🔮 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: AUS'S TOP MUSIC OF 2023

Tokyo-based artist aus, aka the human producer, DJ and label owner Yasuhiko Fukuzono, has had a busy 2023. "I've hardly been able to catch up on this year's releases," he says. That's probably got something to do with the fact that, for the first time in a few years, he released a new album under his musicmaking moniker.

Titled Everis, and joint released by UK label Lo Recordings and his own (that's flau, by the way), the album was made "in an empty nest" — a labour of love having lost recordings, data and even equipment. "I made it trying to reconnect with my memories from the videos and recordings left on my phone," he says.

The result is a cinematic, emotive release that feels part nebulous lovesong, part Gold Panda. Everis was followed up later by a remix album, Revise, which features reworkings of Fukuzono's original tracks by the likes of Grantby and Patricia Wolf. Next year will see yet more aus music, with an EP and album in the works, as well as more flau releases. "I have a lot of projects in the pipeline at the moment," Fukuzono says. "I'm not going to stop with just this year."

One of these releases, appearing just a few days ago, is a collaboration between Fukuzono and guitarist and actor Ryosuke Nagaoka. Titled LAYLAND, the collaborative release is a cocktail of crafted experimental beatscapes and improvised guitar odysseys. As an aside, Nagaoka is played the titular role of ancient strategist Zhuge Liang (shoutout to all the Dynasty Warriors fans out there) in a live-action adaptation of the manga Paripi Kōmei.

But on this note of hoping for a nice and busy 2024, not to mention a successful one, we're very happy to introduce aus's top music of 2023, looking back over a year of lounge-laden funk, delicate dream pop, and everything in between. Though admittedly being in a constant state of discovering and buying years-old releases, fresh new music nevertheless made its way to Fukuzono: "These are some of the great songs I found this year." Read on ☟

Maxine Funke – River Said

Yasuhiko Fukuzono: Wonderful singer from NZ.

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'River Said' is the title track from the singer-songwriter's April-released album.

Sven Wunder – Take A Break

YF: Music genius.

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Taken from Stockholm-based composer Sven Wunder's September-released album, Late Again

Virginia Astley – The Singing Places

YF: Surprise of the year.

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Taken from English singer-songwriter Virginia Astley's 2023 26-minute, one-track release The Singing Places.

Charif Megarbane – Pas de Dialogue

YF: Genius.

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This track appears on the 2023 album Marzipan by Lebanese composer, musician and producer Charif Megarbane. It is the first full contemporary release by Berlin-based label Habibi Funk.

John Beltran – As the Sunsets

YF: He made a remix for me, all-time wonderful.

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Beltran remixed 'Landia' on Fukuzono's 2023 Revise, the remix follow-up to his sparkling release at the start of the year, Everis. 'As the Sunsets' appears on Beltran's limited edition 7" Back To Bahia Vol. 3, released by Detroit's very own record shop-meets-wine bar label, MotorCity Wine.

MSD Elementary Music Class – Happiness Runs

YF: Just found from Bandcamp searching, so so lovely.

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Performed by the children of MSD Elementary Music Class for their album What's That Sound? (which also includes a cute rendition of 'Let It Be').

Theo Parrish and Maurissa Rose – Spiral Staircase

YF: Always great!

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Taken from Free Myself, the collaborative album between Theo Parrish and Maurissa Rose

Hazel English – There She Goes

YF: I love the original, so I love this too of course.

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This is a one-off cover by Australian-American artist Hazel English of the 1988 classic 'There She Goes' by English band The La's.

Purelink – 4k Murmurs feat. J

YF: One of the few electronic ones I listened to this year.

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This dreamy track is from Brooklyn-based Purelink's September album Signs.

a.s.o. – Love In The Darkness

YF: Reminds me of Seely.

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'Love In The Darkness' is taken from Berlin duo a.s.o.'s debut self-titled album.

Ana Frango Elétrico – Electric Fish

YF: Gives big energy.

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'Electric Fish' is from the album Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua by Rio de Janeiro's very own Ana Frango Elétrico

Photography by Neon Bunny

• 🔔 Keep up to date with the latest from flau and check their Bandcamp and SoundCloud pages too. There's also Twitter (which is nowadays trying to be known as X). Oh, and Instagram.

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STH — FINISH CROSSING

⌾ LISTEN TO STH, FINISH CROSSING ⌾

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It's on a backdrop of skittering Geiger ambience, the fuzz and dust of the years made sound and launched burrowing into the air, swarms of Big Bang television static, that Russian producer sth (short for "synthetic sequencing") overlays an otherwise calm, relaxing atmosphere.

