🐣 ANOMALIE — NO WAY

The Montreal maestro of keyboard Anomalie inducts us once more into his world of virtuosity with 'No Way', a squiffy head-nodding hip hop-influenced track that with its boom-bapping organic drums and their ticking hi-hats gives an aching sway to it all, founding the whole thing on a cartoon sea, all of it bobbing on deep blue waves. And if you thought the regular beat was fine just wait till the little fill at 2:09, all riddly diddly—just one of many ornamentations that make this whole experience pretty opulent in terms of sound.

Alongside that bounce is the star of the show, the keyboard, the motif throughout refraining with all the squishy wah-wah you could imagine, plasticine electric slime giving it an elasticity which, although the track is a slow one, crams your soul full of potential kinetic energy, winding you up like a spring. The vocal sample – "No way…" – adds colour to the groove. The crashing cymbals as the refrain rolls around again, they help, splashing metallically. And it ends with lounge piano, warm and sophisticated, the swank of a fancy restaurant dawning as the wonky squelch of the streets ends.

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• 🔔 You may download 'No Way' for free if you choose to do such a thing.
• 🔔 Anomalie has a new EP coming out in April 2018, arriving after his debut Métropole EP last year.

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🐣 MAHALIA — SOBER

This lovely track is arrives like a cool breeze through a window, contains within it that sheepish drowsy feeling that accompanies the delicate stages of the early morning following the inebriation and fun that bubbles between four walls and down corridors and in the garden, with its wonky boom-bap beat describing sonically that state of disarray as you awake from slumbering stupor and attempt to be a human, memories of the house party arising as you survey the room that was so hectic the night previously which now is filled with hangover and headache. "This story is totally about the morning after," says 19-year-old Leicester-based Mahalia about her track 'Sober'. "Thinking about the night before - all the mistakes you made, all the muddled texts you sent."

And so the track bounces this off-kilter pathway, the low subtle bass groove which charts this fresh, clean feeling throughout, the wobbling nature of it all giving the track this post-spinning-room relief in drymouthed stability. Yet we also have the vocals of Mahalia herself, not wonky, nor hungover, but self-assured and epiphanous, silkenly spinning lines that represent a realisation of good sense; "This is me waking up and smelling the roses," she explains further her first official single. Smooth, hazy, soulful, 'Sober' is an analogy for turning your life around, a night of revelry illustrating past mistakes, maybe even a whole lifetime of folly, but realising in a moment of clarity that things should and could be different.

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• 🔔 You can download or stream 'Sober' in various ways via this link here.

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🐣 OKBADLANDS — MINERAL

There is something beautiful in the attention to detail placed at the heart of this track, the little things we've their way through the luscious thickets of percussion, the ambient glistening, the robust groove that gloops underneath the breezy lounge feel that helps this track recline with ease. 'Mineral' is imbued with a boom-bap flavoured offbeat rhythm that trickles through in bass-vacuumed tracts of head-nodding percussion, a pre-chorus that settles in before the dual vocals of Kate Gurren and Sally Latter – Brisbane duo comprising OKBadlands – entwine and soar together in rich harmony, cymbals stream metallic. Below it all, deep bass scoops out a wholly legible pulse, a soft intimate sound that feels leviathan heartbeat, undeniable groove.

But aside from these ornate buttress foundations, the beat having been somewhat crafted by fellow Brisbanite Max Byrne (aka Golden Vessel), the duo create upper tier sounds that feel good enough to eat, lush flavours at work in things as simple as the little keyboard melody that glosses glassily at the intro and post-chorus areas, the high-pitched synth pings that mimic the vocal occasionally, the pulsar flutter of thin synth golden thread in the verse, the glitter in the chorus, and easily how silken smooth the vocals spiral with reverb adding to the sense of space afforded by the minimalism of the track, how open and expansive it feels yet how close-up and personal: intimacy, and its hopes for continuation indefinitely.

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• 🔔 See more of OKBadlands' back catalogue on SoundCloud.

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🐣 BARAKA — LEISURE

The beat here, the decayed whispering tap of the boom-bap beat, shoots a beam of instachill as soon as it starts its swaying swing beneath the bendy bass and liquid stream and sultry vocals that fall in like a fog as the beat becomes more legible and the kicks bump the ambience with their cassette tape thuds. This horizontally inclined track is from producer and jazz pianist Baraka (real name Geoffrey Dean) and it is very fittingly named 'Leisure'—and that is exactly it, jazz flavours combining with beats to create a sense of blissful nothingness.

