YES/NO GUEST MIX 026 :: MORGAN HISLOP'S CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE INSIDE OF THE CLUB… AND YOUR SOUL! MIX

Something tasty for you today on this wonderful Saturday. The sun is out, the air is warm (warmer than it has been) and Spring is in the air. The land births itself once more, life emanates from previous barren scenery. Flowers and sunshine. Fresh vitality. If you are reading this you are alive. I am writing this whilst alive. Generally it's good to be alive. Let's be alive together~

Anyway the pre-mentioned something tasty is a Guest Mix, no. 26 (twenty-six) for YES/NO, and it arrives like a cherry pie fresh out the oven from the brain of Morgan Hislop. He is a producer and DJ from the UK whose music is a regulatedly manic blend of ear-exciting experimental emissions and dance-laden flavours, whose music has been released on a bunch of nice labels, including Bad Panda Records, Activia Benz and Astro Nautico. He also used to be the drummer for Tropics (a project of Chris Ward "gone band" – like Caribou or anyone else who makes music and needs extra hands to perform it in a live context), and it's an experience with that band which gave this Guest Mix its title: Can't Wait To See The Inside Of The Club… AND Your Soul!

"A good friend of mine said this [the title] to me a couple of years ago as we entered a filmed 24 hour clubnight we were invited to in Mexico City while touring," he explains via email, "and the joke/quote has stayed with me ever since." The in-joke is paradoxically universal: everyone has them, but only some people understand them – from paupers to kings, we all have our private funnies. But that aside, from the clubby origins of the Mix's title you can rightly surmise that it's a totally club-conjuring collection of sounds: "I've always been interested in the ritualistic layout of clubs and the almost worshipful state they adhere to," says Morgan.

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From an alien perspective it must be a truly eerie and tribal combination of sights and sounds, claustrophobic and euphoric at the same time. 

MORGAN HISLOP on nightclubs

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So from his own intensely skiffling synth-fraught edit of Brandy & Monica's 'The Boy Is Mine' to Slugabed's 2014 rendition of the 2001 emotional dance hit 'Another Chance' by Roger Sanchez, Morgan's mix takes in varying dishes of dance and serves them up as a buffet of delights. French dance don Para One is involved, and so is techno legend Claude VonStroke. There's a remix of Braqueberry's 'Blaque Won' by MikeQ and Divoli S'Vere. MIA's clattering 'Bird Flu' transitions seamlessly into the trance-hinting Tokyo Hands remix of VesperTown's 'Royal Flash'. And he throws in some Ludacris for good measure.

"The mix compiles a lot of eclectic tracks I was DJing out at Festivals and in the second half of last year," he says of the mix, adding: "It also has a couple of unreleased tracks of mine in there."

Without further ado, and without me basically just naming every single track on the tracklist, you should just enjoy the mix. Big thank you to Morgan Hislop. Oh and by the way, he told me that the '?????' intro is a snippet from an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? – remember that? (You're old if you do, just face it). The artwork above is a collage made by the fair hands of Morgan himself, scanned in and sent straight to me, how cool is that? Collages are fun.

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• Ｔ　Ｒ　Ａ　Ｃ　Ｋ　Ｌ　Ｉ　Ｓ　Ｔ •

• 1. ?????
• 2. Sally Shapiro - Prescript
• 3. Hairy Hands - Space (Morgan Hislop’s ‘Interstellar IMAX experience’ Remix)
• 4. Claude VonStroke - The Whistler (DJ Assault Remix)
• 5. Dexter - D-Funked
• 6. Low Concept - Girlfriend
• 7. Ducky - To The Water
• 8. Para One - Vibrations Followed By Poisoned Apples (Club Mix)
• 9. Slugabed - Another Chance 2K14
• 10. Ba-Kuura ft. Branstone - Nothingism
• 11. Sinjin Hawke & Just Blaze - One
• 12. Morgan Hislop - Smitten
• 13. Brandy & Monica - The Boy Is Mine (Morgan Hislop Remix)
• 14. Bruce Smear - Pick & Roll
• 15. MIA - Birdflu
• 16. VesperTown - Royal Flash (Tokyo Hands Remix)
• 17. RX & Shiftee - Act Out!
• 18. Braqueberry - Blaque Won (MikeQ & Divoli S’Vere Ha Crash Remix)
• 19. Ludacris - Splash Waterfalls

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☟ Morgan Hislop Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • official site • Twitter

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MORGAN HISLOP – BRIGHT AS THE MOON, BUT DARKENED BY THE DRAMA

The third release as part of Singles Club on Slugabed's brilliantly named Activia Benz label, this is 'Bright As The Moon, But Darkened By The Drama' by a musicmaker named Morgan Hislop (also the drummer for futuo-R&B outfit Tropics) whose intergalactic track 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts' – released as a standalone single on cool label Astro Nautico – we wrote about earlier this year.

The wonky hook of the track is a pitch-shifted vocal sample, chopped to catchy rhythm, appearing throughout in varying forms of iteration, and stands out amidst the bustling fluid beat of the track. Half-dakly cosmic and half-retro-minded, the track features as many ambient washes of sound as it does robust piano chords and sunny joyful synth jollities; at one point the beat feels as if it could have been lifted from an early '90s hip hop track; at other times, it is heavily accented and future-facing with trilling snares and stuttering plasma-vision synth.

