E.M.M.A — INTO INDIGO

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E.M.M.A has been an interesting producer for yes/no ever since 'Mindmaze'. This bouncy splice of beats and baroque was inspired by educational dungeon crawler/quiz 'em up Mindmaze, a side-game featured on the much-loved e-encyclopedia Encarta 95 (see here for reference.)

Moving on two and a half years since then, E.M.M.A has amassed full power into Indigo Dream, her first album since 2013's Blue Gardens (also marking a titular move on to the next major hue of the rainbow). And the first track to be taken from the forthcoming release — 'Into Indigo' — is a gleaming overture into E.M.M.A's multi-faceted electronic world.

Like 'Mindmaze', though fuller bodied and less midiwave in aesthetic, 'Into Indigo' speaks of a fantasy world, fugue-flavoured, interpolating notes. Feeling akin to microgenre dungeon synth — more to the point, without being beholden by that label — the track glimmers with soft synths tumbling in a mesh of arpeggio and flashing flourishes, each element kinetic, like everything's vibrating. It's the sort of highly credible induction into a different reality that hints of vaporwave influences, too.

The metallic fuzz of a picked bass propels the track forward, a battlement of thumping, treble-focused kicks and punchy snares, doused with splashy cymbals, builds itself up amidst the spectral synth. It's a combination that feels reminiscent of Jim Guthrie's soundtrack to 2011 videogame Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP: transportive, but rooted in real-world instrumentation.

Drama twists its way into the track, space and simplicity like gaps in towering clouds, trails through ancient woodland, mountain paths; the background noise of buffeting wind summoning resolve, grit. And after this sonic introduction, clambering the epic ridge that separates wherever you're listening to the album from the aural forms of the album itself, the world map of Indigo Dream stretches out ahead.

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• 🔔 Check out our Lazy Interview with E.M.M.A
• 🔔 Indigo Dream by E.M.M.A is out 23rd July on London label Local Action. You can pre-order Indigo Dream via E.M.M.A's Bandcamp, available as a digital download and on cassette. A "deluxe edition" cassette bundle bags you a poster, eight-page photo inlay and a special E.M.M.A guitar plectrum.
• 🔔 A whole hosts of artists have contributed to visual side to Indigo Dream, with exquisite portrait photography by Ivan Weiss, more photography (this time on a beach) by Sophie Davies, a prog-rock worthy typeface designed by Patrick Saville, and Morgan Hislop putting together the exclusive poster (see below).

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SLOW STATE — THE SILENCE WE CREATE

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There is a sense of epic landscape swathed in peals of feeling in Australian artist Slow State's 'The Silence We Create' — but it's not something necessarily present from the beginning of the track. Instead, this intertwined emotive, environmental atmosphere comes into gradual focus, beginning with textures jostling with one another, unsure of themselves, hesitant almost, crackling with ghostly static, the rustle of dry leaves. A vocal sample struggles to finish a phrase (the title of the track), cutting itself off.

Gravely bass thumps splash and fizzle into bold tracts of silence, creating a dramatic, heavy portion that shifts the aesthetic from intricate soundscape to something more illustrative, experimental. "[The song] was written for a someone who I shared a memory with," Slow State tells yes/no via email.

"We walked into a sunset on Greenmount Hill, up in Perth City, and as the sun fell the scintillating lights of the city started shimmering. One of those moments you just wish you could grab, you know?" he continues.

The final section of the track — fraught with synth and clanking percussion — begins to mirror the weight of this twilight, the vocal sample on loop and variously pitch-shifted like a reflection of windows beginning to glow in buildings. 'The Silence We Create' is a purposeful setting aside of language, of commentary, in order to be imbued with the drama of the turning earth, the tale of an ending day.

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• 🔔 'The Silence We Create' is taken from Slow State's eponymous SlowState EP, which you can listen to on SoundCloud. The artist himself calls the project "a respite from everything that is far too fast."

  He continues: "It's introspective and reflective, but driven with intent. If space is the breath of art, then I believe silence is the breath of sound. I try to capture moments of silence floating in and out like a breath within the pulse.

