TDOYLE – COTTON CANDY CLOUDS

Ahh… tdoyle. I said it three times in the mirror last night (it was Halloween, yes I'm writing this from the past) but no one appeared. I tried it also with a hundred other different names of different people I know but no dice. Too bad. But anyway; news flash, tdoyle (which TextEdit keeps correcting to "toddle" which would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn annoying) might be changing his name. We were at Kami's Lookout (online venue) the other day and this was one of the things discussed. I won't divulge anything else though. Y? COS I AINT TELLIN U M8. Besides, I know nothing.

Anyway, here we are. A new track by Mr tdoyle. It's called 'Cotton Candy Clouds' (nice alliteration) and it is as the title says. Sounds like sweeties. Sounds like sugar. Popping arpeggios intermingle with more tangy arpeggios, each note seems to zing in glorious waves across a teal sky painted salmon pink with smiling, lazy clouds. It sounds actually almost as if it could've been written not from the point of view of looking up at the sky, but from being up in the sky looking down – from an airplane or something.

Yoshi makes an appearance, his cute lil voice sampled in the song's second half where claps run amok and synth chords almost like trumpets are triumphal and welcoming. There is a blissful simplicity at work here, something easygoing and uncluttered that makes it all the more easy to drift off to this one, really float 'pon it.

Wouldn't it be super cool if you could fly? That'd be amazing.

• tdoyle is Tom Doyle. A few months ago I wrote about his track 'Free Floating' – is there a theme here? – which is very nice also.
• This is taken from a fun compilation by Midwest Collective, simply titled Vol. 5 – the 5th volume of standalone singles created by the collective's affiliates. CHECK IT HERE (CLICKY).

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VENTUREX – TALK TO ME

How does VentureX keep making such lovely music? Last I heard from him was his very funky and very danceable track, 'Do You Remember' – it's been a while since then (also, and unfortunately, as usual) but I've just been magnetised to his brand new track 'Talk To Me'. It was the bass that got me at first.

The bass! The bass is fat and a little fuzzy. Sound is made of vibrations. Sound rather is vibrations. But it's not that often you actually physically feel those vibrations in your ear, in your brain, in your corneas – the world exists in a puzzle of slightly shuddering shapes.

These robust bassplosions are submerged beneath a shuffling beat whose hi-hat ticks impatiently, or lashes out into the open with cutting sharpness. An original track, dissected for inspection and chopped expertly finds itself strewn across VentureX's track; guitar appears in golden truncated chords, or else it peeks in with glints of funk. A vocal sample adds its warm soul to the mix, washed with clarity; the track ends with a cascade of chiming cosmic rainstick and the treble is gently removed, leaving you with that ever-satisfying vacuum that is only achingly good bass rumblings.

• This comes as the second in very, very, very cool label / collective Stratford CT.'s Secret Selection, a series of surprise singles.
• They also released a VentureX album which is one of my actual favourite releases of this year ever. It's called Together and it's genuinely and flawlessly superb. Listen to it here.

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URLCHILD – LIKE YOU ~ FALLING FOR

From this track's first abrasive beats it was kinda sold to me instantly. Then this gnarly vocal sample pops in like a small anthropomorphic whale bouncing around the room after it's crept in through the window, blubbering all the while in hypnotic loops. Wtf, sorry.

Well it's by urlchild (who is 21, from Austin, Texas) and it's called 'Like You ~ Falling For'. I didn't expect it to drop into this really house-flavoured vibe, didn't expect those sharp syncopated piano chords, mainly. These, alongside pulsar whispers of synth that zip in and out of earshot, are the main actual non-percussion sounds that aren't vocal samples, which in endlessly reverbing pitch-shiftedness croon the song's title.

The beat clacks, exploded from underneath with blooping depth charge sub-bass deposits, shifting above with garage-esque hi-hats that provide the fidgety skitter that work for house tracks like this – regular rhythm gets you moving on a basic level; the hi-hats accent this rhythm just so, just so, zapping your limbs into life. And then your brain gets shaken by the dynamic cymbals that crash across the track like haphazard punctuation.

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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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