MINDSIGHT — STILL

⌾ LISTEN TO MINDSIGHT, STILL ⌾

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With its synths like liquid metal glittering darkly in the intoxicated slosh of a cold starry night, 'Still' is a nocturnal number from a collection of tracks created by Berlin producer Mindsight. He attributes their creation to "a fascination with the world", coincidences, moments revisited in memory and expressed with music.

'Still' thumps with a rapid heartbeat, punctuated with lo-fi mechanical percussion, timeworn snares shot with industrial rust — the propulsion behind the flowing pulse of synths. Mindsight's vision is a vital one, unrelenting in its forward motion; flocks of high-pitched sounds soar, the sonic embodiment of a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings.

And as the mind inches away from memory, the present moment crawling into consciousness, the fantastical synth falls away, leaving only the beat, the pistons and cogs of the brain and body moving on and on.

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• 🔔 'Still' is taken from W___ EP, which you can stream and download from his Bandcamp.
• 🔔 And if you like, you can stream or download 'Still' by Mindsight via whatever service you feel most comfortable with on this list.

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🐣 WUH OH — PRETTY BOY

⌾ LISTEN TO WUH OH, PRETTY BOY ⌾

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The distorted arpeggios that wind their way through 'Pretty Boy' by Glasgow producer Wuh Oh give it this final act suspense. Instead of drops, the track opens up into gaping chasms, the suspense weaving its way through like the last level on a platformer; all the difficulty with the final boss yet to rear its head.

Different elements fade and fall from the scathing, sharpness of it all, with only the gleaming vocal harmonies (what Wuh Oh calls his "angelic choir impression") lancing in like the glow of some unholy machine, innocent in its unholiness—a sense of discovery, uncovery, delving deeper into an expansive, but increasingly claustrophobic world.

The synth scuttles and twangs, the bugs on the underside of a rock in a parallel dimension.

"The track Pretty Boy happened in a weird way," Wuh Oh tells yes/no over email. "I set myself the challenge of writing a track using only one synthesizer and no drums to see if I could achieve enough tension and release without resorting to typical build up and drop tropes.

"[But] the arpeggios were all major key. It sounded like an advert for a cruise holiday or some shit."

Moving the notes around, 'Pretty Boy' then transformed from his "corniest song yet" to his "spookiest." It's spooky alright. Sinister and demented in its last moments, everything comes to a stop as the synth takes on a new, garbled flavour; the motion of this final stage ends and the game's final boss appears. It's that scene-setting.

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• 🔔 Watch this space for more about Wuh Oh.

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☟ Wuh Oh Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 STEVEN A. CLARK — KARMA

⌾ LISTEN TO STEVEN A. CLARK, KARMA ⌾

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"Just getting into bad relationships over and over. Then one day you realize that these relationships are just a reflection of what’s going on inside of you," writes Steven A. Clark of 'Karma'. With the skewed bassline cutting a warped groove, the cyclical – yes, karmic – guitar twinkling out of focus, and lyrics that speak of that "internal battle", the spills into your mind, seeping through the cracks.

At its centre swirl the vocals of Steven A. Clark himself. Worn, cradled in woozy effects and cutting an infectious R&B glimmer in lines like "Everyday, everyday, everyday / Telling me lies disguised as truths" and laying himself bare (literally) in the opener, "I'm naked / Over you..." it swings between these flying falsettos and a soothsaying mantra crooned in a plasma gravel: "Cause when the karma comes / The karma comes / karma's coming your way." A feverish warning.

"We do some much external shit looking for people, places, things, activities to make us happy, or distract us from the way we feel about ourselves," he explains more about the track. Something like Tame Impala analysing the uglier sides of the brain, 'Karma' is a psychedelic saunter around the block, a me-and-my-thoughts gloopy, gossamer tangle.

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• 🔔 'Karma' is taken from Steven A. Clark's upcoming album Hypervigilant, actual release date TBC. Stream 'Karma' by clicking this text and choosing from one of the various streaming services that you desire.

