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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🐣 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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🎥 CHAI — CURLY ADVENTURE

In the video for Nagoya-based band CHAI's 'Curly Adventure', curly hair literally becomes synonymous with adventure; the protagonist as animated by LA artist Sean Solomon daydreams the lyrics of the four-piece's thunderous ode to curly hair.

"Long long time ago, my hair is troubling me…" the song begins with singer Mana spinning these hair-based lyrics composed by bassist (and art director) Yuuki.

With the fizzing-crash of the drums alongside a galloping funk of bass, plasma watery synth shoots through this track distorted and fluid all at the same time, a storm of summer-summoning sound; half '90s-remembered sparkly sun-soaked jam, half explosive reaction against the slump of frustration.

Lines in CHAI's song like "curly hair: that is amazing" and "curly hair means being yourself" can resonate with anyone having to alter themselves for the sake of uniformity. And this is reflected in Solomon's video for 'Curly Adventure', with its carefree spirit, popping colours, winding roads and undersea treasure hunts.

Watch it below, obviously.

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• 🔔 'Curly Adventure' is taken from CHAI's 2019 album Punk.

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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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🐣 THE ENTREPRENEURS — JOAQUIN

⌾ LISTEN TO JOAQUIN BY THE ENTREPRENEURS ⌾

The open road tumbling ahead, the scenery struggling to appear correctly because of just how quickly you're moving along it. This is the sense of wild freedom that explodes out of 'Joaquin' by Danish band The Entrepreneurs; thick bass and guitars with frazzled distortion play rumbling and loose with drums thumping out a frolicking heartbeat. It's a galloping horse, a rushing train, a dog with its head out the window as a car speeds on an open highway.

But you soon realise the song isn't a pure celebration of freedom—it's a yearning for it, tearing a space for yourself in the fabric of the world. The vocals suddenly yell out:

"Feels like / We should / Take a trip outside / See what’s all around / In this part of town / Where the lights are out / And the doors are unlocked at night / And time flies right on by..."

From that moment, 'Joaquin' is more than just a powering engine: it's a heartfelt casting off of a hometown, like shedding skin. It's painful, though it's something that feels necessary. It explodes poetically with the desire for moving onwards, with almost childlike imagery that evokes absurd visions: "Get away / I might just get away / This place is way too small / Standing 8 feet tall in an 18th century hall."

That childlike nature continues into the instrumental itself: the guitar and bass guitar turn playful, pedalling over each other in twists and turns of math rock style arpeggios as the song becomes quiet and introspective as singer Mathias Bertelsen asks, "What comes to the one who stays around?"

And as much as the dreary feeling of trapped in a small town courses through your veins, there's an unending nostalgia attached to it that chills your heart to think you ever wanted to leave in the first place. And this is the romantic soundscape The Entrepreneurs have created: the crushing joy of running free from the only thing you've ever known.

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• 🔔 You can stream and/or purchase the lovely 'Joaquin' by new indie rock trio The Entrepreneurs over on their their Bandcamp. It's taken from their upcoming album Noise & Romance scheduled for release on 1st February 2019. Pre-order also on Bandcamp if you like what you hear.

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🐣 RUBY FRANCIS — RUSH (INITIAL TALK REMIX)

⊚ LISTEN TO RUBY FRANCIS, RUSH (INITIAL TALK REMIX) ⊚

This remix- with the soft bounce of its toy sized plasma chords, the virtuoso bass groove, the instant glitter of its glassy synths - oozes the blocky pastels of its late 20th century inspiration; it's a buffet of 1990s flavours served up by the Japan-based caretaker of nostalgia Initial Talk (whose credits also include a Dua Lipa 'New Rules' remix).

The original 'Rush' is minimal: all space and angular, squelchy synth. It feels contemporary for its sparseness and sub-bass, but equally retro-futuristic (sounding a little like Prince's 'Kiss' actually). So it makes sense that Initial Talk has transplanted the voice of Ruby Francis into decidedly retro surroundings. In fact, it feels as though this is the way it should have always been.

Like a safari through the aural landscape of twenty-something years ago, this remix of 'Rush' chimes, bounces and glistens with its purposefully timeworn elements. Ruby Francis' voice lilts soulfully in the verse, its echo weaving through the skipping rhythm—elsewhere it provides a sprinkle of jangling '90s ad-libs: "baby, why the rush?"

