SCINTII — TIMES NEW ROMAN (PALMISTRY REMIX)

⌾ LISTEN TO SCINTII, TIMES NEW ROMAN (PALMISTRY REMIX) ⌾

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Firstly an undulating wash of post-trance sound, the static sea of scathing synths and hiss that marks the start of this track feels panoramic, witch house-tinged, maybe, but less pentagrams, more amorphous futuristic mode of transport. This harsh, nebulous swirl becomes the backdrop for a restless scuttle of garage-tinged beats — the propulsion at the heart of Palmistry's remix treatment for 'Times New Roman' by Shanghai-based Scintii.

Leaving its electrified cosmic cloud behind, the track dives into a glimmering shuffle of percussion and gloopy bass, pitched clangs simultaneously rooting it somewhere physical while also darkly ringing in a metaphysical realm, a club night on another plane of existence.

While Scintii's original 'Times New Roman' sees her voice creep amid a lurching forest of synth, Palmistry's reworking fragments the vocal and scatters it like silly putty throughout, adding human — if warped — warmth to its cold, kinetic vessel. The change tempo towards the end is natural, satisfyingly so, like a train slowing for a station, further emphasising the propulsive power of the track as the track draws to a fizzy, ethereal close.

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• 🔔 This track is out now via Houndstooth. You can stream it and purchase it as your heart desires from this list of services.
• 🔔 The original 'Times New Roman' was the result of a recording session with Danny L. Harle. "The main melody came to me while wandering round a shopping mall," Scintii says of the track "but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then I had the session with Danny and it just worked with the beat he was making. It really started to become about me feeling sure of myself as a musician and producer, going in a new direction and really being able to maximise my own voice."

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🐣 YMIR — STAIR [初演 • PREMIERE]

⌾ LISTEN TO YMIR - STAIR ⌾

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Space. The final frontier. Well, not in this instance — 'Stair' by Los Angeles-based producer Ymir just sounds as though it's in space. That's because in this dramatic piece of ambient music, he's rising above and looking at from afar what was (at the time) "a new urban environment" — a new resident in an alien city.

"I'd never been somewhere that never sleeps before," Ymir tells yes/no by email. Originally from North Dakota, moving to Los Angeles was an eye-opening experience; he reveals that its particular sense of "decay" was soemthing that interested him.

"I think that was sparked by the more run-down areas of the city, and how different that was from what I was used to in my (relatively) small town," he says.

Suitably, the track hums with unsteady resonance, touched with lo-fi scratches and imperfections — a sense of sonic wear-and-tear that makes it feel as though this track has been around for years, floating in the air. Most noticeable are the wheeling changes in pitch, dynamic and flighty, continuing well into the swampy drone that drenches the track's final minute.

Giant bassy notes twang out a dirge of vast Western proportions, emanating from the depths of the city for miles around, a sense of classic instrumentation yet muffled under the waves of cosmic drama; far-off pines bristle against grid systems, someone huddles beneath an overpass.

Part far more gritty alternative soundtrack to 'Space Junk Road' from Super Mario Galaxy, part out-of-body experience looking out over the countless street lights and shuffling people of LA's urban sprawl, 'Stair' is a balanced, considered view of something new. Space — and tender, detached feeling — tempered into sound.

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• 🔔 Listen to 'Stair' on Spotify, or check out more of Ymir's unreleased electronic work on his SoundCloud.

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SUN CORP。 — RENEW

⌾ LISTEN TO SUN CORP。, RENEW ⌾

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Arriving after the gloomy 'Displacement', Singapore-based Australian musicmaker SUN CORP。 continues an introspective exploration of urban atmospheres with 'Renew'. Trickling into earshot, the track soon shudders with with a the ghost of a 1980s rock guitar chord, sweeping the the scuttling tick of the track and its watery foundations.

A tumble of lo-fi beats setting wheels in motion, the track is a tale of waking up from a fever dream told in shades of vaporwave. Hinting at its title, choral synths cut through the air like columns of sunbeams, punching holes in the storm clouds — the destructed crush of those chords, the sound of thunder, traffic, noise, disappearing into the distance.

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• 🔔 'Renew' is taken from Displacement EP, which you can stream and/or download from Bandcamp if you like.

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🐣 STEVEN A. CLARK — KARMA

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"Just getting into bad relationships over and over. Then one day you realize that these relationships are just a reflection of what’s going on inside of you," writes Steven A. Clark of 'Karma'. With the skewed bassline cutting a warped groove, the cyclical – yes, karmic – guitar twinkling out of focus, and lyrics that speak of that "internal battle", the spills into your mind, seeping through the cracks.