Effusing from the track – from its golden haze of sound, the soothing textures of those crooning vocals, the ambient plasma of synthetic noises, the deep chimes, the snippets of flute that wind in – is a big sense of leisure, of having nothing pressing to do, of melting into a sunset, dissolving into nature, occupying oneself with no occupation. The way the sounds weave between each other, a loose tapestry of languorous dimensions, this one fading into that one, this one falling away, now all of it gradually breaking only to return in fuller form, this pattern is random in the gentle way that clouds pass by overhead; so here we are, outstretched in warm glinting grass, observing the ebb and flow of clouds pluming majestically in its grand wisps melting and growing and merging and going.

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• 🔔 'Leisure' is one of the tracks on Baraka's album V, released at the start of June. Listen to it on SoundCloud.

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🐣 NAKURY — AUNQUE QUIERAS

With soothing plumes of bass glooping behind a laid-back slowdown boom-bap beat 'Aunque Quieras' begins, the chilled and subtly dynamic vehicle for the words and voice of Costa Rican artist, Nakury, formerly of graffiti crew Pintores Sin Kontrol and breakdancing veteran.

In the singular groove crafted by San José-based producer Barzo, saw-wave synth and glittering trails of ambient computerised sound lend a heavy misty atmosphere to the instrumental, a sultry melting vibe that solidifies and buzzes with electricity when it comes to the hook—"aunque quieras…" Nakury sings anthemically, the vocal soaked in reverb, adding to the thick delicious haze of the instrumental, bounced and pockmarked by the shuffle of the beat.

As for the verses, Nakury shines. Her flow is breathless, skipping along, pursued by itself, layered with hypnotic monotone harmonies, the vocal resonating with its rapid staccato and Latin lilt. Though low-slung and casual, the rap feels extra-explosive above the robust calm of the instrumental, its speed is satisfying, the tone sumptuous, and it gleams poised to pounce, pushes clouds across the sky: it feels vital, elemental.

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• 🔔 'Aunque Quieras' is taken from Nakury's recent album VIA, released by Lácteo Cósmico back in April—it's packed with tracks, including another standout, 'Rima Que Ilumina'. You can download the album here here.

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☟ Nakury Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 MICHL — WASTE?

Dynamic plays a big part in this new one from LA singer Michl. It swings like a galactic pendulum between the soft synths of the verse, its sparse beat with miniature percussion clicks, and the chorus, a swaying segment of the song that's sultry with wide rich synths and the harplike glittering sweeps of sound that give it a heavenly feeling. 'Waste?' questions ourselves, exhibits doubt; in the verse the synths grow and bulge and play in different patterns when Michl croons, "So what's next?"—in the second verse a pulse of synth bass begins to rumble at this juncture. Questions arise, unanswered, and send us into the exquisite disquiet of the chorus, where the snares clack and the hi-hats shuffle-swing, each one a sonic shrug, unable to answer the question of whether or not everything will go to waste, the synth shivering around it anxiously in the wake of this big question mark.

Michl's singing in the verse, lilting and beautifully treated by the space in between the sounds that cradles his voice, his vocals are also rhythmic, which is part of which makes this song so instantly likeable. The metre is verging on that in which Shakespeare wrote his plays, iambic pentameter, a rhythmic way of speaking where there are 10 syllables written in pairs, unstressed-stressed. However, in 'Waste?' this is shaken up. For instance: "i can't push this barrel any farther" is the other way round. We have then "cause every single step is getting harder" which is iambic, but there are 11 and not 10 syllables. And in the pre-chorus, "can anyone repair the mess we've made?"—this line is iambic, and follows the chords that play behind it.

This rhythm, like a heartbeat – de-DUM de-DUM – is naturally easy to follow, but by adding and subtracting syllables, stressing it backwards, the followable is subtly changed and sticks out, catching the listeners' attention. The point of this? Michl writes them well, that's what.

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• 🔔 Just one new track earlier this year, 'Everything'll Change', followed Michl's debut self-titled EP that appeared last year. So is that one, alongside 'Waste?', part of a new release? We dunno.

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☟ Michl Internet Presence ☟
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EEVEE – FORGET YUR NAME

The first I heard from this Netherlands-based (is it Netherlands or the Netherlands and if so WHY does it need a definitive article, like Ukraine and the Ukraine, what's the difference? Is it an area? Is it a country?) beatmaker was a track called 'Opium'. And I was gonna write about it too; the gloomy rain-washed synth sounds of its Japanese scale melody really sounded like the theme for the Ruins of Alph in Pokémon Gold/Silver, though I don't think they're exactly the same. But I was totally hooked on the watercolour dripping half-decayed evaporating quality of the synth sounds, like listening to an ancient cassette tape with fresh beats laid beneath it for support and clarification.

That was until I heard 'Forgot yur name' and then I knew I had to write about this one because it's just so ... wow. It's a tract of minimalism in beatmaking, an exercise in polished antiquity in music, of creating fossilised music from a fresh mind and body and giving it those hairline fissures and lo-fi anti-gloss of authenticity.

