XXX CLVR – MAKE ME [初演 • PREMIERE]

Here's a healthy helping of post-everything experimental drug-infused rap courtesy of XXX CLVR – he's from Halifax, Canada, and is part of collective, Weirdo Click. The track is called 'Make Me'.

Based on a foundation of looped fragments of a remix of a Shlohmo song – all sub-bass and unintelligible, monstrously FX'd vocals – it's an odyssey of sound, like sailing through a pitch-black cavern to who-knows-where; the soundtrack to slowly being ferried down the River Styx, filled with aching regretful spirits, to Acheron, the swampy lake of fathomless depth, and across its waters like sludge, a deep purple colour, infested with bad thoughts and vileness.

Here, XXX CLVR becomes the mythical ferryman himself, Charon, as he whispers a stream of consciousness into your ear. "Make me… the most hated…" he whispers as a refrain, weed smoke encircling his head as it pours from his lips.

Full of seemingly mundane references – Ed Hardy seat covers ("one of my exes… we used to take road trips everywhere," he reveals, a girl flying in from Cleveland, remembering ex's tattoos – the track is personal for the artist himself; a disconnected list of observations and thoughts much like Beat poetry but in super-slow motion.

"I tried to appreciate some of the more ugly aspects of my life. Make Me is sort of like, a dark social climbers' theme song" XXX CLVR tells me. "Also around where I'm at right now everyone all friendly and shit wanna be the most liked by everyone like its high school and shit so I was just like fuck it y'all might as well make me most hated bc im tryna be as far away from y'all as possible just doing my own thing working on myself as a person."

He concludes: "I'm a terrible person right now. Working on it."

The rise against ingratiating oneself to appear to fit in more, pleasing others to become accepted, comes across in the song – the imagery in XXX CLVR's outpouring sometimes verges on disturbing – "put the drugs in my neck," he states bluntly – but is mainly confessional, sharing dark and flashing yet everyday vignettes of his life thus far: "Every other week delete numbers" — "Nike tech fleece at ur funeral / Shit was beautiful / Brutal but it's just the usual." Smoke inhalations and lighters skritch-skritching accompany the slurred words.

Like I said, it floats around on the borders of the Underworld, but dissuades itself from inching closer to the jaws of hell themselves, displaying artistic restraint, and matching the minimalist instrumental produced by Aux Jennings, the sparse use of words, the verses dotting through the darkness like burning torches in a nocturnal world.

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• 'Make Me' is taken from an upcoming EP, Vxntxblxck, released 27th February via South African music/creative entity, YOH.

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GERRY READ – COME TO ME

I think this guy Gerry Read is from the UK. It's a guess. Only because I am also from the UK and his profile picture on SoundCloud shows some houses that are unmistakably British suburb. Other than that I don't know anything about him really. A quick look at his profile on Discogs tells us that he first emerged with some "warm, harmonious productions" but is now practising "an altogether darker, funkier take on house music."

Case in point: this track. It's called 'Come To Me' and although it's not that dark, it is certainly a funky and hypnotic slice of house. First impressions: a mechanical sound, with clacking woodblocks and pneumatic hi-hats, that conjures the rhythmic inner workings of a diorama depicting a romantic bedroom scene, the vocal sample "Come to me…" an eternal speech bubble of desire in the nocturnal heat of the moment.

It shuffles along with this industrial precision, seamlessly introducing, removing and replacing elements for a decidedly progressive feel. Ghostly samples appear a third of the way through, the slow and melodic in-and-out wheezings of an ancient phantom, which sway beneath warm chords that sound like soft gemstones gleaming in static. The whole luscious lot of it is imbued with this slightly worn, decayed feel – a loving touch that adds an aged yet timeless feel to the music.

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• A further google reveals that Mr. Read is indeed from the UK – but I've seen that he's from Suffolk and also from St Albans so who knows.
• Also, the cover art for 'Come To Me' is a mirrored image of the artwork for Gerry Read's album Jummy – but the song isn't on the tracklist. Maybe taken from an upcoming release related to the 2012 album? Prob not though.

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MARTEL FERDAN – TOY GUN

Arriving courtesy of supercool Paris label Sound Pellegrino, this is a new track from French, or at least France-based, producer Martel Ferdan. Unfortunately it's only a snippet; my heart cries tears of longing when I stumble across a snippet of a track on the internet. But it's ok. I understand… kinda.

