Showing posts with label Sydney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sydney. Show all posts

Friday, 29 September 2017

πŸ“£ LAZY INTERVIEW #31 — TOUCH SENSITIVE

Opening the email that contained the story behind Touch Sensitive's masterwork in electropop, 'Pizza Guy' – the song that burst into our consciousnesses in 2013, re-released two years later to even wider appreciation – was disarmingly exciting. It's a funny story actually.

"My friend and former band mate from Van She started a night called Pizza Party and he never invited me to play which is understandable because we lived in each other pockets," he writes, "But at the time I was disappointed so in a fit of rage when I was bouncing it to send to Future Classic I called it 'Pizza Guy'." Don't worry, he and Nick (Routledge) can laugh about it now. Originally an instrumental, he told us how it went through "so many different versions" and finally became non-instrumental: "A friend of mine (who went on to become a global superstar) cut up a vocal from an undisclosed location and that's kind of it."

And even though the song isn't this romantic tale of a struggling real-life pizza guy, we can still live vicariously through the video for the track which features Touch Sensitive as the eponymous purveyor of pizza.

Between then and now the Australian musicmaker has dropped a string of singles, including the glistening bouncy 'Slowments', and finally his debut album has appeared: Visions. Funnily enough the album opens with a self-referential track called 'First Slice', a dreamified snippet of 'Pizza Guy', and if that wasn't enough of a nod the "official visualizer" has the producer walk over to a table, open a box and pull out a slice of pizza that he nonchalantly munches as he gazes out a window—the majority of the album tracks do also come with visuals, including the album's piano-thumping lead single, 'Lay Down', which "went through 50 versions," we are told. Elsewhere on the album Harriet Brown features on two songs, there's an instrumental called 'The Mystery Of Cats', and glorious tape warp on 'You're My Last Chance (Interlude)'. Visions glitters and clacks, glows warm and textured with classic synthesiser sounds.

But with the album release behind him by about two weeks now, Touch Sensitive was finally able to sit down with a slice of pizza and a kitten curled up next to him and answer our world famous Lazy Interview questions. Read on, dear reader, read on.


🐀



w h o   a r e   y o u ?   w h e r e   a r e   y o u   f r o m ?   w h a t   d o   y o u   d o ?
My name is Michael Di Francesco, I'm from Sydney Australia and I make and play music.


h o w   d i d   y o u   s t a r t   c r e a t i n g   m u s i c ?


I played in bands at school then studied it at university then I discovered Daft Punk so I sold my double bass and went halves with a friend in a TR909 and an EMU sampler, after that we went crazy collecting records etc. etc. I also spent many years playing in cover bands and doing whatever session gigs I could, I got to play with some cool people most of whom are/became my friends.


h o w   w o u l d   y o u   d e s c r i b e   y o u r   s o u n d ?


Not sure but I'm constantly trying to make it better and break out of harmonic and rhythmic habits, that's the greatest challenge for me anyway. It can always be better. But by better I don't mean technically or rather sonically, the combination of the elements.


i s   t h e r e   a   p e r f e c t   t i m e   a n d   p l a c e   f o r   l i s t e n i n g   t o   y o u r   m u s i c ?


Maybe driving, I'm not sure.

If anyone likes anything you do it's nice and if it made people happy that makes me happy
w h a t   i n s p i r e s   y o u   m o s t   w h e n   m a k i n g   a   t r a c k ?
A sound, something that just happened, a couple of words or a phrase.


w h a t   i s   y o u r   m o s t   m e m o r a b l e   m u s i c a l   e x p e r i e n c e ?


I got to do a session with Snoop once, that was pretty cool, also had the privilege of playing with Jamie Liddell many years ago, that was cool too, some of the best ones are in a friends studio or at home.


w h a t   a r e   y o u r   f a v o u r i t e   t h r e e   s o n g s   a t   t h e   m o m e n t ?


Harriet Brown – 20/15

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Kate Bush – Why Should I Love You

B.B. & Q. Band – Mistakes


w h o   d o   y o u   m o s t   a d m i r e   i n   t h e   m u s i c   w o r l d ?


