TAY NOEL — LAST TIME

⌾ LISTEN TO TAY NOEL, LAST TIME ⌾

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With its beat echoing in a collage of ticks and booms as if caught in a looping memory, 'Last Time' is a vessel of tender emotion tumbled along by the multifaceted rhythm of time. Sultry chords paint a soundscape with muted synth glow, a picked melody adding a gentle delicacy to the scene.

All the while, percussion rattles, cymbals whisper metallics into the air, a lone, full-bodied snare explodes in the near-distance laden with reverb. Created by Virginia producer Tay NoeL, 'Last Time' is a gleaming marvel of measured, minimal production.

"This song came from a personal experience," the producer tells yes/no via email. "It was inspired from a mutual breakup between me and a girl before I shipped off to the Navy."

A hollow synth melody that calls out every now and then, a hollow, flute-esque R&B-flavoured beacon that stretches out slowly above it all. It's a sound that summons the spiritual aesthetic of old-school lovesongs, but in its descending notes, its hint of a mournful tone, it becomes emotive.

"When I create I need to have an emotion in my mind, either from personal or what I believe the song is trying to show me," he adds.

"In better words, I speak my mind and emotions through my music."

The unpretentious simplicity of 'Last Time' — and indeed many of the instrumental soundtracks to emotion and experience to be found on Tay NoeL's album The Vibez: Chill Instrumentals — calls to mind the vaporwave sensitivity to scenes, times, places, fantasy visions, nostalgia. But there's one presiding difference: this music remains gloriously rooted in and inspired by reality.

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• 🔔 You can stream and/or download The Vibez: Chill Instrumentals, Tay NoeL's collection of instrumentals, over on Bandcamp.

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☟ Tay NoeL Internet Presence ☟
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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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☟ rocco Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ traktrain

☟ wilkjayy Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 NSAY MADA — UNDER COVER

The vocals here are so softly done so falling over everything mistily like a veil, the long curls of its silken tones unfurling, whispers into the night air, the nocturnal desire effusing as from a smoke machine at an otherdimensional disco, how it is slowly serpentine like this, how it coils with the leisure and languor of looming lust, the low tones of Nsay Mada and her fluttering highs rich with feeling and focus, fragranced by its textures, pastel spray paint above the neon crunch of the throwback synth that frames this track perpetually in another realm of time where midnight is dark yet chequered with colours and promise of something more.

'Under Cover' keeps to this juddering syncopation, the clang of its electro mainstay providing the foundation, the simple alternating beat with the trebly kick and the shhff shaker shifting sand spray can snare (allegedly Joy Division achieved a similar drum quality in 'She's Lost Control' by spraying an aerosol can into a microphone), the sparse hi-hat chit-chat with the open sharpness echoing blissfully, drum machine tom tumbling occasionally, augmenting the sparse feel of the track, with the modulating synth, the hazy nebulous chords, the icy pings, all decorating and helping to augment that late night feeling with starlight apartment block window twinkles and slow hum of traffic taillights extending into night. Still, that voice, "under cover, under cover," this refrain unusual and fragmented, satin sheen on this sparkling bed of sounds.

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• 🔔 'Under Cover' was produced by Cyenna Bay. You can catch more from Nsay Mada on SoundCloud.

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☟ Nsay Mada Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter

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MIRROR KISSES – GENIUS [VIDEO]

Is this a photograph of the young George Clanton, aka (or at least the brains behind) Mirror Kisses? I think it might be. Now, with that kinda cleared up we can move forward. Who is this George Clanton? He is a musicmaker from Richmond, Virginia (USA innit) who creates hazy nostalgic vaporwavey tracks under the alias ESPRIT 空想 but with Mirror Kisses – a more real, less dreamy, less idealistic project – there's something quite different going on. Maybe there's a similar sense of nostalgia, but that's where comparisons end: this is truly heartfelt: a live, wriggling entity with 80s aesthetics, punk energy and a romantic sensibility, seemingly miles away from the bedroom lassitude of ESPRIT 空想.

