🐣 CLAWS AI — 777

⌾ LISTEN TO 777 BY CLAWS AI ⌾

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Fully formed like a pile of earth you'd pat down as a kid till it was no longer dirt but a solid construct, '777' is all about its earthy substrates. Musicmaker CLAWS AI ensures that it not only goes full throttle, but that the track has solid foundations. So naturally the bass drum thumps and the punchy, punky bass guitar shoots through it like an electric current, screeching distortion leaving scorch marks over everything. It's a cross between heavy industry and discovering you've got superpowers, but there's more to '777' than inspiring noise.

"I sat down to write a simple song about a girl," CLAWS AI tells us over email. But it became more than that. "I am convinced the past few weeks of my life were steered by divine intervention. You know the feeling when you meet someone you know could change your life? Maybe fate had me and her intertwined and I got what I always wanted. You have to consider that it might be no coincidence."

This – and the history of making "mindless rock songs," as he describes it – gives CLAWS AI the perfect grounding to create something that scores top marks in somersaulting its way into your psyche. A stun grenade of sound, it's not only the power of the production in this track that immobilises you: it's the questioning lyrics that inject the intrigue, and the humanity in the explosive desperate vocals, that truly gives this track the nitro it possesses.

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• 🔔 Head on over to CLAWS AI's SoundCloud for more music.

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🐣 PORTALS — WAKELAST

This song was pitched very briefly with the captivating subtitle ‘Elvis trying to use Windows 98.’ Clickbait, you may think. But upon listening, upon hear the guttural abrasive vocals of PORTALS curling round each pointed word like a cyberpunk savant fortune-teller and the gabbering liquid gooey instrumental, this description seems quite spot-on - at least superficially.

“Looking back,” Alejandro Cañellas, the human behind PORTALS, kindly explains, “it seems the track focuses on the law of correspondence. Every line is a reference to either looking at myself from within myself or from without.”

Accordingly the lyrics of ‘WAKELAST’ - taken from a recent double-single Voult//Wakelast (tagged ‘win98core’ on SoundCloud) - are cryptic and self-examining. The refraining nature of it gives a mantra quality to how it is delivered, making it feel like a frenzied, searching howl into the vaulting void: “eyes look into the next life / myself always outside / eyes look into the next life / I stand behind my eyes.” Not to mention how it is viscerally scrawled into the air by the vicious vocals, falling thunderboltish on the bed of garbled plasma noise - a sample taken from 'jacket funk' by pilotredsun track. ‘WAKELAST’ is like a brutal reflection, self-reflexive poetry in the form of a fist to one’s own face—aggressive existentialism.

“It's like a hall of mirrors,” Cañellas tells us. “I think people should spend more time in mirror halls cause no matter where they look they're forced to stare at themselves and at their own vampire elementals and smoke demons.”

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• 🔔 Listen to the Voult//Wakelast double single over on PORTALS' SoundCloud.
• 🔔 There is also a suitably abrasive and glitched-out music video for the other track 'VOULT' to illustrate the garbled existentialist aggression of the track. This can be viewed on YouTube.

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☟ PORTALS Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 KAMAL — FEEL IT

Minimalism lies at the ambivalent heart of this dancefloor-flavoured number, a track so heavy in directional atmosphere that even in its minimalism there is serious gravity. The vocal samples in this track don’t have to be full-frontal, catchy things that other dance tracks may rely upon. Here they hold so much charged energy that each echoing vocal is like a crack of electricity on the robust, uncompromising beat.

“The creation of this track started with a drum loop,” the track’s creator, the Chicago-based Kamal, told us. “I wanted something that reminded me of when I was at the Chicago dance parties back in the 90's. This track was created with that party feel in mind.”

And as such ‘Feel It’ bumps away, syncopated plasma synth soft and cyclical conducting proceedings with wanton retro-futurism, the splashy strobes and laser shows in a the dark of a club, diagonal shots of dancers mid-move, drinks and sweat, sleek lines. That’s what this song is: an entire groovesome universe, something you might dance to on a space colony one day, like a throwback gem that turns everything wild.

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• 🔔 This track appears on Kamal's The Prerequisite EP, which you can listen to on SoundCloud.

