🐣 POOL BOY — OLD DOG NO TRICKS

The first thing here is a sense of familiarity. Though it is new and from a new artist going by the name of Pool Boy, the bassline is a constant refrain of the first four beats of the bassline in 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League. Intentionally, it is an innocent nod to something everybody knows. Unintentionally, it shows the pervasive nature of "classics" of the late 20th century. Either way, there it is; and 'Old Dog No Tricks' continues with a clatter of disco percussion, scathing hi-hats, cool lounge bongos, smart handclaps.

The heaviest element of the track is that bass. Above that close-quarters groove the feel is one of haze and otherworldliness. A constant fog of ethereal synth creeping across the floor; and above that a twinkling cluster of notes hangs in the air. Lead melodies spin like submerged guitar solos, muffled and wavering. Against this mirage of sound, like a disco in a dream, real world noises pour in: birdsong, fresh and innocent, and the wash-crash of the sea, expansive and farsighted—as with the musical elements, it is light and heavy combining.

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• 🔔 This appears courtesy of London label Coastal Haze as a single ahead of the Pool Boy LP, scheduled for release on 22nd January. You can pre-order it digitally or on cassette from Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The description of the track reads: "Produced overlooking the port of Vancouver but ..who is Pool Boy?!" We have an inkling.

  1) The track itself was reposted by Cyril Hahn.
  2) One SoundCloud comment reads: "At last more music by Cyril!"
  3) Also he is Canadian, and it was produced in/near Vancouver.

  But we shall see.

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📠
☟ Pool Boy Internet Presence ☟
?????

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🐣 WILD & FREE — FERNS AND STUFF

The groove piledrives through this track, the glossy dancefloor sparkles its glitter and the lights cut through the dark and dust. But mainly let's address that groove: bass guitar seems to somersault and cartwheel, it's an acrobatic full-bodied bass, tinged at the edges with metallic pugilism, something thudding about the way it curls like a snake covered in scaly armour around the bumping beat, the kick and abrasive handclap. Groove lies at the heart of this one, powers it, propels it forward.

LA duo Wild & Free, aside from these disco-summoning rhythmic patterns, also inject some faraway sense of darkness, of faded neo-noir, into 'Ferns and Stuff'. Stuttering synth arpeggios blip and boop twinkling in the air, and gradually there are these high pitched string sounds fluttering around this one particular note and effusing a sort of ambient tension with that soft persistence it has; and with wide sweeping chords that wobble with wonky progressions there is the guitar, half-surf half-late night jazz, distorted and starkly angled against its foundations. Vocals seem to speak from all sides, from beyond the vanishing point, a thin ghostly croon adding human intrigue to the dance steps painted boldly all over this one.

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• 🔔 'Ferns and Stuff' arrives courtesy of Lisbon-based label Discotexas, and is taken from Wild & Free's album Shapes on Shapes, which is out now also on Discotexas. You may purchase it via this hyperlink.

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📠
☟ Wild & Free Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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🐣 AMELIA AIRHORN — NY IS RED HOT

The glaze of future funk, glossy vaporwave offshoot, sparkles in the big city flavours of 'NY Is Red Hot', broiling in cola sweetness and carving out a groove that bubbles with feel-good-ness, and in fact with summery red-hot-ness as well. In Amelia Airhorn's single, with its wanna-join-in communal-feeling vocals, the guitar chords hit with a robust shimmer of funk, the brass blares triumphal like beacons of upscale uptown sheen, strings glimmer like streetlights, the bass croons in subtle columns weaving with the deep thump of the beat, the jostle of it all a whirlwind of disco and dancing, the keen future funk fade-ins and fade-outs providing not only subtle parallel to builds and drops in terms of dynamic feels, but also with its irregular amplitudinal consistency conjuring a real life setting: moving through a club, nearer further from the speakers, outside for a cigarette, leaning in for a warm lips-to-ear conversation.

This track, at once flavourful both in danceability and in the inherent nostalgia-summoning, somewhat filmic nature, is or at least was a common feature of the earlier music of Ryan DeRobertis aka Skylar Spence, the pop-infused retro sample collages that awoke from then-vaporwave component Saint Pepsi. This is one half of Amelia Airhorn—the other being The Knocks, a duo with a similar penchant for funk though with a more polished surface, more Kitsuné-ready, more mainstream friendly: they never had to contend with actual Pepsi Co.'s legal team, for instance (DeRobertis' moniker change occurred in 2015).

The evocative yesteryear collage nature of the track plus album artwork and the retro airbrushed typography, this mirrors the collaborative cocktail. On its own 'NY Is Red Hot' brims with energy and noise, shines bright in the nocturnal glitz that surrounds it like mist, conceptually frames it; but with context, this merging of underground SoundCloud musicmaker and pre-initiated pop producers represents a meeting of the new unexplored avenues of making a success in music and the well-trod halls of namedrop beatmaking, traditional and unconventional, past and now, the span of time and attitude that is the foundation of future funk.

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• 🔔 This single is taken from Amelia Airhorn's 18-track debut release, The Knocks & Skylar Spence Present...Amelia Airhorn. You can download it for free from ameliaairhorn.com, where you'll also find fun background on characters in the Amelia Airhorn universe, i.e. NYC itself.

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📠
☟ Amelia Airhorn Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ official site ⚘ ios app

☟ Skylar Spence Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ SAINT PEPSI BANDCAMP ⚘ twitter ⚘ wikipedia

☟ The Knocks Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia ⚘ beatport

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🐣 LINDSAY LOWEND – DOWNTOWN MANNEQUIN

Painting a fun but altogether chilling atmosphere with this smart uptempo tune is musicmaking maestro (officially composer and sound designer) Lindsay Lowend. 'Downtown Mannequin' combines clever composition with various instruments and a driving disco feel, not only allowing you to skim on its surface as if it were a videogame soundtrack – not unlike Lowend, what with his 2013 VGM-inspired Wind Fish EP, and much SoundCloud output since then – but also allowing a deeper experience for the cavernous imagination.