[The beatmaker is stylistically called E e v e e but I'ma type Eevee; also I think it's short for Eveline but there's no surname, and it seems that she's from Dordrecht, Netherlands and that's all we know.]

The beats on this track thud with authoritative intensity, the kicks full and dust-disturbing, the snares clacking and crushed, with the hint of other percussion haunting the spaces between sounds of this track the whiff of golden age noir nostalgia permeating the air like rare perfume balmy nights balcony the nearby seashore whispering in the luxury-lit gloam surrounding the white stucco walls of the hotel. It's that kinda vibe you get me?

Then there's that sampled string insturment, a romantic tone and melody but played with as if listened to when high or drunk or both, the frequency dropping in and out of perfect pitch, the speed also fluctuating minutely, both adding to a sense of reality but as viewed through a film, of the romantic setting of 1950s Tangiers (forgive the colonial overtones) and live music and cocktails but as heard through a radio, life, but viewed through memories. All of that sort of thing maybe. Maybe.

But the point is: the beat is real, it is soaked in atmosphere, is emotive, and cleverly reflective of its title (which a) suggests that a memory of past love has finally faded, b) suggests some sort of intoxication or laissez-faire nonchalance with the misspelling of 'your' as "yur") with the old-school sounds further warped and wobbling out of sight and out of mind. A haunted and inspired too-short-too-sweet number; luckily Eevee makes a lot of music a lot of the time.

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不明 FUMEI – GINSENG COFFEE

The sun is hanging low in the sky, hitting the magnolia tree outside the window, throwing dappled shadows on the table where I'm sitting writing this. I love magnolia – it's like blossom (or it just is blossom), but big blossom, blossom that means business, Serious Blossom swaying in a sleepy breeze… and it's in this blissful spring-but-feels-like-summer evening that I stumbled across this track by 不明 FUMEI (不明, pronounced 'fumei' means "unknown"). I think Fumei might be from Italy but I could be wrong, might be German or something else. Who knows. Anyway, unfortunately the track in question, 'Ginseng Coffee', is only 1'30" but it's currently on repeat, sending its nice vibes into my brain.

Something about boom-bappish hip hop sounds like this fit this time of day so effortlessly – and if we're talking specifics then I suppose you'd have to say it was the listless offbeat clacking for the duration of the song, the soft but robust bass locked into the kick drum for undeniable rhythmic harmony, the lounge-leaning chords oozing with somnolent tremolo, phasing icy synth, hollow vox-esque sounds plaintively echoing a half-done melody in the midst of sunny heat haze; it's all this that makes this track so lovely, all of it culminating in a sound lightly decayed by its own innate sense of bliss.

'Ginseng Coffee' (which is just titled 'Ginseng' on the release – see below) embodies chillment of a very high degree crossed with otherworldly wooziness, summoning the groggy feeling of having fallen asleep in your garden and waking up with hot skin and absolutely no concept of time, birds zipping home to roost with chirps and whatnot, blue sky littered with near-dissipated clouds.

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• It's from a split release between 不明 FUMEI and o k h o called La Caffeteria, a 22-minute long selection of beats in the same vein as this, born from an apparent concept of sitting in a café, track titles including 'Espresso', 'Smokers Zone', 'Take A Sip' and 'Beans Smell'. Perfect leaning-back-with-a-coffee music. Buy it here. And here it is below :)

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☟ o k h o Social Media Presence ☟
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GHOST CRUISE – PAST MIDNIGHT

Not sure where this guy is from but I'm going to make some sort of half-educated guess. So… yeah, I think he might be from Paris. And in fact – could be male or female. So let's say… them. They might be from Paris because they tagged the song as 'Paris' (also a Parisian musicmaker commented on the track, too, so…). Then again, they've also tagged it with The, Imaginarium, Midnight, Beats, 2015, and Hadrian. So who can say anything for sure? Not I. Not I.

So anyway, the track is called 'Past Midnight' and it's by somebody making music under the name GHOST CRUISE. The etymology of the name… a ghost cruise I suppose. Either a cruise for ghosts or a cruise you go on to see ghosts. Sorry, too much talking.

The track itself is gloriously wonky, owing not only to the skipping off-kilter beat that thuds and thumps along, nor just to the the seemingly arhythmic synth bass bouncing throughout, but also to the sounds higher up the scale. Harp flourishes sweep as if endlessly conjuring a flashback, backdropped with phasing sounds and punctuated with zither icicles and delicate strings. Something wholly fitting the title 'After Midnight', summoning the unreal moods and atmospheres that effuse from the heart of night itself.

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PRIMAPARTE – 1975. // noire

This ain't the newest song from this German beatmaker, but it is the first one I heard when I stumbled onto his SoundCloud page. I also listened to a couple of his other tracks, but, yeah, still decided to show you guys this one.

