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
"Change reality…" The vocal sample in this track is a fitting one, breaking through its hypnotic heart with foggy delay and reverb like an interdimensional mantra and suggesting this most wild and fantastical of notions. It fits alright, suiting the fluttering synth of the track, the way it phases in and out, the glassy sounds that fold into the track like sugar into a delicious batter for the brain. Like rain, hi-hats seem to fall golden and white-noise pitter-patter, chilled rather than agitated.
Summoned by Australian musicmaker Fantastic Man, these sounds are the thinner spiritual elements of 'Reality Change', the veil of somnolent heavy-eyed air, the spirit of sunset-gazers, leg-crossers and cocktail-drinkers, a Balearic fantasia. At the same time, acid synth wiggles in, urgent and silly and elastic; and the booming bounce of bass and the unrelenting kicks ground this rave-wise into something earthly, the visceral anchor for its flights of fancy; at its core, these two retro styles inhabiting the same groove.
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This is from Fantastic Man's P.M.T.C. 12" (featuring 'Reality Change' alongside one other track, 'Cool Waters'), released 8th January 2018 via Superconscious Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp for a certain amount of currency.
That's what we asked London-based producer Loom of his recently released EP. He tell us over email that it's "an imaginary musical history that's in the air in London." In fact that is almost exactly, to the finest detail, what London Ambient sounds like. Snippets of acid-inflected synths wibble and writhe throughout; rave drums crash plosive and tribal; a conjuration of the city at night, its dimly lit streets, its hidden clubs. "So much great stuff has come out on London," he continues, "so I wanted to touch on that."
It begins with 'Heavy Glow', a beatless prelude in hefty synth and sub that sets the atmosphere for what follows—but you'll have to read our review to see what else we thought (a lot of things). We may have established that it's a love-letter to the UK capital's heritage of dance and electronic sounds, but what we were really bursting to know was if he was named after Loom, the 1990 Lucasfilm graphic adventure game. Could it be? "I've got no idea what that is mate," he wrote back. "It's not really the name that matters, it's the work attached to it." Touché. But still.
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w h o a r e y o u ? w h e r e a r e y o u f r o m ? w h a t d o y o u d o ?
I am a person who enjoys making music, eating kebabs and DJing. I was born in the 90s and raised in rural (farmland, raves and dogging) Suffolk. Now I live in South London with my girlfriend.
h o w d i d y o u s t a r t c r e a t i n g m u s i c ?
I thought So Solid Crew were really cool when I was like 11 and wanted to be DJ Oxide. I got some decks for Christmas started DJing, I was DJing in bars at 14 around Ipswich, playing old house music. I wanted to learn how to produce so I got Reason or Fruity and it went from there.
h o w w o u l d y o u d e s c r i b e y o u r s o u n d ?
It changes, right now I'm really feeling a lot of house, techno & jungle, so I'm trying to work them into my music. It’s very UK sounding, but I love the older US stuff as well.
i s t h e r e a p e r f e c t t i m e a n d p l a c e f o r l i s t e n i n g t o y o u r m u s i c ?
Club, if it's a banger, or on the motorway at night if it's one of my moody, beatless ones.
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Even if everyone hated what I was making, I don't care as long as I'm challenging myself
”
w h a t i n s p i r e s y o u m o s t w h e n m a k i n g a t r a c k ?
I run purely on instinct – I enter a brain-dead state to write music and try not think at all. Certainly other music influences creep in, plus moods/atmospheres/memories.
w h a t i s y o u r m o s t m e m o r a b l e m u s i c a l e x p e r i e n c e ?
Probably going to a grime/DnB rave at 14. We all knew the owners daughter and she would get us in. The first time there I felt real sub bass, saw live DJs/MCs, saw people fucked, drug dealers, gangs, plus the fear of my mum finding out made it an amazing experience. That real hit of adrenaline, fear and wonder I felt, I always try to capture in my own music and DJ sets.
w h a t a r e y o u r f a v o u r i t e t h r e e s o n g s a t t h e m o m e n t ?
w h o d o y o u m o s t a d m i r e i n t h e m u s i c w o r l d ?
