MEISHI SMILE – BLANK OCEAN

Meishi Smile has shared a song via Ryan Hemsworth friends-only-not-a-label Secret Songs. Who is Meishi Smile? I hear you cry. Don't worry. His real name is Garrett Yim and he is from California and he makes music so sweet you'll want to cry, so bleakly sad that you'll want to smile. At the beginning of last year he released his debut album, LUST, which I really enjoyed – a high-energy whirlwind of J-pop flavours that was as wistful and introverted as it was all-encompassing and euphoric. A lovely mix, in short. Oh and he is also the head of alternative pop label/collective, Zoom Lens.

Anyway, the track is called 'Blank Ocean' (the title alone is the first tearjerker – even that speaks to me) and it's really good, basically. The intro is a real killer, a 27-second gradual slide into the track's candy-coloured bounce featuring cold, fizzing synth with hints of the Amen-style breaks. The main body of this track is all breakbeats, with zithery plucked instruments plaintively echoing the melody of the vocals, which are vocodered to good effect, almost as a detachment from the true emotion of what they're singing.

Mr. Meishi Smile has kindly provided the lyrics and with lines like, "let's end our lives in a sentimental way / let's echo our youth like death in poetry," the fearsome despair and hopelessness at the heart of this song become more evident.

In true Meishi style, he's also added some brilliant pan flute sounds, the hollow quirky sound of them conjuring the otherworldliness of one of his influences, the soundtrack of Bomberman 64. Add to this the blooping (almost like Sonic jumping circa 1991) synth hook and breezy guitar chords, and you have a whole lot of disparate and perhaps even conflicting elements.

But Meishi Smile weaves them all together with a finesse that not only results in a well-crafted piece of sugary and emotive pop, but that also, in its loud and bustling way, harks back to Meishi's roots in harsh noise music. Top marks!

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• Meishi Smile made a guest mix for YES/NO last year – Valentine's Day-themed, too! It's really good! Go listen! And download it~!
• Also I interviewed Mr. Meishi for Red Bull Music Academy magazine regarding Zoom Lens. Go read!

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☟ Meishi Smile Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube

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GHOST CRUISE – PAST MIDNIGHT

Not sure where this guy is from but I'm going to make some sort of half-educated guess. So… yeah, I think he might be from Paris. And in fact – could be male or female. So let's say… them. They might be from Paris because they tagged the song as 'Paris' (also a Parisian musicmaker commented on the track, too, so…). Then again, they've also tagged it with The, Imaginarium, Midnight, Beats, 2015, and Hadrian. So who can say anything for sure? Not I. Not I.

So anyway, the track is called 'Past Midnight' and it's by somebody making music under the name GHOST CRUISE. The etymology of the name… a ghost cruise I suppose. Either a cruise for ghosts or a cruise you go on to see ghosts. Sorry, too much talking.

The track itself is gloriously wonky, owing not only to the skipping off-kilter beat that thuds and thumps along, nor just to the the seemingly arhythmic synth bass bouncing throughout, but also to the sounds higher up the scale. Harp flourishes sweep as if endlessly conjuring a flashback, backdropped with phasing sounds and punctuated with zither icicles and delicate strings. Something wholly fitting the title 'After Midnight', summoning the unreal moods and atmospheres that effuse from the heart of night itself.

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☟ GHOST CRUISE Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Facebook

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DRAGON UMA – COSMOS

Here is a song from a Japanese producer Ryuma Miyamoto aka Dragon UMA. Now, UMA could stand for a lot of things (Universal Music Australia, Union du Maghreb arabe, uniform memory access) but I like to think, given the preceding 'Dragon' that it's a reference to the game Little King's Story. The enemies in the game, for the most part, are classified as "UMA" – Unidentified Mysterious Animals; though I can't remember stumbling upon a dragon-based one, unless it refers to the Worker Onii (onii = a kind of pun because "oni" is demon in Japanese and "onii" is means something like older brother or "big bro"), or the Blue Dragon Guardian (boss).

Anyway — enough of this!

I stumbled across this track called 'COSMOS' today and was pretty much intent on writing about it all day and I MADE SURE I DID. SO HERE I AM WRITING! WILLPOWER!

