🐣 INNING — EXPENSIVE FLIGHTS

The name of the game here is hazy. It's also cloudy, misty, nebulous—it's all of those things. That insubstantial foggy-headed feeling, sun glinting in your eyes, all created by gorgeous washes of sound that swish and sway with lo-fi abrasions like some sort of dust storm just so that they graze your mind ever so slightly, so that all that loveliness can pour in, you know. It's called 'Expensive Flights' and it toes the line somewhere in the heavenly kingdom between chillwave and dream pop, a delicious combo of live drums and bass and guitar and synth in a soothing symphony of sound created by the Charlottesville-based Inning.

Like dream pop, it feels alive yet somewhere else, voices soaring in the sky, and the drums thump and rattle with a doofing pulse and scritch-scratch metallics – yet in a pattern that summons something more electronic-based, a slow house sorta pace; but though a 'real' instrument, the bass guitar coarse and grinding in low-slung indie-band fashion, it is founded on this sub-bass frequency that has that quality of being able to erase everything going on around you. And at a heavenly crescendo the guitar arpeggiates like glitter, like light, soft synth chords ever-present, everything slots into place as the vocals refrain enigmatic: "Are the things that I like me for the reasons I like you, or are things that I like you for the reasons I like me?" Self-doubt broiling beneath a calm exterior; a vocal that with its reverb and light decay feels faraway, like a vague worry.

This is a late afternoon sound, a montage of the day's move into night, with that beatless and wordless outro, cool and blissful, hitting just as the sun fades and dusk sets in, inky and purple, a watercolour in sound of the feeling that comes at the end of a good day with its effusion of doubt and its memories, when the passing of time is most visible and poignant in a dramatic colour-changing sky. And besides, Inning sang it at the start of the track:""Yeah I like you, but right now things aren't right." A breeze picks up, and your summer clothes feel suddenly inadequate.

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• 🔔 'Expensive Flights' is taken from Inning's recently released D.C. Party Machine EP, a 5-track exposition of thick body-wobbling low-end frequencies and hazy-headed washes of sound in patterns that evoke vague emotions amidst of chillment. You can listen to/download it on Bandcamp if that sounds like your thing.

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📠
☟ Inning Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ spotify ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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🐣 COMPUTER DATA — STRESS

The very sparing nature of this track is partly what makes it, the purposeful holding back on how many elements should be used and where, and secondly it is the sense of decay that eats around the edges of its sounds, providing you with a glimpse into what it might sound like transporting a feeling or a general mood from the afterlife into the waking world via digital means, or vice versa. The atmosphere in 'stress' is cold, computerised, voidsome even, yet shot through at all times with a continual warmth.

COMPUTER DATA follows in the vein of broken house purveyed by producers like DJ Seinfeld, except with a notable veil of chill at work: the synths are constant and wavy, deep hypnotic streams of robust texture that call to mind something in the realm of vaporwave. Streamers of fluid fuzzy melody ring out gleaming against that warm plasma modulation, ghostly samples waft in and out, the beat in its drum machine glory crackling with rapid-fire handclap fills and the synths swell with bass, absorbing you into its swell of cool vacancy.

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• 🔔 COMPUTER DATA's lovely track 'stress' may be purchased from Bandcamp for just $0.50.

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📠
☟ COMPUTER DATA Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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🐣 HOTWAX — ROCKAWAY FEAT. STEFFALOO

The ten ton, no ten-thousand ton, crush of the kicks here, like the engine room of a huge vessel as it hums cyclopean across the stars, is the glorious intensity that lies at the foundation of 'Rockaway' by Floridian musicmaker Hotwax. It is this slow-down techno rumble that perforates the stillness of the air, the blank pugilism of it summoning hard trebles as well as full-body bass for a robust beat. It's the simplest backdrop to a swishing of mists that rain down like veils—vocals that cut across your hearing and drip down like oil in water, fathomless reverb like galactic ghosts in this tract of minimalism.

These are provided by Steffaloo, a prominent voice in chillwave, whose simple harmonies resonate and vibrate to give extra texture to the already grainy phantasm of her tone as it reaches out across the dark of the track. Alongside this, simple synth clouds bop and gleam softly, a tangle of silken fibres that threads through the void. Ornaments orbit the beat: panning abrasive shakers, decayed metallic cowbell, shuffling hi-hats, handclaps followed by veils of fog. The atmosphere is a sunken one, where the heaviness of the water weighs huge and choking, and where the prettiness of life glistens and sparkles in the winnowing waves above.

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• 🔔 The quite wonderful Steffaloo-featuring 'Rockaway' is taken from Hotwax's debut album Communicator out now on 2060 Records. You can download it free-of-charge, or $7 for a cassette, from Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Hotwax Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ myspace ☟ Steffaloo Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ itunes

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🐣 EMMECOSTA — HEAVY HEART

Slowly slowly this track rolls along, the eternal trundle of curling clouds across a greyscale landscape, the horizontal energy of chillwave simplicity sweeping into the foundation of this track: the dom-dom glooping bass of the kicks and the thin abrasion of the snare tinged with lo-fi, the soft constancy of the synth constant like a tide in the sidechain of it all. 'Heavy Heart' unfolds like a flower turning and opening to the day's first flood of light, the vocals of Gothenburg-based Italian trio Emmecosta adding silken texture to the track, the languorous luxury of it heightened. Here we are laid-back and loafing, bleary and wandering.

