Monday, 29 June 2020

🐣 INDIGOS PARADISE — UNDERGROUND

⌾ LISTEN TO INDIGOS PARADISE, UNDERGROUND ⌾

The ambience of a city — the apartment blocks with glowing windows, the brake lights flashing in the rain, the parades of people on the pavement, umbrellas, dog-walkers, stairs down to metro stations, neon eateries — is at the heart of the imagery conjured by 'Underground' by Boston-based indigos paradise.

On a blurred, watery backdrop acting as a melodic palette where all the fatigue that glittering city life can have is mixed, the producer adds snappy handclaps and sharp hi-hats for the the inescapable regularity of it all: the rectangular buildings, the traffic lights, the endless grids.

"How I see my hometown, with big buildings through the skyline, brings out different visuals and imagery I put towards my music," says indigos paradise via email. "Let's say that you are walking down a path, and it's good warm day to go for a walk. You hear this elegant track when you click to the play that gathers the whole surroundings around you. The wind starts breezing through your scalp and goes down to your neck while hearing it.

"I kinda picture my music as the 22nd century."

Adding to the beat and the all-encompassing shades of the synth whirling like a deluge, staccato synths hop smartly throughout for a bustling atmosphere, as if, now that you have the city, here is the life — the people — to jostle around it, here are their silhouettes and footsteps. Nocturnal and doused with faded uptown glamour, 'Underground' is the malls and walkways of yesteryear, still just half-empty with promise.



πŸ“ 
indigos paradise Internet Presence ☟
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Wednesday, 24 June 2020

🐣 BROKEN KID CLUB — LIGHTBEAM (WITH SQWD)

⌾ LISTEN TO BROKEN KID CLUB, LIGHTBEAM ⌾

Taken from his SONDER EP, Broken Kid Club's 'Lightbeam' is the softness of life entangled with its harsher parts. The stress of skittering percussion, hyperventilating synth, cracking synth, far-off gunshots, yes — but also the mellow of a clouded sunrise in tracts of modulated synth, calming vox rising up like a forcefield. Then, abruptly, the circuitry changes again.

Mexico City-based producer Broken Kid Club credits the intense-yet-beautiful sounds on their track 'Lightbeam' to a careful balance of tension and mellowed sounds. The track, they explain, represents his own musical journey — that of going from a "pop songwriter" to creating more complex music like this, enlisting the help of fellow musician, LA-based Sqwd, to execute it.

"I envisioned a lot of aquatic animals alongside different, colourful textures," Broken Kid Club says via email, speaking about the imagery behind the track that also went on to inform the EP's artwork.

Otherwise minimal and almost oppressive with its sense of space, 'Lightbeam' is noisy and pugilistic, shot through with glimmers of human joy and relief, a melding of machine and mind. "I believe living one of the world's most surreal cities has definitely impacted my production style," they say.

"It's impossible to see what one sees every day in my hometown and stay inside the box."



πŸ“ 
Broken Kid Club Internet Presence ☟
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Monday, 22 June 2020

AKIYOSHI YASUDA — MEMENTO


Taking as the theme for this track as leaving behind his view of life and death, 'Memento' by composer and producer Akiyoshi Yasuda (aka STARGUiTAR) is an existential whirlwind. Harsh gales of ambient waves rush forth, speckled with the static of distortion and decay, a vague hope spun in the rising, gleaming resonance that lies at the heart of it all.

"In 'Memento' I'm trying to capture the scales, melodies, rhythms, verses, emotions, ups and downs... you can strip away all that stuff that music should have, and you can make it work," Yasuda tells yes/no via email.

"I'm composing to express the sound as if it were swimming freely."

Free of constraints, 'Memento' (taking its name from the Latin expression memento mori, a symbolic expression or reminder of death) erupts as if from a spring, but also falls into an empty sky like mist; it is dynamic, shifting through different textures — sharp, soft, glittering, whispering — and yet it is still; it feels as though it could be sunk in depression, but at the same time optimistic and upward-looking as if glimpsing a sunrise; preparing for sleep, seizing the day.



πŸ“ 
Akiyoshi Yasuda Internet Presence ☟
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Saturday, 20 June 2020

SLOW STATE — THE SILENCE WE CREATE

⌾ LISTEN TO SLOW STATE, THE SILENCE WE CREATE ⌾

There is a sense of epic landscape swathed in peals of feeling in Australian artist Slow State's 'The Silence We Create' — but it's not something necessarily present from the beginning of the track. Instead, this intertwined emotive, environmental atmosphere comes into gradual focus, beginning with textures jostling with one another, unsure of themselves, hesitant almost, crackling with ghostly static, the rustle of dry leaves. A vocal sample struggles to finish a phrase (the title of the track), cutting itself off.

Gravely bass thumps splash and fizzle into bold tracts of silence, creating a dramatic, heavy portion that shifts the aesthetic from intricate soundscape to something more illustrative, experimental. "[The song] was written for a someone who I shared a memory with," Slow State tells yes/no via email.

"We walked into a sunset on Greenmount Hill, up in Perth City, and as the sun fell the scintillating lights of the city started shimmering. One of those moments you just wish you could grab, you know?" he continues.

The final section of the track — fraught with synth and clanking percussion — begins to mirror the weight of this twilight, the vocal sample on loop and variously pitch-shifted like a reflection of windows beginning to glow in buildings. 'The Silence We Create' is a purposeful setting aside of language, of commentary, in order to be imbued with the drama of the turning earth, the tale of an ending day.


  • πŸ”” 'The Silence We Create' is taken from Slow State's eponymous SlowState EP, which you can listen to on SoundCloud. The artist himself calls the project "a respite from everything that is far too fast."

    He continues: "It's introspective and reflective, but driven with intent. If space is the breath of art, then I believe silence is the breath of sound. I try to capture moments of silence floating in and out like a breath within the pulse.


πŸ“ 
Slow State Internet Presence ☟
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Thursday, 18 June 2020

REEFS — TOGETHER

⌾ LISTEN TO REEFS, TOGETHER ⌾

There's a playful feeling to Reefs' track 'Together'. But it's not just the synths somersaulting past in a rainbow-worthy of various colours that give it this vibe, it's also the different textures, the different sounds used that afford the track its level of liveliness.

"The first step was getting those drums to knock just right," Reefs tells yes/no over email. "The beat reminds me of a bird dancing for some reason!" The rest of the track is a tale of jazz-flavoured chord progressions, inspiration from music by the likes of Photay and Galimatias, and a sample of the moon scene from It's a Wonderful Life.

Garbled vocal samples pop, syncopated kalimba chords clonk uptempo and tropical, while every now and then a snappy staccato synth lead whistles with retro buzz, summoning a melodic feel leaning in the direction of Animal Crossing (Reefs calls that 8-bit synth a "pallet cleanser" to bring the listener back). And all of it lays on the punch and rattle of a trap beat, a robust foundation for the light and kinetic instrumental.


  • πŸ”” Stream and/or download/purchase 'Together' from Reefs' Bandcamp if you like.

πŸ“ 
Reefs Internet Presence ☟
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