WAKON — TOKYO IS DYING

⌾ LISTEN TO WAKON, TOKYO IS DYING ⌾

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— Painting a picture of simultaneous fatigue and excitement —the shuffling fluorescent tunnels and dead-tired eyes of train-riders twinned with the entertainment, the frenetic streets of clothes, faces, skyscrapers, shopfronts lit with light — 'Tokyo Is Dying' by WAKON is an apt soundtrack for a city that is two cities: business and pleasure.

As the Tokyo duo's house-tinged track rattles on with a mechanical rattling industrious beat, looped samples warp in and out of earshot like a reflection of the Japanese capital's day-in-day-day out feeling. But more than this propulsive flow, there's a collage of colour in 'Tokyo Is Dying' that, despite the title, infuses optimism and vitality into the metropolitan malaise of the track.

Speaking about the track, WAKON put forward this mission statement:

"Tokyo is dying. Having gone through 30 years of economic stagnation, Tokyo is still fettered by commercialism and globalism, and repeatedly destroyed and created anew. Nature, culture, tradition, scenery, sentiment, humanity, affection, and laughter disappear day by day. Music is no exception."

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• 🔔 'Tokyo Is Dying' by WAKON arrives via Tokyo artist collective & label DENTO. Stream/download it variously from whichever digital music service is your favourite.

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☟ WAKON Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 JONIE — SQUUUEZE

⌾ LISTEN TO JONIE, SQUUUEZE ⌾

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The cut-up collage of sound that stutters through 'Squuueze' flows softly and stays knife-edge sharp — testament to how LA-based producer Jonie digs the "unique energy and musicality" of '90s West Coast funk and hip-hop.

"Producers like Dre and Dilla used sampling in a way that was really musical, playing it like an instrument and composing with it," Jonie tells y/n. "I got into making electronic music a few years ago, and in the beginning it felt very stale and cookie-cutter, so I wanted to see if I could loosen the tie and emulate that musicality in my own may."

Accordingly, 'Squuueze' verges on virtuosic — and at times reminiscent of the 'Battle Against A Weird Opponent' theme from '90s SNES classic Earthbound. Bustling in the beginning, with varying textures, tones and colours jostling for space (people, cars, city sights), the track plays out the sun-drenched day and fades towards pastel evening in its second half; that West Coast lilt comes into play, a drawling high-pitched synth the herald of heat-warped tarmac and palms, the landscape of an idealised summer.

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• 🔔 Like what you hear? Check out more from Jonie over on SoundCloud.

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☟ Jonie Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 TOMC — BAKE THE HOUSE

⌾ LISTEN TO TOMC, BAKE THE HOUSE ⌾ Like trying to tune into a feeling, the same way you'd find a station on an old radio, this track flits and skips between different textures from all directions; discovering and pinpointing disparate but harmonious sounds in a cocktail of audio collage. TOMC's collection of samples and noises spills out like a painter set free, all of it washed with thick, glittering warmth and backed by thumping house kicks.

Reassembling and restructuring audio samples taken from a Japanese bakery, amongst other things, the trackmaker spreads out a blanket of clinking metallics, mechanical squeaks, the sound of trays being set down, fractious bubbling, as well as stuttering synths, far-off soulful singing and slices of lounge guitar licks to quell the chaos; sharp hi-hats cut and shakers alternate to keep the beat shuffling.

Originally created for a company to the theme of "enjoy bread with the five senses", 'Bake The House' is TOMC's definitive intermingling of senses: the ripples of space and texture like the centre of a loaf, the clusters of clanking utensils the zing of flavours, the beat measuring out calorie intake.

And to take it, partly at least, from the inner workings of a bakery speaks of both its subtle delicacies and its machinelike industriousness—breathing like dough as much as it whirrs like a pocketsized factory.

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• 🔔 TOMC's abstract festival for the senses 'Bake The House' was released via Tokyo label PURE GOOHN and can be purchased via this actual link. It comes packaged with a remix by "Tokyo house unit" Pee.J Anderson.

