🐣 SUSPECT — SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST

Sometimes it is what's left unsaid that is most powerful, and in the case of instrumentals it's what's left unused and untouched: space. A sense of space can give a sense of majesty and grandeur as well as chilling tension and literal expansiveness. And so it is in 'Say It With Your Chest', the latest from London rapper Suspect—synths glassy and glacial, halfway between a slowed-down music box and a warped gamelan, chime out a haunting melody that adds a calculated coldness to the track.

Between these chimes is space, and lots of it, plenty for Suspect's murderous bars, who breathlessly and growling explains the advantages of not talking behind someone's (i.e. his) back – "bet you can't @ me when you're dead" – and challenging you to "say it with your chest," this hook screaming out guttural with reverb and ad-libs yelping in the void of the track. A huge trap-flavoured beat thumps and rattles, the minimalism and delicacy of the instrumental making the venom and aggression of the words all the more effectively brutal: "all I smell is death in the air / it gets dark in the depths."

---

• 🔔 This track is out now on RINSE and you can stream it variously here.
• 🔔 The video for 'Say It With Your Chest' was directed by Bafic and Hector Dockrill, who explain the ideas behind the vivid visuals, dark yet colourful: "Suspect wanted to shoot a hood video with colour, so we experimented with lights around Wooly [Walworth Road] — we wanted to capture everything in its correct environment, but within a heightened reality."

---

---

📠
☟ Suspect Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter

---

---

🐣 TYLER — TOUCHING

'Touching' by South African producer Tyler purportedly inhabits the world of Wave, an environment like domed gardens on a terraforming planet, palm fronds jostling against plexiglass in artificial breezes: artificial, harsh, but deep and thriving with life. The musicmaker arrived to the scene just over a year ago, courtesy of a friend who suggested he listen to the Plastician's now-defunct Rinse.fm show—citing that "the slower tempo allowed for a more emotive journey," he ditched his previous dustup outputting moniker Melodik and blasted off into space for this, his first ever release.

And space is what it is. With the reverse synth sounds, tinged with Middle Eastern elasticity in its slow aching melody, it sounds very much like a cosmic version of the theme for Shifting Sand Land from Super Mario 64; whilst the twisting scattered glitter mingles with the warbling modulated waves of cold synth for that air of elsewhere mystery, the bass below rumbles with ascending melody, slow and steady, pushing the music upwards for a determined feel, more like the Mario 64 Bowser Road theme in feeling: big, impending doom, otherworldiness, but ultimately gritted-teeth pushing forward. And then we have more textured flute sounds into the bargain, enriching the track with body as the beat ticks and rattles, a rolling of clacking fills and trills.

This is scene-setting stuff—the wild expanse of it, the far-flung exotic nature of it as the spacey synths mix with closer-to-home melodies of Eastern persuasion, familiar but altered in form, silicon sands reaching out to a black horizon that glows where the void meets the sharp dunes of the desert, human vocal samples ghostly and faded like the memories and paranoia of explorers bound never to set foot on Earth again.

---

• 🔔 You may stream 'Touching' by Tyler via this hyperlink here. It's been released courtesy of UK label Liquid Ritual, founded by producer Kareful, amongst others.

---

---

📠
☟ Tyler Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud (as Melodik) ⚘
youtube (also as Melodik)

---

---

🐣 11:37 — FALCON

A juddering twang of a synth bass, halfway between doinging a ruler on a table and the crundering of a plectrum picked bass guitar, a sort of synthesised bass vibraslap, and it pops out with groove that sits simply in the bottom layers of this bitesized track called 'Falcon' from newcomer 11:37—this enigmatic name is taken, the musicmaker says in the track's description, from their time of birth. Although in this digital setting, something they wrote calls to mind a DIY ethic that is often overlooked when it comes to SoundCloud producers: "Saw no need to draw it out," they said, "because if the Ramones can keep it short and sweet why can't I."

The producer keeps it bright and textured, adding shakers and shimmering tambourine hits as well as delicious wet handclaps and a gleaming chime that glomps into the distance, all before the main body of the track begins beset with a parade of pitch-shifted vocals. Wordlessly these call out rhythmically jumping octaves, skipping and dancing through the columns of thudding bass kicks and tight snares that punctuate the streaming glittering mist of reverb from those vocals, the ticker tape of hi-hats and sheafing cymbal whooshes subtly detailing the beat. Here in 11:37's debut track there is expansiveness, attention to fine-tuning the track's ingredients, sort of like the eponymous soaring falcon zooming in on the minutiae of the landscape with its keen vision.

---

• 🔔 You can show early support for 11:37 and 'Falcon' on iTunes if you want.