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🐣 KARYME — BACKYARD THOUGHTS

N E W M U S I C ⌾ LISTEN TO KARYME, BACKYARD THOUGHTS ⌾

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Space and colour get dribbled around the court like basketballs in karyme's 'Backward Thoughts', a gap in the fence of doziness and warm grass. Chords like the panting of a cosmic dog zoom in before warping away in a woozy procession punctuated by pummelling kicks. This double-tap rapid beat, the scratchy worn pastel tones in the wheeze of synth, adds to the cartoonish frame of 'Backyard Thoughts'. As if that wasn't enough, karyme throws jazzy chiming progressions for optimal haphazard lounge feeling. Part uobtrusive, part mindfully scattered: perfect for the nebulous thoughts and cloudwatching of a lawnside pause.

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• 🔔 'Backyard Thoughts' is taken from karyme's freshly released Backyard Thoughts EP. You can stream it on Bandcamp. The coordinated and clashing artwork was created by Daryosh.
• 🔔 The Backyard Thoughts EP arrives after Full Cream, an album of squidgy grooves and diagonal beats released by karyme in April 2019.

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🐣 R.BLACK — ALIEN MONSTER

⌾ LISTEN TO R.BLACK ALIEN MONSTER ⌾ There's a lot to like about 'Alien Monster' by R.Black. The synths twisting and melding with each other in the background definitely effuse a sense of, well, alien-ness and that's the first thing: this unobtrusive instrumental that, without getting in the way of what Houston-based, Jamaica-born musicmaker is doing with his voice, still conjures this bizarre backdrop of retro UFOs and pixellated, far-off galaxies.

Vocally, and lyrically, 'Alien Monster' is a gem. There's this hushed, rapid rap to begin with – featuring the no-bullshit of "I'm young and reckless / I'll snatch your breakfast" – and later on this slower, playground rhyme kinda rhythm, that kicks off with "Lover not a fighter / not a coward I'm a writer."

With this and other references to the literal craft of rapping, the skill of hopping on the beat, contending with nouns and verbs, R.Black has some originality that makes listening to his bars almost like hearing an alien man from outer space, which he mentions throughout. Combine with prime useage of reverb on some lines, brazen inexplicable yells and yelps for ad-libs, and you get a feel for the unique hype that is at work in 'Alien Monster'.

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• 🔔 Get to R.Black's SoundCloud to hear more (since 'Alien Monster' the tracks have mostly been produced by others and don't have the same soul, personal touch or DIY charm present in this track).

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🐣 FELDERMELDER — SHANGHAI (SHAO REMIX) [初演 • PREMIERE]

⌾ LISTEN TO FELDERMELDER, SHANGHAI (SHAO REMIX) ⌾

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By the trundling false-starts, erratic thuds and empty scrawls of shining synth and vocal sample etchings, it certainly does seem that in 'Shanghai' Swiss producer Feldermelder achieved the goal of reflecting a late night walk through a deserted area of the Chinese megacity. Based on a visual recording of that experience ("an attempt to capture nightly nothingness," wrote Feldermelder), 'Shanghai' glitches, squawks and buzzes throughout the track, a noisy, gleaming morsel with a mood ripe for remixing.

On that remix is long-time friend, Beijing-based producer and sound designer Shao. "It was last summer, on a rainy morning, I was drinking on the rooftop beside my studio," Shao remembers. "I got the message from Manuel [Oberholz, aka Feldermelder], asking me to remix a track that he did in China."

⌾ THE ORIGINAL 'SHANGHAI' BY FELDERMELDER ⌾

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Creating the remix was as simple as stripping the original track bare and then processing them with "some effects pedals, some delays" whilst adding a drum beat that matched the atmosphere.

"I just followed the feeling and the atmosphere and made a relaxing track," Shao, formerly known as Dead J, explains simply. Though focused recently on techno-flavoured production (see Shao's Doppler Shift Pt. 1), he decided to change things up for this remix.

The result is unrelaxing. A doomful doppelganger of the original, a doped dirge of surging drama like an undersea cave, a mirror to the mire of irony of lonely deserted streets in a huge city, crushing isolation told in drawn out growls of distortion and warped glitter.

And the beat, a sparse march of organic thuds, gives it a feeling of techno deconstructed, four-to-the-floor-minus-two, simultaneously creating – along with the teasing rise and fall of the synth waves – a sense of something about to teeter over the edge.