It's called '1975.' and it's by a guy from Essen, Germany (fun fact: the city recently started an initiative which pays alcoholics in beer to clean the streets) called primaparte. It is hip hop, or at least utilises an offbeat that is very hip hop, as well as a whole lotta sampling and looping.

The track soars with the sound of astronauts talking to mission control and gloopy pianos playing a warm walking-through-the-door-of-your-childhood-home type melody, as electronic buzzing and beeping get giddy in the crackling ambient cosmos conjured by the beatmaker. Note also the well-placed truncated sample of "Motherf—"

Speaking of which, and after a sampled "YEAH", you'll see it's smart af, with metronomic hi-hats ticking above tight snares that clack alternately to the thud-boom of the kicks, holding up this transportive wonder – even if it is only 1m 33s long.

And fuck it, why not listen to the sparkling 'noire' as well—

—which aches with sultry urban brass blares that announce the triumph of nocturnal lassitude, with the occasional sample of someone laughing, as if the kitchen utensil percussion is actually tickling him, whose beat is boom bap through and through. It basically sounds noire.

• If you like the looped chilled stylings of these tracks then get yourself over to primaparte's SoundCloud and follow.

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☟ primaparte Social Media Presence ☟
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JANETTE KING – DUSK

For a song called 'Dusk' to sound like actual dusk is, well, you'd kinda expect that to be the case. But somehow not as accurately as Janette King has done it. The track perfectly captures the stuttering fade-out of evening, the slow grudging descent into night as the air fills with twilit sounds, part unnervingly evocative of our mortality, part beautiful.

This is a grand piece of ambience crossed with off-kilter hip-hop style beats, following a seemingly arrhythmic pattern, with the fizzing punch of its snares and somehow urgently ticking hi-hats, pulverising kicks with that thud leaving poignant trails of dust having been disturbed.

All the while, piano plays in jazz slant, dark-world lounge bar melodies tinkling beside aching synth strings, squelchy bass underpinning this in no small part, with this fantastically stark BIP noise every now and again. What with the truncated synth solo at the end, a resonant, soulful snippet describing the sun hitting the horizon, throwing its last oranges and pinks across a serene and sea.

Janette King herself is a musicmaker from Vancouver, with an as-yet-unnamed EP apparently on its way. With stuff this good, it'll be nice to see what she's got in store for us next.

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CORY JREAMZ INVICTUS EP

Wahoo! Here it is. Yes. Ever since I first encountered the music of Houston rapper Cory Jreamz well over a year ago, he's been on a constant curve of improvement; coming across as a guy who not only seems intent on conquering the world, but also as someone whose future efforts must surpass those that came before, it's no surprise that he gets better and better. His latest EP, Invictus ("unconquerable" or "undefeated" in Latin), released a couple of days ago, is his third to date and follows on from last year's Vague Current Vivid Fated, an angst-ridden quartet of songs from the mind of 18-year-old Cory Jreamz. One year and four months later, and one year older, CJ has developed his sound and his style and come up with something very striking indeed.

From the first ultra-distorted, unearthly sounds of 'Pressure' you know you're in for an intense ride. The very first lines introduce the Cory's uncontainable emotion, littered with varied name-drops: "Teen anger's all in my heart / Sylvia Plath all in my veins / I ain't takin' shit like Rosa Parks" and "Play this piece in the Pantheon / I'll play it all in Versailles too / Write a script with Hitchcock / Then show my cock to Lucy Liu" particularly. Grinding saw-waves rise like razor waves from a steel sea, framing a dizzying slew of references – both pop culture and high culture – from Cory Jreamz throughout the song: Napoleon, Thomas Edison, Genghis Khan, to name just a few. He roars the song's refrain – "They should've played this shit up in the movie Casablanca, and have a black man rapping while they fight Nazis" – draping a fierceness across the rumbling beat of the track that he has absolutely no qualms about displaying. He doesn't ooze confident, he burns with it.

At the end of 'Pressure' he brashly raps "I'm the black black black black black Marlon Brando" – clearly unafraid to make a point of his race, something which is still very much an issue in the US. Speaking of Marlon Brando, Cory must be a fan because he references the actor in 'Alive' as well, a song with a more chilled beat, dripping with strings and samples yet still retaining Cory's love for dark atmospheres. This track comes with a new extension, known now as 'Alive/NYC', the 'NYC' part comprised of a track he dropped earlier this year, 'Driving To New York AT 4AM'. It's a wholly nightmarish and menacing closer to the EP, in which he implores, "let my family know that I'm gone with the wind" and spits vitriolic and ironic desire for model wives and fast cars in the nocuturnally alone atmosphere.

