PRIMAPARTE – 1975. // noire

This ain't the newest song from this German beatmaker, but it is the first one I heard when I stumbled onto his SoundCloud page. I also listened to a couple of his other tracks, but, yeah, still decided to show you guys this one.

It's called '1975.' and it's by a guy from Essen, Germany (fun fact: the city recently started an initiative which pays alcoholics in beer to clean the streets) called primaparte. It is hip hop, or at least utilises an offbeat that is very hip hop, as well as a whole lotta sampling and looping.

The track soars with the sound of astronauts talking to mission control and gloopy pianos playing a warm walking-through-the-door-of-your-childhood-home type melody, as electronic buzzing and beeping get giddy in the crackling ambient cosmos conjured by the beatmaker. Note also the well-placed truncated sample of "Motherf—"

Speaking of which, and after a sampled "YEAH", you'll see it's smart af, with metronomic hi-hats ticking above tight snares that clack alternately to the thud-boom of the kicks, holding up this transportive wonder – even if it is only 1m 33s long.

And fuck it, why not listen to the sparkling 'noire' as well—

—which aches with sultry urban brass blares that announce the triumph of nocturnal lassitude, with the occasional sample of someone laughing, as if the kitchen utensil percussion is actually tickling him, whose beat is boom bap through and through. It basically sounds noire.

• If you like the looped chilled stylings of these tracks then get yourself over to primaparte's SoundCloud and follow.

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DOUJINSHI – LALALA~

Hmmm, I can't think of a song recently that's had such overt classical influences as this one seems to have had. Mmm… nope. Can't think of one. Anyway. This is a track by Doujinshi (or dōjinshi, meaning self-published stuff like zines and comics – music in this case, I guess), whom I first became aware of thanks to, well, I can't remember actually, soz.

Since then I've been, like, lazy, oblivious, otherwise engaged, and for some reason or another have never gotten around to giving Doujinshi a little feature here. Well, the time has come. That day has arrived. And as such, here's a really great new track from the producer called 'lalala~' (TextEdit just corrected that to 'llama~').

You hear the classical influence? Yes, it sounds very much like Baroque composer Pachelbel's most famous, uh, "piece" Canon in D Major. It's kind of not though. But it is super relaxing and soft-edged, these harmonious sweeps of feather-touch pliable synths. Claps reverb out into this gentle space, followed by the virtuosic kicks and gattling hi-hats of the beat, the foundation for this gorgeous track.

The vocal sample here has a lot to answer for. It's like, so addictive. I think its relatively slow rhythm against the carnivalistic trap regularity of the beat has something to do with it; the tone of the voice is great, too; also don't forget the virtuosic pitch-shifting by Doujinshi at work here. And when the actual "laaa laaa laaa…" comes in, layered on top of existing vocals, it's another level of pure joy. And it all slows towards the finish, a subtle dynamic that brings the track to a tidy, natural ending.

As often happens I spent literally ages looking for the source of this friendly and inexplicably captivating vocal sample. Thankfully, as doesn't always happen, I found that it was from a song called 'Nijiiro' ("rainbow-coloured") by Ayaka – a stripped-back piece of fun, chilled & breezy J-pop released earlier this year.

• Yo, and for further aural fun go check out Doujinshi's Studio Ghibli-inspired Excalibur EP, released end of September this year.

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Y/N GUEST MIX 017 :: MEMORY CARDS PROJECT DREAM MIX

It's that time again. Another guest mix from an artist we like. This time around it's the turn of Memory Cards. He's a musicmaker who began making music in LA but currently resides in Arizona who makes super dreamy trap-flavoured music. The kind of thing that has been labelled "otaku trap" (kinda for good reason, in that much of the music is at least anime-inspired, with some out-and-out covers/remixes of anime themes, etc.) of late. But labels are for card catalogues.

"If I had to pick a season for this," Mr Memory Cards (irl name Jonathan) tells me via email, "I think this suits the beginning of fall more." And right now, as I write this listening to the mix for severalth time, looking out the window at grey-white sky and permanent rain, I can safely say that I totally agree. So this is when it's happening. Listen to this mix and kick up some dead leaves.

Why is it called Project Dream? And why is the artwork like it is? Both are inspired by Initial D, a manga/anime that is centred around the world of illegal street racing in Japan, of which Memory Cards had just started watching the final season at the time of making this mix.

I ask him what inspires his own music. "Nostalgia," he says. "For me, a vital part of the music making process involves introspection and seeing how my recollections can be incorporated into the work I make. Since for the most part the music I make doesn't really have words (or at least my own words) it's difficult to explicitly articulate these concepts. However, I try and draw inspiration from forms of media and popular culture that have brought me joy in the past. By doing so, I hope that I can at least partially convey who I am, where I've been and where I'm going not just as a producer or a musician but as a person as well.

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I dream a lot

MEMORY CARDS

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And what about the mix itself? "Really the only unifying theme with this mix is that they're all tracks that I've been very much enjoying lately," he explains. "Some of the tracks have a sort of eerie menace to them while some have a more jubilant nature to them. Others still carry an air of sweetness tinged with a shade of melancholy, so there's a variation in what I consider to be the themes of the songs I chose." He then adds something that seems to be an overriding theme of internet music: "I would also like to say that I consider myself friends with or at least acquaintances of a good portion of the producers featured here."

It's solidarity, a support network of artists who are at least right now eternally collaborating with each other, bigging each other up, and generally just being nice to one another. Since it's not a local scene, you don't have to "put up" with people, you choose your friend group based mainly and firstly on similar interests rather than spatial limitations; these pockets collect online, attract more people. Soon enough you have a veritable movement.

