FLOOR BABA — DO NOT LOOK AWAY

In 'DO NOT LOOK AWAY' Pittsburgh-based producer and visual artist FLOOR BABA (Jesse Martin) takes us on a journey to the suburbs where all is not what it seems. Well, it's more than seeming not what it is. Panning over low-poly renders of greenery-lined streets, playgrounds and parking lots, we see trees fragmented in post-exploded stillness, trucks chewed by digital rot, skies sinking into corroded community pools.

Over this, with no regard to x or y axes, stomp faceless figures remiscent of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask-era ReDead (for those unfamiliar, see here). As the title suggests, in Martin's animated illustration we are privy to the things we usually look away from — in the melted, corroded visuals we sense the unease that lies behind apparent perfection, while the ReDead-esque figures symbolise those who trample unchecked over the green grass and picket fences and, by extension, over the lives of others.

It's all soundtracked perfectly. Cricket-like chirps and destructed background fuzz add supplementary percussion the boom-tick of a forboding beat, while echoing detuned synth vox flutter unsettlingly on a bed of disarmingly warm chords that move in impresonal lounge-flavoured progression. In the final third, we enter a quasi-West Coast groove with a flute refraining a simple melody over clanging synthetic plucked strings. Martin mixes ambient textures with a more attention-forward dynamic to create an atmosphere that is at once detached but invested in the accompanying scenes.

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• 🔔 For more FLOOR BABA fun, you might want to check out their most recent album waking, self-described "experiments in soft music" that are full of incredibly pleasing noises and soundscapes. You can do this by tapping or clicking here to move your digital attention to Bandcamp.

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SAVNKO — WHYUFALLIN

Italian producer savnko delivers a high-octane treat with 'whyufallin', a breakcore number that mixes the symphonic heights of Balearic-leaning dance music with the murk and crunch of various lofi-infused '-core' offshoots. The beat scampers and soars alternately, intricate yet destructed, providing the jet fuel that underpins the rising synths and glimmering syncopated chord stabs, the pitched vocals like rare polygonal birdsong. And, despite the variegated textures and vitality of the track, there's conscious attention to a minimal soundscape here.

Ultimately, and if the title is anything to go by, in this track the Milan-based producer illustrates troubled flight and hindered movement — the desire to ascend or push forward while weighed down by futility, fear, anything that anchors us. 'Why are you falling? What is holding you back?' Or to put it another way: it's the last lap on Rainbow Road and you're in 11th but still you push on to the finish.

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• 🔔 'whyufallin' by savnko is taken from his BIGTHINGS EP, which you can listen to via spotify or apple music if you like.
• 🔔 You also might like to check out savnko's previous work, such as his notgood@sports EP for Milan label 51beats, where he exhibits a decidedly more analogue approach and aesthetic.

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SHELF NUNNY — CASCADE GLIDE

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Seattle producer Shelf Nunny aka Christian Gunning first came to our attention way back in 2013 — namely it was via 'About The Boy', a collaborative track between him and Berlin-based artist Eriko Toyoda. It was a vibe.

A decade and several releases later (via labels such as Chicago-based Palettes and Seattle's own Hush Hush Records), not to mention remixes from the likes of Kidkanevil (“who heavily inspired + shaped my sound,” Gunning says), his style of experimental beat-making remains addictively luscious.

With more than just a nod to ambient music and field recordings, his latest track 'Cascade Glide' begins trickles with natural-meets-synthetic minutiae from the outset. Synth bleeps and bloops ping and warp in the neardistance, clockwork ticks and mechanical clacks keeping time, fuzzy steps crunching on ground begin proceedings. It's like field recording if you were capturing sounds somewhere like Green Hill Zone, for example. Sonic has long sprinted through, leaving only the swaying grass and empty loops.

It morphs from this quiet, thoughtful beatscape, flying through cotton wool skies into something less pinpoint-detail, more dynamic loud-and-quiet festivities with stuttering chords and bold sections of dead air. It's a track that's equal parts chilled and exhilarating, study beats reimagined — a daydream worked into being by a novel approach to beat-led incidental music of the modern age.

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• 🔔 'Cascade Glide' is taken from Pronoia, Shelf Nunny's upcoming “concept album about the opposite of paranoia”, scheduled for release on 26th January; grab it on Bandcamp.

