🔮 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER: AUS'S TOP MUSIC OF 2023

Tokyo-based artist aus, aka the human producer, DJ and label owner Yasuhiko Fukuzono, has had a busy 2023. "I've hardly been able to catch up on this year's releases," he says. That's probably got something to do with the fact that, for the first time in a few years, he released a new album under his musicmaking moniker.

Titled Everis, and joint released by UK label Lo Recordings and his own (that's flau, by the way), the album was made "in an empty nest" — a labour of love having lost recordings, data and even equipment. "I made it trying to reconnect with my memories from the videos and recordings left on my phone," he says.

The result is a cinematic, emotive release that feels part nebulous lovesong, part Gold Panda. Everis was followed up later by a remix album, Revise, which features reworkings of Fukuzono's original tracks by the likes of Grantby and Patricia Wolf. Next year will see yet more aus music, with an EP and album in the works, as well as more flau releases. "I have a lot of projects in the pipeline at the moment," Fukuzono says. "I'm not going to stop with just this year."

One of these releases, appearing just a few days ago, is a collaboration between Fukuzono and guitarist and actor Ryosuke Nagaoka. Titled LAYLAND, the collaborative release is a cocktail of crafted experimental beatscapes and improvised guitar odysseys. As an aside, Nagaoka is played the titular role of ancient strategist Zhuge Liang (shoutout to all the Dynasty Warriors fans out there) in a live-action adaptation of the manga Paripi Kōmei.

But on this note of hoping for a nice and busy 2024, not to mention a successful one, we're very happy to introduce aus's top music of 2023, looking back over a year of lounge-laden funk, delicate dream pop, and everything in between. Though admittedly being in a constant state of discovering and buying years-old releases, fresh new music nevertheless made its way to Fukuzono: "These are some of the great songs I found this year." Read on ☟

Maxine Funke – River Said

Yasuhiko Fukuzono: Wonderful singer from NZ.

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'River Said' is the title track from the singer-songwriter's April-released album.

Sven Wunder – Take A Break

YF: Music genius.

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Taken from Stockholm-based composer Sven Wunder's September-released album, Late Again

Virginia Astley – The Singing Places

YF: Surprise of the year.

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Taken from English singer-songwriter Virginia Astley's 2023 26-minute, one-track release The Singing Places.

Charif Megarbane – Pas de Dialogue

YF: Genius.

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This track appears on the 2023 album Marzipan by Lebanese composer, musician and producer Charif Megarbane. It is the first full contemporary release by Berlin-based label Habibi Funk.

John Beltran – As the Sunsets

YF: He made a remix for me, all-time wonderful.

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Beltran remixed 'Landia' on Fukuzono's 2023 Revise, the remix follow-up to his sparkling release at the start of the year, Everis. 'As the Sunsets' appears on Beltran's limited edition 7" Back To Bahia Vol. 3, released by Detroit's very own record shop-meets-wine bar label, MotorCity Wine.

MSD Elementary Music Class – Happiness Runs

YF: Just found from Bandcamp searching, so so lovely.

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Performed by the children of MSD Elementary Music Class for their album What's That Sound? (which also includes a cute rendition of 'Let It Be').

Theo Parrish and Maurissa Rose – Spiral Staircase

YF: Always great!

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Taken from Free Myself, the collaborative album between Theo Parrish and Maurissa Rose

Hazel English – There She Goes

YF: I love the original, so I love this too of course.

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This is a one-off cover by Australian-American artist Hazel English of the 1988 classic 'There She Goes' by English band The La's.

Purelink – 4k Murmurs feat. J

YF: One of the few electronic ones I listened to this year.

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This dreamy track is from Brooklyn-based Purelink's September album Signs.

a.s.o. – Love In The Darkness

YF: Reminds me of Seely.

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'Love In The Darkness' is taken from Berlin duo a.s.o.'s debut self-titled album.

Ana Frango Elétrico – Electric Fish

YF: Gives big energy.

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'Electric Fish' is from the album Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua by Rio de Janeiro's very own Ana Frango Elétrico

Photography by Neon Bunny

• 🔔 Keep up to date with the latest from flau and check their Bandcamp and SoundCloud pages too. There's also Twitter (which is nowadays trying to be known as X). Oh, and Instagram.

