SAVNKO — WHYUFALLIN

Italian producer savnko delivers a high-octane treat with 'whyufallin', a breakcore number that mixes the symphonic heights of Balearic-leaning dance music with the murk and crunch of various lofi-infused '-core' offshoots. The beat scampers and soars alternately, intricate yet destructed, providing the jet fuel that underpins the rising synths and glimmering syncopated chord stabs, the pitched vocals like rare polygonal birdsong. And, despite the variegated textures and vitality of the track, there's conscious attention to a minimal soundscape here.

Ultimately, and if the title is anything to go by, in this track the Milan-based producer illustrates troubled flight and hindered movement — the desire to ascend or push forward while weighed down by futility, fear, anything that anchors us. 'Why are you falling? What is holding you back?' Or to put it another way: it's the last lap on Rainbow Road and you're in 11th but still you push on to the finish.

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• 🔔 'whyufallin' by savnko is taken from his BIGTHINGS EP, which you can listen to via spotify or apple music if you like.
• 🔔 You also might like to check out savnko's previous work, such as his notgood@sports EP for Milan label 51beats, where he exhibits a decidedly more analogue approach and aesthetic.

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☟ savnko Internet Presence ☟
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OLIVIA BELLI — VALADIER

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⌾ LISTEN TO VALADIER BY OLIVIA BELLI ⌾

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Speaking about her new track 'Valadier', composer and pianist Olivia Belli states that she was "inspired by the homonymous temple in Genga: a place of pilgrimage where many seek silence, introspection and spiritual growth." That's the town Genga, in Marche, Italy, not the Pokemon Gengar. That said, it seems there's a spiritual, ghost-adjacent energy to Genga: "It is the place where I go to train myself to see what is real but invisible," Belli adds.

Hailing from Mantova, aka Mantua, home of ancient Roman poet Virgil (if you know, you know, right?), Belli has moved from the ambient intricacies of her earlier releases (2018's Other Lines EP, for example). The Belli of today looks back, waving, atop her most recent masterful work. It arrives accompanied by a video of Belli herself wandering the Sanctuary of Santa Maria Infra Saxa, hidden in a karst cave system since 1029 (the octagonal temple, crafted from travertine, was finished in 1827).

In 'Valadier' her piano brims with kinetic potential, as if the galloping flurry of notes could send it to the skies at any moment. Rhythm and melody intertwine throuhgout, the one being the other and vice versa, allowing for this sense of movement in the mind, a wondering at history and primordial rocks and the centuries of people who have come before. Warm yet razor sharp, with strings providing additional colour and texture, 'Valadier' is a dynamic and powerful illustration of introspection.

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• 🔔 'Valadier' is the first single taken from Olivia Belli's forthcoming album, Intermundia, scheduled for release 23rd February, 2024, via XXIM Records.
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☟ Olivia Belli Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 DANIELE SCIOLLA — SCHERZO

⌾ LISTEN TO DANIELE SCIOLLA, SCHERZO ⌾

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Drama lies at the heart of 'Scherzo' by Italian composer and Mathematics major, Daniele Sciolla. Like the descent of a spirit, a god, your future self, before being dragged away by the infinite pull of a force beyond its control, 'Scherzo' is a tally of de-regulated sounds speeding and elastic, looping but linear and finite. Virtuosic in their temporal imperfection, crescendos rising in a merging of moments, the track is 1:42 of experimentation.

"When I listen to a track, I like to search for rules describing some aspects of it," Sciolla tells yes/no via email. "And in the same way my composition notes are placed following algorithms, especially rhythmically."

"There's a lot of math involved in Synth Carnival," he continues. "I set the tempo and then notes were gradually added and removed following a specific pattern. So one gets the impression of chaos and slowing down or acceleration, but the BPM is always the same.

"It's similar to what some arpeggiators give off, but writing it by myself I can control more parameters."

Sciolla mentions that he was driving along Lake Geneva, Switzerland, when he first came up with this way of creating music. "In those days, I was recording a large number of synthesisers at the SMEM Museum in Fribourg," he says, and likens the sound of 'Scherzo' to the way one can stumble upon state-of-the-art buildings in the middle of a forest — "unspoiled, wild nature next to high technology."