There is a panicked feel in 'Finish Crossing' — noticeable in the bio-mechanical micropercussion shredding the air like paper rain, and the gurgling güiro-esque calling out like unknown nocturnal insects, the arrhythmic deep bass thuds — but there is laid-back lounge cool that exists here, too.

Electric piano chords spread muted gleaming softness into the proceedings, with later melodies inching in from far-off corners, and the clonk and woozy resonance of a vibraphone providing horizontal jazz. sth summons wordless vocals from the noise, adds a few drops of elastic synth and punches in dynamic punctuation (an abrupt one second of quiet at 3:16) to complete this comprehensive study in atmospheric sample-made music.

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• 🔔 'Finish Crossing' is one of the tracks taken from sth's album 35mm, the musicmaker's latest release for Russian label Radiant Sound. Recorded between 2018 and 2020, it's dedicated to analogue people living in the digital world. You can download it or stream 35mm on the label's Bandcamp if you like.

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🐣 HARUKA SALT — PINCH 'N ITCH FEAT FAT TONY

⌾ LISTEN TO HARUKA SALT, PINCH 'N ITCH FEAT FAT TONY ⌾

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"Been a long week, had enough of this": Nigerian-American rapper Fat Tony's opening lines to Brooklyn producer and DJ Haruka Salt's smooth house odyssey 'Pinch 'N Itch' couldn't be more relatable. Fired along glossy plums of bass and a drum machine collage of beats, the feeling of the instrumental is one of elation, freedom — something Fat Tony didn't miss: "'Bout time that I scratch the itch / 'bout time that I left and I hit the road."

"I was feeling so free to express myself and exploring vintage synths at [indie disco & house record label from Brooklyn] Toucan Sounds’ YouTooCanWoo studio to find unique sounds to go with my mood," Haruka tells yes/no via email. "It was like hunting [for] treasure through all the vintage synths and being on the creative journey with those sounds/treasures I found on the way."

It's hard not pick up on that. Glassy keys craft a cool, lounge atmosphere; spiralling sounds soar upwards in a crescendo of energy; soft horn sounds swirl left and right; high strings cut a nocturnal flavour. There's an excitement to her music that Haruka can attribute, at least in part, to Brookyln itself. "I have never gotten tired of it," she says. "[It] definitely impacts my creative ideas and flows."

For Fat Tony, who counts the Houston scene as a huge influence on his style, his contribution was a chance to let off steam. "I was having a stressful ass week!" he tells yes/no. "The walk over to Toucan Sounds’ studio, was peaceful. It gave me time to cool off and reflect. The lyrics came naturally."

His vocal, laid-back but coiled with elastic energy, provides the perfect companion to Haruka's ever-changing beast of sound. 'Pinch 'N Itch' is a journey, an exploration of sound twinned with emotion expressed on reflection — a snappy, dynamic response to stress as much as to vintage synths.

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• 🔔 'Pinch 'N Itch' is taken from Haruka Salt's HarukaMart EP, released on Toucan Sounds. You can stream or download the whole thing on Bandcamp if you like.

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DJ RELAX BGM — ROUTINE BGM

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Officially titled 家カフェ ギターのおしゃれな音楽 ("Stylish Guitar Music for Home Cafe" in English), 'Routine BGM' is an example of a phenomenon of background music being made to soundtrack certain space.

A spiritual successor to VGM (videogame music) as much as ambient or environmental music, BGM of this ilk has a particularly strong following and usage in Japan; many channels late at night on Japanese TV feature lounge, jazz and bossa nova-flavoured BGM as soundtrack for gentle nature documentaries, or programs that follow tram journeys around the world.

DJ Relax BGM, the creator of 'Routine BGM', has created this in response to the pandemic. Its official title, referencing an at-home cafe, helps those working from home to change the atmosphere of their rooms. "The atmosphere of a space, in a room or inside a car, changes dramatically [with BGM]. It is where a 'space' is made," they say to yes/no via email. "I'm a guitarist and personally I like bossa nova, but I think it is one of the most relaxing types of music."

The love of bossa nova shines through on 'Routine BGM', with its warm, relaxed chords providing a snappy yet comforting backdrop to a cartwheeling solo that seems to pour like liquid over the top.

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• 🔔 Find more relaxing BGM on DJ Relax BGM's YouTube Channel.

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🐣 OKAY(K) — SEVEN, TI SEVEN [初演 • PREMIERE]

⌾ LISTEN TO OKAY(K) SEVEN TI SEVEN ⌾

Fresh from the faded sunset beach guitar sounds of ‘bacardi with a soda’ – his latest track – SoundCloud musicmaker, vocalist and all-round wordist okay(K) crash lands back to earth in his interdimensional pod; the control panel has gone haywire and is playing out some wonky chords from a far-off radio station, colourful blips and bleeps crackling in the hook (notification system failing), the fizzing circuitry of the beat skipping and lurching with a galaxy of glitch.

