DEAREST – BEACON

On the surface, from the start at least, this track by California ("the deserts east of Los Angeles") band DEAREST could seem just like a "regular", but still v v good, indie track – the guitars speak with a delicate honesty, the vocals stream out with soft aching (I mean, just check out (0:45) the sweetly poignant way in which singer, Tessa Bolsover, poses the question, "Do you still have dreams / of endless highways?"), a drum machine patters its pattern in the background. Everything seems normal.

But just under halfway, a portal opens up. You step through. 'Beacon' receives a simple bassline and some gentle noise plays a cosmic solo, sounds like a theremin. Vocals arrive in pitch-shifted layers, "ahh ahh ahhhh…", thin cymbals like white noise rain pour down, the beat feels bigger, kicks more pronounced…

So yes, you get the picture: this is anything but regular. Electronic precision with its clinical cosmos-conjuring vibe is paired with the raw, stark reality of live instruments, and as you heard even the vocals do not go unaltered, themselves pulled like a yielding star into the enveloping black hole of the electronics' manipulation. It is simultaneously cold and comforting, sharp and soft – long dead and perpetually haunting, but desperately alive at the same time.

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CLAS TUUTH – HALF HOUR FROM HOME

I've been meaning to write about this guy for some time, and when opportunity knocks… open the door? Is that even a thing? I've never heard it before. Anyway, yes, this is Clas Tuuth, a musicmaker from London, whose sounds are ghostfully analogue, plainly minimalist. Listening to his music is like watching a grainy video of yourself in your most solitary moments, and from his most recent 003 EP I've picked the one that most resonates with this feel, and perhaps with me.

Called 'HALF HOUR FROM HOME' (or without the caps, which some people would deem "shouting", the fools), its title speaks a lot for the song. Perhaps not the most popular track from the EP, it nevertheless demonstrates the sound of Clas Tuuth: cassette aesthetics and singular noise, trails of atmosphere trapped inside machines dusty with crackling distortion.

Like I said, for this one it's in the title. Within the track there is the same obliterated monotony of commuting, the ennui that stales the air when it takes ages to get home from a night out, the drear feeling of wanting so much to be at home when you are not at home. It doesn't matter if you're two hours from home or half an hour from it – you're either at home or you're not; the closer you get the more you ache for its warmth.

The mechanical lamenting of the track is layered in a choir of arpeggiating voices, soft but crackly, led by a tenor of buzzing synth, gesticulating its longing with resounding reverb that seems to just stretch out the feeling; you yourself seem to expand and fill the space between home and wherever, thinly spread in patterns of draining hunger between the two until you reach one or the other.

• I really think you should check out Clas Tuuth's 003 EP, which is out on indie label, NeedNoWater Records. If only just to see what the shit I'm talking about.

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SEYMOORE – RAMEN

What attracted me to this song? It is at once warm and welcoming, effusing charm with endearing itself with the soft, playful sounds of its synth.

Who is it by? It is by Seymoore, a person with a few followers on SoundCloud, and I just assume they make music. What is it called? 'Ramen'. And no, I don't just like it because of the concept of ramen – and no, I am not hungry.

However, I often do this thing, and I'm sure a zillion others do as well, where I listen to a song with its title in mind. Maybe this track kind of sounds like ramen – soupy and full of steaming flavourful notes, with understated clicking beats the gentle sounds of spoon and chopsticks as the bowl is gradually emptied of its delicious sea of delicacy.

I like the hi-hat pattern, its constant tick with the open hi-hat sound seeming random with its gem-like glisten. I like the wibbly synth, feels like improvised flute – certainly like actual noodles themselves, upheld with warm chords, chopped like samples (unless they are actually samples); I definitely like the dynamic pauses throughout the whole track, like pauses to have a glass of water with your food, or say something to somebody eating with you (like, uh, "this is so tasty" – "can i finish your food please" etc.), or otherwise just pause to think about how great life is.

0:30 – the synth goes "woo-oo" like a flailing noodle.

I truly dig the blissful chill of this. It contains within it the blissful warmth of eating food, especially your favourite food. It feels homely, kind, personable. Who are you, Seymoore? What are you doing right now? Are you eating ramen?

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LONG NEK – MELTING ICE

Last time I heard from Long Nek was on his production on Taiwanese rapper Simon's track '城市車手' ("City Riders"), where he created some soulfully lilting boom bap complete with saxophone and funk-flavoured guitar. Long Nek is from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and it may surprise you to learn that the island country itself is home to a burgeoning, underground hip hop scene: I also love the flow of female rapper Aristophanes, and the productions of fellow-beatmaker, Luviia.

Not by any means his latest track but one that I've enjoyed since I heard it first is this one, 'Melting Ice'. What he does here definitely has more of a combination hip hop / footwork feel – the BPM feels pretty fast all the way through (no I'm not gonna guess, you guess). It goes through different parts, all bridged by the constant drip-drop of melting ice that is the glassy electronic piano chords, feeling decidedly cool creating their mist above the jazzy stand-up bass flourishes, and the smart raw clacking of the somewhat urgent beat – maybe reflecting the image of actual melting ice and/or the prevention of such melting.

Every now and then a synth lead erupts into view, squawking wildly in the same kind of pentatonic pattern that you'd expect some duelling electric guitars to be in. Sometimes that solo sound is calmer – such as at the start of the second half, where it summons a super-chilled feel. Add to this some rich brass blares, delayed with dub lassitude, and you have yourself a unique number, an atmospheric double-time hip hop head-nodder with all the dancefloor potential of juke.

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JACOB 2-2 – SAVE MIRACLES

The way Jacob 2-2 makes music creates a good listening environment; it seems architecturally led, constructed with slabs of robust building materials and decorated with the synth equivalent of glitter to ornament his sometimes towering, sometimes sprawling, winding, tunnelling, labyrinthine edifices. These are not gothic structures however, nor Edwardian or art-fucking-deco or harsh brutalism; in fact, it might be better to say that his music – a mix of hip-hop patterns and glitching noises childhood-memory-summoning – is more of a collage.

And it has never been more of a collage than with the opener on his new EP, The Rec, called 'Save Miracles'. This is a dadaist collage, a plasticine stir-fry, funky fragments weaving in and out of mist left by resonant cold cosmic chords, squelchy bass breakdancing as the beat skiffles in flourishing waves of virtuosity; chopped chunks of sound rapid-fire like kaleidoscopic stills flashing in front of your eyes; its interior is splashed with biomechanical groove, funk flavours written in abstractions on the walls, but otherwise it is another Jacob 2-2 construction with its odyssey of chords feeling like empty oddities, a yellow brick road leading to blank nostalgias, roughly sketched by its creator for you. This is not your nostalgia it is a manifestation of collective recollection.

Um…

• Like I said this comes fresh from J2-2's The Rec EP, which is actually aptly described as "late-night lock-in gymnasium funk" – which is about right. You should check it out.
• Oh and this comes fairly soon after his album, Herbivore, to which I gave a massive thumbs-up, awesome-out-of-awesome. If those were homely, bedtime sounds, The Rec effuses a slightly more adolescent attitude.
• He made a rrrrrrreally cool mix called Abiogenesis for YES/NO, a blender full of jazz, hip hop, electro, prog rock. Really do check it out when you got time.

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