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🐣 MARIUS — EASY

This one tumbles and crashes and thuds and explodes with organicity, a track that jostles with maddening energy, a multi-limbed cartwheel, a staircase of descending rhythmic rigid boxing gloves pugilising each step, a combination haymaker of a track—and this is all courtesy, mainly, of the gorgeous drums that essentially define this morsel of music. You hear them at the beginning, they stop, and then gradually here they are again, popping out with dusty vitality, muscly forearm ferocity, the raw hi-hats sheafing and swishing, everything breathing, even the underpinning bass sound is like a windpipe of superhuman exhalation, a robust didgeridoo drone that packs a punch as much as those grass-growing living cliff mental mountain drums.

Named 'Easy', this track by Norwegian producer Marius trundles along with flesh-and-bone breakbeats till its tectonic titanic end, when the cymbals rush out and smash like storms in the swaying doses of the new rhythmic 2-step-flavoured beat, feeling closer to metal with its juddering electronics like palm muted distorted guitars. It's a heavy finale. This in contrast to a soft beginning, those chords that fluttered slowly, a fragile innocence exuding from the thin resounding synth; in contrast to the far-off like a distant memory sample that sounds as though it's been lifted from a museum audio guide. The shattering shuffle of this track, its wicked rhythm, its full-blown tree-sap felled-logs life, is a joy of sound, and made even more sweltering in the wake of the shred of quiet that gleams faintly throughout.

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• 🔔 You can download 'Easy' by Marius, real name Marius Elfstedt, from ToneDen.

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☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 LEELEK — 騰雲幫

This morsel of music by Taipei trackcrafter LeeLek is a buffet of beats, one dish after another flies through the jagged peaks of hard experimental electronica and each one is delicious. We start with stuttering chords over bristling brassy percussion, move into the sway of a beat that towers over and swaggers forward, powerful kicks spun throughout with webs of menacing sharp chords, soar a into section that laserbeams forward with serious electro bassline pulsing below, fall into a patch of arpeggiating melodies where the kicks rapid-fire wild and rhythmic. Segment after segment it's a barrage of continuous excitement.

But as much as it employs unstinting swathes of clear synthetic sound, the modulating synth chords, hefty dollops of acid bass, thin twangs of melody, the stomp-clap shuffling hi-hat beat itself, there is also an organic side to '騰雲幫' (which means, like... soaring cloud society? or something? maybe) where stringed pluckings glitter mutedly and where gongs crash and metallic percussion crackles and sheafs and where golden flutes glide painting pictures of gentler things than the beat alone summons. This is a duelling dance track where it's future vs. traditional, electronic vs. natural, but the clash and contrast weaves together into this monster that's part-lion dance, part-dark rave.

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• 🔔 This track arrives on the compilation WAREHOUSE curated by Taipei creative collective, UnderU (available on Bandcamp). As the title may suggest, it's filled with pieces like this one, fit for a big old abandoned warehouse, to make you "dance and lose control." It is the antithesis to previously released compilation, GREENHOUSE, much more chill, which "brings you to a space where you can enjoy the sunshine while you photosynthesize with flowers and plants."

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☟ LeeLek Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 YOUNG SUMMER — PAUSED PARADE (LINDSAY LOWEND REMIX)

Whilst Lindsay Lowend originally became known for the now seminal Wind Fish EP, his sound has continued to evolve since his VGM and juke infusion impacted on the nebulous infancy of internet music. Different styles effuse into the world from the mind of Tony Mendez, for instance this smart and snappy track from last year, and such is the case with this recent remix of fellow Washington-D.C.-er Young Summer's 'Paused Parade'.

The original track is a slinky number cradled in the arms of jazz with haphazard cymbal licks and flashes of crystalline piano. Lindsay Lowend transforms it into something else entirely, lifting the vocals and brushing them like watercolour strokes over a bold bustling backdrop grounded on thudding kicks that roll along a rumbling wobbly bedrock of bass.

It's a frenzy of juddering stabs of clanking chords and simple synth melody played that rifles along a few notes, ornamented with rasping metallic hi-hats and the occasional sparkle of electronics that sounds like a chime sweep, a subtle nudge away from the song's dark and vacant feel into higher more heavenly climes.