At its centre swirl the vocals of Steven A. Clark himself. Worn, cradled in woozy effects and cutting an infectious R&B glimmer in lines like "Everyday, everyday, everyday / Telling me lies disguised as truths" and laying himself bare (literally) in the opener, "I'm naked / Over you..." it swings between these flying falsettos and a soothsaying mantra crooned in a plasma gravel: "Cause when the karma comes / The karma comes / karma's coming your way." A feverish warning.

"We do some much external shit looking for people, places, things, activities to make us happy, or distract us from the way we feel about ourselves," he explains more about the track. Something like Tame Impala analysing the uglier sides of the brain, 'Karma' is a psychedelic saunter around the block, a me-and-my-thoughts gloopy, gossamer tangle.

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• 🔔 'Karma' is taken from Steven A. Clark's upcoming album Hypervigilant, actual release date TBC. Stream 'Karma' by clicking this text and choosing from one of the various streaming services that you desire.

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🐣 R23X — TERRA_II

⌾ LISTEN TO R23X TERRA_II ⌾ Described as an "adventure to a long-forgotten space station/arcade orbiting the now-vacated planet once known as Earth," the two morsels of music that comprise R23X's latest release – Terra_II – act like a soundtrack to an imaginary videogame. They set the mood, induct you seamlessly into the world at the heart of this project.

The two parts to this single represent of the adventure to the eponymous space station/arcade: Terra_II. Partly summoning the steady pace of a space shuttle journey with its swaying march of layered beats, this track for the most part feels like walking around an abandoned space station.

There are the hollow synth boops that summon this sense of forlorn loneliness, the emptiness of robots with nothing to do—something once great rediscovered. But there's a cheerfulness to the coldness in the track: the two-chord vox sounds, the cut sample in the background, the videogame noises throughout that still erupt from the forgotten arcade machines.

But the last part of the track changes tack. Following a tiny break, where you feel the silence of creeping through a dripping tunnel to a new area on the station, the airy, analogue chords (conjuring the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VII) change dramatically. A now brooding, maybe more monstrous atmosphere hides in the hallways.

Part of the "mystery" at the heart of Terra_II as a whole.

'G.A.I.A. Probe' represents the (perhaps) discovery of something that might shed light on how the "thought-to-be destroyed space station has thrived and adapted in ways thought previously impossible."

It's just 54 seconds of sound, but for the duration of its series of rising, textured synth chords it shifts between beauty and decay, discovery and devastation. Synth vox suggests a hint of eerie humanity, no matter how long ago; the clinking bleeps ping a simple melody of inevitable but untimely shutdown.

Equal parts delicate and laden with the possibilities of space, shades of human emotion mingle with overtones of the sad uselessness of prodigious machines mired in neglect. In Terra_II, R23X marries with vivid colour and detail a scene of moody mystery with that strange lightness and gravity with which videogames consume and enthrall.

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• 🔔 Part of a project called EarthCade, created by R23X (Marc Junker) and Drew Wise (game developer, artist), which originally began as a game idea: "an exploration of bright and colourful animal characters who built a a self-sufficient arcade (The EarthCade) where everyone is welcome and included."

  Junker explains a little further. "We started the project with the idea of donating a portion of profits from every item sold to various charities (VOKRA, WCS, etc) that may prompt the audience (or their kids) to discuss/think about ways they can change/contribute for a better future on Earth!"

• 🔔 Terra_II is available now on Yetee Records, an offshoot of The Yetee, purveyor of art, apparel and more, where both Junker and Wise are both art directors. You can purchase Terrace_II on Bandcamp, if you like. And you can find more EarthCade products here.
• 🔔 We first stumbled across R23X in 2014. Check out the track that introduced us to R23X, 'Dry Summer'.

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🐣 ZAP HOLMES — FLAKED OUT DREAMING

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This track floats along on two separate plain. One is this floating nebulous feeling, a flowing tide like the watercolours of a dreamscape, the melting mind of somewhere unknown, the swells of the tide of the unsconscious, sweeping along and founding this track on wholly ambient terrain. Like floating through space, it's the infinity of slumber.

On the other hand, it feels close and intimate, though detached and lonely, like the charting and observation of a biomechanical organism. The way samples chant in regularity, lo-fi and wheezing like some artificial life process, ticking percussion keeping time and clacking and sounding the cogs of static motion, trickling along like a living engine.

And that makes sense. Swedish musicmaker Zap Holmes tells us his inspiration for the track was his dreaming girlfriend.

"My girlfirend like to sleep and sometimes for many hours. And I made this track during one of those times," he said. "Got some recordings on my iphone when we messed around at home so I put some samples of her in the song also."

So 'Flaked Out Dreaming' has this sense of being alive in suspended animation, a grand dream arcing over whilst all the time no time is moving at all; those hazy, crackling samples counting the seconds till consciousness. It's an epic of sleep, where it culminates in these sometime crashing waves of charged white noise distortion, twinkling lights like neurons firing on the cusp of waking.