And around 2:40 the brief disappearance of the beat, relegated to its most bassy parts, highlights another element that bejewels the track; these high-pitched pings, synth or effected guitar it may be, how they cry into the air, splashing watercolours, the stifling distortion of it, the degradation of the pure sound conjuring this feel of something pushed to its limit—and the energy in this scathing absent melodies is something that aches and pines and yearns, careering into a blanket of dazzling stars. The electronic tricks of 'Heavy Heart', the sometimes staccato cuttings through the track, that ebb-flow sidechain, both betray and bolster how human it is, how organic, how like a melancholy nostalgic longing howl into the ether it is.

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• 🔔 'Heavy Heart' is taken from the August-released EP from the band, Velour, which was brought into the world courtesy of Stockholm label ICEA. You can listen to and download it from Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Emmecosta Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube

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🐣 SHOOS OFF — FROM THE START

That synth sound at the start instantly calls to mind chillwave, not anything in particular—it just seems to summon the letters that make up that word and the word itself and what it means, which is chillment of the highest degree. The way it wobbles and flaps like a butterfly with molten metal wings or with lavalamp puttiness and making its way across a strangely bleeding sky oil in water on an overhead projector, swirling impressionistic with its wonderful wah-wah effect. And amidst the broad strokes of chill in 'From The Start', the chunky all-encompassing flavour of it, there are carvings of inescapable groove.

The bounce of the beat goes some distance to match the groove at work in this track, the very chords that flutter and effuse their chill going through patterns in the chorus that wholly call to mind grooves past, relatively complex chords that at some points in the song also find their counterparts in glistening tremolo keys that add glassy ornamentation to the proceedings. Los Angeles band Shoos Off manage this cocktail of groovesome danceability and viscous chill with liquid effortlessness, crooning vocals jump in, layered and resonating, popping with funky stutter in offbeat patterns, skipping and hopping over the robust bounce at the heart of this melting popsicle track.

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• 🔔 You may, if you wish, for just $1 purchase 'Shoos Off' digitally from Bandcamp.

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☟ Shoos Off Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ instagram

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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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☟ Baraka Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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🐣 SUPER MAGIC HATS — SEASHELL FEAT. MAYUMI

Here is an end of the day song from Super Magic Hats, a bittersweet what-a-lovely-time-we've-had-but-how-sad-it's-over kind of song, a song draped in gentle electronics and set on a bed of chill. In order to fully realise this feeling of melancholic euphoria the song features Tokyo-based singer Mayumi (aka GrayNightly, aka Chelsea Terrace) whose breathy vocal whispers plaintive and echoing through the synthetics, an illustration of a person alone in the world painted by the instrumental.

A genuine Balearic sunset sound exudes from the track, a slow sunset winding into the hazy indigo of dusk: the soothing just slightly abrasive pulse of the bass, the slow melody pinging into the distance with delay and reverb setting it timeless in space, the later arpeggios, all of it a well defined melt of tranquilising sounds. At the same time swells of emotion crest with the track's amplitude, with additions to the beat – syncopated snares, rapid hi-hats – with combinations of the two weaving together for subtle dynamics, a gradual rise and fade from the day to dark with memories in tow. 'Seashell' is the transition to twilight, the voice of Mayumi leading the way like a guiding spirit.

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• 🔔 This track is taken from Wish, the Super Magic Hats album released 15th March this year via Tokyo label PROGRESSIVE FOrM. It is possible to purchase it online.

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☟ Super Magic Hats Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • official site • Twitter • YouTube • SongKick

☟ Mayumi Internet Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Facebook • Twitter • Bandcamp

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MUS.HIBA – PASANIA

As part of Japanese indie label Virgin Babylon Record's 5th Anniversary, they've curated a compilation for which they asked a variety of artists to submit around one minute of music – fittingly, it's called ONE MINUTE OLDER and features FIFTY very diverse tracks from FORTY-NINE very diverse artists, including Miii, N-qia, world's end girlfriend, Shokuhin Matsuri a.k.a Foodman, and canooooopy. However, I've decided to put a small spotlight on just one artist whose work I particularly enjoy: mus.hiba.

Back at the end of 2014 I wrote about a mus.hiba track called 'Slow Snow', which basically sounded like slow snow – beautiful, delicate, mystifying. It was from his White Girl EP, which followed in mus.hiba's style of vital, intricate beats and intense synth chords, all tied up with the interesting concept of equating the fragility of winter with the ephemerality of using the voice of virtual singer Sekka Yufu (a character from singing synthesiser application UTAU). His addition to Virgin Babylon's compilation is called 'Pasania', and is in keeping with his intense yet delicately chilled style.

