🐣 TOLEDO — BATH

⌾ LISTEN TO TOLEDO, BATH ⌾

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For a song that has a glistening, sunny feel to it, all the deliciously recorded acoustic guitar organic string feeling – so close it's in your ear, played right next to you – the drums gently rapping out a woodshed craft workshop rhythm in trebling splendour and woody leaves-after-rain clarity; for all its harmony, there is disharmony in TOLEDO's 'Bath'. It's much more than typical lo-fi indie pop — for one thing, it's not lo-fi.

The lyrics, sung warm and layered, joyous, tell a different story. The first line raises the curtain: "So / lose my mind and lose my hold / nowhere to run to." There's the refraining imagery of "red in my eyes." And then there is the effectiveness of contrast between the chorus' last line and the second verse's first:

... Such fun to be young and alive

I / saw the doctor when I was nine
For all the anger

The words in speak of losing control, instability – and not just a moment of it, but a history, a tendency – whilst the music itself, with its rose-tinted gleaming guitar, exists as a simultaneous remedy, the feel of a diary entry when something is out of your system maybe: a way to exorcise emotion painting it with this comforting, nostalgic sound. Or else it is the haze of help and healthy thinking in light of looking back on darker days.

And ushering us into and out of the Brooklyn duo's reminiscence is a drum machine; rather than organic, real drums we have this cutesy, childlike detachment, the tumbling of miniature building blocks into painful recollections.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Bath' by TOLEDO's for as little as $1 on Bandcamp. You can also stream it there as many times as you like.

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📠
☟ TOLEDO Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ songkick ⚘ spotify

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🎥 CHAI — CURLY ADVENTURE

In the video for Nagoya-based band CHAI's 'Curly Adventure', curly hair literally becomes synonymous with adventure; the protagonist as animated by LA artist Sean Solomon daydreams the lyrics of the four-piece's thunderous ode to curly hair.

"Long long time ago, my hair is troubling me…" the song begins with singer Mana spinning these hair-based lyrics composed by bassist (and art director) Yuuki.

With the fizzing-crash of the drums alongside a galloping funk of bass, plasma watery synth shoots through this track distorted and fluid all at the same time, a storm of summer-summoning sound; half '90s-remembered sparkly sun-soaked jam, half explosive reaction against the slump of frustration.

Lines in CHAI's song like "curly hair: that is amazing" and "curly hair means being yourself" can resonate with anyone having to alter themselves for the sake of uniformity. And this is reflected in Solomon's video for 'Curly Adventure', with its carefree spirit, popping colours, winding roads and undersea treasure hunts.

Watch it below, obviously.

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• 🔔 'Curly Adventure' is taken from CHAI's 2019 album Punk.

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📠
☟ CHAI Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ LINE ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia

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🐣 CLAWS AI — 777

⌾ LISTEN TO 777 BY CLAWS AI ⌾

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Fully formed like a pile of earth you'd pat down as a kid till it was no longer dirt but a solid construct, '777' is all about its earthy substrates. Musicmaker CLAWS AI ensures that it not only goes full throttle, but that the track has solid foundations. So naturally the bass drum thumps and the punchy, punky bass guitar shoots through it like an electric current, screeching distortion leaving scorch marks over everything. It's a cross between heavy industry and discovering you've got superpowers, but there's more to '777' than inspiring noise.

"I sat down to write a simple song about a girl," CLAWS AI tells us over email. But it became more than that. "I am convinced the past few weeks of my life were steered by divine intervention. You know the feeling when you meet someone you know could change your life? Maybe fate had me and her intertwined and I got what I always wanted. You have to consider that it might be no coincidence."

This – and the history of making "mindless rock songs," as he describes it – gives CLAWS AI the perfect grounding to create something that scores top marks in somersaulting its way into your psyche. A stun grenade of sound, it's not only the power of the production in this track that immobilises you: it's the questioning lyrics that inject the intrigue, and the humanity in the explosive desperate vocals, that truly gives this track the nitro it possesses.

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• 🔔 Head on over to CLAWS AI's SoundCloud for more music.

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📠
☟ CLAWS AI Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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