But the chorus is the centrepoint for this track's magic. The two distinct parts to the addictive vocal (the simple clarity of the first 4 bars and its playful vocal melody, and the rich, winding harmonies of the second 4), the step-up into it, the faroff sparkle of it, the warm, vibrant bass, the swaying beat. It's a cocktail of everything it should be: delicious escapism.

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• 🔔 Stream and/or download Initial Talk's remix of 'Rush' by Ruby Francis via your fav service

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☟ Ruby Francis Internet Presence ☟
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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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🐣 JAPOR — OH HEART OF GOLD

This is an enigma of a track, a home recording with choppy ambient noise both warming this morsel of music and making it feel exposed, a simultaneous lonely feeling sinking behind the superficial fuzzy texture of it. With that in mind, 'Oh Heart Of Gold' by the equally enigmatic Japor seeps into your consciousness not like most lo-fi tracks with their hearts set on triggering your nostalgia, but more anti-nostalgia: a true representation of lo-fi. Live, very raw, and unedited.

It pulls no punches in this regard. Listening to 'Oh Heart Of Gold' is like listening to a slice of reality - a lingering twinkle of guitar plays throughout, unconcerned for tempo or a steady rhythm, becoming more agitated as the song continues until the rattling keyboard drum preset kicks in, when the guitar morphs into a sparse offhand groove, something that morphs into something more legible by around the 5-minute mark. Throughout there is a percussive thump - the unheeded sound of a hand or foot setting off the drumbeat.

Unimpeded by pretence, Japor has created their own unconventional type of music, and with its looping feel and the stream-of-consciousness guitar - sort of 'automatic' playing: a surrealist approach - it feels hypnotic as much as incidental.

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• 🔔 Classification seems to play a big part in the music of Japor. For example, description for this track on YouTube is:

  "This is my instrumental live single "Oh Heart Of Gold (Guitar Drum Instrumental)". It has an early eighties modernised rock guitar melody. (It is best listened on headphones)."

  Similarly, the description for another track reads as follows:

  "This is my live single "It Is A Dark Time". It has a hard rock guitar based tone. It has a hard lyrics addition. It is a blended contrast. (It is best listened on headphones)."

  His Twitter, in likewise fashion, seems to follow a pattern of four or five tweets that vary in subject matter but are structurally identical. It's a mystery.

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☟ Japor Internet Presence ☟
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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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🐣 E.M.M.A — MINDMAZE

Two indomitable styles of dance music come together here. One is from the past, all flutes and lutes fluttering and harpsichord trilling, with no percussion except the sound of fervent court dancers and baroque celebrities hoisting their skirts to show off their fancy footwork, the era of clammy hand-holding in a collective series of movements including gentle twirls and partner swapping. The other style is rooted in dancehall, just as clammy if not more so but with less collectivism and more individual flair, and wholly centred on the beat pouring out of the soundsystem and onto the sultry writhing dancefloor.

In 'Mindmaze' London producer E.M.M.A fuses the breezy proprieties of delicate medieval court music with the marching mayhem of dancehall-flavoured beats, a trundle of rolling abrasive snares and rapid-fire handclaps that lock in with snippets of that courtly music of yesteryear. However there is a twist. And the twist is that these fine melodies are actually lifted from the music of Mindmaze, the educational diluted dungeon crawler that came with childhood-summoning e-encyclopedia, Encarta '95. The choice of source material speaks of junior schools in Autumn, installing the CD-ROM on your family computer, working your way through the maze—but more than that it simply conjures youth, not with abstract references, faux-'80s remembrances, but with a concrete trinket from the old days; and the cocktailing of that with a current rhythm suggests that this is more than vacant nostalgia, something closer – with its strong booming beats and naturally playful nature – to an extension of youth, a refusal of adulthood.

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• 🔔 This track arrives alongside another called 'Pumpkin Emoji', both of which will comprise a 12" single from E.M.M.A to be released on 10th of November via Coyote Records. You may pre-order it by clicking on this exact hyperlink and selecting from a series of options.

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🐣 DJ SEINFELD —TIME SPENT AWAY FROM U

The overdriven beat is what starts this track on its way to you heart. It is not only the superficial decay of it, the lo-fi crackle as the booming kick begins to distort into a speaker-blowing splodge, the grainy swishing of the hi-hats as they cut through the buzzing air, the exploding handclap hidden in the splash of curdled noise, the snare like robust cardboard thudding its accents on the beat—it's not just the beat existing in this way. It's not just the entire track existing this way, actually, the whole of 'Time Spent Away From U' shuffling with the rhythm of funky house, big sunset crashes of synth destroyed by sidechain and the decay of the track, the vocals crooning ancient lovesongs into the mix. It is not the mere fact of DJ Seinfeld's track existing in this lo-fi manner.