It’s friendly though. In fact, 'seven, ti seven' sort of reminds me of the 'Battle Against a Weird Opponent' theme from Earthbound. The sound is warm, though jaunty and angular in structure. Like Mr Burns from that Simpsons episode, he brings you love. And here okay(K) is in the middle of it all, with a message from the future. Or was it the past?

“The concept is "seven ti seven ti seven ti seventy" meaning "seven you seven you seven you seventy",” he tells us via email.

“everyone is as much alike in a way as they are different. we’re all human with our own unique characteristics that make us distinct.”

Halfway between a lounge croon and a beat poet recital, okay(K)’s vocal in ‘seven, ti seven’ rolls around picking up references from everywhere, like a virtual snowball through Wikipedia, from foreign languages to the next US election. And all in a style that drips in stream-of-consciousness fever dream freedom; even the way the lyrics can be set out looks like a poem:

never, never, never been where i is
is i isn't
isn't i isn't
isn't i finished
i said now isnt thy wishlist not made in 79 minutes
79 minutes till he be sending my giftish
its like my 79th christmas
he said Pitkästä aikaa
* i said now isn't i Finnish
i said now isn't i finished
...

The skipping but low-slung virtuosity of this first verse (above is a fragment) contrasts with the wobbly, positive spoken word-esque vocal of the second; there’s simple but inspiration thinking in there, with lines like “I think we can go far / If we hold on real tightly” delivered with rounded earnest. Politics comes into play, when okay(K) talks about waiting “patiently” for 2020: "If we are impeaching then it may be imperfection / Coulda happened sooner then there would be no objection now."

It’s an exercise in patient positivity, set to a scuttled hodge-podge glitch-flavoured beat that could seem chaotic, but feels as chill and accessible as those jazzed-out chords—a joyful juncture where rap, poetry and sheer artistic communication meet and mingle.

* This means 'long time no see' in Finnish.

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• 🔔 Listen to more okay(K) on SoundCloud.

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🐣 ÀBÁSE — SKEME GOES ALL CITY

Built around the frenzy of cyclical repetition, this track two-steps to a speedy tempo with a half-time trap-feeling beat—a slice of jazz that's more about the atmosphere created and solid rhythms rather than wheeling, flighty solos. Beginning with a lush, lounge-flavoured intro, it soon bursts into life with a series of dynamic riffs that feel more nightclub than jazz club.

It's by Budapest-based producer and keyboardist Szabolcs Bognar, now embarking on a new project called Àbáse. And it's this musicmaker's love of hip hop that has created the unique, beat-and-groove-led vehicle at the heart of this track: the track's title 'Skeme Goes All City' references Style Wars, a 1983 documentary about graffiti.

"I can clearly remember that I was listening to a lot of current Blue Note releases at the time. Music from Jaleel Shaw, Marcus Strickland, Ben Willams and such." Bognar tells us about the birth of the track. "The main melody is definitely inspired by that scene."

"Each member came up with their part on the spot. We were jamming through it a few times and the trap feel and groove just came out of us so it was all pretty natural. We did only a few takes of recording. I also wanted to put out something completely live first. No huge editing and production process, just the musicians playing and grooving together. It's kind of a tip of the hat to the blue note and classic jazz style of recording, as well."

The crossover of jazz instrumentation and trap-style beats with swaggering repetition is one that feels as relevant as ever—e.g. Kendrick's To Pimp A Butterfly, Kamasi Washington, the flavours of Brainfeeder's output. Riding this wave of band-created groove well away from the producer's studio, Àbáse reflect a newness of modern pick-and-mix culture diverting from the specificity of genre.

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• 🔔 The members of Àbáse this time around are Fanni Zahár (flute, vocals), Szabolcs Bognár (Rhodes), Tamás Heilig (bass) and Tamás Czirják (drums). The artwork, fresh green with concentric circles of cocktailing collage, reflects the combos at work in the track itself.
• 🔔 You may stream and/or download 'Skeme Goes All City' via your favourite service, if you like. There will be an EP, or maybe an LP, coming soon so, yeah, watch out for that if you liked this.

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🐣 KERO KERO BONITO — TIME TODAY

Taking off into a world of ceaseless leisure, whimsical hope, the hefty air of summer and free time finding its way into our hearts, this is the wonderful 'Time Today' by the trio that is Kero Kero Bonito. Usually and perhaps more well known for their bilingual Anglo-Japanese playground-rhyme-raps and polished analogue collages of electronic sound, 'Time Today' is a bouncy bopper of a track, with all the airiness, kinetic journeymaking rhythm, and tomorrow-never-comes sweet stoicism that'd make for a good ending theme for a slice of life (or other genre of) anime. The outward appearing of the track says as much, but so do the lyrics, cradling ambition in simple lines like opener, "I got so much time today / I got hopes and dreams and plans all yet to be made" and "But I don't / Even know / Where I should be trying to go / So I guess I'll follow my nose." All honest, all relatable.

