When the stars align in breakcore, when the drum fills are scattered in all the right places and appear as seasonal flowers, when the instrumentation sweeps across the soundscape like swathes of cloud-piercing sunshine, when samples pop up like birds flitting between shrubs and treetops, when the bass keeps a simple, effective untiring line as the patterns of planted beds and geometric pathways — wait, this is a garden analogy! And it's one that we are employing to describe 'Ocean Acrobats' by producer CHEAP LOVE HOTEL.
“I love gaming so I make music to help me concentrate and put me in my zone while playing. I don't like dancing and I don't like yoga but I like meditative soundscapes,” the artist writes in their bio. There is no doubt that this music is inspired by the current thread of “PS1 low poly beats” aesthetic that has emerged from the pools of nostalgia gathering in game-related reminiscences of the early 2000s.
Plagued by prolificacy, they allegedly have “so many unreleased tunes ... that my friends had to intervene and started helping me release stuff.” While their entire output is worthy of listening and re-listening, 'Ocean Acrobats' has that meditative feel that puts it on par with ambient music; there is a beat, sure, quite a bustling one, but even this becomes nothing more than a rhythmic texture as the elements in the track begin to melt into one another and into the background. Ambience achieved.
In 'DO NOT LOOK AWAY' Pittsburgh-based producer and visual artist FLOOR BABA (Jesse Martin) takes us on a journey to the suburbs where all is not what it seems. Well, it's more than seeming not what it is. Panning over low-poly renders of greenery-lined streets, playgrounds and parking lots, we see trees fragmented in post-exploded stillness, trucks chewed by digital rot, skies sinking into corroded community pools.
Over this, with no regard to x or y axes, stomp faceless figures remiscent of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask-era ReDead (for those unfamiliar, see here). As the title suggests, in Martin's animated illustration we are privy to the things we usually look away from — in the melted, corroded visuals we sense the unease that lies behind apparent perfection, while the ReDead-esque figures symbolise those who trample unchecked over the green grass and picket fences and, by extension, over the lives of others.
It's all soundtracked perfectly. Cricket-like chirps and destructed background fuzz add supplementary percussion the boom-tick of a forboding beat, while echoing detuned synth vox flutter unsettlingly on a bed of disarmingly warm chords that move in impresonal lounge-flavoured progression. In the final third, we enter a quasi-West Coast groove with a flute refraining a simple melody over clanging synthetic plucked strings. Martin mixes ambient textures with a more attention-forward dynamic to create an atmosphere that is at once detached but invested in the accompanying scenes.
✧
🔔
For more FLOOR BABA fun, you might want to check out their most recent album waking, self-described "experiments in soft music" that are full of incredibly pleasing noises and soundscapes. You can do this by tapping or clicking here to move your digital attention to Bandcamp.
Tokyo-based singer and producer Cuushe (aka Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi) is summoning the ancient past with this slice of new music. 'Faded Corners' features her tradebmark vocals, a textural combination of a far-off call and close-quarters whisper, as they spin words based on 'Asobi wo sen to ya~', a famous poem that was included in the Ryōjin Hishō, a 12th-century anthology of imayō — lyrical poetry that was intended to be sung with music (and dancing).
It's an masterclass in atmosphere-making — the soothing ambient wash of chords, the urgent hush of the vocals — but it's also an excercise in creating a sense of propulsion and a vehicle of dance without actually using a constant beat (aside from the odd deep, bassy thud of a kick). The overlapping rhythms combine to create a complex footwork-adjacent web of energy, extra rhythm provided by the muffled splash of syncopated synth chords.
The stirring strings and plumes of bass, the scratching, glittering, richly textured soudscape reflects the violence and beauty that comes with the preservation of ancient culture through the centuries. Pages tear, fires burn, people forget, and yet scholars record, artists revive — marvellously mirrored in the dense yet flighty crescendo of 'Faded Corners', like a sky ripped asunder.
The single arrives with bonus remixes. Flau label boss aus takes the track to the boundaries of a frosty realm in his 'reprise', waves of ambient synth washing through a minimal landscape with cascading clusters of bleeping synths and snippets of harsh noise, ending with intense destructed glimmers of sound.