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☟ TOMC Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 OSCAR OSCAR — HEY HO

This is the sound of dopamine acrostics, the sound of wondrous sultry nights permeated with loneliness, the sound of the gargantuan grey of rainy mornings, the intensity and power of distraction, the chimes of loss, the jostling gongs of creativity—it is many things. 'Hey Ho' is all about texture, from the curved angularity of metallic percussion and the bright clinking strings of a sampled East Asian instrument, to the insectoid crinkling trickle crackle like white noise and the smooth satin of oscar oscar's voice itself folding its falsetto through the diverse soundscape. Texture, and the variety of it, sets this track ablaze with lightning intrigue.

The noise that stands out the most in this slow bopping refreshing sluice of sound is that soft clonk of marimba, each note in the chord deliciously minutely out of time with others, producing a low-key audio instrumental version of a light slurring voice, just ever so slightly off, the reverb luscious, the sound so very organic, so very human: it's no wonder that this noise is often left to its own devices in the track, cradled between thudding kicks and tight snapping snares. The second half of the track is more about the samples, truncated snippets of oscar oscar's vocal like avian ad libs, as the song reaches its dissolution into its simplest elements towards the end, languorous and nocturnally downtrod as it began.

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• 🔔 You can check out 'Hey Ho' on various streaming services here, courtesy of majestic casual records.
• 🔔 The dark and dramatically lit photography that graces the artwork for this track, and very suitably, is by fellow Brisbanite and photographer Bruce Truong. The Korean script says oseuka oseuka—oscar oscar.

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☟ oscar oscar Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 CYANURA — SPLASH

There is a wholesome realness in this track that makes it difficult to not bring your other senses along for the ride: skin tingles and warms, mouth and tongue seems to anticipate flavours and textures of tasty food, visions of a natural world elsewhere swirl like mists into your mind. Combining the sounds of outside, the sounds of nature with its luscious crunches and the inviting glory of water sloshing and soothing, combining these with the sounds of indoors, the ultimate indside sounds in the form of synths that bleep simple and videogame-esque or resonate rounded and glassy with artificial digital perfection, Vancouver musicmaker cyanura transports us to wherever we most associate these sounds, a lake shore, the ocean, a boat, a riverside, a tropical island—where there's water, there 'splash' is.

With a big emphasis on foley – that is, creating sound effects or in this case instruments by effectively sampling real life sounds – cyanura serves up a bustling collage of percussion that gives this song its rich textural dimensions, that all-senses effect where the clean clicks and clops tapping and popping in the track feel like different hard sweets: it is quite literally delicious. We have the crunch of footsteps, the dry shuffle of sheafing through pages of a book, reverbing finger clicks, distant hi-hats, tiny rolling snares—a percussive playground. It almost overshadows the beautiful plaintive melodies of the track, a modern day pastoral, the childlike nature of it summoning a deep sense of fun and nostalgia associated with fun and the places where it can be had. Idyllic is the word.

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• 🔔 This beautiful track is cyanura's first to be uploaded so keep an eye on their SoundCloud.

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☟ cyanura Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 MACHINEDRUM — U BETTA

Starting out on a gently fizzing backdrop, muffled vocal samples that reverb into infinite space, and percussive marimba clonks, LA musicmaker Machinedrum continues to carve out an energetic space in this dynamo of a track 'U Betta'. It's so named for the vocal samples that wobble and cascade throughout, otherdimensional and multifaceted sometimes and lucid at others. Mellow sections with delicate noises – where wide open spaces are ornamented with ascending guitar that warbles in spaghetti western dust and desertification – contrast with lasershot parts of maximalist intensity.

These segments are raked by plasma beam synths that cut into the enormity of space, left intact for the most part and utilised dynamically by Machinedrum as he pockmarks the void with rollicking booming drums, and siphoning into it the glare of the synths, thin and iridescent above and columning robustly below like some futuristic machine, these sounds interchanging with smooth cloudy synthetic vox that rise up in a robotic call-and-response between hard and smooth. All the while glassy chiming and pizzicato strings adorn these synthetic theatrics, ornamenting the surrealistic mirror surfaces and intergalactic noir feel of the track.

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• 🔔 Machinedrum released Human Energy in September of last year. You can listen to some selections from the album on SoundCloud.

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☟ Machinedrum Internet Presence ☟
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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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LUVIIA – X V V W

Here is something short and sweet from Taiwan-dwelling beatmaker-/-producer Luviia. It's called 'x v v w' and it's tagged on SoundCloud as "Downtempo" and, well, yeah, that's what it is: utterly chilled. It's quite short, just over a minute long. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you want it to be longer; 10 times longer would be lovely. You can, however, just stick it on loop and enjoy it fluttering in and out of your mind.