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JONSJOOEL — PIANO

⌾ LISTEN TO PIANO BY JONSJOEEL ⌾

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Warped by dust and wrapped in nostalgia, 'Piano' by Berlin-based Finnish artist Jonsjoeel is not exactly a lullaby. The titular piano may be playing something resembling a lullaby, like something you'd hear plink and plonk its way out of an antique music box, but it is inextricably sad. And, like a music box melody, the mechanism slows and the playing gradually peters out.

Alongside the cold, almost harsh piano, strains of vocal leap out of the spirit-tinged keyboard, a muted skirling like the croon of one both in pain and self-soothing all at once. It crackles, it fuzzes, it crunches and crawls itself on the air, bearing the hallmarks of heartfelt lo-fi music with cold experimentalism crashing within. Ultimately 'Piano' is emotive and intellectual, soulful and mechanical, a tone poem that charts what it might feel like for a skeptic to see a ghost.

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• 🔔 'Piano' is taken from Jonsjooel's upcoming new album Lullabies for Younger Self, scheduled for release 22nd September via Kieku Records.

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DANIEL BORTZ — YOU CAN STAY FOREVER

⌾ LISTEN TO DANIEL BORTZ, YOU CAN STAY FOREVER ⌾

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With its haunting pitched croons lifted from Alicia Keys' 'No One' effusing from a backdrop of synths bleeding together and time-worn beats, 'You Can Stay Forever' by producer Daniel Bortzreads like a vestige of the past. It moves through forests of flustered elastic acid arpeggios, plumes of vox synth laying a fog over proceedings, while the stuttering echoes of thin, gleaming chords punctuate the song like strobe lights.

The faint syncopation of it all, the crushed indistinct hi-hats, the destructed snares and their harsh reverberation, the lo-fi aesthetic, its juddering dancefloor atmosphere (sticky floors; the floral tangle of beer and perfume) — all of it culminates in an unearthed relic of a track; a cassette plunged into a tape deck that conjures ghosts and memories of a grainy, unremembered time instead of sound.

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• 🔔 This is taken from the new album by Daniel Bortz, Stay, out 16th October on Permanent Vacation. You can pre-order it on Bandcamp if you like, or memorise the tracklist below for fun.

  Daniel Bortz — Stay tracklist:
  1. Grind
  2. Holding You
  3. How Far Can We Go
  4. South Beach
  5. On A Boat
  6. Smells Like CK One
  7. Stay
  8. Teenage Emotions
  9. Isolation
  10. Together
  11. You Can Stay Forever
  

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EDYTH — AGAIN

⌾ LISTEN TO EDYTH, AGAIN ⌾

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'Again' by producer Edyth begins with resonating drone and distressed aging analogue textures, gleaming with poignancy like a key item suspended, spinning, glowing above an altar at the end of an ancient colonnade (Triforce, anyone? Or maybe when the key drops down with that glimmering sound when you defeat Bowser in Super Mario 64.)

Anyway. This is scene-setting ambience, and it grows more mechanical in its whirring heart, gradually moving into curling waves of static that envelop the atmosphere with intensity; the perception of a physical object, or a feeling, warping in memories over time.

The track effuses vaporwave, not only in its curdled sonic aesthetics, but also in how a pitch-shifted vocal rhythmically trundles into earshot, whispering sharply. Trap-flavoured sub-bass hops from note to note, somersaulting octaves in simple dance-mat steps, the constant tick of a hi-hat like the chain of a drawbridge raising — the portal to another realm.

Elevating vaporwave past its usual tropes and combining it with other contemporary musical traditions, Edyth creates a simple but blissful marriage of background aesthetics — and all the soundtracking potential they bring with them — and the close-at-hand vitality of a beat that roots 'Again' more readily in a real world setting.

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• 🔔 'Again' by Edyth is actually taken from an album called Sadie Pop, which was released via netlabel Kalibrplus. You can choose the preferred way you stream or purchase the album by clicking on this link.
• 🔔 Speaking about Sadie Pop, Edyth says that it's "meant to be a small but different type of beast from what I usually do," going on to call it "a refining of my production pallette and a gift to those that have enjoyed what I do as a beatmaker" and "a display of my love for the types of music I've loved listening to this past decade: wave, vaportrap, sad boy, cloud, witch house, dub, bass and phonk."