The is suitably organic: self-made, instead of relying on the convenience of automation. It's a testament to the majesty of nature, as much as to the tone and texture of organic synthesisers, and to the power of mathematics.

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• 🔔 'Scherzo' is taken from Daniele Sciolla's Synthesizer Carnival EP, which you can listen to over on his SoundCloud.
• 🔔 SMEM is the Swiss Museum & Centre for Electronic Music Instruments, in Fribourg, Switzerland.

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☟ Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 OLIVIA BELLI — IN THESE SILENCES YOU SEE

The piano comes alive in Italian pianist and composer Olivia Belli’s shuffling ambient piece, ‘In These Silences You See’. The pace and pattern of this music is meandering, organic and evershifting, with harmonious tracts like wide peaceful stretches of river juxtaposed with atonal divergences, rivulets that jar jaggedly in the soft vessel of this track. Belli charts this course to summon an atmosphere of blankness, of window-watching, the glacial pace of grey skies, ending with an expression of clarity, as if a decision has been reached after mindful musing that swirled almost drone-like between steadiness and spontaneity, the coda steadfast and melancholy: but legible.

All along it is not just what Olivia Belli is playing in this slice of contemporary classical, but the tone of it, the recording, the fragments of ambience that fuzz and resonate together in organic overdrive, the sounds of the physical body of the piano itself, the dust and wooden flavours imbued in this track, even the gentle wheezing percussion of the hammer striking the strings themselves, sometimes a chime, but mostly a dull clatter, as if a droplet of rain were falling with each key pressed; even down to the creak of the pedals, ‘In These Silences You See’ is more than its musicality—it is wholly the bristlingly detailed environment in which it exists, and to which it contributes.

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• 🔔 This lovely thoughtful piece of piano music is taken from Olivia Belli’s Other Lines EP, a collection of four piano pieces from the composer. You can listen to and purchase it on Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ Olivia Belli Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 EMMECOSTA — HEAVY HEART

Slowly slowly this track rolls along, the eternal trundle of curling clouds across a greyscale landscape, the horizontal energy of chillwave simplicity sweeping into the foundation of this track: the dom-dom glooping bass of the kicks and the thin abrasion of the snare tinged with lo-fi, the soft constancy of the synth constant like a tide in the sidechain of it all. 'Heavy Heart' unfolds like a flower turning and opening to the day's first flood of light, the vocals of Gothenburg-based Italian trio Emmecosta adding silken texture to the track, the languorous luxury of it heightened. Here we are laid-back and loafing, bleary and wandering.

And around 2:40 the brief disappearance of the beat, relegated to its most bassy parts, highlights another element that bejewels the track; these high-pitched pings, synth or effected guitar it may be, how they cry into the air, splashing watercolours, the stifling distortion of it, the degradation of the pure sound conjuring this feel of something pushed to its limit—and the energy in this scathing absent melodies is something that aches and pines and yearns, careering into a blanket of dazzling stars. The electronic tricks of 'Heavy Heart', the sometimes staccato cuttings through the track, that ebb-flow sidechain, both betray and bolster how human it is, how organic, how like a melancholy nostalgic longing howl into the ether it is.

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• 🔔 'Heavy Heart' is taken from the August-released EP from the band, Velour, which was brought into the world courtesy of Stockholm label ICEA. You can listen to and download it from Bandcamp.

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☟ Emmecosta Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 ERSTAV — INK & GLUE [初演 • PREMIERE]

Alien flavours dominate the backdrop to this track, a swirling of lost-in-space radio signals that chirp and click and pulse like inhuman vocal chords expressing an inhuman language, fluttering with abrasive tiny ping-pong balls clattering energy, a rapid helicopter chop of grinding synthetics – like the atmospherics of space disaster-themed videogame music – and at the beginning a low voice introduces the track with unintelligible guttural digitised sounds. 'Ink & Glue' by Italian duo Erstav shows off the respective interests of the musicmakers behind the name: Marco's "careful balance between minimalism and musicality" mixed with Alessandro's "industrial and punk background," influenced by "the d.i.y. ethos of punk and power-electronics." The sound-design-esque immersive ambience of that constant extragalactic sound in the track certainly owes itself to the brooding nature of these two producers' tastes.