It's a waterfall of sound... muffled synth chords rush between thumping heartbeat kicks set against a backdrop of nocturnal insectoid chirrupings and intermittent bass groove. Soft mellow chimes and bright string arpeggios decorate the track all the way, till it cuts out and drops in again – clearer, sharper, more deliciously crunching and with crisp percussion adding luscious texture. Paints a mood of growing chillment, the anticipation of escaping; nocturnal solace after a long, busy day, sinking into content fatigue.

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• Wanna hear more? Check Luviia's latest album, Mo' Butter, released at the beginning of this year on Inner Ocean Records

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☟ Luviia's Social Media Presence ☟
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YES/NO GUEST MIX 026 :: MORGAN HISLOP'S CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE INSIDE OF THE CLUB… AND YOUR SOUL! MIX

Something tasty for you today on this wonderful Saturday. The sun is out, the air is warm (warmer than it has been) and Spring is in the air. The land births itself once more, life emanates from previous barren scenery. Flowers and sunshine. Fresh vitality. If you are reading this you are alive. I am writing this whilst alive. Generally it's good to be alive. Let's be alive together~

Anyway the pre-mentioned something tasty is a Guest Mix, no. 26 (twenty-six) for YES/NO, and it arrives like a cherry pie fresh out the oven from the brain of Morgan Hislop. He is a producer and DJ from the UK whose music is a regulatedly manic blend of ear-exciting experimental emissions and dance-laden flavours, whose music has been released on a bunch of nice labels, including Bad Panda Records, Activia Benz and Astro Nautico. He also used to be the drummer for Tropics (a project of Chris Ward "gone band" – like Caribou or anyone else who makes music and needs extra hands to perform it in a live context), and it's an experience with that band which gave this Guest Mix its title: Can't Wait To See The Inside Of The Club… AND Your Soul!

"A good friend of mine said this [the title] to me a couple of years ago as we entered a filmed 24 hour clubnight we were invited to in Mexico City while touring," he explains via email, "and the joke/quote has stayed with me ever since." The in-joke is paradoxically universal: everyone has them, but only some people understand them – from paupers to kings, we all have our private funnies. But that aside, from the clubby origins of the Mix's title you can rightly surmise that it's a totally club-conjuring collection of sounds: "I've always been interested in the ritualistic layout of clubs and the almost worshipful state they adhere to," says Morgan.

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From an alien perspective it must be a truly eerie and tribal combination of sights and sounds, claustrophobic and euphoric at the same time. 

MORGAN HISLOP on nightclubs

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So from his own intensely skiffling synth-fraught edit of Brandy & Monica's 'The Boy Is Mine' to Slugabed's 2014 rendition of the 2001 emotional dance hit 'Another Chance' by Roger Sanchez, Morgan's mix takes in varying dishes of dance and serves them up as a buffet of delights. French dance don Para One is involved, and so is techno legend Claude VonStroke. There's a remix of Braqueberry's 'Blaque Won' by MikeQ and Divoli S'Vere. MIA's clattering 'Bird Flu' transitions seamlessly into the trance-hinting Tokyo Hands remix of VesperTown's 'Royal Flash'. And he throws in some Ludacris for good measure.

"The mix compiles a lot of eclectic tracks I was DJing out at Festivals and in the second half of last year," he says of the mix, adding: "It also has a couple of unreleased tracks of mine in there."

Without further ado, and without me basically just naming every single track on the tracklist, you should just enjoy the mix. Big thank you to Morgan Hislop. Oh and by the way, he told me that the '?????' intro is a snippet from an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? – remember that? (You're old if you do, just face it). The artwork above is a collage made by the fair hands of Morgan himself, scanned in and sent straight to me, how cool is that? Collages are fun.