It bears a resemblance to Shibuya-kei, the Japanese genre defined by its mix of styles, and yep it's all here: the lounge atmosphere, the electronic keyboard sounds, the jazz chord progressions, the busy upbeat tempo. Those gently unexpected progressions – founded on lovely warm bass, which really complement the cosy, comfy texture of the organ-ish chords – make it colourful and full of feeling, whilst typically KKB musical asides like chiming little melodies, sun-glinting sparkles, whoopy instrumental warbles, and drum machine fills decorate it with engaging nuance and keep things fun.

It is also brief—not too brief, but the sort of brief that mirrors how the song feels and what it says: that time, especially when everything feels right, seems to stretch on and on ahead of you – that "I got so much time today" refrain right? – but before you know it you're thinking, where's it all gone? With its lyrical references to day and night, dawn and sunset, you can see that it's a hopeful start-of-the-day song for the end of the day, a late afternoon reflection for tomorrow's bright morning.

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• 🔔 This lovely song is taken from the upcoming NEW Kero Kero Bonito album Time 'n' Place, which is coming soon. That's all we know.
• 🔔 KKB also took part in YES/NO's Lazy Interview series all the way back in 2014. Have a lil' read if you feel like it~

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🐣 ANOMALIE — CANAL

From literally the first few seconds of 'Canal' we're dropped into an ultrachill atmosphere, one that begins smooth and viscous, hefty on the sub-bass and the lounge-flavoured piano that meanders throughout—and which turns cinematic, with flashes of freewheeling strings that zing on beds of wide warm synth; this morphs into a tract of hard-boiled electronica, with wibbly synths and brash columns of synth-bass buzzing beneath. Canadian musicmaker Anomalie sets us floating down this chilled flow, actual water noises and waves washing on sand interspersed throughout.

And besides the obvious chill of this track there's the dynamism of it all – very much helped by the rattle and thump of the prodigious drums ; the way it sways between different atmospheres and different textures, being neon bubbling contemporary synth jam one moment before reverting to peals of kinetic piano the next: the corollary being this contemporary nocturne, a highly polished, ornately sculptured piece of noir that remains light instead of weighed down by the world. The six seconds between 2:24 and 2:30, with the piano's motif at the end before those synth chords again, sums up the playful virtuoso and expansive subdued nature of 'Canal', sitting somewhere at the juncture between gorgeous inactivity and exciting hyperactivity.

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• 🔔 This wonderful slice of classy piano is taken from Anomalie's upcoming second EP, Métropole Part II (out 13th April), the follow-up to last year's Métropole EP, which featured tracks like the well balanced jazz of 'New Space' and the elastic 'No Way'.
• 🔔 You can download and stream 'Canal' variously here.
• 🔔 The artwork was created by fellow Montreal resident Ali Hassanein.

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🐣 SHAWN KINGSBERRY — INTO TOMORROW

The smoothness of this track lies not only in its late-night jazz style, the softer dimensions of noir, the aching limbs at the end of the day feeling, the starless sky and the angular buildings of a nameless city – ‘Into Tomorrow’ is undeniably smooth, carved into its twinkling lounge shape by musician Shawn Kingsberry. The saxophone plays a languid melody; the long drawn-out notes are the motif of the track, like a lone voice chanting a wordless song. Piano trickles in, adding structure and opulence to the satin soul of the sax, its keys rich and robust yet light and chiming. But all that soothing sound would be for nothing if it weren’t for the beat and bass, a sparse rhythm like a slow walk upstairs, or the empty feeling of watching blurred city lights from the rainy window of a taxi: space, and room to think.

But as with much that effuses noir sentiment, there is a darker side. ‘Into Tomorrow’, even in its name, suggests that wherever this gentle soundscape is located in time, it is night, pathetic fallacy creeping in with the danger and ignorance of the dark and nocturnal activities – but at least it seems to be signifying a transitory moment, as the melody reaches gradually upwards, as uplifting as it is the sound of sinking into exhaustion and despair. Where there is hope, there is a reason to hope.

Kingsberry himself describes the track’s origin: “2017 was a year of reflection on where we are today,” he writes. “As we wake up every day watching the news, listening to the radio, or reading the news feeds, we cannot escape the sadness, negativity, and violence surrounding us.” Though hopeful, though relaxing, these truths leave their mark on the worn soul, the warm emptiness, of this music.