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• 🔔 This is taken from Zap Holmes' Bluescreens EP - all of which he made on a "crappy little laptop when my main computer was broke. Was stuck with almost no samples and an old version of Reason."
• 🔔 You may stream or download 'Flaked Out Dreaming' via your fav service on this link right here.

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🐣 BOD [包家巷] — EMPTY MOUNTAIN WEEPS ALONE [空山独哭]

The screaming cosmic synth that hits at the start of this track, it arrives scathing and scorching, but shot through in the midst of its scratchings and scrapings is this plasma modulation, a sense of the steel and unbridled progress of the present and its outstretched hands craving the years ahead and beyond. The decayed whistle and muffled impact of a bomb, the PA system speaking to the crowd as you embark a ship to a future industrial megacity. This is the scene-setting power of two-thirds noise one-third classical in 'Empty Mountain Weeps Alone [空山独哭]' by LA-based musicmaker Nicolas Zhu aka bod or Baojiaxiang[包家巷] ('Baojia Alley'), presumably named after the same street in Chengdu. Maybe not.

Halfway through this short sharp snippet of sound we are introduced to this gargantuan construction site, the glitching beat like heavy machinery working in unison clashing together cranes and cement mixers and all the movement and drills and hammers and metal and muscle carving away at the surface of the earth and constructing a cradle of consumerism. In the background the silken tones of a traditional Chinese lute-like instrument (there are many so to name one would be a guess), like a sigh of nature drowned out by the grunts of advancement, reminscent of the hole-boring mall-making and gaudy grandiosity at tourist destination Yangshuo. Nature as stomped on by humanity. And it ends, the rush of cars in the rain, piano sounding a gentle shrug as protest, a casual hands-in-pocket lonely lament.

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• 🔔 This wonderful experimental piece arrives from bod's upcoming release for Zoom Lens called Piano Compositions: a 17-minute piece of which this snippet is in fact the 3rd movement. It's out and available tomorrow (15th December).
• 🔔 Read about the strange carnival that is Yangshuo right here, which we wrote about as part of our Visits travel series.

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🐣 POLTRAGHOST — EXPOSURE

To a shuffling march of French touch style rounded meaty drum sounds, we enter into this disembodied club, a cube of strangeness spinning through space like an errant asteroid, an Enterprise of the stars that instead of going where no-one has ever gone before is instead spinning and spinning with this fever dream of dance firmly lodged in its prefrontal cortex. The familiarity of the track, that you know you can dance to it, lies in those sharp thumping kicks, the pugilistic bump of the snare, the thud and tang of it propelling tracts of pinprick starlight glitter and wobbling nebulous string samples across the mysterious expanse, the gloopy groovesome bass and its ascending notes casting a cloak of pioneering exploration over it all.

'Exposure' by sometime remotely conjoined duo Poltraghost lives in this interdimensional zone, a sort of blissful nowhere of its own creation. The alien nature of the track does not come from these regular elements – these tried-and-true tropes of 4/4 kick-snare electronic music: a regular foundation – but mostly from the pitch-shifted vocal that with a silken rumbling tone delineates something unintelligible, resonating richly into the stripped-back rhythmic body-pop space of the track. Theremin sounds call out into the universe searching for the right frequency on which to communicate; synth lead plays out airy and plasma, breezy blasts that colour the solidity of this track with modulating digitised lonely washes, the futurism of it feeling fleeting and ephemeral as it drifts fatefully through starfields and constellations.

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• 🔔 'Exposure' is taken from Poltraghost's debut album, Nineties Business Woman. This can be acquired digitally via the duo's Bandcamp.

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🐣 ERSTAV — INK & GLUE [初演 • PREMIERE]

Alien flavours dominate the backdrop to this track, a swirling of lost-in-space radio signals that chirp and click and pulse like inhuman vocal chords expressing an inhuman language, fluttering with abrasive tiny ping-pong balls clattering energy, a rapid helicopter chop of grinding synthetics – like the atmospherics of space disaster-themed videogame music – and at the beginning a low voice introduces the track with unintelligible guttural digitised sounds. 'Ink & Glue' by Italian duo Erstav shows off the respective interests of the musicmakers behind the name: Marco's "careful balance between minimalism and musicality" mixed with Alessandro's "industrial and punk background," influenced by "the d.i.y. ethos of punk and power-electronics." The sound-design-esque immersive ambience of that constant extragalactic sound in the track certainly owes itself to the brooding nature of these two producers' tastes.

But if it is that fractional communication, or the buzzing of pipes and machinery and interstellar background chatter, which provides the atmosphere, it is in the beats of this track where we find immediacy. The here-and-now of 'Ink & Glue' is in its hard percussive punctuation throughout, in the broken beat nature of the hits that tumble in swinging, holding onto the dark air that comes before and piledriving that which stumbles afterward, a rabble of overdriven kicks and burnished metallic hi-hats sheafing and shuffling throughout with satisfying syncopation, switching after 0:53 with more rapidity rolling and raining down, the industrial influences clear, the hard spartan essence of these pugilistic drums reflecting the large mechanical megaliths that float through the galaxy in a distant future of unidentified radiowaves and deepspace mystery.

