THE PINK FROSTS — A SMILE AWAY

⌾ LISTEN TO A SMILE AWAY BY THE PINK FROSTS ⌾

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Gripping. Captivating. This gorgeous number will grab you, albeit gently, and whirl you around in a jolly dance, various aspects of your life whizzing in watercolour, leaving you in soft focus with a handful of flowers and a heaful of fondness. That is at least the general vibe emanating from 'A Smile Away', an affirmation of a song by Wellington-based New Zealanders, The Pink Frosts.

Optimism brims from the beginning, a propulsive and purposeful stride on the drums (Peter Molteno), the bass (Neale Willis) stepping carefully, softly upwards, the backdrop to a simple sun-glint of a guitar melody (Oliver Gaskell) and dreamy synth (Hedley Dew), married in musical harmony like a dawn chorus played out in post-punk. Things get distinctly more noisy with crashing cymbals and tumbling snares and swooshing guitar distortion, a welcome dynamic, joy bursting in sonic form.

It's on this alternating backdrop that Dew pours out his earnest baritone vocals, a kind of cross between Ian Curtis and Jack Steadman (Bombay Bicycle Club), conjuring tableaux so bundled with emotion yet honest and low-key they bring pre-tears heat to the eyes. I mean, "Wake up one morning with a smile on / You slept well and you don't feel worn / Breakfast of choice and the coffee's warm / The high couldn't be more lovely"? This song couldn't be more lovely.

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• 🔔 This wonderful piece of new music from The Pink Forsts is the first single taken from their upcoming Unremarkable Product EP. The self-released set trio of songs is scheduled to be available from 29th September.

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JUHAN ONGBRIAN — SAIL ON

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⌾ LISTEN TO JUHAN ONGBRIAN, SAIL ON ⌾

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‘Sail On’ is an apt title for jazz guitarist Juhan Ongbrian’s masterful piece of music. Not only does this song seem to travel effortlessly on gentle waves of sound, like a heavenly sailboat, but it seems to be a spiritual and sonic successor to ‘Albatross’ by Fleetwood Mac.

For sailors, to kill an albatross while at sea was considered a bad omen; so the equally oceanic ‘Sail On’, perhaps, is the sequel here — in the timeline that no albatrosses were harmed, at least.

While the bass guitar (Austin Smith) creates a gloopy groove of stepping notes, like the sturdy materials of a seagoing vessel, or the shape of waves; the slow, calculated drums (Adrian Michael) represent the rhythm of the sea itself, the gentle tick of water lapping against the hull. Ongbrian’s guitar — dropping in at 1:38 — is expansive, a veritable sky of sound, exuding endless possibilities and a moment of bliss all at once.

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• 🔔 You can stream or download Juhan Ongbrian's 'Sail On' from whichever service on this list is your absolute favourite.

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☟ Juhan Ongbrian Internet Presence ☟
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AKIYOSHI YASUDA — MEMENTO

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Taking as the theme for this track as leaving behind his view of life and death, 'Memento' by composer and producer Akiyoshi Yasuda (aka STARGUiTAR) is an existential whirlwind. Harsh gales of ambient waves rush forth, speckled with the static of distortion and decay, a vague hope spun in the rising, gleaming resonance that lies at the heart of it all.

"In 'Memento' I'm trying to capture the scales, melodies, rhythms, verses, emotions, ups and downs... you can strip away all that stuff that music should have, and you can make it work," Yasuda tells yes/no via email.

"I'm composing to express the sound as if it were swimming freely."

Free of constraints, 'Memento' (taking its name from the Latin expression memento mori, a symbolic expression or reminder of death) erupts as if from a spring, but also falls into an empty sky like mist; it is dynamic, shifting through different textures — sharp, soft, glittering, whispering — and yet it is still; it feels as though it could be sunk in depression, but at the same time optimistic and upward-looking as if glimpsing a sunrise; preparing for sleep, seizing the day.

