🐣 MACHINEDRUM — U BETTA

Starting out on a gently fizzing backdrop, muffled vocal samples that reverb into infinite space, and percussive marimba clonks, LA musicmaker Machinedrum continues to carve out an energetic space in this dynamo of a track 'U Betta'. It's so named for the vocal samples that wobble and cascade throughout, otherdimensional and multifaceted sometimes and lucid at others. Mellow sections with delicate noises – where wide open spaces are ornamented with ascending guitar that warbles in spaghetti western dust and desertification – contrast with lasershot parts of maximalist intensity.

These segments are raked by plasma beam synths that cut into the enormity of space, left intact for the most part and utilised dynamically by Machinedrum as he pockmarks the void with rollicking booming drums, and siphoning into it the glare of the synths, thin and iridescent above and columning robustly below like some futuristic machine, these sounds interchanging with smooth cloudy synthetic vox that rise up in a robotic call-and-response between hard and smooth. All the while glassy chiming and pizzicato strings adorn these synthetic theatrics, ornamenting the surrealistic mirror surfaces and intergalactic noir feel of the track.

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• 🔔 Machinedrum released Human Energy in September of last year. You can listen to some selections from the album on SoundCloud.

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☟ Machinedrum Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • official site • Twitter • Instagram

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🐣 SMTHN — INTERFERENCE [初演 • PREMIERE]

Something special arrives today. It's literally draped in pulchritude, a slo-mo slam-dunk, homerun into a deep cloudless blue, b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l, do you get it? smthn graces us with 'interference', freshly farmed, just juiced, poured up and here it is in this milkshake glass of a site—here, you can taste it. The track has already been wrapped in superlatives but let's give it some more.

This soundular item bumps and bubbles, contrasting pools deep with calm where a sparse beat staggers along, all mellow sub and drip-drop, where a vocal sample urges plaintively "I'll be the one for you", contrasting this with segments where the kick thumps hard booming and the hi-hats t--t--t-t-ttt-tt-tick and the snare snaps and the synth flutters like a nervous heartbeat, the sliced vocal stutters and pops. It all feels somewhat frosty, like being able to see your breath on a school morning in winter.

The clarion call of the synths is difficult to ignore, the agility of their alterations, the bass-to-treble slide into the chorus like an awakening, exciting, instantly addictive; on the other hand: the gorgeous room to breathe throughout gives the song a precious delicate feel, as if the sounds created do not wish to say more than they feel they deserve, echoing the statement made by that aching vocal again and again.

What is said, in this case, is as valuable as what isn't said, and the spaces between the luscious noises that vibrate in this vessel are bristling with energy and emotion, like the silence after a secret whisper.

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• 🔔 smthn is a new new musicmaker, having uploaded just two tracks to SoundCloud. Listen to 'pale', also emotive, icy, breathy—another beautiful exercise in sound and silence.
• 🔔 Both 'pale' and 'interference' are available to download for free. Do it and play it to your friends and tell them it's smthn.

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☟ smthn Internet Presence ☟
• SoundCloud •

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🐣 BLANK — HOLD ON

Short but undeniably sweet is this addictive slice of sound from musicmaker Blank. Not only is it dynamic in its bouncy slides between loud and quiet, bobbing around and positively jostling, but its clearly defined intro and outro, as well as the carefully crafted mood of the track, mark it out as something that deserves some attention. As such, it begins with innocent VGM-style synths, thin and small, setting a scene of distant homeliness as the the track appears to wind up and bubble ominously as if charging up a laser. And then it snaps into life with bustling thickets of percussion and smooth syncopated chords, footwork-flavour, and bulging bass menaces beneath it all, vocal samples "I'll run away" coming in chopped and strewn around.

And the next section, it's wonderful. It's a drop, of course it's a drop, it's been built-up and we freefall into this wide mouth of supercharged synths and whiplash rhythms that make it a dynamo of power and ear-satisfying amplitude. The neon chords strike at your veins, enter, and blast around your body, their tone one not of the overjoyousness but instead panic and frustration—and that's what makes it interesting. More of the brooding bass and again into this synth section, where the chords are wider, higher, thicker than before—before we reach the outro, where darkness seems to have fallen and home feels further off than it did before. The track feels precious in its simultaneous playfulness and maturity, in the sugary sounds that paint a picture of bitterer things.