Elsewhere there's a chilled, almost New Age vibe to the remix by Korean duo Salamanda, complete with slow, deeply blooping drums spinning a relaxed groove. Melati ESP, on the other hand, makes things propulsive with a bouncing beat and tropical approach to its bubbling collection of iridiscent synths.
🔔
'Faded Corners' by Cuushe is out now! It is available to download digitally from Flau's Bandcamp, or else you can purchase the CD, giving you access to a CD-only track called 'Tsuki to Sakana'.
New music from Gold Panda alert. It's called '222', which is fun because the song is also two-minutes-two-seconds long. It's a song of two halves, or thereabouts. We begin our journey into the minutiae-filled world of Gold Panda (aka the human Derwin Schlecker) with a whirl of dynamically wobbly, out-of-tune chords and masterfully cut glossy vocal samples sitting between them like half-said sentences.
At around the 1:11 mark it becomes a rapid fire stream of what may be guessed to be koto strings, the detail and design of it all underpinned by a minimalist garage shuffle, and occasional bass boops driving a groove like a gossamer stake into a patch of tofu-soft ground.
But that's not all. Alongside this single we get '0.2', like a coda to the strings that came before, except this time stuttering and decorated with a pitched-down melody, gradually swimming in hefty reverb and a touch of distortion. Buy the end, the sttuttering glitches have become the tickings of a machine, the hands of a clock; angst meets ambient. Together these two tracks present a well-studied soundtrack to everyday living, the movement and the stillness alike.
🔔
This slice of new music from Gold Panda is available to own physically on a 6" transparent PVC lathe-cut disc, but you must buy it to possess it. Bandcamp is the place to go for all your purchasing options, which also includes a digital download.
🔔
The art though. That shade of purple, more a lilac or lavender, really hits. The photo (taken by GP himself) of the abandoned kei van next to those half-toppled plastic crates gives you a good idea of the imagery that you should hold in your mind's eye when listening to these pieces of music.
It's time for some new music from Lindsay Lowend, the human Detroit-dweller, educator and game composer, Tony Mendez. Differently from his recent releases, the chiptune-heavy Chiptunes 2022 (clue's in the name) and the demoscene-dedicated Nectarine (also released in 2022), the focus on this EP is a real instrument: the guitar. It's appeared in his high-energy frenetic VGM-flavoured compositions before — LL 2020 - Volume 3, for example — but never with such prominence as to be the crux of the release itself.
That's where Braddock Run is different. Named possibly after a tiny little river in Pennsylvania, or maybe not, the five-track EP is characterised by the same Lindsay Lowend lyricism, all those refraining melodies and addictive, looping progressions — take the splashy chords in the calypso-inflected 'Smokestacks', a sunny number that also retains the emotive soft synth goodness that Mendez is known for. Little avenues of guitar work with the synth, different melodies folded into each other, perhaps most noticeable on the virtuoso, math-leaning melodies that skip and skitter in 'Blue Nun'.
High reverb on the synths give a gossamer backdrop to tracks on Braddock Run, providing a suitably seasonal scattering of frost and fog to the atmosphere. 'Höfner' displays this nicely, with a stutter of sharp synths and a repeating tract of delayed guitar disappearing as if down a sparkling wintry lane into the low, sheltered hills beyond. We even get a taste of outdoors on opener 'Horseshoe Crab' with its crispy field recordings. Mendez is no stranger to field recordings; his redubs can be found on Vimeo, where he once uploaded an exercise in foley in the form of redubbing environmental noises in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Contrasting with the cool temperatures, but wholly coexisting with them if not codependent on them entirely, is the warmth of indoors. You can't be cosy without the cold. It evokes a table set with breakfast items, a pluming mug of coffee, a steamed-up window with a vista of some hivernal scene.
The thudding rounded tones of the beat throughout provides this — especially the slightly distorted drums in title track (and final song) 'Braddock Run', crackling like glowing hearth-bound firewood — as does the bass, creating unobtrustive grooves like a quilted coat. Simplicity rather than elaboration in the beat-and-bass foundations provides the stable conditions to press pause on your day and be caught in the music.
There's a sense of end-of-the-day resolution, a kind of sunset finality, on the EP's closer, the meldoy skipping upwards but falling back with melancholy-tinged contentment. The guitar on this track exemplifies the guitar on the entire EP, the melodies affectionately layered over each other, each a copy but differing just so. Compare it with 'Horseshoe Crab', with its introductory feel, its Animal Crossing gentleness.