Popping boppity beeps provide their subtle jolts throughout, these staccato patterns bouncing along from start to finish, the pixel canvas on which is strewn moody synth strings and atonal chords like shimmering shards of light striking here and there, muted lightning, and icy sparkling notes played in exotic scales. Later a crazed march of acidy synth joins in, squelching and whipping along with the skitter of the beat: it all feels like the frenzy of shopping.

Yes combined with the title, this track with its frosty yet happy-go-lucky physique, its excited but frenetic ticking percussion, presents the clean lines chrome and glass sheen of a high-end future shopping experience, the frantic bustle of shoppers, the gleam of expensive new items on display and out of reach, overwhelming. And how some sounds jar and jut out, subtle sideswipes at the expected tinny emptiness of the track—the mind assaulted the sensory overload; and how the string parts, soft and sensitive, play bravely in the whirl of confusion. Modern day consumerism with the gloss of superficiality draped over true troubled feelings boiling below.

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• 'Downtown Mannequin' does not appear to be part of any release, but like almost all of Lindsay Lowend's music it can be downloaded for free. You will also notice that comments are disabled and numbers of likes/plays are hidden for pretty much all his tracks.
• You should also check out LL's Vimeo, where musicmaking meets the wholly practicable art-science of sound design under his real name, Tony Mendez.

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📠
☟ Lindsay Lowend Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Vimeo

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LANCASTER – SUNSET DANCE

Here's a lovely rich and crunchy gravel-zest slice of future funk from a producer called Lancaster. What do you need to know? His real name is Luis Rodriguez and he is from Philadelphia and from the looks of things he was born in 1996, making him like 18 or 19. As many other talented purveyors of future funk are, he is an associate of KEATS//COLLECTIVE – spiritual home to other creators of modern funk/disco/soul classics, including Skylar Spence (fka Saint Pepsi), Harrison, and Rollergirl, to name just a few on their long and illustrious roster.

Looking at the lists of artists included in their compilations sometimes it's like… Pokémon, or something equally collectible. Each of the numerous artists exists in this stylistic, aesthetic-led, nostalgia-breathing space, yet they're all different people, with their own individual styles and flairs. Let's get going on the Future Funk Trading Card series – that would be suuuper fun!

Anyway, here we are with Lancaster (a fine name) and his track 'Sunset Dance'. It begins with a sample of some sort of interview with… some punk people (forgive me for not knowing), something which pops up throughout the track; they talk about being individual, and not wanting to wear Lacoste clothes, and how punk is "overwhelmingly loud". An interesting thing: the interviewer notes that in being different to everybody else, punks end up looking the same. More on this in a second~

This song is thick with funk, a multicoloured miasmia of music that samples a lo-low pitch-shifted version of '80s group Manhatten Transfer song 'Spice of Life' , distorted and overdriven, with classy-breezy horns added along with semi-brutal ricocheting drums – it's even tagged "oversaturated".

Now, this could be a reference to the actual music itself, or something else: if you take the snippets of punk interview present here and equate them with future funk, this track could be taken as a message about the current online music scene being oversaturated. Maybe. Rodriguez also says in the SoundCloud description, "this song means a lot to me." On the other hand, the insertion of this punk interview could just be ascribing to a punk aesthetic, a rebellious spirit, alive in the sample-heavy music of future funk; this kind of attitude, just because it's not distorted guitars and gobbing on people, can thrive in any new music form. For me, chopping up old songs and making new jams outta them, well, I love it, and I definitely think there's something punk about it: nobody's asking permission here, it's about producers using raw materials (samples, sounds, effects) in any way they want in order to portray a fantasy, an idealised throwback to the past, a netting of old music bent to the will of the producer and moulded in whichever way they want: it's freedom.

Another note in the SC description simply says "press play pt 2," which – judging from the title of his 2013 Bandcamp release Press Play, could be heralding a brand new album from Lancaster. Hooray! (maybe)

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☟ Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp •

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QUIETFUNK – HOUSE OF LOADED PEOPLE FEAT. LILI & FLATCASTLE

I am currently watching The Land Before Time 2 because it's on TV and I've never seen it before. I literally loved the first one when I first saw it when I was like, however old, 3 or 4. To see Littlefoot and Cera and Petrie and Spike and Ducky together again is making my heart bounce a little bit. And what else is making my heart bounce right now is this track right here.

It's a strange soundtrack for small dinosaurs running away from a scary big dinosaur, but it kind works in a strange way. What's this track? It's by Saitama, Japan-based producer Yu Uchida aka quietfunk and features LILI on vocals (I can't find any info on her) and a guy called flatcastle – v cool name (irl: Daisuke Hirajo) – on slap bass. It's entirely groovesome, founded on a smooth popping bassline courtesy of Mr. Hirajo and gradually more accented disco-style beat with shuffling hi-hats and the occasional stroke of a cymbal.

Called 'house of loaded people' it takes its name from the samples it uses. Well, more correctly it takes inspiration (and samples) from 'Loaded' by Primal Scream and aside from a bit of brass that hazily fades in and out every now and then, the quietfunk track also uses the dialogue that appears in the Primal Scream original, "We wanna be free… we wanna get loaded!" – itself a sample taken from weird film Werewolves On Wheels. It's an exploitation film in which an outlaw bike gang stops off at a church in the desert, parties, falls asleep, one of them gets drugged by the satanic cult that actually runs the church, wakes up as a werewolf. Normal.

I keep thinking about the bassline, robust and silken at the same time, but there's more to this track than just this fragmentary funk. Thin tremolo synth begins to wiggle pulsar-like overhead, swathes of white noise building to a whispering crescendo, and LILI's voice sings gently and with nocturnal party-time longing what the vocal sample proclaims throughout. Everything culminates in echoing intensity towards the end, like the frenzied end to a sweaty imagined party as wished for by the song itself.

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'house of loaded people' is a free download – do it!

• quietfunk has featured on semi-illustrious underground compilation FOGPAK twice before (that I know of), most recently on FOGPAK #10 – check it out!