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🐣 KAREFUL — H2O

The sky is collapsing in an instant at the beginning of this track and the ground opens up and everything from above begins to tumble down this expanse of space now bored through the earth, the most fantastic fissure that we find ourselves in, what darkness and undeniable foreboding dwells in the ranging ripples of reverb, the arpeggiating synths, the hardness of the electronic beats like jagged rocks, the nocturnal rumbling modulation of synth that columns barrelling through the lower reaches of this track. Like a cathedral freefalling through a bottomless pit lined with sparkling jewels and gemstones and a carved alien script that glows turquoise and sunset-orange, UK producer Kareful's track 'H2o' is a judgement day of sound on a rushing epic scale, a conjuring of otherness with otherworldly sounds.

The feeling of this track is heavily towards the baroque, towards the polished and filigreed, the ornate and broadly twisting, romance and distance conjured by the incredible vocal sample, foreign even to our world, pitch-shifted and lingering on each word, aching, searching for a soul, a slow display of beautiful turmoil. "I've always found myself heavily processing vocals to make them sound nothing like what I originally found," Kareful himself tells us about those beautifully meandering vocals. Inspired by an "involuntary break in music" after losing everything on an previous PC, he calls 'H2o' a romantic track: "Many of my tracks are…" he confirms: "I'm somewhat of a hopeless romantic myself." And in the track, its heartbeating dynamic grime-trap-flavoured percussion pulsing, there is such a sense of grandiose gothic hopelessness, of crushing from afar, the all-encompassing wreathes of unrequited love.

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• 🔔 'H2o' is taken from Kareful's upcoming Alchemy EP, out 15th September via trapdoor records. Download the track and anticipate the release via this specific site.
• 🔔 You can grab the producer's previous release, the 2016 album Deluge, over on iTunes if you like.
• 🔔 Recently Kareful featured as one of the collaborators on Lifeforce, the debut LP from Nottingham's very own Glacci.

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CM88 – HIGHWAY OF BYGONE MINDS

•                          The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
•                          Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
•                          Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
•                          Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it

This is what sprang to mind when I began writing this post. It is the Quatrain 51 from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a translation by Edward FitzGerald of poems by Persian poet/mathematician/astronomer Omar Khayyám. Something about it relates both to the track which is the subject of this post and also to the long, desolate and pointless hiatus of YES/NO these past weeks.

'Highway Of Bygone Minds' is by a Belfast-based producer CM88 (irl: Charles Mullan). He's originally from Limavady which amongst other things is famous for being the place where the tune for 'Danny Boy' ('Londonderry Air') was collected from a fiddle player in the mid-19th century. But this is all beside the point. 'Highway Of Bygone Minds' as a title suggests loss, loneliness, a lament for something long fallen by the wayside: and the beautiful ambience of the music itself helps to illustrate this sentiment further.

Beginning with the sound of cars streaming up and down a road, the undulating synth at the heart of this track rises up like an all-encompassing fog, rolling along unrelentingly until it meets a steady, lightly bouncy, gradually more-and-more shuffling beat with ticking hi-hats that drives it onwards. Screaming distorted abrasions of synth lance out of the dank mind-melting fog like lightning from clouds, occasional ornamentations in the form of chimes ringing out like something half-forgotten at the back of the mind. It's a slice of intense, living-and-breathing electronica that reminded me of something Jon Hopkins might make.

The mood is wholly and wonderfully elegaic, almost triumphally so, conjuring stretched-out landscapes hemmed in by iron-coloured clouds, heavy monochrome days, endless rain; the condensation of inside blurring the drowned world outside the window. Bass booms and grinds, thickening the inescapable hubbub of the track, robust, more concrete patterns taking shape from the initial, thinner sweeps of sharpened noise that cuts through your mind. This is a huge Turner-esque oil painting, stamping and storming as much as it bursting with sadness to such a degree that it has become vague, indistinct.

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• You can download the track from CM88's Bandcamp.
• It's taken from an upcoming EP called V which will arrive in January 2016.

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DIAMOND MIND – DRAGON EGG [FREE DOWNLOAD]

I haven't written about anything by a band like this for a while and I'm not sure why. I think it's because, not that it isn't good, but it just seems to fit much better with sunny days and this long approach to summer we call spring. So it's with happiness and hope for the warm weather days to come that I introduce Canadian band Diamond Mind. I was originally going to write about this Edmonton-based band's song 'Better Alone', which is a pretty slice of indie doo-wop flavours with hints of baroque orchestration in its strings and jaunty melodies… but then I heard 'Dragon Egg' and everything changed.

