MAT PLAYFORD – ISON

When I was thinking about this track earlier I came up with the idea that it sounded exactly the same as the music for the first stage of Captain Falcon's Twister Race on Nintendoland. Now, as I listen to this bit of soundtrack afresh, I can hear that, really, they don't sound all that similar. Where did I get that from?

I think it is the motion, the urgent, hyperactive kineticism of Mat Playford's house track 'ISON' that made me automatically associate with the speedy vibes that traditionally go with anything F-Zero related. I first heard 'ISON' one night on the radio (think it was an Annie Mac show?) and couldn't help but love it. That was months ago. Since then I've been waiting patiently for a real upload that wasn't a 2-minute teaser on Black Rock Records and HERE IT IS.

It's an odyssey of squidgy bass and a gloriously cyclical set of piano chords that gradually come into focus in the first minute of the track, where cymbals and hi-hats invade the beat – pulsing kicks and understated handclaps with the occasional snare stutter – to give it more energy. Soon, the main event: virtuoso piano. Tinkling and 7th-chording all the over the place, a kind of jazz-flavoured mania of cascading notes that should cement Mat Playford as a very decent piano player, too. Please note: 3:11, the low-note pause; the muted breakdown at about 4:08; the gradually deconstructed, bleepy outro from 5:35-ish. Dynamics are strong 'n' subtle here.

It's like, yeah, like something that might play in one of the clubs post-race on F-Zero, hanging in a slick Mute City bar and watching the future of lounge piano playing unfold before your very ears.

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• You can, if you wish, purchase 'ISON' from Traxsource, via Black Rock.
• Speaking of lounge, Peruvian DJ Viktor Torvik made an easy listening/lounge, '60s/'70s guest mix for YES/NO a few weeks ago. I urge you to check out its brilliance.

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☟ Mat Playford Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • official site • Twitter

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Y/N GUEST MIX 022 :: WINTER CHILL MIX BY MUS.HIBA

Mushiba means "tooth decay" in Japanese. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like to introduce mus.hiba. He is a producer from Hachioji, Tokyo, and when I asked, What do you do? he answered "I'm an office worker." It's a very modest way of looking at things and his music, subtly dynamic and often creeping up you with gradual intensity, reflects this. Recently, he released his first album on Tokyo-based Noble Label called White Girl – a beautiful exploration of wintry themes and the fragility of using artificial vocalist Yufu Sekka (from vocal database, UTAU) and her almost-alive, delicate whispery tones.

The list of inspirations behind his own music, when I asked him, feels very introspective, the hallmark I would guess of a bedroom producer, which is (I think, at least) how he started making music. mus.hiba is inspired by "Spending time alone, escapism, internet, the cultural climate of Japan, and music that gives a new stimulus to me."

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A moderate loneliness and a positive mind.

MUS.HIBA, on what this mix says about him

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Moving on from cultural climates, we get to the actual climate itself: yes, it's winter. And to celebrate this, mus.hiba has created a wonderful mix for YES/NO. Called his Winter Chill Mix, he explains the connection between the artists in the mix as "feeling winter and chilly vibes." — "I listened to these songs many times, they are my favorites." And that is as good a reason as any.

Beginning with the gloriously snowflakey and disorienting left-and-right panning in Blum's 'for love', we soon find ourselves at the mercy of multiple synth-gasms in the form of the high-octane, ear-tickling pleasure-waves of $aturn's remix of Diversa's track 'xxxXXX' and in mus.hiba's first appearance on the mix with his remix of 'Because of my eyes' by Tokyo band LLLL.

Mr. mus.hiba sews seemingly disparate elements together, too: we move by way of Irish producer Harmful Logic's lo-pitch hypnotism in 'Kitsune Mask (狐のマスク)' into the bustling mellowness in 'It's All Around You' by American band Tortoise, then back into the aching electronica in the clattering chill of 'Let Go' by London producer Bearcubs. Finally, Argentinian musicmaker Sobrenadar with 'Junio' and its understated icy chill leads into mus.hiba's own 'Moonlight', an intense end to a collection of songs that certainly deserves the title Winter Chill Mix.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

• 1. Blum – for love
• 2. Galimatias & Sorrow - Subside
• 3. Jonwayne - Bowser feat. Mndsgn
• 4. LLLL - Because of my eyes (mus.hiba snow remix)
• 5. Diversa - xxxXXX ($aturn Remix)
• 6. H20$$$SPORTS$$$ - \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
• 7. Harmful Logic - Kitsune Mask (狐のマスク)
• 8. Tortoise - It's All Around You
• 9. Bearcubs - Let Go
• 10. The Sea And Cake - Sound & Vision
• 11. The Bilinda Butchers - All My Friends
• 12. Sobrenadar - Junio
• 13. mus.hiba - Moonlight

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• I urge you wholeheartedly to check out mus.hiba's debut album White Girl – not only is it great on its own, but it's perfect for this time of year. Just look out the window on a frosty morning whilst it's playing~

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☟ mus.hiba Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr

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CATT MOOP – CATT MOOP #1

It's sometimes like really difficult to describe where things actually come from, who made them, what the point of such and such a release is, blah blah blah, it's just tricky. Gotta research things if you wanna properly know but sometimes the answers just aren't there.

Luckily they [the answers] are um kinda here with this track from Atlanta-based beatmaker Catt Moop (love the name – what does it mean? idk – the word "moop" just sounds great). Seemingly created for a newish SoundCloud page called FOODFIGHT, it has no name and arrives in a series presumably under FOODFIGHT's bio: "beat battles for fun!"