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☟ quietfunk Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter

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YES/NO GUEST MIX 024 :: OH WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? A DREAM DISCO MIX BY STATS

It's that time again. What time? Guest mix time. It's a bit of a different guest mix this time around because the tracklist isn't so much a tracklist as a set of "ingredients" – it's not in order, I'm not 100% certain that enough of each and every track was used to warrant it being listed as a "track", and I don't know if some of the sounds in the mix were even listed. Instead, elements are spliced and mixed together, just like ingredients. Flour and eggs and sugar and butter kinda stop being those things when you make them into a cake. And so it is with this mix, courtesy of London band Stats – in particular, from just one of its members who is called Ed.

I stopped trying to dissect this mix after a while and just enjoyed it, trying to guess which parts came from where on the ingredients list was just getting to be impossible. To use the cake metaphor again, it's like digging into your favourite cake to try and find the original components that came together to create it. Well, it's obviously not as impossible to discern which sound comes from which song, but it definitely does show the abilities of Ed, who is the actual frontman of Stats.

Filled with meaningful snippets from documentaries and interviews – the voices of people as diverse as Werner Herzog and the digitised female voice of the Narrator for Windows (I think?) – the mix moves through a wormhole lined with pulsing disco basslines and fragmentary electronica, the groovesome nature of the mix clear at the very outset as 'Beam Me Up' by modern-but-authentic disco outfit from Brooklyn, Midnight Magic, moves into Stats' own 'Where is the Money'.

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Music contains everything, and you can make a song about anything, so it’s like the world but bigger. Once you’re doing it, it’s difficult to remember how you first started, like when you learn to talk. It becomes second nature, which is more interesting than first nature because it’s not strictly necessary, but it feels like it is.

ED (STATS)

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The jaunty poetry (check out 'D'you wanna eat') and art-pop sound of Stats, inspired by acts like Talking Heads, is as clean-cut as it is angular; they incorporate funk grooves and rock noise into their songs, coupled with catchy vocals and spoken word quirks that suit the urban environment in which they exist. Frontman Ed also says, "Stats songs often try to look at what’s specific about how we live right now, especially in cities." So there you go.

Taking inspiration from the opening line to Bryan Ferry's version of 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall' (Bob Dylan), the mix is called Oh Where Have You Been? "And that," confirms Ed, "is loosely its theme."

Playing for La Roux (whom Stats remixed a couple of months ago) on tour recently, he tells me about the experience of travelling the world, having not really been anywhere apart from the UK. "Songs people write about touring often complain about [it], on the grounds that it’s repetitive and alienating - but I really enjoy everything about it," he tells me. "Because you have so little time and control, you are under no illusions about discovering the 'real' St Petersburg or Los Angeles or wherever: your experience of a city is guaranteed to be short, incomplete and highly subjective."

With much of Stats' lyrical output dedicated to contemporary living, traveling to many different cities was eye-opening for Ed. "One thing common to pretty much every city I’ve seen, from Berlin to Boulder, Colorado, is people saying they can’t afford to live in them any more because property is impossibly expensive," he explains, relating it back to 'Where is the Money', adding, "Many of the songs and films and stories in this mix stay in my head because they seem to relate to things like that."

So, in conclusion: please enjoy the dreamy disco feels running through this mix. I hope you like it. Thank you to Ed, who also would like to thank William Bowerman, Tom Hatfield and Ali Staton.

"This mix is by Stats.
Stats are a minimal pop band.
Stats are six people.
Stats can’t dance and Stats don’t take drugs.
Stats are a grown-up thing to do.
Stats have big plans tomorrow.
Stats are all over the place."

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1. It is a journey to the end of the world

2. Remember the future (beam me up)

1. You have to keep moving out, but remain in orbit

2. Happy man, happy man, that's me

1. This green world of God’s

2. You can almost taste the hot dogs and french fries they sell

1. Nature here is vile and base 

2. When I’m working, or washing my hair

1. Oh, where have you been? 
2. It was lots of fun, the mechanics of getting together

1. Well go on, tell me something

2. There’s a big building, that's me.

• I N G R E D I E N T S •

• Laurie Anderson - Sharkey’s Day
• Laurie Anderson - Walking and Falling
• Caress - Love Spell
• Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf - Tell You Something
• Chic - Happy Man
• Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
• The Flirtations - Nothing But A Heartache
• Werner Herzog - speech from Les Blank’s ‘Burden of Dreams’ (speech)
• Patrick Keiller/Paul Scofield - London (speech)
• Klein & MBO - Dirty Talk
• La Roux - Cruel Seuxality
• Carson McCullers - Interview (speech)
• Jonathan Meades - Remember the Future (speech)
• Midnight Magic - Beam Me Up
• Gaz Nevada - Special Agent Man (12” Female Mix)
• Notown - Cannon
• Flannery O’Connor reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find (speech)
• Steve Reich - Piano Counterpoint Arranged From Six Pianos By Vincent Corver
• Laurie Spiegel - Patchwork
• Stats - Bring Me The Stats
• Stats - Do It On The Weekend
• Stats - Where is the Money
• Stats - D’you wanna eat?
• Stats - You Have To Say So
• Stats - Private Party Stats - 2 Minds
• Talk Talk - Happiness Is Easy
• Talking Heads - Road To Nowhere
• Tom Tom Club - Under The Boardwalk
• The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights

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☟ Stats Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Last.fm • official site • Twitter • YouTube • Instagram

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CARMELLE (HALCYON TONE) – WET DREAM

Not only do I fucking love this, it also has a brilliant concept. A really fun concept. Whilst on the surface of things it seems to be created by Carmelle, it's actually not as it seems. Ostensibly, Carmelle is a "Minneapolis Funk veteran" who, for the creation of this track 'Wet Dream', "hired a variety of local musicians in his adopted home of Lisbon to bring an uncharacteristically frantic pace to this, his biggest release as an expat."

It is pure fantasy. Carmelle, and in fact every artist featured on this compilation by Halcyon Tone, Halcyon Tone vol. 1: Reflection – yes, even "Yugoslavian-Italian songwriter and record producer" YUNIX – is a fabrication. Explaining themselves, the duo that is Halcyon Tone say: "Many concept albums have been written from the POV of some alter-ego, but Halcyon Tone have invented an entire roster of imaginary and often eccentric artists in order to express their eclectic (and electric) musical impulses."