Beginning as a beat-heavy piece of robust pop that seems to sample some Japanese singing, the track soon slides into a unique foray into distorted trance-flavoured sounds. Piercing glassy chords lance outwards from a booming soundscape of fuzzy kicks exploding with bass, which become more frantically frequent as the melodies become more energetic.

In particular this is a synth symphony, a sweeping exposition of sounds from blissful solos to clustered bleepings, from syncopated grinds of bass blasts to high pitched sounds that are kind of like sneakers making that squeak sound on a polished floor (or the high pitched sound you can hear in the Graveyard level from Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins). Overall it's packed with as much alternative dancefloor leanings – the bouncy yet abrasive kicks made me think of Pictureplane, as a comparison – as it is with not necessarily atmospheric but certainly scene-setting sounds.

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• Check out some of Dragon UMA's releases: here's a recent EP courtesy of alternative Japanese netlabel Omoide, and on his own Bandcamp there's an album called Princess恵.
• Recently he also uploaded a track called 'Casual Vacancy' that's set to appear on Tanukineiri Shiori Sampler, a compilation (by the netlabel Tanukineiri) set to be released in the near future

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☟ Dragon UMA Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

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SUNGJOON KIM QUARTET (SJQ) – NO. 2

Ah I found this ages ago and have been meaning to share it ever since. I'm not usually a fan of crazy jazz, or maybe I don't know what jazz is. Can jazz be anything? Does it have to sound jazzy? Hmm. Maybe this is "contemporary" jazz. I found this because I don't really subscribe to many people on YouTube and the one person I do subscribe to is this guy from South Korea who films lots of music and culture stuff.

Anyway yeah, this is the Sungjoon Kim Quartet (or 김성준 쿼텟) performing a track simply called 'No. 2' – except this time around it's a sextet, with an additional saxophonist and a zither type thing. This is actually called a yang-geum, which is a traditional Korean instrument, and this would make more sense in this instance given that SJQ (as they are known) is a South Korean entity of jazz.

It's headed up by jazz saxophonist, Sungjoon Kim. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston, he moved to NYC and sat in on many jam sessions, taking the new experiences back with him to South Korea in 2010, where he makes music and teaches as a professor at Soongsil University and Baekseok University. Jun Kim is on guitar, Doc Skim is playing synth bass, and Woongwon Hahn is on drums. This is SJQ. The girl playing the yang-geum is possibly Hwiseon Choe and the additional (tenor) saxophone guy might be Jeeseok Kim.

The track, performed live at VELOSO in Seoul, is a mad slice of bustling energy, a large helping of hot and sticky music, sultry and humid, permeated with cool calm in the form of constant laid-back guitar chords, all the while the bulging bass supports beneath it all. It begins with saxophone flourishes, a kind of brass call-and-response, the yang-geum solo is particularly fresh, hearing it in this jazz context gives it a whole new meaning, a twist on tradition.

The guitar solo is a break in the craziness after some crashing dynamic punctation from the drums, a soothing oasis from the screaming saxophones, which soon itself bleeds back into high-energy, rapid-fire playing, building to a crescendo which drops us off full circle, to the ascending saxophones that played at the start.

Whew. I don't ever write about jazz and I'm sorry if you don't like it but you should give it a listen anyway, it's really cool. It's 11 minutes long but I'm sure you can deal with it.

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• And if you'd like to hear the whole album, it is a possibility. It's been uploaded to YouTube courtesy of the label on which it was released, ILIL SOUND.

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☟ Sungjoon Kim Quartet Social Media Presence ☟
Sungjoon Kim's Facebook • SoundCloud • Myspace • Bandcamp • ILIL SOUND • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube • Wikipedia

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Y/N GUEST MIX 023 :: GOODNIGHT CODY

HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's 2015! Imagine that! We made it! We're still here! And to kick-start this year – whose numbers, if you're into numerology, add up to 8 (v lucky number) – we have an exclusive tasty guest mix from a producer whom I admire quite a bit. What a New Year's surprise this is!

