🐣 FOUR TET — BABY (FT. ELLIE GOULDING)

⌾ LISTEN TO FOUR TET, BABY ⌾

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Two things stand out quite a lot in this Four Tet track. First of all, the chopped Ellie Goulding vocals are a surprise — a welcome one. Giving 'Baby' its title, the samples litter the track with UK garage flavourings, what with the deft angular cuts, the intentional tinniness, the warmth of the words. The general minimalism of 'Baby' — with its ambient gossamer synths and its shuffling '00s beat — nudge yet more wintry garage aesthetic into your auditory cortex.

Secondly, the midsection. The beat falls away and we are left with gleaming synths, resonating slowly like the radiant heat of a sunny day on tarmac; the glass of a shop window glittering, swaying trees in a city park. What happens here is the emergence of that garage sound into a leafier part of town, the clearing of a green space in a forest of blocks and buildings; birdsong and glowing ambience, reminiscent of Japanese "environmental music" — ambient, but with added flora and fauna for full outdoorsy immersion.

Percussive and driving, warm and emotive, 'Baby' paves a way into inner city paradise, juggling beats, ambient and the sounds of nature for a city walk that leaves the rush, the traffic, for private reflections of the day in a public park.

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• 🔔 Purchase 'Baby' as a single. It's taken from Sixteen Oceans, Kieran Hebden's 10th studio album as Four Tet, released 16th March, 2020 via Hebden's own Text Records which you can purchase on Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Four Tet Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia ⚘

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BROOKLYN83 – STORM IN A TEACUP + PRINCE OF TENNIS REMIX

You know sometimes you just gotta do something? Just gotta do it. Like, oh a piece of cheesecake just appeared in front of me, gotta eat it. Or, wow there's a £10 note on the floor, gotta pick it up. And in this instance, I just got sent this music and listened to it, gotta write about it! That's how it works. But FYI you shouldn't be as instantly self-gratifying like this when it comes to immoral stuff – please stay moral and loving and nice towards each other.

Anyway, this music appeared all the way from Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. It's just one song, one song by the mysterious Brooklyn83 (just this one song is on their SoundCloud, and they have like no followers, no links either), with a remix of that song by fellow Prague duo Prince of Tennis, their name obvs inspired by manga/anime The Prince of Tennis. The song is called 'Storm In A Teacup' after the fun idiom that basically means making a big deal over nothing (synonymous with tempest in a teapot, tempest in a teacup, storm in a cream bowl, tempest in a glass of water, storm in a wash-hand basin and storm in a glass of water, according to Wikipedia).

And it's that phrase precisely which refrains throughout the song, heavily vocodered with cybernetic aesthetics – a light sprinkling of vocals to season the track, tangled and bristling with shuffling shaking beats that sway between thudding kick and cracking snare in a perfect rendition of UK garage sensibilities, yet budding with the rhythmic addiction of footwork. Bass stays low and subby but there are moments where it's thrown out like a lasso to the higher ends of the spectrum and pulled back with kinetic whiplash effect. Weird and lush, it's happily surprising and shivery with sonic nuances that you can't help but eat up.

Prince of Tennis's remix is a much noisier affair, a sort of indie-dance-pop with steely and robust bass guitar driving the song in a fragmentary fashion; brash explosive electro drums make up the semi-brutal dancefloor-friendly beat; the refrain "Storm… in a teacup, in a teacup" is treated well alongside smart pulses of synthpop chord and heart-popping copter-like chops. Two surprises in one. Two very different songs. Both unique and affecting enough to get excited about. Check out their other stuff.

• It's available for a free download if you like it CLICK RIGHT HERE or go to Prince of Tennis's SoundCloud (link below innit)

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Listen to Brooklyn83 on SoundCloud

Listen to Prince of Tennis on SoundCloud
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Watch Prince of Tennis on YouTube

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RANDOM HERO – MORE, MORE, MORE // CLOUD NINE

These are the sultry and let's say quite frankly nicely addictive sounds of nowhere-based musicmaker Random Hero. With their SoundCloud back catalogue full to the brim with bootleg remixes and regular remixes and bootlegs by themselves, this up-and-coming artist has just – well, I say just, but it was over two weeks ago – uploaded two original songs. Both are different, yet both contain lashings of samples, positively crowded with the sounds of yore in glossy modern surroundings.