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• 🔔 ‘Into Tomorrow’ is taken from Shawn Kingsberry’s current album, Peace Love and Happiness, which you can purchase here. “Peace Love & Happiness is my attempt to escape the world by creating a place of music, soul, and happiness to bring joy to my listeners.”
• 🔔 Interestingly, Shawn Kingsberry is actually VP, Digital Government and Citizen Services, at global IT company Unisys, where he “[guides] public sector consumers to adopt cloud computing, data analytics and other digital government platforms​.”

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🐣 HIDDEN SPHERES — LIANAS

The delicacy of this tropical track is beautiful, charting its namesake – liana, a species of woody vine that climbs to the top of a forest canopy for sunlight – as it twists slowly onwards towards life, glassy synths illustrating the robust nature of these vines with their percussive feel and full-bodied warmth, as well as the clack-clopping of subtle snare-woodblock. Manchester musicmaker Hidden Spheres inches his track towards brightness, gradually adding elements that conjure dappled sunlight, like vital breathy hi-hats, and a simple two-note horn refrain that blasts out low-key triumphantly.

The natural element to this chilled and breezy lounge-flavoured track is more than in the name, however. It begins and continues throughout with a backdrop of the rainforest itself, ambient sounds of insectoid white noise and mammalian hoots and indistinct birdcalls, taken from 1970s documentary Wonders Of The Rainforest. And so with the veil of nature draped firmly over the bumping kicks and skiffling percussion, which includes the tactile rolling of bongos, 'Lianas' is with those gorgeous chords and the aching rise and fall of more fizzing synths, lush and living, playful and paradisiacal: music for the splendour of the natural world.

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• 🔔 'Lianas' is in fact taken from the producer's upcoming Wonders Of The Rainforest EP, directly inspired by the documentary of the same name. It arrives on 2nd February, and will be the first release on Hidden Spheres' brand new label, Fruit Merchant.
• 🔔 Listen to a preview of Wonders Of The Rainforest here.
• 🔔 Since 'Lianas', the next track that has dropped in full from the EP is called 'Sapodilla' and you should listen to that too.

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🐣 SHIGETO — DETROIT PART II

Four years following the release of previous album No Better Time Than Now, Shigeto has produced a follow-up to 'Detroit Part I', an almost symphonic morsel of music, a journey of a track in which a brooding atmosphere is beset with bristling sounds, a melancholy atmosphere where a sense of downcast dystopia looms somewhere in the lament of it all. 'Detroit Part II' is a different beast entirely. If the first part of this sonic homage to the Michigan city charts abandoned buildings and boarded up houses and forgotten assembly lines, the dereliction of Detroit, all angular and atmospheric, then the second part is humanistic, living-and-breathing, focused on how people react to their surroundings in terms of art: its musical culture and heritage.

The track thumps along with a dusty wheezing organic thud of a kick, luscious handclaps and muffled snare rimshots and delicious clopping woodblocks and shuffling shakers punctuating and decorating this subtle driving force of a beat, a tangible waterfall of textures. Soft synth bass plunges fuzzy giving the track a wandering breezy groove, the meandering jazz feel of it augmented by saxophone peals that prize open the heart of the song and allow life to flow forth. Barely discernible, a mist of gentle keys gloss glassy nebulous aching and accepting, merging with the whispering tones of the vocal sample that reverbs into the streaming percussive beat and its homely comforting sense of space. This is a change of heart, the silver lining of the cloud, the other side of the coin.

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• 🔔 'Detroit Part II' is taken from upcoming Shigeto album The New Monday, which will be released via Ghostly International on 7th October.
• 🔔 The suitably atmospheric video for the track, a production of The Work Inc., shows Zach Saginaw (real name of Shigeto) driving around Detroit and recording the track in glorious greyscale. It was directed and produced by Brandon Rottman.
• 🔔 Here's the yes/no review of Shigeto's 2013 album No Better Time Than Now.

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🐣 WILKJAYY & ROCCO — CHILL // WAVY

In a sea of melted electronic digital chords we have an eternal sense of chill, slow whirlpooling swirling in the air like heavy curling weed smoke, it's an instrumental immersion in relaxing horizontal flavours that fizz and bubble with undeniable chill. This sonic aromatherapy is actually a double helping, too, so we're extra lucky that we can get a comprehensive feel for both artists carving and etching their souls online in two slightly different vessels of sound. In 'chill', Virginia rapper wilkjayy exhibits flawless rhythm with this creaking elastic tone as much as his wordplay stuns impossibly, each rhyme like a great flash, alliteration raining down as producer rocco lays down these sleepy glassy lounge chords, these crunching overdriven kicks, razor hi-hats and cannonball splash cymbals, sounding like a marble-floored gold-detailed elevator lobby in some retro-futuristic dimension.