But if it is that fractional communication, or the buzzing of pipes and machinery and interstellar background chatter, which provides the atmosphere, it is in the beats of this track where we find immediacy. The here-and-now of 'Ink & Glue' is in its hard percussive punctuation throughout, in the broken beat nature of the hits that tumble in swinging, holding onto the dark air that comes before and piledriving that which stumbles afterward, a rabble of overdriven kicks and burnished metallic hi-hats sheafing and shuffling throughout with satisfying syncopation, switching after 0:53 with more rapidity rolling and raining down, the industrial influences clear, the hard spartan essence of these pugilistic drums reflecting the large mechanical megaliths that float through the galaxy in a distant future of unidentified radiowaves and deepspace mystery.

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• 🔔 You can download 'Ink & Glue' above. It is taken from Erstav's White Windmill EP, which can also be downloaded for free via the duo's SoundCloud.
• 🔔 Their debut album Cold Europe is available to purchase on Bandcamp courtesy of San Francisco label Muti Music.

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☟ Erstav Internet Presence ☟
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WRYCROFT – WHERE I AM

Here is a really nice example of concrete music or musique concrete if you prefer it en français. It arrives to our ears from a Surrey, UK / Rome, Italy-based musicmaker called Max Bonar-Law, under the moniker Wrycroft.

If you don't know, because you don't have to know (it is not a sin), concrete music is the art of creating music wholly out of sound samples. Kind of like concrete poetry but a lot closer to found poetry, in which words are "found" in their natural environments and isolated into a poem form. If you google it, like I did, you'll see that it was first developed in 1948 by French composer Pierre Schaeffer.

Wrycroft's offering is called 'Where I Am' and described by its maker on SoundCloud thusly: "i made this piece out of audio samples i mainly collected with my phone. no effects were used in the making of this piece." On Bandcamp it is described similarly: "a piece i made out of recordings i collected over the years. no effects/vsts/plug-ins/bla bla/silly stuffs were used to make this."

Alternating between samples on the high and low register for a percussive, beat-like effect, the track judders onwards through chiptune-sounding fuzzy bleeps and stuttering slices of guitar chords, punctuated with a string of pulsing kicks and the slow tick of a hi-hat-sort-of-sound. The found sound/concrete music aesthetic is topped off with lo-fi samples of somebody speaking and, from what I can hear, the sound of a road or a train station with distant vehicles rattling on a backdrop of static, grey noise.

I don't know how much work it takes to go through these various samples and figure out not only what parts to use, but where to put them and how to progress the song – it feels like Wrycroft went through a pretty long process to get to this finished result. But fun, too – fun to create a musical collage.

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If you'd like to support this producer, please head on over to Bandcamp and download 'Where I Am' on a name-your-price basis. It is also a free download.

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☟ Wrycroft Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

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Y/N GUEST MIX 015 :: JOLLY MARE

I saw a person on Twitter like last week say something like, "There are too many mixes therefore they are obsolete" – when questioned they cited "inflation" but I think they meant "saturation" maybe. Anyway, it's a ridiculous statement: replace "mixes" with any other thing of which there might too many or too much – food, videogames, paintings – and you can see how. I just thought that would be a nice thing to say cause, like, here's another mix. But I'd really hate to be the one to push you over the edge, so if you think you've heard one mix too many, then go take a cold shower, talk it through with a loved one.

This guest mix is from Fabrizio Faberismi, aka Jolly Mare: an Italian DJ, producer, and a participant in the Red Bull Music Academy 2013. I've also read that he has a PhD in Vibration Dynamics, something that led me to stare at gifs of wobbling catilevered L-beams on the wiki page for 'Vibration'; this might be why in an email he sent to me he described himself as "Something in between a gone-bad scientist and a musician." He also loves old music, and if this mix is anything to go by it's obscure old music in particular that is his penchant.

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I got good taste in music

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Self-confessedly inspired by a "groove, any kind of" when it comes to his own music, it also seems to lead his choices for this wondrous guest mix, itself a lil' under half-an-hour of groovesome entities. Mostly taken from the 1980s, and most you've probably never heard OF let alone actually heard, it runs from the sultry 'Marinero' by Spanish singer Lucía who also provided the Spanish entry, 'Él', for the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest, held in the UK at Harrogate (really weird choice), to the synth-disco of 'Histoire D'un Soir' by Bibi Flash, aka Brigitte Gasté, a French singer active in the '80s. The song really really sounds like Blondie's 'Rapture' – mainly in the rap-singing, the bassline (almost note-for-note), etc.