While the feel of Braddock Run may be more "real" than Mendez's previous endeavours, the sense of everyday escapism, of familiar fantasies, is heightened with his command of the fretboard, working with synthetic elements to create a composite daydream of chilled — and chilly — proportions.
⌾
🔔
Listen to Lindsay Lowend's Braddock Run EP all you like over on Bandcamp. You can even buy it on a name-your-price basis.
🔔
The cover photo for the EP is by Detroit-based artist and designer Nick Tilma, who also designs some wonderful furniture.
Seattle producer Shelf Nunny aka Christian Gunning first came to our attention way back in 2013 — namely it was via 'About The Boy', a collaborative track between him and Berlin-based artist Eriko Toyoda. It was a vibe.
A decade and several releases later (via labels such as Chicago-based Palettes and Seattle's own Hush Hush Records), not to mention remixes from the likes of Kidkanevil (“who heavily inspired + shaped my sound,” Gunning says), his style of experimental beat-making remains addictively luscious.
With more than just a nod to ambient music and field recordings, his latest track 'Cascade Glide' begins trickles with natural-meets-synthetic minutiae from the outset. Synth bleeps and bloops ping and warp in the neardistance, clockwork ticks and mechanical clacks keeping time, fuzzy steps crunching on ground begin proceedings. It's like field recording if you were capturing sounds somewhere like Green Hill Zone, for example. Sonic has long sprinted through, leaving only the swaying grass and empty loops.
It morphs from this quiet, thoughtful beatscape, flying through cotton wool skies into something less pinpoint-detail, more dynamic loud-and-quiet festivities with stuttering chords and bold sections of dead air. It's a track that's equal parts chilled and exhilarating, study beats reimagined — a daydream worked into being by a novel approach to beat-led incidental music of the modern age.
⌾
🔔
'Cascade Glide' is taken from Pronoia, Shelf Nunny's upcoming “concept album about the opposite of paranoia”, scheduled for release on 26th January; grab it on Bandcamp.
E.M.M.A., aka producer, label owner and person Emma Davies, has intrigued us as a musicmaker since her astounding 'Mindmaze'. A mingling of huge beats and medieval, dungeon synth-adjacent melodies, it was certainly well received here (it was a moment).
But, of course, Davies has done more than blended UK-flavoured beats with fugues to create Renaissance riddims. Years, various projects, two albums (Blue Gardens and 2020's Indigo Dream) and an EP (Change My Mind, released this year) have passed since. Along the way she's crafted commercial and artistic soundtracks, providing audio backdrops for brands such as Gucci, for example, and a selection of short films
Davies is one of the masterminds behind Producergirls, a "beginners' music production workshop for girls" (currently on pause). In a previous interview with yes/no, Davies stated the aim behind the workshop series is "to encourage more women to try out electronic music production and to see if we can make the industry more gender balanced." This is not her only endeavour outside of musicmaking itself. She's the founder of label Pastel Prism, host for NTS show Angel Food alongside journalist Aimee Cliff, and is a regular DJ and mixmaker.
Her most recent release, Change My Mind, is a result of going down a "Miami Vice OG TV series rabbit hole."
"I had a few demos together at the end of 2022 but they were all sort of psychedelic and mellotron-based," says Davies. More Glyn Johns than Jan Hammer. "But having immersed myself in Miami Vice episodes, and taking over the TV for many months ... I was reminded that I actually have a record label named Pastel Prism, which was a reference to the soft powdery hues of '80s aesthetic." Thus the '80s theme stuck. With the aesthetic set, Change My Mind came into fruition "inspired by wanting to extract the most emotion with as few sounds as I can," she says.
And so the E.M.M.A. take on the top tracks of 2023 was always going to be interesting. Broad-ranging but beat-focused, her selection is international and close to home, as involved with atmospherics as it is honed on the thud and boom of myriad BPMs. Read on ☟
1. SHIMZ343 – 35BAGUMBRELLA
Emma Davies:SHIMZ343 is my favourite producer of the year (insert goat emoji here). Listening to this track is like watching a movie. There is a proper narrative going on and a really immersive world being built around you which moves you to a different place from where you were before you listened. I don’t want to say any more because I'd rather you listen and buy the track and see what I mean. Also he’s got a great eye for the visual aesthetic too. SHIMZ34 film soundtrack ASAP plz.