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• 🔔 You can download 'Ink & Glue' above. It is taken from Erstav's White Windmill EP, which can also be downloaded for free via the duo's SoundCloud.
• 🔔 Their debut album Cold Europe is available to purchase on Bandcamp courtesy of San Francisco label Muti Music.

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🐣 DTTØ — REEF BREAKS

First and foremost what I have to say or at least what I had to say was that the chords in this song reminded me of the same soft wobbly wibbly muted chords in some battle music from Earthbound. It turns out that actually the feel of the music is very different, but the spacey texture of the chords is overall the same, and that is attractive for me. I have Glasgow producer Rory Green to thank for that I suppose, who is the real name behind DTTØ and this track 'Reef Breaks', a study in sampling and broken beat style sonic craftsmanship, a collection of sounds like an exhibit of trinkets, treasure trove for your ears.

So aside from those chords which persist warmly through the song there is a wealth of rich sounds floating through and falling down into the cradle between 0:00 and 3:02, this authentic homely scientific white noise crackle, these flashes of percussion insectoid and bristling with the whole bustling rest of found sounds – the fragments of conversation and other vocal samples – bing-bing-bing somewhere along, scratching raspy snare-clap on robust body of sub, all of it combining in a fizz that whilst busy-busy is floating over you breezy casual, collage of chill and intrigue like half-drawn geometric patterns in pastel with striking blobs of oilpaints dashed on. Violin sampled refraining and amateur touches the heart, helps it to feel even more like cosy orange light in a small comfy friendly friend's house.

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• 'Reef Breaks' is from the album Botanics which came out at the end of November and there's a lot more of the broken beat-feeling rhythms and found sounds and cut-up samples and wavysmooth synths, particularly liked this track obviously and the opening track 'Azure' and 'Push Me'. You can download it for freeeee here.

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🐣 HARRIS COLE – PAUSE/CHAPSITKC

This feels like it arrived just in time. Laying back in the swirl of synth, in the thick speckled plasma noise of it all, smooth and electric caramel, deeply uttering chillment, silvery chimes and golden fragments of piano like glints of light, muted natural ambient sound trickling in the background, it's easy to slip into the thought that right now is exactly the right time to hear this. This is the the eponymous opener of Harris Cole's debut LP pause and it is wonderful.

And then arrives second track, 'chapsitkc'—a different atmosphere, thinner and hallucinogenic, a mist of phasing waves, whooshing and alien. A gradual slow hail of percussive booms tumble down, sub carving a stoppy groove with an occasional stutter of bass boops, broken beats in an astounding laze of lethargy, pounding absent-purposefully on the present moment and creating its own compartment. But the aching way in which Harris Cole brings in the nocturnal slosh of beach breaking waves, a sample of the real world: reality merges then washes over the once transdimensional sound gallery and shifts your attention to a different moment till it fades away.

Lying beyond this awaits the rest of the album. The sequential nature of these first two morsels makes us feel like we're in for a jolly journey with pause, which also judging from the soundular shapes of 'pause' and 'chapsitkc' will be one that is spacey and reality-blurring, thereby also blurring the perceived distance between recording actual sound and the artificial process of actually manipulating sound.

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• These two morsels act, of course, as the appetiser for Harris Cole's album, pause, which will be released in Fall/Autumn this year. We will maybe have to wait for a month or something like that who knows.
• The artwork by George Wylesol captures the atmosphere of these two tracks – presumably the LP too – with its own depiction of an otherworldly experience in a worldly setting, bold yet muted, colours that feel somehow off, employing levitation in a setting of magical realism that feels arcane, in spirit and style similar to the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

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🐣 HOÀNG THUỲ LINH – BÁNH TRÔI NƯỚC (WOMAN)

Here's a little something heard whilst watching MTV Vietnam, the latest song from Hoàng Thùy Linh, a Vietnamese singer who is "well known", according to Wikipedia, for her sex tape. She was at that point starring in an interactive sitcom called Vàng Anh’s Diary, but this was cancelled essentially because of said sex tape, the last episode that was aired (2007) being a pre-recorded talk show with Thùy Linh in which she apologised for her actions. Very harsh, we say.