It's all part of the entertainment, this total immersion in an imagined retro world, with characters as big and bold as any real life star of yesteryear. Rather than be inspired by retro things, be a modern-day person and make music that sounds like old stuff, why not create a whole universe of characters who actually existed back then, and whose music can be retrospectively re-discovered or posthumously released. The possibilities are infinite.

I wish I could write about all of these tracks but I'm afraid I would, uh, gush. Yes, that's the right word. I'd gush. So I'll just mini-gush about 'Wet Dream' (sounds wrong, sorry).

It is a vigorous disco-leaning, boogie-conjuror of a track, bumping forward with robust bass and a brisk jogging beat with supershaker hi-hats; punctuated with sparkling synth chords, delicate and subtle, joined by a different progression towards the end, played this time with a breezy organ. The verse holds in it a simple 3-note synth melody, supporting the vocals, which are incidentally the best part of this track; sung in falsetto and totally aware of how to make everything catchy, they ring with ecstasy and romance and I cannot get the chorus hook "Not a day in my life goes by / When I'm not thinking of you" out of my head. The lyrics are also incredible, full of rich, youthful imagery (you can read them all here). I am in love with this song and you could be, too. Just too damn charming.

I can't say anything else except that this is extremely interesting for me. I love the sounds, I love the concept, aesthetics. I guess I could say that Halcyon Tone are a duo, Josh and Chris, and they are based in Tokyo.

• Please, please, please, please, please do yourself a favour and have a listen to Halcyon Tone Vol. 1: Reflection
• Fun fact: you ever heard the term 'halcyon days'? Like a wordy way to say 'good old days'. But it comes from the Greek world for kingfisher, halcyon, which would often appear in late summer, thus cementing the term 'halcyon days' as reminiscent of very nice warm days of summer.

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☟ Carmelle Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • official site • Twitter • YouTube

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VENTUREX – TALK TO ME

How does VentureX keep making such lovely music? Last I heard from him was his very funky and very danceable track, 'Do You Remember' – it's been a while since then (also, and unfortunately, as usual) but I've just been magnetised to his brand new track 'Talk To Me'. It was the bass that got me at first.

The bass! The bass is fat and a little fuzzy. Sound is made of vibrations. Sound rather is vibrations. But it's not that often you actually physically feel those vibrations in your ear, in your brain, in your corneas – the world exists in a puzzle of slightly shuddering shapes.

These robust bassplosions are submerged beneath a shuffling beat whose hi-hat ticks impatiently, or lashes out into the open with cutting sharpness. An original track, dissected for inspection and chopped expertly finds itself strewn across VentureX's track; guitar appears in golden truncated chords, or else it peeks in with glints of funk. A vocal sample adds its warm soul to the mix, washed with clarity; the track ends with a cascade of chiming cosmic rainstick and the treble is gently removed, leaving you with that ever-satisfying vacuum that is only achingly good bass rumblings.

• This comes as the second in very, very, very cool label / collective Stratford CT.'s Secret Selection, a series of surprise singles.
• They also released a VentureX album which is one of my actual favourite releases of this year ever. It's called Together and it's genuinely and flawlessly superb. Listen to it here.

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☟ VentureX Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Instagram

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Y/N GUEST MIX 015 :: JOLLY MARE

I saw a person on Twitter like last week say something like, "There are too many mixes therefore they are obsolete" – when questioned they cited "inflation" but I think they meant "saturation" maybe. Anyway, it's a ridiculous statement: replace "mixes" with any other thing of which there might too many or too much – food, videogames, paintings – and you can see how. I just thought that would be a nice thing to say cause, like, here's another mix. But I'd really hate to be the one to push you over the edge, so if you think you've heard one mix too many, then go take a cold shower, talk it through with a loved one.

This guest mix is from Fabrizio Faberismi, aka Jolly Mare: an Italian DJ, producer, and a participant in the Red Bull Music Academy 2013. I've also read that he has a PhD in Vibration Dynamics, something that led me to stare at gifs of wobbling catilevered L-beams on the wiki page for 'Vibration'; this might be why in an email he sent to me he described himself as "Something in between a gone-bad scientist and a musician." He also loves old music, and if this mix is anything to go by it's obscure old music in particular that is his penchant.

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I got good taste in music

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Self-confessedly inspired by a "groove, any kind of" when it comes to his own music, it also seems to lead his choices for this wondrous guest mix, itself a lil' under half-an-hour of groovesome entities. Mostly taken from the 1980s, and most you've probably never heard OF let alone actually heard, it runs from the sultry 'Marinero' by Spanish singer Lucía who also provided the Spanish entry, 'Él', for the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest, held in the UK at Harrogate (really weird choice), to the synth-disco of 'Histoire D'un Soir' by Bibi Flash, aka Brigitte Gasté, a French singer active in the '80s. The song really really sounds like Blondie's 'Rapture' – mainly in the rap-singing, the bassline (almost note-for-note), etc.

"There is some freakness in every one of them," says Jolly Mare of the tracks in the mix – and it's true: from the first vital, note-hopping bassline of 'Use My Body' by the unknown Mavis John, through the stretched out, night-anticipating 'Sunset' (L33 and Sven Atterton) and the effortlessly cool remix by Luke Million of The Swiss's summery 'In The City', to the Italo disco of Big Ben Tribe's 'Tarzan Loves The Summer Nights' and the indefatigable soulfunk of 'Better By The Minute' by unlocatable group Glass Pyramid, it's an amalgamation of genres and styles that basically utilise "freakness" as their foundations, namely funk, disco (regular & Italo), soul, boogie, R&B.