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• 🔔 'Memento' is taken from Akiyoshi Yasuda's Memento — Day 1 EP. You can stream and/or download that from this extensive list of streaming services.

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🐣 SOFT POWDER — I WONDER IF YOU DREAM

⌾ LISTEN TO I WONDER IF YOU DREAM BY SOFT POWER ⌾

A stumbling drum machine drops you gently onto the foggy boardwalk between waking and dreaming that Soft Powder aka Andy Szetho creates in the meditative 'I Wonder If You Dream'. More than just an exercise in lo-fi, this is a fantasia of to-and-fro guitar melodies that fracture your heart with pinpricks of recollection and late-night diary entry vocals, all wrapped up in a blanket of comforting synth.

But as much as the thick layers of sound offer comfort, it's a soft entrapment, the warm glow of your bedroom lamp as time seems to lose meaning. Sharper sounds cut through the two-chord march, brightness lancing faintly through bleakness, a detached sadness looking inwards.

Counselled by the sincere refrain of "I wonder if you dream" other lines appear ghostly and welcoming: "sometimes it's just nice to pretend" and "start to feel so distant" summon a passive, modest, but searching melancholy. There's no turmoil here, no great tragedy in the deep pastel crush of Soft Powder's nocturne: but there is personal despair, which is the grandest and most soultrapping of all.

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• 🔔 Incredibly 'I Wonder If You Dream' is Soft Powder's first ever release. It's taken from his debut Shangri-La EP and you can listen to the whole thing over here on his SoundCloud. The nostalgic, lonely cassette cover art, complete with perfect brooding palette, was created by designer John Szetho.

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🐣 THE EARFLOWER EXPERIMENT — PASS(H)ERBY

Something steeped in humidity here actually turns out to be the perfect soundtrack to watching the snow fall (the UK is currently wrapped in a frosty Siberian weather front). The blissful soft snowflake sounds of the hank drum employed in this track by Indian artist Astaaq Ahmed aka The Earflower Experiment – tuned in the cheerful key of C, he tells us via email – ping and pong with a soothing pace and texture. ‘Pass(h)erby’ is like a panacea, a gorgeous weave of textures, the cradle of bristling rich percussion that arrives, the warm waves of synth that waft in resolutely, the sparkling deep-breath lead synths.

“While conceptualising this song, I was mostly concerned with trying to capture the essence of a constantly moving, fast-paced world,” says Astaaq. “There are things happening in our lives on a regular basis, but our stories, in the larger scheme of things, don’t have any impact on anyone but us. The world is blissfully ignorant of your happiness, anger, pains and sorrows, and it just keeps spinning.” And this track has that motion, the gently unrelenting beat that fades into a lullaby on a patchwork of chirruping night insects: the heartbeat of your panic and pain as ignored by the natural world. And how fine that is, how ok the world is even after tragedy, how this track comforts you.

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• 🔔 This comes from The Earflower Experiment's An Anecdote EP, which Astaaq tells us "tries to convey the life cycle of a rather unfortunate relationship."

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🐣 CYNABEL — WHEN I'M WITH YOU

This track begins awash with textures, the sea spreading itself onto sand with all its foam and flotsam and tumbling little stones and shells that dance jostling on the beach and the bleached bones of coral twisted ceramic antler collections crooning to the sky with its trickling trickling streaming watery sounds. Your private beach. How natural it all sounds, the percussion luscious delicious all hurtling molecular and tiny, a tapestry for time and the way the natural world fills it. Cynabel creates this moss forest these glorious miniatures for roundabout the first third of the wonderful 'When I'm With You', before wide synth chords like rainbows, slow and kinetic, these are dolphins arcing in open sea.