Fast-forward 9 years and here we are in 2016. The song in question, 'Bánh Trôi Nước (Woman)', is a spacious whirlwind of whooshing sounds, glittering synth and fresh forested percussion, Thùy Linh's voice stretching into the distance, crooning and acrobatic, sampled throughout for elastic ad-lib firings. It's based on a poem called "The Floating Cake" (the meaning of 'Bánh Trôi Nước', and an actual dessert) by female poet Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822). The song's producer, Long Halo, creates an atmosphere of far-off wanderings and half-forgotten echoes, jungles leaning in to listen and whisper with the percussive shiverings and clangings, rapid-fire clip-cloppings giving way to a sludgy, punchy dubstep beat towards the end.

The mystique of this song, the clean snares, the drip-drop clicking percussion, the syncopated chords, the general luscious atmosphere fogged with reverb, the vocals flowing long and liquid, heaping sounds into an intense explosive storm of sound, it's a surprise and we welcome those with open arms.

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• 'Bánh Trôi Nước' is taken from the S.I.X EP, a 6 track collaboration between Thùy Linh (4 tracks) and Triple D (2 tracks). You can purchase that or any of its songs on iTunes if you like.

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VOYAGER – PARSEC

Just to clear things up to begin with, a parsec is "A parsec is an astronomical unit of distance derived by the theoretical annual parallax of one arc second, and is found as the inverse of that measured parallax" (thanks Wikipedia), wherein 1 parsec is equal to 3.08567758 × 10^16 metres – of course. Duh. What else is new?

It's a pretty big distance. Big distance for a big place: SPACE. I wonder if it's longer than a light year… (just looked it up, IT IS). So it's like... just a different measurement. Even in space there's a metric/imperial-style confusion and conflict at work. We never learn.

So anyway, now that that's outta the way we can have a listen to 'Parsec' by VOYAGER, or stylised V O Y A G E R (but it's too much effort to write every time) on his actual SoundCloud, the moniker of musicmaker Paco Santos from Manila. 'Parsec' is a basically a groovesome piece of music that finds its feet in funk as much as it does in the slow sensuality of R&B.

Beginning with a glorious palm-muted guitar intro, suggesting that we will be delving into a wholly funky number, we soon find out that we're in something else entirely, something a bit more intergalactic or spacey, suiting the track's name. This is a soaring morsel, deliciously rich with ever-reverbing piano chords that provide a beautiful blanket of noise on top of which everything else sits quite nicely – below this, the bassline ascends and descends, supporting the slow, R&B-style beat. There's something ultimately chilled about this, laid-back, barely sung vocals echoing amidst the smart synth arpeggios and lead guitar-esque melodies.

It's basically like a cross between a pop song and a vision of what indie music might actually be in the future – without going as far as saying it's outright funk, R&B (not least with the "future-" prefix), chillwave, whatever. Really genuinely beautiful & catchy stuff here.

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N.O.R.K – YELL OUT (LADY CITIZEN REMIX)

What is N.O.R.K? Well, they're a R&B-inspired duo from Tokyo who seem to be set on success – or least that's the idea that you get from the preview of their upcoming album ADSR; stunning harmonies from the pair, Nariaki Obukuro and Ray Kunimoto, sing out over huge soundscapey instrumentals. Only formed in 2013, their sound is already massively polished and I'm sure set for big things.

There's also a few of remixes on the album (more a mini-album cause there are only 4 originals), including one from Licaxxx (aka Rika Hirota, whom you may have seen in the video for Spazzkid's '40 Winks') and one from DJ & producer Lady Citizen – as you can tell from the title of this little post right here, he's remixed 'Yell Out' and it sounds a little something like the embedded thingy below. In addition to this, I believe that it, perhaps because of simplicity, improves upon the original.

What you'll notice straight away here is the huge attention paid to the bass here, pulsating like the mechanical heartbeat of some huge machine, becoming the sludgy yet smooth foundational beat to the track. Airy, intergalactic drones provide wall-of-sound appeal as glittering synths make their appearance above, in golden echoes of sunlight sweeping across the crests of gently lapping waves. The beat is joined by gentle percussion towards the end, popping tom sounds and tambourine rattlings that move in tandem with the great bulges of sub-bass.

The vocals become unearthly here, soaked with reverb – as is the rest of the track – for spacey appeal, a lonely sound that puts voice into a void. The futuristic simplicity of this track's reliance on bass, and not much more (and what there is used only for ornamental purposes), is kind of fascinating, hypnotising in a way – an all-encompassing take on dance music.

• N.O.R.K's ADSR is out 14th May on Japanese label Anay

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MORGAN HISLOP – SMALL ROOMS & NOCTURNAL THOUGHTS [FREE DOWNLOAD]

I was supposed to or rather I meant to write about this guy, UK-based Morgan Hislop, a looong time ago but, like many things in life, it slipped me by or I was having a panic attack and my mind went blank for months or I just simply forgot about it. One or more of those things. In any case, we tweeted briefly today about the benefits of Ping Pong (dim sum resto, not table tennis) and I wondered what he'd been up to musically and I saw this track – one I was gonna write about ages ago. And I thought hmm well let's just do it now.