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• 🔔 This Shao remix of 'Shanghai' arrives ahead of Feldermelder's The Sound Of Remixes, out tomorrow 19th April on Zurich label -OUS. This release sees three tracks from the Swiss artist's 2018 The Sound Of EP. You can pre-order the remix EP here.

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🐣 KAZU — SALTY

⌾ LISTEN TO KAZU, SALTY ⌾

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With its delicious blooping bumps of bass drum and pastoral soft sounds rising in thumb-daubed pastel arpeggios, 'Salty' is a mist of sea air, a coastal breeze, an idyll of freshness swirling around gnarled trees; it is also urgent, a bubbling of thoughts, gradually turning into something that feels almost panicked.

"hurry up" KAZU sings towards the end, whilst sounds become like short breaths, spots of light in your vision, being unsure where to look anymore. Cells vibrating like molecules.

That KAZU is Kazu Makino, co-founder of rock Blonde Redhead, and 'Salty' - so named for its cryptic and statemently loveable hook, "i bet you're salty" - is the first track to be taken from her upcoming debut solo album, Adult Baby.

With credits on the single a starter-pack rollerdex of names ranging from Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco to composing legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, the instrumental for 'Salty' is unquestionable. Plumes of lightness, trinkets of percussion, analogue loops and dives that breathe extra vitality into the track. Though KAZU, with her expressionist lyrics and distinctive, rounded tones, emotes enough for multiple lifetimes throughout.

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• 🔔 'Salty' is taken from the upcoming debut from KAZU, Adult Baby, which is set for release on Kazu Makino's brand new imprint of the same name later this year. It will be distributed by !K7, by the way.
• 🔔 The video for 'Salty', a concept of Makino herself, was directed, filmed and edited by Paride Ambrogi and Jonas Ranner in Elba, Italy.

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☟ KAZU Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 POLES — MOTION FT. SOFT JAW

⌾ LISTEN TO POLES, MOTION FEAT JAW ⌾

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The elastic instruments of 'Motion' is something that gives it the dynamic energy that absorbs you and then bounces you away, the rubber sway of the stumbling-down-a-corridor synths, an intoxicated sound that feels like a twirling mind. Not just the flapping synth, but the zooming acceleration and then dead stops of the bass give it this kineticism. It's a minimalist, leftfield approach to R&B, as producer Poles explains over email.

"I knew I wanted my music to continue in that direction as opposed to the more poppy, future bass music I was writing," he writes. "'Motion' draws from my history in hip-hop, but incorporates my love of odd, bass-hitting electronic music. The fusion gave us something really unique."

Not just the plasma synths, nor the taffy heft of the bass, or the punchball training thuds of bass drum that pummel throughout, but the twisted musicbox clinks, the phantomatic chords that squeak across the glossy surface of 'Motion' like a disjointed dancer, add to that definitively unconventional approach to musicmaking.

A slice of normality comes at the end, the piano, damaged and dusty, like the sun rising after club sojourns, the haze of alcohol exorcising itself from the spirit; Poles' hazy full stop to vocalist Soft Jaw's pitch shifted croons that gave this track its sultry, nocturnal character.

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• 🔔 Download and stream the Poles and Soft Jaw collaboration 'Motion' via your fav platform.

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🐣 CLAWS AI — EURISKO

⌾ LISTEN TO CLAWS AI, EURISKO

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Fuzzy, outright violent, decayed and broken in instrumental terms, 'Eurisko' by CLAWS AI is a self-destruction of sound. In a good way. The drums tumble angular and warped in the background as the chorus spins a howling refrain, "I know you're sleeping around..."

But rather than this uncontrollable reaction to infidelity, the true intent behind 'Eurisko' matches the scorching jagged nightmare of its distorted storm of guitars, the harshness and noise of it all, the full-bodied thump of bass guitar.

"Eurisko draws upon this lingering, maybe personal feeling of instability and chaos in the air," the musicmaker explains to us via email. "Both in my own life and in the world."

Mentioning war explicitly in his response, CLAWS AI helps make sense of the "bullets flying around" line in the chorus. This concept also very much gives grounding to the wild gravel and grit of the track — its noise in a word. Though 'Eurisko' isn't all noise. Liquid chorus FX add grunge warp to the pre-chorus, whilst the whole coda of the track feels like a psychedelic sway into death: a wounded soldier lamenting their involvement.

