CHEAP LOVE HOTEL — OCEAN ACROBATS

When the stars align in breakcore, when the drum fills are scattered in all the right places and appear as seasonal flowers, when the instrumentation sweeps across the soundscape like swathes of cloud-piercing sunshine, when samples pop up like birds flitting between shrubs and treetops, when the bass keeps a simple, effective untiring line as the patterns of planted beds and geometric pathways — wait, this is a garden analogy! And it's one that we are employing to describe 'Ocean Acrobats' by producer CHEAP LOVE HOTEL.

“I love gaming so I make music to help me concentrate and put me in my zone while playing. I don't like dancing and I don't like yoga but I like meditative soundscapes,” the artist writes in their bio. There is no doubt that this music is inspired by the current thread of “PS1 low poly beats” aesthetic that has emerged from the pools of nostalgia gathering in game-related reminiscences of the early 2000s.

Plagued by prolificacy, they allegedly have “so many unreleased tunes ... that my friends had to intervene and started helping me release stuff.” While their entire output is worthy of listening and re-listening, 'Ocean Acrobats' has that meditative feel that puts it on par with ambient music; there is a beat, sure, quite a bustling one, but even this becomes nothing more than a rhythmic texture as the elements in the track begin to melt into one another and into the background. Ambience achieved.

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• 🔔 'Ocean Acrobat' by CHEAP LOVE HOTEL is taken from their most recent release, XOE MY TRUE LOVE which you can stream and purchase digitally over on Bandcamp.

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FIVEIGHTHIRTEEN — SOME QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERS

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Pulsing to the velcro snap of hip-hop infused drums, yawning ambient synths roar at the base of fiveighthirteen’s ‘some questions are answers’. But being the chimeric track it is, there’s more to it than that. It’s a mix of sensitive drones and legible grooves, an urgent, infiltrative bassline, a shuffling math rock spirit, with an indefinable synth melody played in soft, mythic sweeps.

The bass becomes distorted, rampaging in a steady gallop in the track’s most propulsive parts, with officious vocal samples (reminiscent of Public Service Broadcasting) topping it off like a psychedelic trip through archival ruins centuries from now.

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• 🔔 'some questions are answers' is taken from fiveighthirteen's upcoming album a fever of rays due out on 13th August.

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🐣 MEISHI SMILE, LLLL & U-PISTOL — ALWAYS FEAT. CALENDULA

We heard from a pairing of Tokyo producer LLLL and Manila-based artist U-Pistol quite recently, on the happysad trance-pop-gaze of 'Falling', but now the musicmaking team extends, including Zoom Lens label boss Meishi Smile as well as sometime vocal collaborator Calendula lending their voices to a brand new song: 'Always,' — with a comma, like an unfinished sentence, the miasmic spirit of it hanging there unformed, waiting for the right words to emerge.

From the extensive introduction – a building of excitement with twinkling lights (reminiscent of the marimba arpeggio on The Who's 'Baba O'Riley') above a propellant house beat, exploding into the spaced apart synth chord hits synced with the drums this triumphal showstarting prelude quality to them – from this a spark for the rest of the track is lit.

Calendula's vocal sings quietly but swims in close-to-your-ear intimacy, vocodered layering courtesy of Meishi Smile giving the lyrics a futuristic feel, a sense of distance that fits the lyrical content of two people grasping at mirages of each other as they drift apart in their relationship, the present hammering down in the crashing snares of the beat; U-Pistol's vocals croon the story in juxtaposing upbeat pop fashion: "Slowly we've become two entities / used to be as one, which was you and me."

The track goes through a zippy synth solo, a progression that oozes positivity, heightening the feeling of this song as something "happy", the glitter and soft focus of a cherished memory, before reaching its coda; everything quietens down, the chords summon this sunset melancholy, the happiness of knowing that it happened, looking back, twinned with the all too real feeling of loss. It is romantic, sentimental, looking tentatively ahead, evocative of days gone by, the closing credits of your life.