"This particular song was symphonically through-composed, rather than the usual copy/paste we're so accustomed to in music, especially EDM," the Philadelphia-based musicmaker himself tells yes/no via email. "The lack of strophic form and general air of adventure were directly inspired by RefraQ's tune Soda Ritual." The finished product, Cynabel explains, creates "a journey for the listener to experience," adding: "I sincerely hope that the sparkling chords and comforting ambience result in a few smiles for those who choose to adventure with me."

Out there just beyond the reef and from far off it seems slow and getting close to them it's a speed racer affair, it's wiggling and wobbly and vital utterly the smooth mammalian grey of the skin strobing in and out of the calm tufts of sea, as highlighted by the drum fill and the leaping leap into the jostle of more rapid fire rolling soft synth foamy fizzy waves breaking breaking. And the dynamic shift, slowdown, the cascading waterworld of the track's outro where Cynabel seems to be channelling this Zora's Domain feeling, a crowd of effortlessly glistening melodic synths that chime and drip-drop crystalline and ultragorgeous, this aching beautiful coda stretching into the distance, the gentle fade of cirrus clouds against vast blue, the comfort and heartwarm of being with whoever the "you" is in this electronic symphony.

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• 🔔 This foley-soaked track arrived ahead of Cynabel's recent Summer Breeze EP. You can download 'When I'm With You' here courtesy of collective Phonotecture.
• 🔔 The cute artwork for the track was created by Sam F Hinton, an illustrator based in Falmouth, UK.

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☟ Cynabel Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 GEO — FOR YOU

There it is, that liquid sound, that trickling water, the jagged trajectory of a countryside rill becolumned with rocks and pebbles and clear as glass, all of it glistening atop and refracted below, glinting glinting, overhanging plants, the gnarl of ancient trees, flowers, heather, stone and water, angular and fluid. And it's all created with percussion, plumes of percussive sound that jingles and rat-tat-tats metallic and clinking, all light and lo-fi, a constant trundle, close to haunting with the vintage crackle infused in this textured tapestry. Romantically titled 'For You' this wildly ornamental piece of sound bedecked in silver and gold and iridescent gems was created by LA-based producer GEO, sultry and splendrous, smooth and shivering.

The clanking evolves into more woody sounds, clopping clonking robust hollow tick-tockings lashed together with sharp sheafing hi-hats, blessings of percussion that make the skin quiver, hairs tightening in their follicles on the nape of your neck. As if that wasn't enough, bass with a beautiful thick rounded tone scoops out the underlayers of the track and fills it with slow bubbles of groove for a slow-jam feel, soon joined by warm piano chords that lock in with the bassline, play with organic power the hot sighs of a beating heart. Vocals lifted from somewhere paint in silken soothing brushstrokes crooning romance. Little squelchy bleeps act all playful with soft melodies and synth peals soar into the sky. Streaming and flowing riverine and pastoral, here is that sonnet of sound, that melodious pouring forth of emotions, something beautiful carved for a beloved someone.

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• 🔔 You can find GEO's stunning 'For You' on Hype Machine and give it some love if you like.

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☟ GEO Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 KAREFUL — H2O

The sky is collapsing in an instant at the beginning of this track and the ground opens up and everything from above begins to tumble down this expanse of space now bored through the earth, the most fantastic fissure that we find ourselves in, what darkness and undeniable foreboding dwells in the ranging ripples of reverb, the arpeggiating synths, the hardness of the electronic beats like jagged rocks, the nocturnal rumbling modulation of synth that columns barrelling through the lower reaches of this track. Like a cathedral freefalling through a bottomless pit lined with sparkling jewels and gemstones and a carved alien script that glows turquoise and sunset-orange, UK producer Kareful's track 'H2o' is a judgement day of sound on a rushing epic scale, a conjuring of otherness with otherworldly sounds.