I don't admire anyone but my mum.
i n y o u r o p i n i o n , w h a t i s t h e f u t u r e o f m u s i c ?
New music will be released, some good, some bad, same as ever innit. I hope underground music keeps evolving. Most producers quickly become comfortable and lazy. Even if everyone hated what I was making, I don't care as long as I'm challenging myself and keeping things interesting.
w h a t ' s t h e f u t u r e o f y o u r m u s i c – w h a t d o y o u h o p e t o d o n e x t ?
Start a label, DJ around the world, keep releasing tracks I'm happy with.
JAAAAAA. The first big chords of producer Loom's London Ambient EP bristle with drama. The complexity of them and the progression as the opening track 'Heavy Glow' soars onward. The space between the chords and the robust sub that drops depth charges in these ambient moments. The orchestral clarity of the sampled violin hits versus the twangs of metallic synth that play syncopated melodies ending each phrase in a series of satisfyingly jarring triplets. The darkness and distortion of it. And the thing is that it feels like late-night London, the looming exterior of a club on an empty orange-lit street, and the slow-motion crowd of its interior; the camera turns slowly on its axis. It is the prelude to the three juddering tracks that follow.
First up: 'Aacccid', a track true to its name, featuring the overdriven booming kicks and handclaps that conjure warehouse dancefloors, distant smoke machine times, the vomit of strobes, the uptempo rave counterpart of house music that was born and nurtured in the UK. But over the top, in place of the squeegee elastic synths typical of this '90s style, there are clarion clusters of synth boops that cut the air glacially, less soft fizzy Refresher bar and more hardboiled tang of a melody pop; rave cymbals crash.
A slosh of crushing handclaps is the abrasive punctuation of aptly 'Dog In The Fight', combined with plasma kicks and a constant gloop anti-groove of sub-bass that gives it this urban swamp sort of feel. Beginning like an unaccompanied grime instrumental the track morphs into a UK funky sort of rhythm, complete with wobbling wah-wah synths, something closer to the acid that gives the previous track its title, a retro sound; one of the things that characterises London Ambient as a whole, these sounds of yore, a motif extracted not from nostalgia but from objective heritage and contemporaneous revivalism in electronic dance music.
Raving breakbeats thud and thump at the heart of 'Saturday Job At Laser Quest', part throwback dancefloor destiny and part heart-thumping excitement and fear of a laser quest party. The middle section is tense, poised, all the smell of the smoke machines and the strobing lights and the heavy laser gun in hand. Slimy synths drip-drop all over this one, a biohazard sort of sludge that gives this track a wonderfully dark edge to its retro-facing beats.
But ending as it began, beatless and textured, London Ambient bows out with 'Forever', a postscript to everything that's gone before. It's a touching swansong of crunched rumbling synth that fizzes with crackling decay and chugs along with a flanger effect, decorated with zipping little plasma synths resonating like echoes of the synths from the previous track in a cosmic void, chirruping like alien animals calling out to each other, and bitcrushed little trinkets. A simple melody plays on glossy blooping synth, melancholy and heartbroken but innocent in its melody, something human and emotive above the harsh electronics, the contrast of glassy clarity and the drone of the bass below, humans doing what they can in the murk of reality. A robotic voice wheezes the word "Forever…" The lights come on, the music stops, everybody has to go home.
London Ambient is both fantasy and reality, cinematic and observational, pushing forward but with a reverence to the sounds of the past. Crucially, atmospheric drops abound—even from looking at the waveforms as the tracks play on SoundCloud you can tell this. It's another relic of the past – another motif for Loom in this instance – taken carefully from the UK's earliest love affair with dance and a trope of the collection of genres that make up "rave"; the beat falls away and there is this ambient void in which sweat-jewelled dancers sway and eyes-half-open leaning on each other, an almost motionless vacuum; a chance to breathe, let the music sink in, feel. And that is London Ambient.