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GO TO SPOTIFY AND STREAM THE TRACK AND ALL THE REMIXES OF IT* BY CLICKING THIS HYPERLINK

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🔔 The track is out today (!) on a partnering of Zoom Lens and Maltine Records. *It also comes with remixes by: Kristofferson (slow gossamer synths and bass above a house beat in a nebulous reworking); パソコン音楽クラブ (a synth heavy remix with a barrage of footwork-ish beats bumping the track along); ANAMANAGUCHI (faithful to the original, though even more a pogosticking dancefloor of noisy pop); Yoshino Yoshikawa (hefty and cute at the same time with clonking percussive elements and a tumbling beat); Sayohimebou (clattering experimental breakcore remix that fulfils our desire for speed and noise and glitch). Purchase it all as a nice bundle over here.

🔔 The artwork for 'Always' was created by FANGRRLZ, and it really evokes not only the spirit but the content of the song: with melancholy yet neon lighting it reflects the bittersweet feeling, the setting of the Japanese train with its sort of end-credits placement, the way the couple sits in different positions facing away from each other, their face sadly reflected in the windows of the train. Plus an easter egg—the Maltine logo as a sticker stuck below the seat on the right; and the girl is wearing a Zoom Lens badge. It's perfect.

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☟ Calendula Internet Presence ☟
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☟ LLLL Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 ROCHELLE JORDAN — HOW U WANT IT PROD. MACHINEDRUM

Straight away there's this aura of opulence – that soft synth glow – gold fittings and fixtures and chandeliers and mahogany or maybe teak furniture presenting angularity and sweeping curves in delicious alternation. Rich, that's it—there is a high degree of richness embedded at the heart of Rochelle Jordan's 'How U Want It'. Her voice is of course a fabulous part of the track, its shining jewel, its billowing silk streaming through the well oiled machinery of the instrumental, at some points long and silken, and other times her vocals are tongue twisters, rapid-fire trilling lines that end in swooping lilts, itself full-bodied and robust but bringing it all together, lacing it with delicacy.

The all-encompassing solidity of 'How U Want It' comes from its producer Machinedrum, who creates a playground of synth and beats that stutter and somersault in tracts of audaciously empty instrumental hits, priceless vase ornamental rose footwork, clinking and glittering high-pitch and wonky but bumping and thumping with juddering rubbery quakes too. It is this with its sense of playful urgency that Rochelle Jordan's vocal pairs perfectly, similarly agile and acrobatic, making this track a marrying of two virtuoso elements that soar and sizzle. A subversion of classy with its spilling-over decorative feel, this track is feeling out-of-place at a high-society event and knocking over champagne and having fun in the face of imposition.

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• 🔔 This track is the first release on Machinedrum's newly birthed label IAMSIAM. You can steam it and purchase it variously from most of your favourite services via this hyperlink.

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🐣 DUCKY — WHAT U SAY

To find a sort of absolutism for sounds and styles of sounds in the music world today is something of a rare thing. Genres have become so fluid and superfluous a notion that, instead of being rallied around and defining a fanbase, they are treated more like palettes, or moodboards, and can be blended in new ways according the artists' desires. And so it is with musicmaker DUCKY. In particular 'What U Say' is a cocktail of chiptune, VGM, dubstep, pop, footwork, drum and bass, an experimental track, as many tracks that make their way into the pages of yes/no tend to be; gone is the label of 'experimental' as mere code for 'abstract' or 'unlistenable', experimental is vibrant and fresh and very online.

But to say that is to discredit the clear leaning towards, or rather the roots in, rave and specifically dubstep and the combination of sweet upbeatness – euphoria – and hard, noisy, quite dark manifestations that loom in both. 'What U Say' begins something like a track from SNES racer Top Gear, triumphal synths blaring overdriven abrasive, pulsing bass bobbling with excitement. It builds, handclaps taking us to the apex from where we plummet into grinding squelching synth and a punchy thudding beat. Vocodered vocals skip like a robotic sirensong. A small bridge where marimba-like chimes resound darkly amidst warm crackles and ominous tides of sub-bass gloop. And at breakneck speed: rapid kicks take us back into the chaos of neon bubblegum high-end melodies and scraping searing synth that storms with the beat.

Delicately, that chiming once more in earshot, DUCKY's track ends. And you realise, despite the squalling dubstep sounds at work, despite the familiar rhythms, it is alive with freshness, with emotivity, illustrating chaos and calm like an electronic symphony.

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• 🔔 The wonderful 'What U Say' is track number 3 on LA-based DUCKY's new EP I Fall In Love With Everyone I Meet, which you can stream and download variously here.

