CHINO YOSHIO — そのうちいいことあるよ

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'Someday, something good will happen' — so says the translated title of Japanese composer Chino Yoshio's latest piece. These words form part of the poignant refrain sung by collaborator Michiru (Michiru Tamaki), whose vocals ring with far-off hope. Michiru, a lyricist and doujin singer, brings more than a hint of anime OST to the song, resulting in a decidedly J-pop aesthetic.

But Yoshio's ambient approach to composition results in something different to pure J-pop — something meditative and magical, with the warm silky tones of his synth creating a smooth texture that underpins everything, wrapping it in a gossamer veil. Particularly evocative are the strings provided by MIZ (Mizuho Mori) — a prolific composer and musician who with credits in the classical, pop and video game music (including Final Fantasy Record Keeper) worlds.

Lyrically and sonically, Yoshio pieces it together like a modern-day, minimalist passacaglia: sombre and somewhat serious, yes, but also an optimistic mantra for simple wishes.

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• 🔔 If you really enjoyed 'そのうちいいことあるよ' by Chino Yoshio you can even purchase it on vinyl, if you like.

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📠
☟ Chino Yoshio Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 TEPLICE – BRIGHT FUTURE

⌾ LISTEN TO BRIGHT FUTURE BY TEPLICE ⌾

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From the very beginnings of 'Bright Future', with its curdled kazoo crunches and icy shards of synth, there's something in the sound that wrestles with the title of Teplice's track. Sub-bass tumbles along and a mellow miasma of plasma synth is ambient in the background, seeping into your skin when it all suddenly sinks into a mire of doom come chord-change.

The vocals do the hoping, literally. "I hope... / For a bright future" Berlin-based, London-born Teplice opens the song, unaffected and in a tired monotone. Later, insomniac lines – "I lay awake at night / Thinking of the moon / Sleep will greet me soon" – rise up and look likewise into a positive, albeit near, future. Alongside hoping is questioning, a haunted interrogation at the heart of this song like a mantra.

In harmonies that conjure spoken nonchalance like spoken spells under spectres that twang and lilt, something vocally like The Cranberries or maybe Warpaint, the existential inquiry curls out like smoke: "Is anything out there / Is anything out there / Is anything out there / Is anything..."—cut short at a moment of sudden discovery or resignation of futility. These vocals especially expel warmth, in tone, in rhythm, that makes the song bounce.

The simplicity of the lyrics stand the sentiment and imagery of up as monoliths, symbols and vignettes in a nocturnal frame of frozen electronica, driven by an unstoppable marching beat: the slow, officious plod of time. As ghostly as it is a real, true voice, 'Bright Future' wonders about the world outside—not outdoors, but outisde what you know, in something that summons the choice of music in Twin Peaks (inhabiting a realm similar to Rebekah Del Rio's 'No Stars', for example).

All the lilting vocals, all the sense of falling off the face of the Earth. And yet by the end of the track, the density of the track has lightened, the clouds begin to part; minimal and angular, 'Bright Future' is still warm and human, still hopes.

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• 🔔 The product of working at producer, label owner, radio show host E.M.M.A's Producergirls workshop, this track is taken from Teplice's upcoming Bright Future EP, inspired, she says, by "contemporary feelings of angst, stagnation and uncertainty" as well as wanting "to capture a sense of time elapsing at a personal, social and historical level."

  "In this sense," she continues, "considering how individual lives intersect with historical moments, my grandma has been a massive inspiration. [...] It was important to me that she was represented [in the artwork]."

• 🔔 The Bright Future EP is set to be released on Pastel Prism Records on 18th October, and marks the inaugural release on the label. Pre-order it on Bandcamp.

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👉 Read our interview with E.M.M.A by tapping these words 👈

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☟ Teplice Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 NELYLAND — SUNRISE

It’s an added bonus when a piece of music sounds like its title, or more correctly evokes its title with sound, and that is the case with Nigerian artist Nelyland. His track ‘Sunrise’ is a nod to the subtle feeling of pre-dawn, the muted sky washed in a gradual brightening and lightening of colour, dark clouds becoming white, purple skies becoming blue – the soft synth rising up in the subtle afrobeat rhythm of the track represent that tone, those dark pastel shades when day still cannot yet shake the night, nor take the sleep from its eyes.

Speaking of that afrobeat rhythm, it’s a sparse semblance of a beat that propels this track forward, with robust thudding kicks like a gradual step towards the proverbial light, and softer percussion popping alongside in an angular, fragmented cluster of beats that gets smooth shaker and hi-hat accents. Nelyland’s soulful vocal itself calls out fringed with autotuned brightness, telling his story: “I been through the storm and the hurricane / Searching for love but it never came.” These lamenting yet determined verses are contrasted with the gradual hope that rises up in the hook: “Sunrise, sunrise, they pray for my downfall but I’m praying for my sunrise…”

It represents that dark side of hope, when you realise that by the very act of living in hope you are without something, struggling, and could be on a long journey to realise your dreams. And yet the slow, steady pace of ‘Sunrise’ feels like a march, a tenacious beeline set for what Nelyland wants to achieve: tell his story to the world.

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• 🔔 The description for 'Sunrise', a track written by Nelyland following the loss of his mother, reads as follows:

  "I'm sure there are a couple of people out there still trying to find the light. I want to help you realize that your light is already within you and that you should just let it shine! RISE UP LIKE THE SUN !"

  The track is out now courtesy of Afrocentric independent label Sufferings & Offerings and you can listen to it on SoundCloud as above, or via Spotify if you like.

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☟ Nelyland Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ spotify ⚘ instagram

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🐣 VARSITY STAR — SOFT NOTHING

Here there is the sound of a vague dwindling hope sailing through the air like a stream of faint aurora lights, against the void of despair and the absence of hope. The rounded, clanging synths have a delicious texture to them – tinged with warped decay – as they play the downcast melody, but things do begin to look up, the plaintive song teeters between giving-up and persevering, the beat propelling it forward with clusters of thin snares, and later a shimmering parade of icy cymbals. An ambient hiss whooshes as a backdrop, making this feel all the more vital, authentic, a mild eruption of life amidst a broken landscape.

It arrives from the mind of New York-based musicmaker Varsity Star. Beginning life as an idea on a friend's Roland Alpha Juno, recorded on an iPhone and archived, it was two years until it surfaced again. "The morning after the 2016 election in the US, I came across the recording again and immediately felt where it could go," the producer told us via email. "The working title was "Hopeless", but after I got more of a blooming sound into it, I felt like there was more to the track than that, so I called it "Soft Nothing". I like to keep titles short if I can, and for me that was the shortest way to describe my late-2016 feeling of insignificance."

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• 🔔 This is from Varsity Star's self-released album Model Home. Speaking to us about the ideas behind it, the musicmaker told us that it was inspired by the scenery of the New England suburb in which he grew up. "I don't expect anyone listening to necessarily see those same things that I do when they hear the music," he explained, "and that's why I chose the title Model Home: it's there for people to put their own 'furniture' into and visualize their own experiences in." You can stream it, and purchase it, on Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The art for the album is by London-based studio Partners In Crime; Varsity Star told us about them: "The designers who worked on the album cover did a really beautiful job of bringing that kind of vague notion of the area [of New England] to life, especially considering they're from another continent."

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📠
☟ Varsity Star Internet Presence ☟
soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ bandcamp

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