'Pasania', you may or may not be interested to know, is the name of a defunct genus of trees now known as Lithocarpus in the family Fagaceae (beech trees), which also includes the better known Quercus, or oak trees. Many of the species are endemic to East and South East Asia, specifically Lithocarpus edulis or Japanese Stone Oak (マテバシイ = Matebashī), which is cultivated for ornamental purposes. Wow that was a lot of words about trees.

The actual morsel of music 'Pasania' by mus.hiba is a delicious temporary shelter from the storm of life, a plethora of sumptuous percussion – lip-smacking clacks, clip-clopping sounds, pulsing thuds for kicks, occasional clusters of hi-hat hits, saturated hand-claps – cascading alongside dramatic torrents of astral synth that seem like the sonic equivalent to sitting beneath a waterfall and letting the weight and all-encompassing nature of the water wash your mind clean of thoughts.

A dynamic-urgent electronic bassline, delightfully synth-rock sounding, provides dramatic movement beneath the onslaught of chill from the beat and the chords, and moves in line with bustling breezy piano that paints a picture of airy beauty throughout. Extremely tasty throughout, a little bit of rapid-fire, pitch-shifted vocal sampling signals the end of the track as a cherry on top, a tantalising cliffhanger to a short track that nevertheless exemplifies the mood-setting talents of this producer.

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• Grab the Virgin Babylon Records 5th Anniversary compilation, ONE MINUTE OLDER, from Bandcamp.
• It's not Winter now, it's Summer, but still you could check out the themed Winter Chill mix that mus.hiba made for YES/NO Guest Mix series.

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☟ mus.hiba Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr

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BRAYDO – I THINK I SAW YOU IN MY DREAM LAST NIGHT

I stumbled upon this the other day and I was like "whaaat" so I put it on a to-write-about list like "yeahhh" then forgot about it and then I rediscovered it just now like "whaaat" again. Safe to say it's a tasty tune and one that suits the spring palette and most hopefully will delight your palate. Hm. Two different words, two different meanings, sound the same. Homophone.

So this is a track by braydo, who is a musicmaker from Washington, as far as I can tell. It's called 'i think i saw you in my dream last night' and instantly, without even having to think about it, I can feel that fleeting feeling of glimpsing a welcome human presence within a dream, fantasy love welling up from the hidden recesses of the heart, where your more rational, waking mind archives them for safe-keeping. Or maybe I'm just being melodramatic.

The constant pulmonary plume of bass in this song is a soft, exacting rumble, like it's the kind of intense ambient sound you'd hear if you were a miniaturised person floating inside a human body, like in The Magic School Bus or that film Innerspace. A very organic sound.

On top of this, plaintive synth flute sounds chime in and out of earshot, indistinct and glistening, soaked with reverb, just like the vague outlines of a beautiful dream, with a steady contemplative beat dishing out thumping kicks and lo-fi snares, a wandering hi-hat pattern split between something more simple in the song's first half and gently ornamented, busier strains in the second.

This clear twoness of the track is bridged by a subsidence in the rich rumble of the bass, linking the initial appearance of the mystery dream person in the first half of the track, to the heartmelting recognition and realisation in the second section, where plunking almost pizzicato synth mix with continual muffled vox sounds: the shard of light and love that does not physically or actually change much, but accentuates your surroundings and lightens your mind.

But at the same time, dreams are essentially mirages, and the turmoil of tumbled-down beliefs that your subconscious mind stacked up during the night, leading you to believe real, actual passages of time were passing, real emotions felt, physical people interacted with – all evaporates as you surface once again into reality.

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☟ braydo Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • Instagram

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Y/N GUEST MIX 022 :: WINTER CHILL MIX BY MUS.HIBA

Mushiba means "tooth decay" in Japanese. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like to introduce mus.hiba. He is a producer from Hachioji, Tokyo, and when I asked, What do you do? he answered "I'm an office worker." It's a very modest way of looking at things and his music, subtly dynamic and often creeping up you with gradual intensity, reflects this. Recently, he released his first album on Tokyo-based Noble Label called White Girl – a beautiful exploration of wintry themes and the fragility of using artificial vocalist Yufu Sekka (from vocal database, UTAU) and her almost-alive, delicate whispery tones.

The list of inspirations behind his own music, when I asked him, feels very introspective, the hallmark I would guess of a bedroom producer, which is (I think, at least) how he started making music. mus.hiba is inspired by "Spending time alone, escapism, internet, the cultural climate of Japan, and music that gives a new stimulus to me."

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A moderate loneliness and a positive mind.

MUS.HIBA, on what this mix says about him

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Moving on from cultural climates, we get to the actual climate itself: yes, it's winter. And to celebrate this, mus.hiba has created a wonderful mix for YES/NO. Called his Winter Chill Mix, he explains the connection between the artists in the mix as "feeling winter and chilly vibes." — "I listened to these songs many times, they are my favorites." And that is as good a reason as any.

