Showing posts with label party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label party. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 September 2017

🐣 ROCHELLE JORDAN — HOW U WANT IT PROD. MACHINEDRUM

Straight away there's this aura of opulence – that soft synth glow – gold fittings and fixtures and chandeliers and mahogany or maybe teak furniture presenting angularity and sweeping curves in delicious alternation. Rich, that's it—there is a high degree of richness embedded at the heart of Rochelle Jordan's 'How U Want It'. Her voice is of course a fabulous part of the track, its shining jewel, its billowing silk streaming through the well oiled machinery of the instrumental, at some points long and silken, and other times her vocals are tongue twisters, rapid-fire trilling lines that end in swooping lilts, itself full-bodied and robust but bringing it all together, lacing it with delicacy.

The all-encompassing solidity of 'How U Want It' comes from its producer Machinedrum, who creates a playground of synth and beats that stutter and somersault in tracts of audaciously empty instrumental hits, priceless vase ornamental rose footwork, clinking and glittering high-pitch and wonky but bumping and thumping with juddering rubbery quakes too. It is this with its sense of playful urgency that Rochelle Jordan's vocal pairs perfectly, similarly agile and acrobatic, making this track a marrying of two virtuoso elements that soar and sizzle. A subversion of classy with its spilling-over decorative feel, this track is feeling out-of-place at a high-society event and knocking over champagne and having fun in the face of imposition.


  • πŸ”” This track is the first release on Machinedrum's newly birthed label IAMSIAM. You can steam it and purchase it variously from most of your favourite services via this hyperlink.


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Monday, 14 August 2017

🐣 MAHALIA — SOBER

This lovely track is arrives like a cool breeze through a window, contains within it that sheepish drowsy feeling that accompanies the delicate stages of the early morning following the inebriation and fun that bubbles between four walls and down corridors and in the garden, with its wonky boom-bap beat describing sonically that state of disarray as you awake from slumbering stupor and attempt to be a human, memories of the house party arising as you survey the room that was so hectic the night previously which now is filled with hangover and headache. "This story is totally about the morning after," says 19-year-old Leicester-based Mahalia about her track 'Sober'. "Thinking about the night before - all the mistakes you made, all the muddled texts you sent."

And so the track bounces this off-kilter pathway, the low subtle bass groove which charts this fresh, clean feeling throughout, the wobbling nature of it all giving the track this post-spinning-room relief in drymouthed stability. Yet we also have the vocals of Mahalia herself, not wonky, nor hungover, but self-assured and epiphanous, silkenly spinning lines that represent a realisation of good sense; "This is me waking up and smelling the roses," she explains further her first official single. Smooth, hazy, soulful, 'Sober' is an analogy for turning your life around, a night of revelry illustrating past mistakes, maybe even a whole lifetime of folly, but realising in a moment of clarity that things should and could be different.


  • πŸ”” You can download or stream 'Sober' in various ways via this link here.


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🐣 BRIKA — JUST WANNA BE SINGLE

It's a jostling multi-faceted party atmosphere, that heat-warped guitar chord sweeping sultry in the cool balm of night and the bounce of the lightly shuffling beat, those foot-tapping hi-hat sheafing, the starry open skies of the slow melt into meandering dance and conversation through the lens of intoxication, carefree and sprinkled with hedonism, somehow those bopping percussive drum machine toms rhythmically echoing measuring time in their rounded synthesised droplets. In 'Just Wanna Be Single' Miami artist Brika invites us to the party, says stay a while, chill.

She sings slow in the verses, silken and low and conversational with the pattern of notes that skip up and down, amidst the luscious spread of percussion, the lovingly crafted handclaps, the sandy shakers, the thump of the kick. Light decorations tastefully adorn the nocturnal groove, little guitar licks in reverse like strings of fairy lights, the occasional wah-wah wobble of a synth chord, and that last slowly building shade of plasma sound, into the eponymous chorus, the laid-back vibe supporting Brika's desire to remain free of obligation and commitment, this sombre starlit saturnalia of sound a suitable vessel for the vocalisation of single life.


  • πŸ”” This track has been co-written/produced by Shy Girls alongside award-winning producer Julio Reyes Copello—it's taken from an upcoming EP, so keep your eyes out for that if you like the sound of 'Just Wanna Be Single'.


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Thursday, 4 August 2016

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.