As you can tell by now, Cory Jreamz is full of inspiration and influences, from films and pop culture to literature and historical figures. I love them; they're really entertaining, I find myself listening intently to hear who is gonna find themselves mentioned in a rap. The grime-flavoured 'Nina' is packed full of references and irony, displaying a confident, sarcastic lilt against a triumphal, war-like brass section. Also, in 'Howl' (check the video here), for instance – the title itself a reference to Allen Ginsberg's famous poem of the same name – Cory summons art world references in his defence, raining down fiery scorn on anybody who refers to his career as a pipedream.

He tackles that same judgemental attitude in 'Will You Be Here', condemning the world for making people conform and stamping down his conviction for success with lines like "Ain't never stoppin' I'm always climbing" and "Nigga this more than a rap hobby / All this soul up in my body / If I don't make it and get a Grammy / You can shoot me like I'm Bobby." In the second half of the song the music turns slow, ambient, fluid, echoing with ghostly samples in a stew of everdreaming subconscious, the perfect evocation of the "lost highway" he finds himself on, countering fear of death with determination to leave a legacy: "When the lights go out I'ma still be here / Rockin like Keith Moon till my last breath of air."

The cocksure, audacious lines don't stop, gloriously full of Cory Jreamz' personality: determined to make something of himself. Amidst its raw beat and scratching synths, 'Swim' is a track in which he humorously explains "I never learned how to swim or ride a bike" whilst contrasting this with determination in the form of a tongue-in-cheek middle-finger-up attitude to detractors. 'Swim' is potentially my favourite from the EP, because of its very legible beat and being the track to best display the almost yawning flow of Cory Jreamz, talking out the side of his mouth (seemingly) in a sarcastic manner that truly gives no amount of fucks to "doubters".

What more can I say? Alternatively dark beats that scream just as loud as Cory Jreamz's soul seems to be and, as he says himself in 'Swim', his voice is a piece of art, something to enjoy. You don't have to relate to it, of course. But the fact that it exists, and is consumed like art, is enough. With this said, it's pretty evident that Cory Jreamz is going to get bigger – this EP has confirmed it. And since bettering himself from last year to this, I don't really doubt that he's going to top this Invictus next year when he releases album The Lonely Painter. Also, look out for a video for track 'Nina' in January.

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YES/NO GUEST MIX 003 :: LUVIIA

Everybody say hey! Everybody say, um, something else! Now everybody sit down and chill out. I wouldn't do much good as a frontman, agent provocateur or agitator-in-general. But that's ok. I can live with that. In any case, everybody should sit down and chill out now cause I have a lovely Guest Mix - the 3rd in this series - courtesy of Taiwan-based beatmaker Luviia.

I first stumbled across this guy through Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes' work; one of the beats to her tracks was crafted by Luviia. I first wrote about his track 'Coppertone', then he released his P2P Feelings EP - his style is old school, marked by crackling samples and hefty doses of boom bap beats, yet tinged with modernity, influenced by the revival in lounge-type vibes and 80s throwback sounds. His process, his creative flair, is eclectic: "I always listen to a lot of different music and flick through random vinyl, just sample anything I see or hear. Cos everything is music!"

His mix shows off his favourite sounds in hip hop. There are some truly experimental tracks in amongst this mix; Repeat Pattern being one of them, Lidly another, REZ, Linn... they're all great, in fact. All of them exude different notions of what instrumental hip hop could or should be, yet all tied with the uniting factor of being intended for chilling out, for horizontal living, for filling the empty air of modern spaces with soothing sounds and the smart offbeats of hip hop.

And this stuff is VERY SPECIAL cause, well, Luviia says why. "All these tracks are unreleased or new releases, I'm so honoured that I got some tracks from these artists!" he said. "Hopefully everyone will enjoy it! Respect though. Blessings!" So with no further ado, please check it out.

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TRACKLIST:
01. Sir Froderick - Better Off
02. a-robb - surippee05
03. Repeat Pattern - Oooh Aaah
04. Lidly - kLoke
05. Linn - Sail To The Moon
06. Bugseed x ill.sugi - Diamond
07. Da Youngstas - Mad Props (Orion Remix) (Instrumental)
08. Sicknessmp - Jazzpiece
09. Milo Mills - Mystery
10. Bugseed - Dreams Of Tomorrow
11. Bluestaeb - Cookie Monster Dreams
12. Tarik Sabar - Rah!
13. weirddough - High Tide 1
14. Gordy Michael - The One Who Knocks
15. REZ - Lovers

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LAZY INTERVIEW #17: BOTANY

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← #16: SAMUEL #18: PSAPP →

At the end of last week I wrote about a really nice album. It's called Lava Diviner (Truestory) and it's by Botany and it's kinda a concept album built on the loose story of a religious cult praying for a volcano to explode. Whilst the songs worked out of context, so to speak, they most certainly worked in their intended order and I recommend having a listen. The atmosphere alone is really filmic stuff, so prepare to drift off and imagine.

