🐣 ILLION — BANKA

Inhabiting a place caught between two different worlds, one of lightness, human reality, softness, flesh and blood, heartfelt emotions, and one of gravity, fear, something inhuman, irregularity, hardness, mechanics, uncontrolled urges, Japanese musicmaker illion (solo project of Yojiro Noda, lead singer of rock band RADWIMPS) croons his way through gentle clouds of aching cello and piano chords, creating a wholly balladic feel in 'BANKA'. Beneath this soft surface, where real feeling is told in washes of watercolour with these traditional instruments and with illion's lilting vocals, lies something darker: acceptable emotions and "normal" ways of expressing them cover the bricked-up well of inner turmoil, of the rarely discussed and unspeakable.

So it is that the choked secrets of 'BANKA' bulge beneath the pop ballad beauty, wholly at odds with the delicate piano, this internal conflict begins with indistinct rumbles glossed with sandy abrasions and grows throughout the song, elements of glitch and breakcore and noise infused in these sudden fragmented outpourings of grief and despair—the twinkling piano is cut short at 3:59 for just under 10 seconds of unadulterated chopped sounds with rollicking percussion and grinding distortion gnashing its teeth before the song's crescendo, illion crafting a legible beat, layering vocals that echo strong, awakened, in this final showdown of sound, the culmination of these combined elements now working in harsh heartfelt harmony.

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• 🔔 Though taken from illion's 2016 album P.Y.L, 'BANKA' is the theme song / lead track taken from the soundtrack to the live action adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul. Based on Sui Ishida's manga of the same name, the film hits theatres worldwide on 29th July. This hyperlink leads to a trailer.
• 🔔 The limited edition album P.Y.L [Deluxe Edition] will be released on 26th July via Warner Music Japan—get it here.
• 🔔 The video featured in this post is around half the length of the actual version; stream and purchase the full-sized 'BANKA' by illion on various platforms via this link.

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📠
☟ illion Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ wikipedia

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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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Like Rollergirl! on Facebook
Listen to Rollergirl! on SoundCloud
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Check Rollergirl! on Tumblr
Hear more Rollergirl! on Bandcamp

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YES/NO GUEST MIX 013 :: COMANCHE

A particularly large HAPPY SPRING emanates fragrantly from the latest guest mix or Guest Mix for YES/NO, arriving courtesy of Comanche. Named after the Plains Indian tribe, he's actually called Keegan (though I thought Comanche was a duo but… well, maybe it is?) and he's from Minneapolis. When I stumbled upon Silicon Basilica, his debut album released on supercool label Astro Nautico, I was majorly impressed and have been itching for new stuff ever since; so I'm very happy to present this lovely guest mix from him.

"It's finally spring, and some of these songs have been on repeat, bringing warm vibes and the like," he says. "I've also really been getting into a lot of old scores and movie music, which have been increasingly dominating my playlists." How does the mix relate to him as Comanche, though? "A sign of things to come!" he says. "I'm always looking to enjoy & create from rich source material, be it inspirational or otherwise, and am often drawn towards instrumental music. Both of these truths are evident in this mix, and they help guide me in the creative process."

And you hear just that all the way through; from the beginning, with 82-year-old composer Isao Tomita's spacey arrangement of Debussy's 'Arabesque No. 1' from his 1974 album Snowflakes Are Dancing (which reappears later in the mix), through Chrome Sparks' arpeggio-ridden electro rainforest of a track 'Your Planet' and German pianist and composer Horst Jankowski's soft lounge classic 'Pink Balloon' with its kitsch "la-la-la-la-laaaa...", to the main title from the Taxi Driver original soundtrack, a moody piece for saxophone that summons a kind of deluded heroic romance of nocturnal isolation, which builds to a glittering bellicose fantasy, composed by Bernard Hermann – it was the last film score he composed before his death in 1975, the year prior to the its release; previous works include Psycho and François Truffaut's Farenheit 451.

Anyway. That's enough of words. Just sit back and enjoy this voyage through a bright and varied collage of sounds.

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• T R A C K L I S T •
Isao Tomita – Arabesque No. 1
Chrome Sparks – Your Planet
Handsomeboy Technique – A Walk Across The Rooftops
Daedelus – You've Heard
Horst Jankowski – Pink Balloon
Les Loups – Paradisco
Jan Driver – Empathy
Dirty Art Club – Into the Night
Taxi Driver OST – Main Title
Isao Tomita – Arabesque No. 1 (contd.)
Bibio – Polycoulrophon
Bullion – Pressure To Dance
Todd Terje – Preben Goes To Acapulco
Bot'Ox – 2.4.1

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Listen to Comanche on SoundCloud

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