"There is some freakness in every one of them," says Jolly Mare of the tracks in the mix – and it's true: from the first vital, note-hopping bassline of 'Use My Body' by the unknown Mavis John, through the stretched out, night-anticipating 'Sunset' (L33 and Sven Atterton) and the effortlessly cool remix by Luke Million of The Swiss's summery 'In The City', to the Italo disco of Big Ben Tribe's 'Tarzan Loves The Summer Nights' and the indefatigable soulfunk of 'Better By The Minute' by unlocatable group Glass Pyramid, it's an amalgamation of genres and styles that basically utilise "freakness" as their foundations, namely funk, disco (regular & Italo), soul, boogie, R&B.

What does it demonstrate? "That I got good taste in music," replies Jolly Mare. I mean, well, yeah, these are good songs. And for those of you who are looking for some obscure tracks to boogie the fuck on down to, chill to, do your taxes to, stir fry some noodles to, fix that thing in your car to, clean your living quarters to, whatever to, then don't worry cause this crate-digging mix has done it for you.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. Mavis John - Use My Body (1980)
2. L33 & Sven Atterton - Sunset (2013)
3. Lucía - Marinero (1986)
4. The Swiss - In The City (Luke Million Remix) (2014)
5. Desi - I Want To Be With You (1984)
6. Gladys Knight & The Pips - Save the Overtime (For Me) (1983)
7. Big Ben Tribe - Tarzan Loves The Summer Nights (1984)
8. Bibi Flash - Histoire D'un Soir (1983)
9. The McCrarys - Love On A Summer Night (1982)
10. Glass Pyramid - Better By The Minute (1984)

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☟ Jolly Mare Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • YouTube • Mixcloud

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EARTHQUAKE ISLAND – 9 TALES ABOUT GALASTROPHY (REMIXES)

Last summer, in July to be precise, I wrote about an album called The Case of Galastrophy by an Italian guy who lives in Tokyo, Emiliano Ruggiero, aka Earthquake Island (so-named cause of that natural phenomenon of new islands being made from mud and stuff by undersea earthquakes, like the one off the coast of Pakistan last year). It was a lovely album, effusing intense chillment that was quite easy to get lost in.

Now well over half-a-year later, a set of remixes appear, reworking tracks from the original into new sonic offerings. Dubbed 9 Tales About Galastrophy, there are 8 remixes by 8 different artists, with one wholly new track from Earthquake Island himself. My favourite track from the original album, 'Fantastic', has been given a remix by another wonderful artist, Sun Glitters, placing it in more expansively brooding surroundings than before, retaining and altering the lone vocal sample – "…Fantastic…" – whilst a gravelly cascade of percussion blankets the track. Also making an appearance is Japanese beatmaker canooooopy, whose experimental hip hop style skiffles in sumptuous offbeats, providing consistent foundations to the ever-twisted noises from the original. Italian duo LIES provide their typical electro style in juddering piercing glistenings of synth in their remix of 'My Moon, My Moon', the original of which is a super-slow, fresh affair – now it pulses with up-tempo rhythm.

In a different remix, 'My Moon, My Moon' becomes a punchy, sample-invaded piece of alternative R&B in the hands of Godblesscomputers, a Bologna-based also known as Lorenzo Nada. This one is a moody remix that focuses on percussion, the synth sounds being rather understated, like a fog through which the beat marches rhythmically through. The atmospheric 'Flying Cat 2' gets a very dark reworking by Italian producer Machweo, inserting police-siren-esque noises and clanging pulses of menacing gloopy synth.

Super expansive rich synth chords in sombre progression dominate avant-garde Italian musicmaker Grovekingsley's remix of 'The Lake And The Mist', forested with bustling percussion, carried in a cradle of bass. My favourite is from Brussels-based Haring, cutting 'Sunrise On' into bite-sized pieces, chopping them together in stuttering succession, pausing for cold reverbing ambience, bass rising up into the final sample-heaven of the track soaring with whooshes of synth. Or maybe my favourite is actually Go Dugong's remix of 'Super Strawberry' – an exceedingly bassy number in its original form, rollicking with raw-sounding drums, has now become a weirdly swaying ball of energy; telephones ring, cheeky synth bleeps boil, samples of a girl laughing appear. It's full of theatrical intent, exciting as it is showy, full of electro attitude.