---

---

📠
☟ 11:37 Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

---

🐣 IMONI — MONEY

In a world of swirling neo-noir, a place of hazy soft synth chords modulating subtly, London singer IMONI weaves her vocal amidst the offbeat stutters of a drumtrack that swings with nocturnal cool, thudding kicks and sumptuous clacking snares and the sharp popping hi-hats that skip and skitter alternately. 'Money' verges on melancholic, a moody whirl of music that utilises the chilled and stifled nature of the muffled synths to conjure a breezy sort of seriousness, whilst bass with electric bounce exercises its future-leaning sound on the atmosphere for stark colour against the gloom, spots on neon-pastel on a near-black charred grey void, a stark sense of being by yourself in vast space.

"I was always in the habit of writing sad songs, but recently I’ve started writing about what makes me feel good and it’s been empowering for me," explains the musicmaker in a press release. "‘Money’ is about me not letting other people’s negativity affect me, being care-free and focusing on myself as I begin my music career." There is certainly an aloof feel to IMONI's vocal, the lilting soul acrobatics switching between a crooning voice in the dark and spoken word calm in full control: "think i'm gonna settle down / boy don't mess around / it's about time that i let you down a little bit / but can you handle it." Reverb drips from the words, whether creaking and colloquial or singing out emotive and fluttering, giving the track a sense of expanse, of endless possibilities, the apprehensive but hopeful feeling of the first step on a journey, the brink of a waterfall.

---

• 🔔 IMONI is currently working on her debut Serendipity EP.

---

---

📠
☟ IMONI Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

---

---

Y/N GUEST MIX 018 :: STONEWALL KLAXON

This mix. It is a wholly original mix. It features only tracks from the artist himself, Mr. Stonewall Klaxon. Obviously, or perhaps not obviously if you're not au fait with Americano historia, this guy is named after Stonewall Jackson, an American Civil War commander. A few potential reasons why: 1. This guy is a Confederate sympathiser (being from Texas and all); 2. Apparently Mr. Jackson was something of a legendary person, why not name yourself after (kinda) him?; 3. Just cos it rhymes; 4. Don't know. Should've asked really shouldn't I?????????? lol oh well. Not the point right now is it.

The point is this is a mix with a difference because it's basically like hearing a Stonewall Klaxon live set. His music is like… really nice. It's beats-heavy, synth-heavy, a waterfallish cascade of electronica set to mostly uptempo rhythms, kind of in a paint-splashed realm between dubstep and footworky stuff, for instance with the white noise watercolour wash and pneumatic drill kicks of his remix of 'TBAE' by urlchild or the hyperactive synth stutterings and finely diced vocals in 'Gary Lazer-Eyes', coupled with the busy explosiveness of 'Neon Swords' and its gurgling vocal samples whose beat seems to hang in the air, and 'Cigarettes', where infra-bass kicks are the gloopy swamp out of which brittle mangrove snares snap and crack.

The mix, which includes samples of Link's sword-swinging shout in Ocarina of Time ('All Of Me') and Navi's "Hey!" ('Neon Swords', the set closer), and a sparkly remix of 'Latch' by Disclosure, pitch-shifting Sam Smith's vocals just ever so slightly, is luscious, the sound equivalent of breakdancing under a canopy of stars, or playing videogames with friends because one of them has a free house and it happens to be a marble-and-gold mansion of a place. Stonewall Klaxon, real name David Andrew Lunson, is 26 currently lives in Austin, Texas, "working as a chef in a restaurant downtown." But cooking skills aside, musicmaking comes first: "Music has always been my passion, and my true priority," he tells me. "I suppose what first inspired me to make music was simply being in the school band and orchestra~ playing euphonium, trombone, and cello."

The rich flavours and dynamics of his sound are, with this information in mind, easily traceable back to this classical and traditional training in music; you can hear the feel-good, triumphal nature of band music in each rousing hit of synth, and in its gentler moments, his music is certainly orchestral, albeit with electronic sounds – the melodies and progressions are so well done, so basically perfect. I've seen reviews of his stuff saying 'Flume-esque' or 'Wave Racer-esque' but you never hear anybody say that any classical music is 'Beethoven-esque' or 'Mozart-esque', really, do you? There is space enough in the music world for true talent and actual hard work to shine through, and it seems as if the gleams of Stonewall Klaxon are just about starting to reach the eyes and ears of the world.

---

• T R A C K L I S T •

1. 0:00 Chords (Excerpt) (Vocals are Frank Zappa)
2. 2:39 Gary Lazer-Eyes
3. 7:27 Spherical
4. 12:07 Cigarettes
5. 15:21 Urlchild - TBAE (Stonewall Klaxon Remix)
6. 20:09 Disclosure - Latch (Stonewall Klaxon Remix)
7. 23:21 All Of Me
8. 26:38 Neon Swords

All tracks by Stonewall Klaxon

---

• Hey! Listen! Go download a free copy of the Neon Swords EP, from which most of these songs are taken.

---

---

☟ Stonewall Klaxon Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

---

---