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🐣 MARIUS — EXISTENCE PROBLEM

The energy! The incredible energy of this dense dynamo, the fizzling vibrating kineticism of it, the warped vortex devouring you as you listen, compressing your carbon self and in the immensity of it you become a tiny, tiny diamond. Some music feels like it washes you clean, others like this one have a great intensity about them that simply engulfs with its energy, which has appeared at this present moment as a voracious appetite for human souls. Aptly enough this track bears the title 'Existence Problem', and in the different elements swirling around – the plinking toybox keys, the dissonant collage of clacking percussive sounds, the warm slow-attack hoovering synth staccato – the problems of existence indeed are defined by their confounding multiplicity.

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☞ PREVIOUS MARIUS TRACK 'EASY' FEATURED ON YES/NO (June/2017) ☜

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Norwegian producer Marius Elfsted, simply Marius, ushers us into this multicoloured existential crisis, at first with these light chords, cute and childlike plinking, easing us in like a sparkly surfaced warm rockpool of sound with its mini starfish and anemones and little scuttly crabs, popcorn beats bubbling along and foaming fizzy—and then in an exploded abstraction of future bass formula we get this drop like a tidal wave, a low ghost-in-the-machine voice like an inner monologue humming a carefree tune to distract from the bullet hell of percussion raining down, the squeak of hi-pitch shoes-on-basketball-court adding a startle of electricity alongside the muffled warmth of that gruff digitised vox, splendid incoherency in its Dadaist collage of cartoon sound effects. This wave of intricacy crashes crashes crashes and in it is the glory of motion and sound and the hundred-thoughts-a-second madness of the mind.

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• 🔔 'Existence Problem' is out now via Brussels-based Pelican Fly Records (the people who brought you Cashmere Cat, Lido and other well known electronic artists). It's taken from a debut EP that will be arriving on 15th September.

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☟ Marius Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 ÄTSCH — UP

What really is surprising about this track is how it sounds like a variation on a theme of Bert Bacharach's smooth 'What The World Needs Now', its introduction fogged with those reminiscent chords, soft and lounge-leaning, a lull of resting heart-rate and horizontal chill. It is not exactly reflective of the track as a whole, nor the heart of the track, but it is a component of what this instrumental journey is all about—and that is drama. So this intro, the heartfelt touching sweetness of it, a trough of energy, soon builds with a flying formation of acrobatic distorted guitar into a peak, the concoction of it soon towering and vibrating all around you cinematic and atomic.

There's a great point in 'Up' where the Dublin-based band ÄTSCH, having already skipped up some gears via new zooming tempos and cascading drums that skiffle and shimmer sharply and a storm of bass, where it all joins together in-sync and wonderful, jumping into staccato patterns at 03:05, locking in gloriously and falling away for the drums again to roll tornadoes into the proceedings, and the virtuoso guitar wailing now with jazz freedom furious rapid lightning in the crashing noise of it all. And we end where we began, the gentle piano chords resonating quietly, framing this dramatic sojourn of sound, this ascension into the clouds and somewhere beyond.

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• 🔔 'Up' is taken from the Irish band's upcoming EP; peep a preview of that here.

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☟ ÄTSCH Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 INVERNESS — CAN'T KEEP US

A symphony of electronic excitement, this is 'Can't Keep Us' by inverness, a musicmaker from both NYC and Honolulu if you can imagine such a thing. The track bursts in with fizzy syncopated chords and puttylike vox elastic and bendy, similar to a sped-up lava lamp, and it continues to burst into dynamic spurts of synth and blasting bundles of kicks with a delicious thump to them, footwork rhythm underpinning with its addictive bumps the rainbow flavours of the instrumental.

It's busy and bustling, ornamented with snippets of celebratory brass, a pinch of Amen break, a telephone ringing, the song's titular vocal sample, thickets of luscious percussion, clicks and clacks and claps and tuned-down snare hits, some parts veritably spilling over the sides with rapid-fire stuttering synth chords. But it's never too busy and bustling. There is enough space between the sound, enough quiet amidst the loud, that this inverness track can deliver its kinetic energy without any of it getting lost, this colourful and precise display of sound, like watching the interiors of atoms playing alongside cartoons within a glass case.