Lastly we have Earthquake Island's new track, 'So Bright'; founded on the skewed rhythm of an unusual offbeat, crowded with ripping snares and multi-claps tick-tocked with neat hi-hats, it features convulsing waves of bass around which heartfelt merry-go-rounds of sampled sound and voices whirl in funfair peeling-paint nostalgia above; the height of summer; running around having fun; reclining in the heartbeat pulse of the sun. This collection of artists have, with like-minded intention, remixed the songs of Earthquake Island not overtly, not dramatically, but in some cases just enough to provide a dream version of the track in question – an alternate reality version, a Dark World rendition. As such, despite not being dramatic or wildly different, 9 Tales About Galastrophy warrants a listen, its chilled-out, twisted and often hip-hop-inspired vibe a gorgeous journey nonetheless.

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EN2AK WOODWORK MISFITS (JOLLY MARE REMIX)

It's Jolly Mare! Hooray! I probably could've written about this guy a hundred times between now and the time that I last wrote about him, but I haven't, so— anyway, here he is again with a remix of Wrocław-based Polish musicmaker En2ak's bristling track 'Woodwork Misfits'.

Before I go any further, some of you may be thinking, "who the literal hell is Jolly Mare?" – well, that's kind of easy to answer. From Italy, his real name is Fabrizio Faberismi, and I've written about a couple of his songs before – namely 'Nobody Cares', a vaporwavey number, and 'Castlemare', sounding like the hardest videogame boss fight ever; he was also a participant in the Red Bull Music Academy. So too was En2ak – and that is how the two met. And so Jolly Mare ended up as one of the artists featured on 3 Remixed – a set of remixes of the songs from En2ak's 3, set for release on Christmas day (25th December lol) of all days, via Warsaw-based label U Know Me Records.

But what about the actual remix? En2ak's original – from his third album, simply titled 3 – is a bustling tin-pan assortment of percussion mixed with bubbling bass and phasing synths polka-dotted with tuned vocal samples, turning in its second half into a more menacing rumbler of a track, all with a distinct ghetto house feel to it.

Jolly Mare's version is nothing short of brilliant. Taking on the mind-bending dub sounds of reggae, this remix is a warm and synth-laden foray into a stress-melting atmosphere; bass bulges lazily alongside the raw drums and the glitchy lead synth sounds. Occasional samples from the original cut through the chilled blanket of noises in thin reverbing stabs. By the end of the track, you're so far engrossed in its bliss that it's almost as if you could be on holiday – soaking up the sun and feeling a single beat of sweat drip from your forehead. It also positively aches with an 80s sensuality, perhaps in the raw, almost primordial synth sounds that Jolly Mare chose to use in the track.

His remix, though different to original (which ain't a bad thing yo), is a sultry, head-bopping number that whisks us away from the cold gusts of wind that winter is currently throwing our way – at least in the UK anyway – and takes us to a fantasy island, where the beach is endless, and all the amenities you could ever desire are sitting right behind you, nestled under rows tall palm trees. It's the soundtrack to a sexy dub holiday, that's what.

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LIFE & LIMB FOOL'S NEST (LIES "PROMISES" REMIX) [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Hello. Remixes, not always but often, are really fun. It's not just a re-tweaking of a finished song, it's a whole new song, a whole new person's creative vision based on the original elements launched into the world by the original creator of said elements. It goes to show not only how interesting it is to have somebody else's take on things every once in a while, but also that "art" - yeah that includes music - can never be finished. Even Marcel Duchamp "remixed" the Mona Lisa by drawing a moustache on the original and calling it L.H.O.O.Q (which is a pun cause in French, the reading sounds like elle a chaud au cul). As long as remixers are out there in the world, art of any kind can never be considered utterly finished. In anything's contemporary, original format, however, it is difficult to see a new beginning - that is, unless you are the kind of person who can remix things.

But I'm talkin' too much! About stuff! Stuff!