It's a reflection that, "maybe through catharsis" he tells me, "each of us can win the spiritual war within ourselves and avoid an actual war." An anti-war anthem told with the personal tint of expressionist lyrics and post-punk trauma.

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• 🔔 Stream the song and examine the lyrics of 'Eurisko' by CLAWS AI over on SoundCloud.

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MORE MUSIC BY CLAWS AI → 777

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🐣 TOLEDO — BATH

⌾ LISTEN TO TOLEDO, BATH ⌾

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For a song that has a glistening, sunny feel to it, all the deliciously recorded acoustic guitar organic string feeling – so close it's in your ear, played right next to you – the drums gently rapping out a woodshed craft workshop rhythm in trebling splendour and woody leaves-after-rain clarity; for all its harmony, there is disharmony in TOLEDO's 'Bath'. It's much more than typical lo-fi indie pop — for one thing, it's not lo-fi.

The lyrics, sung warm and layered, joyous, tell a different story. The first line raises the curtain: "So / lose my mind and lose my hold / nowhere to run to." There's the refraining imagery of "red in my eyes." And then there is the effectiveness of contrast between the chorus' last line and the second verse's first:

... Such fun to be young and alive

I / saw the doctor when I was nine
For all the anger

The words in speak of losing control, instability – and not just a moment of it, but a history, a tendency – whilst the music itself, with its rose-tinted gleaming guitar, exists as a simultaneous remedy, the feel of a diary entry when something is out of your system maybe: a way to exorcise emotion painting it with this comforting, nostalgic sound. Or else it is the haze of help and healthy thinking in light of looking back on darker days.

And ushering us into and out of the Brooklyn duo's reminiscence is a drum machine; rather than organic, real drums we have this cutesy, childlike detachment, the tumbling of miniature building blocks into painful recollections.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Bath' by TOLEDO's for as little as $1 on Bandcamp. You can also stream it there as many times as you like.

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🐣 QUARTETTO MINIMO — ATLANTICO

⌾ LISTEN TO QUARTETTO MINIMO, ATLANTICO⌾ RPG meets jazz in 'Atlantico', a sandswept soundscape from Madrid-founded, Paris-based band Quartetto Minimo. With a guitar melody – composed one summer in southern France – that summons a kind of intrepid videogame castle exploration and sparkling harp that harks back to faraway dark-wood-panelled rooms fable baroque (let's talk E.M.M.A's 'Mindmaze') a time and place, nowhere concrete, gets a bold, impressionistic illustration.

"It's funny that you said it sounds like baroque," guitar player Nicolas Arzimanoglou Mas tells us over email, "because for the past 2 years the bass player and I have actually been playing baroque music, with different instruments and bands of course."

Combine it with organic rough textured bass that feels noir and fantasy, and drums that give it pace and intrigue, and there is excitement, the urgency of jazz merging this into the battle music, penultimate level themes; in terms of real videogame comparisons, it sounds much like the 'Gerudo Valley' theme from Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The medieval-summoning chamber aesthetics with kinetic energy of improvisation and quick tempo gives it that VGM dynamism. A new jazz release that crosses boundaries and conjures a world away from the traditional; it's chamber jazz.

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• 🔔 This track is taken from the album of the same name, Atlantico by Quartetto Minimo. Feel free to stream and/or download it on Bandcamp.

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🗞 SLOWTHAI SHARES GORGEOUS FROM DEBUT ALBUM NOTHING GREAT ABOUT BRITAIN

Northampton, UK rapper and producer slowthai has announced his debut album, Nothing Great About Britain (scheduled 17th May), by unleashing a new track called 'Gorgeous'. On a bed of sparkling piano samples, swaggering saxophones and classic yesteryear vocal chops laying down a timeless canvas, slowthai spits bars in that slurring tone of voice he's known for, half growling, half speaking.

Specifically it's a coming of age tune, fitting the vintage lo-fi samples and the temporal clunking clock tick-tocking percussion of the beat, with lyrics that reference being "drunk on vodka" as much as childhood pursuits that have defined a generation of British people: "been the same since Gameboys and stickfights, stabilised push bikes, few shinies / jump off the pushbike, Tony jacked my Yu-Gi-Oh cards..."