Anyway. It was a really nice listen and I had fun going on the journey. There should be more concept albums. The flow is something else. I'm talking like I've never heard a concept album. But all of that aside, Botany himself was kind enough to lend his time in answering the Y/N lazy interview: lazy by name, not by nature. Please sit yourself down with a cup of tea or coffee or whatever you fancy, have a nice read of these words and enjoy.

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Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?
My name is Spencer Stephenson. I grew up in a small town in Texas called Weatherford, full of football-moms, chain restaurants, and conservative politics. I think the guitar player of White Denim is from here too. It's a place that anyone who wants to do or say anything moves out of as soon as possible. I make music as often as I can and schlep at a warehouse in Fort Worth, Texas. I would say I live there too, but I'm in a little bit of transient period. I don't live in LA or New York and I'm not from Detroit or Chicago. I have a life story that no one should pay attention to.

Why did you decide to start creating music?
I've been playing since I was 10 and making electronic and hip hop stuff since I was 15. I've always done it. It's a hermit-crab shell that I never outgrew.

How would you describe your sound? What makes you and your style stand out?
I would describe my sound as one that uses a hip-hop composition style to make anything that can possibly be made that way. I tend to gravitate towards themes like mysticism, wonder, fantasy, and the ancient world, anything that someone would call another person a nerd for liking.

Is there a perfect time and place for listening to your music?
That's totally up to the listener. I try to create enough of a "world" within the music itself for the listener to be able to listen to it anywhere at any time, but there are some places that are better than others. I'd recommend night time, outside.

What inspires you most when writing a song?
Usually a piece of an old record that would loop into something really interesting or pleasing to listen to. Landing on good drum sounds always pushes a song into the next dimension for me, too. If I like something I'm working on and that feeling doesn't go away then I'll finish the track.

What is your most memorable musical experience?
I opened for Panda Bear in 2011 in Dallas and it was the first time I played a big room by myself, to 500-800 people. It was really exhilarating.
Other than that some of my favorite musical moments have come from improvised jams between me and my friend Bruce Blay who makes music under the name Melting Season. We used to do a lot of free-form, krautrock-infused noise jams a

What are your favourite three songs at the moment?
Pharoah Sanders - "Greeting To Saud"
Four Tet - "Gong"
Ahnnu - "Mirror"

Who do you most admire in the music world?
Matthewdavid is doing some amazing shit with his label Leaving Records. They've partnered with Stones Throw for a few releases as well. Everything they put out sounds great and sounds so much more raw and alive than 99.9% of electronic music/hip-hop. When I first found out about them I felt a kinship immediately like "ah yeah someone gets it!" Some of the stuff on Leaving breathes so naturally you'd never know computers were involved. Perfect approach, and really relatable. To me anyway.

In your opinion, what is the future of music?
Well I see the kind of music that I do fully breaching the visual side of things. I hope to see albums released with some kind of fully interactive visual component, maybe one that is viewed through virtual-reality hardware. I often listen to music in dark rooms with my eyes wide open, it would be nice to put something in front of them and round out the experience that way.

Music is a personal experience and you can cherry-pick record stores and the internet and create a library that reflects your tastes perfectly in a much more specific way than ever before. I think we're at a point where artists are reaching for their own sound and identity like never before because of how saturated the music world is, and that's only going to make for a more personal experience on the listener's end as well.

What's the future of your music - what do you hope to do next?
I hope to just keep going and making music that I'm proud of. I'd like to work with more rappers and other vocalists, but not in a "featuring" way necessarily, not in a way that's sort of compartmentalized like "here's the beat, here's the singer." I'd like to work with vocalists who add to the music in a really integrated way instead of just floating over the top of it. That's not how I think about vocals. They're another instrument in the mix. I feel like too many vocalists give songs an ego and a face with what they do. I'd like to go the opposite route.

I'm working on an EP right now that should be out next year, I really like the material that's on that.

What, aside from music, is most important to you?
Staying on top of everything else so I can keep making music.

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He comes across as wholly dedicated to not just the process of creating music but also to the intended purpose of music: listening. Which is a nice thing to hear. Enjoyment, as ever, seems to play a big part in whether music even gets made in the first place, and his idea for the future of music - a more pervasive visual element - is something that prolong, augment and even enhance the listening experience. I know that VJs exist but how often do you ever hear of a famous VJ? Matching movement, images, colour to sound (the video for Julien Mier's 'Super Tropic Tramp' is a perfect example) is probably as difficult as making sounds into a coherent, likeable flow in the first place.

