VISCO CITY — SIXTH WEEK

⌾ LISTEN TO VISCO CITY, SIXTH WEEK ⌾

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There's more meaning behind the title 'Sixth Week' than an arbitrary measurement of time. It actually refers to when UK producer Visco City actually created it: during the sixth week of the country's nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus.

As such, the track bristles with anxiety — tracts of clattering metallic sounds, gnawing and insectoid, appear crushed and crinkled like the sound of a car crumpling sped up a hundredfold. But there are hints of hope here, optimism (or nostalgia for "old times") spelled out by a melody dancing over it all, thick warm plumes of bass enacting a sonic embrace.

The focus, Visco City tells yes/no via email was "to try and highlight the contrast between something anxious and something beautiful." And though shattered lines of chaos spark through 'Sixth Week', in essence it is a lush soundscape of better days, a slice of blue sky beyond the giant clouds.

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• 🔔 'Sixth Week' is from Visco City's Solstice EP, released via Birmingham (UK) based Brox Records. Download and/or stream it from your favourite among on this list of various streaming services.

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SIM FANE — SOME SAY

⌾ LISTEN TO SIM FANE, SOME SAY ⌾

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Though 'Some Say' could be quite easily seen as "future bass" and nothing more, it's the variation, the intense colours and the attention to the spaces between sounds in Netherlands producer Sim Fane's track that give it the power to not just occupy a space, but create its very own atmosphere. While it does build up with hyperactive pitch shifted vocals and snapping handclaps, and drops into a glooping tumble of frenzied piercing synth and soft staccato chords, Sim Fane offers up much more than a well-versed formula of builds 'n' drops.

Post-drop, the beat shifts into a frenzy of footwork-flavoured kicks, a sudden jet engine of propulsion that not only provides a boost, but also helps break up the track into a kinetic series of vignettes. Later, listeners await the final drop, but instead — after the sub-bass rumble, the scattering of bleeps and crashes promising one last popping refrain — the track falls away into a dreamy coda of fuzzed out keys, the explosive energy that was there depleted as the ship is cast adrift through a space-scape, nebulae and distant galaxies splashed on the void like abstract art.

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• 🔔 'Some Say' is taken from Sim Fane's Where She Lived EP. You can download and/or stream the whole thing over on Bandcamp.

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REEFS — TOGETHER

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There's a playful feeling to Reefs' track 'Together'. But it's not just the synths somersaulting past in a rainbow-worthy of various colours that give it this vibe, it's also the different textures, the different sounds used that afford the track its level of liveliness.

"The first step was getting those drums to knock just right," Reefs tells yes/no over email. "The beat reminds me of a bird dancing for some reason!" The rest of the track is a tale of jazz-flavoured chord progressions, inspiration from music by the likes of Photay and Galimatias, and a sample of the moon scene from It's a Wonderful Life.

Garbled vocal samples pop, syncopated kalimba chords clonk uptempo and tropical, while every now and then a snappy staccato synth lead whistles with retro buzz, summoning a melodic feel leaning in the direction of Animal Crossing (Reefs calls that 8-bit synth a "pallet cleanser" to bring the listener back). And all of it lays on the punch and rattle of a trap beat, a robust foundation for the light and kinetic instrumental.

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• 🔔 Stream and/or download/purchase 'Together' from Reefs' Bandcamp if you like.

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🐣SHLOHMO — THE END

⌾ LISTEN TO THE END BY SHLOHMO ⌾ Chaos and calm collide in this calamitous track, a dirge of insular sunbeam hope, a decree for celebration burned at the edges and wet from acid rain. Shlohmo's 'THE END' basically works out for the best.

It's a tale of different influences, from the doom of the clanging metallic guitars and their twinkling-in-the-basement arpeggios – feeling a little like Brand New's most despondent moments – to the vital trap thump of the beat with its ripped paper handclaps and ticking white noise hi-hats, it is a beast of everything; thin synths even herald better things with their shining, future bass builds—before, of course, the guitars tear them to shreds.

Dusty pianos tumble decayed in the background, spook house chimes trickle by warped and chopped with radiation shimmer, whilst bass rumbles lo-fi in the distance. As far as a track charting apocalyptic mess goes, Shlohmo's is one of consideration, playing your favourite trap heroes as the windows melt; nonchalance in the face of extinction.