But things take a colder turn aside from the garbled jazz of the first half of this track, as 'wavy' right away veils the world in breezy synth, muffled and breezy and all-encompassing, losing the playful edge of 'chill' and instead blooms spacey, rocco floating it up to where the air is thinner: kicks quake, handclaps and hi-hats tick-tack metallic. The spacewalk of sound is narrated by wilkjayy, who begins 'chill' slowly, low and creaky, before he breathlessly blasts lines of rapid-fire dactyls for about a minute, all based around the same hypnotic rhyme scheme: "everything that i be doin original / switching so often it's not too predictable"—ending this rolling ridge of rap with a comment on tradition within the genre: "boom bappin rappin aint nothing additional / they say they loving me no not conditional / so far above you you're hardly formidable."

The devastating virtuoso and savage calm of wilkjayy, seemingly determined to make an impact on the world, combined with the freshly juiced soul-cleansing beats of rocco, feels like a powerful partnership, and one that is only just beginning to blossom for the ears of the globe.

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• 🔔 Though 'chill // wavy' is technically just wilkjayy "prod by" rocco, there's a more recent collaboration between the two that labels them both as joint creators of the track. It is the wonderful, maybe equally wonderful, 'lost in the smoke', released via underground label-collective osty (oh shit that's you).

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🐣 LEXI THE LEXICONIST — I MADE THIS FOR YOU

The first loving touch of this track is that guitar, those sun-tinted chords that sweep deliciously, an all-seeing eye of jelly-bodied chillment and curling slumber with its lounge jazz flavour, the fingers slowly sliding on the strings mellow and breezy yet sultry and moody, light and sophisticated, two interrupted whiskies waiting on the veranda with ice sweating and the full length gossamer drapes fluttering like slow-motion ghosts and the long shadows cutting up the glow of light on the marble floor. 'i made this for you' is already artfully atmospheric with its jazzy sixths and sevenths reverbing into the neardistance a slight decay gently warping its clean sheen, dripping with warmth and sun and skin-sapping humidity.

The vocals of New York-based Lexi the Lexiconist enter the equation, the tone of her voice like rich silk rippling, the way her words tail off, the echo of it, the soft whispering velvet washing into the silent voids of the song. A trap flavoured beat adds slo-down percussive kinetic energy to the languorous veils of mist that the vocals effuse—created by producer kloudbeats these soft solid bumps are soaked in muffled vintage lo-fi, this contemporary sound poached in a gorgeous cocktail of yesteryear, the kicks dusty thudding, the hi-hats distorted tip-tapping rattling, the snare clack emptily resonating across this simple scene of love and lassitude. And at 2:33 the bpm decreases and low pitch-shifts accompany Lexi's vocal, sub-bass quakes rumbling beneath this new sense of slowness and silence, hearing your own heartbeat in the push and pull of passion, plumes of pastel smoke erupting in a someplace of pleasure.

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• 🔔 Collect some of Lexi's music on Bandcamp.

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🐣 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.

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• 🔔 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.

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🐣 LIAM.M — DRIFTING

The sample here instantly calls to mind something high-altitude, something with the vast expansiveness of light blue skies, of thick cotton wool clouds like continents curling through the sky with wisps and breakaways like islands, constantly shifting and breezing through the cool upper air of the world, that string sound really soaring above it all. Brisbane's very own Liam.M sends that sound up, lets it fly, loosens it from its cage early on and adds extra glitter for a the gleaming sun glints that shine blindingly on airplane wings and the on the peaks that float on gargantuan cloudscapes. In 'Drifting' this brightness is the main thing: what else do you see above the clouds but the white blaring twinkle of our closest star?

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☞ PREVIOUS LIAM.M TRACK 'TON' FEATURED ON YES/NO (2017) ☜

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This is set on a bristling blanket of beats, a dense tract of luscious percussive sounds that feel like hardboiled sweets punctuated by the flutter of the sidechained kick that helps give the gleaming fog of sound above a sense of structural dynamism, sentences that speak another language that you can sort of understand, all the while shakers and hi-hats sheaf and shuffle, snares clack and click and snap, occasional dynamic slow drumrolls. The swirling opulence of this track is a satisfying flavour, a gorgeous texture like walking into a room where everything is a reflective sparkling surface—and underpinned by this solid beat that's decorated with as much flare it just becomes this jewelbox of sound, rhythm and light.

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• 🔔 'Drifting' can be downloaded for free via Toneden.
• The main sample in this track is lifted from 'February' by Italian composer Gianni Marchetti.