Beginning with the gloriously snowflakey and disorienting left-and-right panning in Blum's 'for love', we soon find ourselves at the mercy of multiple synth-gasms in the form of the high-octane, ear-tickling pleasure-waves of $aturn's remix of Diversa's track 'xxxXXX' and in mus.hiba's first appearance on the mix with his remix of 'Because of my eyes' by Tokyo band LLLL.

Mr. mus.hiba sews seemingly disparate elements together, too: we move by way of Irish producer Harmful Logic's lo-pitch hypnotism in 'Kitsune Mask (狐のマスク)' into the bustling mellowness in 'It's All Around You' by American band Tortoise, then back into the aching electronica in the clattering chill of 'Let Go' by London producer Bearcubs. Finally, Argentinian musicmaker Sobrenadar with 'Junio' and its understated icy chill leads into mus.hiba's own 'Moonlight', an intense end to a collection of songs that certainly deserves the title Winter Chill Mix.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

• 1. Blum – for love
• 2. Galimatias & Sorrow - Subside
• 3. Jonwayne - Bowser feat. Mndsgn
• 4. LLLL - Because of my eyes (mus.hiba snow remix)
• 5. Diversa - xxxXXX ($aturn Remix)
• 6. H20$$$SPORTS$$$ - \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
• 7. Harmful Logic - Kitsune Mask (狐のマスク)
• 8. Tortoise - It's All Around You
• 9. Bearcubs - Let Go
• 10. The Sea And Cake - Sound & Vision
• 11. The Bilinda Butchers - All My Friends
• 12. Sobrenadar - Junio
• 13. mus.hiba - Moonlight

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• I urge you wholeheartedly to check out mus.hiba's debut album White Girl – not only is it great on its own, but it's perfect for this time of year. Just look out the window on a frosty morning whilst it's playing~

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☟ mus.hiba Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr

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LOCAL DISK (C:) – ERROR

Please allow me to introduce Local Disk (C:) – a musicmaker from Manila, the Philippines, and part of his friend Ulzzang Pistol's collective, Youngliquidgang. I was first acquainted with his music when Zeon (that's Ulzzang Pistol) shared a guest mix for YES/NO, a representation and showcase of his collective's artists, including a track called 'Event Horizon' from Local Disk (C:). I really like typing Local Disk (C:) so I'm gonna write it fully every time.

His latest track 'Error' is a step above that one though. And in fact, his track before this, the soundtrack-to-a-crisis of 'CommandPrompt', was also a step above that one. Both of these things mean one thing: that he is developing, improving, as an artist. Anyway here is 'Error' – it sounds like this…

It's lush and expansive, a floating medley of phasing synth chords, subtle slap bass, euphoric anime-soundtrack-style strings and a lounge style beat, complete with rim shots, gloriously off-rhythm hi-hats, rapid kick flourishes – a fog of longlost memory seasoned with the joy of remembrance. It doesn't do what you expect it to do; from those first few touches of piano it takes a different direction, ending up gorgeously ornamented with a long, rich and vibrant synth solo. It's like chillwave with jazz-pop and trap / R&B influences, too… but y'know everything's always difficult to pin down, especially when it's such a medley of sounds as this.

Certainly my favourite track from Local Disk (C:) so far – but he keeps getting better, and also his previous work sounds a little different to this (in general), so I'm excited to hear what's gonna be next.

• Check out that Guest Mix for Y/N from Ulzzang Pistol right here.
• Local Disk (C:) also makes cool experimental electronic pop music with Angelica Pablo aka solo trackmaker / singer Mirror Masks. This duo is called Victims of Balnibarbi and you should check it out.

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☟ Local Disk (C:) Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

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SUPER MAGIC HATS – COASTLINE

This is some music from a Melbourne-based music entity called Super Magic Hats. Sometimes, according to the SoundCloud bio, it's two people, but it's "mainly" one person. Which is fine. That's fine for me.

What I also just noticed is that I was about to acronymise (?) Super Magic Hats and I got SMH. That might be intentional – if so, nice one; if not, I still love it. They tweeted me today after I mentioned something about a Tokyo band called LLLL (they make really pretty music) – after that I checked SMH's latest track and here we are: here is 'Coastline'.

It's intriguing that this downtempo cloudwave is so bleakly beautiful, so illustrative of standing on the edge of tomorrow with as many hopes as fears, scanning the sea for everything and nothing. Hey, I guess it's the nature of the inspiration for this track, which I can only assume is a coastline. It sounds like a coastline.

And it achieves this goal with crunching synth whirling around your ears, with hissing cymbals and multilayered clap-clicks and the hi-hat's frenetic mechanical tick, the fuzz of waves and wind merging into one. Wordless words soar from fore to background, disturbing the glisten of golden clouds, the tinkle of some glockenspiel type thing, making way for plums of aggressive pulsing synth to take over towards the end of the track. It's expansive and all-encompassing enough to penetrate your mind; just like staring out at the sparse horizon from the dynamic meeting of sea and earth, this track clears the mind of any needless bullshit that might happen to be stinking it up.