Sorry for waffling but idc really: I will waffle. The track is 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts', a title that suits the quasi-claustrophobia of small rooms and the often bizarre lonely sentiments of nighttime, especially nighttimes in small rooms. Clunky percussion coupled with hard kicks, swaddled with a gloomy gloss of sub-bass, and harpsichordish synth melodies form the main rhythmic pattern for the song, but it has this added phantom-cosmic quality with strange vocal samples, pulled apart like plasticine in places and in others spilled out in endless reverb like exploded mists of dry dust.

A bit that I particularly like arrives just after the halfway point, the music drowned out by a gritty splash of abrasive white noise and wiped out in a voidful moment, where it's only the clunking beat and vocal samples chime in like messages from ancient spacemen garbled by unknown phenomena; this bit is brilliantly lonely, like a mind in turmoil behind unthinking everyday actions. An exciting, indescribable journey through a nicely crafted soundscape, mindscape, whose sounds are almost edible they are so delicious. Download this song from M. Hislop's SoundCloud (link belowww) if you want :)

• Fun fact: Morgan Hislop is the drummer in Tropics, the deeply soulful progeny of Chris Ward. I urge you to check out the Home & Consonance EP from last year, it's pretty beautiful.
• Normal fact: 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Though' is taken from the Atlantics Volume 3 compilation by extraordinarily cool Brooklyn "label/blog/party" Astro Nautico, which incidentally you can download for name-your-price here (CLICK).

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METOME – SAMPLE CHAIR [FREE DOWNLOAD]

It's only been a few weeks since we heard from prodigious Japanese producer Takahiro Uchibori, aka Metome – in the form of the moody 'Rainmaker' and its ominous video – but already there's something new for us all to savour. Yep, he's as prolific as he is good. And this time around it's something a bit different to the norm; usually Metome is all sumptuous post-lounge with free-flowing jazz instrumentals and rapid-fire sampling— usually.

But the oddly yet somehow brilliantly named 'Sample Chair' is a sketch of something different, a foray into a different set of sounds, an experiment with wide synths that seem to have been given off by some distant space ship somewhere, a far-flung space-disco orbiting a planet where we'll arrive hundreds if not thousands of years from now. Perhaps that's the case. The other possibility is that Takahiro's mind is as elastic and frenetic as his sounds, and hence the seeming strangeness of 'Sample Chair'.

That of course is not say that it isn't good. It's great! Irregular bouts of keyless almost atonal synths pop up unexpectedly, bouncing around as if being thrown and somersaulted in low gravity; here the virtuosity isn't in the notes themselves, but how the notes are manipulated, how they are placed with regard to rhythm, or maybe more accurately with no regard to rhythm. Organic kicks and claps and clicks occasionally pop up; the melody whirlwinds at times in a frenzied storm; high-register vocal samples chirp in the expansive galaxy of the blissful chords.

There is almost no reverb at work here at all, invoking a heavier sense of silence or rather the space between sounds than previous Metome tracks, which often were hazed or lightly breezed with soft and pretty reverberating sounds. It's experimental, taking the essence of glitch (look at the track image for instance) – which is to create glitchy sounds – and using it to instead twist and manipulate his sounds in natural, real-life, less digitised ways, as if his synths are putty that he simply plays with.

• Discover a lil more about the lovely Metome w this lil interview he did for YES/NO

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SAMUEL FALLING STAR EP

Sparks of brilliance sometimes just come from nowhere without any forewarning. Such is the case with London-based Samuel, an enigmatic no-surnamed Irish-born singer & songmaker. Recently he has worked with Gervase Gordon, aka Okzharp - 1/3 of London trio LV - to produce this brand new Falling Star EP.

It's a collection of sounds that have really put a spin on the world of R&B, falling much more into a kind of swirling post-R&B protoplasma, a place where all the form and style of "urban" music is taken from the streets and blasted into far-flung galaxies where physicality is something dreamt-up. Much of this is owing to the noises that in all their careful minimalism make for an enormous atmosphere of a futuristic space-age of music. There are distorted delayed synths in the menacing subby sea of 'Death Star Wonder', sounds of lasers rippling by like a neon-tinged dogfight in space - which is kinda perfect as the song is an intergalactic vision of dancehall-flavoured music, a club night orbiting Earth where there is no day, only the eternally danceable night.

Likewise, in 'Boom Boom Boom', the ultra-clean snapping beat of "present-day" R&B becomes an otherwordly, liquidly-distorted bounce, the romantic pizzicato strings become ultra-computerised beeps. Hip hop faces the future in the short-n-sweet title track 'Falling Star', its shuffling rhythm combining sharp synth chords with fidgeting lead bleeps that become more and more paranoiac towards the end of the song. Here also, Samuel's vocals themselves go through a change with a Jamaican lilt that he clearly seems to enjoy singing with, feeling each note with a longing ache.