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🐣 HARUKA SALT — PINCH 'N ITCH FEAT FAT TONY

⌾ LISTEN TO HARUKA SALT, PINCH 'N ITCH FEAT FAT TONY ⌾

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"Been a long week, had enough of this": Nigerian-American rapper Fat Tony's opening lines to Brooklyn producer and DJ Haruka Salt's smooth house odyssey 'Pinch 'N Itch' couldn't be more relatable. Fired along glossy plums of bass and a drum machine collage of beats, the feeling of the instrumental is one of elation, freedom — something Fat Tony didn't miss: "'Bout time that I scratch the itch / 'bout time that I left and I hit the road."

"I was feeling so free to express myself and exploring vintage synths at [indie disco & house record label from Brooklyn] Toucan Sounds’ YouTooCanWoo studio to find unique sounds to go with my mood," Haruka tells yes/no via email. "It was like hunting [for] treasure through all the vintage synths and being on the creative journey with those sounds/treasures I found on the way."

It's hard not pick up on that. Glassy keys craft a cool, lounge atmosphere; spiralling sounds soar upwards in a crescendo of energy; soft horn sounds swirl left and right; high strings cut a nocturnal flavour. There's an excitement to her music that Haruka can attribute, at least in part, to Brookyln itself. "I have never gotten tired of it," she says. "[It] definitely impacts my creative ideas and flows."

For Fat Tony, who counts the Houston scene as a huge influence on his style, his contribution was a chance to let off steam. "I was having a stressful ass week!" he tells yes/no. "The walk over to Toucan Sounds’ studio, was peaceful. It gave me time to cool off and reflect. The lyrics came naturally."

His vocal, laid-back but coiled with elastic energy, provides the perfect companion to Haruka's ever-changing beast of sound. 'Pinch 'N Itch' is a journey, an exploration of sound twinned with emotion expressed on reflection — a snappy, dynamic response to stress as much as to vintage synths.

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• 🔔 'Pinch 'N Itch' is taken from Haruka Salt's HarukaMart EP, released on Toucan Sounds. You can stream or download the whole thing on Bandcamp if you like.

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WAKON — TOKYO IS DYING

⌾ LISTEN TO WAKON, TOKYO IS DYING ⌾

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— Painting a picture of simultaneous fatigue and excitement —the shuffling fluorescent tunnels and dead-tired eyes of train-riders twinned with the entertainment, the frenetic streets of clothes, faces, skyscrapers, shopfronts lit with light — 'Tokyo Is Dying' by WAKON is an apt soundtrack for a city that is two cities: business and pleasure.

As the Tokyo duo's house-tinged track rattles on with a mechanical rattling industrious beat, looped samples warp in and out of earshot like a reflection of the Japanese capital's day-in-day-day out feeling. But more than this propulsive flow, there's a collage of colour in 'Tokyo Is Dying' that, despite the title, infuses optimism and vitality into the metropolitan malaise of the track.

Speaking about the track, WAKON put forward this mission statement:

"Tokyo is dying. Having gone through 30 years of economic stagnation, Tokyo is still fettered by commercialism and globalism, and repeatedly destroyed and created anew. Nature, culture, tradition, scenery, sentiment, humanity, affection, and laughter disappear day by day. Music is no exception."

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• 🔔 'Tokyo Is Dying' by WAKON arrives via Tokyo artist collective & label DENTO. Stream/download it variously from whichever digital music service is your favourite.

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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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🐣 TOMC — BAKE THE HOUSE

⌾ LISTEN TO TOMC, BAKE THE HOUSE ⌾ Like trying to tune into a feeling, the same way you'd find a station on an old radio, this track flits and skips between different textures from all directions; discovering and pinpointing disparate but harmonious sounds in a cocktail of audio collage. TOMC's collection of samples and noises spills out like a painter set free, all of it washed with thick, glittering warmth and backed by thumping house kicks.

Reassembling and restructuring audio samples taken from a Japanese bakery, amongst other things, the trackmaker spreads out a blanket of clinking metallics, mechanical squeaks, the sound of trays being set down, fractious bubbling, as well as stuttering synths, far-off soulful singing and slices of lounge guitar licks to quell the chaos; sharp hi-hats cut and shakers alternate to keep the beat shuffling.

Originally created for a company to the theme of "enjoy bread with the five senses", 'Bake The House' is TOMC's definitive intermingling of senses: the ripples of space and texture like the centre of a loaf, the clusters of clanking utensils the zing of flavours, the beat measuring out calorie intake.