Um. That's it. And it in particular is taken from a forthcoming EP called Kumori (meaning "cloudy weather" or "cloudiness" in Japanese) that is not scheduled for release as much as it WILL be released at some point between now and the end of this year.

• While you're here, why not go check out Super Magic Hats' debut EP?

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☟ Super Magic Hats Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • YouTube •

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AIR JAPAN – TOKYO AUDIO

Get your brain massages right here! Come on folks, step on up step on up – you sir, with the brain, ain't yer brain tired of doing stuff? Ain't it harrrrd deciphering this world we live in sometimes? Well this is like a new lil miracle massage for grey matter called 'TOKYO AUDIO' and it's by AIR Japan. It's actually music it's not a real massage.

But it feels like one. All the sounds in this track are so gently fluid that it's real difficult not to drift away with em for the two minutes in which they exist, but at the same time they're all so futuristic, they're carefully considered noises that do not conjure a particular time and place that you have ever imagined. Instead you are seated in a plush chamber of chill, a deep chair softening as you recline in it, almost gripping your limbs with its nanotechnological cushions, a large screen (for um, hypnotising you? or something) change colours with each gargantuan wave of synth chord, bright cerulean fades into electric mauve. Each one is like a breath, the track effusing organic and automatic aesthetics simultaneously.

With the slow arpeggio, the percussive clicks, the backwards-water-droplet sound, the soft plasma waves of far-off flute noises twisting into figures of eight and other variously arranged loops of ethereality, the endlessly phasing resonance of those lounge inflected chords: it all melds into a thing that's as much future-spa as it is console startup screen, as undeniably chilled as it is portalesque in its purpose, cyber-exotica for the now.

• You should check out AIR Japan's album, Tokyo Audio 3000,a kinda dark bass-flavoured, Tekken-inspired vaporwave sound, released at the beginning of this year on mega prolific netlabel, Dream Catalogue.
• SPEAKING OF WHICH: check out this v comprehensive Q&A I did for the Red Bull Music Academy magazine with Dream Catalogue's founder and boss, Hong Kong Express. Lots about the label and vaporwave and music.

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☟ AIR Japan Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud

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NO ROME – HEAVEN

Been meaning to post something about this for a while now. Better late than never though. So here it is. It's by a guy who goes by the name of No Rome (irl: Rome Gomez) and he's from Manila – actually, he's the brother of Ulzzang Pistol: they're both part of the tight-knit, underground collective Youngliquidgang, or YLG to be brief, one of a few in the capital's bustling music scene (another being, for example, Buwan Buwan, headed up by Similar Objects).

Mastered by collective-mate SOUL_BRK, 'Heaven' is basically a beautiful song. I thought it was beautiful when I first listened to it, but it wasn't until I was in the shower a few days later when the vocal hook came back to me: I found myself humming it (and noticing, also, that it sounded a little like Rikrok's part in 'It Wasn't Me'). This two line fragment repeats throughout, lending the otherwise chill-hop-leaning track – itself awash with a fluid cascading koto-esque instrumental, chopped and looped, with sub-bass blasts – an R&B flavour. Punchy beats with satisfying sharp and shiny hi-hats drive this mantra forward, becoming deliciously rapid-fire and frenetic towards the end, with sampled punctuation in the form of "wow!" and another, wordless exclamation. It's difficult not to be drawn into its spiral of hypnotic repetition, which is to be fair dotted with dynamic breaks and additions along the way.

It's when you hear about the background, the context of this song when it becomes even more poignant and even moving. Within the space of a week Rome lost his grandfather, and his friend Guillo Cesar Servando, a fellow student at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, who was killed in a fraternity initiation. The lyrics take on a more poetic edge in this instance; every time I hear his voice singing it's easy to feel the emotion. On the other hand, they're neutral enough so that people hearing it for the first time can still vibe to it and sing along, as with any catchy pop song.

LYRICS:and i’m playing with the radio sound, i don’t wanna hear what’s going down
and i wish i was with you now, heaven probably told you to say goodbye

Yet another (but the greatest, I think) in a string of cool songs from No Rome, another URL-based J-culture-appreciating talent of Manila with big things ahead of him – it's almost guaranteed.

• Check out Ulzzang Pistol's Guest Mix for YES/NO, a showcase of the Youngliquidgang collective, including a song by No Rome.

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No Rome on • Facebook • Bandcamp • Twitter • Tumblr

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ESPRIT 空想 – VIRTUA.ZIP

It's been a long time coming but finally I am writing about ESPRIT 空想's latest (and perhaps greatest) album virtua.zip. Last time we heard from this guy it was actually in the form of his alter-ego (or is this his alter ego?), another musical project: Mirror Kisses – namely the cool video for even cooler song, 'Genius'. There's some new Mirror Kisses stuff out right now actually but let's just put that off for a second and get right into the melted-mind sounds of this collection of songs.