Life for many English kids growing up is this running around your estate, your road, your block, whatever it was, on a bike, showing off your trading cards, having them "jacked" (that's stolen btw), all that. And then it seems that before you know it, vodka is the inevitable next stage; bottles of alcohol find their pride of place in your bedroom, next to the trading cards of just a couple of summer before, now veneered with aerosol-scented dust.

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• 🔔 'Gorgeous' is taken from the slowthai – real name Tyron Frampton – debut album Nothing Great About Britain, out on True Panther Records/Method Records, 17th May 2019. He calls it "basically my experience of growing up."

• 🔔 slowthai Nothing Great About Britain tracklist ::
  1. Nothing Great About Britain
  2. Doorman
  3. Dead Leaves
  4. Gorgeous
  5. Crack
  6. Grow Up feat. Jaykae
  7. Inglorious feat. Skepta
  8. Toaster
  9. Peace of Mind
  10. Missing
  11. Northampton's Child
  

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🎥 CHAI — CURLY ADVENTURE

In the video for Nagoya-based band CHAI's 'Curly Adventure', curly hair literally becomes synonymous with adventure; the protagonist as animated by LA artist Sean Solomon daydreams the lyrics of the four-piece's thunderous ode to curly hair.

"Long long time ago, my hair is troubling me…" the song begins with singer Mana spinning these hair-based lyrics composed by bassist (and art director) Yuuki.

With the fizzing-crash of the drums alongside a galloping funk of bass, plasma watery synth shoots through this track distorted and fluid all at the same time, a storm of summer-summoning sound; half '90s-remembered sparkly sun-soaked jam, half explosive reaction against the slump of frustration.

Lines in CHAI's song like "curly hair: that is amazing" and "curly hair means being yourself" can resonate with anyone having to alter themselves for the sake of uniformity. And this is reflected in Solomon's video for 'Curly Adventure', with its carefree spirit, popping colours, winding roads and undersea treasure hunts.

Watch it below, obviously.

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• 🔔 'Curly Adventure' is taken from CHAI's 2019 album Punk.

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🐣 TSUKI — OXYGEN

⌾ LISTEN TO TSUKI, OXYGEN ⌾ The feel of being bed-bound with the window open and nature spills in. Bright mornings. Birds chirping like book ends wrap the sweetness of the song in pastoral, the synth even feeling leafy and organic in its rhythmic sparrow-sized chords, pastel-coloured trembling with minute vibrato.

'Oxygen' by TSUKI – a duo comprising Chanlar Rose and Levi Chappell (and one of the first songs they wrote together back in 2015) – is part natural idyll, part honest convalescence, an atmosphere conjured by Chanlar's vocals. The lyrics, referencing lungs, oxygen, souls turning black, lacking strength to lend, were written by Chanlar "while she was recovering from a fairly invasive surgery," Levi tells us.

"She was out for a few months and the lyrics are a reflection of the strain that that the entire experience ended up putting on her personal relationships."

The gravity of those lyrics – the way Chanlar's voice vaults into the air, how words seem almost spit out, how light distortion touches them – contrasts with the candy-coated instrumental, resonating only with the thump and heft of the beat, comparatively brutal compared to the delicacy of the cute synths. The birdsong, by the end, is crushed as the song, instead of fading out, decays.

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• 🔔 You can stream TSUKI's 'Oxygen' variously, but it's on Spotify too.
• 🔔 It doesn't feature 'Oxygen', but if you liked this you should probably take a listen to TSUKI's debut album, Severance Package.

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MORE MUSIC BY TSUKI → LAPSE

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🐣 LIL BIRTH CONTROL — IF I SEE ANY TOSSED SALAD IN THESE SCRAMBLED EGGS I AM GONNA GO FULL CRANE

⌾ LISTEN TO LIL BIRTH CONTROL, IF I SEE ANY TOSSED SALAD IN THESE SCRAMBLED EGGS I AM GONNA GO FULL CRANE ⌾

Referencing the sitcom Frasier in its deceptively lolious Morrissey-length song title, this morsel of music from Toronto-based producer lil birth control is a simple one, but there's a evocative atmosphere at work here. Though set to intense flurries of overdriven kicks, and the metallic crack of a snare bursting the air later on, 'IF I SEE ANY TOSSED SALAD IN THESE SCRAMBLED EGGS I AM GONNA GO FULL CRANE' is a partition of softness.