I like the idea behind it. Just nice and innocent food fights, I mean beat battles.

'Catt Moop #1' is a cool track. It is sunk with vibrating sub-bass, a moody mire upon which synth bleeps do their thing, pockmarked with nifty little dynamics, like a complete cut out of the volume or a gradual slow-down with the synth gradually reverbing more and more and imploding in on itself. And at the beginning there's a brilliant muted shout of FOOOD FIIIGHT! Yeah! LET'S GET MESSY!

It reminds me of a few things, which I will list now. It reminds me of Mr. Oizo-style French touch kinda stuff, with a cheeky melody that belies a certain idgaf swagger, pointy and electronic and sometimes decaying with squeaky distortion. It also reminds me of the minimal beats of London grime – a repetitive (and cheeky but we don't have to say it cause I already said so) melody against slow swaying beats. Then again, the actual rhythm is more trap than anything. So there you go – a cocktail of attitudinal flavours.

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Catt Moop is also one half of musicmaking duo, HYDERABADD. Check em out.

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☟ Catt Moop Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

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SPAZZKID – DAYTIME DISCO FEAT NEON BUNNY

Spazzkid basically never fails to disappoint and in this instance the same is true in his brand new track 'Daytime Disco'. Here he becomes a super talented producer for the vocal talents of Korean singer-songwriter Neon Bunny, whose voice sings a gorgeously plaintive song over the super palatable flavours of Spazzkid's squelchy dynamic synth patterns.

These bounce on a jelly bouncy castle of sound in the form of bloopsome sub bass globules, which are the footwork kicks underpinning the wildly frenetic beat, skittering with exhilarating hi-hat-cymbal-combination gunning out with amicable-uzi rattlings. As ever his ear for dynamic is spot on; the beat loses its shit where it needs to, the synth grows fainter in some parts for Yoojin Lim's (Neon Bunny's irl name) voice to drop its beautiful mist upon your ears more purely, a break in the music makes room for the sample of what sounds like the cheerful chatter of a restaurant. It's lovely.

Little accoutrements finish it off as sonic ornaments in the form of bleeping little popcorn wiggles from left to right, and also featuring some dreamy guitar twinkling from Hiro Makino aka There Is A Fox (and it's not the first time he's collaborated either, having made a track back in spring with Spazzkid called 'At Fault'). I'm so happy to hear that Spazzkid, Mr Mark Redito, is continuing to attract attention from all the right places – this time from ultracool London / NY label Cascine – and that he's doing this with his group of international friends, too.

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• You can purchase 'Daytime Disco' right here (clickety-click).

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☟ Spazzkid Social Media Presence ☟
Soundcloud • Bandcamp • official site • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

☟ Neon Bunny Social Media Presence ☟ Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

☟ Hiro Makino/There Is A Fox Social Media Presence ☟ Facebook • Soundcloud • Tumblr • oto sound (another alias of Hiro) on Myspace

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Y/N GUEST MIX 021 :: CLAS TUUTH

One day I will get better at creating the cover art for these guest mixes. For now, I will stick with making stuff on Paintbrush, a buggy port of Paint for Mac. If anybody has any suggestions, or can make art for free (some of the artists have done this themselves) please contact me. Thank you.

For now though, allow me to introduce Clas Tuuth. Well not so much introduce as meet him once more, as I did write about one of the tracks from his recent-ish 003 EP the other month. He's from London and he makes lovely organic-sounding electronic music, as if these electronics were plant matter or animal matter, and lived their own lives, living and breathing within the compositions with naturalistic ease. At the same time, they're filled with urban grit and a decidedly cold sense of loneliness – an almost melancholic feeling, yet content with itself, the soundtracks to solitary journeys and pensive moods.

But as for this mix itself. From the introspective ambience of Clas Tuuth's own intro in the form of his track 'Legion', it is a predominantly '90s-flavoured affair, a voyage through rave-inspired beats and heavenly dub. There's the cascade of beats in 'Hooligan 69' by Ragga Twins, containing within it a sample of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy', the twisted synth fantasia in the Alley Cat remix of 'Charly' by The Prodigy, the dance-rap of Rebel MC's 'The Wickedest Sound' (featuring, I have discovered, the origin of the eponymous sample in DJ Fresh's 'Dibby Dibby Sound'), ending as it began with the beautiful life-of-its-own vinyl crackle.

It's real nice to hear some music that I didn't really grow up with, but that has inspired a whole generation of musicmakers with its unrelenting beats and simplistic approach to music. I hope you enjoy or at least appreciate :~)

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• T R A C K L I S T •

• 01. Clas Tuuth – Legion Intro
• 02. Manix – Stupid Dope Mix
• 03. Intelligent Hoodlum – Arrest The President
• 04. Clas Tuuth – Glass feat. Catriona Irving
• 05. Tek9 – Space 91
• 06. Shut Up and Dance – Derek Went Mad
• 07. Ragga Twins – 18" Speaker
• 08. Ragga Twins – Hooligan 69
• 09. SL2 – The Noise (Remix)
• 10. Eric B. & Rakim – I Know You Got Soul
• 11. 2 Bad Mice – Bombscare
• 12. The Prodigy – Charly (Alley Cat Mix)
• 13. Bug Khan & Plastic Jamm – Made In 2 Minutes
• 14. Rebel MC – The Wickedest Sound
• 15. 2 Bad Mice – Hold It Down
• 16. Clas Tuuth – Legion (version)

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☟ Clas Tuuth Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

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