Anybody that finishes stuff and puts it out. 


i n   y o u r   o p i n i o n ,   w h a t   i s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   m u s i c ?


I think it's an exciting time on so many levels but also it's a bit sad at times because most of the time music is not all about music, there are so many contributing factors, there are amazing players and performers all over the world who don't get the accolades or recognition they deserve. On the other hand with the technology we have now it's easier to find these people and message them direct.


w h a t ' s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   y o u r   m u s i c   –   w h a t   d o   y o u   h o p e   t o   d o   n e x t ?


Not sure but not the same as last time. I just pulled my studio apart so time will tell.


w h a t   i s   m o s t   i m p o r t a n t   t o   y o u ?


The Rhodes Chroma from a materialistic perspective but as a human being probably coffee and good manners.


πŸƒ



  • πŸ”” Touch Sensitive's debut album Visions is out now on Australian label Future Classic. You will find streaming options on this hyperlink, whilst over here is a more physical offering in the form of a vinyl, CD and merch bundle.


πŸ“ 
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Thursday, 21 September 2017

🐣 ISSERLEY — PRIVILEGE

The crunch of it, the frustrated clenched fists broil of it, the distorted decay of it all and veiled with a haunted corridor of wobbling ambient sounds to create this negative miasma clouding over the robust solidity of the mechanical swampsome sounds at the foundation, the emptiness that this track summons is vast and uncompromising. Sydney-based artist Isserley returns as the formidable force that we saw in 'Advent', her seemingly small childlike voice poised as it swoops disjointedly around the room, a glinting tone like a silvery flash in the dark, growling walls of synth bass fuzzing and pushing on your spirit, helping the musicmaker to illustrate the blocky angst at the heart of 'Privilege'.

"Sadness doesn't discriminate at all," Isserley writes in a message to yes/no, "and it always angers me when people assume that if you have money or a certain superficial quality, that life is inherently perfect."

Throughout the song she slurs in slow measured lines, monotone for the most part and sometimes dipping down to a low mutter, a drugged vacant quality as the languishing speaker attempts to tell themselves they have a secret weapon in privilege—the classic overcompensation of an unhappy soul. Isserley explains further: "The song is essentially a collage of miscellaneous misanthropy, nihilism and sarcasm directed towards the attitude that just because some people don't suffer the same problem as you, they're not suffering at all."

Indeed it begins, "I sit here waiting for the end of my suffering…" and the lyrics later ask, "But how can I be something, when I am surrounded by people who make me feel nothing?" — always the scuttled abrasive beat, the bruising calamitous synth, the soundtrack to dying inside.


  • πŸ”” 'Privilege' is part of a new cycle of songs by Isserley—will or won't there be a new release? Either way if you like this go check her 2016 album Messes on Bandcamp.


πŸ“ 
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Friday, 21 July 2017

🐣 TOUCH SENSITIVE — LAY DOWN

There is something instantly classic in this track, something that is instantly gratifying, a dose of familiarity with just enough unfamiliar infused, a sound an atmosphere that virtually lives in our collective memories with the easy sway afforded by the clean bouncing syncopated synth bass throughout, with the clonking stabs of piano chord that summon a resurging era of yesteryear, kicking up dust and giving this track the raw organic feel that effuses from real instruments like that, the sweating bodies hot skin real life humans on the other side of the speakers, a sense of sensual reality also rising from those vocals: "Why don't we lay down for a while?" The poetry in this simplicity is too much to bear: the electric charge behind those words, what it suggests as a situation, what preceded, what follows, it quivers carnally.

Australian musicmaker Touch Sensitive has certainly evoked something in 'Lay Down', that is for sure. Lyrically, because language is what we understand, but also in the warm crowded varying layers of the vocal, the aching reminiscence of the melody, the repetition of "lay down for a while" calling to mind some unnamable nostalgia—and then that shivering falsetto. And next to all this human organicity is of course the synthetic, the neon chords that fade in and out towards the end, the French touch splat and thud of the beat, the construction of it all, its artificiality, desperate desire for closeness in closed quarters, in private, spinning mantra-like in this track that both suits and evokes public dancing places, where you are alone in a crowd, an internal juxtaposition that combined with its timeless retro appeal gives 'Lay Down' a sense of tragic beauty, a yearn for something that was never there.