The feeling of this track is heavily towards the baroque, towards the polished and filigreed, the ornate and broadly twisting, romance and distance conjured by the incredible vocal sample, foreign even to our world, pitch-shifted and lingering on each word, aching, searching for a soul, a slow display of beautiful turmoil. "I've always found myself heavily processing vocals to make them sound nothing like what I originally found," Kareful himself tells us about those beautifully meandering vocals. Inspired by an "involuntary break in music" after losing everything on an previous PC, he calls 'H2o' a romantic track: "Many of my tracks are…" he confirms: "I'm somewhat of a hopeless romantic myself." And in the track, its heartbeating dynamic grime-trap-flavoured percussion pulsing, there is such a sense of grandiose gothic hopelessness, of crushing from afar, the all-encompassing wreathes of unrequited love.

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• 🔔 'H2o' is taken from Kareful's upcoming Alchemy EP, out 15th September via trapdoor records. Download the track and anticipate the release via this specific site.
• 🔔 You can grab the producer's previous release, the 2016 album Deluge, over on iTunes if you like.
• 🔔 Recently Kareful featured as one of the collaborators on Lifeforce, the debut LP from Nottingham's very own Glacci.

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☟ KAREFUL Internet Presence ☟
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🌭 MICHAEL O — YOUR WAY

There is something wonderfully intoxicating about this track, something mesmerising—maybe it's in the general uplifting atmosphere of the afrobeat wholesomeness of it, or maybe it's something more physical, in the cyclical three-note melody played throughout that draws you in like a hypnotic spiral, in the instantaneous get-up-and-move feel of the rhythm, the warmth of the track. It soothes and caresses, enlivens and boosts, feels like a 1UP, feels quaint and whimsical but solidly ready for dancefloors and poolsides across the land. Like an uncut gemstone, this is the unassuming beauty the herald of bittersweet emotion that is 'Your Way' by Los Angeles-based Michael O.

There is a delicacy about the synthetic bass sounds, something fragile there, the reverb gently whispering off each note as the sprinkling pings of the repeated melody, feeling like tiny instruments, continue in their happy splendour. The dancehall drums with their offbeat and their busy clacking shuffle suggest carefree movement, but the gradual warm synth that flows in and out like waves on a beach, there is a far-off brave acceptance of something adverse, yet that plinking melody remains upbeat—this is like the true tides of emotion hidden behind a cheerful personality. The tranquillising lilt of the vocals is like a lullaby, even with the autotune hardening the tone. An essence of a person, of an emotion, is in this track, like alcohol in a cocktail, sweetness and sourness and the inebriating feel, an effortless mix of many ingredients, of many feelings, that slides effortlessly into your soul.

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• 🔔 See Michael O's SoundCloud for more music.

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☟ Michael O Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 MOON BOOTS — THE LIFE AQUATIC

Diving right into the watery depths now is Moon Boots, whose latest track 'The Life Aquatic' is alive with liquid-leaning sounds, a sensation of floating through an undersea expanse, the mystery and panic of below the waves illustrated with just a few simple elements. Keeping momentum, bravery as the light is almost dim around you, a well crafted kick drum thuds through it all with sheafing hi-hats shaking alongside, a thin snare counting down the time you've been in this submarine world. An arpeggio of modulating synth, sometimes soft and muted, other times sharp and abrasive, plays a bubblesome melody, supplemented by steel drum pings at certain points, the notes shifting dramatically with a baroque chord change, lending a sense of majestic urgency, of being very small in a very big place.

Downcast almost gloomy synth javelins through with ambience, laserlike, futuristic, reflecting the alien nature of our obscure oceans—according to the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, humans have explored only 5% of this territory, though it makes up 70% of the earth's surface. It might as well be a different galaxy. Further allusions to the secretive seas are made in the synth vox that seems to call into the distance, illustrating the vast underwater world with reverb fizzling into the furthest stretches of vision in the big blue of it all.

