SHANGHAI DEN – THE SUN

Ahhhhhhhh… The strange romantic aesthetics of opium dens: the acceptable crackhouses of yesteryear. Divans and drapes and pipes, ingratiating attendants, sordid opulence, the classic hazy sparkle of fin de siècle decadence; the Victorian duality of public obligation and private subversion, light and dark, foreign exotica furnishing domestic shores.

Why the shit am I talking about all of this? Cause of this guy's name, Shanghai Den, and also because of their profile pic, both on SC and FB – just sparked the imagination y'know and I had to just vent those mental images. But far from these antique pollutants, in the here-and-now of present day, Shanghai Den has made some music that has juuust been released: 'The Sun' – it's unusual, unnerving, mean, cold; funny for a track named after something that's pretty much none of those things. Just as the bright side of dance music has its appeal, so too does the dark.

Let's have a listen to this mucky little number shall we?

In the midst of a swirling, narcotic haze, this track introduces itself with sharp, cutting percussion – serrated knife-edge hi-hats that seem to slash at your ears (in a good way, if possible to imagine). Different layers appear, peeling off as you descend deeper into the darkness; unknown alien synths wah-wah through the inky dirt of the track's dominant and obsessive two-note rhythm, a frantic cycle that threatens to develop into more at all times, making it one hell of a tease. A continuous detonation of fog-like bass rumbles like aphotic murk, further intensifying the principal vibe of unsettlement. Indeed, commenting on their own music, Shanghai Den themselves say it's "the fear inside of all of us mixed with a constant stream of chemical self medication." Sounds about right.

• This is released on infamous London label, R&S Records, along with another song 'Vale W. Group Bench' as an EP, which you can purchase HERE.

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HELFER – DESIGNS

Please don't say that I am alone in saying that I hate Sundays. They are rank with conservatism and stink of boredom and hold up a telescope to the very end of your days. Sunday opening hours are lame — super lame, in fact, and we should do away with them. Let's open up and embrace a new era of consumerism that cuts to the very core of this vile Christian-led freezing of life every damn week. Who's with me?

Can you guess that it's Sunday? So yeah it's that day. But luckily, I do this writing thing basically every day so it's no skin off my nose what day it is anyway. I just observe that Sundays are rubbish, that's all. Anyway. So here we are. And here is another song to moisten your eyes and tap your heart and jiggle your mind and skip over your skin; it's from a person who I've written about before, but who has changed their name. Formerly known as NoamiKo, this musicmaker from Israel now goes by the name Helfer – and this particular song is called 'Designs'…

Moving forward from a curling insectoid sprint of bleeping synth leads in the beginning, we're treated to icy glistening cascadings and simple-smooth bass that columnates the underside of the track. As the song starts proper, an aching grind of noise soars overhead, deep kicks bump below and rolling claps join slivers of hi-hat; vocals enter as heavily echoed snippets of refrain, giving the song a spectral dimension; noise crescendos throughout, spacey glimmerings with stringy richness dominating the richly bleeping soundscape and scratchling beat.

It's a huge, poignant sound that has developed from what I last heard from this guy. This is a time-travelling whirl of sounds that takes you from sofa to space station to proto-nightclub surroundings. Moving from totally unknown indie to underground indie is a small but frenziedly discernible step, and this is exactly what Mr Noah Helfer is proceeding with; indeed, 'Designs' is taken from his upcoming Air Drops EP, which comes courtesy of dunno-where-it's-based label, BLDG5 Records.

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MOSLEM PRIEST REAL SWIMMIN'

Take a little look outside of your own culture once in a while and you will find that, truly, people aren't that different in other cultures. People are, at the end of the day and when all has been said and done, people. Wherever you go. So, of course, people are creative right across the globe – there are no exceptions. Someone somewhere is always making something interesting, in all forms of art – and for the sake of this site, we'll say ESPECIALLY music. Especially. Music, believe it or not, exists outside of the UK, outside of the USA, outside of whatever country you're from. One good example is Moslem Priest.

Real name Farhan Yassin, Moslem Priest lives and makes music in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His name – curious and awesome as it is – comes from an incident that occurred when he was in London once, when one of my fellow countrymen yelled "Muslim priest!" at him in the street; he liked it and it stuck. I stumbled across his music when I was having a look around KL-based magazine, Gumball, for whom I also write a weekly (mostly...) article. It was his latest track that interested me the most, so I'd really like to share it with you: here is 'Real Swimmin'' by Moslem Priest.

What you'll notice at first is the strong emphasis on samples of all kinds: a constant background noise of running water attacked by the sound of a phone ringing. Then, of course, the song's namesake, the rhythmic vocal sample of "Real, real, real real real" makes its appearance throughout the track. Wobbling soft synths wibble their way through, becoming more heavily layered and intense as the track progresses; clocks provide an unrelenting tick-tock; gunshots take the place of snare hits.

