FOREST SWORDS — BUTTERFLY EFFECT (REMIXES)

⌾ LISTEN TO BUTTERFLY EFFECT REMIXES BY FOREST SWORDS ⌾

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Last month Forest Swords (real name: Matthew Barnes) gave us a taste of a longform project to come. Arriving in the form of a double single, 'Tar' and 'Butterfly Effect', these showcase the eminence of a composer-producer in sculpting new worlds using the same electronic materials, quarried deep from the earth in muddy handfuls, precious clumps.

'Tar' sees Barnes conjure a distorted sonata, skittering noises creeping in the background, like a lament for preserved Neolithic body encased in the track's titular substance. And featuring a previously unheard Neneh Chery sample, 'Butterfly Effect' cracks with living-and-breathing percussion, shards of ancient noises, mosaicked into a beat fit for a bog bonfire.

Most recently come the remix treatments for the latter in a love-letter to UK dance music. A fragmented, shuffling garage beat plays out in 'Drizzlah's Club Remix', the Neneh Cherry vocal weaving among scrambled popping melodies, while the 'Basement Dub Remix' slows things down, imbuing a dub groove with the soul of the original, synth skirling like a haunted melodica.

More dance-inflected fun arrives in the clean-cut collage of percussion in the 'DJ Ron Dixon Clubstep Mix', which is beset with a mash and melding of dissonant synths. Perhaps most fitting partner for the original 'Butterfly Effect', however, is the 'FS Ambient Air Mix' - like a phantom stretched thin, it falls as a giant sheet enveloping moorland, all fizzing greys and gleaming calls to the other side. Throughout these nocturnal, evnveloped remixes, there's a satisfying contrast at work, bringing the twigs and tarot of Forest Swords into distinctly synthetic, contemporary spaces.

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• 🔔 This collection of new music from Forest Swords is available to purchase and stream at your leisure over on his Bandcamp. They've been released ahead of some tour dates (below)
• 🔔 Forest Swords tour dates:
  Saturday 2nd September - Varpalota, Hungary: INOTA Festival
  Sunday 17th September - Sofia, Bulgaria: Wrong Fest
  Thursday 2nd November - Manchester, UK: White Hotel
  Friday 3rd November - Newcastle, UK: Cluny 2
  Saturday 4th November - Glasgow, UK: Mackintosh Church for Great Western Festival
  Friday 10th November - London, UK - ICA
  Saturday 18th November - Paris, FR - Badaboum
  Monday 20th November - Brussels, BE - AB Club
  Tuesday 21st November - Amsterdam, NL - Bitterroot
  Wednesday 22nd November - Arnhem, NL - Willemeen
  Thursday 23rd November - Leipzig, DE - UT Connewitz
  Tuesday 28th November - Athens, GR - Municipal Theatre Of Piraeus
  Tuesday 5th December - Copenhagen, DK - Hotel Cecil
  Wednesday 6th December - Stockholm, SE - Slaktkyrkan
  
  Tickets available from forestswords.co.uk.

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☟ Forest Swords Internet Presence ☟
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RAYONS — A FRAGMENT OF SUMMER

⌾ LISTEN TO A FRAGMENT OF SUMMER BY RAYON ⌾

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Images of summer float by to the drifts of piano in 'A Fragment of Summer'. A cicada screams in the humid green park. Bright blurs of dappled sun wave on tree-shaded grass like living islands. A collection of clouds cruise in a pale blue sky. Cricket and frisbee, sunset drives, salt-washed skin and sandy feet, mopping sweat off your brow on a melting pavement beneath tall gleaming buildings. While the song is a fragment of summer, it evokes many fragments of summer, like a beam of light shot through a prism, dazzling with an iridesence of vignettes and beaming photos.