This track isn't very sunny, isn't very spring-themed, but it is instead a galloper of a track – a true sprint through zingy, energetic feelin and expansive guitar sounds that, sure, ok, may summon a little bit of sunshine, but if it were a film it would be more adventure-romance than rom-com – does that make sense? The sunshine is less a static thing and much more a thing that's almost followed, a hanging beacon in a sky above endless roads and exciting potential.

Well, a dragon egg is quite an exciting thing I suppose. And if this song is supposed to be an illustration of that fact, well, then it's done its job pretty much perfectly. It was the undeniably experimental intro that first grabbed me: frenetic drums and dramatic twists between full-noise and no-noise and chipmunked vocals thrown into the equation – it's full of wonder as to what's gonna come next. A dynamic shift, and we count into the lo-fi flutter of gleaming guitars – an ethereal riff. Smooth silky vocals, with a distinctive lilt, seem calm yet urgent as guitar chords stab and the drums judder excitedly, bass providing slices of groove beneath it all. A really super cool song that I can't get enough of right now. Wahoo!

And, getting outside of this song's clarion brilliance, it shows the brilliance of the band, able to doo-wop in coastal-pop fashion like anybody's business one minute – singing this indie rollicker about a dragon egg the next. I'm genuinely curious to see where they go next – is there an album or something or an EP? I don't know.

• And it's a free download, do you want anything else with that? Biscuits? Complimentary hot towel? Fries?

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Listen to Diamond Mind on SoundCloud

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SOSLYLOVE – AGELESS

A good compilation is sometimes all you need to open up a previously unexplored section of the music world; Various Artists are my favourite kind of artist. These compilations are like portals to an incredible 'elsewhere' – like opening a Pandora's Box, except with less of the world's evils and more of the world's good music. And besides, if Pokémon has proven anything, it's that we love collectibles – the mystique of Various Artists compilations hits us like the heady whiff of Nintendo's motley crew of monsters.

That's not to reduce the ever-surprising V.A. down to a lower status – not at all. I love finding new things. And as such, this compilation (discovered thanks to LA producer Spazzkid) is a particularly special one. Now, talking about this whole thing – Amicus Curiae by fledgling collective/label Stratford CT. – would be ridiculous, so I'll start with the first track. It's by American producer sloslylove and it's called 'Ageless' and it's really nice.

Taking cues from sunset-imbued 80s balladic pop, the track is a smooth escape into warmth and nostalgia, led by a cracking marvel of a bassline. A huge cradle of slapbass, thick and soulful, holds within it dreamy fragments of saxophone that lap at the edges of your mind's fondest memories whilst beautiful washes of soft synth watercolour the scene with twilit skies. You're struck by the timelessness of the song, its atmosphere pummelled gently by epic-inspired reverbing drums, slow and steady. It is indeed ageless. A sound to be lost in – an aid for unwinding – yet filled with heady romance on the cusp between action and fantasy.

If you know what's good for you, and you wanna listen to some songs that have a similar vibe to this one, then please I do really urge you to check out Stratford CT.'s collection of curated tracks on Amicus Curae. You can also download it for free/name-your-price; definitely do this.

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CLARA MOTO BLUE DISTANCE LP

So the time has finally come. I've known about Austrian-born Berlin-based artist Clara Moto for a few months now, firstly when I wrote about her track 'Disposable Darling', taken from her August-released EP Disposable Darling. Her brand of pop-tinged techno - or techno-laden pop - was evident from the get-go and it's still something that makes her sound particularly interesting. As far as mainstream listeners go, techno has been a bit of a black sheep in the "dance" family; disco, house, drum and bass, and dubstep (amongst other genres) have enjoyed quite a bit of crossover in pop music (and as "popular" music itself) from the 90s onward. To my mind anyway, techno has been largely ignored.

Clara Moto, however, whether by chance or by choice, has made a step forward for techno in this respect. Whilst not mainstream, nor technically "pop", her new album Blue Distance - released on Monday (4th November) - not only softens the edges to the often quite stony facade of techno, but it also adds subtle pop nuances that have the potential of giving the genre a friendly facelift.