It's a Dadaist take on hip hop: the down-South beats with the extreme sub-bass thundering throughout and skiffling hi-hats combine with all these strange samples – there's even a dog barking at some points – to paint the kind of landscape you'd see in a dream of some surreal domestic situation. This is a bold collage of sounds that booms right into your brain, leaving delicate touches to those who believe experimentation should be subtle; Moslem Priest does it differently.

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FOREST SWORDS THOR'S STONE

Well well well. Well well well well well. I never knew that I would hear anything more from Forest Swords ever since I first stumbled upon their minimalist reverb-guitared sparse and tribal nocturnal soundtracks to various spooky landscapes. Why? I think because it was so strange that they would most likely stay obscure. It seemed, by their very sound, that they wanted to stay obscure. I keep saying "they", but I really don't know the number of people involved in Forest Swords. Cool name though eh? All I know is that they come from the Wirral (peninsula in north west England) and Liverpool - maybe there's more than one person after all.

But! Obviously! They're here. On their SoundCloud there is a two year gap between the first song they added, 'Miarches' - the kind of sound that I described above, creeping and hidden - and their newest song 'Thor's Stone'. Now, those two years have definitely made a difference because now there is a very big difference in sound. There is more layering, more production, more texture. Take a listen or have a listen or in some way get the sound of this song into your ears.

What is still there in the sound of Forest Swords is the spooky quality, a dark vibe that seems to have matured over time from something hidden into something now in full view. With deep, near-foghorn bass and light drums the song grinds along, introducing different layers over its duration, tinkering hi-hats and barely-noticeable high-pitch noises. Around halfway through, a wooden flute of some sort takes centre stage (could be a shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute), sounding very cool in the stillness between the drums. That part is downright dirty - durty even.

Stabs of sound crash, the hi-hats roll, the beat grows and a snare smash gives itself to the noise of the song. Bright and frantic vocal samples rise up towards the end, culminating in a turntably reversal of sound. It is experimental in essence, and something that by the very nature of the nomenclature, with things like "Forest" and "Thor's Stone", seems to actually be quite close to nature, or at least, perhaps, to an unseen, occultist part of nature that has yet to be set to music. Well, until now. And the only drawback - and indeed the only bridge to realising that sound - is imagination. Forest Swords definitely seem to have a lot of that.

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BRAQUEBERRY BLAQUE WON

When the right song comes along, you know - you just know. Yeah well it doesn't always happen that way. It doesn't always turn out the way it does in the movies. Sometimes you think it's the right song and the right song comes along and is all fine for a while and then the right song becomes the wrong song. What am I talking about?

Now that we've got that out the way, I'd like to introduce Braqueberry. Braqueberry is... well, I actually don't know anything about the person behind the name. (Red Bull Music Academy graduate, granted.) Only that, judging by the video they've released, they may or may not be familiar with the amazing game Another World, which was not only amazing but probably the only game I know that is simultaneously cool and actually-going-to-cry-ly frustrating. The video is rife with scenes from the game that have also been edited to include some ladies in bikinis - normal. The video also quite interestingly includes footage of early music making software - fun. But enough of the video.

Let's talk about the actual actual song which is called bizarrely 'Blaque Won'. It comes from Braqueberry's new and debut EP, WEMEN (out now). But seriously, every time I see the word 'braqueberry' it makes me want to laugh, so when I type it I almost do actually laugh. I don't mean that in a nasty way: spellings just make me laugh. I actually and literally love the name. Anyway: Watch & listen.

A kind of drum machine, I guess, is what you're first treated to, alongside what sounds like a shoe squeaking along a newly polished wooden floor. But what comes next is a madly distorted synth that seems to have undergone some intensive bitcrushing, that's for sure, and I love it. It's so brazenly crackly and rough that it's difficult not to love, like a weird and scruffy dog with endearing qualities. Atonal instrument samples flash in and out above the gravelly bass and clash slightly to create an even weirder atmosphere than there was before. It's a completely jarring song, an oddity of a song you could say, but it's truly marvellous.

The difference between this and something that you would be genuinely weirded out by is that this song is only made to sound weird - it isn't inherently weird. It's been specially concocted to have a certain old-school analogue electro noise-freak sound. And I love that. Greatly. But what I am most looking forward to is what might happen to the sound after this first EP - is it a permanent fixture, a heart-deep love of this sound that will never change, or merely the basis for something even better?

PS. Check out the "traditional chinese rip edit" on Youku = more sound compression + (even) more video degradation. lol.

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