Y/N GUEST MIX 017 :: MEMORY CARDS PROJECT DREAM MIX

It's that time again. Another guest mix from an artist we like. This time around it's the turn of Memory Cards. He's a musicmaker who began making music in LA but currently resides in Arizona who makes super dreamy trap-flavoured music. The kind of thing that has been labelled "otaku trap" (kinda for good reason, in that much of the music is at least anime-inspired, with some out-and-out covers/remixes of anime themes, etc.) of late. But labels are for card catalogues.

"If I had to pick a season for this," Mr Memory Cards (irl name Jonathan) tells me via email, "I think this suits the beginning of fall more." And right now, as I write this listening to the mix for severalth time, looking out the window at grey-white sky and permanent rain, I can safely say that I totally agree. So this is when it's happening. Listen to this mix and kick up some dead leaves.

Why is it called Project Dream? And why is the artwork like it is? Both are inspired by Initial D, a manga/anime that is centred around the world of illegal street racing in Japan, of which Memory Cards had just started watching the final season at the time of making this mix.

I ask him what inspires his own music. "Nostalgia," he says. "For me, a vital part of the music making process involves introspection and seeing how my recollections can be incorporated into the work I make. Since for the most part the music I make doesn't really have words (or at least my own words) it's difficult to explicitly articulate these concepts. However, I try and draw inspiration from forms of media and popular culture that have brought me joy in the past. By doing so, I hope that I can at least partially convey who I am, where I've been and where I'm going not just as a producer or a musician but as a person as well.

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I dream a lot

MEMORY CARDS

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And what about the mix itself? "Really the only unifying theme with this mix is that they're all tracks that I've been very much enjoying lately," he explains. "Some of the tracks have a sort of eerie menace to them while some have a more jubilant nature to them. Others still carry an air of sweetness tinged with a shade of melancholy, so there's a variation in what I consider to be the themes of the songs I chose." He then adds something that seems to be an overriding theme of internet music: "I would also like to say that I consider myself friends with or at least acquaintances of a good portion of the producers featured here."

It's solidarity, a support network of artists who are at least right now eternally collaborating with each other, bigging each other up, and generally just being nice to one another. Since it's not a local scene, you don't have to "put up" with people, you choose your friend group based mainly and firstly on similar interests rather than spatial limitations; these pockets collect online, attract more people. Soon enough you have a veritable movement.

So from the stand-out electronic atmospherics of the Sonic Adventure-inspired indoors track 'Mystic Ruins' made for the pretty cool CHAO GARDEN compilation (curated by collective MECHA YURI and Memory Cards' own floating cloud sparkling euphoria in 'Fantasia Arc', to the glitzy ambient/future funk crossover in 'SUMMER VI', a collaboration between Bansheebeat and Yung Bae, to Shoujo Eyes and his track 'My Magical Girl' playing us out with gorgeous chiptune melodies, this mix is as varied and evocative as Memory Cards said it'd be, bristling with thickets of machine gun hi-hats and videogame samples (Link swinging his sword in ☆ＩＣＥＡＧＥ☆ by allegedly 14yo producer, manitee, or original Smash Bros. "choose your character" sounds in Cosmastly & Heavy Hearts collab, 'Fighting Polygon Team') – a great showcase of young producers making music right now.

Plus I think I finally got Memory Cards' name – it's all about recollections, memories… memory cards… store memories… of games.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. 32jnqwn-_-_-_ - ECSTATIC CLARITY
2. memory cards - Fantasia Arc
3. Childish Gambino – candler road (memory cards Chopped & Screwed Edit)
4. indoors - mystic ruins
5. Oliver~ - <3 Sosa Screwx
6. Howlings - What We Could Have Been
7. mizukage - OG Bobby
8. tones_ - heal 
9. HiGHBRiD - N E X U S
10. grèg - 水族館 (将来)
11. highbrid x memory cards - bandana . witta . mullet
12. // Hydro // - ~ R E A C H ~
13. manitee - ☆ＩＣＥＡＧＥ☆ (1.5k special free dl)
14. ║丂ｲ乇√乇刀 ۩ d乇乃ﾚﾑƬ║ - ｃｌｅｍｅｎｔｉｎｅ// ありがとう『feat. NET WORTHY』 
15. d o w n s † a † e - i c e ` g r a v e
16. ║丂ｲ乇√乇刀 ۩ d乇乃ﾚﾑƬ║ -ｉ ｄｏｎｔ ｕｎｄｅｒｓｔａｎｄ… (•̩̩̩̩＿•̩̩̩̩) ……╔ feat. H i G H B R i D ☥╗ 
17. [bansheebeat + yung bae] - SUMMER VI 
18. COSMASTLY ✗ HEAVY HEARTS - FIGHTING POLYGON TEAM
19. A$AP Rocky - Wassup (LOSTSVUND Remix)
20. ILOVEMAKONNEN - Tuesday (ft. Drake) (MXRA & LOSTSVUND Remix)
21. Shoujo Eyes - My Magical Girl