It is more what this actually conveys. What does it convey? When people think of vintage crackle, what is that? It's from turntables, from old records warped and scratched, from old never-replaced needles. But the nostalgia, unless you are old enough to remember it, from these is borrowed, nonreal. The nostalgia of the warping and destruction of this track is blissful and intimate, it has a bootleg feel, as if it were captured on a tape recorder in someone's back garden shed, as if it were being shared by friends on a hi-fi, the speakers already damaged from playing music too loud and now this late night discovery blaring on the speaker, all of you crowded around. It is not just the sound of a song being played a thousand times already, but of the soundsystem it's played through being used even more times. The warmth of this situation, the uncapturable time-and-place perfection of it.

This quality, this aching tragic nostalgic quality of the track, our generation's recognisable nostalgia, not borrowed—this quality, coupled with the sudden gutwrenching drop in the stomach that the big pianos of the track conjure, perfectly illustrates its title. Missing somebody, longing, needing; simply told, bold and blocky, brash and blunt. And through the bleary-eyed sadness of it, we come through the other side, the crunch and depression of it ceasing to quake our ears, the final few seconds of the track free of decay and distortion as we enter into our cold realities once more.

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• 🔔 This track is take from Barcelona-based DJ Seinfeld's debut album of the same name, Time Spent Away From U, which is being released on 3rd November courtesy of Lobster Fury (Lobster Theremin / Media Fury). You may pre-order the vinyl version of this, which features more tracks than the digital version, by clicking this hyperlink.
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🐣 DAISILY — JEFF'S BEAT / SQUIRTLES DON'T DROWN

The emotive nature of this charged with nostalgia with the crackle of many moons past with the delights of some place some time that you reach for fingers outstretched and straining the odyssey of memory a fog in the mind slowly curling and crowding and fingertips glazed with yearning aim yesteryearly seeking for that one thing which is a something composite of many things this nebula of fond experience. It is beatmaker daisily's utilisation of this piano sample that so washes the track in gallons of organic ancestral yearning, a dusty tract of high-pitched keys that call out coldly chiming into a night that does not seem to be listening, or that listens a silently weeps knowing it can do nothing to ease the distress.

Wow. And that piano comes lifted, the musicmaker tells us via email, from an episode of the Pokémon anime called Pikachu's Goodbye: "it is pretty emotional if i say so myself." Light organs accompany the twinkling keys in the nicely named 'jeff's beat / squirtles don't drown' (it's true—they don't), now warped as if distorted through bleary tear-filled eyes, now fluttering like panicked heartbeats, providing soulful ambience on the backdrop of a crackling nocturnal canopy of sound, insectoid and chirruping, itself reminiscent of summer days, specifically summer nights, humid endless. The beat is persistent, the rapid double-tap thud of the kick, the full-bodied clack of the snare.

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• 🔔 This nostalgic track is taken from LESS FEEL I, the beat tape by daisily, which you can download from Bandcamp. It's dedicated, says he, "to the progenitors of my friends, they inspired this by n' large".

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🐣 EMMECOSTA — HEAVY HEART

Slowly slowly this track rolls along, the eternal trundle of curling clouds across a greyscale landscape, the horizontal energy of chillwave simplicity sweeping into the foundation of this track: the dom-dom glooping bass of the kicks and the thin abrasion of the snare tinged with lo-fi, the soft constancy of the synth constant like a tide in the sidechain of it all. 'Heavy Heart' unfolds like a flower turning and opening to the day's first flood of light, the vocals of Gothenburg-based Italian trio Emmecosta adding silken texture to the track, the languorous luxury of it heightened. Here we are laid-back and loafing, bleary and wandering.

And around 2:40 the brief disappearance of the beat, relegated to its most bassy parts, highlights another element that bejewels the track; these high-pitched pings, synth or effected guitar it may be, how they cry into the air, splashing watercolours, the stifling distortion of it, the degradation of the pure sound conjuring this feel of something pushed to its limit—and the energy in this scathing absent melodies is something that aches and pines and yearns, careering into a blanket of dazzling stars. The electronic tricks of 'Heavy Heart', the sometimes staccato cuttings through the track, that ebb-flow sidechain, both betray and bolster how human it is, how organic, how like a melancholy nostalgic longing howl into the ether it is.