Whilst he says "I have a life story that no one should pay attention to," I believe that a life story, anyone's life story actually, shapes the person they become. For a maker of music, especially one so entrenched in music from an early age, that life story is going to mark your sound somewhat. Growing up, he says, in the midst of a place "full of football-moms, chain restaurants, and conservative politics" might explain why his music is so escapist; it doesn't even lash out, it simply transports you from where you are to somewhere else.

I listened to Lava Diviner (Truestory) whilst I was walking around my own hometown early in the morning. It was still dark. Instead of the comfortable suburban housing and commuters walking to the train station, I focused on the music - I couldn't not. This is music that comes from a place where people feel they don't belong, and speaks to people in similar situations. For everyone else, his finely-crafted beats will attract you into the marginal soundscapes that live at the heart of Botany's music.

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← #16: SAMUEL #18: PSAPP →

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BOTANY LAVA DIVINER (TRUESTORY)

Google "the death of the album" and you have like a zillion results (259 million on google dot com), the top one being a Wikipedia entry on the actual phrase itself. A lot of publications have based entire articles around this phrase, which you can see on the Wikipedia snippet described as a "perceived decline of a traditional album in the 21st century." The keyword here, however, is "perceived" - and of course, it is perceived. It is not fact. You don't need to read any article to refute it. Although single songs are more readily available and people aren't necessarily having to buy entire albums just for one song anymore (as my dad admitted he used to do), these single songs happen to come from actual albums. People are still making albums. It's not, or shouldn't be, a big debate. It simply shows the readiness and the willingness of people to jump on the naysaying bandwagon and commit themselves to pronouncing the supposed decline or, more melodramatically, "death" of something, almost like a celebratory lament: a virtual conjuring of vultures circling. Tell me if I'm wrong.

In a similar vein, I'd like to introduce the new album, Lava Diviner (Truestory) by Texan producer Botany. It was released this week and it is a concept album, charting an imaginary cult in their efforts to make a volcano erupt via their prayers. I've already written about a couple of songs from the album, 'Quatic' and 'Simple Creatures', and was curious to hear how they fit into the concept, because both tracks are strong by themselves. Let's see, shall we?

From the bubbling bleeps and drum chaos of at the intro of 'Comm', we're led into a soothing paradise of sounds: true glitters of metallic percussion and chanting, wordless vocals. An introduction to the ideas behind this album, a searching view of a distant, unknown, tropical land. Tribal drumming rises out of the sounds, fades out, until a raw hip hop beats comes in, leading us to the next track, 'Anchor'. True to its name, heavy, bursting kicks lie at the heart of the beat, cementing it as the rest of the sounds are free to float all around - a dream world of pretty, ambient sounds. Inhuman voices yelp out, as if you're passing by the glowing mouth of a cave in the sweat of ominous night air. We're taken slowly into that forboding maw, as a low shamanistic vocal chants at the beginning of 'Owa'.

White noise fills your ears to the bounce of the beat, swimming synth echoing more singularly than before, the howl of voices in a labyrinth of tunnels. Things start to heat up. A huge room opens up, signalled by the expansive fluttering of the sounds in 'Per Eon', a greeting of a song where unintelligible voices chatter in its intense, all-encompassing sound, slowly fading to nothing. It's here, in 'Simple Creatures', where things turn a little eerie, helped by the soaring vocals of RYAT, our brief guide who in otherworldly layerings of aching tones repeats the mantra "simple creatures". We find ourselves in the midst of a ceremony in 'Cant / Goosemother' regular stamps of beating drums give way to hoards of relentless clapping and looping bloops of some giant marimba. A chorus rises up and sways. By the end, we're left with a more peaceful beat, more delicate sounds that herald utopian visions underpinned by sub bass.

But the real truth lies in the raw boom-bap of the unnerving 'Quatic' - euphoric sunny guitar sweeps get left behind for the hard reality of molten lava and ever-maddening voices, twirling over distorted walkways of bass. Things get serious. 'Small Keys' explodes with a hard, aggressive beat, decorated with snare ornamentations, a frenzy of sparkling noises jostling for supremacy. We finally meet the 'Lava Diviner' - a short oasis of exalted, choral reverence. Then the lamenting guitars of 'Celeste' and breezy drums give way to a dubstep beat, the perfect rhythmic vehicle for the less-busy, darker sounds of this track. Whooping, chuckling shades of vox fly out at you. Things turn orchestral as strings take over hounded by white noise. By the end, it's nothing but a frightening concoction of noise and brief murmurings of a low, demonic voice: a glimpse of the dark heart at work.