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• Ｔ　Ｒ　Ａ　Ｃ　Ｋ　Ｌ　Ｉ　Ｓ　Ｔ •

• 1. ?????
• 2. Sally Shapiro - Prescript
• 3. Hairy Hands - Space (Morgan Hislop’s ‘Interstellar IMAX experience’ Remix)
• 4. Claude VonStroke - The Whistler (DJ Assault Remix)
• 5. Dexter - D-Funked
• 6. Low Concept - Girlfriend
• 7. Ducky - To The Water
• 8. Para One - Vibrations Followed By Poisoned Apples (Club Mix)
• 9. Slugabed - Another Chance 2K14
• 10. Ba-Kuura ft. Branstone - Nothingism
• 11. Sinjin Hawke & Just Blaze - One
• 12. Morgan Hislop - Smitten
• 13. Brandy & Monica - The Boy Is Mine (Morgan Hislop Remix)
• 14. Bruce Smear - Pick & Roll
• 15. MIA - Birdflu
• 16. VesperTown - Royal Flash (Tokyo Hands Remix)
• 17. RX & Shiftee - Act Out!
• 18. Braqueberry - Blaque Won (MikeQ & Divoli S’Vere Ha Crash Remix)
• 19. Ludacris - Splash Waterfalls

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☟ Morgan Hislop Social Media Presence ☟
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WRYCROFT – WHERE I AM

Here is a really nice example of concrete music or musique concrete if you prefer it en français. It arrives to our ears from a Surrey, UK / Rome, Italy-based musicmaker called Max Bonar-Law, under the moniker Wrycroft.

If you don't know, because you don't have to know (it is not a sin), concrete music is the art of creating music wholly out of sound samples. Kind of like concrete poetry but a lot closer to found poetry, in which words are "found" in their natural environments and isolated into a poem form. If you google it, like I did, you'll see that it was first developed in 1948 by French composer Pierre Schaeffer.

Wrycroft's offering is called 'Where I Am' and described by its maker on SoundCloud thusly: "i made this piece out of audio samples i mainly collected with my phone. no effects were used in the making of this piece." On Bandcamp it is described similarly: "a piece i made out of recordings i collected over the years. no effects/vsts/plug-ins/bla bla/silly stuffs were used to make this."

Alternating between samples on the high and low register for a percussive, beat-like effect, the track judders onwards through chiptune-sounding fuzzy bleeps and stuttering slices of guitar chords, punctuated with a string of pulsing kicks and the slow tick of a hi-hat-sort-of-sound. The found sound/concrete music aesthetic is topped off with lo-fi samples of somebody speaking and, from what I can hear, the sound of a road or a train station with distant vehicles rattling on a backdrop of static, grey noise.

I don't know how much work it takes to go through these various samples and figure out not only what parts to use, but where to put them and how to progress the song – it feels like Wrycroft went through a pretty long process to get to this finished result. But fun, too – fun to create a musical collage.

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If you'd like to support this producer, please head on over to Bandcamp and download 'Where I Am' on a name-your-price basis. It is also a free download.

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☟ Wrycroft Social Media Presence ☟
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✿ RYCE ✿ – FLOWERS

One commenter on this track said "gotta watch out the young ones are murking everyone in the game right now." And to some extent that may well be true. Not necessarily that they're already better, or that they are actually actually murking everybody, but the sentiment still stands. Why is it that a younger person might be better? Well, firstly it's easier to learn things when you're younger. Your brain is more malleable, skills and things sink in more easily. Secondly, there's less bias! If you've only just started making music at 20-something, it might be the case that you're more biased towards one sound, or less inclined to experiment with other sounds.

If I had more time to explore the differences more thoroughly with actual evidence, etc. then obviously I would sound less like I am totally going on conjecture and "what I think" i.e. "my opinion". But I digress.

I speak of youth because the producer of this track is, apparently, 14-years-old. Really? If so, that's amazing, big talent. But it's not the reason I'm writing about the track. I'm writing about it because I heard it and liked it! :)

Created by Finnish producer ✿ ryce ✿ – or for brevity's sake let's say just plain ryce (no pun intended) – the track is called 'f l o w e r s' or 'flowers' and it's a slow melding of luscious sounds twisting together to a gloriously textured beat twinkling with metallic and glassy chimes of percussion. It's underpinned with supple columns of bass, a sample, with pitch-shifted vocals and slow guitar twangs, from I-don't-know-where winding its way gently across the track. It tastes like vaporwave with hints of hip hop, but it feels more unique than that. It feels like liquid treasure, a bypassing of ontological worries to simply float through life with bliss free-flowing all around you. If only〜

The real beauty of being this young and this creative and talented, however, is anticipating how these skills and this vision will evolve over time. Here's hoping for the literal best song ever from ryce one day in the future.