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• 🔔 'Heavy Heart' is taken from the August-released EP from the band, Velour, which was brought into the world courtesy of Stockholm label ICEA. You can listen to and download it from Bandcamp.

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💿 PAISLEY — 404 FUNERAL

'Time Passing' – one of the more diminutive tracks among this selection of seventeen – is as good as any a place to start off this odyssey of beats. Fluttering whooshes like the track's just landed on your windowsill and will start cooing to you at any moment, it arrives with decayed instrumental sample, glitchified percussion with hi-hats that fizz, kicks that thud with MegaDrive distinction. 404 Funeral is a selection of vignettes that feel like this. 'U Got It Going On', one of the more wobbling tracks in this series of seventeen, feels decayed, suffocated by age and warped beyond recognition, with elements that feel similarly bitcrushed; 'Squash' feels like a flood, fifty-two seconds of mashed beats and samples that feels like a luscious rainstick of sound.

Paisley's new stream of lo-fi creations – "made well over a year ago" – does go beyond just tape cassette decay and crackling nostalgia. The retro VGM sound to some of the percussion is matched by a sharp and delicious outpourings of drum sounds, like on 'What's Your Name' where behind snippets of Japanese dialogue a hi-hat dimly ticks with rounded flavours, and by the real-life drum-kit's-next-door feel beat in 'Lost My Suica'; here the outdoors noises, the singing birds of evening and the whir of insects, are evocative of the track's eponymous story: losing a Suica card (one of Japan's numerous, regional travelcards) means walking through the pseudo-suburbs that blossom between Tokyo's main hubs, thus hearing the city differently—here is where the titles of these tracks meet their content perfectly, a contemporary urban idyll. Indeed with this in mind the album's title could refer to the organicity of these tracks, embedded in the real world: '404' refers to a missing webpage and the 'funeral' part, well, netdeath: becoming a web ghost.

So 'Sunday' is chilled, samples like colours melting into each other stream along with a sleepy feel. In 'Until Next Time' the music wobbles rapidly like eyes welling up, the samples plaintive, painting the thoughts you have after a goodbye. But it's not all rose-tinted: 'I Need an Adult' seems to signify, with its exorbitant trap-infused beat and dramatic icy tones, a twinge of despair, a sense of longing exuding from its cold booms. Amidst the warped pianos that sound like television in black-and-white with no remote controls, rotary dial telephones, floorboards and gas lighting, there is more. Stand-out and yes/no favourite '1992' sounds like a joint right out of Earthbound, 'Battle Against a Machine' to be exact, with its huge gloopy constructivist beat and cold-sleek sampling; 'Nobody' makes groovesome use of a funk sample, 'Doomed' weaves in MF Doom—'One For Rex' glosses futuristic with hollow synth melodies.

404 Funeral skips along for just twenty-one minutes of your time, each track just over or just under a minute long. But it is that exact brevity which makes Paisley's morsels of music so delectable. To conjure a feeling through music, any feeling, is impressive, but to do it in a matter of never much more than 100 seconds feels wonderful, a bagful of gems, a batch of cookies, sketches, a pile of postcards that etch images for us, evoke comfort or love or adventure or relaxation, that temporally, spatially send us elsewhere: time passing.

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• 🔔 You can download 404 Funeral in all its glory from Bandcamp for a mere $3USD. Tokyo-based Paisley has also put the album on YouTube for streaming purposes.

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🐣 INSTUPENDO — PLAY PALETTE

The nebulous wandering sounds at the heart of this track hint at more than just a chilled atmosphere. There is a warmth to this, a ghostly warmth, a warmth of things past and remembered and cherished, something like a loved one coming back to watch over you in their afterlife—almost mournful, almost joyful, this track is clouds pierced by sunlight, sadness sprinkled with glad feelings, it is bittersweetness. It has the touching title of 'play palette' and it was created by instupendo.

Heady nostalgia swirls heavily around the glass sides of this track like a wine saved and savoured. The wonky decaying synth chimes like an ancient musicbox opened and watched and listened to and almost tasted, memories effusing from it, and then the beauty of that piano, dusty and half-dilapidated, the touching ornamentations and flourishes of recollection, the exquisite details of broad emotions. 'play palette' takes us by the hand, driven along by the smart stoic beat, unceasing clean with snapping clarity, the structure of it providing that grounding of reality as the mists of time whirl round our fingers and we try to hold on; the angular frame of the window as we gaze out of it.