  • 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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Saturday, 31 January 2015

QUIETFUNK – HOUSE OF LOADED PEOPLE FEAT. LILI & FLATCASTLE

I am currently watching The Land Before Time 2 because it's on TV and I've never seen it before. I literally loved the first one when I first saw it when I was like, however old, 3 or 4. To see Littlefoot and Cera and Petrie and Spike and Ducky together again is making my heart bounce a little bit. And what else is making my heart bounce right now is this track right here.

It's a strange soundtrack for small dinosaurs running away from a scary big dinosaur, but it kind works in a strange way. What's this track? It's by Saitama, Japan-based producer Yu Uchida aka quietfunk and features LILI on vocals (I can't find any info on her) and a guy called flatcastle – v cool name (irl: Daisuke Hirajo) – on slap bass. It's entirely groovesome, founded on a smooth popping bassline courtesy of Mr. Hirajo and gradually more accented disco-style beat with shuffling hi-hats and the occasional stroke of a cymbal.

Called 'house of loaded people' it takes its name from the samples it uses. Well, more correctly it takes inspiration (and samples) from 'Loaded' by Primal Scream and aside from a bit of brass that hazily fades in and out every now and then, the quietfunk track also uses the dialogue that appears in the Primal Scream original, "We wanna be free… we wanna get loaded!" – itself a sample taken from weird film Werewolves On Wheels. It's an exploitation film in which an outlaw bike gang stops off at a church in the desert, parties, falls asleep, one of them gets drugged by the satanic cult that actually runs the church, wakes up as a werewolf. Normal.

I keep thinking about the bassline, robust and silken at the same time, but there's more to this track than just this fragmentary funk. Thin tremolo synth begins to wiggle pulsar-like overhead, swathes of white noise building to a whispering crescendo, and LILI's voice sings gently and with nocturnal party-time longing what the vocal sample proclaims throughout. Everything culminates in echoing intensity towards the end, like the frenzied end to a sweaty imagined party as wished for by the song itself.


  • 'house of loaded people' is a free download – do it!

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  • Monday, 9 December 2013

    LOW TEE HEY YOU (AND FOREVER) (TAPE TRANSPORT REMIX)

    Back in September I wrote about a release from a man called Anders Obel, aka Tape Transport, from Norway. The release was Panoply and it was dripping with retro dancefloor appeal, ambient atmospheres and glitchy ornamentation. That came from an email he sent me, so I do really appreciate getting emails (I might take ages to reply but I DO TRY to reply to everyone). This song right here right now also came from something TT sent me. Rather than an original, however, it's a remix, which is fine. I love a remix. I've gotten very into remixes over the time I have been living and breathing; from not understanding them at all whilst I was an adolescent, scorning and avoiding them in late teen years, and now accepting them as legitimate pieces of music in themselves, my view on remixes has changed a lot. It's a good idea to change your mind often. Sticking with one thing, well, it's gonna get a bit stale innit.

    Anyway this remix is of a track by a guy called Low Tee, a producer from NYC and someone who I've seen round and about on Twitter but I've never really checked his music out. It took this remix to make me check it out. Tape Transport's version of 'Hey You (And Forever)' is a far cry from Low Tee's original – a blissful house number dominated with percussive organ caresses and flute synth – but that's a good thing. As long as the result is good, does it matter how far or near a remix lies to the original? Not particularly.

    Beginning with a super-slowed-down sample from the original, which is then pushed into the stratosphere in terms of tempo, before being scratched and flipped on its head, the track sheds the house rhythm of the original, but doesn't leave behind the dancefloor completely. Collections of synth chords in zippy syncopation give a lovely electronic house appeal, creating the atmosphere of a nocturnal pre-night mood-upper with the heavy heft of a hip hop beat. Skittering hi-hats – which go mental towards the end – smatter the track with frenetic energy-driving vibes whilst smoke machine synths create lo-fi ambience across the board.

    It's a smart, urbane track that whilst retaining the sheen of newness, contains somewhere within a leftfield appeal with its jungle of noises, tiny and almost undiscernible vocal samples abound in the fabric of the song, as well as those white-noise-aping synth chords. Arriving at the tale-end of this year's set of warm days for the Northern Hemisphere, Tape Transport's remix of Low Tee's 'Hey You (And Forever)' lights a little fire in your heart and tells you that it's still ok to go outside and party, despite the weather.



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