What does it demonstrate? "That I got good taste in music," replies Jolly Mare. I mean, well, yeah, these are good songs. And for those of you who are looking for some obscure tracks to boogie the fuck on down to, chill to, do your taxes to, stir fry some noodles to, fix that thing in your car to, clean your living quarters to, whatever to, then don't worry cause this crate-digging mix has done it for you.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. Mavis John - Use My Body (1980)
2. L33 & Sven Atterton - Sunset (2013)
3. Lucía - Marinero (1986)
4. The Swiss - In The City (Luke Million Remix) (2014)
5. Desi - I Want To Be With You (1984)
6. Gladys Knight & The Pips - Save the Overtime (For Me) (1983)
7. Big Ben Tribe - Tarzan Loves The Summer Nights (1984)
8. Bibi Flash - Histoire D'un Soir (1983)
9. The McCrarys - Love On A Summer Night (1982)
10. Glass Pyramid - Better By The Minute (1984)

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☟ Jolly Mare Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • YouTube • Mixcloud

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ONDA SUAVE – CHARM

Onda Suave! Cool name. I don't know what it means, but it sounds good. Rolls off the tongue. It's just as well because this guy, real name Harold Ordonez and from New Jersey, makes some cool music, too. It's very nice (despite being started as a self-described hobby, but isn't everything, to start with anyway?).

Case in point is 'Charm'. It's a reworking of the brilliant 'Midas Touch' by '80s synth-pop outfit Midnight Star . The bassline of the original makes a return, sped up to an ecstatically danceable tempo, which makes it sound more disco than anything else but kinda like, doesn't matter what it is. Because it's GOOD: Glamorous hedonistic retro-futurist boogie kinda good.

Carved from the original, vocals becoming a flashing neon mosaic of their former selves, cut with abstract surgery and reverbing away into the unending midnight strings, the syncopated funk chords shivering with groove. Add in the satisfying dynamic of muffling all treble in a satisfying plunge-pool of sound for the ears and you got something here that's gonna pull you in and hypnotise you into a foot-waggle, a head-nod, a full-on-body-moving experience.

• Also check out his latest track called 'I Like You', featuring some inspirational words from Mister Rogers against thick lo-fi sunset bass and tape-scratched steel pans.

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☟ Onda Suave Social Media Presence ☟
Tumblr • YouTube • Instagram

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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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WOOLFY – CITY LIGHTS EP

Waking up waking up is difficult especially on a Monday morning soooo why not go on a disco odyssey for 8 minutes 11 seconds? And this ain't no sweaty throwback New York dopamine-enhanced disco club disco, this is like the slow jam of disco, slo-disco, and as such it's perfect for a brain that doesn't want anything faster right now. Perfect for a brain that like, wants to wake up, but not suddenly, and definitely not anytime soon; this kind of quasi-sleep in the early morning is quite nice its own horrible little way.

And what track pray tell am I chatting about? Well, it's come aaall the way from LA and it's by a guy named Woolfy (real name Simon James) and the track is called '17' which is one of those Great Ages – others being 18, 19, 21, 23, 27 or something (this is what happens when you write early in the morning, you make shit up) – that everyone loves so much. Anyway, like I said earlier this is like slo-disco, slo-house, chilled kinda sound, and it reminded me of the sort of sounds I heard once on one of German (Munich) label Permanent Vacation's If This Is House I Want My Money Back compilations – there've only been two so far so it's one of those – which is funny cause this other track at least ostensibly has something to do with Perm Vac. After some reading, I've found that he first released music under his alter-alias Woolfy vs Projections (his The Astral Projections of Starlight album) on Permanent Vacation, so there you go.

Anyway, it comes from his newly released (14th April) City Lights EP which features two original tracks and two remixes. Here you go it's right below uh so you can listen to it.

At the beginning and at the heart of '17' the main riff is provided quite unusually by a ukelele or mandolin or something, a little toy-esque riff that gives the track a cutesy earthiness, grounding it something entirely different from what the funkily popping slightly slap-bassline and rich piano chords will have you believe. Combine this with misty swooshing tides of synth, scattered tumblings of lead blips and ever-so-often saw-wave chord stutterings, you have quite the soundscape – a mix of Del Mar flavours, coastal indie pop and late-night lounge music. Glassy organ solos enhance the atmosphere, draping it in classy inebriation; and that's not to mention the singing, which talks of some kind of romance and being 17 years old ("And when you grow up grow up to be the woman that you are / you're gonna appreciate the fact that I / kept myself away / cause you were seventeen"). Ghostly, synth-punk vocals reverbing into space with the slacker refrain that mentions sex, cigarettes, Ford Cortinas (¿¿¿ or am I deaf ???): "Couldn't care less."

It comes as the late-late-night sequel song to the first track of the EP, the eponymous 'City Lights'. It's a nicely bouncy track, a slapdash acoustic guitar riff being the foundation of the track, packed with organic percussion like shakers and gently muffled kicks and this one fluid sound that sounds like a cross between a delayed sample of water simultaneously dripping into and draining out of a sink, and tasty woodblock cloppings. This roots-indie flavour is strengthened by two additional things: a xylophone that gives the track a airily cute appeal, and of course the vocals which appear endearingly unpolished and campfiery. In fact, campfire is very much the vibe here. A beach campfire. WHICH is strange considering the song's title and its lyrics: it's about city lights. Being in the city. So in some ways, instead of making "the city" out to be this archetypal hazy, scary, hard-edged, blocky place, the magnitude of its impact is brought down a peg or two thanks to Woolfy's treatment of it – it becomes pretty and quaint, essentially having been observed from a different angle. The finishing refrain, "We live to love you…" – a perfect sing-along – tops it off as a lovesong, the so-often-done love-letter to a city, but with a refreshingly down-to-earth difference.

But wait there's more! Two remixes of '17' grace this EP, too. One by fellow LA-ppl Split Secs is a slow-builder into a synth odyssey, sawtooth boops bouncing along with retro intent in place of the more organic bassline of the original. The vocals, reverbing and dreamy before, are now much trippier, blasting off into the void with heavy delay and reverb like a weird cloud passing above. Synth lead roars into life and explodes with the same trajectory as a cosmic boiling kettle amidst the warm chords and popping clusters of melody. Francis Inferno Orchestra, from Melbourne, makes it a more intense ride, however, with clearer synths playing cosmically over the hard pulse of kicks, waves of phased-out sound blanketing it all. The second half of the track is pockmarked with laser-like synths and a mash of sounds from crashing disco hi-hats and cymbals to booming toms and thickening chords. Both remixes do different things, one is low-key and the other is imbued with much more of a sense of head-spinnery than the other, but both are excellent treatments of the original.