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• 🔔 This comes from instupendo's recent Friend of a Friend EP. You can listen to this on SoundCloud but you can also stream and download it from various other places.
• 🔔 The artwork for the EP, with brushstrokes and details as indistinct yet bold as the shifting shadows of memorial echoes in the track itself, was created by Kacper Abolik. This artist has, amongst other things, received attention due to his vibrant soulful paintings being featured on A$AP Rocky's instagram.

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☟ instupendo Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 JULIETTE — MOM AND DAD

That first bright wobbling chord, the bumping bass kick and dry clack of snare that punctuates the drumbrushed static, the starry continuation of the synth in a plaintive melody, the chords warmer and more muted, pizzicato beeps in percussive arpeggios —the gentle slide into that gloomy gloop and groove of the bass, playing in unending cycles, decayed piano chords dusty and severed by the beat, veils of silken synth ghostly, and then just over a minute into this exquisite vessel of sound the sombre bounce of 'Mom And Dad' kicks in.

Created by self-appointed creator of "Seattle dance music", Juliette, the track expands, a procession into a sense of bigger space. The level of intensity rises: synth like a Hawaiian guitar winds in and out of earshot, buzzing saw-waves of bass crunch along the way, bongo percussion audible in the sad air of it all, that soft synth floating and drip-dropping, a handclap augments the snare clack, the punishing timekeeper, all of it mingling together to create an illustration of what the musicmaker themselves calls the "particular sensation of longing for your parents when you're at your lowest."

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• 🔔 You can download Juliette's self-titled EP over on iTunes, but ignore the stuff about being a French pop artist active in the '90s and '00s.

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☟ Juliette Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 STAR CHAMBERS — MATERIAL NOSTALGIA

This track is interesting in that it plays like a deconstruction of an original song into what might be argued to be its most memorable parts. Or rather, not memorable, but its most elementary components. We have the tumbling metallic slapped bass, flute synth scorching like a melted sunset, we have vocal fragments, faded keyboard synths. All of these, together, differentiating in melody, rhythm, these create a song. But what Star Chambers does here instead is leave them as extracts of the essence of a song, using them as building blocks to assemble the fragmentary retro dream that is 'Material Nostalgia'.

The sound is essentially compartments of sound interspersed with silence, over into which that bass, the vocal samples, the reverb from these noises, spills and fades into the quiet, creating an instantly dynamic soundscape where each break in audio is cushioned with warm whispers of reverberation, and where each node of noise is sharpened by the spaces between. At 01:00 the beat rolls in, thudding kicks, sword-from-a-sheath hi-hat, popping snare, disappearing between 02:24 and 03:12 where a new vocal hits rhythmically, pans left and right, a breathy almost alien section in the song that soon takes us back to sunny swagger of the beat. A retro reverie, and an exercise in what actually constitutes a song – simply the rhythmic placement of musical elements on a soundless backdrop – 'Material Nostalgia', if its title is anything to go by, plays on ideas of nostalgia, and how it can be summoned into our consciousness with just sub-second-long slices of sound.

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• 🔔 You can go listen to 'I Was Born Twenty Years Too Late', which you can also purchase for $1000. It's the first release from upcoming album Material Nostalgia, out sometime this year digitally and on cassette, too.
• 🔔 Does the name Star Chambers refer to the English court that existed at Westminster from the 15th to the 17th century? Who can say. More likely it comes from the related modern meaning of "legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings"—that's from Wikipedia.

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📠
☟ Star Chambers Internet Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Bandcamp

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LILY – BEACH GIRL

We're discovering Lily as Lily, rather than Lily as she was formerly/is still known (Ultrademon). It seems a good a time as any; recently she released her debut under this new moniker (her real name), Psychic Jealousy, and it's the first explosive opener from that album that's the focus here: 'Beach Girl'—an exciting swirl of ineffable fun. "Beach girl"... What does it connote? A girl at the beach. But Lily says much more than just this, painting a deeper picture of summer, holidaying, freedom, memories, broad and minute sonic brushstrokes forming an unending, relatable image. Partly, it's the polished late-90s-early-00s-party-music vibe that give it a quality of being somewhat unlocatable in time, lending a fantasy feel to it: or maybe that's just the internet talking.

Slap of snare shakes the track into life, different patterns of syncopated digital synth chords and plink-plonking boops make themselves known, some of these at one point or another becoming part of its frenzied refrain, uptempo beat pulsing pulsing with life beneath it all. These sumptuous and deeply toned sounds, clean and rounded, forming the main crux of the track, are decorated with thin synth arpeggiating down in misty rain, orchestra hits rapid-firing, all of it whirling together, melodies crossing over and changing dynamically throughout, the beat – with its punchy snare and precision hi-hats – dictating changes and keeping foot-tapping, head-nodding, heart-beating time.