Anyway, the track is called 'Toy Gun' and what I first noticed about it was the collage of styles at work throughout. The thudding kicks follow a dancehall pattern, a sonic trigger that almost always results in some form of dancing; clusters of giant metallic drum summon a Brazilian carnival-esque atmosphere; the percussion forms a kind of breakbeat pattern; the wonky synth bass sounds very much like the sort of bass you'd find in UK grime… The amalgamation of these different flavours gives it a rich and complex base that feels like it does to the brain what a tasty, well spiced dish does to the tongue.

And from out this exciting broth emerges melody, stuttering and spicy synth that right away took me back to Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – the same dynamic short and sharp bursts, the same wild and wailing vibrato at work. Add to this an occasional sound which is kind of like the synthesised squawk of a seagull, and the combined plaintive-spooky melodies of a music box and toy flute towards the end, and you have yourself a mishmash of dance flavours ornamented with hints of videogame music.

I wanna hear the full version!

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• Like I said, this is from Sound Pellegrino – a compilation called SND.PE VOL.04: MELODIC MECHANISMS (if this track is anything to go by it's a fitting title!). Including stuff from Crystal, Matthias Zimmerman and Orgasmic (co-founder/owner of the label along with Teki Latex). You can grab the compilation here!

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ARIANA GRANDE & THE WEEKND – LOVE ME HARDER (BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD FLIP)

Call it a flip, call it a remix, call it a re-rub, rub-a-fuckin-dub-reworking – whatever: It's a different angle on an existing song. And in this instance Blackbird Blackbird has improved upon the original. The Weeknd teamed up with maybe-heir-to-Mariah's-throne (if that exists) Ariana Grande for the sexual epic, 'Love Me Harder' – the video is a pretty standard allusion to orgasms, a sleek drawn-out euphemism. Hm. We see this everywhere. New mouths sing about old things.

But it's ok, everyone does it. It's just great that people want to remix songs like this, people who can see the promise and potential in the words and vocals and take these energies, this human spirit, and place them in a new setting, a new musical vessel from which they can shine a different light.

As such, San Francisco-based producer Blackbird Blackbird's version of 'Love Me Harder' features pitch-shifted vocals, sometimes low and rich, sometimes high and chipmunk-like, sometimes fluctuating dynamically between the two, set in a gently swaying fantasy world of feeling. Fragmented beats mark out the sensual journey, rolling melodic snares and rattling hi-hats playing above gloopy heart-boom kicks. Soft electric piano chords mutate into fizzing tremolo synths, winding and wiggling through your mind and conjuring a hazy, narcotic lust – A far cry from the crescendoing fireworks of the original.

Attentive breaks in the beat appear throughout, making the track gloriously slow and considerate, allowing you to better hear delicate music box twinklings. It's an honest reworking, more true yet with more fantastical elements throughout (take the chipmunk vocals, for instance), a variation on the idealistic elements at work in 'Love Me Harder'. And there also seems to be a sample of a dog whining, which basically feels like the perfect epithet for longing lust.

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Y E Λ R S – 緑の都市

If you google image search 緑の都市 (which literally means "green city") you'll be in for a treat. There are loads of photos and pictures of "green cities" around the world, from futuristic plans for cities imbued with living-and-breathing greenery to actual cities brimming with plantlife. It's kind of a utopian vision; one plan sees a verdant cycle path created as a second floor for a highway overpass; another is an actual photo of a stepped building covered in a forest of trees. It's beautiful~

Other than that, it's the title of a brand new song by Y E Λ R S, or as I'm going to say from now on, YEARS. One of the sparks that ignited the now very popular kinda otaku or anime trap style (there's no other name for it as far as I know so…) this musicmaker is very prolific, pairing chilled atmospheres with hard beats for soundscapes that are as transportive as they are head-nodding.

This latest one, 緑の都市, feels a little different. Taking some orchestration from somewhere (or maybe it's original), it's looped and then allowed to continue into its flighty fantasy, whimsical melodies fluttering throughout. Coupled with a simple beat that features rolling hi-hats, handclaps and one particularly pronounced kick that hides a blast of sub-bass, it does indeed feel like the perfect soundtrack to a green city, or Green City.

The natural feel of the flute and strings in the orchestration conjures images of rustling leaves, green shrubbery, flowers skipping in the breeze, lush grass – the beat, on the other hand, effuses a more synthetic feel, precise and man-made and future-facing, yet working with the organic instruments to produce a beautiful harmony. YEARS has made a sonic illustration of the possible unity that can exist between the natural world and our technological one; both can be as destructive as each other, but only one can think for itself: that's us. We can build green cities!

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