"i really put my heart into this lil shit," the musicmaker told us, "and im very glad that it shows."

Glancing gleams of half-sparkle, half-music box synth play a childlike three-note melody throughout, summoning a sort of happysadness. Not necessarily in its simplicity but with the synth that is cocktailed with it, the swirling phasing haze of synth that washes behind it as the backdrop.

And its in this childhood-summoning atmosphere that it actually resembles parts of Jim Guthrie's Sword & Sworcery OST. Maybe 'Little Furnace' or the 'Cabin Music' from the actual game itself (both with a similar sort of basic delicacy in its nursery rhyme major key melodies). Differently to that, however, lil birth control provides a destruction of that carefree atmosphere with the intrusion of crazed kicks—how everyday life is super effective against dreams and nostalgia.

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• 🔔 Listen to more lil birth control over on SoundCloud.

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🐣 TRUDGE — FROM SORROW TO DARKNESS

⌾ LISTEN TO TRUDGE, FROM SORROW TO DARKNESS⌾ There's something wholly Super Mario 64 about this track from French musicmaker Trudge. But not at first. It begins with a glittering portal—a shoesqueak synth arpeggio that grades into an intense sparkle; a wormhole that spills out into a void where rapid hammering kicks and hi-hats tick urgently and cymbals clash valvelike. All for a minal, mechanical intensity that summons the same sort of drama that begins the theme for 'Hazy Maze Cave' in Super Mario 64.

Rockfalls of cutting rave breakbeats gleam in 'From Sorrow To Darkness' as the kick continues its syncopated thump beneath all the fresh crash of the percussion. Airy synth chords also summon that Mario level: a breathy, breezy sound that feels at once grand and dilapidated simultaneously. From the orchestra at his disposal, Trudge adds and subtracts with compositional attention to detail. Atmospheric and cave-like.

By the end of the track, the musicmaker has conjured the portal again—the arpeggio swirling and growing stormcloudic above and widening into the transportative sheen that it was in the beginning. A dynamic, transforming journey, hefty panic attack flavours of rave rumbles and the dark bump of the kick taking us through the caverns and trailing tunnels of a mind in tumult, lit with the pale gloam of ancient synth.

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• 🔔 'From Sorrow To Darkness' by Trudge, a dungeon-like exploration of the mind in techno symphony, is taken from his upcoming 100 EP. This is set for release via 1Ø Pills Mate on 19th April. You may, if you like, pre-order it in vinyl form or digitally from Bandcamp.

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☟ Trudge Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 UAH — AFTER WORDS

⌾ LISTEN TO UAH, AFTER WORDS⌾

The piano in 'After Words' explodes on a heavy, storm-summoning chord, and continues dramatic and grounded in the impending trauma at the heart of it. It's the feeling of having tenderness turned on its head, sinking sadly on the sofa; a warm and homely environment where ghosts seep in through the walls and cling to your skin.

High notes tumble and ache, like thoughts on stilts wading through the heaviness of your head - the fine, disturbed lines of London musicmaker uah's dim washed canvas. That fogged feel is nudged along by the gradual gale of phasing ambience that settles into the track, soon made the tormented dominance of it all, piano - all semblance of mindful control fading.

"I wrote 'After Words' when I was trying to make sense of the difficult times a friend was facing," uah types. "I didn't know whether to be stoic or sad or just be true to the trepidation I felt inside. Recording it helped me decide to be all of those, and more."

Starting low and crawling beneath the surface of the detached mist, trails of synth slowly crack the surface, pushed up with the aid of analogue crushing sub, bubbles glooping from the depths. Unsteadily the trails begin, like something reanimated trying to find its feet, until the treble hits a crescendo; the synth gallops in streams, cutting, the phasing surge of ambience like a heavy cloud getting lower.

As 'After Words' fades, the camera focused on the warmly lit room zooms out in time, showing the window, other windows, the building - night.