And to take it, partly at least, from the inner workings of a bakery speaks of both its subtle delicacies and its machinelike industriousness—breathing like dough as much as it whirrs like a pocketsized factory.

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• 🔔 TOMC's abstract festival for the senses 'Bake The House' was released via Tokyo label PURE GOOHN and can be purchased via this actual link. It comes packaged with a remix by "Tokyo house unit" Pee.J Anderson.

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🐣 MARQUIS HAWKES — DON'T U FEAT. URSULA RUCKER

Uplifting, yes, but not to the point of euphoria—uplifting from a low-level mood, bringing you out of the darkness, the feeling of looking up at the blinding sun after you've fallen over and grazed your knees or just woken up from a nap and remembered all the things that are making you anxious but then you rationalise. Far from the dancefloor, Marquis Hawkes' track feels more as though it both reflects and alleviates suburban misery. It is a track of small, important victories: dancing won't heal you, but it's fine for now.

Part of that almost solemn feeling of 'Don't U' comes from those skyward synth chords - in the style of a chapel organ, the continuous chords with occasional single note changes feels very organ-like; it suggests something redemptive about this track. The tone of those chords has us pointing ourselves similarly skyward: they're slightly decayed and warm, not too bright but also not dull; the synth – like the track itself – is elegant in its simplicity.

Simple acid synth bass squelches in sparse groove to give this sense of dynamic movement alongside the constant house kicks. Ursula Rucker's star-of-the-show vocals softly pad alongside the incidental gladdening synth chords feeling like a motivational speaker or a pastor telling you what you want to hear—or else they sing in gentle butterfly snippets. Combine that with simple dynamic subtractions and additions, tumbling toms, a handful of simple percussion, teetering on the edge of lo-fi house to deliver an atmospheric, modern-day sermon of a track in the church of dance with an overflowing heart.

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• 🔔 You may, if you choose to, stream this track via some sort of service or order the physical 12" copy of it – complete with three versions of 'Don't U' on top of this. It arrives courtesy of Fabric's label Houndstooth and precedes Marquis Hawkes' second full-length release sometime this summer.
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🐣 KAMAL — FEEL IT

Minimalism lies at the ambivalent heart of this dancefloor-flavoured number, a track so heavy in directional atmosphere that even in its minimalism there is serious gravity. The vocal samples in this track don’t have to be full-frontal, catchy things that other dance tracks may rely upon. Here they hold so much charged energy that each echoing vocal is like a crack of electricity on the robust, uncompromising beat.

“The creation of this track started with a drum loop,” the track’s creator, the Chicago-based Kamal, told us. “I wanted something that reminded me of when I was at the Chicago dance parties back in the 90's. This track was created with that party feel in mind.”

And as such ‘Feel It’ bumps away, syncopated plasma synth soft and cyclical conducting proceedings with wanton retro-futurism, the splashy strobes and laser shows in a the dark of a club, diagonal shots of dancers mid-move, drinks and sweat, sleek lines. That’s what this song is: an entire groovesome universe, something you might dance to on a space colony one day, like a throwback gem that turns everything wild.

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• 🔔 This track appears on Kamal's The Prerequisite EP, which you can listen to on SoundCloud.

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🐣 RIP SWIRL — LONG ISLAND MEDIUM

Extending the legacy of fairly new style lo-fi house, Berlin-based producer RIP Swirl (it’s like rip curl, you see) not only gives us a satisfying overdrive crunch-gloop in the kicks that bump and propel this track along, but also transports us into a retro realm of beige computers and fax machines: sharp metallic orchestra hits squeak out of the hazy crackle in ‘Long Island Medium’, with laser gun zips and turntable scratches cutting in for good measure. Synth chords bulge softly below with dance sensibilities in their refraining nature.

The old-school keyboard sounds, like the lo-fi veil draped over this track, aren’t all about nostalgia but instead add to the subtle abrasions of the track—it isn’t necessarily the sound itself that is the focus of our attention, but the quality of that sound and how it fits into the vessel of sonic imperfection that RIP Swirl has carved out. The hi-hats trickle-tick distortedly, the snare is crushed; both are jagged, whilst the synths are nebulous cushions that these harsher sounds strike against and pierce; the soft yet shattered atmosphere of new becoming old, old becoming obsolete.

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• 🔔 The artwork for the cover was created by Conrad Hübbe, a photograph of something new and pretty—and yet it's a grainy photo; like RIP Swirl's track, it is a skewed representation of novelty, a new feeling or concept as much as a physical thing, by which we encounter newness through an old medium.
• 🔔 RIP Swirl's 'Long Island Medium' is out now on PARADISE HOUSE.