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💿 AIDA SKEE — MACH LEISURE

⌾ LISTEN TO AIDA SKEE - PKMN SNAP ⌾

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Skittering and beset with structured staccato slices of unidentifiable sampling, 'Pkmn Snap' by Aida Skee feels like a cool breeze. What relevance it bears to 1999 N64 title Pokémon Snap isn't immediately obvious, and perhaps there isn't one, but in its simplicity — its lines of airy sampling, sparing and delicate bassline, background ambience — there is something at least in spirit to the game's soundtrack, notably its 'The Young Photographer' theme.

Cheerful without being sunny, sparse without feeling overly lonely, 'Pkmn Snap' similarly conjures an imaginary landscape. Not unsurprising, as the musicmaker themselves revealed to yes/no that Mach Leisure, the beat tape which the track is taken, is inspired at least partly "hiking while listening to Knxwledge, Marvin Gaye, and deep cut '70s R&B." Physical landscapes, and how music enhances or reflects them, play their part.

This musical foundation is noticeable on the rest of the beat tape, which sometimes gloops with vaporwave ooze ('can't see shit'), glitters like the vapor-friendly tracts of nostalgia in title track 'MACH LEISURE', or radiates warmth as in the comforting groove of album closer 'Where to start it'.

Attention to detail comes to the foreground in tracks like 'right' — its beat clicks into something high octane, before samples drop in slowly skewed and bubbling. It's places like this where Aida Skee's process reveals itself, Mach Leisure being a collection of experiments in high BPM tracks that still retain a "relaxing element of R&B sample-based music."

This sense of relaxation is an element throughout that was (probably) sought after and welcomed by the musicmaker themselves. "I made this whole tape while living alone in Montreal, smoking too much legal weed," they say. "The theme is meant to be like attempting to attain relaxation as fast as possible and how that's sort of an oxymoron."

Tricks in tempo aren't the only cocktail that binds Mach Leisure: "The tracks integrate pitched up and pitched down components of the same sampled tracks, use heavily warped or distorted sample components in tandem with non-distorted loops," the producer explains.

That sense of speed, as well as glistening pairings of pitched and non-pitched samples, occurs in 'like relaxing in a car that's going fast' — a title that sums up the whole idea behind the album — and following track, 'Keep me talking', whose sampled flashes and snaps crackle with chaos. In them, the situation of creating the album — not just hiking in the mountains and listening to music, but also weed and panic and paranoia — come into play. It's both a result of, and a cure for, those negative emotions that inspire minds to race and disappear into realms we wished they wouldn't.

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• 🔔 Stream and download Mach Leisure over on Aida Skee's Bandcamp.

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🐣 INDIGOS PARADISE — UNDERGROUND

⌾ LISTEN TO INDIGOS PARADISE, UNDERGROUND ⌾

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The ambience of a city — the apartment blocks with glowing windows, the brake lights flashing in the rain, the parades of people on the pavement, umbrellas, dog-walkers, stairs down to metro stations, neon eateries — is at the heart of the imagery conjured by 'Underground' by Boston-based indigos paradise.

On a blurred, watery backdrop acting as a melodic palette where all the fatigue that glittering city life can have is mixed, the producer adds snappy handclaps and sharp hi-hats for the the inescapable regularity of it all: the rectangular buildings, the traffic lights, the endless grids.

"How I see my hometown, with big buildings through the skyline, brings out different visuals and imagery I put towards my music," says indigos paradise via email. "Let's say that you are walking down a path, and it's good warm day to go for a walk. You hear this elegant track when you click to the play that gathers the whole surroundings around you. The wind starts breezing through your scalp and goes down to your neck while hearing it.

"I kinda picture my music as the 22nd century."

Adding to the beat and the all-encompassing shades of the synth whirling like a deluge, staccato synths hop smartly throughout for a bustling atmosphere, as if, now that you have the city, here is the life — the people — to jostle around it, here are their silhouettes and footsteps. Nocturnal and doused with faded uptown glamour, 'Underground' is the malls and walkways of yesteryear, still just half-empty with promise.

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• 🔔 'Undeground' is taken from indigos paradise's New York EP — find out more about it here. Alternatively you can also listen on Spotify.