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🐣 ON-LY — PUCE

This track is movement in groovesome proportions, wholly kinetic and body-shaking with its impatient shakers and other shuffling elements of percussion with hi-hats and drumstick clacks and abrasive snare thwacks, giving the impression of movement unabated. And whilst the drums twist and turn with roly-poly energy, nervous and stifling, that groovesomeness pops out from below, a tumble of bass notes polished with slight distortion, clusters of bassline phrases that speak out with undeniable funk—Melbourne-based Australian musicmaker On-Ly carves out these layers of rhythm in 'Puce' with satisfying contrast: the robust kicks and bass; the shivering chatter of high-register percussion.

However, this building-blocks boom and shake of the beat and its accoutrements – a very real-life, very angular buildings, empty roads with streetlights' dim gazes, hard and brickish sort of sound – is juxtaposed with the emoting jazz fancy of the instrumental that whirls around those breezy nocturnal judderings. Tremolo keys chime and weave glimmering, stamping the air with clouds of warm lounge-leaning chords, twinkling virtuoso, whilst a synth refrain beset with peals of reverb plays occasional solos, both elements presenting a resounding sense of space and distance. Like parallel city Moonside in Earthbound there is a sense of elsewhere infused in 'Puce', a glittering warren of instrumental noises tinged with dreamlike flavours turn this into a sort of somnolent noir scene, a cocktail bar on the other side.

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• 🔔 'Puce' is taken from On-Ly's recently released The Purple LP, which can be listened to and downloaded over on Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The title of the track refers to a colour, a sort of brownish purple. Dictionary.com defines it thusly:

  "brownish-purple," 1787, from French puce "flea-color; flea," from Latin pucilem (nominative pulex) "flea," from PIE *plou- "flea" (cf. Sanskrit plusih, Greek psylla, Old Church Slavonic blucha, Lithuanian blusa, Armenian lu "flea"). That it could be generally recognized as a color seems a testimony to our ancestors' intimacy with vermin.

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🐣 BARAKA — LEISURE

The beat here, the decayed whispering tap of the boom-bap beat, shoots a beam of instachill as soon as it starts its swaying swing beneath the bendy bass and liquid stream and sultry vocals that fall in like a fog as the beat becomes more legible and the kicks bump the ambience with their cassette tape thuds. This horizontally inclined track is from producer and jazz pianist Baraka (real name Geoffrey Dean) and it is very fittingly named 'Leisure'—and that is exactly it, jazz flavours combining with beats to create a sense of blissful nothingness.

Effusing from the track – from its golden haze of sound, the soothing textures of those crooning vocals, the ambient plasma of synthetic noises, the deep chimes, the snippets of flute that wind in – is a big sense of leisure, of having nothing pressing to do, of melting into a sunset, dissolving into nature, occupying oneself with no occupation. The way the sounds weave between each other, a loose tapestry of languorous dimensions, this one fading into that one, this one falling away, now all of it gradually breaking only to return in fuller form, this pattern is random in the gentle way that clouds pass by overhead; so here we are, outstretched in warm glinting grass, observing the ebb and flow of clouds pluming majestically in its grand wisps melting and growing and merging and going.

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• 🔔 'Leisure' is one of the tracks on Baraka's album V, released at the start of June. Listen to it on SoundCloud.

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🐣 DJ SUPERMARKET — WIMBLEDON 1988

A song called 'Wimbledon 1988' has two things in store for someone like me because my birth year is 1988, year of the dragon, and I am a fan of tennis whenever Wimbledon is on. Maybe I'll watch the French Open too. So anyway it reached out to me on a basic level. But aside from that there is something inescapably nostalgic within even just the name of this track, and there's the name, DJ Supermarket. Things like artwork and titles and names, things that surround the music, these also bound the music, frame the music in some sort of context, inform you of what to expect stylistically, and here it is, a dream from 28 summers ago.

Like the whirring of some machine intended to implant some idealistic memories some borrowed nostalgia into your brain the track starts up with clicking and clanking and a deep subspace rumble. The wind-up toy sufficiently wound-up, in earnest we sail along with the smooth lounge-flavoured chords, additional woodblock clicks and robust drum bits added to this sample from who-knows-where* and the crowd cheers every now and again faraway and distant almost as if you are instead sitting on a beach with this sultry soft music and hearing waves crash on the sand. The rumble again into reality, to now – the end of this manufactured fragment of chill, this shard of humming melody, nonchalant walking along thought – and the music fades and reverberates into the ether just as it arrived.

*Someone in the comments of the song said it, the music sampled, sounded like Alec Mansion and apparently it is. He's a Belgian singer.