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• ryce is part of collective/label/genre (???) BAEWAVE, which has like 24 artists on its roster. 10 Reasons Why The Internet Is So Nice.

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☟ ✿ ryce ✿ Social Media Presence ☟
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URLCHILD – LIKE YOU ~ FALLING FOR

From this track's first abrasive beats it was kinda sold to me instantly. Then this gnarly vocal sample pops in like a small anthropomorphic whale bouncing around the room after it's crept in through the window, blubbering all the while in hypnotic loops. Wtf, sorry.

Well it's by urlchild (who is 21, from Austin, Texas) and it's called 'Like You ~ Falling For'. I didn't expect it to drop into this really house-flavoured vibe, didn't expect those sharp syncopated piano chords, mainly. These, alongside pulsar whispers of synth that zip in and out of earshot, are the main actual non-percussion sounds that aren't vocal samples, which in endlessly reverbing pitch-shiftedness croon the song's title.

The beat clacks, exploded from underneath with blooping depth charge sub-bass deposits, shifting above with garage-esque hi-hats that provide the fidgety skitter that work for house tracks like this – regular rhythm gets you moving on a basic level; the hi-hats accent this rhythm just so, just so, zapping your limbs into life. And then your brain gets shaken by the dynamic cymbals that crash across the track like haphazard punctuation.

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☟ urlchild Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter

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JAMIE XX – SLEEP SOUND [VIDEO]

You can always trust London's Jamie xx to plate up a solid serving of bass in each of his musical mealtimes, but here it's not only a feast, a banquet of bass, but also a crucial element to the video. What? Well, the people dancing, members of the Manchester Deaf Centre in the video are deaf – the only way they can get the rhythm is to feel it, literally feel it through the bulldozing bass that would make your hair stand on end and through the rhythm of shared movement. This was the dream of its creator, artist Sofia Mattioli, to explore not hearing rhythm, but also feeling and sharing rhythm.

It's an inspiring video that shows the danceable power in Jamie xx's music, his signature. 'Sleep Sound' is a rumbling giant of sound, blood-curdling bass juddering the whole way, draped with rhythmic, indecipherable vocal samples that play in patterns alongside the drums, which clatter in virtuosic garage style with muffled snares and pinching hi-hats to a house-flavoured pattern. The whole thing swings forward in luscious lilts of rhythm, something that strikes you almost instantly as soon as the beat kicks in, additional percussive loops and fills as well as increased waves of sampled vocals providing a heady lift as the track crescendos towards the end.

• 'Sleep Sound' is uh available to purchase along with another track – 'Girl' – on Young Turks, 5th May

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PUPILATION – NATURE

How about something from Spain right now? Is that gonna float your boat? Well in some ways it doesn't really matter where anything is from, but in others it matters a great deal. Let's just split the bill and say that it depends – it depends entirely on the situation I suppose, and your interest. Me, for example, I'm interested in where stuff comes from. Sorry but I am.

Anyway, in this instance here is something not from "Spain" as it were but from Euskal Herria – Basque Country, and it arrives in the form of a track called 'Nature' by Bilbao-based beatmaker Pupilation – or PVPILΔTION. For the sake of ease, I'm going to say Pupilation from now on. Sorry about that.

True to its name, 'Nature' features sounds of birds singing, chirping noises that ease you into the glittering glitz of wide chiming melodies that float over the top of this track for its entire duration, like a silvery mist. Bass grooves with slow and simple funk pattern, filling the deep void beneath the the shuffling raw beat that shakes its way forward with harsh hi-hats and dull-thud organic kicks and resounding snare. The middle of the track marks a return to the sound of birds; other sounds join in, glassy shearing synth sound, stepping patterns of harpsichord-like twinkling.

Little things – like the introducing the beat with just bare hi-hats, like muting all sounds except the drums for less than a second just before the middle break, like the beat's staggering return to life for the final part, like the chunks of leftover bass chopped at the end – make this track what it is: very cool. It's these simple things, simple acts of not even decoration, but of minimal subtraction, dynamic placement, that keep things interesting in this track, which with its sounds and fresh beat is very, very pretty anyway.

This guy makes music under not only Pupilation, but also Ber SO and Zitrick – maybe this current moniker is the ultimate one, the name of choice. In any case, he seems to upload a tune here and there pretty regularly, so if you're into this just check his SoundCloud every now and again.