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RYAN PLAYGROUND — BETTER OFF ALONE

⌾ LISTEN TO RYAN PLAYGROUND, BETTER OFF ALONE ⌾

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'Better Off Alone' by Alice Deejay lends itself to being covered in some way, whether it's Mark Redito giving it a tropical rework or if it's a nightcore flip by Crapface (real artist name). It's impossibly iconic and instantly recognisable, both in its of-a-certain era (1998) aesthetics and in its simple, titular vocal refrain and melody: "Do you think you're better off alone?"

The question is asked in such a haunting, slow and repetitive way that it's almost impossible not to be caught up in a daydreaming moment, feeling the melancholy of the vocal. The fact that it's in the second person immediately puts the listener at the receiving end of the interrogation: You, no matter where you read it, is always you (yes, you). It's relative, and relatable.

The choice of how the question is being asked may have been one of picking what fit best, of course, but the interesting thing is that it's not simply "Are you better off alone?" That's a simpler question. Prefacing the question with "Do you think—" automatically elicits a shift to pondering in the one being asked. It forces consideration.

Not only that, but in using the colloquialism "better off", the comparative "better" begs a thing, a situation, which may have been worse — by however many degrees — than being "alone", i.e. together, but perhaps not ideally together. In the unspoken unknown that lingers in the moments before the iconic refrain calls out, there is the feeling of abandonment, a pair divided, and the repeating enquiry is necessarily stacked with emotion.

When we get to the "Talk to me... Oh, talk to me" it becomes clear that we're hearing something like one side of a phone conversation. And it also becomes clear that, in the pleading imperatives and the wordless, tuneful "oo-ooo-oo" that punctuates them, the prior question has gone unanswered, heartbreakingly so.

Needless to say, what was a hit at the time, and which could easily be seen as a simple dancefloor song by a europop group in what is very much a bygone era, has in fact stewed and simmered these past 22 years, fusing its feeling into the memories of all that have heard it. And that's why it's a great song to cover, whatever way you look at it.

Genevieve Ryan Martel aka RYAN Playground brings a decidedly different feel to the song, in her hands it becomes an icy, emo-tinged cover, guitar in glittering arpeggios that summon Brand New at their most downcast sparkling atop a frosty whisper of ambient synth; deep below, a far-off rumble provides not only the bass, but a sense of vague disaster. The vocals, crisp and wonderfully falling into the snowy soundscape, eventually fade, as does the track as a whole, thus ending a version of the original was woven with a similar sense of loss and heartache.

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• 🔔 Montreal artist RYAN Playground's version of 'Better Off Alone' can be streamed and downloaded on her Bandcamp, along with another Alice Deejay cover, 'I Can See (See It In Your Eyes)'. Both of them make up a two-track release For The Ones Who Need Guitars Anyway; in light of her use of guitars in the covers, it's a pun on the original album that both songs appeared on, Who Needs Guitars Anyway? (2000).

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SUN CORP。 — RENEW

⌾ LISTEN TO SUN CORP。, RENEW ⌾

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Arriving after the gloomy 'Displacement', Singapore-based Australian musicmaker SUN CORP。 continues an introspective exploration of urban atmospheres with 'Renew'. Trickling into earshot, the track soon shudders with with a the ghost of a 1980s rock guitar chord, sweeping the the scuttling tick of the track and its watery foundations.

A tumble of lo-fi beats setting wheels in motion, the track is a tale of waking up from a fever dream told in shades of vaporwave. Hinting at its title, choral synths cut through the air like columns of sunbeams, punching holes in the storm clouds — the destructed crush of those chords, the sound of thunder, traffic, noise, disappearing into the distance.

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• 🔔 'Renew' is taken from Displacement EP, which you can stream and/or download from Bandcamp if you like.

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MINDSIGHT — STILL

⌾ LISTEN TO MINDSIGHT, STILL ⌾

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With its synths like liquid metal glittering darkly in the intoxicated slosh of a cold starry night, 'Still' is a nocturnal number from a collection of tracks created by Berlin producer Mindsight. He attributes their creation to "a fascination with the world", coincidences, moments revisited in memory and expressed with music.

'Still' thumps with a rapid heartbeat, punctuated with lo-fi mechanical percussion, timeworn snares shot with industrial rust — the propulsion behind the flowing pulse of synths. Mindsight's vision is a vital one, unrelenting in its forward motion; flocks of high-pitched sounds soar, the sonic embodiment of a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings.