So let's talk about this song. It is, as you may have guessed by now, a remix. And it is a very nice example of a kind of completely different take on the original. In this instance, the track - 'Fool's Nest' - is originally by a one-half-Italian, one-half-New-Yorker duo called Life & Limb. It's a nice chunky slice of synthpop that is buzzing with saw-waves and sentimental overtones.

Enter LIES. This Italian duo - Oscar Cini and Piero... something - (whom I've written about a couple of times before) have essentially softened the original and turned into something more dreamy, more intangible in a way, than the structured original. They've sped up the pulsing lead synths of the original, teasing with the hint of tumbling hi-hats in the background as the vocals come in ghostishly looped on one syllable with forever-eternal glassy synth chords sweeping the whole song with their ambience.

It's the kind of thing that makes you drift off a little; LIES' style of embedding an addictive, cyclical beat in amongst a bristling thicket of noise has that kind of effect on a person. Thin snares pummel the offbeat with minimal hi-hats riding high above a constant click and the steady, sometime-rolling thump of the kick. A wonderful take on a song which is now similar to this one in title, and a bit in sound, only: even the atmosphere changed from sentimental and slightly sad to one of feelingless dreaminess. Hooray for the (good) remixers of the world!

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LIES FT JUNO// ORIENTE [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Last time I wrote about Italian duo LIES and their song 'Escape I/S/M' it was thanks to them, or one of them at least, sending me a message. Now I'm writing about them again and it's down to the same fact of their sending a message. It's difficult to keep tabs on everything at once so to have lovely music delivered right to you is very nice indeed. So, thank you!

This time around, however, they have teamed up with fellow Italian producer JUNO// to create a very nice song indeed: 'Oriente'. I've gotta admit I was quite surprised at the result. It's a pretty intense sounding song, with a very solid beat and some very solid bass, all tied together with some wonderful crackling synth arpeggios. It's a veritable electro playground, having all the fun of retro music crossed with the nice production methods of the modern day. You'll find it difficult not to bop your head, wiggle your toes, tap your fingers, raise your eyebrows or whatever it is you happen to do when you find rhythmic solace in music.

Those bass synths are something else, aren't they? Really get under your skin and into your body. Very loud. Those along with that slo-house beat give it an epic feel - especially with the occasional battering of tom drums. There's a dose of the tropical in there, too, with some beach-friendly tubular bell-type things, heavily accented with reverb and other things, making them seem a little unearthly. Screaming synth streams over the top in some places, heavily modulated and sounding like a waterbeam (a Pokémon move for those who don't know) or something similar. Javelins of neon electricity.

Add to this a laid-back, 1990s-songstress-type vocal sample and you have a pretty interesting sound. The dynamic breaks are really nice too - the one at 2:49 for example that only lasts for seconds is perfect; it's just a small break from the intense rumblings of the song, but it's enough to give those same rumblings some massive "oomph" when they come back in. Nice sounds all nicely composed. In fact it actually reminds me of something... kind of a slowed down version of 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)' by Eurythmics. Get what I mean? Similar synth. Anyway.

You can download this song for free. FREE. Download it and put it on your iPod/Phone or whatever other device you happen to own for listening to music on-the-go and just wait till it pops up. Imagine it would be especially cool if you listened to this on a crowded rush-hour tube train on the way home. I don't usually give recommendations like this so I don't think I'll make it a regular thing.

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Like LIES on Facebook
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NEEVA EVEN IF... EP

Hello. Today I had my first ever red "Forelle" pear. It was very sweet but not as juicy as regular pears. Perhaps it wasn't ripe enough. In any case, it was tasty.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'd like to introduce this very nice Italian producer called Neeva. With the IRL (In Real Life - of course, how could you not know that? but don't fret if you didn't, there's a first time for everything) name of Federico Orrù, he makes really nice electronic music. On his most recent release, the Even If... EP, he has collaborated with quite a few people both in terms of "featuring" artists and remix artists - it's nice to see because often you think of electronic musicians as quite solitary people.

I mean, they make music "on their own" don't they? So it's just heartwarming, in a weird way perhaps, to know that they are building strong communities. Neeva himself is quite active in his local community, collaborating with artists at galleries, for instance. Often this kind of thing has to do with "label-mates", as I've heard them called; in this case it would have been Russian label Ritmo Sportivo, but I don't know if any of those featuring are actually on/have anything to do with the label. Possibly/probably/most likely not (except Cream Child). Which makes my point kinda moot. Whatever. I could be wrong though. Nice to see collaborations, is what I mean.

