🐣 PRINCIPLEASURE — HYSTERICAL O

This kinetic vessel takes us on a voyage through fizzing retro electric seas, sloshing and foaming grey-blue, cutting through it all smoothly and simply, a vision of the future from the past, looking forward from the analogue age, the modulating synths airbrushing complexity with their warm wide tone, their breezy ascending pattern. Outstandingly simple, Principleasure's thumping 'Hysterical O' crackles with residual feedback from a bygone era, yet quivers with minimalism and negative space, simultaneously rich and lo-fi yet sparse and considered—"I wanted to create something that sat between club and soundtrack," the producer told us.

The kick drum bumps below, working with the addition and subtraction of driving razor-sharp gleaming hi-hats to effect dynamism into the track, the white noise resonation of these drum machine percussives adding rounded muffled texture to the plosive sounds, nuancing the basic beat with that groovesome squelch of a synth bass stepping constructivist throughout. Created using only vintage synthesisers, 'Hysterical O' doesn't ape a retro style but is rather a reincarnation of it, an anachronism: the creation of a modern minimal house track with tools and materials we no longer use.

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• 🔔 'Hysterical O' is taken from Principleasure's debut four-track EP, Hexagonal Dab, which you can listen to over on SoundCloud or acquire it via Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ Principleasure Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 SAUX — FOR I KNOW

Instantaneous. The lush pop rhythms and delicious pop flavours flowing and bubbling and resounding and spreading like a magical ether have a rare timeless appeal, an ease and fluidity that enables the track to reach you with instant effect. The first few seconds: the shuffling groove in the percussion, the indefatigable retro gloss of the glassy chords. It really is a lightning strike of pop. In 'For I Know' Netherlands musicmaker Saux has it covered: the simplicity, the sumptuous sounds, the summer-ready sulter. Barely any accoutrements dangle from the bones of the track, xylophonic luscious bones that frame the vocals lilting with pop melody, making this a minimalist's dream, a groovesome abstraction of cool longing.

Kicks thump, handclaps clop organically. The simplicity is one of the crowning glories of this track. Few elements come together to make 'For I Know' what it is. For added tropical poolside conjurations the constant stutter of a palm-muted guitar makes its sunlit entrance into the track, summoning a decades old adage of sound, heightening the retro quality, the simple lyrics as sung by Saux and friend Sjaak Thissen with its subtle harmonies slowly unfolding in the sashay forwards. Minor additions in the beat, the regularity of it, hi-hats, some shakers in the finale alongside, the guitar that mirrors the vocal hook. The sounds dissolve wonderfully into the well preserved space, reverb painting a sense of expansive universality whilst the dusty instrumentation, the intonation of the vocals rich and whispering, creates a sense of carefree intimacy, closeness not yet attained.

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• 🔔 'For I Know' can be downloaded courtesy of this link here.

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☟ Saux Internet Presence ☟
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METOME – SAMPLE CHAIR [FREE DOWNLOAD]

It's only been a few weeks since we heard from prodigious Japanese producer Takahiro Uchibori, aka Metome – in the form of the moody 'Rainmaker' and its ominous video – but already there's something new for us all to savour. Yep, he's as prolific as he is good. And this time around it's something a bit different to the norm; usually Metome is all sumptuous post-lounge with free-flowing jazz instrumentals and rapid-fire sampling— usually.

But the oddly yet somehow brilliantly named 'Sample Chair' is a sketch of something different, a foray into a different set of sounds, an experiment with wide synths that seem to have been given off by some distant space ship somewhere, a far-flung space-disco orbiting a planet where we'll arrive hundreds if not thousands of years from now. Perhaps that's the case. The other possibility is that Takahiro's mind is as elastic and frenetic as his sounds, and hence the seeming strangeness of 'Sample Chair'.

That of course is not say that it isn't good. It's great! Irregular bouts of keyless almost atonal synths pop up unexpectedly, bouncing around as if being thrown and somersaulted in low gravity; here the virtuosity isn't in the notes themselves, but how the notes are manipulated, how they are placed with regard to rhythm, or maybe more accurately with no regard to rhythm. Organic kicks and claps and clicks occasionally pop up; the melody whirlwinds at times in a frenzied storm; high-register vocal samples chirp in the expansive galaxy of the blissful chords.

There is almost no reverb at work here at all, invoking a heavier sense of silence or rather the space between sounds than previous Metome tracks, which often were hazed or lightly breezed with soft and pretty reverberating sounds. It's experimental, taking the essence of glitch (look at the track image for instance) – which is to create glitchy sounds – and using it to instead twist and manipulate his sounds in natural, real-life, less digitised ways, as if his synths are putty that he simply plays with.

• Discover a lil more about the lovely Metome w this lil interview he did for YES/NO

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PSAPP WET SALT [VIDEO]

Here's something cool. Well not necessarily cool - that's like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. What do I know? I've just been called a "whitey hipster" and I'm struggling to come to terms with my own identity. I'm deeply hurt. I'm not really I'm just confused about people. Anyway, this is really irrelevant. So you've probably seen the video above this little bit of writing. It's from London-based duo Psapp, whose desertified percussion in 'Everything Belongs To The Sun' I wrote about a couple of months ago.

The name of the song is 'Wet Salt' and it's a magical, delicate toytronica bossa nova. Lush sweeps of percussion clip, clop, twist, swish and trickle their way through the song and cutesy electric piano chords provide a breezy melody that has a touch of grey-sky lament to it. Layered vocals sing the light commentary on our urban filth, with lines like "Our unwashed sheets, our filthy streets, I didn't care at first." Overall, it feels like a slice of sense, a pocket of sorrow, in the midst of the bustling and thoughtless city airflow - yet there is still this magical sound thanks to the luscious percussion; we can't stop being in love with the city, no matter how dirty it is.

The video itself is illustrative: "This video tells the stopframe story of a hapless but intrepid paper shape on her journey through a hostile city, and the strange band of litter creatures she befriends on her way," said Psapp. "Banana skins, scouring pads, ants, shuttlecocks and benevolent hats all appear to help our plucky protagonist." It's cute!

It comes from their new album What Makes Us Glow which is OUT NOW.

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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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