2. Adrian Carter – Motif
ED: I speak to Adi [Adrian Carter] quite regularly and he’s always banging out a hit in the studio. The thing I like about Adi’s music is to me it’s completely timeless, in the same way a lot (all?) of these tunes are. His melodies grasp at the meaning of life while also having the ability to turn any time of day into a party, a party you could imagine happening at any point in the last 40+ years. He’s a wizard. Having said that this tune [taken from October album Salt Horse] is not a party tune, maybe more of an after party, while questioning your life choices.
3. Novelist – Big Novelist
ED: No one needs me to point out Novelist is in a league of his own, but here I am pointing it out. His approach to music is very inspiring, not only how it sounds but how he places his work in the world and the intent behind it. This track released this year [on album 3.5 4 THA RIDE] is one of my favourites, as is ‘Again’. It also goes without saying that as someone also on an '80s flex from time to time that’s a particular characteristic of his tracks and aesthetic that I am a big fan of, his ability to synthesize a detailed palette of film and music influences into something completely unique.
4. Teplice – Revival
ED: Matilda [Jones] aka Teplice was the first person I released on my label Pastel Prism Records that wasn’t me. Shout out Dexplicit who is the other person. This release [Call It Home] on Hot Concept out of Berlin is super dreamy and I love the progression. There are snatches of vocals which I can’t really work out what’s being said, which I think makes it more impactful because your imagination joins the dots and therefore the mood is profound.
5. Etch – Guardare Ma Non Toccare
ED: My pal Etch has had loads of releases this year but I’ve picked this one from a “quick lil mish mash of 1-2min long tracks made in one evening using Italian Library & Film Soundtracks (YES ALL OF IT, EVEN THE WEIRD SYNTHY SHIT, IT’S CALLED FX CHAINS)” to quote the man himself. Me and him have got a collab coming out at some point, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying. We both use FL Studio so I regularly ask him how TF he has done something in his mix. I only ask about 3 people and he’s one of them. There’s nothing this guy can’t do, throw a BPM at him, I dare you.
ED: I simply came across this tune [from Brussels-based artist Céline Gillain's album Mind Is Mud] and liked it.
7. O'o – Moon
ED: As a big fan of the moon, this [track by Barcelona duo O'o] caught my eye. You’ve got to be careful referencing the moon because it’s such a big deal. That’s why I called my track “Ryan Gosling in Space” instead of “Ryan Gosling on the Moon”. I think this track does the moon justice. What we’re looking for here is a feeling of being recharged by the moon whilst simultaneously feeling completely insignificant.
8. Yamaneko ft. J.Day – Nowhere
ED: Yamaneko was the person who kept me sane during writing my first album Blue Gardens. Anyone who’s followed me for more than 5 mins will know I’ve played him in all of my sets, most recently seamlessly and effortlessly blending him with 'Crockett’s Theme' on NTS on a Friday night no less. Get your ears around this.
Behind the eminently evocative title of this track, Jodövade (aka Jodie Primadonna) conjures more than the simple action of deliberate social denial. The world of ‘It’s Not Ignoring You If I Turn My Phone Off’ is expansive and glacial, the bass boom providing a gloopsome contrast to the playful mundanity of the modular synth chords and melody, padding like phantomatic footsteps throughout; the wibbling, wordless vocal chops like unheeded words of someone you wish not to heed. (Why do any of us turn our phones off, right?)
An additional clatter of beats and the angularity of those synths give Jodövade’s track an excavatory feel, the twist and turn of cavernous corridors — the sonic shoulds and coulds of life.
🔔
'It's Not Ignoring You If I Turn My Phone Off' is out on Contre Jour Records. You may alternatively stream and/or purchase the track on Jodövade's Bandcamp.
Pulsing to the velcro snap of hip-hop infused drums, yawning ambient synths roar at the base of fiveighthirteen’s ‘some questions are answers’. But being the chimeric track it is, there’s more to it than that. It’s a mix of sensitive drones and legible grooves, an urgent, infiltrative bassline, a shuffling math rock spirit, with an indefinable synth melody played in soft, mythic sweeps.