• There is also an album, free to download, called Land of Lies.

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Like Pupilation on Facebook
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RANDOM HERO – MORE, MORE, MORE // CLOUD NINE

These are the sultry and let's say quite frankly nicely addictive sounds of nowhere-based musicmaker Random Hero. With their SoundCloud back catalogue full to the brim with bootleg remixes and regular remixes and bootlegs by themselves, this up-and-coming artist has just – well, I say just, but it was over two weeks ago – uploaded two original songs. Both are different, yet both contain lashings of samples, positively crowded with the sounds of yore in glossy modern surroundings.

Perhaps inspired by the success or the widespread nature of future funk or the phantom adherents of vaporwave, there are, like I said, a load of samples in both. The first, however 'More, More, More' is packed with ghost noises from three sonic relics: 'More, More, More' (you coulda guessed that kinda though) by Andre True Connection, 'Mr. Funky Samba' by Banda Black Rio, and 'I'm Your Boogie Man' by KC & The Sunshine Band.

Obviously, the overriding sample here, the refrain, the riff, is the iconic "More, more, more… set to a swaying disco beat – shuffling and shaking along with slow intensity – stuttering oooo's and looped trumpets shoot through like a mist of funk as huge bass booms with a muffled synth squelch underneath it all. It's sunny and carefree, looking back to mould a new vision for the future, melding the happy sounds of these three songs into one seamless entity.

It's in 'Cloud Nine' where things are a little bit different. Although it could still be called future funk, because by its nature, its sounds – the fluttering rhythm guitar chords, the keyless octave-skipping bassline, the jittering lead funk guitar – it is extremely funky. Funk funk funk. But there is something else in its up-tempo sounds, too fast for disco, but just about catching the tailcoat of early 00's pop – the type inspired by UK garage.

When dance music spoke of getting home to get ready, still innocent to the actual act of dancing and going out and getting completely drunk, with a sensibility for sugarcoating the whole affair; dancing in the mirror, traffic jams in the fading evening summer sun, speaking to friends on the chunky ancestors of cordless phones, gaudy clothes-ridden bedrooms.

All in all, what more can I say than what I've already said? These are instantly likeable songs, ones that take old sounds and frame them in glossy new surroundings. Random Hero has offered up these two very well produced morsels, like perfectly barbecued meat, for us and I can confirm that they smell damn good and they're tasty, too: simple, not overcomplicated, and done with style.

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Listen to Random Hero on SoundCloud

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VENTUREX KEEP ON & ON

O dang o damn. Feel da Funk. Can you feel it? If you haven't pressed play, then I doubt very much if you're feeling the funk at all at the moment - unless, that is, you happen to be listening to funk already; or perhaps you feel pretty funky anyway. Maybe you're a funky person generally. Well, whether you got the funk or you don't got the funk or you want to know what the shiz I'm talking about, then I'd read on.

Hi, it's me again. So here we have VentureX, a producer from Chicago, with the overtly funky vibrations of 'Keep On & On', one of his most recent songs. He's rather prolific on his SoundCloud so I'd check that out if I were you - there are tons of gems just like this one. I chose 'Keep On & On' cause it sounds grrrrreat, better than a bowl of Frosties. "What's cooler than being cool?" asked Andre 3000. "Ice cold!" the people respond. And this song is ice cold. Freezy.

The song seems to fade in from nowhere, just like all good future funk songs, and at once it explodes into a funk-tastic groove of a track. The bass digs deep into your spirit. The drums thud, glitching out every now and again in delicious clipping clops and delectable clopping clips - hi-hats tick and the snare is a vicious slap. Synth samples wash over your brain. A piano is in there too. The funk guitar or synth or whatever-it-is melody conduces a funk-flavoured dance-a-thon in your blood.

The vocal is a strong altered sample from somewhere (do you know where it's from? I don't); it's handled with care and stretched to dynamic proportions around the change of vibe in the song as it becomes a blast of energy aside from the head-nodding funk that cushions this section. Don't you just dig the the bongo rhythms at 3:05? And then the song fades out. It leaves as it arrived. A brief spark of stimulation for the brain and body, carrying with it the spirit of funk as well as the spirit of the radio on a Saturday afternoon in the 1990s. You can't deny that. Listen to more of this guy's songs.