Perhaps inspired by the success or the widespread nature of future funk or the phantom adherents of vaporwave, there are, like I said, a load of samples in both. The first, however 'More, More, More' is packed with ghost noises from three sonic relics: 'More, More, More' (you coulda guessed that kinda though) by Andre True Connection, 'Mr. Funky Samba' by Banda Black Rio, and 'I'm Your Boogie Man' by KC & The Sunshine Band.

Obviously, the overriding sample here, the refrain, the riff, is the iconic "More, more, more… set to a swaying disco beat – shuffling and shaking along with slow intensity – stuttering oooo's and looped trumpets shoot through like a mist of funk as huge bass booms with a muffled synth squelch underneath it all. It's sunny and carefree, looking back to mould a new vision for the future, melding the happy sounds of these three songs into one seamless entity.

It's in 'Cloud Nine' where things are a little bit different. Although it could still be called future funk, because by its nature, its sounds – the fluttering rhythm guitar chords, the keyless octave-skipping bassline, the jittering lead funk guitar – it is extremely funky. Funk funk funk. But there is something else in its up-tempo sounds, too fast for disco, but just about catching the tailcoat of early 00's pop – the type inspired by UK garage.

When dance music spoke of getting home to get ready, still innocent to the actual act of dancing and going out and getting completely drunk, with a sensibility for sugarcoating the whole affair; dancing in the mirror, traffic jams in the fading evening summer sun, speaking to friends on the chunky ancestors of cordless phones, gaudy clothes-ridden bedrooms.

All in all, what more can I say than what I've already said? These are instantly likeable songs, ones that take old sounds and frame them in glossy new surroundings. Random Hero has offered up these two very well produced morsels, like perfectly barbecued meat, for us and I can confirm that they smell damn good and they're tasty, too: simple, not overcomplicated, and done with style.

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Listen to Random Hero on SoundCloud

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SAINT PEPSI WE BELONG TOGETHER

It's basically like this guy just cannot stop making good music. Like, it's literally impossible. Who am I talking about? I'm talkin' 'bout Saint Pepsi (real life dude: Ryan DeRobertis). His style seems to be changing with pretty much every new song he releases and that is not a bad thing whatsoever. Not only does it show versatility in his own creative process, switching effortlessly from the emo-trap-wave of Fader-premiered breakthrough hit 'Unhappy' to the urban grooves of this lovely number: 'We Belong Together'.

The title gives it away, but this is basically a remix of Mariah Carey's POP CLASSIC of the same name. Mariah Carey is one of my favourite ladies of pop, so this song arrived as pretty much a bonus package for me.

It's the garage flavour of this song that really gets me though. There's a I'm-getting-ready-to-go-out-tonight-and-I'm-gonna-look-fabulous or maybe I'm-in-a-rush-to-get-home-and-I'm-stuck-in-traffic-but-I'm-dancing-in-my-car-so-it's-ok kinda vibe to the itchy hi-hat shakiness of the driving beat - an instant late night classic with all the trimmings. A jangly snippet of funky disco guitar adds a lovely flourish of spice to the tune - calling to mind Saint Pepsi's own roots in sampling classic-if-obscure disco and funk tunes to massively fun effect (when I first wrote about him, for instance) and also his past and current contributions to label/collective KEATS//COLLECTIVE - as does the ubiquitous but always nice to hear "Woo! Yeah!" James Brown sample and the occasional group chant of "PARTY!" - is this EVER a party song!

Then there's his treatment of the sample. As soon as Mariah's vocals come in, it's clear that this is like... an instant hit. If you don't like it then I dunno you must just like a certain type of music or something - because anyone with OPEN ears can hear the goodness here. Yes, it's from a classic song itself, but the way they have been treated, the different landscape, the new imagined vehicle for Mariah Carey's voice as ultra-urban and retro-futurist, are inventive and fun. Chopping that same sample up and throwing it around at the end like confetti is just the icing on the cake. Love it. Who doesn't?

This, by the way, comes from a compilation by entity STYLSS; it's the latest in a series of monthly collections of songs by likeminded artists: Suicide Pact. This is Volume 9 of that btw.

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