So from the stand-out electronic atmospherics of the Sonic Adventure-inspired indoors track 'Mystic Ruins' made for the pretty cool CHAO GARDEN compilation (curated by collective MECHA YURI and Memory Cards' own floating cloud sparkling euphoria in 'Fantasia Arc', to the glitzy ambient/future funk crossover in 'SUMMER VI', a collaboration between Bansheebeat and Yung Bae, to Shoujo Eyes and his track 'My Magical Girl' playing us out with gorgeous chiptune melodies, this mix is as varied and evocative as Memory Cards said it'd be, bristling with thickets of machine gun hi-hats and videogame samples (Link swinging his sword in ☆ＩＣＥＡＧＥ☆ by allegedly 14yo producer, manitee, or original Smash Bros. "choose your character" sounds in Cosmastly & Heavy Hearts collab, 'Fighting Polygon Team') – a great showcase of young producers making music right now.

Plus I think I finally got Memory Cards' name – it's all about recollections, memories… memory cards… store memories… of games.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. 32jnqwn-_-_-_ - ECSTATIC CLARITY
2. memory cards - Fantasia Arc
3. Childish Gambino – candler road (memory cards Chopped & Screwed Edit)
4. indoors - mystic ruins
5. Oliver~ - <3 Sosa Screwx
6. Howlings - What We Could Have Been
7. mizukage - OG Bobby
8. tones_ - heal 
9. HiGHBRiD - N E X U S
10. grèg - 水族館 (将来)
11. highbrid x memory cards - bandana . witta . mullet
12. // Hydro // - ~ R E A C H ~
13. manitee - ☆ＩＣＥＡＧＥ☆ (1.5k special free dl)
14. ║丂ｲ乇√乇刀 ۩ d乇乃ﾚﾑƬ║ - ｃｌｅｍｅｎｔｉｎｅ// ありがとう『feat. NET WORTHY』 
15. d o w n s † a † e - i c e ` g r a v e
16. ║丂ｲ乇√乇刀 ۩ d乇乃ﾚﾑƬ║ -ｉ ｄｏｎｔ ｕｎｄｅｒｓｔａｎｄ… (•̩̩̩̩＿•̩̩̩̩) ……╔ feat. H i G H B R i D ☥╗ 
17. [bansheebeat + yung bae] - SUMMER VI 
18. COSMASTLY ✗ HEAVY HEARTS - FIGHTING POLYGON TEAM
19. A$AP Rocky - Wassup (LOSTSVUND Remix)
20. ILOVEMAKONNEN - Tuesday (ft. Drake) (MXRA & LOSTSVUND Remix)
21. Shoujo Eyes - My Magical Girl

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LIQUID SUNSHINE – BE NICE

Woo. Here is some new music from a guy called Hosh'ki Tsunoda, a Japanese producer currently making music in Costa Mesa, California. Oh yeah his musicmaking name is Liquid Sunshine, and the music he makes is prettttttty close to this moniker: liquid shots of actual sun, blended up (blent up?) UV, drinking the sun and all the confusing physics and superheat that goes along with it. Complicated space stuff, y'knoooowww. He actually does describe himself as a "Cosmic beat maker" so…

Annnnyway, his new track is called 'Be Nice' (good message) and it's a mixture of understated, sweaty euphoria and wobbly, wonk-laden hip hop, using shoegazing phasers and a whole host of other FX to paint a multi-flavoured soup of rising/falling swirling synth, grinding bloops, seesawing squeals, dappled light glittering and beachside breezes on the melted façade of a hot afternoon.

All the while kicks sub-boom their slow way along, texturised claps like slapping gravel-filled puddles of water, dynamic build-ups with steady loudening snare rolls, bursting with low-key energy. Crackles and tropical percussion whisper in the quieter moments, just one of many layers of this richly bustling track.

This arrives as the first single from Tsunoda's upcoming EP (dunno what it's called yet, sorry), out 15th October, courtesy of internationalist netlabel, Rootnote Collective, arriving as the first volume – Vol 1.0 – in their The Rooted Arts series, an "exclusive SoundCloud project" aiming to showcase music from a wide range of artists, stemming from a weariness of the current "homogenization of a singular sound." Go for it, I say!

• Please (if u liked this stuff) go have a listen to his other two EPs, his debut, liquid.sunset, off the back of which performing at Shibuya-based online venue, 2.5D, and the slightly more recent Voices EP.

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PALE – SILENCE (EYEDRESS REMIX)

The shifting & shuffling night-drive R&B of London-based Pale's recent track 'Silence' is beautiful; synth chords drenched in chorus seem to laser through ur mind with pulsar hypnotism riding the plasma length of each resounding blast; minimalist guitar reverbs with cold sharp twangs of introverted sound; vocals, smooth and wracked with heartfelt longing — for what? Silence? Who knows.

This has now been acquired by Filipino musicmaker Eyedress for a suitably hazy remix. This guy, whose alias is a phonetic rendition for all those who would mispronounce his actual name: Idris (Vicuña), is well known for his powerful, ghost-flavoured originals and remixes alike. And in the same vein as his past efforts, 'Silence' becomes a different beast.

Soaked with off-kilter sweeps of wobbling, grinding synth, the track is set adrift a turbulent undercurrent of clap collections, urgent hi-hats and syncopated snares, beset with an occasional near-supersonic scream whirling about like some nightmare flying insect that's like a horrifically sized cranefly but with a death-coloured human head and long flowing greasy hair. The vocals are now stretched from their original pitch, wrenched through the nocturnal sludge of Eyedress's witchy sound for an unsettling decoration atop this subtly stormy sound.

• The original 'Silence' is taken from Pale's recent The Comeback EP, a four-song showcase of downtempo beauty seasoned with R&B lilts. You'll like it, probably.

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