Soooo yeah that was Woolfy. And it will maybe (maybe) surprise you to learn that this has graced your ears today courtesy of Australian label Future Classic, who've been putting out great stuff for ages, wonderfully diverse all the way from the surgical synth of Charles Murdoch to the Drive-inspired sounds of Touch Sensitive, and this most recent release with Woolfy (his debut with the label) continues a much-loved series of sounds with dance/electronic-leanings that ooze originality as much as they do quality and loveable quirks.

• Grab this if u like it from iTunes now or just stream it forever on SoundCloud
• Or hang on if you like vinyls it exists in 10" form too

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RANDOM HERO – MORE, MORE, MORE // CLOUD NINE

These are the sultry and let's say quite frankly nicely addictive sounds of nowhere-based musicmaker Random Hero. With their SoundCloud back catalogue full to the brim with bootleg remixes and regular remixes and bootlegs by themselves, this up-and-coming artist has just – well, I say just, but it was over two weeks ago – uploaded two original songs. Both are different, yet both contain lashings of samples, positively crowded with the sounds of yore in glossy modern surroundings.

Perhaps inspired by the success or the widespread nature of future funk or the phantom adherents of vaporwave, there are, like I said, a load of samples in both. The first, however 'More, More, More' is packed with ghost noises from three sonic relics: 'More, More, More' (you coulda guessed that kinda though) by Andre True Connection, 'Mr. Funky Samba' by Banda Black Rio, and 'I'm Your Boogie Man' by KC & The Sunshine Band.

Obviously, the overriding sample here, the refrain, the riff, is the iconic "More, more, more… set to a swaying disco beat – shuffling and shaking along with slow intensity – stuttering oooo's and looped trumpets shoot through like a mist of funk as huge bass booms with a muffled synth squelch underneath it all. It's sunny and carefree, looking back to mould a new vision for the future, melding the happy sounds of these three songs into one seamless entity.

It's in 'Cloud Nine' where things are a little bit different. Although it could still be called future funk, because by its nature, its sounds – the fluttering rhythm guitar chords, the keyless octave-skipping bassline, the jittering lead funk guitar – it is extremely funky. Funk funk funk. But there is something else in its up-tempo sounds, too fast for disco, but just about catching the tailcoat of early 00's pop – the type inspired by UK garage.

When dance music spoke of getting home to get ready, still innocent to the actual act of dancing and going out and getting completely drunk, with a sensibility for sugarcoating the whole affair; dancing in the mirror, traffic jams in the fading evening summer sun, speaking to friends on the chunky ancestors of cordless phones, gaudy clothes-ridden bedrooms.

All in all, what more can I say than what I've already said? These are instantly likeable songs, ones that take old sounds and frame them in glossy new surroundings. Random Hero has offered up these two very well produced morsels, like perfectly barbecued meat, for us and I can confirm that they smell damn good and they're tasty, too: simple, not overcomplicated, and done with style.

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Listen to Random Hero on SoundCloud

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FVLCRVM – NOTCH EP

Hello and hi to everybody. Thanks to the wonders of free and plentiful communication media, people from all over the world are able to send me their sounds. It is honestly very exciting for a curious person like myself to stumble dizzily fatigued onto Facebook in the morning to find a message from somebody enclosing a link to some music. It could be from anywhere! But of course like all things, no matter how much I like it, I still add it to a list of things to feature and invariably this list gets longer and longer until it gets silly and I start afresh. But no longer. Organisation is now my middle name, hear me roar!

With that in mind, I'd like to focus on such a thing sent to at the beginning of the year. Sent by Slovakian netlabel Gergaz Records, this is the Notch EP from Bratislava-based musicmaker FVLCRVM. Having grown up playing jazz and funk guitar, as well as possessing the insatiability of a multi-instrumentalist, he self-admittedly fell in love with synth music in his teens, and since then has formed a band – NVMERI – as well as DJing and making music himself under his inscriptive moniker.

The variegated background in music makes itself known on the EP – five wildly differing tracks from the mind of a guy who "can't get himself to use the same pattern twice" (SoundCloud bio). From the offset in 'Work It Out' – a twisted vaporwave-sounding 80s affair in 37 seconds: glitching, sampled, noisy – you get to know that this is a producer who loves to make exciting, dynamic music. This is confirmed when the second track blasts into your ears, a smooth slice of soulful singing set to addictive juke beats called, funnily enough, 'Gospel of Juke'. Its slow glossy bass and popping-candy electro beeps intertwine with rich sun-god vocal choruses, summoning the dew-tipped grass of a summer morning; samples abound to make this a universally appealing track, and one that makes me long for some heat and some sun (it's actually sunny right now and I'm loving it). A slower juke vibe appears in perhaps more techno-inspired 'Yummy!', with its altered-vox samples swaggering low and the sub-bass kicks summoning the pure dirt-sludge of ghetto house; again we have beeps popping around, hollow intergalactically modulating synths, whooshing and speckling the bustling beat for a future-finding sound.

That futuristic feel also appears on EP-closer 'That's The Way It Is', whose slow-sway clicking beat evokes winding-down nocturnal chill and supports fog-like bursts of synth, tied together wonderfully with harmonising vocal samples: "That's the way it is / When you fall in love," lifted from who-knows-where. It's a gorgeous song to end on, sumptuous with a buffet of different sounds, crackling ambience in the background, fading out long and slow with sensual heavy breathing to accompany it. You could see the whole EP as a journey, a night out at a party with this final track indicating romance of some sort, thus becoming the proverbial "notch" after which this EP is named; but I dunno if it's open to interpretation.