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💿 ANTONIO MENDEZ — HIGHLAND DRIVE

The legacy of Lindsay Lowend's Wind Fish EP continues on almost five years after it first appeared: Maxo's bootleg of 'GT40' for a 2017 Christmas treat, for instance, shows that it's still lodged in the psyche of online music. But something had happened between then and now. Comments were disabled on LL's SoundCloud, the plays-like-repost numbers invisible, his Twitter account disappeared. The type of music moved well away from the VGM-juke of his famous Zelda-inspired EP, and onto a snappy sorta house music focused on texture, as in 2016 track 'Downtown Mannequin'. Lindsay Lowend appeared to us again Spring 2017 with a remix of 'Paused Parade' by Young Summer.

It was around this time that we learned Lindsay Lowend was pursuing endeavours in the realm of sound design under the name Tony Mendez; we'd discovered his Vimeo channel, and in particular an impressive video in which he redubbed music and sound effects from a Breath of the Wild trailer. In the description he commented:

Practicing foley. Explored all over my neighborhood and some woods nearby to get a lot of these sounds. Super fun.

The precisionist thinking required in first of all finding and documenting various sounds is itself vast, but to then chop these up into the best parts and set them to images is a process that must tune an ear to the finest details or, more likely, reflects a fastidious mind. This itself is evidenced in (now known as) Antonio Mendez's surprise new self-released album called Highland Drive, part collection of experiments with textures both recorded IRL and synthesised, part seasonal journey of music in which winter is illustrated in its superficial coldness and the feeling it evokes.

Synths, often soft (reminiscent of snow as much as wrapping up warm), describe this frosty temperature for much of the album with long stretches of lonely reverb, signalling with the expansive feeling both a more rural setting than urban and with its thin, almost harsh nature, the cold itself: being able to see your breath on a chilly day. Opening track 'Too Cold For Slugs' introduces this atmosphere, and the album's second 'Cordell' develops it with a thirty second section that evokes the bittersweet feeling of a winter sunset, whilst later the title track begins with wintry chords.

But final track 'Shovelling Snow' both in its title and sound best sums up the feel of the season. First heard in 'Cordell', that winter sunset-feeling snippet comes back as a motif and refrains for the whole track, soaked in dazzling icy reverb like a snow flurry. There's a sense of contentment tinged with melancholy, an emotive happysadness that evokes not only the title – the purposeful yet pointless act of shovelling snow – but also and more generally winter: its stark beauty, the freshness of the cold, how glorious it can be on a blue sky day, but how freezing it can be, how isolating. Stretches of decayed trance sound siphon an uneasiness, a yearning, into the seeming normality of the melody, creating this dual feeling.

This uneasiness also appears in other tracks that feature a more experimental, sometimes decayed synth sound, like the scratchy and clattering synth leads in 'Cordell'. 'Junkyard Drama' shows off an ultra-distorted intro before modulated acidic synths twang elastic atop sheafing white noise chords; zesty electronics shaded with bitcrush ping throughout 'Too Cold For Slugs', whilst rapid-fire staccato bloops ping-pong in the speedy 'Ghost Notes'. Conversely the album also harbours warmth in its some of its sounds too: the feeling of a comforting hot meal or a well insulated coat; thick chords bubble at the start of 'A Perfectly Common Accident', foam and charge ear-massaging throughout 'Highland Drive', fuzz along in 'Cordell'.

They have this moderate temperature in Earthbound-flavoured 'City Place', first evidence of glitch sensibilities on Highland Drive, sounding with its oddly warped chords and glomping subtle bubbles of bass like a homage to the SNES classic, the decay of it all like the internal workings of a computer. Similar computerisation exists in the fizzing crackling circuitry sounds at the beginning of the title track, the beat here possibly the most substantial on the album, following a robust breakbeat pattern with this beautifully phantomatic tract of uzi hi-hats midway. Beats play a large part: they're experimented with throughout the album, from the garage-flavours of the delicate percussion in 'Cordell' and pseudo-garage beat pattern of 'City Place', to the breezy house beats that bookend the album in its closer and opener.