  • πŸ”” The very fitting video for 'Lay Down', decidedly of a different era with its flashing fonts and collages of dancing 3DCGI objects and imagery – and directly inspired by Prince's lyric video for 'Sign 'O The Times' – was directed by Lost Art with the 3D bits created by Melbourne-based Adam Parata.
  • πŸ”” 'Lay Down' is the latest single by Touch Sensitive released by Sydney-based record label Future Classic. You can purchase and stream the track variously if you click upon this link right here.


πŸ“ 
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Tuesday, 27 June 2017

πŸ’Ώ PAISLEY — 404 FUNERAL

'Time Passing' – one of the more diminutive tracks among this selection of seventeen – is as good as any a place to start off this odyssey of beats. Fluttering whooshes like the track's just landed on your windowsill and will start cooing to you at any moment, it arrives with decayed instrumental sample, glitchified percussion with hi-hats that fizz, kicks that thud with MegaDrive distinction. 404 Funeral is a selection of vignettes that feel like this. 'U Got It Going On', one of the more wobbling tracks in this series of seventeen, feels decayed, suffocated by age and warped beyond recognition, with elements that feel similarly bitcrushed; 'Squash' feels like a flood, fifty-two seconds of mashed beats and samples that feels like a luscious rainstick of sound.

Paisley's new stream of lo-fi creations – "made well over a year ago" – does go beyond just tape cassette decay and crackling nostalgia. The retro VGM sound to some of the percussion is matched by a sharp and delicious outpourings of drum sounds, like on 'What's Your Name' where behind snippets of Japanese dialogue a hi-hat dimly ticks with rounded flavours, and by the real-life drum-kit's-next-door feel beat in 'Lost My Suica'; here the outdoors noises, the singing birds of evening and the whir of insects, are evocative of the track's eponymous story: losing a Suica card (one of Japan's numerous, regional travelcards) means walking through the pseudo-suburbs that blossom between Tokyo's main hubs, thus hearing the city differently—here is where the titles of these tracks meet their content perfectly, a contemporary urban idyll. Indeed with this in mind the album's title could refer to the organicity of these tracks, embedded in the real world: '404' refers to a missing webpage and the 'funeral' part, well, netdeath: becoming a web ghost.

So 'Sunday' is chilled, samples like colours melting into each other stream along with a sleepy feel. In 'Until Next Time' the music wobbles rapidly like eyes welling up, the samples plaintive, painting the thoughts you have after a goodbye. But it's not all rose-tinted: 'I Need an Adult' seems to signify, with its exorbitant trap-infused beat and dramatic icy tones, a twinge of despair, a sense of longing exuding from its cold booms. Amidst the warped pianos that sound like television in black-and-white with no remote controls, rotary dial telephones, floorboards and gas lighting, there is more. Stand-out and yes/no favourite '1992' sounds like a joint right out of Earthbound, 'Battle Against a Machine' to be exact, with its huge gloopy constructivist beat and cold-sleek sampling; 'Nobody' makes groovesome use of a funk sample, 'Doomed' weaves in MF Doom—'One For Rex' glosses futuristic with hollow synth melodies.

404 Funeral skips along for just twenty-one minutes of your time, each track just over or just under a minute long. But it is that exact brevity which makes Paisley's morsels of music so delectable. To conjure a feeling through music, any feeling, is impressive, but to do it in a matter of never much more than 100 seconds feels wonderful, a bagful of gems, a batch of cookies, sketches, a pile of postcards that etch images for us, evoke comfort or love or adventure or relaxation, that temporally, spatially send us elsewhere: time passing.