Great disco house vibes – with perhaps some garage influence here with ongoing high-register strings and syncopating percussion – permeate the menacing analogue sounds of 'Prism Vision', bustling with rich synth chords and a thudding bassline that leads the track through itself to its post-Earth orbit, the remnants of our population dancing in the galactic night. Next track 'Tokyo 360' features as its mainstay the warlike booms of a taiko drum, enveloping the skittering scuttles of the house beat, thin synth chords popping mutedly till changes in dynamic bring about expansive extensions of synths, the introduction of modulated arpeggios, sailing and soaring until they fade, leaving the busy beat in place to finish up.

It's this faith in beats that prove FVLCRVM's Notch EP to be gloriously listenable; giving them such room to speak for themselves in many instances across the EP means that within the rhythm itself there is something for your curiosity to drink up. These are interesting multilayered tracks, not just in the beat, but in the clear futurism of the synths and other instruments, offering up rich time-capsules of music that do not overcomplicate but move on simply, often with forgotten ancient pop culture from the Earth of yesterday running through their veins in the form of vocal samples. It's something that suits here and now perfectly, from a musicmaker whose future work – which I hope will be even more varied and evolved – I look forward to hearing.

Get it now on a "name your price" (free?) basis at Gergaz Records' Bandcamp page (C L I C K).

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BLUFRANK I FELL IN LOVE WITHOUT YOU :&: PILL FOUND / FIELDS OF NOTHING

Cairo's own indie dance producer offers up some new stuff. Maybe this time around I could just say that and that it's "sounding really good this evening" or something like that and just be done with it. I could but I won't. Good music deserves more words than you think they do. It's an extended compliment; a song-length description; accompaniment. Quick—! Steal the keyboard! Stop me waffling!

So anyway, this is a new (but not the newest) track from Egyptian musicmaker, BLUFRANK, whom I wrote about at some point last year for the first time. It's interesting to find out about someone in Egypt because, well, there was a revolution there last year (the second in as many years) and in such an atmosphere it seems that creativity continues (the internet probably helps in this respect), with BLUFRANK herself playing at a downtown-Cairo club called Vent for New Year's Eve just gone. It just surprises me.

In any case, let's have a little listen to BLUFRANK's penultimate track, 'I Fell In Love With You'.

Thumping along to a clean, allegretto hip hop beat throughout – complete with snappy snares and thud-pulse kicks – the track is a hypnotic trek through surreal club landscapes, walls dripping with sweat in slow-motion and the floor a bouncing mat of disorientation. Samples, some female vocals sung, are dropped throughout the song, as are snippets of vocal well after the halfway mark, combined with the ripping crash-crackle of water & bubbling bongwater sounds, as the drums go virtuoso with rapid-fire hi-hats. The thick jumble of sounds that creates the track's foundation gives it a heavy, mesmerising flavour, whilst the sharp drums and sample placement keeps it exceedingly fresh.

On the other hand, BLUFRANK's true latest track is a mix of acid house with a dark, almost icy disco-house tang towards the end, a mix of styles that indeed is reflected in its title, 'Pill Found / Fields Of Nothing':

Whilst in my opinion not as strong as 'I Fell In Love Without You', well actually that's not fair to say: it's not a strong STARTER but it certainly ends with a bang of disco-house beats. (Interestingly, the end of this track leads pretty much perfectly into 'I Fell In Love Without You' – a nice EP set up, perhaps…?) The second half of this track, 'Fields Of Nothing' I guess, is really great, dominated by its foot-possessing beat and muffled synth waves, enshrouding you with addictively comforting white-noise-esque sounds as you dance in a mindless fog. Void! That's why we dance yo.

So, get to know. I'm looking forward to seeing how BLUFRANK evolves in the future. Here's to creativity!

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BOYS GET HURT ELEGANCE [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Here is something quite nicely magical for the collective Friday Feeling, provided of course that everybody is happy about today being Friday. In some places it might already be not Friday – I believe that's called Saturday – and if so, sorry to get your hopes up. Perhaps you could or might re-listen to this song on a future Friday somewhen. But what is this exactly? It comes from the Tokyo-dwelling emotional dance wonder himself, Yuki Abe – aka Boys Get Hurt. I've been supporting his cause for a while now (even getting a tweet taken down because apparently this song [click!] was a copyright infringement) and it seems with each new track things get a bit more refined, richer – you could even say more elegant. Ha ha.

Yes and it's no different with this track, 'Elegance'. Taking us with each of his songs into the very heart of the endless summer (well if it's endless technically there is no "very heart", no middle to speak of, but I'm sure you can understand what I mean), he conjures dancefloor romance, naïveté housed within a clean club setting, insta-crushes based on fleeting glimpses of beauty and all the carefree youthful happiness that goes with all that. Pop on over to his latest indie-discothèque soundtrack and have yourself a little dance.

Inviting us in via a chiming curtain, sturdy house piano chords and an evocative if not slightly solemn brass melody, we plunge headfirst into a disco beat with occasional but satisfying variety on the hi-hat, where the chords are supported by synth variations and a plunking bulge of bass synth bounces along with a funky jaunt. The vocal sample – or are they original, I'm not sure – lends its now-or-never sense of nocturnal temporary romance with lines like "spend all night with me", beautifully retro-ised with welcome interruptions from two note string melodies and the ever-tropical glockenspiel on loop, the synth widening towards the end, helped along its way by brief bursts of white noise fizz.

This feels different to many other Boys Get Hurt tracks simply because of the purity of the brass melody that comes in, there's something sensible about it, a maturity, a knowing resignation to certain facts or factors – and it's this gradual change in the music of Yuki Abe that makes me want to keep listening to everything he puts out. No matter what, though, you're always safe in the knowledge that he's gonna give you some real danceable and instantly likeable disco vibes every single time.

Pssst... you can also download this for free from BGH's SC page...

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YES/NO GUEST MIX 005 :: DCUP

Whilst other music magazines, websites, blogs and whatever say farewell to you as they disappear into the mists of Christmas like fun-loving spirits of Christmasses present, past and future, I am tirelessly – well, actually completely and pretty much always tired – continuing the music-posting struggle. Christmas or no Christmas. However: please do not get the wrong idea and get it into your head that I am some sort of Scrooge who doesn't give a fig for tradition. Cause I a) really like/love Christmas, and b) Tradition is important. So there. I just happen to be able to write about music even as we inch towards the 25th of December without withering into a pool of why-should-I or where's-the-snow.

