AYSEN – ESTREMECIDO

Yes, this is four years old this track. But that doesn't really matter. I heard it and I liked it. What is the most strange is that the artist behind the track, a Chilean musicmaker called Aysen (perhaps named after the region in Chile, Aysén), hasn't really released much music as of late. In fact, the compilation this track is taken from, 3 estados (referring to 3 states of water; ice, um water, and water vapour), is made up of creations made by Aysen (real name Pablo Flores) in Santiago between 2007 and 2009.

In any case this is 'estremecido', which means 'shaken' or 'shivery' in Spanish, and it certainly lives up to its name. Great icicles chime together, heavily knocking into each other and producing waves of frozen air, wafting towards you with promises of cold: chattering teeth and red cheeks.

Even the beat is chilly, with cymbals gently shivering with frozen urgency, hi-hats stuttering, the kicks lazily pummelling the air with their gentle sub-bass; the snare itself actually sounds like someone kicking snow, grains of ice chafing together with each hit. A parade of claps, as if the song itself is trying to keep warm, joins this ambient ice music in the middle and at the end, waking you up from this bracing tundra of a track.

• If you like instrumental experimentally like this, I'd really urge you to check out 3 estados for yourself. All the tracks can be downloaded for free.
• Whilst Aysen doesn't seem active anymore, the Santiago-based netlabel that released 3 estados, Pueblo Nuevo, is alive and well. Check it out!

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☟ Aysen Social Media Presence ☟
• SoundCloud •

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ROBOKID – PANTHER

Du lourd! That's what I'd say in French. Means heavy. And this shit from Robokid is rather heavy, weighty – yeah, there's definitely a bulkiness to it, a dense mass of hard sounds. A congealing of liquid sounds into a more putty-like substance that rolls around consuming everything in its path, much like the blob in the 1958 film, The Blob.

Who is Robokid? A musicmaker from Boston. That's all you need to know. His track 'Panther' is pockmarked with vast, fuzzy sludgewalls of brass-ish blares, which form the bassline underpinning the bristling jungle-esque beat, itself a frenzy of urgent broken clockwork percussion. As this assault bears down on your brain, high synth soars in, lingering with eagle-call melodies; beeps 'n' bleeps join in, stuttering to be heard amidst tumbling marimba chimes that glisten through the heavy shades of this track.

It's kinda spooky sounding, but it's also kinda not; it draws you with its punchiness and keeps you there with its dynamic structure – its use of the space between sounds, for instance – and with its atmospheric noises, its busy bustling beat. What could be misconstrued as just one thing ends up being many things at once, without sounding even one jot jumbled or confused, an odyssey of proclamatory and exclamatory proportions. It totally knows where it's going and what it's up to.

• This arrives fresh-ish courtesy of burgeoning artist collective Lifted Contingency and a mini-compilation called 24k. At $1, it's a bargain. In the words of JME, "cop that, it's a deal like Ikea."

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☟ Robokid Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter

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TDOYLE – COTTON CANDY CLOUDS

Ahh… tdoyle. I said it three times in the mirror last night (it was Halloween, yes I'm writing this from the past) but no one appeared. I tried it also with a hundred other different names of different people I know but no dice. Too bad. But anyway; news flash, tdoyle (which TextEdit keeps correcting to "toddle" which would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn annoying) might be changing his name. We were at Kami's Lookout (online venue) the other day and this was one of the things discussed. I won't divulge anything else though. Y? COS I AINT TELLIN U M8. Besides, I know nothing.

Anyway, here we are. A new track by Mr tdoyle. It's called 'Cotton Candy Clouds' (nice alliteration) and it is as the title says. Sounds like sweeties. Sounds like sugar. Popping arpeggios intermingle with more tangy arpeggios, each note seems to zing in glorious waves across a teal sky painted salmon pink with smiling, lazy clouds. It sounds actually almost as if it could've been written not from the point of view of looking up at the sky, but from being up in the sky looking down – from an airplane or something.

Yoshi makes an appearance, his cute lil voice sampled in the song's second half where claps run amok and synth chords almost like trumpets are triumphal and welcoming. There is a blissful simplicity at work here, something easygoing and uncluttered that makes it all the more easy to drift off to this one, really float 'pon it.

Wouldn't it be super cool if you could fly? That'd be amazing.

• tdoyle is Tom Doyle. A few months ago I wrote about his track 'Free Floating' – is there a theme here? – which is very nice also.
• This is taken from a fun compilation by Midwest Collective, simply titled Vol. 5 – the 5th volume of standalone singles created by the collective's affiliates. CHECK IT HERE (CLICKY).

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☟ tdoyle Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • site • Twitter

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VENTUREX – TALK TO ME

How does VentureX keep making such lovely music? Last I heard from him was his very funky and very danceable track, 'Do You Remember' – it's been a while since then (also, and unfortunately, as usual) but I've just been magnetised to his brand new track 'Talk To Me'. It was the bass that got me at first.

The bass! The bass is fat and a little fuzzy. Sound is made of vibrations. Sound rather is vibrations. But it's not that often you actually physically feel those vibrations in your ear, in your brain, in your corneas – the world exists in a puzzle of slightly shuddering shapes.

These robust bassplosions are submerged beneath a shuffling beat whose hi-hat ticks impatiently, or lashes out into the open with cutting sharpness. An original track, dissected for inspection and chopped expertly finds itself strewn across VentureX's track; guitar appears in golden truncated chords, or else it peeks in with glints of funk. A vocal sample adds its warm soul to the mix, washed with clarity; the track ends with a cascade of chiming cosmic rainstick and the treble is gently removed, leaving you with that ever-satisfying vacuum that is only achingly good bass rumblings.

• This comes as the second in very, very, very cool label / collective Stratford CT.'s Secret Selection, a series of surprise singles.
• They also released a VentureX album which is one of my actual favourite releases of this year ever. It's called Together and it's genuinely and flawlessly superb. Listen to it here.

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☟ VentureX Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Instagram

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URLCHILD – LIKE YOU ~ FALLING FOR

From this track's first abrasive beats it was kinda sold to me instantly. Then this gnarly vocal sample pops in like a small anthropomorphic whale bouncing around the room after it's crept in through the window, blubbering all the while in hypnotic loops. Wtf, sorry.

Well it's by urlchild (who is 21, from Austin, Texas) and it's called 'Like You ~ Falling For'. I didn't expect it to drop into this really house-flavoured vibe, didn't expect those sharp syncopated piano chords, mainly. These, alongside pulsar whispers of synth that zip in and out of earshot, are the main actual non-percussion sounds that aren't vocal samples, which in endlessly reverbing pitch-shiftedness croon the song's title.

The beat clacks, exploded from underneath with blooping depth charge sub-bass deposits, shifting above with garage-esque hi-hats that provide the fidgety skitter that work for house tracks like this – regular rhythm gets you moving on a basic level; the hi-hats accent this rhythm just so, just so, zapping your limbs into life. And then your brain gets shaken by the dynamic cymbals that crash across the track like haphazard punctuation.

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☟ urlchild Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter

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