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• A recent album by DJ Supermarket that you might want to listen to is UX Design which was released 7 months ago by Roof Garden Records, owned by the musicmaker himself. By the way he is from Glasgow and he's called Jack Fawcett.

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EVM128 FEAT. OLMO CASSIBBA – TREATMENT

Wooowww, well well well. This captured my imagination a great deal when I first heard it. A month or so later, it's still teetering on the borders of my memory like a candy wrapper glimmering in sunlight, or like something else that might draw your attention – crystals strewn across a beach, finding a prize (plastic funny-smelling figurine) in your cereal as you pour it into your bowl. That sort of thing.

It arrives from EVM128, real name Luke Meads: Bristol progeny who now dwells in London. It's called 'Treatment'. Heralded in descriptions and press releases as a revival of another Bristol product, broken beat, it's easy to discern the fragmented nature of the beat through your own ears: irregular patterns in the alternating kick and abrasive-fluid snare, jangling tambourine cut and placed between these, hi-hats skiffling in unusual order, additions of flighty cymbal bell-hits, assertive hyperactive snare rolls, other percussive syncopations, all offbeat in a style that fits rhythmically between house and hip-hop. People 'in the know' will say 'ah yes this broken beat rite here'. Sounds broken – simple.

Hmmmm, well, actually, thinking about it… it seems less simple the more you think about it. Despite knowing about the style beforehand, despite listening to 'Treatment' on repeat, the pattern of the beat feels fresh every time. Is it its seeming irregularity that makes it harder to pick up on? Are there genuinely predictable and unpredictable rhythms in music? I suppose you could become used to it after a long while… These are questions for a neurologist.

But it's not just the beat that makes EVM128's track so salted-caramel-delicious; add to the neurone-stimulating skiffle-thump a modulating wobble of airy ghostly synth – woo-oo-oo-oo, like that – the occasional singular soft chord simply asserting its existence in the midst of the beat thicket, the drippy-splash melodic synth painting chilled lounge melodies in miniature; add all this and you have a special sound, seemingly effortless and wonderfully basic.

And that's not forgetting Olmo Cassibba, the Sicilian-Scottish alto saxophonist and person-of-percussion, whose blissful work on the flute completes 'Treatment', making it a great clashing together of these fractured even garage-lilting beats, these trip-hopping future-facing electronics, and horizontal lounge exotica sunshine pouring in, jungle-beach-cosmopolitan-hangout jazz flavours, the phantom of cigarette smoke hanging like a thin veil in a basement club, nocturnal car-driving under illuminated palm trees.

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• And there is more of this delightful beatwork and instrumental goodness on EVM128's debut album, Nova. It's out now and you can listen to / purchase it here.

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LULU + MIKENEKO HOMELESS – WATERMELON

三毛猫ホームレス or Mikeneko Homeless (that's "homeless tortoiseshell cat") is a musicmaking duo from Tokyo composed of Tokinori Kakimoto, a double bassist and composer who also makes music as mochilon, and Masahiro Oba aka hironica. These two have teamed up with singer Lulu to come up with the instant infatuation of 'Watermelon', a supremely bouncy and immediately likeable musical morsel that speaks of … how funny; I was just about to write that it speaks of crisp autumn days and the continuance of the early days of a developing romance, a tale begun and spun during the hot and humid hours of summer, when I read in the description of the track on SoundCloud: "Where you and me will be when autumn comes?"

And really, since this sort of sentiment is what came to mind when listening to the song – even without understanding the lyrics – you can say that the trio have achieved certainly asked the above question with their music.

In fact, it is a story told in different parts; firstly beginning with a cascade jazzy synth chords and tumbling rapid-fire acoustic guitar arpeggios; secondly launching into a jaunty upbeat chorus with fluttering synths soaring up to meet it, playful vocal melodies skipping over the dop-dop-dop-dop of chipper chords; thirdly we skim into a part where chords cushion a scorchingly modulated bleepy solo melody, the beat slow and evocative with virtuoso hi-hat rolls; fourthly, the realisation part – where perhaps what went before in summer will not carry on as days become chilly and leaves curl and crisp, falling orange and red – Lulu's melody is slower, emotional, the chords softer, gentler, rippling vacant and numb, you especially notice it in the song's final part, with Lulu singing wordless "ahhh-aa-aa…", a slight lament at unforseeable futures, unpredictable circumstances.

Even without paying this much attention, this is a sumptuous slice of electronic-flavoured, atmospheric, sunny-meets-chilly atmosphere-summoning music, the vocals by Lulu compelling, subtly harmonised at times, flustered with romance and uncertainty against the virtuoso nu-shibuya-kei city pop vibe effused from Mineneko Homeless; it seeps into your head, inspiring happiness as much as a pang of doubt in the heart.

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