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• 🔔 You can download 'Can't Keep Us' for free if you like, courtesy of Stockholm/NYC label PRMD Music's new "PRMD DSCVR" thingy.

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☟ inverness Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 MACHINEDRUM — U BETTA

Starting out on a gently fizzing backdrop, muffled vocal samples that reverb into infinite space, and percussive marimba clonks, LA musicmaker Machinedrum continues to carve out an energetic space in this dynamo of a track 'U Betta'. It's so named for the vocal samples that wobble and cascade throughout, otherdimensional and multifaceted sometimes and lucid at others. Mellow sections with delicate noises – where wide open spaces are ornamented with ascending guitar that warbles in spaghetti western dust and desertification – contrast with lasershot parts of maximalist intensity.

These segments are raked by plasma beam synths that cut into the enormity of space, left intact for the most part and utilised dynamically by Machinedrum as he pockmarks the void with rollicking booming drums, and siphoning into it the glare of the synths, thin and iridescent above and columning robustly below like some futuristic machine, these sounds interchanging with smooth cloudy synthetic vox that rise up in a robotic call-and-response between hard and smooth. All the while glassy chiming and pizzicato strings adorn these synthetic theatrics, ornamenting the surrealistic mirror surfaces and intergalactic noir feel of the track.

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• 🔔 Machinedrum released Human Energy in September of last year. You can listen to some selections from the album on SoundCloud.

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☟ Machinedrum Internet Presence ☟
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HYPERJUICE – CITY LIGHTS (PARKGOLF REMIX)

PARKGOLF's moniker no longer appears in all caps on his SoundCloud page so I'm really not sure how to address him anymore. For ease (since I am not much of a caps lock user and can't be bothered to hold down shift every time I type his name) I will refer to him as Parkgolf. Eeesh, but it doesn't look as good, does it? It's ok. This is change and progress probably.

If you don't know: PARkgolf is a musicmaker from Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. He first caught the attention of YES/NO after he remixed 'I Don't Care', a brash and sweltering iridescent reworking of the Tofubeats original that appeared on the latter's remix version of his album Lost Decade back in 2013. Since then he's been dropping ever more electrostatic pearls of plasticine playfulness, sometimes in the form of originals, other times in the form of remixes, always jittering with untetherable energy.

And with that, here's his latest: a remix of 'City Lights' by Tokyo duo HyperJuice; maybe I'm just a sucker for a Seinfeld-esque bassline, maybe this is just the kind of music to sate my overstimulated mind – either way: expect nerf gatling gun bass popcorn laced throughout.

It's safe to say that this is an out-of-control ferris wheel of fun, turning the original track into a fireworks celebration of the vocals by EVO+ (unless they have exactly the same name and I've got this wrong, she is an utaite, which means she's predominantly, or at least started out by, posting cover versions of mostly VOCALOID songs on Nico Nico Douga), with gentle piano belying the jet takeoff that awaits with Parkgolf's mastery of plasma beam chords, a decoction of pulsing rhythmic-explosion dynamism and crystalline fluidity.

The drums are full-bodied, thick, like the sound of that thing astronauts train in as it spins WHOMP! - WHOMP! - WHOMP! The scree of bass notes jumbling with complexity, a wonder of virtuoso sonic storytelling and summoning energy in the listener – who with each phantasmic blast of synth sound sets our minds and bodies aglow with rainbow frequencies, careening dopamine hailing from neurone to neurone in orgasmic succession.

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• There's a free download of the track via Dropbox right here (clicking).
• 'City Lights' appears on recent HyperJuice release, Lights.

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SUNGJOON KIM QUARTET (SJQ) – NO. 2

Ah I found this ages ago and have been meaning to share it ever since. I'm not usually a fan of crazy jazz, or maybe I don't know what jazz is. Can jazz be anything? Does it have to sound jazzy? Hmm. Maybe this is "contemporary" jazz. I found this because I don't really subscribe to many people on YouTube and the one person I do subscribe to is this guy from South Korea who films lots of music and culture stuff.

Anyway yeah, this is the Sungjoon Kim Quartet (or 김성준 쿼텟) performing a track simply called 'No. 2' – except this time around it's a sextet, with an additional saxophonist and a zither type thing. This is actually called a yang-geum, which is a traditional Korean instrument, and this would make more sense in this instance given that SJQ (as they are known) is a South Korean entity of jazz.

