The third release as part of Singles Club on Slugabed's brilliantly named Activia Benz label, this is 'Bright As The Moon, But Darkened By The Drama' by a musicmaker named Morgan Hislop (also the drummer for futuo-R&B outfit Tropics) whose intergalactic track 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts' – released as a standalone single on cool label Astro Nautico – we wrote about earlier this year.
The wonky hook of the track is a pitch-shifted vocal sample, chopped to catchy rhythm, appearing throughout in varying forms of iteration, and stands out amidst the bustling fluid beat of the track. Half-dakly cosmic and half-retro-minded, the track features as many ambient washes of sound as it does robust piano chords and sunny joyful synth jollities; at one point the beat feels as if it could have been lifted from an early '90s hip hop track; at other times, it is heavily accented and future-facing with trilling snares and stuttering plasma-vision synth.
It also features English artist James Bright aka Hairy Hands on vocals, whose words arrive stoned and chewed up with echoing harmonies of hazy sound, with phantomatic ad-libs sounding like a giant cat's purr in places, suiting the bliss and clatter of Mr Hislop's unplaceable style. Someone else suggested it sounded like "Aphex Twin gone pop" and in some ways – with the samples and bristling beat – they're not entirely wrong.
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 :)
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).
When it's an edit, or a rerub, rework, refix, or some other name - that's when. I'm sure there is some tiny particular detail of difference between all these different terms, and maybe I'm just stupid, but to be honest I kinda don't particularly care what you call it. But then again maybe I AM just stupid. You tell me.
In any case, I went straight from Gang Colours' 'Man Up Girl! Open For Business' mix to this. Chris Ward, aka Tropics, is friends with Will Ozanne, aka Gang Colours. It was a natural progression to check out what Mr Tropics was up to after I finished writing about GC. And he musta heard the the 'Open For Business' mix cause what I saw was that Tropics had done an edit of 'Lift Off' by 2morrows Victory, a song that features as the opening for said mix. It's a great song - a kind of spacey foray into rap via soulful 'n' beatless skater vibes.
That's where the Tropics edit changes things. Keeping that ambient drone on which the original drifted like a few rapscallions on a magic carpet, he pulls those mellow chords to where he wants them, chopping them where necessary. He gives legs to a song which before was in danger of floating away.
It's now endowed with a slightly glitchy beat that's at once busy and balanced, snares and claps battling for power as hi-hats spazz electrically behind them, hemming in the essential organs of the original with a beautiful bone structure. He takes sections of the original husky vocal, too, and loops them to great effect. Though the original is a very good song, Tropics' version of it might as well basically be a Tropics song - this also means a very good song. His fingerprints are all over it. Shuffling and bouncy without being obvious, taking care of the original samples but not letting them overpower his own additions, it's an exercise in harmony and it works very well indeed.
I was very happy to hear this because I was amazingly happy with Tropics' recent Home & Consonance EP. You should, if you haven't, probably go and listen to that.
From start to finish, this is a genuinely fab record to listen to, and one that is definitely suiting England's belated and rather gradual slip into summer. First listened to this driving alongside the River Thames in the evening with the sun just teetering above the horizon - the perfect soundtrack I gotta say. And from the very first I heard of Tropics like 2 years ago till now, the quality and clarity and direction of the music has increased - not to say that the old stuff was bad, no way in fact. Just gets better and better is what I mean. And hearing more of Chris's voice, which I dunno why he was hiding in the first place, is nice too.
But what is the 'this' that I speak of? It's Tropics's's new Home & Consonance EP. Beginning with the achingly nostalgic and brimming-with-heartache title track - 'Home & Consonance' duh - and it storms ahead with a rolling beat, blanketed with smooth vocals and gentle-gentle keyboards, dreamlike in their solo form towards the end. Get started listening yo:
We move onto the bass explosion of 'Courage', a slow-down house affair fringed with romance - more lovely vocals and additional sultry crooning provided by the LA-based Gavin Turek. Lovely drawn-out solo synths here make my skin hot up. A medley of passion and should-have-done-this vibe here. Broken beats joined with stuttering hi-hats abound in next track 'Don't You Know', whose jazz/lounge sounds are like glitter on glue atop a profusion of soulful vocal samples and lung-expanding synths. The EP ends with 'Fleeting Haunt', a midtempo tune pockmarked with a catchy vocal "ooo-ooo"; there is at its core the same absolute heartfelt chillment as lies at the core of all songs that came before it. Vocals slip in and out from the abundance of lush sound scenery and there's this lovely break in the beat where the synth rises up like a tide of electricity at a beach of polished tiles and cocktail-built huts.
As you might be able to tell, I really dig this EP. It sounds lovely. Builds on a foundation of luscious sounds, easy beats, chilled melodies and emotive vocals that all the songs include. Empty and full at the same time. V v v v v nice.
There's a really super cool live rendition. Chris Ward himself said: "So recently I went back to my late grandparents' house where last year I wrote the Home & Consonance EP. The band joined me and the guys from It Drew Itself were kind enough to record us performing a song."