Perhaps being titled 'The Life Aquatic' (probably named after that film) helps with all this imagery, but still the track suits it very well, you can imagine the slow-moving wetsuited diver in the cover art above, uncovering unknown places in the deep, fear as much as wonder summoned in the glorious melody that does not cut out or fade out but achingly beautifully slows down, the ending of a symphony, halting with realisation: is it a marvel of a discovery or unimaginable peril that looms in that final note?

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• 🔔 You who are reading this can download 'The Life Aquatic' if you choose to do so. The track arrives on independent label Anjunadeep.

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🐣 CLAESONS — ACOUSTIC PUNK

With a title like 'Acoustic Punk' you might imagine something like a cross between gentle acoustic music and the noise of punk. If that is what you imagined whilst reading that sentence then, well, it's correct. This track by Swedish music unit Claesons is a combo of these two ideals, a bright blend of acoustic—no, almost chamber music, classical-style, new and experimental; of this, and of something closer to the quirky DIY of garage indie than punk. It's a mix of rough and smooth, beauty and energy.

The plucked guitar that begins the track teeters on mournful and in the same cyclical style as that guitar piece Romance, you know the one, cello solemn beneath, but soon leads into a thumping beat punctuated by the occasional crash of a cymbal, the main vocal floats in slurring and soaring, other voices haunt chorally above, all in all a sound like a cold gale, something internal externalised. The outro appears, long and languorous, a pinging guitar melody, soft piano, yet struck like distant lightning with peals of distorted guitar, disappearing into the vapour.

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• 🔔 This is from Claesons album V.V.V.V.V., due for release on 28th April via Swedish label Lamour.

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☟ Claesons Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 SMTHN — INTERFERENCE [初演 • PREMIERE]

Something special arrives today. It's literally draped in pulchritude, a slo-mo slam-dunk, homerun into a deep cloudless blue, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l, do you get it? smthn graces us with 'interference', freshly farmed, just juiced, poured up and here it is in this milkshake glass of a site—here, you can taste it. The track has already been wrapped in superlatives but let's give it some more.

This soundular item bumps and bubbles, contrasting pools deep with calm where a sparse beat staggers along, all mellow sub and drip-drop, where a vocal sample urges plaintively "I'll be the one for you", contrasting this with segments where the kick thumps hard booming and the hi-hats t--t--t-t-ttt-tt-tick and the snare snaps and the synth flutters like a nervous heartbeat, the sliced vocal stutters and pops. It all feels somewhat frosty, like being able to see your breath on a school morning in winter.

The clarion call of the synths is difficult to ignore, the agility of their alterations, the bass-to-treble slide into the chorus like an awakening, exciting, instantly addictive; on the other hand: the gorgeous room to breathe throughout gives the song a precious delicate feel, as if the sounds created do not wish to say more than they feel they deserve, echoing the statement made by that aching vocal again and again.

What is said, in this case, is as valuable as what isn't said, and the spaces between the luscious noises that vibrate in this vessel are bristling with energy and emotion, like the silence after a secret whisper.

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• 🔔 smthn is a new new musicmaker, having uploaded just two tracks to SoundCloud. Listen to 'pale', also emotive, icy, breathy—another beautiful exercise in sound and silence.
• 🔔 Both 'pale' and 'interference' are available to download for free. Do it and play it to your friends and tell them it's smthn.

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☟ smthn Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 FINS A LUMINOUS – ANTIPODES

This newness from British musicmaking team Fins A Luminous is, we think, the best they've offered up to the world yet, marking something of a departure from their usual plunge pool of rock-infused dark and stormy electronica into an area of richly exalting sun-glinted sky-touching Balearic-flavoured sound. That's not to say that darkness gathers at the edges of 'Antipodes', and at its core, as a techno bassline dominates alongside a thumping beat and a fizz of slicing synth hits that fly in the cold, stark air summoned in the sound.