But it's in 'Ghost Notes' that we see Antonio Mendez erupt into an exposition of breakcore, a real world sound on loop below the glitched-out twizzling and speeding up of snares in an Amen-style drum break; there's a vocal sample taken from a video by infamous drummer Bernard Purdie teaching people about advanced drumming techniques, fitting for a song with such dopamine-firing beatwork. 'A Perfectly Common Accident' is similarly breakcore in style, the bpm increasing even further around 1:40 for breakneck velocity, bitcrushed cymbal and tight snare joining a panning blanket of found sound around its midpoint, ending on a delicious fade-out of soft-fuzzy wah-wah chords.

The speed of those two makes the album's general focus on the minutiae of sound most impressive; to be so precise with the amount of percussive sounds going on very quickly is no mean feat. However since both tracks are essentially high-speed experiments, they don't overshadow the rest of the Highland Drive, nor do they seem out of place as the precedent for attention-to-detail in texture, quality, variety was set in the very first track. Antonio Mendez's efforts in sound engineering gleam brilliantly not just in the nuanced percussion and beats – each bristling percussive hit and insectoid rasp different from standard beatsets and most definitely toyed-with – but also in how the synths sound, from wobbly and elastic to twanging metallic, trance-like to thickly gurgling. It's another release from the brain that gave us Wind Fish, but this time the roots are in reality and not variations on a theme; it feels mature, subtle, an evolution in sound through the demonstrable progress in a skillset.

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• 🔔 You can download Antonio Mendez's wonderful Highland Drive in its entirety for $5US from his Bandcamp. You can also stream it variously via your favourite service by clicking on this hyperlink.

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☟ Antonio Mendez Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 COMPUTER DATA — STRESS

The very sparing nature of this track is partly what makes it, the purposeful holding back on how many elements should be used and where, and secondly it is the sense of decay that eats around the edges of its sounds, providing you with a glimpse into what it might sound like transporting a feeling or a general mood from the afterlife into the waking world via digital means, or vice versa. The atmosphere in 'stress' is cold, computerised, voidsome even, yet shot through at all times with a continual warmth.

COMPUTER DATA follows in the vein of broken house purveyed by producers like DJ Seinfeld, except with a notable veil of chill at work: the synths are constant and wavy, deep hypnotic streams of robust texture that call to mind something in the realm of vaporwave. Streamers of fluid fuzzy melody ring out gleaming against that warm plasma modulation, ghostly samples waft in and out, the beat in its drum machine glory crackling with rapid-fire handclap fills and the synths swell with bass, absorbing you into its swell of cool vacancy.

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• 🔔 COMPUTER DATA's lovely track 'stress' may be purchased from Bandcamp for just $0.50.

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🗞️ 5 YEARS OF LOBSTER THEREMIN EUROPEAN TOUR

London label Lobster Theremin is celebrating five years of existence by embarking on an extensive European tour. Beginning yesterday in at Bristol venue Marble Factory, the tour will see label head Jimmy Asquith and co. travel from the UK to Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, then Germany again before finishing up in France.

Travelling with Asquith for most dates is nthng and Route 8; Budapest club PAL resident Bobbie* will be at the most important shows. Otherwise the tour is a line-up in constant flux for every date. One of our Lobster Theremin favourites, for instance, Spanish maestro of decayed house DJ Seinfeld will be found at Berlin's Griessmuehle in mid-March.

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☖ CHECK OUT OUR ANALYSIS OF DJ SEINFELD'S
INCREDIBLE TRACK 'TIME SPENT AWAY FROM U' ☖

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Around the time of the label's actual 5th birthday a bunch of special releases commemorating the half-decade milestone will be announced in early spring. For now let's enjoy the sparkling preview of upcoming release Diamond Dust by London newcomer SONIKKU, part of the label's offshoot ambient and experimental Lobster Sleep Sequence series.

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5 YEARS OF LOBSTER THEREMIN EUROPEAN TOUR DATES
20. 01 Marble Factory, Bristol
02. 02 Corsica Studios, London
09. 02 Blitz, Munich
10. 02 Smolna, Warsaw
16. 02 PAL, Hamburg
17. 02 Robert Johnson, Offenbach
02. 03 Shelter, Amsterdam
03. 03 LARM, Budapest
16. 03 Gewölbe, Cologne
17. 03 Griessmuehle, Berlin
24. 03 Concrete, Paris
25. 03 Le Sucre, Lyon

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🐣 HIDDEN SPHERES — LIANAS

The delicacy of this tropical track is beautiful, charting its namesake – liana, a species of woody vine that climbs to the top of a forest canopy for sunlight – as it twists slowly onwards towards life, glassy synths illustrating the robust nature of these vines with their percussive feel and full-bodied warmth, as well as the clack-clopping of subtle snare-woodblock. Manchester musicmaker Hidden Spheres inches his track towards brightness, gradually adding elements that conjure dappled sunlight, like vital breathy hi-hats, and a simple two-note horn refrain that blasts out low-key triumphantly.