Anyway, that out of the way, I'd like you to embrace the latest guest mix that has been lovingly created for YES/NO. This one is the fifth in the current series (if there is another series— hmm, well I'll let you know) and it comes from Australian producer, DCUP, aka Duncan MacLennan. Mr MacLennan was kind enough to answer some questions for an interview earlier this week, and now he's contributed this lovely guest mix – what a guy! I'm also very envious of the probably-quite-warm Christmas he'll be having in Australia. Never experienced that; it would be interesting I gotta say.

His mix is an entirely smooth mix of warm house and funky disco that displays one of DCUP's most impassioned loves of music, "that 'hook' that everyone talks about. I'm obsessed with that piece of a song that you sing in the shower, or in your head." That's embellished by a "love of huge bass and beat," as pretty much every song in his mix displays, including his own track 'Magic', fun track – 'Imperfection' – from Welsh duo Bodhi, and the big tune of Amine Edge & DANCE's track 'Lost'. ENJOY/Merry Christmas.

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TRACKLIST
01. Dave Hollister - Keep Lovin' You (Kartell Edit)
02. Den Ishu & Noah - Put Ur Hands
03. Amerie - 1 Thing (Cherokee Remix)
04. Only Children - Down Fever (DCUP edit)
05. DCUP - Magic
06. Samir Maslo - I'm In Love With You
06b. Warren G & Nate Dogg - Regulate (acapella)
07. O&A - Basement Beats
08. Bodhi - Imperfection
09. Andhim - Boy Boy Boy
10. TCTS - Do It Alright
11. FormatB - Magic Button
12. Amine Edge and Dance - Lost
13. Kartell - Minimum Move
14. Janet Jackson - Rock With You (Milo Mills Edition)

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SUMMER TWINS FORGET ME (ROLLERGIRL REMIX) [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Hello how is it all going? Well I hope. Now that we've done away with the pleasantries, let's get down to business shall we? The nitty-gritty. The crunch. Whatever you call it: let's do it. And by that I mean, I'm about to start writing about some music that I have found so hold onto your hats, tuck your shirts in, finish the food that's already on your plate and do everything else you need to do in order to read words with your eyes. You ok? No, neither am I.

So, what do we have here? We have Summer Twins – oh! That rings a bell. Yes it does because I wrote about Summer Twins at the beginning of Summer. I wrote about two of their songs, 'I'm No Good' & 'Forget Me' – they're a duo (twins actually) who specialise in creating retro-Americana sounds, full of surf-rock twang and doo-wop 60s prom night romance. It's nice, generally gentle stuff. But here marks a change: enter Rollergirl. Yes, Rollergirl. He – or at least I think it's a he (???) – has remixed Summer Twins' beach-friendly tune 'Forget Me' and it sounds pretty much very different from the original I'd say.

Preserving the twinkling melody of the original, the remix instantly puffs out its chest in bold and ballsy fashion – this is pretty much indie dance at its dirtiest and fuzziest. The bass flaps like a loose telegraph wire powered by people's dancing feet as a thumping kick and crashing hi-hat create an uptempo disco groove. By the end of the song, the sound is a veritable explosion of gloriously live-sounding instruments, everything half-distorted and super-powered with the sound of someone basically "going for it" on the drums and everything else, punching out the sound with glorious gusto.

The vocals are like the only part of this song that's kept wholly intact. At first it was kind of strange hearing the soft tones of the Chelsea and Justine Brown – the "twin" parts of Summer Twins – but then it allowed the remix to remain true to the California sun-pop vibe of the original, whilst still being able to turn up the roughness on the other elements to the track.

Rollergirl's self-titled debut album is out and has been out for a month courtesy of Nah Collective. And you can also download it from Rollergirl's Bandcamp (below).

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AUSTRA PAINFUL LIKE (XXXY REMIX)

Last time I chatted about anything to do with Austra it was in relation to the new video for their hauntingly dark electropop song 'Forgive Me' – a dirty, modern-day fairytale of absolution. This time around though, it's not just Canadian band Austra standing centre stage – nope, their song 'Painful Like' has been given a hard-edged, club-infiltrating rework by London musicmaker xxxy, or perhaps it's XXXY or even Xxxy. Whatever. In any case, he's done the remix and it's a good one.

Strangely I haven't heard much from xxxy since, well, since I last wrote about his song 'Taking Me Higher' in April this year. I first got onto xxxy though thanks to Spotify – so all the people who say Spotify is good-for-nothing, or evil, or whatever, can just quell their crazed, hype-fuelled anger. Cause Spotify can be a good way to discover artists you've never heard of. Like xxxy for me like two years ago. His song 'Ordinary Things', and other garage-tinged jams like it, hit a very grateful nerve in my body and my spirit and they're often in my memory.

This is like... 3 months old, but I'm sure there are still people who haven't heard it. Like me. Whoops. Haha. Lol. Are you ok with this?

In any case, xxxy's remix of Austra's 'Painful Like' – originally a Kraftwerk-flavoured foray into four-on-the-floor electropop – is not garage but more like electro-disco. It keeps the original's mid-bass melody but gives it some distorted bite, adding raw disco hi-hats and dollops of synth – in the form of dynamic-forming swirls of sound or ambient mist-like swathes that keep up the atmosphere. As the track progresses, the bassline becomes more and more inflected with shining treble; all the while, the voice of Katie Stelmanis (singer of Austra), is treated with respect, weaving through the song soaked with reverb, allowed to breathe on its own.

It's in the second half of the song where things start getting busy. Flute synth leads soar over the top of everything for a dark, voidsome melody and waves of sound begin rising up towards the end, all elements coming together for a perfect finale to a remix that pays homage to the original song, adding to it what he feels – I assume – needs adding for his more dance-oriented version.

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