And as the mind inches away from memory, the present moment crawling into consciousness, the fantastical synth falls away, leaving only the beat, the pistons and cogs of the brain and body moving on and on.

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• 🔔 'Still' is taken from W___ EP, which you can stream and download from his Bandcamp.
• 🔔 And if you like, you can stream or download 'Still' by Mindsight via whatever service you feel most comfortable with on this list.

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🐣 OKAY(K) — FRANK OCEAN [初演 • PREMIERE]

⌾ LISTEN TO FRANK OCEAN BY OKAY(K) ⌾

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The gooey shimmer of the guitar in 'Frank Ocean' by okay(K) is the track's soulful foundation, the fuzzed out, lo-fi quality of it echoing his recent New York EP. It's a mellow mood-setter that balances between emotion and total chill, which is reflected in the lyrics, breathlessly, nonchalantly recited in a stream of hefty layering and warp that puts a cloudy distance between listener and emotive lines.

Things like, "Nike kicks are in the dirt / I don't ever wna work / What are Nikes even worth" as well as "She gon show up where I live / please don't show up where I live" summon a kind of nihilism, ceasing to care but without the outward doom that goes with it. Even when okay(K) mentions "demons at my neck" they are merely "gross", the same sense of humour that also has him rhyming "lazy" with "Lays-y" (the adjective describing Fritos obviously).

The (mostly) seven syllable lines of the track's midsection give every statement a natural pause, staccato space for the lyrics to breathe, to be thought about, furthering that pensive mood; hearing his actual recorded voice in the gloop and crunch of the layered vocal effects becomes poignant after a while.

All set to a clanking, slow shuffle of a beat, okay(K) succinctly explained the horizontal R&B feels of 'Frank Ocean' when we asked about the track over email: "the ocean be flowing man," he wrote to us. "im just tryna flow like the ocean, to be frank." It's a moment of self reflection, as witnessed through a prism of lyrical versatility and skewed chill.

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• 🔔 Listen to more okay(K) over on his SoundCloud.

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🐣 TWIN GALAXXIES — EMOTICON VALLEY

⌾ LISTEN TO TWIN GALAXXIES, EMOTICON VALLEY ⌾

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Aa faraway sea of sound punctuated with an effervescent tick of synth — the restless heart and mind of industry tottering through the crashing waves of muted emotion. 'Emoticon Valley' by London-based musicmaker Twin Galaxxies may begin with this warm chatter of age-crushed sound, but it is a lifecycle of sound, a harmony of homo sapiens and hard machinery.

A splash of realisation, the spark of understanding, floods the space at before pianos begin to gallop into view. The second part of the track begins; waves of blissful synth ebb and flow in rich harmony, signifying a mutual recognition, understanding, acceptance.

"The theme for the the song is communication," Twin Galaxxies says via email. Explaining the sequences as "robotic inhuman subtext" and the piano as "human input", the producer continues: "Communication is layered — we use technology to communicate with each other, but also everything on our phones or laptops are built around a basic computer language."

Synths may rise, may buzz with proclamatory brightness, but at the core of 'Emoticon Valley' is hollowness. The sonic illustration a cyclical drama in which the parts are all the same, whose ending is pre-determined at every new beginning — something which the producer calls a "dark falseness [of technology] that we’re all aware of but seemingly ok with."

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• 🔔 Listen to more from Twin Galaxxies over on SoundCloud.

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🐣 KARYME — BACKYARD THOUGHTS

N E W M U S I C ⌾ LISTEN TO KARYME, BACKYARD THOUGHTS ⌾

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Space and colour get dribbled around the court like basketballs in karyme's 'Backward Thoughts', a gap in the fence of doziness and warm grass. Chords like the panting of a cosmic dog zoom in before warping away in a woozy procession punctuated by pummelling kicks. This double-tap rapid beat, the scratchy worn pastel tones in the wheeze of synth, adds to the cartoonish frame of 'Backyard Thoughts'. As if that wasn't enough, karyme throws jazzy chiming progressions for optimal haphazard lounge feeling. Part uobtrusive, part mindfully scattered: perfect for the nebulous thoughts and cloudwatching of a lawnside pause.