The lyrics, literally poetic, match this rich otherdimensional dirge with a loneliness spun simply, lamenting with imagery of isolation: "On this raft / All I have / Is mental pictures of you / And the stars to guide me"—and later, "I talk to the waves / They whisper your name / I talk to the wind / You're further away now than you've ever been"—conjurations of longing and loss in voices layered in a choir, as if all the fibres of being join in for this totality of feeling.

But this exaltedness: a change from minor to major, from the steel and fog of overcast skies to a raising up above the giant clouds, a rush of emotion in waves of thick, soaring sound, the last section of the song uplifted from introspection of extrospection, the luscious gales and golden light of noise and skittering glitter of synth melody here complimenting the beauty of the lyrics, an illuminated outpouring of the heart: "The clouds form into every face / I've ever known / Into every face I've known / The moon, the stars and the sun / And everyone above..."

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• This wonderful slice of music comes from Fins A Luminous's latest EP, also titled Antipodes, which features more of the musicmakers' forays into huge, spacious sounds, altogether charting a journey of loneliness with experimental electronic orchestration. You can download it from their Bandcamp for just £3.

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☟ Fins A Luminous Internet Presence ☟
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FÁBIO CARAMURU – CIGARRA

The releases of Tokyo-based flau records span the distance from Japanese music like the constructivist electronica of CRYSTAL and the constant dreamworlds of cuushe, to the music of artists from all over the world, like Taiwanese cello-guitar-violin ensemble Cicada, with many genres represented in between—and never do they disappoint. It's ever the same with a beautiful new piece called 'Cigarra'.

A mix of natural found-sounds and fluid waxing-and-waning piano-playing, 'Cigarra' is the work of Brazilian pianist and composer Fábio Caramuru. Taken from an upcoming collection of pieces in which Caramuru "speaks" to the fauna of his home country, this particular track is a conversation with the ostensibly whining and screeching of cigarra – meaning cicada in Portuguese. Its violent buzzing, though, feels like a lament here, the piano reflecting brightly and empathising with grave and tumbling tones the constant call of this long-living insect.

Like the the cicada, the piano too seems to be calling out, mimicking its song with a rapid refrain, soaring into flighty introspection at times, and falling to its refrain again by the coda, repeating endlessly with a certain sadness alongside the cicada, into the air, where the music goes to whose ears that will hear it.

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• That collection of pieces is an album called EcoMúsica - conversas de um piano com a fauna brasileira - ("conversations between a piano and the fauna of Brazil") and it will be out on flau on 7th September 2016. Alongside the album opener 'Cigarra', other tracks/animals included are 'Uirapuru' (musician wren), 'Anu-branco' (guira cuckoo), and 'Tuim' (a type of forpus parrot). And you may pre-order it from flau here if you like the sound of that.

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☟ Fábio Caramuru's Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • official site • Wikipedia

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DAMACHA – YIYUAN

Tagged "places u went" and called 'yiyuan' presumably after the mountainous 沂源 county in China this is a beautiful new-ish track from Shanghai musicmaker Damacha. It is a sprawling hive of living percussion, luscious rainstick sounds and far-off forest wooden clackings and jangling like lost ghost currency and lots more besides, blending together at first in clattering cocktail of arrhythmia, soon syncing to a pummelling beat, nuanced and free and towering.

Bass surges and rumbles in healthy slices below, propping up these delicacies of sound like time-lapsed hillsides and peaks jutting out newborn forming the rugged earth. Alongside these elastic beat arrangements are gentle bell chimes and plaintive 8-bit melodies, this simple tapestry of synth matching the percussion in all its sparkling illustration, pencilling details and adding ornamentation – a sonic mirror of the drama and gargantuan scale of natural landscapes, of the feeling of being simultaneously tiny yet liberated in the midst of such places, of their simplicity and their complexity; it is a landscape painted with sound.

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• This track is a free download as you can see above.
• Check out Damacha's half-year-old 3E3240 EP on Bandcamp.