And it can quite clearly influence the resulting sound of a song. For starters we have 'One Day' featuring Tokyo duo N-Qia. I wrote about this for Dummy magazine because I think it was my favourite from the EP. It's the most melodic track on the EP, with ghostly vocals from Nozomi and a frantic pots-and-pans beat, pulsing with orchestral synth. The remix of this one by Sun Glitters keeps the general sound but adds saw-wave bass and extra cloudy synth, turning it into a hazy dream of the original.

The rest of the collaborators keep things decidedly dark. Italian producer Grovekingsley provides a spooky-yet-urban spin on 'What', a nocturnal hip-hop beat underpinning solemn, murkily reverberating synths. Likewise, Mario Mereu helps provide the dark atmosphere on 'Tail' - an unearthly synth rises and falls in conjunction with low-end vocal samples. But around 1:30 in this track, something positive, a ray of warm, pulsating sunshine rains upon the gloom, joined by scraping glitched-out electric synths. But this darkness can be quite energetic, shown in Russian producer Cream Child's remix of 'What'. It's a towering, house-beat-led foray into the dark, industrial side of dark music. Like looking into the edge of a dark forest without actually getting lost in it. Bleeps twist and turn in the bleak water-moving-around-in-old-pipes sound. Pretty intense.

The only song that Neeva "does" by himself, 'Waiting For', is an ambient, bass-ear-massage that washes over you in tones of pretty chilled-out stuff. Gradually leads to a more distorted sound, more beset with percussion. Sounds like a deserted beach in winter. Scintillating synths rain down, clopping percussion zooms in at the end - a party is beginning - is that what we were waiting for? Who knows. It's nice anyway.

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JOLLY MARE NOBODY CARES

Here is some music all the way from Italy. It's by a person - DJ/producer - who goes by the name of Jolly Mare ("mare" is sea in Italian, so I am guessing that's what it's all about) but who is actually called Fabrizio Faberismi. They were a participant in the Red Bull Music Academy 2013 and played, from what I can gather, a more than acceptable opening set for duo Masters at Work at Le Bain, New York.

Apparently people left there as fans of this guy, and I'm sure I would have too. However, for all the fledgling hermits out there, music is all online, baby. So let's create some more fans today by spreading these wonderful sounds around, eh? This particular number is one of the latest from Jolly Mare and is called 'Nobody Cares'.

I thought I was just going to be posting the audio for this but I actually found the video quite easily, so I just went for it, I bloody went for it. It's below. And it fits in perfectly with the retro vibes of the song, playing scenes from what could be a straight-to-VHS film from the glitzy trashy 80s. Of people frolicking/living in/by the sea.

The funky beat in this tune, with its differing snares, is the foundation to the rest of the funk found within - from the twanging, forever-sunset guitars to the gloriously wibbling lead synths in the first half. Different instruments of varying syntheticness swim in between each other in a medley of fun: in the background, LED-light type synths scuttle around faintly in the background, glittering against the rich backdrop of chilled-out good times.

The true groove here, however, I think comes from the bassline. More synth, it's true, but this song seems to be BUILT on synth - Starship may have built their city on rock and roll, but Jolly Mare builds these structures of dreamy escapism wholly on synth. But yes the bassline - soaked in 1980s aesthetic and grilled on the barbecue of retro-future fantasy, it's not far off getting the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. Just perfect.

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EARTHQUAKE ISLAND THE LAKE AND THE MIST

This is just, well, I really like it. It's really cool when someone actually personally sends you an email with their own music. Even better when the music is actually good and tasty, like a Belgian bun. So when I looked at my emails today (I didn't yesterday, sorry!) and saw in amongst the usual stuff a non-templated email from a guy called Emiliano Ruggiero and checked the sound that he had sent me, well, I was really happy. It's real indie promotion - the guy is doing it himself.

Anyway as you might guess from the name he is Italian, but he lives in Tokyo and makes music under the name Earthquake Island. To add even more countries to the mix, he is signed to the record label FRESH YO! which is split between Italy and Sweden. A nice mix is always fun. Anyway. The song is called 'The lake and the mist' and it is from Earthquake Island's upcoming album The Case of Galastrophy, out 24th June.

