☟YES/NO☟

Wednesday, 5 March 2014

TOUCH SENSITIVE – SLOWMENTS

I've been thinking about this song ever since it arrived in my inbox. I didn't write about it straight away because 2013's timeless-incredible track from Touch Sensitive, the indomitable and eternal 'Pizza Guy', was just so good that I was worried the next instalment from this Future Classic-dwelling Australian producer just wouldn't match up. With that worry firmly locked in my mind last night, I finally steeled myself: it was on the cusp of sleep that I resolved, tomorrow – today – I would write about Touch Sensitive's new track, 'Slowments'.

The song itself is a remix, essentially – or perhaps more correctly, a re-envisioning – of Art of Noise's bizarre and sensual 1985 track 'Moments In Love' (also responsible for the Prince-covered 1988 hit, 'Kiss'), yet when the slow arpeggio of synth bips rippled through the air, my first thought was of the 'Prelude' from Final Fantasy VII, and if that makes you angry, or you think I'm stupid, I'm really sorry. Just listen to the song and forget I said anything.

Turning the original vocals into high-register piercings of soul-moving sound, Touch Sensitive – real name Michael Di Francesco – lays on controlled torrents of warm, flowing bass, enough to rumble your very blood, whilst organising jumbled metallic hits to reverb their way through the faraway romance of the song. It's a perfect match of old and new – modern drum sounds clapping and thudding out a mid-tempo, extremely danceable rhythm; glittering old synths like vintage jewellery raining from the sky. At heart, it's a retelling of 80s synthpop and it's very pretty.

But— is it better than 'Pizza Guy'? Well, in my opinion, no. I say this because I have been and still am obsessed with that track. It's one of my go-to songs. But 'Slowments' is different in style, eschewing the bold and bright Drive inspired sounds of last year for something subtler, and maybe prettier; something that, by description, pays homage to something else (and as such it's difficult to compare to the originality of 'Pizza Guy'). I like it, I like it a lot, but I am yearning for something that is going to jolt my heart with such energy that I can't help but listen to it on repeat for days on end – perhaps that's what's to come.

Get this for free right here (clickety-click-click).

Like Touch Sensitive on Facebook
Listen to Touch Sensitive on Soundcloud
Follow Touch Sensitive on Twitter
Look at Touch Sensitive's photos on Instagram

Tuesday, 4 March 2014

YES/NO GUEST MIX 009 :: HARMFUL LOGIC

Number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9 number 9. This is the ninth guest mix created for YES/NO. This time, the half-hour collection of tracks has been lovingly stitched together by Harmful Logic. A producer from Drogheda, Ireland, called Steven Clarke, he usually makes music that combines a love of dark, experimental hip hop and trap with animé and the cute sounds of J-pop – two seemingly disparate areas of interest, but it works. It works I tell ya. Check out, for instance, his free-to-download track of 2013's post-summer period, 'Sorry', a hypnotic drone of a track, or the more recent mix of cute and heavy in '愛'.

In this, his 'I Got So Emotional Doing This Mix That Now My Laptop Has Water Damage From My Tears' Mix, Harmful Logic shows us what's been tickling his fancy recently, most of the tracks being much less than a month old. Be prepared for a clash of Japanese pop culture and bristling beats, heavy and soft, harsh and soothing. A highlight, for me personally, arrives early on in the mix, with Montpellier musicmaker TeaLeaf` sampling Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence' in his trap-flavoured track 'San' – and later on with the remix of memory cards' track 'phoenix downs' by yandere, a pretty special spark of electro-glitch.

So please, sit back or find something to do – like accounting, tidying your room, yoga, or just plain old URL browsing – and enjoy the next half an hour of sounds, the musical tastes of Harmful Logic.

TRACKLIST:

Like Harmful Logic on Facebook
Listen to Harmful Logic on Soundcloud
Follow Harmful Logic on Twitter
Check Harmful Logic on Tumblr

Monday, 3 March 2014

SOSLYLOVE – AGELESS

A good compilation is sometimes all you need to open up a previously unexplored section of the music world; Various Artists are my favourite kind of artist. These compilations are like portals to an incredible 'elsewhere' – like opening a Pandora's Box, except with less of the world's evils and more of the world's good music. And besides, if Pokémon has proven anything, it's that we love collectibles – the mystique of Various Artists compilations hits us like the heady whiff of Nintendo's motley crew of monsters.

That's not to reduce the ever-surprising V.A. down to a lower status – not at all. I love finding new things. And as such, this compilation (discovered thanks to LA producer Spazzkid) is a particularly special one. Now, talking about this whole thing – Amicus Curiae by fledgling collective/label Stratford CT. – would be ridiculous, so I'll start with the first track. It's by American producer sloslylove and it's called 'Ageless' and it's really nice.