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• 🔔 'Paused Parade' is from Young Summer's 2016 You Would Have Loved It Here EP.
• 🔔 Check out Lindsay Lowend's SoundCloud for a back catalogue of music. Much if not all of it can be downloaded for free. You will also notice that comments are disabled and numbers of likes/plays are hidden for pretty much all his tracks.
• 🔔 In addition, under his real name Tony Mendez, Lindsay Lowend uploads experiments in sound design on his Vimeo, mainly in the realm of videogames.

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☟ Young Summer Internet Presence ☟
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☟ Lindsay Lowend Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Vimeo

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CORY JREAMZ HOWL [VIDEO]

It's been a while since we've heard from Cory Jreamz - for those who don't know, this young guy is an up-and-coming rapper from Houston, Texas. You could call it alternative rap, but it's quite difficult to compare Mr Jreamz to anybody in particular: he is his own creation. Which is a very good thing.

Last time the world heard from him it was at the end of last year with his Vague Current Vivid Fated EP, four songs that run through the fantasies and frustrations of youth. I wrote about it - check it out.

Now he's back with a new song: 'Howl'. Alongside sharing its name with Allen Ginsberg's iconic and "obscene" poem - a frantic and wordy shout to the world - Cory Jreamz has peppered it with lyrics that reference other art-world-related things, such as trying to be "better than Ernest Hemingway" and putting a "black man in the MoMa". It overflows with the desire to create art, dismissing those who dismiss this desire as a pipe dream with a suggestion: "stick it up your anus".

You can even see this intense attitude in the video; Jreamz directs his diatribal one-liners at the camera, keen and fervid.

Aside from CJ's voice itself, whose words strike and reverberate poignantly, the music itself is biting and affective. Experimental at heart, a barely decipherable beat hides itself behind these fluidly rippling sounds, a watery, dreamlike feel to them. An occasional bassline almost gets the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. An eastern-like twanging of a stringed instrument boils in the background, a cycle of sharp sounds to go with the growl of the vocals. It's a heavy atmosphere.

It's a nicely unique sound, one that's genuinely a sonic howl into the air, a short statement of intent to the world - and I'm glad it's coming from someone like Cory Jreamz, a thoughtful and thinking guy standing on the fringes of rap and hip hop looking to external influences for inspiration, expanding his mind. We'll be hearing his next single, 'Swim' on 1st August, after which we'll be looking forward to his album The Lonely Painter, expected later this year.

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SONIC DEADHORSE FT ARISTOPHANES 貍貓 THE ARRESTED

Wow well I have been sort of quietly anticipating something new from Aristophanes (貍貓) and here it has arrived - with knobs on. Yes with knobs on - it's an English expression. With bells on. That's right, in addition, another talent comes screaming out of Taiwan: Sonic Deadhorse. The song is technically his, Aristophanes only featuring on it, but featuring or not, she still totally kills it with her vocal skill.

If you feel like you're missing something, Aristophanes is a young female rapper from Taiwan whose talents I am rather enjoying at the moment. I wrote about her song 'The Peach Blossom' a while back, and I also wrote something about her for Dummy magazine too. She raps in Mandarin Chinese, which you'd think would cause a problem with me not being able to understand Mandarin Chinese and all, but two things: a) she provides the lyrics, so you can translate them and get an idea of what's being said; b) the WAY she raps, the way she expresses herself through her voice, is very evocative. So there you go.

Sonic Deadhorse, on the other hand, is very new to me. One thing's for sure: he packs a punch. In this song at least, 'The Arrested', he crosses genres to deliver an all-out assault on the ears. It's a sound of aggression, frustration, anger, but crafted very well instead of being just a mess of sounds which can happen too often with this kind of style. He calls it "music for lonely urban women and men, the youths captivated by literature and art, dumb rockers, and the crazy ravers" - "post rock whimpers affecting sorrow violent electro." I like those descriptions.

So on we go. I've coloured the SoundCloud player the colour of the song: bright passionate maraschino-cherry-red.

First of all there's a sample from a French film floating over chilled piano tinkling (I'm guessing it's from a Truffaut film). Then without warning, the song cracks its knuckles and gets down, a flurry of wound-up snares battling together in a violent breakbeat style, low synth earthquaking below. The beat changes throughout the song, going from that frenetic style into dubstep by way of a glitchy break, and then for the finale the two patterns almost become mixed together. That last part - wow. It's a hurricane of noise, epic-sounding electro-rock brought to an untamed boiling point with wild synths and thunderous percussion, Aristophanes' voice now distorted and megaphonic, sounding every bit as explosive as the music behind her voice.