It's headed up by jazz saxophonist, Sungjoon Kim. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston, he moved to NYC and sat in on many jam sessions, taking the new experiences back with him to South Korea in 2010, where he makes music and teaches as a professor at Soongsil University and Baekseok University. Jun Kim is on guitar, Doc Skim is playing synth bass, and Woongwon Hahn is on drums. This is SJQ. The girl playing the yang-geum is possibly Hwiseon Choe and the additional (tenor) saxophone guy might be Jeeseok Kim.

The track, performed live at VELOSO in Seoul, is a mad slice of bustling energy, a large helping of hot and sticky music, sultry and humid, permeated with cool calm in the form of constant laid-back guitar chords, all the while the bulging bass supports beneath it all. It begins with saxophone flourishes, a kind of brass call-and-response, the yang-geum solo is particularly fresh, hearing it in this jazz context gives it a whole new meaning, a twist on tradition.

The guitar solo is a break in the craziness after some crashing dynamic punctation from the drums, a soothing oasis from the screaming saxophones, which soon itself bleeds back into high-energy, rapid-fire playing, building to a crescendo which drops us off full circle, to the ascending saxophones that played at the start.

Whew. I don't ever write about jazz and I'm sorry if you don't like it but you should give it a listen anyway, it's really cool. It's 11 minutes long but I'm sure you can deal with it.

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• And if you'd like to hear the whole album, it is a possibility. It's been uploaded to YouTube courtesy of the label on which it was released, ILIL SOUND.

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☟ Sungjoon Kim Quartet Social Media Presence ☟
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99LETTERS MACHINE

Here's something noisy. Cause, you know, sometimes you need something noisy and boisterous to purge your mind of those tiniest of feelings that can really do a number on your mood, like small occurrences that can - albeit irrationally - ruin a perfectly good day. So something that can knock some sense into you is a good thing. Music can do the job of that proverbial "knock", though, cause we don't wanna get too violent with our good selves do we? No.

So here is 'Machine' by 99LETTERS - an Osaka-based DJ and producer who spends his time between Japan and France, real name Takahiro Kinoshita (or just Taka). According to his SoundCloud page, he's made music since 1998, beginning the process using a Gameboy for its sounds. But everything evolves, does it not? And now what supposedly began as chiptune style stuff has grown into some pretty hectic dance music with more than a little nod to the industrial side of techno. That, at least, is what I hear in 'Machine', which is 99LETTERS' latest single & offering to the ears of the world.

The song, aptly enough, starts with the sound of some machine or mechanical process - the perfect little intro to what is a relentless grinding of buzz-saw bitcrushed bleeps, a shower of rapid-fire sparks of distortion. That is underpinned with a beat that at first combines well-rounded kick with almost-out-of-time hi-hat flourishes, later extending to the sheer fizz of open hi-hats alternating with a fat, whip-like snare. It grows with intensity after a break that pummels you with ear-crunching low-low synth like digital gravel or the spirit of chiptune awakened through a séance with a blender as the medium. Or something. Indeed, the Taka himself says that part of this song was created by "some sampling with my gameboy."

It's lively and does not pull any punches, laying itself out from the start as a track fully intended to get the blood racing. More of that crunchy bass appears at the end, until the track fades out but whether or not this is because the SoundCloud stream is promotional, or if it is actually intended, I don't know. In any case, it will be out soon (???) on Japanese dance music label, House Studio-R.

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Listen to 99LETTERS on Soundcloud
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TAPE TRANSPORT PANOPLY EP

I received an email the other day and it was from a person called Anders Obel (you can call him Andrew, btw) - he was introducing me to the music that he had created under the name Tape Transport. I am very glad that he sent me the email because I've had a very nice time listening to this EP on repeat just now. He is from Norway, and I don't think I've ever written about someone from Norway before - there is a first time for everything.

Anyway, I was going to write about just one song but now I think I'll just write about the whole EP, called Panoply (coming from Greek meaning "a full suit of armour"), which Mr Tape Transport has self-released on Bandcamp for purchase on a name-yo-price basis. Not only is the whole EP worthy of praise, but there's a difficulty in picking a song that best represents his style, because it's as varied as it pleasant to the eardrums. To sum it up on a general level, I suppose you'd call it electro-pop but it's not as straightforward as that - there are dance elements in there, as well as a large chunk of experimentalism chucked in.