This is the quiet power of Rayons, aka Masako Nakai, whose playing feels like waves, rhythmic and organic. Nakai weaves in a melody like a tapestry pattern, a motif following a swing beat like the rhythm of a train, a cantering horse, an active hearbeat. Washes of emotion range throughout, encapsulating the contentment, sadness and promise of summer. In Japan, this season comes and goes in a whirl of mind-altering heat, merging the human world and something altogether more earthly, deeply entrenched in the buzz of insects, the burning green of leaves, the hot grey heavy skies.

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• 🔔 This slice of new music is the second in Rayons' digital single series, following on from her previous release 'Luminescence'. Stream and/or download it courtesy of her label home, Flau.

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MOSHIMOSHI — ANIME THEME

⌾ LISTEN TO ANIME THEME BY MOSHIMOSHI ⌾

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A dynamic pendulum keeps time in 'Anime Theme', swinging between math rock-laden slabs of stabbing, syncopated guitar, bass and drums, and the portions where distorted guitars send out a wave after wave of sweeping fuzz. Gently jagged, no harshness in the fast-paced but digestible acrobatics of the melodies here, the track races along very much like a high-octane anime theme.

Finnish band Moshimoshi summon the sensibilities of early-2000s post-hardcore and the emotivity of emo, complete with punk-flavoured drums and throaty, screaming vocals. Warped by their own force, these screams blend with the guitar, becoming a part of the overdriven medley, providing an extra albeit shattered melody to the proceedings. It bounces, pops with precision, fizzes with energy.

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• 🔔 'Anime Theme' is taken from Moshimoshi's upcoming album GREEN, scheduled for release on 28th April.

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KOKI NAKANO — MUE

⌾ LISTEN TO MUE BY KOKI NAKANO ⌾

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Taking its name from the French for metamorphosis or moulting, 'Mue' by Paris-based, Fukuoka-born pianist and composer Koki Nakano feels transformational. Compared to 'Port de Bras', the previous single released for his upcoming album Oceanic Feeling, 'Mue' is much more intimate, less expansive. Nakano's piano playing is light but intense, spelling out a heavy, fluttering ostinato — like a dramatic version of the daytime riding theme from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The track canters along until its final third, when a skirl of electronics needles in from the side, flailing fiercely atop the piano as if the air itself had been set alight. The composer certainly has a knack for combining his classical background with experimental elements to create chimeric sounds like this one, an effortless overlay of synthetic on organic.

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• 🔔 'Mue' is taken from Oceanic Feeling, out 13th May via No Format! You can pre-order it on Koki Nakano's Bandcamp.
• 🔔 There's also a video for 'Mue'. Filmed at the Paris Hôtel de Ville, it features the combined expertise of choreographers, Nicolas Huchard, Nick Coutsier, and Christian Yav.

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☟ Koki Nakano Internet Presence ☟
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JAMES BLAKE — LIFE IS NOT THE SAME

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"I wore your favourite clothes / I said the things you'd say" — the lines in James Blake's elegaic 'Life Is Not The Same' are elegant in their simplicity, evoking the everyday remembrances that sting when someone leaves. To a metronomic beat, ticking insistently as time tends to when it means the most, Blake spins his tale of woe, centred around the chorus, the central question: "So if you loved me so much, why'd you go?" Fair logic.

With co-production from Take a Daytrip, ensuring those glitching intricacies in the beat, the crashing waves (and sharing on writing duties), Blake's voice — by turns splashed with clarity or drenched with reverb or pitch-shifted — layers on itself like a feedback loop of longing: "Life is not same when you're miles if we're miles away." As his music has shown over the years, James Blake has a knack for detail and dynamic, and 'Life Is Not The Same' is another in a long line of this minimalist-meets-massive sound.

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• 🔔 You can stream 'Life Is Not The Same' on various services. It's taken from James Blake's new album Friends That Break Your Heart, scheduled for release on 10th September. You may pre-order it, if you like.
• 🔔 The Dali-meets-impressionist artwork was created by surrealist illustrator Miles Johnston (see his Instagram also).

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☟ James Blake Internet Presence ☟
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