A key component of the slightly undefinable, nostalgia-and-sample-ridden style of vaporwave – whose sounds can reach as far back in time as any artist's musical memory will allow, and as far forward as their imagination will take them – ESPRIT 空想 has moved forward, describing his album as "distinct in that it is comprised of all original compositions. Samples are utilized as a brushstroke rather than a canvas. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 11 are entirely free of sampling." As such, the imaginary constraints of vaporwave fall away to leave nothing but its lightly distorted aesthetics and its apparent liberal-mindedness, wherein the freedom to do whatever underpins most of what has been made within the brackets of "vaporwave", which simultaneously leads to an eternal paradox: if this is the case, then what is vaporwave? A genreless genre; a community brought together by common interests.

Almost as a realisation of this kind of maturation into formlessness, ESPRIT 空想 does as he pleases: to great effect. virtua.zip – its name reflecting the cube comprising of Akira Yuki (from Sega's Virtua Fighter series) on the album art – is expansive and atmospheric yet groovesome and quirky, building these soundscapes with relatively short tracks; each one of these suffixed with the extension ".wav", the perfect accompaniment to the album's own ".zip" – as if the sights, sounds and words attached to this release are wholly indebted to all things digital.

And what a set of sounds! We go from the warm holiday sounds of opener 'whispers.wav', with its '80s-commercial glitz and two chords spacing out in 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' (Tears For Fears) fashion, and the chopped-up sounds and stammering beat of 'select.wav', as well as 'slow2014.wav', which sounds like an area on Streets Of Rage, swaggering yet calm in the post-crime-syndicate-clean-up; to the moody chillment of 'mindless.wav' – the hollowed-out skull of deadbeat intoxication – with a beat reminiscent of 'peter.wav': almost pure trip hop: spacey strings and surprising sub-bass as accoutrements to a slowed-down beat that uses the "Amen break"; 'esprit.wav', whose tropical washes of sound cloak a familiar sample and ghostly vocals, matches with 'iwillbe.wav', which finds its partner in the aching 'withyou.wav', the two essentially one track cut in two ("i will be with you"), both sufficiently equipped with steel pan stylings and epic tom drums to evoke a bepalmed beach paradise at sunset – titularly including the fantasy love-(or-lust)-of-one's-life.

Then there's 'warmjet.wav', a master-class in warm, modulating synths, focusing also a lot on empty space, syncopated bass and the loving sway of the beat, similar in a way to 'love.wav', a jaunty track with twisted, drugged-out synths, upbeat percussion, and the shadow of an angelic choir oooo-ing for extra romantic flavour, as well as the wholly retro 'gameover.wav' – staccato-chopper synths over a slow beat, with weird moo-box-style decorations; for virtua.zip, it's an ending that couldn't be more different from the romanticised glistenings of its beginning.

It's certainly an eye-opener, an insight into new territories of sound that paradoxically – and conversely to many "futuristic" sounds in music at the moment – are drenched with cassette-tape fuzz, imbued with nostalgia and, ultimately, could well have been made 20, 25, 30 years ago. Even though it runs the gauntlet of chillwave, retro game music, hip hop, synthpop, and yes: vaporwave – virtua.zip just effuses freshness effortlessly. And it's all condensed into around 21 minutes of music, making it a brief and blissful slice of escapism; I did, in fact, at many points find myself whisked away somewhere else. Basically, this album is like a modern version of exotica ("a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same title"), itself an offshoot of lounge music, and intended to provide listeners with a synthetic, sonic experience of Pacific islands, African jungles & South American mountaintops.

What ESPRIT 空想 does is very much the same: from its very concept, as a .zip file, you have this strange, digitally tangible feeling for the music even before you've heard it; then, when you're listening, you could at certain points be in a videogame ('slow2014.wav'), in the past ('whisper.wav'), on a beach ('withyou.wav'), or – for something more descriptive – stuck at home on a rainy day during summer looking out the window ('esprit.wav'). The places it can take you depend on your imagination, of course, but to have made songs that are capable of acting in this way shows, maybe not intent, but at least a capacious and reflective imagination in the first place.

This is vaporwave's answer to lounge music – or perhaps vaporwave IS just an unknowing, modern interpretation of it – and it really is lovely.

• Download virtua.zip for just $1 (USD), or more, from ESPRIT 空想's Bandcamp page
• '空想' means 'fantasy' in Chinese
• N.B. lounge music does not mean 'bad music' – I am being complimentary, not disparaging.

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ROLLERGIRL – I LOVE YOU, ROLLERGIRL! EP

So I'm behind on what I'm supposed to be writing about. So what? u wanna fite irl about it? No? Didn't think so. In that case, we'll just forget all about any of this: my tardiness, my bellicosity, my etc. And we'll get straight on to it.

Rollergirl (or Rollergirl!, either way, but for the sake of ease I'm gonna drop that exclamation mark, sorry) is from the USA and makes wonderful music. My first taste of this fun-filled breed of music was the Rollergirl remix of Summer Twins' year-old track 'Forget Me', treating the original with a healthy drop of fuzzy funk stylings. Well, now there's a whole EP to enjoy.