The song that stuck out most, on first listen, was 'You Are Mine', whose skiffly beat jitters away in the summoning up of dance energy and the steering of organically modulating synth bass and chords that rise up and down. Rapidly chopped-up vocal samples give extra oomph to the energy here, almost an R&B vibe - and it's very well done. Likewise, 'Flick The Switch' creates a dancey vibe, but with a more laid-back half-time rhythm thanks to an understated beat - here synth chords stab intergalactically and create glorious walls of noise alternately. That rhythmic, house-like twinging of chords occurs on pretty much every song on Panoply, which ain't a bad thing; nope, it adds retro dancefloor appeal to all five quite-differing tracks.

That said dance-hearted rhythm commands the chords in opener 'Crushing Waves', sending them from muffled depths to exalted heights of ear-piercing treble, adding synth horns for a triumphant atmosphere - kinda perfect for a first song. The beatwork at the beginning was certainly a promising sign when I first listened to it, intricate sounds coming together and layering for maximum excitement. There's REAL electric guitar here, too, sounding like the perfect accompaniment to the song - it's not easy to make real instruments and synth get along sometimes, but Tape Transport's got it down.

But it's a more chilled out affair for 'Look At The Stars (And The Stars Look Back)', which utilises a chiptune-style arpeggio and that twinging chord rhythm again against a lo-fi beat. Again, there's real guitar here: single, muted, reverbing notes that resonate beautifully. Towards the end of the song vocal samples pop up and the arpeggio plays in reverse - it grows ever ambient, with gentle bells, before fading away entirely. A similar ambience imbues closer 'Bedtime Story 夢は現実のもの', with a fizzing, glitched-out, up-tempo beat that upholds delicate glockenspiel sounds and soft synths; at about 1:42 a gently crashing cymbal adds to the urgency of the beat. Little things like this make the whole song quite a joy to listen to, like a genuine journey into dreams, the purpose of bedtime stories (the Japanese btw means 'dreams into reality' or similar). Muffled marimba provides a lullaby-esque outro.

With a good ear for creating dynamic soundscapes, and skilled switching between pretty, ambient atmospheres and upbeat, dancey vibes, Tape Transport's Panoply is more than just a "chill" journey: it's a deeper side of intelligent, glitchy dance music, multi-faceted enough so that it's an original voyage with each listen.

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Listen to Tape Transport on Soundcloud
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GAMMA-F7 TWO TONE PITCH BENT

And now I have something for you that comes from an artist who seems to come from nowhere and has no ties and is known only by some people on SoundCloud. But that's not a problem. I just think it adds to mystique - not that mystique is something that makes music sound any different or better or anything. It's just an interesting facet. The artist in question is Gamma-F7 and the song in question is 'Two Tone Pitch Bent'.

Nice and nothingy - no emotion, no feelings, just a fantasy adventure inside some kind of intergalactic magic carpet-slash-circuit board. It's a cool, cold, icy kind of sound. Something created in a laboratory for major funk experiments. The rhythm of a thousand dancing harddrives in tandem. That kind of thing u know. It's quite unique in that there seem to be two different beats going on at the same time: something quite fast, tittering and skipped-out hi-hats; then there's something slow, almost a dubstep beat, a slow two-step kinda thing.

In a medley of chopped up samples, the song exists. It is made up entirely of chopped up samples. Not that that's a bad thing. It actually isn't a bad thing at all. As interrupted vocal samples breathe through the scintillating sounds, almost like neon-glowing glass cascading down a day-glo waterfall, hollow synth chords mark the song's progression alongside, of course, the beat - the snare appearing like a punch from nowhere in virtual reality.

Generally, it is just a very busy and energetic sound. Partly coming from the glitchy elements where samples are held back and riffed upon like toy sub-machine guns. I like how it slows gradually towards the end, eventually becoming just a completely slowed-down version of its former self. The shutting down of some huge, glossy, imaginary machine. Internet music. Hope you enjoyed it.

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Listen to Gamma-F7 on Soundcloud