MOSLEM PRIEST REAL SWIMMIN'

Take a little look outside of your own culture once in a while and you will find that, truly, people aren't that different in other cultures. People are, at the end of the day and when all has been said and done, people. Wherever you go. So, of course, people are creative right across the globe – there are no exceptions. Someone somewhere is always making something interesting, in all forms of art – and for the sake of this site, we'll say ESPECIALLY music. Especially. Music, believe it or not, exists outside of the UK, outside of the USA, outside of whatever country you're from. One good example is Moslem Priest.

Real name Farhan Yassin, Moslem Priest lives and makes music in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His name – curious and awesome as it is – comes from an incident that occurred when he was in London once, when one of my fellow countrymen yelled "Muslim priest!" at him in the street; he liked it and it stuck. I stumbled across his music when I was having a look around KL-based magazine, Gumball, for whom I also write a weekly (mostly...) article. It was his latest track that interested me the most, so I'd really like to share it with you: here is 'Real Swimmin'' by Moslem Priest.

What you'll notice at first is the strong emphasis on samples of all kinds: a constant background noise of running water attacked by the sound of a phone ringing. Then, of course, the song's namesake, the rhythmic vocal sample of "Real, real, real real real" makes its appearance throughout the track. Wobbling soft synths wibble their way through, becoming more heavily layered and intense as the track progresses; clocks provide an unrelenting tick-tock; gunshots take the place of snare hits.

It's a Dadaist take on hip hop: the down-South beats with the extreme sub-bass thundering throughout and skiffling hi-hats combine with all these strange samples – there's even a dog barking at some points – to paint the kind of landscape you'd see in a dream of some surreal domestic situation. This is a bold collage of sounds that booms right into your brain, leaving delicate touches to those who believe experimentation should be subtle; Moslem Priest does it differently.

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SAINT PEPSI UNHAPPY

Here is a song that I was supposed to write about like last week but Saint Pepsi (aka Ryan DeRobertis) decided to take it down soon after he'd put it up. It's called 'Unhappy' and I think must refer to end of summer. That's an assumption based both on the time of year it is currently - the end of summer - and the fact that the main hooks in his song come from an altered sample of a song called 'The Summer Ends' by an emo (yeah emo) band called American Football, who were around from 1997-2000.

And well well well. Firstly, how genuine to have sampled a song that isn't a hot pop hit, something of the moment, but something that was probably totally in Saint Pepsi's ears at some point or another in his life. That's a really nice touch. And from that you can I suppose infer that he's completely making the music that he wants to make, with no constraints, no box, no label (certainly not that of vaporwave), instead going totally on what he wants to do.

In this instance, the slow guitar arpeggios and unassuming percussion in the original become faster and get summarily glitched-out, along with vocals that are now nicely chipmunked, but not in a bad way - high vocals can of course go one of two ways, and this one has come out ok.

Alongside the magic of this sample - the strange nostalgia from a song I've never heard from a band I never knew effusing from its now-altered state - there's now chunks of smooth bass and a hip hop/I-guess-trap beat, in which much revelry seems to be had with producing joyful flourishes on the snare and hi-hat, making it a very energetic beat indeed. Some synth finds its way in there somehow, after the midsection of the song.

On the surface of things, setting a sample of an emo song to a down-south-flavoured hip hop beat is theoretical madness. Imagine that working. Well, it has, in this instance. It's worked very well. It's a multicoloured shower of candy, trap turned on its head, emo's frown turned upside down - yet in the midst of this subversion, there is emotion. Whether it's happy or sad is up to how you're hearing it, I suppose.

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Learn about American Football on Wikipedia

Y E A R S ビスタ (VISTA)

So last month I wrote about YEARS or Y E A R S or // Y E Λ R S //'s song 'She Is The Girl Of My Dreams' - dreamy stuff, as you might imagine from the name. But then, most of this bedroom musician's music is rather dreamy (self-described as "Ｃｒａｚｙ Ｔｒａｐ//Ｃｈｉｌｌ//Ａｍｂｉｅｎｔ//Ｄｒｅａｍ"). And if there is any insult felt from "bedroom musician", then I apologise. It's just a phrase. A meaningless phrase. Just means you make music at home. Is that so wrong?

In any case, here's another song from the man (or woman - let's not discriminate) him/herself. It's called 'ビスタ' or in English 'Vista' - a view of sorts I guess. It was posted to his/her Facebook page with a message that said it was "really really the last track" they would make: "my mpc is dead so i can't make music anymore for long time". They mean Akai MPC - a cool kinda sequencer/sampler/drum machine. It's an interesting fact that they're so analogue in this digital age. Certainly gives things an earthy, scrabblingly real sound, as it is on this new track.

I just thought it was quite an interesting sound, so I had to write about it. Whilst it coasts along on its attitudinal hip hop beat, complete with synthy woodblock tappings and sharp scatty hi-hat, boom-booming kicks as well. Pop-tinkling chimes glitter icily alongside the smart sampled synth, like the sound of a mystical bath emptying.

The most interesting thing for me was the altered sample of Celine Dion's vocals in 'My Heart Will Go On' - against the brash down-south beat, this kind of jarred, but then that's the sound of this kind of music. It's jarring. Discordant, almost. But I like it. Dreamy sounds, strange samples, big beats. Yeah. A meeting point of real life and the dreamworld.

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