The cutely titled I Love You, Rollergirl! EP inhabits that addictive zone of music called future funk; if you know what it is, then whatever, good for you, but if you don't, well… it's not so much futuristic as remodelled cuts of classic funk, soul and disco, blent into gorgeous cocktails of sound with all the accoutrements of modern day production to benefit the style. This is where Rollergirl seems to thrive.

But as this EP shows, it's not just straight up slow-down samples and muffled edits; each track is instead a variation on that overarching theme. Take the particularly punchy 'Do You Wanna Dance?', for instance – it is a huge track, featuring all the gigantic energy of carnival tracks, with syncopated percussion dropping in and out with the aggressive call of samba whistles like the cry of some dance-obsessed creature. Then you have something quite different in the slow sway of 'Eve' (featuring the talent of Chicagoan musicmaker, Harris Cole), where in the second half 80s synths filter through a foundational membrane of stuttering slap-bass – a mystical, nocturnal kind of sound.

For the most part, however, Rollergirl's EP booms with disco intensity. 'I Love You' is an especially good example of this; beginning with a sample taken from dialogue in the classic film Dirty Dancing ("I'm scared of everything..."), its sharp hi-hats swish above a frenzy-inducing two note bassline, intense loops leading to more and different intense loops towards the end, funk guitar hatching its undeniable groove all the way. In much the same vein, second track 'Vanilla Coke' rattles along with the raucous sound of racing hi-hats, a clattering example of disco, injected with dynamism by creating bassless voids with old-car-radio-esque tinniness, then flooding these with French-Touch-style bass, working the muscles in your ears to a surprisingly satisfying degree.

Pop hooks show themselves throughout, like in EP-closer 'Last Night', whose shivering chops of guitar jump in aching, catchy melody, providing a mesmerising mist that hangs over lightly overdriven bulges of bass; in the last quarter or so of this track it jumps into a slower rhythm, somehow becoming even more addictive. And of course, in opener 'Boogie Down' – which begins with a snippet of dialogue from 1979 film Roller Boogie – this catchiness extends from the disco-ball sheen of the chords and its supporting bassline, to the vocals supplied by Rollergirl himself, singing "Live it up, live it up!" … and personally I think this has in it snippets of Toro y Moi-style chillwave. But the style of chillwave in general included nods to many genres of music, including funk; perhaps future funk is merely a natural offshoot of this particular sound. Maybe not. You discuss it yourselves.

God, um, well that's it really. Can be chilled to, can be danced to; can be engaged with, can be background sound. I Love You, Rollergirl! is nostalgic deep pan pizza of sound; totally doughy and heavy with delicious beats, but still featuring the tomato-and-pepperoni zing of exciting chops and near-virtuosic versatility. And it's yet another sterling release from undeniably cool label/collective, KEATS//COLLECTIVE.

• You can actually download this for free because Rollergirl is such a nice guy
• And could this be the inspiration for the Rollergirl moniker…?

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SIMILAROBJECTS – FELT_IT

I dunno about you but when I first heard this song it tickled my ears so much that I needed to itch em. No jokes. I don't know if that's meaningful or anything but I've written it now so let's just leave it at that. Anyway, point being: it sounds real good. What sounds real good? This track 'Felt_It' by Filipino producer Similarobjects – real name Jorge Juan Wieneke V, from Makati (one of the cities that makes up Metro Manila), there are but two songs on his SoundCloud, one of them being a repost, which is this particular track.

There's something real nice about this track – a narcotic haze that seems to veil everything, a drugged atmosphere that leans towards the cooler streams and tidal pools of chillwave's breezy style; even the beats seem to be shadowed, blanketed, by these rich fog of synth sounds, out of which appear vocal samples which seem to ripple in the vast fluid expanses of synth, moving in huge, slow waves of sound.

But then there's this break in the middle, where the vocal samples seem to be turned down a notch, taking on a low-register, nearly menacing tone – the beat changes too, becoming a double-time jaunt of hip-hop to the trickling sway of trappish design at either sides of this little break. After this, the vocals become higher, become more frequent, jumping out of the richly textured mass of cloudlike sound like glossy dolphins breaching the surface of a silvery sea in slow-motion, the sun turning splashes into golden glints that explode with each samples breathy entrance to our ears.

It's quite beautiful – ambiently so. And then at the end it morphs into something different still, a slice of chillout where indecipherable yet soulful voices fade into a resounding void – if the title is anything go by, well, yes: I felt it! There is feeling here! Wondrous feeling. Wondrous yet lonely – the busy feeling of being encased in a bubble of unconnectedness in the midst of a bustling city full of people. And I hope you liked it. I am looking forward to more from this guy.

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VOYAGER – PARSEC

Just to clear things up to begin with, a parsec is "A parsec is an astronomical unit of distance derived by the theoretical annual parallax of one arc second, and is found as the inverse of that measured parallax" (thanks Wikipedia), wherein 1 parsec is equal to 3.08567758 × 10^16 metres – of course. Duh. What else is new?

It's a pretty big distance. Big distance for a big place: SPACE. I wonder if it's longer than a light year… (just looked it up, IT IS). So it's like... just a different measurement. Even in space there's a metric/imperial-style confusion and conflict at work. We never learn.

