🐣 XINOBI — SKATEBOARDING

A melancholic ride, sumptuous and nocturnal, dimly lit suburban streets, housefronts passing by as the wheels trundle on the tarmac, the determination and focus and the wandering meandering feel of freedom: this track is called 'Skateboarding' and it embodies the spirit of skateboarding—not what it means for everyone, but the spirit of skateboarding for Portuguese producer Xinobi. For him it's personal. "As a suburb kid in the late 80s, he was obsessed with the skateboarding culture, and had a strong urge to get himself a skateboard." After he got one there was an "abrupt and unexpected end to his skateboarding career" when he experienced a serious fracture in his arm. He stopped and took up guitar to rehabilitate his fingers. Xinobi, however, still had "a strong affiliation to the culture."

In the lonely emotivity of the track, its lamenting synth bloops and its plaintive chord washes wobbling into the air, in its solitary feel, there is a sense of being on the outside looking in, of imagining the technical nature and the mechanics of skateboarding, being part of skateboarding culture but not actually skateboarding. As such an intimate disconnect exists in this track, you can feel the closeness, the raw hi-hats and the vital fuzz of the bass synths and the acrobatic nuances of the beat and the organic lifeblood ambience trickling throughout, but in the sadness of some of the sounds there is distance.

Analysing this world from an outsider-inside perspective, Xinobi samples a speech at the US Library of Congress by harcore punk and post-hardcore figurehead Ian MacKaye about the philosophy of skateboarding. It summarises what the producer himself wants to say, encapsulates the power of the track itself, and the potency of the skateboard and its power to both physically and figuratively move.

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• 🔔 The aptly skateboardy video was directed by Lydie Barbara.
• 🔔 'Skateboarding' is the opening track from Xinobi's album, On The Quiet, which was recently released on Lisbon artist collective and electronic music label Discotexas, and you can listen to it on their SoundCloud.

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☟ Xinobi Internet Presence ☟
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TOYS HEY BOY [VIDEO]

It's been a while since I wrote about Paris duo TOYS – the last time, in fact, was when they were kind enough to agree to an interview, back in June. Around the same time, TOYS shared a video for their new-at-the-time track, 'We Are' – an epic track with an equally epic, and strange, video that followed a strange guy who was seemingly able to bring people back from the dead. Before that, way before that, their song 'Noise' entered my ears and never left: it's still one of my favourites (and I urge you to check it out, too).

Just a little bit over a week ago, the duo were at it again – this time far from their native Paris. Filmed in New York City, their new video – for a song called 'Hey Boy' – showcases various yet connected subcultural pursuits of the city, namely: street art, skateboarding, basketball and breakdancing. All in glorious black and white, filmed up-close-and-personal to its participants, we have director Louis de Caunes to thank for this visual treat. For the music, however, we of course must look to TOYS themselves.

Beginning as a dreamlike trickle of haunting sounds, including a hugely glossy column of sub-bass surging its way through everything, the song soon gets an understated R&B-flavoured beat to drive it forward, complete with sandlike hi-hats and popping-gunshot snares. Vocal samples, from where I dunno, are rhythmically dropped into the song with increasing frequency as wide synth chords build up and up, joined by shots of sharpened electro buzz-bleeps. Everything becomes increasingly distorted by these all-engulfing synths, sounding like a white noise organ with a subverted atmosphere of urban consecration. With its laid-back yet intense atmosphere, 'Hey Boy' provides the perfect soundtrack to the city-based pastimes you see in its video, mirroring the frustrations and determination you can see on the faces of the video's protagonists. I want to hear and see more from these guys.

NB. The video, as nice as it is, has already racked up over 30,000 views in a week AND has been featured on Vimeo as one of their staff picks. Nice going!

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TONI WILLZ HYPEBEAST [FREE DOWNLOAD]

This is sounding so very sublime this morning. It's pretty cold outside, well, it's cold, like 1°C outside, but the sun is bright, coming in through the windows, hitting its edges and making long angles of light on the walls. For some reason, a nice fresh slice of rap goes with this kind of morning just as perfectly as next-to-frozen apple juice and a bowl of your favourite cereal. Ya it's a beautiful sleepy morning and this song 'HypeBeast' matches up just perfectly.

But who has made this lovely tune? It comes from 20-year-old Los Angeles-based rapper Toni Willz and producer AbJo, purveyor of smooth sounds and fine beats. Put these two elements together and you get something pretty magical – it's an exercise in a chilled out, horizontal vibe augmented with a few hits of nostalgic skate-rap's easy-peasy no-sweat attitude. I urge you to treat your ears to this right now.

With laid-back liquid precision, the sounds of the track flow out in a head-nodding medley of boom-bap flavoured drums combined with shiftling glitch-induced percussion and unrecognisable snippet samples that ripple in slow-motion kickflip aesthetic, backed up by subtle, glassy bass. It's wholly fresh yet summons the spirit of the ever-present endless summer – the kind of thing that oozes effortlessly out of sunny places like California. Field recorded conversations about being a "hypebeast" raise up like a kind of cultural backdrop for the song, and it certainly works in placing the song, i.e. giving it even more of a sense of coming from a place in space and time.

Toni Willz exhales his bars with nonchalant confidence, sticking with a po-faced low-register tone that flutters just around the same note for the whole song – exudes a certain swagger. His words defame "hypebeasts", presumably rappers completely wrapped up in hype and celebrity, citing himself as a contrast as someone who just lives their life and raps. For instance "All these new waves form like the ocean / No more one hit wonders, we need true devotion" – "In just reality you learn a life-lesson: true rappers live, hypebeasts go to heaven." The point is made with his "new Nirvana flow" making religious metaphors throughout, ultimately coming across with untouchable poetic lilt as someone who will continue to rap with consistent ear-pleasing quality.

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2MORROWS VICTORY VOIR (JUSTUS)

Talk about a knock-on effect... from Gang Colours' mix, to Tropics' edit, to the guys themselves: yes, this is 2morrows Victory with a new (2 months-old) song called 'Voir (JustUs)'. When you go exploring, sometimes you really do find some lovely stuff. And this is precisely one of those sometimes. I had never heard of these guys before a couple of days ago, but as far as I can gather they're from London and they look - and most importantly SOUND - set for big things.

This song comes as a single from an upcoming "project" (an album or an EP, who knows) simply called SEVEN. Perhaps it will include 7 songs. Or be a concept album about the number 7. Any which way you look at it, and especially judging from the stuff I've heard before (including this live rendition of the beautiful 'Lift Off'), it will probably be a very fine-sounding record. Fine as in fiiiiiiiine - not as in "I'm fine thanks".

The song begins as a journey into another dimension, one where the breezes of the world become languid synths that seem to stretch off into infinity, where the earth is a quaking thick jelly of distorted saw-waves at the very deep end of the bass spectrum. Kicks punctuate this world like gentle stepping stones. Later on, snares crack-snap like supernovae.

It's a youthful collage of sounds that, as much as they seem to be ploughing ahead into the future, seems to hold dear to its heart the laid-back and somewhat retro tenets of skate music - it's a broad genre, not even a genre actually and more of a feeling that I get. But it has that long-days, sociable yet esoteric subculture vibe to it. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. If you don't, then I'm sorry that I couldn't get my point across.

The spacey journey continues and before you know it, 2morrows Victory are treating you to 90s slow-jam like sounds, soulful vocals that seem to stroke your ears. This soon gives way to a slow and fluid rap before the final quarter melts into a wide sound incorporating everything that'd come before. A future sound that can't well be ignored. So naturally I'm looking forward to this new project - whenever it may come our way.

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