Taking cues from sunset-imbued 80s balladic pop, the track is a smooth escape into warmth and nostalgia, led by a cracking marvel of a bassline. A huge cradle of slapbass, thick and soulful, holds within it dreamy fragments of saxophone that lap at the edges of your mind's fondest memories whilst beautiful washes of soft synth watercolour the scene with twilit skies. You're struck by the timelessness of the song, its atmosphere pummelled gently by epic-inspired reverbing drums, slow and steady. It is indeed ageless. A sound to be lost in – an aid for unwinding – yet filled with heady romance on the cusp between action and fantasy.

If you know what's good for you, and you wanna listen to some songs that have a similar vibe to this one, then please I do really urge you to check out Stratford CT.'s collection of curated tracks on Amicus Curae. You can also download it for free/name-your-price; definitely do this.

Like sloslylove on Facebook
Listen to sloslylove on SoundCloud
Hear more sloslylove on Bandcamp
Follow sloslylove on Twitter
Watch sloslylove on YouTube

Sunday, 2 March 2014

SLINKY – DMNDZ

As I sit here, I scroll and click and read and listen and recognise more and more acutely the hunger I'm feeling for my imminent dinner; it seems as if the closer it gets, the more wild my appetite feels. I could guzzle a barrel of food. Totally annihilate it. Anyway, as I'm feeling this bizarre hunger, the kind that leaves your thoughts jutting out at strange angles with thinning rationality, I stumbled across something I found a few days ago.

It's by slinky. Who's slinky? In name terms, it's Shane Linkous, but he's a musicmaker from Tampa, Florida, who seemingly likes nothing better than to create musical mind-candy, stuff that burrows into your brain as you listen to it – the sounds of another world but in this world right here right now. I was particularly taken by one of his latest tracks, the 2-month-old rhythmic fairy-beast that is 'Dmndz'. Presumably a contraction of 'Diamonds' with a 'z', it certainly does have a feel to it that evokes diamonds; as if diamonds had made the music, as if their glistening produced sounds, as if a synthesiser were being played inside caverns riddled with diamonds.

Unrelenting mechanical snare-like sounds roll and drum into your ears, chipping away like some monster of industry at great boulders, looking for the precious stone itself. High-pitched arpeggios pinprick in time with the endless percussion, different tones and pitches in glorious stereo, submerging you as fresh synth gusts breeze in, low bass rumbling every now and again like a terrestrial shudder from the deep. The sound of steampunk diamond mines hissing and glittering in the fractured belly of the Earth.

And yeah, you can download it. Have a look through his SoundCloud for more weird and wonderful sounds; his most recent, for instance, is a wholly experimental outing that reminds me of the battle music in the Twilight Realm from Zelda: Twilight Princess, inspired oddly by the 1982 German film Fitzcarraldo, which, coincidentally, a friend recommended to me a few weeks ago. Ain't life funny?

Like slinky on Facebook
Listen to slinky on SoundCloud
Hear more slinky on Bandcamp
Follow slinky on Twitter

Saturday, 1 March 2014

KA-YU – UNXSUAL

Ah wow, so yeah, hmm…! This is nice. This is really nice. And if you're getting tired of my continual surprise at finding incredible stuff that I never knew existed, then maybe you should get some childlike wonder of your own and stop being such an "adult" – woo look at you, all cynical and that, must feel pretty growned-up! You must get regular haircuts too! (The collective "you", no-one in particular).

That aside, this track 'UNXSUAL' really is nice. It's from a producer called KA-YU, who is a Moluccan (islands in Indonesia) / Dutch guy from a little place in the Netherlands called Oosterwolde. Real name Woody Latuheru, he's done something that I've always wondered about: remixed his own track. Yep, he's only gone and done it. And not only that, the original track – called 'Temptations' – is essentially a remix itself, heavily sampling the rich harmonies from Beyoncé's 'Rather Die Young'. It's a remix within a remix, a film within a film, a dream within a dream, and whilst not as confusing as that last one, it sure is as mesmerising.

Exploding in your ears, it's an instant hit, a total dopamine-engager, cradling your heart in its arms as it gets down and gets moving, your spirit inextricably linked in the very moment of now. Vocal cuts like orchestra hits blast out above the clacking roll-sway of a juke-flavoured beat, rumbling drone sub-bass gripping you in its apocalyptic frequency all the way. A gun fires three quarters through. "Oh my god" says a voice; "Aww, shit!" says another. This song knows its own immensity and it brims, pulses with confidence.

Well uh that was that. Happy? I am. And I'm also definitely looking forward to hearing more from KA-YU, which will be in the near future. Recently joining the Art In Melodies family/collective alongside four other musicmakers in the Netherlands, a new EP is currently in the works – check out this snippet of a very intergalactic-sounding remix of Brandy's 'I Wanna Be Down' taken from that upcoming release.

Like KA-YU on Facebook
Listen to KA-YU on SoundCloud
Visit KA-YU official site
Follow KA-YU on Twitter