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• 🔔 This crunchy anti-melodrama is the title track taken Shlohmo's THE END, the upcoming album due out 22nd March via Friends of Friends / WEDIDIT. You may even purchase this lovely track and pre-order the album in deluxe vinyl form from Shlohmo's Bandcamp, if you like.

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🐣 EAUXMAR & CAIUS — HURT U

⌾ LISTEN TO HURT U BY EAUXMAR & CAIUS ⌾

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It's the far-off vocal sample in 'Hurt U' that gives it a sense of instant feeling; stretched, pitch-shifted and flung into the distance, this scratchy, soulful voice gives the track its name. Partway between hearing somebody sing in the shower and listening to bootleg MP3 of your fav new pop song, the sample is all love and reminiscence—sometimes close to your ear, sometimes a ghostly recolletion.

Teaming up for this number, Caius and EAUXMAR lay warm classic chords on a bed of thick, clarified bass, seasoning it with sparkling ornamentations and gooey plasma synth. Layering the dusty grandeur of old-school funk and futurist glitter, it shifts between classic house piano desire lines and the robust fizz of mechanical bass with sweeps of chiptune sensibility. The aural equivalent to a mouthful of tangy, wholesome food, the production on 'Hurt U' is deliciously stodgy and packed full of textures.

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• 🔔 'Hurt U' by EAUXMAR and Caius is out now on STMPD RCRDS.

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🐣 PETTICOAT — POMPOUS

You know in Super Smash Bros. how Kirby's Down Special Move turns him into some heavy object, like a spiked ball, 100-ton weight, a stone, a Thwomp, or a block of trash? Well this track is sort of like that. (If we assume that Kirby in his regular form is soft, then it works). 'Pompous' by the LA-based newcomer Petticoat is squishy, taffy-esque, pastel-coloured and popping with pizzazz, but then there is this constant, stony pugilism in the beat and the rolling modulated synth blasts that gives it a hard but sugary coating.

Kicks thump with a balance between gloopy and thudding, cementing the rhythm of the track and sending it up like karst landforms for a dramatic soundscape that juts out and jostles with jungle greenery; dreamy gleaming chimes chase each other in spears of glistening metallic dust—another similarity to the sparkly world of Kirby. And now piano chords clonk and clank polyrhythmic in the gorgeous goo of 'Pompous', pitched vocals squall heavenly in triumph at the terraforming foundation of it all. Durable, colourful, serious, soft, fantastical: get lost for a moment in the lovely world that Petticoat's created with his music.

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• 🔔 This is literally Petticoat's first original track so keep your ears peeled to his SoundCloud and follow him and stuff if you want to hear more.

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🐣 GHASPER — LUVN U

Future bass is the sort of genre that tends to produce many copies; similar beat sounds are used by different artists, the same fizzy synths flutter in the drops, accompanied by the same pitch-shifted vox. It becomes a paint-by-numbers: the same overall outline, which might be pleasant and interesting, but is ultimately reused in varying colours. This track, 'Luvn U' by US musicmaker Ghaspr however, is something different. Though structurally it follows the build-and-drop foundation, its heart feels in a different place, its noises scream with intrigue, even in the drop which, whilst somewhat typical, uses it to present a gorgeous and delicate antithesis to the more glowering elements of the track.

Yes: the first thing to note here is by and large future bass is pastel-toned, bright, summery, positive. Ghaspr instead conjures a brooding, nocturnal atmosphere, one that's feels quite garage-flavoured - mainly in the rainy-night vocal sample, the shuffling two-step rhythm of the beat, the rumbling modulated bass bulging beneath. It's somewhat sinister, the beat rattling with bristling textures, little insectoid noises wheeling in the background, a spooky music box plink, too. So the drop, with its sudden plasma beam of synth and sense of space, feels like coming up for air; the javelins of sunlight piercing through tracts of overcast sky.

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• 🔔 Ghasper's 'Luvn U' is taken from the musicmaker's Mima EP, which is out now available to stream and purchase if you so wish.

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🐣 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.

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

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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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🐣 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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