The bass becomes distorted, rampaging in a steady gallop in the track’s most propulsive parts, with officious vocal samples (reminiscent of Public Service Broadcasting) topping it off like a psychedelic trip through archival ruins centuries from now.
🔔
'some questions are answers' is taken from fiveighthirteen's upcoming album a fever of rays due out on 13th August.
A frenzy of drums propels ‘Theme From Ernest Borgnine’ along, metallic snares rifle and tumble over themselves, a torrent of hi-hats and cymbals splash as a backdrop. Listening to this storm and surge of percussion is like feeling the weight of a waterfall: unceasing, multifaceted, and in the tumult of both, strangely soothing.
The natural connection to Squarepusher’s track doesn’t stop there. Lead synths chirp in snippets of stave-hopping brightness like the songs of robotic birds; soft, muffled chords provide a heavy haze, the type that fogs the sky on hot days. It’s only in its coda, the final minute and a half of the track, that it feels suddenly synthetic — human, basically.
The ambience falls away, revealing the true harshness of the drums, while acid synths wobble and crack in energetic celebration. Squarepusher symphonises jungle, creates rollicking rave beats garnished with emotive washes of sound, but he also wakes the dreamer from their peaceful slumber.
In 2004, Lethal Bizzle released the hypesome track 'Pow!' — it pops with energy and vocal fire from a who's-who roster of early '00s grime artists. Fast-forward 16 years and we have a modern counterpart in the form of 'Serious 2020'. A fuzzed synth summons the mood of triumphal brass, while a frenzy of restrained beats allow plenty of space for vocal acrobatics.
Assigned to Maxwell D, who first released 'Serious' back in 2001, and whose vocal provides the classic UKG stylings for the hook, this remixed edition features fearsome vocal performances from a roster of fresh feature-spots. Novelist riffs on the "serious" theme — "Dark blue is a serious colour / I got raised by a serious mother / That's why I'm a serious brother" — while Tempa T's finale recalls the unbridled aggression of 'Pow!' with his imagery and vocal tone.
🔔
This all-star remix of Maxwell D's 'Serious' features on the soundtrack for Against All Odds, a film about the '00s grime scene. Both the OST and film are scheduled for release on 13th November. It's actually the first project for newly launched Motown Records UK.
'Monoc' by Japanese digital artist and producer Satoshi Kanno appears like a electronic spectre on a nocturnal city street. Sparse chopped vocal samples merge with flickering percussion, skittering on a bed of bumping kicks and the soft bursts of distortion. Its angular structure feels mechanical, industrial almost, as the track moves into a moody footwork-infused midsection.
The splicing sounds and fusion of elements in 'Monoc' was a result of Kanno's approach to the track.
"I was inspired to compose this piece to reflect on the ways and meanings of communication between all things in our time," he says to yes/no via email. "The noise in the song refers to nature, animals, plants, machines, and humans, and even though each form remains the same, when they overlap each other, they transform into another form."
The track ends up as a "collective form", each element adding to a whole that brings together its fragmented parts to a sonic sum: a reflection of how an individual is ever-transforming, reacting to their situation, the times in which they exist.
There's more meaning behind the title 'Sixth Week' than an arbitrary measurement of time. It actually refers to when UK producer Visco City actually created it: during the sixth week of the country's nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus.
As such, the track bristles with anxiety — tracts of clattering metallic sounds, gnawing and insectoid, appear crushed and crinkled like the sound of a car crumpling sped up a hundredfold. But there are hints of hope here, optimism (or nostalgia for "old times") spelled out by a melody dancing over it all, thick warm plumes of bass enacting a sonic embrace.
The focus, Visco City tells yes/no via email was "to try and highlight the contrast between something anxious and something beautiful." And though shattered lines of chaos spark through 'Sixth Week', in essence it is a lush soundscape of better days, a slice of blue sky beyond the giant clouds.
The minimal production of 'Goddess pt. 1' by Swedish artist Shadi G doesn't just serve to create a luxurious atmosphere — it allows the vocals of the musicmaker herself to soar and glimmer unimpeded. A patter of kicks and the abrasive pop of a snare propels the track forward on a blanket backdrop of soft synth chords, a glitter of zithers ornamenting it all; at the forefront, Shadi G's voice itself lilts and meanders with slow, acrobatic ease, vocal reverb like mist casting a dreamlike softness over proceedings.