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LAZY INTERVIEW #11: YOSI HORIKAWA

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← #10: STARLIT EVERGLADES #12: CORY JREAMZ →

Hello. Here is another Q&A from my Lazy Interview series. It's called "Lazy" because it's the same questions every time. Yep. It's true. But it's kinda a non-issue because all the answers I've received so far have been nice and insightful. I never promised to be Frost (rest in peace). Anyway, you can read all of those past interviews if you want.

This time around, Japanese producer and sound designer Yosi Horikawa was kind enough to get back to me with some answers. He makes music that is infused with found sound, that is, recordings of noises that occur in all walks of everyday and not-so-everyday life - recordings that he has made himself. He's rather dedicated to the cause; he has melted microphones trying to record the sound of fire, and had close-shaves with bears whilst recording the background noises of forests in Japan.

I was first captivated by his sounds thanks to his album Vapor, released earlier this summer - in particular, the magical song 'Wandering' really caught my attention. It is a lush soundscape of forest ambience mixed with intense tribal drums and atmospheric synths - very tasty. Naturally, I wanted to find out a little bit more on how this guy ticked and this is what you can find out below.

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Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?
　This is Yosi Horikawa.
　I'm from Chiba, Japan.
　I'm a sound creator, sound designer.
　Making music with found sounds, sometimes I do sound design as well.

Why did you decide to start creating music?
　Ever since I can remember, I've been making something - in other words, I've been a DIY guy.
　I made everything I wanted, like toys, paintings, photography, welding machine...
　So it was so natural that I started creating music, because I've always been crazy about music.
　But I didn't have any musical instruments when I started, so at first, I started to find a tool to make a music.
　Then, I found a sleeve of KRS-ONE's "Return Of The Boom Bop".
　[On the sleeve] He is shouting into a pair of headphones, and I heard the lo-fi voice on the album, then I noticed that the headphone might work instead of the microphone, so I tried the same thing.
　Finally it worked.
　That's my beginning of music creation.

How would you describe your sound? What makes you and your style stand out?
　I use found sounds on my music.
　Using many sounds which I recorded in my daily life, in nature, everywhere.

　Now, we can find tools to make music so easily.
　Actually so many people are making music.
　I think it's a great thing that we can find a way to do what we want to do.
　But actually it's so difficult to be original.
　There are so many digital sounds we can get so easily.

　As I said, I'm creating with what I've recorded,
　I know it's not a innovative way of making music, but real sounds have a possibility to be unique.
　There are so many sounds we've never heard on this planet.

Is there a perfect time and place for listening to your music?
　I think the listener should decide the perfect moment to listen.
　In a sense, in front of my monitor speaker is the perfect place to listen though.

What inspires you most when writing a song?
　Reminiscence and Association.
　Most of the time, I decide a concept for the track.
　But when I start making it, the real sounds remind me of a memory.
　I follow the memory, then another memory is associated.
　So my music is an aggregate of my memories and imaginations.

What is your most memorable musical experience?
　It's a moment I found the headphone can work instead of the microphone.

What are your favourite three songs at the moment?
　I can't decide.

Who do you most admire in the music world?
　I can't decide.

In your opinion, what is the future of music?
　In our history, we've repeated the same things.
　So, although the technology may be evolved, I think the essence doesn't get changed so much.

What's the future of your music - what do you hope to do next?
　I just want to keep making.
　I will have many experiences in my life, then my music will be changed little by little.
　I'm thinking, now, I will investigate the texture of sound.

What, aside from music, is most important to you?
　I love most of the arts.
　For me, creativity is most important.
　And I can't live without beer.

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I'm looking forward to what Yosi might do next. If he will be exploring sound texture, as opposed to the sounds themselves, then we can expect some interesting noises to make their respective ways onto his future repertoire of songs. It seems as though he's always searching for something new, exploring the world in terms of the sounds that can be found upon or even within it. In that sense, despite his modest dismissal of his field recording stuff as "not an innovative way of making music", he is an innovator; an explorer, at the very least.

To look at the world of music, or - for Yosi's way of thinking - sound itself, with genuine curiosity and pioneering spirit, especially to such an extent that one's most memorable musical memory is finding out that you can use headphones as a microphone, is a good way to look at things. It's not just going through the motions; it's delving deep past music theory and chord progressions and all that blah right to the most basic, natural, and memory-invoking noises that the world has to offer. It's no wonder that his music seems to take you away somewhere else, and will most likely continue to do so.

