ÆGIR — LOOK AT PRETTY THINGS

---

To hear something from Iceland that isn’t solely gently electronic or obviously introspective is a huge gulp of fresh air. ‘Look At Pretty Things’ begins with a mesmeric fumble through tracts of bubbling synth, an oscillating hot tub of thick relaxation, but this serves to lull your ears into a state of malleability.

For Icelandic musicmaker Ægir, clearly this is the ideal ground on which plant his bumper crop of barrelling breakbeats. These come into earshot like a mob of metallic beetles — the snarling snap of snares slapping the air while the kick drum thunders and quakes.

Ægir’s background as a hardcore drummer gives the percussion a living-and-breathing feel; the sense of direction in the beat, despite its speed, is expertly crafted. Overall, ‘Look At Pretty Things’ is a cross between an alien abduction and a sweaty basement gig: weird, but 100% worth it.

---

• 🔔 This track is taken from Ægir’s album The Earth Grew Uncertain, released back in June on Reykjavik’s very own Why not? Plötuútgáfa! Records. Stream, purchase it on Bandcamp. There's also a video for 'Look At Pretty Things'.

---

📠
☟ Ægir Internet Presence ☟
bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

🐣 ZENXIENZ — MISSING CALIFORNIA

A self-destructed blare of lights and colour, of rocks and cosmic material, a delicious morsel of music that mixes these things in a heady unidentifiable salad of matter and anti-matter. Cacophonous and bustling, the sounds crammed into this track fuse together without dissolving into one another, like those vintage psychedelic visuals of oil and water swilling in a tray atop an overhead projector but sped up, these sounds crash and rollick, storm and surge, smack and clatter, synths and percussion alike, all of it alive and wriggling for being alive. This is 'Missing California' by zenxienz, something that begins slow and composed despite the sloshing of colours and sounds, the bleeperie of electronics like the conjurations of circuitboards.

Beneath these slower sections a heavy beat cranks muffled and smothered by synthetics, distant booms and clacks close-at-hand but stifled in the bubbling heat of the sounds, some of them jostling woodblock smacks and clatterations—and then this segment of breakbeat-flavoured percussive patterns, the drum & bass toppling of this sonic tower into a kinetic mash of music, wide horizon-searching synth playing a solo, an aching landscape intoxicated lead, and later on the psychedelic infusion is evident with a scramble of freeform melodies and irregular shapes, zooming towards the end, a dizzy psychic joyride into the wonderfully chaotic imagination of this musicmaker.

---

• 🔔 'Missing California' is from zenxienz's second album Brainforest, to which you can listen via SoundCloud.

---

---

📠
☟ zenxienz Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

---

---

🐣 MARIUS — EASY

This one tumbles and crashes and thuds and explodes with organicity, a track that jostles with maddening energy, a multi-limbed cartwheel, a staircase of descending rhythmic rigid boxing gloves pugilising each step, a combination haymaker of a track—and this is all courtesy, mainly, of the gorgeous drums that essentially define this morsel of music. You hear them at the beginning, they stop, and then gradually here they are again, popping out with dusty vitality, muscly forearm ferocity, the raw hi-hats sheafing and swishing, everything breathing, even the underpinning bass sound is like a windpipe of superhuman exhalation, a robust didgeridoo drone that packs a punch as much as those grass-growing living cliff mental mountain drums.

Named 'Easy', this track by Norwegian producer Marius trundles along with flesh-and-bone breakbeats till its tectonic titanic end, when the cymbals rush out and smash like storms in the swaying doses of the new rhythmic 2-step-flavoured beat, feeling closer to metal with its juddering electronics like palm muted distorted guitars. It's a heavy finale. This in contrast to a soft beginning, those chords that fluttered slowly, a fragile innocence exuding from the thin resounding synth; in contrast to the far-off like a distant memory sample that sounds as though it's been lifted from a museum audio guide. The shattering shuffle of this track, its wicked rhythm, its full-blown tree-sap felled-logs life, is a joy of sound, and made even more sweltering in the wake of the shred of quiet that gleams faintly throughout.

---

• 🔔 You can download 'Easy' by Marius, real name Marius Elfstedt, from ToneDen.

---

---

📠
☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

---

NO ROME – I SPEND ENDLESS DAYS THINKING OF DIFFERENT WAYS

Last time Philippines-based artist No Rome featured on YES/NO was quite a while ago – it was his emotive song 'Heaven', written about the tragic and untimely passing away of a friend, that not only caught the attention of the brain connected to the ears that live on the same body as the fingers typing these words, but that also provided an earworming melody that is still hummed and sung infrequently to this day. If that's what counts as a successful song, then 'Heaven' was a huge success indeed.