The natural element to this chilled and breezy lounge-flavoured track is more than in the name, however. It begins and continues throughout with a backdrop of the rainforest itself, ambient sounds of insectoid white noise and mammalian hoots and indistinct birdcalls, taken from 1970s documentary Wonders Of The Rainforest. And so with the veil of nature draped firmly over the bumping kicks and skiffling percussion, which includes the tactile rolling of bongos, 'Lianas' is with those gorgeous chords and the aching rise and fall of more fizzing synths, lush and living, playful and paradisiacal: music for the splendour of the natural world.

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• 🔔 'Lianas' is in fact taken from the producer's upcoming Wonders Of The Rainforest EP, directly inspired by the documentary of the same name. It arrives on 2nd February, and will be the first release on Hidden Spheres' brand new label, Fruit Merchant.
• 🔔 Listen to a preview of Wonders Of The Rainforest here.
• 🔔 Since 'Lianas', the next track that has dropped in full from the EP is called 'Sapodilla' and you should listen to that too.

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🐣 NATHAN FAKE — SUNDER

This track begins and continues like a séance: a plaintive hollow synth faltering and calling out, later layered and turned into something spooky organ-like—the beat thumping like the thudding heartbeat of a cynical believer, overdriven with simple fills that remain this constant biological function of the track as different percussion comes in and out of view: sharp hi-hats, sshhing shakers like panting pitchshifted, rattling metallics and eventually this garage-flavoured snare but decayed clacks into earshot.

Contact is eventually made. The dearly departed dismal diction at 3:27 the the synths grow ever more intense, the inexpressible emotiveness of Norfolk native Nathan Fake's live, raw approach to sound getting the better of our consciousnesses—"There are no post-edits - they are left completely as they were recorded - so they're quite messy but I love that energy," he says, explaining the sound.

The hi-hat keeps scathing time and the beat falls away and the synth warm and shaking and screaming out for something, for a connection: still that plaintive sadness, human closeness across the digital void or the vaults of time. It calms, recedes, ends ominous and exhausted and alien with twiddling synths and this one final note of dissatisfaction and regret and joy all at the same time. Intangible ghosts, old friends, ebbing memory.

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• 🔔 This track is taken from Nathan Fake's exactly-the-samely titled Sunder EP which will arrive via Ninja Tune on 23rd February. You may stream and pre-order this track and the EP itself respectively in various ways on this page here.
• 🔔 The artwork for the EP (above) was created by Hubert Solczyńsk. It echoes the sadness, the new-and-old-ness of this track, and presumably the four-track EP itself; the desire to reach out and touch something that is not and never has been really there: both the past, and our ephemeral online worlds.

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🐣 FANTASTIC MAN — REALITY CHANGE

"Change reality…" The vocal sample in this track is a fitting one, breaking through its hypnotic heart with foggy delay and reverb like an interdimensional mantra and suggesting this most wild and fantastical of notions. It fits alright, suiting the fluttering synth of the track, the way it phases in and out, the glassy sounds that fold into the track like sugar into a delicious batter for the brain. Like rain, hi-hats seem to fall golden and white-noise pitter-patter, chilled rather than agitated.

Summoned by Australian musicmaker Fantastic Man, these sounds are the thinner spiritual elements of 'Reality Change', the veil of somnolent heavy-eyed air, the spirit of sunset-gazers, leg-crossers and cocktail-drinkers, a Balearic fantasia. At the same time, acid synth wiggles in, urgent and silly and elastic; and the booming bounce of bass and the unrelenting kicks ground this rave-wise into something earthly, the visceral anchor for its flights of fancy; at its core, these two retro styles inhabiting the same groove.

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• 🔔 This is from Fantastic Man's P.M.T.C. 12" (featuring 'Reality Change' alongside one other track, 'Cool Waters'), released 8th January 2018 via Superconscious Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp for a certain amount of currency.