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• 🔔 This lovely little track is taken from uah's Not Dreaming Anymore EP, a collision of antique piano and curling analogue synths. Listen to it over on SoundCloud. And if you like you can purchase it from Bandcamp.

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🐣SHLOHMO — THE END

⌾ LISTEN TO THE END BY SHLOHMO ⌾ Chaos and calm collide in this calamitous track, a dirge of insular sunbeam hope, a decree for celebration burned at the edges and wet from acid rain. Shlohmo's 'THE END' basically works out for the best.

It's a tale of different influences, from the doom of the clanging metallic guitars and their twinkling-in-the-basement arpeggios – feeling a little like Brand New's most despondent moments – to the vital trap thump of the beat with its ripped paper handclaps and ticking white noise hi-hats, it is a beast of everything; thin synths even herald better things with their shining, future bass builds—before, of course, the guitars tear them to shreds.

Dusty pianos tumble decayed in the background, spook house chimes trickle by warped and chopped with radiation shimmer, whilst bass rumbles lo-fi in the distance. As far as a track charting apocalyptic mess goes, Shlohmo's is one of consideration, playing your favourite trap heroes as the windows melt; nonchalance in the face of extinction.

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• 🔔 This crunchy anti-melodrama is the title track taken Shlohmo's THE END, the upcoming album due out 22nd March via Friends of Friends / WEDIDIT. You may even purchase this lovely track and pre-order the album in deluxe vinyl form from Shlohmo's Bandcamp, if you like.

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📠
☟ Shlohmo Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia ⚘ spotify ⚘

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🐣 KANTAKIN — PARELLEL UNIVERSE

⌾ LISTEN TO PARALLEL UNIVERSE BY KANTAKIN ⌾

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With its popping pinprick starry synths setting things off to a steady sojourn on a spacey backdrop, London producer Kantakin is all about slow-moving majesty. Shifting from sparkling icy-lonesome to gradual cosmic menace, this track is all about gradual dynamics, a tilting gradient of power.

At the same time, 'Parallel Universe' is a ship adrift. The irregular arepeggios and brooding, looming clouds and rails of sound, much like John Carpenter's 1979 Halloween theme, summon a sense of horror. Though mirroring that heavier, earthy grounding, closer to Kantakin's subject matter is the title screen theme of Super Metroid, a haunting number soaked in galactic ghastliness. The stepping synth melody feels like we are practically looking over Samus' shoulder: tension is the word.

'Parallel Universe' has this sharp minimalism. But it also feels gigantic. Pumping sub-bass and growling modulated synths rising up highlight the drama of a cruiser on a backdrop of nothingness—and all the epic proportions and unimaginable human impact involved.

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• 🔔 Like what you hear? Kantakin's 'Parallel Universe' can be downloaded from Bandcamp https://kantakin.bandcamp.com/track/parallel-universe if you feel like it.
• 🔔 Kantakin also creates music for film, TV, etc. under real name Paola Cantachin.

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📠
☟ Kantakin Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

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🐣 EAUXMAR & CAIUS — HURT U

⌾ LISTEN TO HURT U BY EAUXMAR & CAIUS ⌾

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It's the far-off vocal sample in 'Hurt U' that gives it a sense of instant feeling; stretched, pitch-shifted and flung into the distance, this scratchy, soulful voice gives the track its name. Partway between hearing somebody sing in the shower and listening to bootleg MP3 of your fav new pop song, the sample is all love and reminiscence—sometimes close to your ear, sometimes a ghostly recolletion.

Teaming up for this number, Caius and EAUXMAR lay warm classic chords on a bed of thick, clarified bass, seasoning it with sparkling ornamentations and gooey plasma synth. Layering the dusty grandeur of old-school funk and futurist glitter, it shifts between classic house piano desire lines and the robust fizz of mechanical bass with sweeps of chiptune sensibility. The aural equivalent to a mouthful of tangy, wholesome food, the production on 'Hurt U' is deliciously stodgy and packed full of textures.

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• 🔔 'Hurt U' by EAUXMAR and Caius is out now on STMPD RCRDS.

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📠
☟ EAUXMAR Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ tumblr ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

📠
☟ Caius Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram

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