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• 🔔 'Backyard Thoughts' is taken from karyme's freshly released Backyard Thoughts EP. You can stream it on Bandcamp. The coordinated and clashing artwork was created by Daryosh.
• 🔔 The Backyard Thoughts EP arrives after Full Cream, an album of squidgy grooves and diagonal beats released by karyme in April 2019.

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🐣 TOLEDO — BATH

⌾ LISTEN TO TOLEDO, BATH ⌾

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For a song that has a glistening, sunny feel to it, all the deliciously recorded acoustic guitar organic string feeling – so close it's in your ear, played right next to you – the drums gently rapping out a woodshed craft workshop rhythm in trebling splendour and woody leaves-after-rain clarity; for all its harmony, there is disharmony in TOLEDO's 'Bath'. It's much more than typical lo-fi indie pop — for one thing, it's not lo-fi.

The lyrics, sung warm and layered, joyous, tell a different story. The first line raises the curtain: "So / lose my mind and lose my hold / nowhere to run to." There's the refraining imagery of "red in my eyes." And then there is the effectiveness of contrast between the chorus' last line and the second verse's first:

... Such fun to be young and alive

I / saw the doctor when I was nine
For all the anger

The words in speak of losing control, instability – and not just a moment of it, but a history, a tendency – whilst the music itself, with its rose-tinted gleaming guitar, exists as a simultaneous remedy, the feel of a diary entry when something is out of your system maybe: a way to exorcise emotion painting it with this comforting, nostalgic sound. Or else it is the haze of help and healthy thinking in light of looking back on darker days.

And ushering us into and out of the Brooklyn duo's reminiscence is a drum machine; rather than organic, real drums we have this cutesy, childlike detachment, the tumbling of miniature building blocks into painful recollections.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Bath' by TOLEDO's for as little as $1 on Bandcamp. You can also stream it there as many times as you like.

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🐣 SHIGETO — FIGHT CLUB

⌾ LISTEN TO FIGHT CLUB BY SHIGETO ⌾

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The kicks bubble and boom in Shigeto's homage to DIY dancefloors, 'Fight Club'. True to its name, this track flexes and thumps with pugilistic vigour. From the clean edges and simplistic space-filled beginnings of it all, right to the cavalcade of cauterised breakbeat clackings and harsh destroyed snares, the energy ramps up from boxing studio warm up to spun out sparring.

But it's not all the flurry of hits that keeps you on your toes as you listen. There's the smoke-filled, dystopian sheen of it all (much like Shigeto's 2013 'Detroit Part 1'), a darkened room and strobes feeling, rust and concrete toppling below the cyber hedonism of it all. This is what a club in Final Fantasy VII's Midgar Slums should sound like, the bouncing bass of the area's soundtrack mixing with the same sort of airy, scorched-out synth chords that play in the 'Infiltrating Shinra' theme later in the game—aged and ageless.

Needless to say, it summons this same soundscape, matching it for tone and mood with the funk jollity and downtrodden darkness of it all, mechanical beats and threatening space in a brutalist, otherworldly conjuring.

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• 🔔 'Fight Club' is taken from the ghostly-released Weighted EP, which arrived unto the world on 28th September 2018. You may stream and purchase this from Shigeto's Bandcamp.

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🐣 SOFT POWDER — I WONDER IF YOU DREAM

⌾ LISTEN TO I WONDER IF YOU DREAM BY SOFT POWER ⌾

A stumbling drum machine drops you gently onto the foggy boardwalk between waking and dreaming that Soft Powder aka Andy Szetho creates in the meditative 'I Wonder If You Dream'. More than just an exercise in lo-fi, this is a fantasia of to-and-fro guitar melodies that fracture your heart with pinpricks of recollection and late-night diary entry vocals, all wrapped up in a blanket of comforting synth.

But as much as the thick layers of sound offer comfort, it's a soft entrapment, the warm glow of your bedroom lamp as time seems to lose meaning. Sharper sounds cut through the two-chord march, brightness lancing faintly through bleakness, a detached sadness looking inwards.

Counselled by the sincere refrain of "I wonder if you dream" other lines appear ghostly and welcoming: "sometimes it's just nice to pretend" and "start to feel so distant" summon a passive, modest, but searching melancholy. There's no turmoil here, no great tragedy in the deep pastel crush of Soft Powder's nocturne: but there is personal despair, which is the grandest and most soultrapping of all.