This time around he has surprise-dropped a track with a nice long title that also rhymes: 'i spend endless days thinking of different ways'. Sampling Trey Songz and referencing Slowdive in the lyrics, No Rome once again displays his knack for creating a thick blanket of sounds, luscious and floating, textured and bristling with gently merging melodic mists; ostensibly this begins as an ultra-chilled version of an R&B slow jam, chiming clouds of sound and his indomitable talent for pop vocal patterns helping the surge of flavours all the more tasty.

Hints of percussion and fragmented beats appear but it's not until halfway that snappy, understated beat appears alongside interwoven pitch-shifted vocal sample clusters — then inexplicably and without warning, the song shifts up a gear and becomes a rollicking cycle of much faster breakbeats, all of it smashed out and abrasive with sparkles of hardcore winking in the crunchy overdriven drums; samples continue to chipmunk-chatter, synths continue to wash and glisten, all until the track fades abruptly into a harsh velcro of actual wall of scathing white noise for the finale.

A massive surprise and a welcome switch between genres that not only keeps the listener on their toes, but shows huge potential for an artist who has already shown himself to be (seemingly) effortlessly multi-styled – and all without it jarring. It blends – and that's what we like.

---

• No Rome is part of Philippines collective YoungLiquidGang, which also counts amongst its members Ulzzang Pistol, Local Disk (C:) and Valiant Vermin.

---

---

☟ No Rome Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • Tumblr

---

---

MINOGAME – FORGET ME NOT

Any style of music suffixed by -core generally isn't widely held to be inherently "beautiful". Leave that to Edvard Grieg and ambient music and toytronic etc. But there are people out there making music that is both xxxxx-core and beautiful. Stunning, actually, if we want to all out on this one.

Specifically I'm talking about lolicore and this track, although not tagged as such, by Minogame called 'forget me not'. I've sort of self-diagnosed it as lolicore because it's arrived to our ears courtesy of lolicore-aligned label The Worst Label. We arrive now at the crucial moment where you open up the the keep gate of your mind and let in the broken frantic beats and vital charm of this piece of music.

It begins with delicate harp prostrating itself sadly amidst the finely textured rain sounds, the fluid plunks of the harp are joined by emotive strings as crunchy bitcrushed beats begin to clack into view, marching across the sky with all the crazed static of an approaching storm. Here is pathetic fallacy in music itself: a sad song mirrored by the eruption of heavy rain and thunderclaps.

Which may or may not appear in reality: amidst the chaos of rapid-fire, stretched and pitch-shifted, tormented snares there need be no extra sound effects. The breaks themselves are stormy enough, punctuated with offcuts of unknown high-register vocals, ripped apart and scattered for melodic effect as the aching virtuosity of these drum edits continue on their way. All the while, a new element in the touching backdrop of sound, a soft, resounding set of occasional chords, laps at the jagged corners here with puppy-dog eyes.

WHOOOSH~~ and we're back in the melting, heart-wrenching emotion from the beginning of the song. A subtle ringing bleep signals every now and again, then cuts into a continuous tone just like the beep of an ECG machine that tells you when someone's heart has stopped. Through this song, after breakneck calamity, a heart breaks somewhere.

---

• Fun fact: the moniker Minogame is analogous to the Japanese word minogame, a kind of turtle that grows algae on its back, and plays a part with the tale of Urashima Tarō from Japanese myth; minogame (蓑亀) literally means 'straw raincoat turtle'.
• 'forget me not' is taken from Minogame's recent album home is where the worst are for The Worst Label, where you can download it for any price you like. (Also available as physical CD from Minogame's Bandcamp).

---

---

☟ Minogame Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Bandcamp

---

---

MARTEL FERDAN – TOY GUN

Arriving courtesy of supercool Paris label Sound Pellegrino, this is a new track from French, or at least France-based, producer Martel Ferdan. Unfortunately it's only a snippet; my heart cries tears of longing when I stumble across a snippet of a track on the internet. But it's ok. I understand… kinda.

Anyway, the track is called 'Toy Gun' and what I first noticed about it was the collage of styles at work throughout. The thudding kicks follow a dancehall pattern, a sonic trigger that almost always results in some form of dancing; clusters of giant metallic drum summon a Brazilian carnival-esque atmosphere; the percussion forms a kind of breakbeat pattern; the wonky synth bass sounds very much like the sort of bass you'd find in UK grime… The amalgamation of these different flavours gives it a rich and complex base that feels like it does to the brain what a tasty, well spiced dish does to the tongue.

And from out this exciting broth emerges melody, stuttering and spicy synth that right away took me back to Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – the same dynamic short and sharp bursts, the same wild and wailing vibrato at work. Add to this an occasional sound which is kind of like the synthesised squawk of a seagull, and the combined plaintive-spooky melodies of a music box and toy flute towards the end, and you have yourself a mishmash of dance flavours ornamented with hints of videogame music.