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AMACCHI – A MATTER OF TIME

Stumbling across something nice and new and unexpected is the point YES/NO. Yeah I write about music I like regardless of how un-new or un-undiscovered it might, but the original point was to find new stuff and write about it, hopefully introduce some people to something fresh to listen to.

And with that word – FRESH – in mind, this is 'a matter of time' by amacchi. Who or what is amacchi? Apart from a somebody that makes music, I can't tell you much else. But with freshness being the keyword now, let's leave history and backstory and every other story and focus on the song – this fresh, fresh song.

From its delicious and raw acoustic guitar sounds rippling throughout this instrumental track, sounding as if a guitar were being plucked and played right in the room with you – complete with outdoor sounds of maybe children playing or something... so maybe its better to say that instead of being in the room with you, you're outside, wherever these sounds were lifted from, chilling and enjoying the time passing by in such gentle ways.

☟☟☟☟☟☟☟☟

So yeah, from that, to the wonky synth decorations, breathy and urgent vocal samples whispering in your ear, to the plink-plonking beeps that gradually grow fizzier and fizzier, leading us into a final section of the track dominated by the slow undulating rumble of sub-bass, all of its ornamentations – and that's not even mentioning the luscious beat with its hi-hat skifflings and grittily crunching clap-snare-thing.

FRESH was the word and is the word and it is closely followed by beautiful and moving in a small, everyday way – not to say that the song is everyday, but rather that what it seems to be celebrating... joy, well not joy (note the slightly end-of-the-day feeling) ... the contented awareness of everything around you: simply BEING. It takes cuteness and mixes it with that vague sense of the limits of being alive, mixes lightness with deeply embedded seriousness. That's what I'm taking from it anyway. A matter of time indeed.

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• Seems amacchi is part of the Fan Service Collective, so you should probably check em out if you liked this.

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ERIKO TOYODA – SEDUCTIVE EYES / BECAUSE YOU WANTED IT

Here is a lovely slice of music courtesy of Eriko Toyoda, a Japanese artist whom I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. Her previous work has been marked by glitch-laden production, which makes this relatively stripped-back song, 'Seductive Eyes / Because You Wanted It', a surprise refreshment for the ears.

It is characterised for the most part by a guitar chord progression played on loop, muted tones in a bossa nova rhythm, soothing and soft, though tinged with a certain empty sadness, like looking back on heartbreak or unrequited love from a perspective of lonesome calm.

One of the song's tags, alongside "loop station", is "broken microphone" – and if this refers to the actual microphone being broken, well, it's a great effect; Toyoda's voice ends up with this thin, metallic quality which, whilst giving it a stylised delicacy, also gives it the sense of being recorded in a very DIY fashion, adding endless romance to the song. She lays down arresting harmonies as she sings the song's refraining lyrics – "I try to forget those seductive eyes" – which by the end of the track becomes a cloud cushion of ear-satisfying richness, occasionally different lines weaving through one another in an impressive show of polyphony.

Add to this ornamentations in the guitar parts, gently sweeping, lightly plucked arpeggios, giving it a dreamy and expansive feel, as well as softened lines of sparse just-discernible guitar melody, and decorations in her vocals – with a brief moment of subtle delay added later in the song, as well as it ending with an ebb and flow of wordless duetting as the guitar pauses playing random ambient notes – and the song is complete: a languorous poem painting a far-off memory of romance, told with a simple and evocative looping guitar accompaniment.

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☟ Eriko Toyoda Social Media Presence ☟
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SAMUEL – THESE DAYS

Ever since I first heard Samuel's debut EP, Falling Star I was hooked. Here was a very fresh, very haunting new voice seeping into the music world. The EP was produced by Okzharp (of London-based outfit LV) and paired Samuel's aching vocals with a futuristic post-R&B sort of sound to a stunning degree of hypnotic clarity – though his voice, both then and now, feels as if it transcends any association with "dat future bass". Just like Samuel as a person, his voice is unique.

