🐣 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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☟ Twin Galaxxies Internet Presence ☟
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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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🐣 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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SUI ZHEN – MEGA DRIVE

Oooo-eeeeee, wow, so, this is supremely pretty. More than that it's scene-conjuring, evocative, heartbreaking, heartwarming, tear-inducing, smile-making – it's 'Mega Drive' by Becky Sui Zhen aka Sui Zhen (aka DJ Susan), a musicmaker and all-round atmosphere creator from Melbourne, Australia.

'Mega Drive' seems to call out from an unplaceable, nonexistent retro-futuristic crevasse deep in the music world – there is something otherworldly about it, a gracious gentle delicacy achieved by the mix of plaintive, unthreatening keyboard-demo beat and the endearing vocals, like insubstantial wisps of clouds making their way across a splashed-orange sunset sky, or like friendly ghosts trying to make contact. The very title is a conjuring of nostalgia: the Sega Mega Drive: symbol of lost youth for a generation torn between the analogue and the digital age.

Synth strings follow the vocal melody somewhat with effortless simplicity, still that beat gently blooping with its semi-tropical snips of sharp percussion, decayed bass rolling itself around the bottom end of the track with a reserved attitude, wobbling slightly like the blurred edges of memories that make you laugh and cry, the whole thing pockmarked with indistinct shouts of "hey!" rising up as if somebody's trying to wake you up from a dream.

The aesthetic Sui Zhen has employed here is one that seeps into your spirit, cradles your sense of self with a forlorn feeling, effuses the reverie of the past from a chasm of abstract memories. It's like… the sense of unutterable longing for childhood and all its beautiful accoutrements, its comfort and its wonder and the sense of time being elongated into a fantasy future as yet undisturbed and waiting to be discovered, happy days of innocence and simplicity. That's how I understand it anyway.

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• 'Mega Drive' is taken from Sui Zhen's very very recent EP, Body Reset, a beautiful collection of introspective songs much in the same vein as this one, exploring "the resetting of both body and mind" and "influenced as much by late nights in Koenji, Tokyo as at an onsen/sauna in the mountains of Nagano," and released by boutique Tokyo-based label eskers.
• Purchase Body Reset on tape cassette here. (Also, don't you just love the art? The green and pink colours go together just perfectly~).
• Sui Zhen was part of the Red Bull Music Academy in 2010, alongside Daisuke Tanabe, and has previously worked with Andras Fox as Sui + Fox.

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Y/N GUEST MIX 021 :: CLAS TUUTH

One day I will get better at creating the cover art for these guest mixes. For now, I will stick with making stuff on Paintbrush, a buggy port of Paint for Mac. If anybody has any suggestions, or can make art for free (some of the artists have done this themselves) please contact me. Thank you.

For now though, allow me to introduce Clas Tuuth. Well not so much introduce as meet him once more, as I did write about one of the tracks from his recent-ish 003 EP the other month. He's from London and he makes lovely organic-sounding electronic music, as if these electronics were plant matter or animal matter, and lived their own lives, living and breathing within the compositions with naturalistic ease. At the same time, they're filled with urban grit and a decidedly cold sense of loneliness – an almost melancholic feeling, yet content with itself, the soundtracks to solitary journeys and pensive moods.

But as for this mix itself. From the introspective ambience of Clas Tuuth's own intro in the form of his track 'Legion', it is a predominantly '90s-flavoured affair, a voyage through rave-inspired beats and heavenly dub. There's the cascade of beats in 'Hooligan 69' by Ragga Twins, containing within it a sample of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy', the twisted synth fantasia in the Alley Cat remix of 'Charly' by The Prodigy, the dance-rap of Rebel MC's 'The Wickedest Sound' (featuring, I have discovered, the origin of the eponymous sample in DJ Fresh's 'Dibby Dibby Sound'), ending as it began with the beautiful life-of-its-own vinyl crackle.

It's real nice to hear some music that I didn't really grow up with, but that has inspired a whole generation of musicmakers with its unrelenting beats and simplistic approach to music. I hope you enjoy or at least appreciate :~)

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• T R A C K L I S T •

• 01. Clas Tuuth – Legion Intro
• 02. Manix – Stupid Dope Mix
• 03. Intelligent Hoodlum – Arrest The President
• 04. Clas Tuuth – Glass feat. Catriona Irving
• 05. Tek9 – Space 91
• 06. Shut Up and Dance – Derek Went Mad
• 07. Ragga Twins – 18" Speaker
• 08. Ragga Twins – Hooligan 69
• 09. SL2 – The Noise (Remix)
• 10. Eric B. & Rakim – I Know You Got Soul
• 11. 2 Bad Mice – Bombscare
• 12. The Prodigy – Charly (Alley Cat Mix)
• 13. Bug Khan & Plastic Jamm – Made In 2 Minutes
• 14. Rebel MC – The Wickedest Sound
• 15. 2 Bad Mice – Hold It Down
• 16. Clas Tuuth – Legion (version)

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STARLIT EVERGLADES – PRETTY ARCADE EP

It was many moons ago, many many moons ago, that I first encountered this particular musicmaker. In fact, I think the last time I wrote about him was back in July 2013. Since then, well – everything has been a whirlwind of uncontrollable speed. It's impossible to keep up with everything all the time. But who cares? Whatever right? RIGHT? So, anyway, this is Starlit Everglades and a long time ago I found his music, wrote about it – in particular his tune 'Mylotic' – enjoyed it. He made a kind of soaring lo-fi dreamscape, a majestic unearthly sound that seemed to gallop through your mind with all the relaxing intensity of a phantom horse.