I wanna hear the full version!

---

• Like I said, this is from Sound Pellegrino – a compilation called SND.PE VOL.04: MELODIC MECHANISMS (if this track is anything to go by it's a fitting title!). Including stuff from Crystal, Matthias Zimmerman and Orgasmic (co-founder/owner of the label along with Teki Latex). You can grab the compilation here!

---

---

☟ Martel Ferdan Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter

---

---

MATOAKAI – BASS STAR PILOT

Here is probably I think the second ever post I've written about lolicore. The first time around was about a super-catchy track called '4U' by maedasalt. This time the high-octane madness crash lands on your screens courtesy of Atlanta, Georgia-based musicmaker Matoakai with a track called 'Bass Star Pilot'.

Fraught with diced-up samples frenetically staccato throughout, the track firstly booms with lightly distorted kicks with abrasive snares resembling a super-decayed kinda breakbeats. After a snippet of somebody talking in Japanese, the beat gets some supreme edits, rattling with super-speed hi-hats and minigun snares, distant cosmic sounds like the rims of wine glasses being played in space providing an otherworldly, atmospheric backdrop to the micro-fractured beats.

A couple of times there's this wild flute sound, a kind of dead-of-night wolf-like sound (I think it's some kind of flute, maybe a Native American one I don't know), which should be out of place – a 'natural' sound in amidst the mad mechanical chops and cuts – but works perfectly; a song of instinct as a star pilot navigates their way through perilous multitudes of asteroids, warning lights flashing urgently inside the tiny starship as it zips past obstacles like a crazy insect.

---

• Check out the album this is taken from, Yuri Forver, released on lolicore-friendly netlabel, Mecha Yuri.
• It seems Matoakai has decided to call it a day under that moniker; I can't find them anywhere. However, someone called gomigomi says that they are "Post Matoakai" on their SoundCloud, which I reckon is probably the right person.

---

---

☟ Matoakai / gomigomi Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr

---

---

Y/N GUEST MIX 021 :: CLAS TUUTH

One day I will get better at creating the cover art for these guest mixes. For now, I will stick with making stuff on Paintbrush, a buggy port of Paint for Mac. If anybody has any suggestions, or can make art for free (some of the artists have done this themselves) please contact me. Thank you.

For now though, allow me to introduce Clas Tuuth. Well not so much introduce as meet him once more, as I did write about one of the tracks from his recent-ish 003 EP the other month. He's from London and he makes lovely organic-sounding electronic music, as if these electronics were plant matter or animal matter, and lived their own lives, living and breathing within the compositions with naturalistic ease. At the same time, they're filled with urban grit and a decidedly cold sense of loneliness – an almost melancholic feeling, yet content with itself, the soundtracks to solitary journeys and pensive moods.

But as for this mix itself. From the introspective ambience of Clas Tuuth's own intro in the form of his track 'Legion', it is a predominantly '90s-flavoured affair, a voyage through rave-inspired beats and heavenly dub. There's the cascade of beats in 'Hooligan 69' by Ragga Twins, containing within it a sample of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy', the twisted synth fantasia in the Alley Cat remix of 'Charly' by The Prodigy, the dance-rap of Rebel MC's 'The Wickedest Sound' (featuring, I have discovered, the origin of the eponymous sample in DJ Fresh's 'Dibby Dibby Sound'), ending as it began with the beautiful life-of-its-own vinyl crackle.

It's real nice to hear some music that I didn't really grow up with, but that has inspired a whole generation of musicmakers with its unrelenting beats and simplistic approach to music. I hope you enjoy or at least appreciate :~)

---

• T R A C K L I S T •

• 01. Clas Tuuth – Legion Intro
• 02. Manix – Stupid Dope Mix
• 03. Intelligent Hoodlum – Arrest The President
• 04. Clas Tuuth – Glass feat. Catriona Irving
• 05. Tek9 – Space 91
• 06. Shut Up and Dance – Derek Went Mad
• 07. Ragga Twins – 18" Speaker
• 08. Ragga Twins – Hooligan 69
• 09. SL2 – The Noise (Remix)
• 10. Eric B. & Rakim – I Know You Got Soul
• 11. 2 Bad Mice – Bombscare
• 12. The Prodigy – Charly (Alley Cat Mix)
• 13. Bug Khan & Plastic Jamm – Made In 2 Minutes
• 14. Rebel MC – The Wickedest Sound
• 15. 2 Bad Mice – Hold It Down
• 16. Clas Tuuth – Legion (version)

---

---

☟ Clas Tuuth Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

---

---