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• 🔔 This comes from Agari Vol. 006, a compilation by Sola, the sub-collective by collective Daruma. 'Agari' (上がり) in Japanese means 'rising'.

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☟ Blank Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Instagram • Spotify • Twitter • Snapchat

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🐣 ISSERLEY — ADVENT

Do you remember the music for the Big Boo's Haunt from Super Mario 64? It's this that literally sets the scene for the level being as frightening as it was and is. This cold synth sound like a freezing gale gives a sense of abandonment and isolation, of adverse weather conditions that go hand-in-hand with things like haunted houses. And it's also how 'Advent' by 22-year-old Australian musicmaker Isserley begins, along with a handful of sub-bass kicks that drag us into this dark pool of lust and self-doubt.

Raspy hi-hats cut in, a sparse two-note piano melody plinks with hefty reverb before turning into something more horrorfully cyclical with more notes, creeping, inescapable. All the while, Isserley talks in aching absent monotone, quiet and breathy against the bass, effusing an ominous atmosphere. And then it hits: a moment of buzzing intensity saws through this, dense synths droning and crashing towards the end, the beat turning busier and rattling sharply like gunfire. The contrast between this heavy blast of brash sound and the small voice of the artist herself is stark, and enough to prove frankly mesmerising. Similarly it's an illustration of surface-level brooding calm and inner turmoil, stillness and the storm beneath.

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• 🔔 Check out Isserley's 2016 album Messes, where you'll find tracks like the sludgy 'Daddy' and 'Deep Throat', which has a decidedly more industrial feel than 'Advent', with its ticking percussion, atonal synths crushed and grinding, simmering with its chopped and decaying vocal samples.
• 🔔 Aside from producing her own music, it turns out she's been utilising her sound for other projects. "I've been doing scoring for horror movies lately too," Isserley told YES/NO, "I'm scoring some of the new Silent Hill movie!"
• 🔔 Isserley is the second project of Roxxi Wallace, who is formerly of formerly existing duo, Girlflesh.

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☟ Isserley Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp

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🐣 YOUNG SUMMER — PAUSED PARADE (LINDSAY LOWEND REMIX)

Whilst Lindsay Lowend originally became known for the now seminal Wind Fish EP, his sound has continued to evolve since his VGM and juke infusion impacted on the nebulous infancy of internet music. Different styles effuse into the world from the mind of Tony Mendez, for instance this smart and snappy track from last year, and such is the case with this recent remix of fellow Washington-D.C.-er Young Summer's 'Paused Parade'.

The original track is a slinky number cradled in the arms of jazz with haphazard cymbal licks and flashes of crystalline piano. Lindsay Lowend transforms it into something else entirely, lifting the vocals and brushing them like watercolour strokes over a bold bustling backdrop grounded on thudding kicks that roll along a rumbling wobbly bedrock of bass.

It's a frenzy of juddering stabs of clanking chords and simple synth melody played that rifles along a few notes, ornamented with rasping metallic hi-hats and the occasional sparkle of electronics that sounds like a chime sweep, a subtle nudge away from the song's dark and vacant feel into higher more heavenly climes.

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• 🔔 'Paused Parade' is from Young Summer's 2016 You Would Have Loved It Here EP.
• 🔔 Check out Lindsay Lowend's SoundCloud for a back catalogue of music. Much if not all of it can be downloaded for free. You will also notice that comments are disabled and numbers of likes/plays are hidden for pretty much all his tracks.
• 🔔 In addition, under his real name Tony Mendez, Lindsay Lowend uploads experiments in sound design on his Vimeo, mainly in the realm of videogames.

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📠
☟ Young Summer Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • official site • Twitter • Wikipedia

☟ Lindsay Lowend Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Vimeo

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