"I felt I was in a place where the fun and playfulness could take a bigger part," says Shadi G in an email to yes/no.
'Goddess pt. 1' may be at its core a silky R&B number, but it's also a soulful exploration of the singer's Iranian heritage: lines of Farsi curl and spiral into earshot in the finale. "I love the melody of the language, the nature of the language itself is so poetic," she says, explaining that she chose include Farsi into her track because of the importance the language has played in her life.
"I really want Farsi to get a platform to be heard and seen," she adds. "Music isn't just made in English, even though it's the language that's given the most exposure and space by the industry."
Beginning with an acoustic version of itself, musicmaker Elliot James Mulhern's new track 'How's It Gonna Stop?' asks a simple, very timely question. It's the titular refrain, layered and bouncing in the crunch of its decayed disco drums.
"Looking back on it now I suppose I was actually wondering ‘how *is* it gonna stop?’" Mulhern tells yes/no via email. "This song was a constant dream; I remember during lockdown waking up with it in my head persistently."
Eventually, that persistent creation became a one-take voice memo: "The more I played, the song took on a life of its own, like a chiseled granite statue," he recalls. It was already there: an atmosphere waiting to be captured.
There's a soft nocturnal sound to 'How's It Gonna Stop?' — a sense of fatigue in the low glimmer of the chords, of street-lit tension in the high siphoning strings, of thudding feet on dark tarmac in its clipped bass groove. Mulhern's voice itself flutters among it all; downcast but bright, slow and measured, before skipping up the scale.
The song summons a day lived, a dream dreamt. Or the tired glow you feel walking home from work: happy, but too exhausted to celebrate. Sort of how we'll feel when 2020 is finally over.
"It’s certain none of us knew how bizarre and challenging this year would become," says Mulhern. But he notes a silver lining in the hefty clouds of this annus horribilis, citing how artists are (to some degree) conditioned to work in isolation.
"This was the most extreme version of that," he continues. "And if I’m truly honest, the intense amount of emotional weight on us all drove me to write from an entirely new, rawer vulnerable place."
The video for 'How's It Gonna Stop?' takes Mulhern from the reality of a London phonebox and its surrounding grit, soundtracked by the organic skitter of acoustic guitar, and flings him into a visually disorienting world of rapid cuts and offset angles. Watch it below.
🔔
'How's It Gonna Stop?' is taken from Elliot James Mulhern's upcoming album Tiny Correspondence, Dangerous Ideas and Sensitive Affairs. It's due out 20th November on Mulhern's own Blossöm Records. You can pre-order it on Bandcamp.
🔔
The track was mastered by Frank Arkwright (Coldplay, Elton John, Oasis) at Abbey Road Studios, London. "[I'm] eternally grateful to have ['How's It Gonna Stop?] completed at Abbey Road, minutes from where I was born and raised, whose records had immeasurable impact on my life," Mulhern tells us.
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.
🔔
You can stream and/or download The Vibez: Chill Instrumentals, Tay NoeL's collection of instrumentals, over on Bandcamp.
'Again' by producer Edyth begins with resonating drone and distressed aging analogue textures, gleaming with poignancy like a key item suspended, spinning, glowing above an altar at the end of an ancient colonnade (Triforce, anyone? Or maybe when the key drops down with that glimmering sound when you defeat Bowser in Super Mario 64.)
Anyway. This is scene-setting ambience, and it grows more mechanical in its whirring heart, gradually moving into curling waves of static that envelop the atmosphere with intensity; the perception of a physical object, or a feeling, warping in memories over time.
The track effuses vaporwave, not only in its curdled sonic aesthetics, but also in how a pitch-shifted vocal rhythmically trundles into earshot, whispering sharply. Trap-flavoured sub-bass hops from note to note, somersaulting octaves in simple dance-mat steps, the constant tick of a hi-hat like the chain of a drawbridge raising — the portal to another realm.
Elevating vaporwave past its usual tropes and combining it with other contemporary musical traditions, Edyth creates a simple but blissful marriage of background aesthetics — and all the soundtracking potential they bring with them — and the close-at-hand vitality of a beat that roots 'Again' more readily in a real world setting.
🔔
'Again' by Edyth is actually taken from an album called Sadie Pop, which was released via netlabel Kalibrplus. You can choose the preferred way you stream or purchase the album by clicking on this link.