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• As mentioned, 'Beach Girl' is the opening track to Lily's recent album Psychic Jealousy, released on Chicago label Deep Space Objects (for which Lily does A&R); listen + download over on the label's bandcamp.

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☟ Lily's Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • Twitter • SoundCloud • Instagram

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BUG BUS PIANO – BUG YIV BUSKONG P

What better way to while away your time than to listen to music, to sink into it, to have it envelop you and curl around you in wreathes of hazy smoke - just for a while. For some minutes it's enough to entertain, to ignite inspiration, to illustrate your current activity with sound, to colour your nothingness. What better way. And what better way than with this cryptically named track, 'Bug yiv buskong P' by Bug Bus Piano.

Writing this I am sitting on the second floor of a coffee shop in Taitung, Taiwan, watching the lights on a crossroad go from green to red, a steady stream of cars and scooters go by. The piano in this track injects a melancholy calm into the situation, a shroud of contented inevitability draped over the vehicles and cyclists and marching pedestrians, over the grey roads and bright vertical signage tumbling out of sight. Timeless piano, making poetry of the scenes below.

Alongside the beautiful piano, vintage crackling runs through the track distorting the soft keys, a sense of ancient electronics, of a dusty phonograph, making it feel like the sort of music that plays in memories, more sounds accompanying the piano with bassy machine rumbles, insecto-avian chirruping towards the end, the piano skewed with sharply added treble, muffling softly, and distorting like a damaged cassette tape. In short, this is heady nostalgia condensed into 5 minutes 19 seconds—but nostalgia for what? Nostalgia for longing and longing for nostalgia.

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• It seems that Bug Bus Piano is a real person called Jake born in 1991 residing in Seattle. According to this blurb on a split release he did with OOAA on French label CINDYS TAPES, Jake also "likes drawing" and "sometimes practising animation." Accordingly "rides the bus everyday."
• This was put out on BBP's SoundCloud prior to releasing an album called Oldest crab on Dominican (?) label, El cuarto elástico, which you should probably listen to if you liked the sound of 'Bug yiv buskong P'.

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☟ Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Bandcamp

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MEISHI SMILE – BLANK OCEAN

Meishi Smile has shared a song via Ryan Hemsworth friends-only-not-a-label Secret Songs. Who is Meishi Smile? I hear you cry. Don't worry. His real name is Garrett Yim and he is from California and he makes music so sweet you'll want to cry, so bleakly sad that you'll want to smile. At the beginning of last year he released his debut album, LUST, which I really enjoyed – a high-energy whirlwind of J-pop flavours that was as wistful and introverted as it was all-encompassing and euphoric. A lovely mix, in short. Oh and he is also the head of alternative pop label/collective, Zoom Lens.

Anyway, the track is called 'Blank Ocean' (the title alone is the first tearjerker – even that speaks to me) and it's really good, basically. The intro is a real killer, a 27-second gradual slide into the track's candy-coloured bounce featuring cold, fizzing synth with hints of the Amen-style breaks. The main body of this track is all breakbeats, with zithery plucked instruments plaintively echoing the melody of the vocals, which are vocodered to good effect, almost as a detachment from the true emotion of what they're singing.

Mr. Meishi Smile has kindly provided the lyrics and with lines like, "let's end our lives in a sentimental way / let's echo our youth like death in poetry," the fearsome despair and hopelessness at the heart of this song become more evident.

In true Meishi style, he's also added some brilliant pan flute sounds, the hollow quirky sound of them conjuring the otherworldliness of one of his influences, the soundtrack of Bomberman 64. Add to this the blooping (almost like Sonic jumping circa 1991) synth hook and breezy guitar chords, and you have a whole lot of disparate and perhaps even conflicting elements.

But Meishi Smile weaves them all together with a finesse that not only results in a well-crafted piece of sugary and emotive pop, but that also, in its loud and bustling way, harks back to Meishi's roots in harsh noise music. Top marks!

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• Meishi Smile made a guest mix for YES/NO last year – Valentine's Day-themed, too! It's really good! Go listen! And download it~!
• Also I interviewed Mr. Meishi for Red Bull Music Academy magazine regarding Zoom Lens. Go read!

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☟ Meishi Smile Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

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