Shoutout to Yosi Horikawa for making nice music and being a nice guy - thank you very much!

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← #10: STARLIT EVERGLADES #12: CORY JREAMZ → - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Like Yosi Horikawa on Facebook
Listen to Yosi Horikawa on Soundcloud
Hear more Yosi Horikawa on Myspace

ARISTOPHANES 貍貓 FT SUMI & PETECHAN 牆裡人 THE WALL

Here is some more from Groove Bunny Records, the up and coming Chinese label who recently facilitated the release of Madpete's Cantonese Boom Bap. This is a little different in that it features more than one, more than two, artists on the track. First of all we have Aristophanes, the young female rapper from Taiwan - the first time I wrote about her it was for her song 'The Peach Blossom' (you should check it out). Secondly, we have one half of Madpete: Petechan, Taiwanese producer who has also created the beats on this track. Thirdly, there are the vocals of Sumi - a Belgium-based singer.

All of that comes together in this lovely track '牆裡人 / The Wall'. It is at once dominated by the undeniable head-bopping old school hip hop vibe that Petechan has constructed. Completely off-kilter and dripping with swagger, it is gloriously left to sparkle without too much heavy bass or other synth instruments floating in its way: in this way it's a kind of minimalistic song. The beat features glass-cracking hi-hats, unassuming kicks, heavy-duty snares. Samples sparkle and cheeky organs peek through the beat playfully.

Sumi provides sung vocals, a dreamlike sound that stretch out almost like a chorus. They're given pride of place towards the end of the song, suiting the beat-instrumental perfectly - adding softness to the general harsh reality of the live-sounding drums. Just another nice element of this nice song.

As always, Aristophanes' voice is flawless. It's so expressive, lilting in and out of the Mandarin bars, aching along with her words, sometimes whispering with a sultry hiss. Not always as before, however - her voice has been more layered this time, allowed to bounce around afterwards. And that's not a bad sound at all - I could actually listen to a lot more of her voice, so to have it echoing around and displayed with a fuller sound is a great thing, really.

Back to waiting now for more Aristophanes. Perhaps an album one day? Could be a possibility. Now that she's with Groove Bunny Records, it's a distinct likelihood. And with many artists willing to collaborate with her to create great sounds, there's a chance it could be a very diverse, interesting and very cool recording indeed.

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Like Aristophanes 貍貓 on Facebook
Listen to Aristophanes 貍貓 on Soundcloud

Listen to Sumi on SoundCloud

Listen to Petechan on SoundCloud

GAMMA-F7 TWO TONE PITCH BENT

And now I have something for you that comes from an artist who seems to come from nowhere and has no ties and is known only by some people on SoundCloud. But that's not a problem. I just think it adds to mystique - not that mystique is something that makes music sound any different or better or anything. It's just an interesting facet. The artist in question is Gamma-F7 and the song in question is 'Two Tone Pitch Bent'.

Nice and nothingy - no emotion, no feelings, just a fantasy adventure inside some kind of intergalactic magic carpet-slash-circuit board. It's a cool, cold, icy kind of sound. Something created in a laboratory for major funk experiments. The rhythm of a thousand dancing harddrives in tandem. That kind of thing u know. It's quite unique in that there seem to be two different beats going on at the same time: something quite fast, tittering and skipped-out hi-hats; then there's something slow, almost a dubstep beat, a slow two-step kinda thing.

In a medley of chopped up samples, the song exists. It is made up entirely of chopped up samples. Not that that's a bad thing. It actually isn't a bad thing at all. As interrupted vocal samples breathe through the scintillating sounds, almost like neon-glowing glass cascading down a day-glo waterfall, hollow synth chords mark the song's progression alongside, of course, the beat - the snare appearing like a punch from nowhere in virtual reality.

Generally, it is just a very busy and energetic sound. Partly coming from the glitchy elements where samples are held back and riffed upon like toy sub-machine guns. I like how it slows gradually towards the end, eventually becoming just a completely slowed-down version of its former self. The shutting down of some huge, glossy, imaginary machine. Internet music. Hope you enjoyed it.

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Listen to Gamma-F7 on Soundcloud