Songs like 'Things We Almost Did', with its Beatles-like positioning of sitar swoops and clinking marimba type chords, and 'In My Dream', whose soft, glistening synths, vocal hooks and lovesong lyrics, provide a gentler techno sound. Kicks still thud, snares slap, yet there's a touch of ambient beauty that is less nightclub and more bedroom. Likewise, 'For All Reasons So Sad' exudes a certain haunting delicacy: a music box melody and heavily reverbed faraway vocals, with reverse-string sounds alongside, play over sub-bass before a beat complete with bongo sounds comes in; final song 'Lyra' - featuring the aching, breathy vocals of Paris-based graphic designer & singer/songwriter Mimu - has a gentle lullaby feel to it, dotted with grand piano flourishes, washes of synth and a slow, muffled beat.

Then there are tracks that, whilst effusing darker sounds, still don't seem to belong in the club. The lonely shades and almost mournful ambient strings of 'Holy' cover up its rumbling kicks. There's the strong beat and booming bass of 'My Double Edged Sword', with a film-score scale to the song - thanks to thick, soaring strings and ornamentations of altered vocal samples, like birds flocking - that makes it a rather grand listen. 'I Saw Your Love' is another grand number - rich, almost indefinable strings rise like a tide throughout the song as an increasingly busy beat, almost like that of a marching band (the rapid, raw hi-hat here is particularly nice), injects it with energy.

A couple of tracks do however keep things strictly dance-oriented. The percussive jitters of 'Hedonic Treadmill' sit perfectly above its constant beat as unnerving swooshes of atonal synth chords swoop in and out of earshot - the bassline here, a simple two-note affair, is wholly conducive to head-nodding and foot-tapping. 'Placid Kindness' mirrors this track later on in the album with a similar driving beat attended to by skiffling hi-hats yet with a less dark sound, glittering bell sounds giving it a kind of happy, innocent feel.

A good gauge for the general sound of the album, however, comes from opener 'How We Live In Each Other' - which I wrote about in more detail in September. It begins ambiently enough, but soon sends you into a whirlwind of heavy techno bounce, kicks exploding and vocals heady with disarming layers and a Middle Eastern-style melody. It's here where the mix of dark melody, soft ambience and techno-flavoured beats first occurs. It has been said previously that Clara Moto brings a feminine or female touch to the male-dominated world of techno; however, just because something is soft or delicate it does not - or rather should not - govern its immediate association with one gender or another.

Clara Moto has not brought her femaleness to techno - she has brought intelligence, thought, feeling. Blue Distance, a line taken from a Sylvia Plath poem referring to remoteness and isolation, is an album that has been thought-through, a process that has taken place in someone's head, their mind and their mind alone, as opposed to someone thinking only in terms of the club where the collective likes and dislikes of the crowd can sway how a person makes music. Here is an artist who thinks for herself, who sounds the way she does because of the way she makes music - not because of her gender.

It's out now on Paris-based international record label InFiné.

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KOLOTO KILL SCREEN

I wrote about Koloto, real name Maria Sullivan, last month - her track 'Fox Tales' was a hotbed of organic sounds and glitchy beats. I suppose in many ways it still IS. But we are forever moving forward. So let's move on. It'll be on her forthcoming EP (no name nor date for that yet) in any case. We now arrive at her new musical creation, 'Kill Screen'.

It's very different from 'Fox Tales', which was a very natural-sounding track. Full of innocence. This one instead is unnatural, in that it's pretty much wholly synthesised, and it is also not innocent. Not at all. Instead 'Kill Screen' brims with a looming menace from the very outset. A low and gloomy ambient atmosphere is cast with waves of dwindling hollow synth and a glitched-out harp arpeggio; aching sounds, like something being tightened, pressure rising, conjures images of something lurking in the background. A shuffling shifty clipping noise builds up to the drop.

And when it comes it's quite a change.

The harp turns into chiptune synthesisers, wildly bleeping in that same arpeggio; that tightening sound becomes a frantic frenetic beat. It's easier to hear the progression now - a kind of fugue that I guess even Bach might have been proud of - which gives it an epic kind of sound. Those bleeps though, aren't they delectable?

And it gets even more wild after the second drop. The synths are layered on top of each other, the beat more full yet still staccato. It conjures an image of an old castle from some old videogame - it would naturally be like, a boss fight or something, and it wouldn't be easy either. Or a chase scene. In any case, it's a menacing, Dracula-is-coming-for-you vibe that is still whizzing around in my head even after I've stopped listening to it - wholly worthy of its title, I say.

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