Ahh, Tropics - his music is so tasty, like a well-deserved Nando's or forgotten-about Magnum Caramel that you re-find crouching in your freezer. Yes, we can confirm that Tropics is just as fantastic as everybody is making out. Just a smigden over a month ago Chris Ward, the man - the brain - behind Tropics, released his first EP, Popup Cinema, to much acclaim; I mean, we liked it (and you can read that right here), so what more do you need to know? It was a delightful jig into a calming sea of soulful vocals and ambient synth sounds that gave you sunny pop with one hand and presented experimental twists and turns with the other. Beautiful.
But that aside, what has Mr. Ward gone and done now but remixed a song? He's actually shadowed the original, his remix standing tall like a majestic palm tree under a full moon and a pebble beach of stars. Where were we...
Oh yes. He's remixed a lovely song by Poliça called 'Wandering Star'. The original is a sparse mix of doleful bass, slapdash drums and vocals that seem to stretch forwards and backwards in time, dripping with lashings of reverb. Listen to this below:
But now, below, we have the remix with the Tropics Touch - a chillwave kind of magic wand, I guess. It takes the heart of the original and puts it into a new body, and a very nice body at that, one that vibrates non-stop with a wavy bass, one that offers up synthy organ tones, one that participates in an orgy of sound, a dazzling, near-jazzy confetti that leads us towards the end of the song over a supremely laid-back beat. A fantastic use of vocal samples at the beginning and end of the song shows Tropics' talent for chopping the right bits and repeating them the right amount of times, like a skillful sound-butcher - and actually, on the subject of vocals, the singing on the track seems to fit Tropics' remix more than the original. Is that a bad thing to say? Not sure, but it's the true thing to say. Feast your ears on this.
You probably, or might not, know by now that Tropics EP Popup Cinema has been released and is currently gaining popularity with pretty much everyone who hears it, casting a spell over them. Tropics, which is just Chris Ward, will be playing at The Nest along with Micachu this Friday 9th November. But when it comes to live stuff, Chris Ward doesn't stand alone onstage - he has a band with him.
One part of this band is Keith Vaz. Whilst he'll be playing in the band with Chris Ward this Friday, this isn't his full-time project. Not at all. Little did you know that he also makes music under the name With Joyful Lips. He released his EP Oneironautics late this summer. Unfortunately we were unable to cover that, but here is the video for one of the lead songs on the EP, 'Suspension Of Disbelief'.
The song makes genius use of touching sample (here are some transcripts) from the 1945 film Brief Encounter directed by David Lean. The tender yet melancholy emotions expressed in the lines from this film, used in the song, act as a kind of springboard for the feeling and vibe of the song itself. It's filled with this bittersweet string melody on a loop, with sparse bass and kick driving the song forward almost like footsteps or a heartbeat. There's a sense of vague frustration about the song, illustrated perhaps by the looping vocal sample of 'Don't'.
The last third of the song are occupied by vocals perhaps from Keith Vaz himself, and gives the song an extra layer of sound and feeling. There's this great slowdown bit in the song where everything gets quiet and muddled up, like some musical version of a blip in lovelife, before the cyclical, nearly Eastern-influenced rhythms of the song comes back. It's gentle enough for a chill, but rhythmic enough for a dance, yet still taut enough with emotion that its worth not only a second listen, but a third, a fourth - to be honest with you, I've lost count.
This is new video for Chris Ward's superchilled dance/lounge project, Tropics. I touched on these guys whilst I was at Glastonbury (the glory of scheduled posts) and will be posting up some live recordings of their set.
For the moment, let's focus on the video for new song 'Mouves' (released this Monday 18th July) - premiered on The Fader, it was directed by Japanese director Yasuyuki Kubota and features two men running through the streets and forests of Japan, eventually into the sea. Seemingly innocent enough, especially when put to Tropics' wonderful sounds, the enigmatic Kubota insists it's something more:
There you have it. Though these messages must be buried pretty deep within the video itself, it's still a really nice concept - the flowing nature of Chris Ward's Fourtet-like liquid synths and softly galloping drums suits these running men perfectly as they ignore the hustle and bustle of their country, and even the country itself, getting lost in the pure escapism of their travels.
The superchilled stylings of Tropics are gracing the Pussy Parlure at Glastonbury today at just after midday. Within its decadent 1920s interior, the Pussy Parlure has been a feature at Britain's biggest festival now for about 5 years, and is famed for hosting acts that are definitely far left of mainstream: perfect stomping ground for Tropics.
Chris Ward is the brains behind Tropics. Just 22, he takes influences from pretty much every type of music to create ultra ambient tracks that just melt your brain and slide down from the skies to settle on your brain like liquid sunshine. Mixing 70's funk drums with ghostly vocals and smooth, watery synth, this new track 'Mouves' (out 18th July) is a perfect example of the vibe that drives Tropics to create such beautiful music. Enjoy.
It sounds a like some parts of Fourtet, and is just as good. I'll be trying to see this today. If the sun's out, it'll be the supreme soundtrack to the festival.
Check Tropics on SoundCloud for more, including 25 minute mixes that have almost put me in a trance as I write this.