Perhaps things have faded for now. Carefree, complex drum patterns characterise 'Sunna / Show Me', a track whose jazzy, lounge leanings feel like gusts of pure air compared to the suffocatingly intense feel of some of what has come before. The drums fade and a flute plays alongside a lo-fi piano, the thin air of dawn. One single menacing note of bass sounds and leads us into 'Birdlife'. It's a structured, 2/4 affair, rich waves of chords ushering in a sense of calm as vocal samples skip along. It builds to an overarching crescendo of farewell. But as you look back, mournful strings remind us of the journey we've taken, remembering strange destructive human desires, the sound of molten bubbling still in our heads. Whether this cult prays for it or not, the threat and the power of the volcano is always there: nature remains.

... A journey, that's for sure. That's what this album was. And it's all thanks to a skill at moulding a whole plethora of analogue noises into evocative, believable soundscapes. Well-crafted, often intricate beats keep the pace and augment the dynamics inherent in these sounds. Botany himself, real name Spencer Stephenson, calls the whole thing a "cathartic release" - perhaps, then, it reflects his own heart, his own passions. This album itself was an eruption waiting to happen.

It's out now on Western Vinyl (as vinyl) and you can also buy it from iTunes or Amazon.

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PLATY∏ FOR REAL

Wow so it's been a while since I talked about this man. I wrote about him around the end of last year. That's like, almost a whole year ago now. Imagine that. You don't actually have to imagine it cause it's happening RIGHT NOW. That's what's going on. Anyway, I'm very happy that Playπ (that's Platypi for those who don't know their π's from their φ's) has made some new music. Last time I wrote about this Brighton-based hip hop producer it was regarding his glitchy-as-it-is-swaggery song 'Lassitude'. A very nice song indeed.

This time around however, Platyπ (aka real-named person Alistair Hill) has uploaded something very different onto his SoundCloud page. Although the mainstay of his general repertoire - that is, the syncopated offbeats of hip hop - is still present, there seem to be a lot more elements at play here, something that gives the song a mature, accomplished feel. Perhaps it's just his use of samples that do it here. Everyone knows I love a well-placed sample or two, but that's beside the point. The point is that it sounds good and I like it a lot.

Utilising a sample that sounds like it could be from some cheesy 80s commercial - glittering pop bells and lush palm-tree evoking sounds, basically - the song leads into a sparse boom-bap-esque hip hop beat with thudding kicks and reverbing snare. Chopping and looping the sample creates the distinct feel of melodic white noise at some points, particularly for the part where the beat drops to make way for some lovely electric piano chord progressions that make their soft presence known for the rest of the song.

A softly distorted bass has been added, something that exudes a certain amount of funk, locking in with the kicks of the beat for maximum rhythmic effect. Speaking of effect, there's a great bit in the song (at 0:58 I think) where everything just cuts out for a beat, leaving a breathless space of nothing that allows the next beat to be pretty punch without adding in any build-up tricks. There are lots of different parts to this song - quite something considering it's only 2 minutes long. This brand of music could be easily aligned with vaporwave, perhaps just for its particular choice of sample use, but for me all it does is mark a change in sound for Platyπ; and not just any old change, but a seemingly natural change - something that, for any artist really, is a good thing.

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BOTANY QUATIC [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Moving on from the sparkling, busy ambience of Texan producer Botany's 'Simple Creatures' featuring the vocals of RYAT, uploaded earlier this month, we arrive at the mellow yet mean sounds of his latest offering, 'Quatic'. Both songs come from an album due for release on 28th October called Lava Diviner: Truestory, a "loosely" conceptual offering that tells the musical story of a cult praying for a volcano to erupt - a vision of smart hip hop that mixes intricate beats and super-atmospheric sounds.

What we have in 'Quatic' is a lot of watery sounds, or perhaps liquid would be a better description; it isn't A-quatic after all. Instead here are images conjured of an subterranean world never seen but for a select few - a world of scorching magma bubbling, of unintelligible spirits inhabiting the very molten rocks themselves. Sumptuous sounds illustrate this hidden world, quietly cradling its liquid lava flow, as sluggish as it is brimming with dangerous power. Atmospheric.

The noises that go into creating such an image are legion. Blooping synth hides in the background like a constant measure, zither-like sounds strum, scratched-glass sounds stab the air, chopped vocal samples whisper gently, synth vox joins the pattern of the bloops, blobs of bass squelch their way along, and ambient air disturbances sound like distant roars or shrieks of the roots - the heart - of the volcano itself.

That's not to mention the beat. A boom bapping sensation, as faltering as it is strong. Dustings of hi-hats skiffle rapidly along with a dull shuffle that sounds as real and raw as a dented, well-used hi-hat should. The snare rip-slaps to the solid bounce of the kick. As traditional a hip hop beat as you could imagine, with a less than traditional approach to the surroundings and cargo of that beat. Spencer Stevenson, the real name of Botany, is onto a winner with this kinda sound.

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