🔔
Speaking about Sadie Pop, Edyth says that it's "meant to be a small but different type of beast from what I usually do," going on to call it "a refining of my production pallette and a gift to those that have enjoyed what I do as a beatmaker" and "a display of my love for the types of music I've loved listening to this past decade: wave, vaportrap, sad boy, cloud, witch house, dub, bass and phonk."
Occupying its time of existence with plumes of bass that collapses in on itself with potential, and with a restless energy curled like a cosmic spring that provides the aesthetic casing for the track, 'Silly' by Brighton-based musicmaker HEIGHTS is a tale of willing one thing leading to another, of inching towards what you desire.
While the propulsive kick-snare pattern and misty tick of cymbals keeps impatient time, the voice of HEIGHTS herself skips over the lyrics, the vocal nonchalant, lilting and heady, turning fully acrobatic in the chorus, splitting sentences in graceful slices: "And I want you to take this / lip lock / No shock / I like this kind of vertigo / From time / to time / I see you when my eyes are closed / No low / no lie / Seen a little light now I want to see the full storm."
Washed with an icy haze of ambient synth throughout, summoning a cityscape at night, HEIGHTS builds a story on tantalising lyrics, weaving between cryptic self-enquiry and concrete, relatable imagery. The opening lines paint this interplay with particular skill — "Would you believe I’ve still not made it home? / I still have the city underneath my bones" — and later announcing "Summer inside my soul" before a harmony of realness erupts with the refraining "all I wanna feel is love".
Splicing this poetic deftness and effortless songwriting with a moody instrumental that feels as though a post-night out atmosphere has been bottled up and presented in sonic form, somehow, the other triumph of 'Silly' is how its title belies its brilliance.
🔔
'Silly' is taken from HEIGHTS' debut self-released EP, also called HEIGHTS, which you can stream on SoundCloud.
'Slicer' by Japanese duo atrem — comprising Ryuichi Shima and Yusuke Kamimura — is a multifaceted being of a track. It all begins with the tricking of looped electronics, glistening drops of glitch, a tour of circuit boards and the shifting complexities of sound.
Streams of harmonised vocals flow into the mix. If you've ever played PS2 RPG EverGrace (2000), the way voices in 'Slicer' are so drastically instrumentalised may remind you of Kota Hoshino's surreal and vocal-heavy soundtrack for that game.
Before long, 'Slicer' shifts into gear. A crescendo of sound, bubbles and crashes into view, drowning out the voices. HEALTH-esque distorted synths swirl and slice through the bristling hyperactive breakcore beats that propel the track into its final section, where wordless vocals soothe the disjointed disquiet that came before.
A showcase of how this atrem can be as intricate as they can be aggressive, as blissed out and chill as they are dedicated to fully fledged noise, in 'Slicer' the duo have made a veritable journey of a track, a tale of kinetic movement, of graceful poise and letting loose.
🔔
Check out the dramatic 'Slicer' as well as many more morsels of music on atrem's SoundCloud.
What begins as a dark take on the Hazy Maze Cave theme from Super Mario 64 — which certainly had its own set of subterranean-flavoured rapid-fire drums — soon proves itself to be much more than a tumble of pugilistic percussion. In fact, this is more like the rave going on in the level's underground lake that Mario must have missed.
Any imagined similarities aside, 'Dancing On Ruins' is a frenzied beast of its own. Syncopated snares crack, punching their own time over a cavalcade of kicks, glossy razor cymbals splashing a liquid sharpness to the thud and gravel of the track. A bass wanders in, wooden and clackety.
It's around the halfway mark that UK producer Galtier seems to have summoned whatever was sleeping beneath the ruins themselves, plasma synths oozing their miasma onto the scene, ever more agitated robust sounds diving bombing the air like a swarm of steam-powered bees.
'Dancing On Ruins' is the sound of whirling over giant boulders and half-standing buildings, unearthing ancient technology and long-buried treasures. Its simplicity, space between sounds, and textures make for a terrifying storm of drama and dance.
🔔
This track is taken from the eponymous Galtier EP which arrived on Mexico City-based label Infinite Machine. You can stream and purchase (if you like) Galtier's Dancing On Ruins EP from their Bandcamp.