πŸ“ 
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Friday, 2 June 2017

🐣 MOOKHI — LACUNAE

We slide down this archaic manuscript of sound with the warm vintage crackle and the plink-plink-plink that speeds up into a dusty pulsar and becomes a constant, we slide and reach the end where we fly off a ramp and hurtle with a rushing whoosh into a vacancyof sky that's littered with a luscious collage of sounds looming and lilting. This is 'Lacunae' by Sydney producer Mookhi, a dose of sound that's intricate and intense, a tapestry of gleaming sounds from pealing violins and rivers of soft synth and flighty chimes, to harp sounds and robust piano, all in a plume of textured smoke, nebulous and narcotic swirling and diving and curling and writhing through a slalom of percussion that thumps with heartbeat bass and shines with sharp hi-hat sheafs and scathing abrasive virtuoso snares.

The dynamics of 'Lacunae' lie in its expert transitions: the beginning, the ramp and take-off, the initial swaying rhythm pockmarked with the reeling snare rolls and wide wheeling atmosphere with those three chords blasting out mistily, an expansive feeling; and then the mid-section where sampled voices and crunching outdoors found sounds jostle like snippets of memory; and then the sounds multiply and grow richer and resonate with wild gentleness; and it ends with those plink-plinking parts, just as it started. By this rise in intensity as it progresses, it's noticeable that crucially this track is marked by an urgency to go forward, with that persistent sample continuous from the beginning, with the impatient snare rolls, the increase in the thicketing sounds, yet it is veiled by a fog of the past – the quality of some of the sounds, the archaic record player crackle, the nostalgic warmth of it – so that the future though seemingly close at hand is out of reach.


  • πŸ”” Earlier this year Mookhi aka Olympia Henshaw released a quite well received project in the form of her Lost & Found EP. You can listen to that over on her SoundCloud.
  • πŸ”” 'Lacunae' is the plural of lacuna which means like a gap or unfilled space. It comes from Latin where it means hole or pit and is actually the diminutive form of lacus—that's lake.


πŸ“ 
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Wednesday, 25 March 2015

SUI ZHEN – MEGA DRIVE

Oooo-eeeeee, wow, so, this is supremely pretty. More than that it's scene-conjuring, evocative, heartbreaking, heartwarming, tear-inducing, smile-making – it's 'Mega Drive' by Becky Sui Zhen aka Sui Zhen (aka DJ Susan), a musicmaker and all-round atmosphere creator from Melbourne, Australia.

'Mega Drive' seems to call out from an unplaceable, nonexistent retro-futuristic crevasse deep in the music world – there is something otherworldly about it, a gracious gentle delicacy achieved by the mix of plaintive, unthreatening keyboard-demo beat and the endearing vocals, like insubstantial wisps of clouds making their way across a splashed-orange sunset sky, or like friendly ghosts trying to make contact. The very title is a conjuring of nostalgia: the Sega Mega Drive: symbol of lost youth for a generation torn between the analogue and the digital age.

Synth strings follow the vocal melody somewhat with effortless simplicity, still that beat gently blooping with its semi-tropical snips of sharp percussion, decayed bass rolling itself around the bottom end of the track with a reserved attitude, wobbling slightly like the blurred edges of memories that make you laugh and cry, the whole thing pockmarked with indistinct shouts of "hey!" rising up as if somebody's trying to wake you up from a dream.

The aesthetic Sui Zhen has employed here is one that seeps into your spirit, cradles your sense of self with a forlorn feeling, effuses the reverie of the past from a chasm of abstract memories. It's like… the sense of unutterable longing for childhood and all its beautiful accoutrements, its comfort and its wonder and the sense of time being elongated into a fantasy future as yet undisturbed and waiting to be discovered, happy days of innocence and simplicity. That's how I understand it anyway.




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Wednesday, 16 July 2014

ENTHEOGENESIS – ICE WATER [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Well well well, here's something new. It's from a Sydney-based producer who goes by the name of Entheogenesis. It's an interesting name that comes from the word "entheogen" – basically a synthesised or natural drug used in a "religious, shamanic, or spiritual context" (ty Wikipedia). But uh, that aside, let's take a look at the actual music of the musicmaker – in particular, the musicmaker's latest track 'Ice Water'.