The perfect opportunity to show this off arrives now, in the form of the brand-spanking-new video for 'Genius' – taken from Mirror Kisses' album of last year, Heartbeat, it's a brilliant example of the sights and sounds that go with this exciting project. In the video we see shots of the man himself singing live at a show in Washington DC, alternating with two guys painting a wall black and then erasing what they've done with white paint. "I didn't even know he [Robb Payne] was making it," said George himself. "It was shot at a show in Washington DC and a couple of the guys who were there made a painting for the song." Luckily, or maybe it was something that was just meant to be – either way it worked, and it suited the song: "I think it's really cool how they make it and then erase it," he said, explaining, "I thought it was very fitting to the spirit of the whole song about second-guessing yourself but still doing what you love in the end."

So without further ado…

It's George's favourite song from the album and you can see why. It's a corker of a song, a cracker even, one that bulges with as much drunk shuffle-dance-inducing sway as it does heartfelt emotion. Thin flanging chords keep their sombre time above the slow 80s-style lo-fi drums with syncopated hi-hats, whilst ear-pinching icicles of high-register synth strings pierce the air above the heavy muffle of the jouncing distorted bass squelch. But what makes this so real, not that the music isn't dead nice on its own, is the vocals, the voice of George, an aching rich baritone that simmers with just enough reverb, crooning lines like "I know… I'm no genius / But when you say those things / It makes me feel so dumb" that seem summoned from a deep well of emotion, gently echoing into the atmosphere.

NB. If you ask me, it sounds kinda like a slowed-down version of 'Last Christmas' by Wham (minus any Christmas-theme ofc) which ain't a bad thing at all. It shows that the 80s synthpop influences are there, well and truly, and they're blissfully endearing.

• In honour of this fancy new video, the Heartbeat LP is now available for FREE.
• A little birdie told me there will be new Mirror Kisses stuff soon, so GET ACQUAINTED with pre-existing stuff (see first bullet point).

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SUBURBAN LIVING ALWAYS EYES // COOPER'S DREAM EP

Ah yeah I like these vibes a lot. Perfect name. Now here's something I can seriously get on board with - Suburban Living. My my, if there's anybody who knows about suburban living it's a man from the suburbs (still IN the damn suburbs). But I can imagine that an all-American, apple-pie, movie-soundtrack suburb is rather different from this English suburb by the Thames. This music actually doesn't really fit here. Round here it's garage. That's the soundtrack for this place. Pretend-you're-urban kind of thing you know. But ENOUGH. This ain't about me.

This is about, as I said, Suburban Living - the musical moniker for the real world person, Wesley Bunch (pictured above). So yeah maybe it's all the American culture that we absorb absent-mindedly over here, but there seems to be this borrowed nostalgia around the sun-drenched American suburbs of yesteryear, a lived-in feeling that makes us yearn for a dream that we never had about an ephemeral place to which we've never been. Ah yes. All those yesterdays we never had. Ahem.

It's that kind of feeling that this song, 'Always Eyes', evokes. Yeah with its jangle-echoing guitars that seem lighter than air and the thin reverbed vocals, it's pretty and ambient, driven along by brash 80s-style drums. Delicate synths clothe the verse of the song like water on oil. But it's synths that make the chorus fun. It's down to these that give the chorus its catchy vocal hook that belies its touching lyrical content, such as, "Why did I wait, why did I wait for you, why did I waste my time?" The breakdown at like the start of the last quarter of the song is great - joyful - complete with epic drum rolls.

Lovely isn't it? Well nice. This song comes as Mr Bunch's latest release off the back off the tantalisingly named Cooper's Dream EP. And yes, it was inspired - in part at least - by the indefatigable cult TV series Twin Peaks. Ah Cooper, you and your zany ways.

From first song - honest, light-diatribe of 'I Don't Fit In' - it's an outing that, if you like 'Always Eyes', you'll enjoy quite a lot I can imagine. Stop-start hi-hats and acrobatic bass in 'Give Up' lead up to its climax washed with guitar distortion, whilst 'Prom' is a synth-fest of 80s proportions, punchy drum machines below simmering synths. 'Float In Clouds' gallops along, stopping for the verse where space in the sound and occasional guitar strums do float on air, then gallops onward. The ballad of title track 'Cooper's Dream' is spookily reminiscent of Twin Peaks in its sound; slower than the others and somewhat more emotive because of this reason, it could be the best track. Maybe I'm biased. Have a listen.

Dream pop, thy name is Suburban Living.

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