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☟ Memory Cards Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • Tumblr

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Y/N GUEST MIX 014 :: ULZZANG PISTOL'S YOUNGLIQUIDGANG FOXHOUND MIX

I love the internet. I just love it. For things like this, i.e. actually communicating with artists on a one-to-one level, it's just the best thing ever. There are a lot of other inventions that are quite useful, like toilets, airplanes, and various medical advancements, but the internet is just parfait. So I was chatting to Zeon Gomez aka Manila-based artist Ulzzang Pistol on FB & I asked if he wanted to make a mix and he said yes, so here we are.

But this is a mix with a difference: besides being the 14th Y/N Guest Mix, it's also a showcase of a collective part-founded by Zeon himself. "I make my own music by mixing J-pop influences with house, disco and dream pop, usually through the use of Japanese lyrics," in an email he tells me about what he does. "I don't know if you can label it as J-pop, but I'd like to call it that way I guess. I am also a Co-founder of the Manila-centric collective called YOUNGLIQUIDGANG, where I handle PR and Artist Management duties."

Youngliquidgang itself is a hotbed of creativity – a 12-strong (and still growing) group of young and talented Filipino music artists, mostly all electronic; "Basically," says Zeon, "YLG is inspired by a family/brotherhood kind of feel, where like-minded artists support each other into creating material and refining their talents." The collective was co-founded along with No Rome (aka Rome Gomez, his brother) and Keats Collective affiliate, MERLINDA/WALLS (Ethan Namoch, also making music as COEXIST). Zeon describes the simple story behind its conception: "We only wanted to make a community of electronic musicians around our university [De Lasalle-College of Saint Benilde], but it ended up being a nationwide collective after we decided to move out of the school's music scene."

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though we are generally like-minded we also have our little differences that we love and try to accept about one another

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From the downtempo soul of singer/musicmaker Hana ACBD and the cosmic blizzards of Local Disk (C:), to No Rome's lush glitterscapes and vapor-leaning R&B tracks from Colombo Beats, YLG is a varied bunch – but there's a bond between all of them that's less loose collective, more tight-knit gang (hence the name, I guess). "What connects us all together, apart from similar tastes in music," Zeon elaborates, "is this CULTURE we shaped inside our group, this family-like atmosphere, where we don't just meet on a artistic level but on a personal one as well, we sort of look out for each other." You can see this in the various remixes they do for each other's tracks, or in the way that vocals are offered up from one to another, etc.

"In short," he continues, "it's about love and respect, where we believe in the skill of others (especially the under-appreciated artists/talents)." Which is a lovely message that I imagine (or hope?) many others in the music community share and equally uphold; I mean, it was/is the YES/NO's raison d'être in the first place.

As for the mix itself, it's choc-a-bloc (bet you never thought you'd hear that ever again) with goodness from the fair isles of the Philippines, beginning with the moody 'ALWAYS' by MSN メッセンジャー (that's 'Messanger' in katakana btw) with its booming kicks, pitch-shifted vocals and classical ambience, continuing on a smooth journey of differing slices of electronic chill, and ending on a high with colourful dose of electro-pop The Valiant Vermin (self-described as: "Bedroom Project of some high school chick") with cute 'n' catchy rapid-fire vocals.

Zeon sums it up: "This mix goes to show that, though our artists are from different genres of electronic music, we share a form of cohesiveness or oneness with the vibe our tracks emit, to give a tag it'd be 'UNITY IN DIVERSITY', much like a family."

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. MSN メッセンジャー – ALWAYS
2. What is Andromeda – If these trees could talk
3. MERLINDA/WALLS – Departure
4. SOUL_BRK – Nights
5. Local Disk (C:) – Event Horizon
6. Colombo Beats – Cater 2 U Edit
7. Hana Acbd – Like Butter
8. COEXIST – Fare Thee Well
9. Ulzzang Pistol – ??????????
10. No Rome – Heaven
11. The Valiant Vermin – Good Girls Sin

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Like Ulzzang Pistol on Facebook
Listen to Ulzzang Pistol on SoundCloud
Follow Ulzzang Pistol on Twitter
Check Ulzzang Pistol on Tumblr

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