One of the crucial elements of all good R&B is of course the voice and it's no different here. Samuel's soulful vocals change to suit each track; they're clean and almost sing-along in 'Death Star Wonder', holding up against the harsh sounds of the song; then there's his tongue-in-cheek parody of contemporary R&B with some of the lines in 'Boom Boom Boom' - "Errbody say hey, hey", mentioning "East Coast" and "West Coast", and declaiming "I'm not a fighter. I'm a lover, baby" halfway through. But in 'Steam Train' his vocals are softer, wrapped in a thin mist of hush that totally suits the slow chill of the song - it's a perfect start to the EP, one that instantly introduces the glistening melodies of imagined planets before going into a gloriously minimalistic verse: each sound is left to resound by itself, Samuel's voice given space to reverb heavenly over everything else.

I wrote about this EP for Dummy magazine at the end of last week. It's difficult to sum it up using different words than I used in that article, so I think what I'll do is just copy and paste them here. Yeah, it's lazy, I know, but, well, maybe there's just no other way to say what I think, ever consider that? "These are isolated idylls of romance; all of it holds reminders of traditional modern pop music, yet its far-flung progressive sound makes it something much more exciting." Pretty much. Where will we find Samuel's voice next? Singing in a pod slowly making its way across the universe... Perhaps not, but if ever there was a sound to remember when the sound of R&B music begins turning its head towards the endless chasm of the future, it's this Falling Star EP.

PS. This is released on Ninjatune affiliate, Technicolour.

PPS. Check out my interview with Samuel!

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LIQUID.SUNSHINE (天照汁御神) LIVE @ 2.5D // LIQUID.SUNSET

I heard liquid.sunshine, aka 天照汁御神 (please what does this mean?) aka Hosh'ki Tsunoda, a few days ago in a live show on 2.5D, an internet channel based in Shibuya, Tokyo, that hosts all sorts of live performances in the name of art and culture. His cosmic and wholly encompassing experimental approach to hip hop pretty much made my day that day - it was a Wednesday. It wasn't actually that long ago at all. But all the same: I loved it.

Luckily Meishi Smile, owner of ZOOM/LENS label/collective and maker of music himself, captured the live sights and sounds of this very interesting set and uploaded it to YouTube. Saying that it begins with a sample of Fred Durst saying "chocolate starfish...!" will give you a small inkling as to the influences (yes, nu-metal) at work on Hosh'ki Tsunoda. In any case, I urge you to stick this on and have a listen to it. You will enjoy it a lot. Well, maybe you won't, but if you like instrumental hip hop with an intergalactic slant that dips its toes into the choppy sea of electronic experimentalism, whilst retaining the brash beats of retro hip hop, you probably will like this.

In other news, Mr Tsunoda released an EP called liquid.sunset - it is a collection of accomplished beats that swim in seas of luscious electro sounds. Here, let me talk you through it from the beginning to the end.

'Seashore Mosaic' captures the sound of literal waves crashing against the sand, but in synth chord form; it also captures the sound of seagulls cawing, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing series of wah-wah synth leads. A very nice break in the drums explodes about 1:20 on this one, leading the way for a bustling second half that has all the cheer of a jolly jaunt by the seaside. Against a crackling backdrop, there are super-high-register clicks to accompany to the beat right to the end.

Those clicks, and more besides, shine out of the beat of 'Visitor at 2am' - there's more of that cheerfulness, too, albeit in a different form: not a fresh day sun-in-your-face cheer, but one of seeing a friendly face at an unexpected point in the night. It's a mildly pulsing and tentative happiness in the slow rhythm here, in the gently bulging bass synth, the lo-fi chords and sparkling leads.

That slowness continues as a blissful hangover in 'Sphere', whose crackles and liquid drips of ambient noise flow underneath a swaggery saw-wave bass, delayed synth blips and 16-bit spears of dramatic gleaming sound. Organic acoustic sounds mark a change in dynamic here, where big taiko drum sounds steal the show from the earlier hip hop shuffle of the beat. Towards the end, all of the sounds of the song layer into a rich, almost overwhelming waterfall of sound.

The hypnotic world of 'Headphones', a mesmerisation of flanging space-age synth that wraps you in the otherworldly isolation that can occur whilst wearing headphones. Not unsurprisingly, it sounds really nice with headphones on. Glitching blips and stabs of digital pads puncture the staccato baseline.

Claps ahoy in next track 'Breathe In', whose beat is a bustling, syncopated foray into a floating world of glitzy swagger - a soft, unintelligible vocal sample hangs like mist in the midst of the clangour of this track. Another expertly woven tapestry of layered sounds that compliment each other like cherry pie and ice cream.