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🐣 BELS LONTANO — LOVELY PATH

We are back in the misty moods that define the music of Bels Lontano, and this time we are inducted into the sumptuous beats and the trickling of percussion of 'Lovely Path' that helps to make it a textured journey of sound. Whereas 'Smokkr' was a delicately decorated tract of sultry ultrachillment, this one is a more winding, creeping sonic illustration, more a flurry of house-styled kicks that keep it uptempo, some sense of vague worry like being lost without fear in a wide wonderful world.

Simple bass underpins the cascade of it all, an ascending pattern of notes that gives the impression of motion, sidechained to the beat for this wavy in-and-out-of-earshot vibe. Chimes glisten and gloss together, insectoid chirruping zings in the background; the clink-clank of hefty metallic objects draped across each other and dragged along for the ride. Harp sounds evoke something heavenly in the nocturnal marrow of this track, a path through an ancient forest lit for your safety by bioluminescent mushrooms: a lovely path.

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• 🔔 This arrives ahead of Bels Lontano's Kin Decade EP, which is "out soon".

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☟ Bels Lontano Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 POOL BOY — OLD DOG NO TRICKS

The first thing here is a sense of familiarity. Though it is new and from a new artist going by the name of Pool Boy, the bassline is a constant refrain of the first four beats of the bassline in 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League. Intentionally, it is an innocent nod to something everybody knows. Unintentionally, it shows the pervasive nature of "classics" of the late 20th century. Either way, there it is; and 'Old Dog No Tricks' continues with a clatter of disco percussion, scathing hi-hats, cool lounge bongos, smart handclaps.

The heaviest element of the track is that bass. Above that close-quarters groove the feel is one of haze and otherworldliness. A constant fog of ethereal synth creeping across the floor; and above that a twinkling cluster of notes hangs in the air. Lead melodies spin like submerged guitar solos, muffled and wavering. Against this mirage of sound, like a disco in a dream, real world noises pour in: birdsong, fresh and innocent, and the wash-crash of the sea, expansive and farsighted—as with the musical elements, it is light and heavy combining.

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• 🔔 This appears courtesy of London label Coastal Haze as a single ahead of the Pool Boy LP, scheduled for release on 22nd January. You can pre-order it digitally or on cassette from Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The description of the track reads: "Produced overlooking the port of Vancouver but ..who is Pool Boy?!" We have an inkling.

  1) The track itself was reposted by Cyril Hahn.
  2) One SoundCloud comment reads: "At last more music by Cyril!"
  3) Also he is Canadian, and it was produced in/near Vancouver.

  But we shall see.

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☟ Pool Boy Internet Presence ☟
?????

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🐣 HOTWAX — ROCKAWAY FEAT. STEFFALOO

The ten ton, no ten-thousand ton, crush of the kicks here, like the engine room of a huge vessel as it hums cyclopean across the stars, is the glorious intensity that lies at the foundation of 'Rockaway' by Floridian musicmaker Hotwax. It is this slow-down techno rumble that perforates the stillness of the air, the blank pugilism of it summoning hard trebles as well as full-body bass for a robust beat. It's the simplest backdrop to a swishing of mists that rain down like veils—vocals that cut across your hearing and drip down like oil in water, fathomless reverb like galactic ghosts in this tract of minimalism.

These are provided by Steffaloo, a prominent voice in chillwave, whose simple harmonies resonate and vibrate to give extra texture to the already grainy phantasm of her tone as it reaches out across the dark of the track. Alongside this, simple synth clouds bop and gleam softly, a tangle of silken fibres that threads through the void. Ornaments orbit the beat: panning abrasive shakers, decayed metallic cowbell, shuffling hi-hats, handclaps followed by veils of fog. The atmosphere is a sunken one, where the heaviness of the water weighs huge and choking, and where the prettiness of life glistens and sparkles in the winnowing waves above.

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• 🔔 The quite wonderful Steffaloo-featuring 'Rockaway' is taken from Hotwax's debut album Communicator out now on 2060 Records. You can download it free-of-charge, or $7 for a cassette, from Bandcamp.

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🐣 NIMINO — JAFIAH

There is particularly something about the real noises that click and clatter, fidgeting and mechanical, like a rubber stamp or a stapler, a cosmic set of office supplies possessed and parading around the peeling paint and pockmarked plaster of their now tumbled-down surroundings. Delicious lip-smacking clicks and clacks, crackling vintage wear-and-tear, trickling jingles, all of it in a mixing bowl and whip into stiff peaks and let it become cooked in an oven and it's the meringue of this track, the sweetness but with simplistic block colour and sort of hard externally and kinda soft in the middle.