Drenched in a glaze of tare-style deliciousness, the track is wet with sounds, totally fluid to a slo-down, narcotic degree. Percussion shimmers lovingly in bristling thickets where clockwork hi-hats dance with woodblocks and sharp metallic sounds. Add to this a serious set of kicks and sub-bass boomings, and you got yourself a beat. Decorate with an amalgamation of cold electronic sounds – seemingly arrhythmic soft chords and ambient murmurs – and leave to simmer in its own slow sway. Serve.

At only 1:28 it's short 'n' sweet, but it gives an idea of the kind of genreless experimental hip-hop-tilted psychoactive-substance-championing electronic stuff that Entheogenesis makes. For an even better idea, check out the debut EP, Vanity, downloadable at a name-yer-price basis on Bandcamp, released earlier this year via Brighton (UK) label Shimmy Records.

Entheogenesis (you realise it's a long, weirdly difficult-to-type name when you type it a lot) is also part of the Sydney-based 穏便 Gentle Records collective, dedicated to releasing beats from local talent. Most recently, Ethneo (that's better) also played at elsewhere in Surfers Paradise for the 3rd instalment of the very-cool-looking LILT – self-described as "Beats & electronica audio/visual adventure." You can read about LILT003 over at Raw Ink.

  • Just in case you forgot or didn't know, you can download 'Ice Water' for free. I believe the little download arrow is on the player above. Peace.



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Wednesday, 23 April 2014

FAILR – GAVE UP

BOM… CRRK… BOM–BOM–CRRK… It's embarrassing enough just imagining myself beatboxing out-loud and in front of people, but now I'm worried that I haven't typed it right – is it onomatopoeically correct? Yeah just so you know it's supposed to be like, this huge sparse beat. Sigh, anyway, that's how I feel after listening to this song.

What song? Well it is a song by a person called Failr, also named Warwick (the real name of this Sydney-based person), and the song is called 'Gave Up'. It gets its name from the cyclical sample used throughout the track, smooth silky vocals contrasting against the hard thudding beats (could you not tell from my literal beatboxing?) which are the very effective bedrock to this track, each kick a veritable blockbuster right hook, each snare a scathing slap. These play around with sombre lounge-esque piano chords, soft and warm, giving a lethargic attitude to the track that fits its defeatist title.

What I like about this is not only its thumping drums – punctuated by skittering hi-hats, and later on mobilising themselves double-time into an uptempo house rhythm – its hard style, but its simplicity: at its heart this is drums, piano, sample – a triumvirate of noise. Of course, there is a little more going on than just this, the fizzing white noise flapping ominously throughout the second half, the just-discernable bassline. With that in mind, you'll also notice that nothing is really repeated or looped so much – repetition falls by the wayside here for more of an experiment with different parts to the song, keeps things interesting.

This comes from Failr's first collection of sounds, the 5-track Lark EP – here he plays with sampling as well as with this style of satisfyingly punchy beats; personally I thought 'Gave Up' was the best example. The name of the EP is quite fitting, as larks (the bird) in literature symbolise daybreak which metaphorically ties in with the "dawn" of this project; on the other hand, it is an old-fashioned thing in Chinese culture for larks to be taught to mimic the sounds of other birds, thus tying in with the sampling side of things; still further, "a lark" is synonymous with "a laugh" or "some fun", so that could work too. Anyway! That's that.



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Tuesday, 18 March 2014

YES/NO GUEST MIX 011 :: MELTY

Last week I fell in love with this song. Maybe I fell in lust with it. Maybe I just really liked it. Whichever it was, I wrote about it. It was called 'Destiny' and it was by a new artist called MELTY. Melty. I can imagine only cheese on toast, only croque monsieurs and madames, only dripping nacho gloop, only pizza-topping aching stretch.

Anyway… MELTY was kind enough to create a wonderful guest mix for me and, well, it's a celebration of bass and darkness and attitude and I think you'll like it.