If this song is anything to go by, a festival of fresh fizzy beats, then the album should be a very nice listen indeed. The video, of various things being poured on the floor - from marbles to jelly beans - seems to fit the mingling drops of greatness in the song. Check it oot.

Watch those things spill on the floor!

Everything about this electronic experimental number is wonderful: the contrasts between the trebly white noise distorted woodblock percussion and deep 'n' smooth sub bass; the far-off chimes and ambient jungle sounds; drips of flanging modulated synth. It's all melded as one package of lo-fi, atmospherically chill music. The kind of thing that doesn't evoke any particular image but a mood instead. Tranquility. Maybe a bit of bleakness as well but isn't tranquility bleak in its own way sometimes?

This was very nice.

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LIES ESCAPE I/S/M/ [VIDEO]

Music arrives from all corners of the world, and it takes you to as many places as well (depending where in the music industry you fit), but as for the former it's certainly true. Music can come from anywhere. And it can surprise you. Especially if you think "cool" music "only" comes from "America" or "England". Cause that ain't true at all. And I think with the last couple of months' worth of music on this site, I think I've proven that good music can come from anywhere. Yep. Even Italy, as I showed last week with FOR's 'Lemme Burn', which is where Lies come from (the music group, not the exponents of mendacity themselves).

Lies is yet another duo, comprised of Oscar Cini and Piero (no surname?), who are from Irpinia, southern Italy - a lovely sunny place, I imagine, far from the struggling summer of the UK. Mr Cini, specifically, sent me some of their music and I was rather taken aback with their hypnotic track 'Escape I/S/M/'. Long story short: I like the song, and here it is.

You could say that I was swayed by the video, but that ain't true. Whilst it provides a perfectly mesmerising visual perspective of the song, it is not integral to its existence. No video is. I like this song's steady beat, sounding like a heart working in chill-mode, with far-off snare claps sounding like slaps of the sea against rock with all their washing reverb. Equally steady is the slow and simple bassline running under everything like a reliable cheesecake base.

Gradually the beat becomes more complex, more components added in, clicks, dinks, hi-hats, and as this happens the song is gradually suffused with ambient synth sounds - alongside the founding two note soft synth begins to fly a more soaring fizz. And the samples put the icing on this cake, especially considering the mesmerising side of things; the endless repetition of these wordless vocals spin round and round your head. Yet it's not intense, it's totally chill.

Anyways, this song comes from Lies' latest album Escaping Colours, out on StrikeBack. Recordings.

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FOR LEMME BURN [VIDEO]

This group has the ambiguous or even agnostically indecisive name of Flowers or Razorwire - but we can shorten this, and it seems officially so, to FOR. I will call them the latter. Three characters is easier than twenty for sure.

Good. Now that we've got that out of the way, I can start properly. Well, FOR is a duo (as you can see from the picture - although their bio on their label's site states that it's just one guy) from Trani, Italy, who started making music in 2009. Fast-forward to now and they have a nicely polished sound that combines a few different elements to come up with bouncy, sunny pop with a groovesome groove that just makes you want to shuffle dance on a cloud.

What we have is this bassline that is obviously so noticeable that I have to write about it first and foremost. Yes indeed. It's slap-bass style with a bit of wah-wah thrown into the mix for a decidedly funky groove, one that slides around the notes with glistening brilliance. On top of this there's a constant guitar stab straight outta some 70s funk, a lovely decoration to an already superb foundation. With piano chords and an 80s-style hollow synth zooming around, too, the mix cradles within it a heart that is decidedly in the summers of the past.

Here is the video. Lots of bubblegum bubbles: retro, just like the song.

To put the icing on the cake, the yelp-singing vocals provide a distinct pop hook - though turned on its head with the ripe use of lo-fi aesthetic in its presentation. Can't understand too many of the words but that's not a problem - the sound and pattern of still be stuck in my head. I think that having a nice song stuck in your head is a bit like sucking on a lemon drop or some other boiled sweet that can't be crunched but enjoyed slowly: lingeringly tasty.

This was released on independent Italian record label Snowy Peach.

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