'Lusty Lusty' finishes the journey of liquid.sunset with a gentle track that is sunken in the depths of some smooth sub-bass. Beginning with a sparse, 4/4 rhythm, it mutates by the end through some nice offbeats into something with more attitude, warming up as it goes along, a stuttering sound like a robotic dove cooing spirals in and out of earshot; the end is as charming and cutesy as the start, with popping, muted synth bops to see us out.

See? It sounds nice doesn't it? Keep an eye out for more from this guy, I don't think he's quite finished yet - usually, with such an inquisitive mind as goes with experimenting with sounds, there's a lot more for them to explore in the future. So I look forward to more.

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EONE AIRPORT LOUNGE

Here's a guy who I haven't heard very much from at all until his record label sent me an email detailing the release of his new EP. This is Eone, the Brighton (UK) producer whom I first knew as "Evil1" when I wrote about his mean-yet-ambient track 'Monochromatic World' at the end of last year - it's actually one that features on his new EP, Dispersion, released at the end of September on Brighton label Numerology Records. On the whole, it's a dark journey characterised by experimental ambience and techno sensibilities - with soft synths, he mixes brutal kicks and brooding bass that rumbles your bones.

I've today decided to write about my favourite track from the EP, 'Airport Lounge'. It is simply bustling with sounds, from intergalactic fizzing ticks and dripping taps, to whirring hard-drives and masses of background noise - papers being shuffled, a murmur of voices, the general white noise of the air. In fact, it sounds as if he quite possibly did sample an actual airport lounge to capture those ambient sounds. Have a listen to this wonderful melting pot.

Alongside those flitting noises, soft stellar synths sweep across the board with a cold and glossy sense of futurism. A muffled kick pattern comes in alongside the urgent timekeeping fizz of half-open hi-hats; this gives the song an understated rhythm without exploding into a full-blown beat that would perhaps take away its actual feeling of an airport lounge - the lassitude of waiting endlessly without consequence. Unintelligble altered vocal samples wind their way through the song, both high-register and low-register, forgetting the original vocal sound, giving it a decidedly urban feel, something hard-edged and bristling, almost like the not-so-lighthearted jargon of airport and airline staff, it rushing into your ears without it making much sense.

It's a song that seems to be over almost instantly, but at the same time it's one that climbs into your mind and stays there for a while. Those futuristic sounds seem to melt into your consciousness, creating and evoking the feeling of cold detachment in our modern world. If you liked this, you can find more intense variations on this vibe on the Dispersion EP - please direct yourself to listen to most of it on Numerology Records SoundCloud.

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RYV HWUT EP [FREE DOWNLOAD]

To the uninitiated, the title of this post could seem like a bit of a mess or a mistake or both: a messy mistake. But never fear, it is actually not a mistake. This is the hwut EP by American producer RYV (also known as real-life-person Charlie Abbott). If you're wondering, though, what "hwut" means exactly, then all you need to do is cast your mind to King Of The Hill cause Hank Hill says "hwut" all the time. Alternatively, Urban Dictionary can tell you a lil' bit. As for RYV, I dunno, could be the Czechoslovakian for 'jerk' (rate of change of acceleration) in physics.

But let's move on. Enough of this - who am I to speculate? Let's listenate to this music. I'm sorry. Anyway, I found it the other day thanks to Spazzkid, who in some way, shape or form, knows Mr RYV. One listen was enough for the music to convey its quality, which is generally a good thing is it not? Like, why should you have to listen to it a zillion times to decide whether it's good or not? A short-but-longwinded-story shorter: three nice songs.

The atmosphere overall seems to grow wider, expanding into seemingly unexplored territories, the vibe more lonely and spacey as we venture further from where we are sitting to the outer reaches of hwut. From the cool coldness of the intergalactic flute synth chords and mechanical hotch-potch of percussion on the spacey opener 'Yaspring' (with some awesomely integral vocal samples and crackling lead synth stabs), we move onto the floating glitchness of 'Yuhhh' with its heavily reverbing xylophonic cloud, sounding by the end as though we are drifting off somewhere, into the nether-hwut.

'Betweentimes' starts with a shock, a dissonant sweep of a harp, to let us know that the journey through hwut is almost at an end. It is brimming with an uneasy atmosphere, poised as if ready to explode into something different yet remaining tensely on-guard the whole time. Organic-sounding perhaps-double bass supports the thin, abrasive chords with a dark and moody slo-jazz flavour; electric crackles pierce through (it actually sounds like he's sampled an electric attack from Pokémon?) as thin strands of a beat click their way through the song. Cut-up vocal samples form a cutesy yet unnerving melody.

This is a sometimes mindbending journey through tasty sounds and an increasingly alien atmosphere - delicious and flavoursome. And it's a free download courtesy of LA art/music collective & independent record label, Stereocure. All three songs. I know right? Cool.

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