats summon booming columns of sub-bass for a decidedly sordid beat that fits the subject matter.

Over the track, Dot Rotten assumes the role of an overprivileged member of the upper class, affecting a posh / aristocratic accent with a genius bit of nonchalant smugness thrown in for good measure. Essentially he paints a picture – and perhaps quite rightly – of the debauched and arrogant upper middle class (yeah we love classes in the UK). The words themselves are brilliant, I want to write them all down. He talks about drinking chamomile, scones with strawberry jam, eating caviar whilst the lower classes are in Malia. Little things, too, like posh, fake laughter fluttering in the background alongside non-posh words like "swag" as the narrator says how the-shit he is – I love it!

A couple of choice lines: "Fuck that business meeting / I shall not be showing up / Father says I'm childish / Fuck him, I'm not growing up" and and also "Red wine from '08 / Been here for a century / Strolled into my mansion / And there's four girls with four friends for me," not only demonstrating great imagery but also punchy and effective rhymes, too.

---

• It's taken from Dot Rotten's Remember Me EP (you can download it for freeeeee), also featuring production on one track by Stwo, which is just extra cool.

---

---

☟ Dot Rotten Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter • Wikipedia

---

---

JANETTE KING – DUSK

For a song called 'Dusk' to sound like actual dusk is, well, you'd kinda expect that to be the case. But somehow not as accurately as Janette King has done it. The track perfectly captures the stuttering fade-out of evening, the slow grudging descent into night as the air fills with twilit sounds, part unnervingly evocative of our mortality, part beautiful.

This is a grand piece of ambience crossed with off-kilter hip-hop style beats, following a seemingly arrhythmic pattern, with the fizzing punch of its snares and somehow urgently ticking hi-hats, pulverising kicks with that thud leaving poignant trails of dust having been disturbed.

All the while, piano plays in jazz slant, dark-world lounge bar melodies tinkling beside aching synth strings, squelchy bass underpinning this in no small part, with this fantastically stark BIP noise every now and again. What with the truncated synth solo at the end, a resonant, soulful snippet describing the sun hitting the horizon, throwing its last oranges and pinks across a serene and sea.

Janette King herself is a musicmaker from Vancouver, with an as-yet-unnamed EP apparently on its way. With stuff this good, it'll be nice to see what she's got in store for us next.

---

---

☟ Janette King Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Instagram • Twitter • Tumblr

---

---