The chilled gooey sensation of 'Jafiah' by London/Brighton musicmaker nimino is alive and gloriously minimalist in its structure with just a few details like pine needles or tiny pebbles. Smooth synth chords bop along, wheezy and rounded, supported by occasional bubbles of bass rising to the surface; a shuffling beat sashays in, ricocheting hi-hat metallics and the organic percussive clopping sound, and this rolling snare insertion. A wonderful change in time signature brings the song to a heavier dimension, low synthy vocals croon in monosyllables in this new surreptitious wobble with its suave smears of synth whispering bassy. How 'Jafiah' seems so simple but is a meeting of opposing textures, a merging of rhythms, blocky but jewel-encrusted music.

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• 🔔 The full version of nimino's 'Jafiah' is actually just over four minutes long and is taken from a compilation called Ample curated by London label Panel—and, in fact, it is their debut album. Various media for streaming this full version can be found listed at the destination of this hyperlink.

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☟ nimino Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 FM2 — THIS ONE

The subterranean tunnelling feel of this, the cold stark descent into the earth, the stifling temperature of it, the mild claustrophobia like miasma tendrils reaching through the labyrinthine space. The house beat of this track is muffled, a juddering rumble, deep and formless, simply the subduing boom of it, this treble-drained procession of kicks helps that underground feeling, the smothered nature of them feeling very in-the-earth, not cavernous but enclosed, buried. 'This One' by Polish musicmaker FM2 continues with the fluttering delay of unknown creatures in the dark, light abrasions texturising the lo-fi murk of these soft but percussive plasma synths, their bouncing stutter like some sort of echolocation, heightening the lonely wall of rocks that bound this stony warren like a blind mirror.

And in these tunnels lined with bare rock and punctuated with glowing minerals and calcified growths there is damp mist, drip-dropping water, the whispering reverb from the ticking hi-hats like rhythmic rain, open hi-hat razor sharp metallics leading the expedition to where they want to go, a garbled vocal sample like a lost radio update crackling into dust, finally around halfway through—the main chamber. How vast, sunlight glaring in from some unknown opening many hundreds of feet above, plantlife swaying in some warm errant breeze, the new brighter tone of the synths a gloss of triumphal discovery, a glittering upbeat new refraction, happier than before, all-encompassing bass gripping your body, soothing and cleansing, tumultuous exploration and its new world end game as told by this analogue techno journey of sound.

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• 🔔 'This One' is taken from FM2's recent Abstract Heat Death EP which you can stream and download for free on Bandcamp.

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☟ FM2 Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 SHIGETO — DETROIT PART II

Four years following the release of previous album No Better Time Than Now, Shigeto has produced a follow-up to 'Detroit Part I', an almost symphonic morsel of music, a journey of a track in which a brooding atmosphere is beset with bristling sounds, a melancholy atmosphere where a sense of downcast dystopia looms somewhere in the lament of it all. 'Detroit Part II' is a different beast entirely. If the first part of this sonic homage to the Michigan city charts abandoned buildings and boarded up houses and forgotten assembly lines, the dereliction of Detroit, all angular and atmospheric, then the second part is humanistic, living-and-breathing, focused on how people react to their surroundings in terms of art: its musical culture and heritage.

The track thumps along with a dusty wheezing organic thud of a kick, luscious handclaps and muffled snare rimshots and delicious clopping woodblocks and shuffling shakers punctuating and decorating this subtle driving force of a beat, a tangible waterfall of textures. Soft synth bass plunges fuzzy giving the track a wandering breezy groove, the meandering jazz feel of it augmented by saxophone peals that prize open the heart of the song and allow life to flow forth. Barely discernible, a mist of gentle keys gloss glassy nebulous aching and accepting, merging with the whispering tones of the vocal sample that reverbs into the streaming percussive beat and its homely comforting sense of space. This is a change of heart, the silver lining of the cloud, the other side of the coin.

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• 🔔 'Detroit Part II' is taken from upcoming Shigeto album The New Monday, which will be released via Ghostly International on 7th October.
• 🔔 The suitably atmospheric video for the track, a production of The Work Inc., shows Zach Saginaw (real name of Shigeto) driving around Detroit and recording the track in glorious greyscale. It was directed and produced by Brandon Rottman.
• 🔔 Here's the yes/no review of Shigeto's 2013 album No Better Time Than Now.

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☟ Shigeto Internet Presence ☟
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