#1 - Nyako - Daisho Remix - Makadem, Behr
Soooooo glad I've discovered this song and it's in my life. It's from 2017, and the original is by South African producer 'Behr' together with Makadem, produced during a 'Santuri Safari' session at Sondeka Festival in Kenya - pretty cool. The whole EP contains three different remixes and is fantastic as a work as a whole - this remix is by Indian producer Daisho, and the global fusion of musical minds has created quite the banger. Instrumentation and vocals are beautiful, I really like the bird noise in the background (remember this for later actually), and the track is brought into a standard house rhythm, letting you dance into a trance with it. The bassline moves in two-note patterns, keeping the song moving but not too rapidly. I also really like the level of electronic sound in the song; it's not overdoing it, but there's some real repeating frequencies which would make it fit in a club setting and gives it more character. Also, the album art is beautiful!
#2 - Feel Infinite - Jacques Greene
I think I actually already knew this song but it came up in my Discover Weekly and Jacques Greene is great so I wanted to include it anyway! Great wind chime effects, funky-jumpy synths, exciting hi-hats, lead up to a drop with great held bass notes and a simple but effective drum beat. It really gives me an image of some expensive car driving down an empty motorway suspended in the sky, camera angles changing, intensity building, all peng. It's reminded me that I need to listen to the whole 'Feel Infinite' album properly, and so should you! His most famous song 'Another Girl' is amazing as well, so give that a listen if you haven't already.
#3 - Lullaby, For J - salute
Simple and beautiful. Cut up vocals is obviously a very much saturated market at this point but when it's done right it's stunning how they can carry just as much meaning as real words. The distorted 'ooo's also remind me of something from an N64 Zelda game which is amusing. I really like the juxtaposition of these sounds and the unaltered piano and strings chords. I haven't got loads to say here, but I think it's very much a nice and wholesome track. It rides a nice line between relaxing and energetic, and also reminds me of this song by Hayden James for some reason.
#4 - Night Flight - Arthur Miles
When I mentioned songs that help me fit the gloomy atmosphere in the dark first thing in the morning - this could not be more fitting, and the album art depicts it too. It's everything I love about ambient electronic music. It gives me real Floating Points vibes and the two sections of the song that intertwine throughout are both beautiful. The beat almost sounds like water rapidly dropping from a drain, the synths are like wind whistling past city blocks, the waves of the song rise and fall and the textures of it mesh so well together. I've also recently decided that 8 minutes is my favourite song length (lol) so this checks that criteria too. Arthur Miles is Adelaide, South Australia, but that's about all I can find out :(. Check him out, because more people should hear his sound. Up the ambience.
#5 - Inkoleko - Goldie, James Davidson, Subjective
Subjective is the collaborative effort of Goldie and Ulterior Motive's James Davidson. Although this song was released as a single about half a year ago, the album is pretty recent, and the sound is fresh. It's fantastic to see the bar held so high when stepping out from drum and bass. In fact, when they've been asked about the album, they say not being restricted by BPM etc. has been exciting for them, and it shows. The bass still thumps and the energy is still definitely high, but it doesn't get restricted to a genre at all. Just another reason for 2019 to be a great year for music, and I want to try and sit down and listen to the rest of the album now it's out. So, I started off the list with some African influence, and we're rounding it off with the same.
That about does it for Spotify songs, I also heard this cool cover of Gabriel, but didn't feel I wanted to write a whole paragraph on it. Tourist released his new album a couple of days ago, Everyday, and I would rate it a strong 8/10. I noticed how consistent the tone is throughout the album as I let it play on repeat at work and it created a consistent atmosphere rather than just feeling like dull repetition. 'Emily' is incredible, a stand out tune, and I also really enjoy 'Love Theme'. The album utilises warm vibrations and optimistic melodies that are able to encapsulate both joy and melancholy simultaneously. I hear Burial influences in a few of the tracks which I always love to hear, but Tourist really has managed to establish his own sound which I believe is really becoming recognisable. He's not trying to be too complex, and a lot of his music is easy listening, but that by no means would ever make it not good or worthy of merit. Unified sound is what I'd say makes the album a success, and at 42 minutes it isn't too long either.
Finally, I just wanted to mention some new playlists I've started working on that you should totally follow :^). They're named after some of our solar system's planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto (whether it counts or not), and I've tried to incorporate the sounds that enter my head when I think of both the planets themselves and the gods of their namesakes when putting them together. Pretty proud of the results, and they're seven very different moods. Also, they're very much ongoing, so join the interplanetary music journey. EDIT - I forgot to mention that Four Tet released a new remix of Dave's '18HUNNA' this week and it's a JAM. As I mentioned earlier, bird noise can be brilliantly atmospheric in songs and playing it over a grime song creates a collision of the serene and the harshness of reality that is really effective - love. Thanks for reading, have a great week xxx