It's interesting because I wouldn't have thought that her rap would suit a song like this, but evidently it does. She whips up her own storm, adding to the already-savage tempest that the beat has created, skilfully weaving in and out of insignificance, sadness, righteousness, beginning the song in a small empty room speaking as another person but by the end admitting that she was that person all along, was projecting her emotions onto her, yet is still in that small empty room. Looking through the lyrics, although Google Translate is far from perfect, you get a sense of how able she is to at expressing her emotions - and honesty is key for a rap that's gonna sound any good. And it does sound good. Sounds damn good.

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FOALS LIVE @ WEST END CENTRE ALDERSHOT

I never thought I'd be writing a post that even mentioned Aldershot, let alone one that actually featured this fair town's name in its title - yet, here we are. And there we were, in Aldershot, in a spookily empty pub at an acceptable drinking hour waiting to see Foals live at the West End Centre. Measuring the minutes with alcohol (what else?) the time quickly whizzed by and, before we knew it, we were en route to the gig itself; 'exciting' didn't cover it.

This rather intimate gig - the venue is officially 175 capacity, although Wikipedia cites it as something more like like 200 (what's 25 more people, eh?) - is just one in a series of rather intimate gigs, that started in Sheffield and will end in Tunbridge Wells in two days' time, stopping off at Derby, Stoke, Southampton, Bournemouth and Brighton on the way. It's a kind of teaser tour, according to the band themselves:

Thanks to everyone who bought tickets for our mini tour this winter. like we said elsewhere it is only a tease, and for us to get back "into it", so don't stress if you missed out, or if we weren't coming near to your home... because there will be many, many more shows coming up.

So there you have it. A mini-tour. Getting back "into it". Of course. That's what it was.

But it really didn't sound anything like that. It sounded like a polished gig. An actual gig. After the danceable grooves of support Trophy Wife, the main event came down on the crowd like a veritable ton of bricks. With Yannis Philippakis, Foals' frontman, typically animated and fully imbued with the feeling of the very music he's playing, a kind of perpetual motion machine in which he is driven by the music in order to drive the music and so on - a cyclical relationship where energy swaps hands between the band, usually culminating in Yannis getting very excited and jumping from whatever pinnacle the stage happens to offer into a sea of outstretched hands and, seemingly refreshed by crowdsurfing in pure adoration, onto the stage again - the gig was suitably frenzied.

They hopped between big tunes from their back and current catalogue, fever-pitch anthems and let's-have-a-breather tunes that nevertheless had everyone screaming. Starting with muscle-beach-evocative 'Miami' they moved onto 'Blue Blood' and new tune 'My Number', whose unquenchable funk had the whole crowd displaying whatever fancy footwork they could muster. Other songs included the now old-school, sweaty indie disco anthem that is 'Balloons' and the epic builder-upper 'Spanish Sahara', which cooled, calmed, and subsequently set ablaze the room with the band's sheer mastery of dynamics.

After a premature departure from the stage, the band returned to the wild shouts of the crowd to launch into the heaviest-ever-Foals-song 'Inhaler', blowing everybody away, bursting many an eardrum, and getting the whole crowd bouncing around and headbanging - not something you expect from Foals, but something that gives a teaser to their own diverse tastes in music (for instance, I noticed that the drummer, Jack Bevan, was wearing a HEALTH vest - +1 point). Then came the ending: 'Two Steps Twice'. This is Foals' usual gig-closer and, with its addictive beat and that chanting-in-the-stands breakdown and Yannis's brave walk from the stage into the crowd itself, bringing everyone together in shouting out this wordless anthem - a beautiful moment.

Foals are certainly a band that needs to be seen live - not only does their energy onstage lend itself to a better quality of sound (because they really do play for all their worth when onstage), but it leads to an exciting show: they are animated and totally gripped by the energy of their own music, lost in a trance like a whirling Dirvish, none more than Yannis, who steals the show with his daredevil jumps from the speakers and his fearless forays into the crowd itself. Phew. Get tickets to the tour proper next year if you know what's good for you.

The night ended with a maniac running out of his car with a golf club and all the pent up aggression of a 17-year-old with a frigid girlfriend. Not typical Aldershot behaviour, I'm sure.

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