First time I stumbled across music created by this man he went under the name Snorlax. As any good Pokémon fan, I followed my nose and leapt into his pool of music and found it to be like, well, just a delight, if I'm allowed to say so. Now creating music under Goodnight Cody, a moniker little closer to real life (his name is Cody Farwell) this producer and bass-player from Los Angeles creates music that at once introduces groove and atmosphere in scene-setting unions, tracks that jiggle your body and your mind at the same time – take, for instance, the wonder that is 'Full Count (Bases Loaded!)', it conjures an actual baseball game, a cartoony, Peanuts-esque baseball game. And that bass, right?!

And yes: he plays bass, has been since age 12, soon after realising he was "a horrible drummer" (which he started playing when he was 8). Then he started writing songs on guitar and piano at 15. "I've always been drawn to music," he tells me, "and I believe that is what started me to create it."

Coming from a punk background, the first electronic music that attracted him was that of Squarepusher; Cody "fell in love with his extreme sounds." Afterwards it was a case of "digging deeper and deeper for new sounds & styles, looking for inspiration."

After I asked nicely, he very kindly agreed to make a mix for YES/NO. And what a mix. Self-confessedly "constantly digging for timeless music from all over the world," it really shows in the collection he's put together for us.

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I think what continues to inspire me is the search for the perfect song for the perfect moment

CODY FARWELL

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"These tracks in the mix are very important to me," he explains, "as they are all by artists that have changed the way I perceive music." He tells me he never understood or enjoyed electro-pop until he heard Sonic Coaster Pop a few years back, and likewise with blues or gospel – "I didn't think [it] was very interesting, or that it would eventually change my life." He divulges it was listening to Blind Wille McTell that changed all that for him: "I found it to be an experience like no other."

This selection of music – "a good look" into the sounds Cody loves, an international hotch-potch ("I also love hearing a melody or an instrument and knowing what country or region it's from," he says) – is a pick-'n'-mix of wildly different flavours, from the soul-elating gospel of 'It's Been a Mighty Good Day', penned by Dr. Maceo Woods, and its sleepy, acoustic-guitar-laden neighbour 'Doçura Forte' by Brazilian singer Joyce, to the frenetic 'Amscray' by LA producer / boss of label Magical Properties, Daedelus, and the sugary hyperactivity of international J-pop phenomenon Perfume on their track 'ポイント'.

That's not to mention two gems from the brain of Yann Tomita, namely the heart-melting 'Some Day, That Place In Time' (by Doopees) and mix opener by Astro Age Steel Orchestra, 'Living Message From Pan Yard #2', or the v famous 1928 song 'Statesboro Blues' by Blind Willie McTell, or a spot of raï singing in 'El Fermlia' from Algerian artist Boutaiba Sghir – it's all lovingly patched together with Goodnight Cody's mixing skills, a mélange of seemingly disparate genres, jarring time periods and contrasting artists, all united with heart and soul.

So, now it's time for you to enjoy this, the longest mix ever made for Y/N! Have fun! :)

• T R A C K L I S T •

1. Astro Age Steel Orchestra - Living Message From Pan Yard #2
2. Sonic Coaster Pop - Spiral Neo Wave
3. Sonic Coaster Pop - SOCOPOGOGO
4. Gangpol & Mit - la comptine
5. Gorillaz - Dub Dumb
6. naivepop or petitfool - Chopstick Rest -休息は大事だよ-
7. Harpo Marx - They Say That Falling In Love Is Wonderful
8. 800 Cherries - Frozen
9. Hello Astronaut, Goodby Television - Masterpiece Backwards
10. Oleg Kostrow - Falling Dreams
11. Daedelus - Amscray
12. YMCK - 左折して右折して
13. Soundmurderer - Awamori
14. Bells Of Joy - There'll Be No More Sorrow
15. Perfume - ポイント
16. Boutaiba Sghir - El Fermlia
17. Itsutsu No Akai Fusen - I will kick a pebble
18. Squarepusher - Rebus
19. Hazel Nuts Chocolate - Kitten's Breaks Dub
20. Mount Kimbie - Maybes (James Blake Remix)
21. Blind Willie McTell - Statesboro Blues
22. Doopees - Some Day, That Place In Time
23. Sam Cooke - (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
24. Dr. Maceo Woods - It's Been a Mighty Good Day
25. Joyce - Doçura Forte / Água e Luz

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• Mr Cody is a part of beat collective Team Supreme – go check 'em out!

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☟ Goodnight Cody Social Media Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp • Twitter

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