So anyway, now that that's outta the way we can have a listen to 'Parsec' by VOYAGER, or stylised V O Y A G E R (but it's too much effort to write every time) on his actual SoundCloud, the moniker of musicmaker Paco Santos from Manila. 'Parsec' is a basically a groovesome piece of music that finds its feet in funk as much as it does in the slow sensuality of R&B.

Beginning with a glorious palm-muted guitar intro, suggesting that we will be delving into a wholly funky number, we soon find out that we're in something else entirely, something a bit more intergalactic or spacey, suiting the track's name. This is a soaring morsel, deliciously rich with ever-reverbing piano chords that provide a beautiful blanket of noise on top of which everything else sits quite nicely – below this, the bassline ascends and descends, supporting the slow, R&B-style beat. There's something ultimately chilled about this, laid-back, barely sung vocals echoing amidst the smart synth arpeggios and lead guitar-esque melodies.

It's basically like a cross between a pop song and a vision of what indie music might actually be in the future – without going as far as saying it's outright funk, R&B (not least with the "future-" prefix), chillwave, whatever. Really genuinely beautiful & catchy stuff here.

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SPAZZKID – AT FAULT (FEAT. THERE IS A FOX) [FREE DOWNLOAD]

I love Spazzkid. How can you not? I mean, even as a person (called Mark Redito) he's really nice, so the fact that he makes really lovely music is a bountiful bonus if ever there was one. If you don't know this guy then, um, get to know: the best way is to trawl his Bandcamp page where you'll find everything from Early Demos (2004–2006), to the wholly immersive experience that was his album release of last year, Desire (願う). His lovingly crafted sounds ring with electropop, with chillwave, with J-inspired melodies, with footwork flavours and above all, with touching positivity.

I managed to miss the uploading of his latest track 'At Fault', however, but thanks to Oliver (s/o The 405) I heard it today and I knew instantly that I had to write about it and share it. This track is unique in that it features the cooperation and collaboration of fellow SoCal resident, There Is A Fox. Real name Hiro Makino, I wrote about him and his dreamily endearing brand of indie-folk-pop last Autumn, and was therefore pleased to find his sound and style permeating this song alongside Spazzkid. Beginning life as something that sampled & re-arranged a There Is A Fox original, 'Bad Day', it grew until these two artists were working alongside each other on the track.

Tagged "folktronic" I think this just about sums it up. Folk-pop guitar appears out of the void in vibrantly choppy succession with xylophonic sounds raining down in the slow sway of the song; by the end everything is jumbling together in a colourful mash of sound, from right down low with the booming bass and muffled kicks to the high registers of rattling percussion and looping guitar riffs. Vocals sing out innocently with lashings of dream-laden reverb, "It's not my fault…", calm in the zinging euphoria of the track. It is expansive, opening up as it goes along, evolving all the way, filled with wonderfully living-and-breathing organic samples and sounds residing harmoniously next to wholly electronic fabrications. At every moment it is endearing; did you hear the little cough/clearing of the throat at the start? Just another magic touch.

So there it was. Hoo-hah! It's lovely. I can't help but love it. I'm a fan. I hope you're a fan too. Fyi this song was supposed to feature on Spazzkid's upcoming EP (which I'm v excited for), but it grew and grew and, as he describes, "ended up wanting a life of its own. It stands for itself, pure and beautiful." Well well well indeed it does.

• Go and download 'At Fault' for absolutely nothing.
• Enjoy this little interview that Spazzkid was kind enough to agree to.

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MELTING MOODS – WAHULA

Ohhh yeaa, here's a track for you. It's a nice one. God I gotta stop talking like this. This arrived in my inbox and I really like it. Please keep sending things, I love to hear things. Anyway, the track is called 'Wahula' and it's by a Brooklyn-based maker-of-music called Melting Moods.

There is indeed something extremely melty about Melting Moods. Real name Andrew Krzynowek, he manages to create some explicitly melty atmospheres in all of the three songs on his SoundCloud. 'Black Magic' is a skewed reality of a track, a semi-nightmarish carnivalistic psychedelic electro number, and there is a ton of melted-sun funk aesthetic appeal in 'Space Walker', but the one that stuck out most to me was the most recent, 'Wahula'. Like I said.

Anyway um the synth in this track is gloriously affected, twisted with pitchbends and wah-wah, writhing over the top of muffled pulsar squelch bass, soon joined by scathing waves of distorted saw-wave chords and a crackling melody of high-register hollow synth. But in the middle we're treated to delicious portion of sumptuous funk, guitar crying carefree and groovesome bass mixed in with weird vox. These come up again, eerily repeating the song's name in barely audible lows (I thought I was hearing things at first).

All in all 'Wahula' sways with its ultimate chillment rubbing shoulders quite comfortably with the bummed-out vibe inherent in its stylised sounds, like someone artfully shrugging on a backdrop of eternal summer afternoon. I really like it. It kind of waxes your mind as if you're standing absent-mindedly watching your car get washed in a gold glint of sun through water.

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