It also features English artist James Bright aka Hairy Hands on vocals, whose words arrive stoned and chewed up with echoing harmonies of hazy sound, with phantomatic ad-libs sounding like a giant cat's purr in places, suiting the bliss and clatter of Mr Hislop's unplaceable style. Someone else suggested it sounded like "Aphex Twin gone pop" and in some ways – with the samples and bristling beat – they're not entirely wrong.

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☟ Morgan Hislop Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • official site • Twitter

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MORGAN HISLOP – SMALL ROOMS & NOCTURNAL THOUGHTS [FREE DOWNLOAD]

I was supposed to or rather I meant to write about this guy, UK-based Morgan Hislop, a looong time ago but, like many things in life, it slipped me by or I was having a panic attack and my mind went blank for months or I just simply forgot about it. One or more of those things. In any case, we tweeted briefly today about the benefits of Ping Pong (dim sum resto, not table tennis) and I wondered what he'd been up to musically and I saw this track – one I was gonna write about ages ago. And I thought hmm well let's just do it now.

Sorry for waffling but idc really: I will waffle. The track is 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts', a title that suits the quasi-claustrophobia of small rooms and the often bizarre lonely sentiments of nighttime, especially nighttimes in small rooms. Clunky percussion coupled with hard kicks, swaddled with a gloomy gloss of sub-bass, and harpsichordish synth melodies form the main rhythmic pattern for the song, but it has this added phantom-cosmic quality with strange vocal samples, pulled apart like plasticine in places and in others spilled out in endless reverb like exploded mists of dry dust.

A bit that I particularly like arrives just after the halfway point, the music drowned out by a gritty splash of abrasive white noise and wiped out in a voidful moment, where it's only the clunking beat and vocal samples chime in like messages from ancient spacemen garbled by unknown phenomena; this bit is brilliantly lonely, like a mind in turmoil behind unthinking everyday actions. An exciting, indescribable journey through a nicely crafted soundscape, mindscape, whose sounds are almost edible they are so delicious. Download this song from M. Hislop's SoundCloud (link belowww) if you want :)

• Fun fact: Morgan Hislop is the drummer in Tropics, the deeply soulful progeny of Chris Ward. I urge you to check out the Home & Consonance EP from last year, it's pretty beautiful.
• Normal fact: 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Though' is taken from the Atlantics Volume 3 compilation by extraordinarily cool Brooklyn "label/blog/party" Astro Nautico, which incidentally you can download for name-your-price here (CLICK).

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Visit Morgan Hislop's official site
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TROPICS HOME & CONSONANCE EP

Tropics - oh my goodness, gosh golly my oh my and everything to that extent. All interjectory words all at once. He's good. Very good. I've written about him before, with his song 'Popup Cinema', an older ditty called 'Mouves' and also I recorded their set at Glastonbury in 2011. Long time fan of Tropics - aka Chris Ward - so you see.

From start to finish, this is a genuinely fab record to listen to, and one that is definitely suiting England's belated and rather gradual slip into summer. First listened to this driving alongside the River Thames in the evening with the sun just teetering above the horizon - the perfect soundtrack I gotta say. And from the very first I heard of Tropics like 2 years ago till now, the quality and clarity and direction of the music has increased - not to say that the old stuff was bad, no way in fact. Just gets better and better is what I mean. And hearing more of Chris's voice, which I dunno why he was hiding in the first place, is nice too.

But what is the 'this' that I speak of? It's Tropics's's new Home & Consonance EP. Beginning with the achingly nostalgic and brimming-with-heartache title track - 'Home & Consonance' duh - and it storms ahead with a rolling beat, blanketed with smooth vocals and gentle-gentle keyboards, dreamlike in their solo form towards the end. Get started listening yo:

We move onto the bass explosion of 'Courage', a slow-down house affair fringed with romance - more lovely vocals and additional sultry crooning provided by the LA-based Gavin Turek. Lovely drawn-out solo synths here make my skin hot up. A medley of passion and should-have-done-this vibe here. Broken beats joined with stuttering hi-hats abound in next track 'Don't You Know', whose jazz/lounge sounds are like glitter on glue atop a profusion of soulful vocal samples and lung-expanding synths. The EP ends with 'Fleeting Haunt', a midtempo tune pockmarked with a catchy vocal "ooo-ooo"; there is at its core the same absolute heartfelt chillment as lies at the core of all songs that came before it. Vocals slip in and out from the abundance of lush sound scenery and there's this lovely break in the beat where the synth rises up like a tide of electricity at a beach of polished tiles and cocktail-built huts.

As you might be able to tell, I really dig this EP. It sounds lovely. Builds on a foundation of luscious sounds, easy beats, chilled melodies and emotive vocals that all the songs include. Empty and full at the same time. V v v v v nice.

There's a really super cool live rendition. Chris Ward himself said: "So recently I went back to my late grandparents' house where last year I wrote the Home & Consonance EP. The band joined me and the guys from It Drew Itself were kind enough to record us performing a song."

Fresh and tasty. Love the drummer's t-shirt also.

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