A particular and nice surprise: Nestled between the overdistorted bass of Exhalted.'s 'VAPOURGRAVE 2001' and its creepy lo-fi vocal sample "There's no such thing as miracles…" ("…Or the supernatural, only cutting-edge technology" – sampling the speech of Revolver Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid 2), and the apocalyptic ghetto house track 'Bass rattle stars out the sky' (it's all in the name), is an exclusive from MELTY. Called 'Untitled' for the moment, it flutters with golden vocal samples against a bruised background of bass before pulsing with electrified waves of synth, lapping gloriously against your ears as the beat skitters addictively onward.

It ends with an explosive remix of 2PAC's 'Fuck Em All' by fellow Sydney-dweller, IMCHILD, which glides effortlessly into the shadowy creep of 'Get Yah Head Bust' by SpaceGhostPurrp. All in all, a mix that stuffs the trappish underground quakes of footwork, ghetto house (WHATEVER), into your ears like kilos of cheese into a bulging panino.


T R A C K L I S T :

  1. NGUZUNGUZU – Skycell
  2. Ryan Hemsworth – Slurring (Baauer Remix)
  3. Lil Ugly Mane – Cup Fulla Beetlejuice
  4. Exhalted. – VAPOURGRAVE 2001
  5. MELTY – Untitled (Unreleased)
  6. Death Grips – Bass rattle stars out the sky
  7. Lil Buddha – Return Of Jah
  8. 2PAC – Fuck Em All (IMCHILD Remix)
  9. SpaceGhostPurrp – Get Yah Head Bust


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Tuesday, 13 August 2013

TOUCH SENSITIVE – PIZZA GUY



UPDATE: 'Pizza Guy', after being the most Shazam'd thing ever in the UK thanks to appearing in a Very.co.uk advert, is being re-released by Future Classic on 26th July 2015 〜❤️️

Just heard this song on the radio and had to write about it. I just... yeah. I really like it. When they first said the name on the radio I was like, a bit confused. The first thing I thought of was an actual touch sensitive pizza guy, i.e. a pizza guy who is touch sensitive. In what way, I do not know. Perhaps it could be a comment on how everything, even pizza delivery, can be done through a touch screen on a phone - so in a way, the actual pizza guy who delivers it is himself "touch sensitive". But it wasn't anything as poetic as that. No. This is just a song called 'Pizza Guy' by a Sydney-based producer called Touch Sensitive.

Now that we've cleared that up, let's continue on our little jaunt. The first thing I liked about this song is the majorly major atmosphere that has been created with these sparkly synths all working together - one playing a simple arpeggio, one mapping out the bassline with a plunging funk that cannot be denied, one bopping like electric popcorn, one glassily jutting out through the rest like an ephemeral spike of sound. In that way it kind of gives me the same buzz that I got from people like College, Electric Youth and Kavinsky (to an extent) - the connection here is a 1980s "classic" aesthetic. Cheesy but meaningful - long walks and knowing glances. Do you know where I'm going with this? It could be in Drive, basically.

And with this wonderfully stylised video, you can tell that's the sound that has been chased like a dream and - I would say - rather successfully attained. Enjoy the sounds and sights.

What else I enjoy is the vocal sample. It is enjoyable. I love it when samples are twisted and turned - played with as if they were another instrument in the song. These dynamic cuts of the sample are supported very nicely by an equally dynamic powerhouse of a beat. Can't really tire of a beat like that. Meaty snare - heavy kick with a tinge of synth. Perfect tempo as well. Perfect for head-bopping whilst looking at things on the internet. That is what I used to do as my job, basically, and all the hours in that office were made all the sweeter thanks to songs like this one, songs that fall somewhere between sit-down-and-chill and get-up-and-boogie. But as I said in the beginning, it's that electric nostalgia that pulses through the atmosphere of this song that I can't quite get enough of.

It is a single off a very short EP of the same name (Pizza Guy) released on the effortlessly cool Future Classic. Anyway - Touch Sensitive will be closely watched from here on in.

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