So thankfully this rare voice, this anti-commonplace set of vocal chords and their unconventional owner, is back for your ears to enjoy, beaming themselves into a new morsel of music called 'These Days'. Produced by London producer Kwes, it's a different sound to the type that graced the Falling Star EP – the cold, glacial, future-forward sounds are gone. However, the minimalism, which basically translates to the producer's careful consideration with Samuel's voice, is still there.

The production is bright, summerful and sunny, soft and soothing synth chords cushioning the vocals, with pockmarking plunks of bass left to peddle their simple subtleties below the meandering croons of Samuel rather than rumbling in-your-face. Clusters of homemade-sounding DIY-esque percussion clink and clankle in the chorus alongside shakers and the lonely thud of a kick as Samuel sings the cryptic hook, "These days are brighter than the sun, so tell me what you want / tell me what you want" – a sentiment reflected in the dripping innocence of this heat-warped music.

What else is good about this? The soaring vibe, the delicious synth sounds, the whole atmospheric, far-off feeling, the spirit of new romance, the deepness of the vocals coated in rich textures snaking through this cloud of production like a lone bird hovering silhouetted against vast blue, or even a the fleeting glint of a passenger plane caught by shards of sunlight amidst nonchalant clouds as it flies lonely and steady out of sight.

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• Please feel free to pre-order 'These Days' from Ninja Tune online shop (the Ninjashop) – or from Bandcamp. It gets released on 31st July via Ninja Tune subsidiary Big Dada.

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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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• 'Mega Drive' is taken from Sui Zhen's very very recent EP, Body Reset, a beautiful collection of introspective songs much in the same vein as this one, exploring "the resetting of both body and mind" and "influenced as much by late nights in Koenji, Tokyo as at an onsen/sauna in the mountains of Nagano," and released by boutique Tokyo-based label eskers.
• Purchase Body Reset on tape cassette here. (Also, don't you just love the art? The green and pink colours go together just perfectly~).
• Sui Zhen was part of the Red Bull Music Academy in 2010, alongside Daisuke Tanabe, and has previously worked with Andras Fox as Sui + Fox.

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CUUSHE – TIE

Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi aka Cuushe is back in town or back in the music world with news of a new and upcoming release. Having lent her voice to a few other artists, notably appearing on Kidkanevil's album My Little Ghost, and releasing a track via Ryan Hemsworth's Secret Songs towards the end of last year, she'll be releasing a new EP called Night Lines. It arrives after her 2013 album Butterfly Case, which sounds pretty much as close to dreaming whilst awake as you could even hope to get, so delicate and floaty were the sounds. What's interesting about this one is that it's not just going to be released on her Tokyo-based label home flau, but also on supercool NY-London label, CASCINE, maximising the world's exposure to this wonderful artist.

Whilst we wait for these new songs from the Japanese singer there is one new song readily and already available. It's called 'Tie' and rather than being produced by Cuushe herself it features production from producer and flau label boss, aus (Yasuhiko Fukuzono). He provides a swaying beat perforated by lightning needles as glistening waterfall chords swathe and swirl with the rich whisper of Cuushe's voice.

Caramel bass crawls groovesome through the icy diamond-drop synth plink-plink melody, things become more cosmic, the pings of electronica seem to be arriving directly from the far reaches of a patch of night sky, somewhere out in the outskirts of your own mind; the beat skiffles more and more, tick-tocks in double time, Cuushe sounds beautiful, her vocals slow and considered, providing a wonderful contrast to the frantic pulchritude of aus' production: she sings a breeze through glittering gem-encrusted walls of a dreamt-up canyon on a wondrous imagined world.

This is one of four tracks that will be on Night Lines and I dunno about you but I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of it. Pre-order details are here.

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• I did a Q&A with Cuushe once, check it out – it's Lazy Interview #14.
• And if you are interested, the devastatingly cute/beautiful artwork (top) is by Yoko Kuno.

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