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Loom's love-letter to the dance music and culture of past and present London Ambient is out now via Gobstopper Records. You may purchase it variously here. There is also a site dedicated especially to the release in the form of londonambient.com.
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Loom is also a founding member of club collective/party/night Acid Fantasy.
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 :~)
Yeah, if you're reading this thinking, "wtf is #SPF420??" then you are in the same boat as I am. That is, a boat adrift and constantly in wonder at what marvels/marvel at what wonders can be found on the internet. There's a lot to find. Anyway, I should probably explain what exactly #SPF420 is.
Enough of the Pokémon-style digression into the proclivities of this artist collective. More about the music. The reason I'm writing this is that Spazzkid has gone and done a 25-minute set on #SPF420, which aired yesterday. Astoundingly, this only has (at time of writing) 7 views, which is mental considering the sound of the music itself - not so mental if you consider the pitfalls of being a relatively unknown artist. Anyway, without further ado, please enjoy the smooth, wholly chilled vibes of this man's innovative beat-strong glitch-hop electro-pop.
The tracklist is this:
1. Forgiveness
2. Kokeshi Doll
3. Getting To Know You
4. Better Off Alone (Alice DeeJay cover) UNRELEASED
5. Loving Free
Yep, from the clicky otherworldly ambience of 'Forgiveness', to the sombre sunset romance vibes of 'Kokeshi Doll' - both with their fair share of bassy rumblings - we arrive at the wonderfully cute 'Getting To Know You' with its bouncy vocal samples. Then a surprise cover of Dutch Eurodance group Alice DeeJay's massive 1999 hit 'Better Off Alone', done to Spazzkid's trademark swaggering beat and complete with mind-ooze synths and steel drums. The set ends with the ravey 'Loving Free', a sharp cross between lo-fi bedroom pop and the soundtrack to people playing volleyball on a yacht harboured in the Maldives.
The visuals are great, too, and found according to Mark Redito (real name of Spazzkid) "from deep internets". Certainly looks that way. In any case, they're cool and fit the style of his music totally. He also looks like he is having a very nice time playing the music that I can only assume he loves making.
Oxford band Fixers had this great song debuted on Zane Lowe's show last week. Touted by NME as "a cartoon Animal Collective", the sounds of the band scream to be remixed, having been given the once-over by the D/R/U/G/S, Memory Tapes and Chad Valley amongst others so far - they're pretty new to the scene and already making friends, which is nice.
Strangely named 'Swimmhaus Johannesburg' is a crazed mix of synth that sounds straight out of the amazing 1992 game for SNES Top Gear, late 90s piano-led house music, a beat that couldn't be more solid if it tried, and the strange euphoric atmosphere of a dark sweaty hotel nightclub - the kind of place where the music seems to come from another world.
Fixers' latest offering is nothing but otherworldly. It's as if aliens looked at the music of pop culture over the last 20-something years and put this all together in a mixing pot. Starting which a distorted guitar Black Betty against a backdrop of tumbling tropical toms, that classic rave piano chord struck on the offbeat comes in, coupled with a drawn out virtuoso synth sound that reverberates in your skull. Soon we are at the chorus, where the vocals though slightly thin lead the song forward accompanied by a host of 'aaah's in the background, and a boiling kettle schizoid synth sound gathers energy as it rises up towards the next break. All the while a disco bassline crunches deeply behind the madness.
There's a lot going on in the song, all coming to a head when the chorus jumps out of the verse to raise you up out of your seats and off the ground it seems. It's very ADHD, jumping from a Duran Duran-style breakdown one minute to a ravey comedown the next; heavily layered, energetic and progressively electro-rock-disco enough to be more than just a quirk, it's not exactly something that you can listen to without an aural doubletake.