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• 🔔 Incredibly 'I Wonder If You Dream' is Soft Powder's first ever release. It's taken from his debut Shangri-La EP and you can listen to the whole thing over here on his SoundCloud. The nostalgic, lonely cassette cover art, complete with perfect brooding palette, was created by designer John Szetho.

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🐣 DRENS — BICYCLE RIDER

⌾ LISTEN TO DRENS, BICYCLE RIDER ⌾

A frantic wallsmash of an ode to riding bicycles, the theme of German band Drens' pogosticking 'Bicycle Rider' doesn't need to be guessed at. The drums are destroyed as the thud fuzz of the snare and splashing razor cymbals become a crashing cutlery drawer of mayhem, setting the rocky terrain where the rest of this track tumbles and divebombs.

We asked the band about the background to 'Bicycle Rider'.

"Our rehearsal room is in a rough area in Dortmund, so we park our bikes inside. [Drummer] Joël saw them and started to shout this "bicycle rider" thing," Drens co-founder Fabian Livrée (vocals, guitar) told us. "The special thing is that we didn't replace the lyrics, because we started to like it. It's our kind of humor and we really like riding bikes."

It's just over a minute of wiggling arpeggios, thrashing guitar and thick galloping bass – complete with stringbreaking guitar solo and vocals overflowing with breathless bite – for a punch-in-the-face parody of the surf sound: instead of hitting the waves, they're tearing up the streets by pedal power.

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• 🔔 Get this brash and bouncy bike ballad via your fav streaming service.
• 🔔 'Bicycle Rider' is taken from Drens' recently released Nowhere Beach EP, which you can/should listen to on their SoundCloud.

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📠
☟ Drens Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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🐣 ISAK THOMAS — SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW

⌾ LISTEN TO ISAK THOMAS, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW ⌾

With a feeling like being invited into the worn pages of a diary tinged with VHS static, 'Somewhere, Somehow' beats with a soulful horizontal heart. Sweeps of warped guitar play somewhere between a dripping bleak-empty coastal town and late night psychedelic bedroom introspection as lyrics float by haunted by the shade of a person, all set to the buzz and thump of a disintegrated beat.

"Lo-fi sounds from old jazz standards to acoustic folk and blues has always been a huge inspiration," trackmaker Isak Thomas explains over email, "so I was aiming to bring that nostalgic, scratchy sound to a more accessible platform."

And after a crescendo of crushed guitar sounds and vocals interrupting themselves in mantra form – "I know you from somewhere somehow / I know you from somewhere somehow" – sun breaks through swirling clouds for the final third of the song, the groove changes tack and jagged chord progressions streak in.

Isak Thomas' well dusted time capsule of a track, an opened Pandora's box of desire and apprehension, presents a crowded mind carved into a love letter destined for another realm.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Somewhere, Somehow' by Isak Thomas via iTunes should you wish to do so. Or if Bandcamp is more your thing then you can grab it from there, too.

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📠
☟ Isak Thomas Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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🐣 CAM OUTLAW — IT'S TRUE

⌾ LISTEN TO CAM OUTLAW, IT'S TRUE ⌾

The bass booms, the bang and bounce of nascent notions in mind, orbiting themselves in the swell and bulge of the sub rumble. But Cam Outlaw's track 'It's True' isn't just about looking inwards—it's all about these thoughts exactly projected onto external stimulus, namely the "you" sung in the slow sultry hook: "I've been thinking about what I'll do with you..."

Alongside the vocals, sumptuously drawn out and sometimes cut-up, skipping glitch-style like a nervous stutter, the beat zips and fidgets, rattling and cracking the air with razor hi-hats and slapping snares—the anxious, excited physiology that matches those cyclical thoughts.

The R&B feel of those vocals, spinning their lovesong amidst gossamer lo-fi melodies and in the depths of that blinkering bass, pays homage to Cassie's 'Me & U' halfway through, injecting the familiar, quoting lines like romantic poetry – "tell me if you like it" – to further position this as a pre-tryst croon, a kinetic vehicle of infatuation.

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• 🔔 Stream Cam Outlaw's 'It's True' variously via your fav service.
• 🔔 We'd also like to take a moment to appreciate the Twin Peaks style artwork for this track; the otherworldly yet recognisable tone of the track very much suiting the half-soap opera, half-interdimensional timeless crypticism of the infamous series.

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📠
☟ Cam Outlaw Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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