But now, now now now – now is a different story. Fast forward for um however many months it's been and we arrive here, where Starlit Everglades is releasing a new EP that sounds gloriously different to his earlier stuff. It's quite incredible, the development that's gone on here. Hip hop influences abound, perhaps more trip hop, and the quality is higher than ever – he's clearly improved as a producer and it's really great to hear it. The EP is called Pretty Arcade and it sounds a bit like this (although I think this is just a preview).

It works as a series of three connected tracks. In title, it moves from a 'Pretty Arcade', to asking somebody 'Twirl For Me', and finally the command 'Undress' – as if on a date, the mood becomes one that is hungry for romance, if not outright lustful. In sound, too, it feels as if this is a journey from the realistic, grounded beats of 'Pretty Arcade', with its bubblesome electronics, coin-grabbing samples and recordings of real-life public places (maybe an arcade, and perhaps even a pretty one); through 'Twirl For Me' whose playful romance and dreamy sensuality – in the super-reverbing breathy vocal samples, glistening glockenspiels, tick-tocking almost urgent beat and filmic strings – echo that post-date feeling, if everything has gone well, of walking together, wandering, meandering the streets with no particular inclination or even care as to where you're heading.

And then there's the end: 'Undress'. It's a blanket of hyper nostalgia with an intro of crackles that make it seem as if the hairs on the back of your neck are sticking up, a pre-sexual out-of-body experience, a sense of wonder at what you're beholding – waves of thick synth like rose-tinted visions pulse in time with the heart-thudding catch-your-breath kicks, with breathless vocal samples whispering pleasure into the starry void of the track.

In another sense, these 3 illustrations hide as if under a haze of nostalgic memory, a set of sounds that seem to have encased heady remembrances forever behind their dreamlike mists, as if perhaps they look better – more idealised – through this fog of time and creativity, or as if memories themselves promote this hazy sound thanks to their intoxicating nature. So basically, this is Starlit Everglades, these are his sounds: a surprise EP that will whisk you away to somewhere beautiful, either imagined or real, on a cloud of hushed, lo-fi synth powered by gently intricate yet firm beats.

• This is out on UK label Slime Recordings 21st April (& you can probably get it from their site)
• Here's an interview with Starlit Everglades exclusively for YES/NO (mmmhmmmmmmmmmm)

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Like Starlit Everglades on Facebook
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YES/NO GUEST MIX 012 :: ABIOGENESIS – A MIX BY JACOB 2-2 FOR YES/NO MUSIC

Ah Jacob 2-2. I fell in love with him, well not actually him – his MUSIC – last year when I was introduced to his song 'Milo De Venus', a beautifully nostalgic track, via cool Canadian label King Deluxe. This was taken from his album Herbivore, which was like taking a journey through the idealised childhood of a young reluctant hero from an 80s movie where real life is slowly taken over by fantasy – it sounded like shiny red bicycles, oversized baseball jackets, and empty suburban stretches of road in the summer holidays. You'd probably like it. Naturally, I thought his tastes would be cool for a mix; I asked, he was happy to do one, and he even made some super nice artwork for the mix. He's titled it 'Abiogenesis', which is (thanks Wikipedia) "the natural process by which life arose from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds" – a fascinating though now discredited concept, and one that fits his mix perfectly, as it features a lot of older music (the music world's "organic compounds" perhaps) that gave life to what we have today.

From jazz to hip hop to electro to prog rock to jazz to disco, it's a fabulously varied mix and one comprised equally of new, shiny, modern and old, endearing, reliclike. There's the crazy frenetic groove in Ras G's noisy and bleepsome 'One 4 Kutmah', Jacob 2-2's own junkyard clattering remix of Navigateur's 'Breathe' as well as Joob's brand of chiptune hip hop in 'Sacred Science'. But then there's surprise Hammond organ virtuoso in British prog rock band Egg's take on Bach's 'Fugue In D Minor' (featuring, if you'd care to notice, a beat that any hip hop fan'd tell you was decent, and certainly not bad for 1970); French disco champion Cerrone's 1978 oddly hypnotic 'Rocket In The Pocket'; Organized Konfusion's fiery underground hip hop in 'Releasing Hypnotical Gases' taken from their debut self-titled album (1991). Then there's the finale, 'White Eagle' by German electronic outfit Tangerine Dream, still going strong since 1967 having recently provided some original music for the Grand Theft Auto V OST.

But enough of this! Go soak up the sounds and download it for free too. THANKS J22!

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T R A C K L I S T :

1. Joel Vandroogenbroeck – Japanese Technology
2. 10th letter – Primordial Soup
3. Navigateur – Breathe (Jacob 2-2 RMX)
4. Organized Konfusion – Releasing Hypnotical Gases
5. Roy Ayers – Fikisha (To Help Someone To Arrive)
6. Joob – Sacred Science
7. Doc ILL – It Starts (ft. Ally B)
8. Ras G – One 4 Kutmah
9. Egg – Fugue in D Minor
10. Cerrone – Rocket In The Pocket
11. Ceephax – Natural Spectrum
12. Tangerine Dream – White Eagle

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Like Jacob 2-2 on Facebook
Listen to Jacob 2-2 on Soundcloud
Hear more Jacob 2-2 on Myspace
Visit Jacob 2-2 official site
Follow Jacob 2-2 on Twitter
Check Jacob 2-2 on Tumblr
Watch Jacob 2-2 on YouTube
Listen to more Jacob 2-2 on Bandcamp

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