tiananmen square dance //

MOOMIN - “YOU”

This jam came out two years ago. Considering our penchant for minimalism, you would have thought we would have posted it before, but nope. That is an error we now intend to remedy. Despite the myriad club, house, ambient, and IDM artists out there creating simple build-and-release-based loops, very rarely does one stumble upon an artist or tune that creates a distinctly memorable moment with all of the subtlety that one would expect out of that brand of electronic music. With Moomin’s “You”, a warm, gentle desperation is created, built, and sustained over the course of nearly seven minutes with nothing but ambling rhythm synth loops, four-on-the-floor deep house beats, and a persistent digital whine. That is literally the entirety of the track, but you have to hear it to believe it. Named for the fairy tale characters featured in Swedish-Finn artist Tove Jansson’s children’s books, Berlin’s Moomin manages to tenderly captivate while remaining perfectly energetic and danceable without getting boring at all (at least, in our opinion). Along with greats like The Field and The Sight Below, what makes his minimalistic electronic music so impressive is that so much can be built from so little, and with 2011’s “You”, Moomin succeeds. So, despite the age of this song, do tha right thing, and grab a free MP3 download after the jump. Afterwards, you can purchase The Story About You via Amazon, iTunes, or from Smallville Records.

MP3 Download of “You”, by Moomin (from The Story About You)

ELITE GYMNASTICS - “IS THIS ON ME?”

After the death of Elite Gymnastics, I think a fair number of us reasonably assumed that the days of witchy K-pop-inspired drum n’ bass were numbered. We thoroughly enjoyed the long, drawn out Q&A’s with lone member James Brooks, but we felt pretty ambivalent about the much-hyped Adult Swim single “Andreja 4-Ever”. We longed for the days of Ruin and its three subsequent iterations. After bumping back on into Elite Gymnastics’ Soundcloud page for sentimental reasons, a screen grab of Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso grabbed our attention, so we felt that a quick listen to the most recent post was in order. “Is This on Me?” is a cut from a little-known release called Real Friends from back in 2010, which explains its similarity to the dark and desperate vibe of the B-side selection of Ruin’s reworks. The typically early 90’s IDM-inspired percussion section is here, but not to the extent that it sounds kitsch. The more refined, and yet nonetheless forceful beat lays the foundation required for an early onslaught of exotic retro sampling from Chinese pop star Faye Wong’s “Eyes on Me”, which was featured prominently in Final Fantasy VIII. A prominent bassline lends the jam a subtly retro tone, while still maintaining the melodramatic flair. Tinny pitch-shifted female vocals chant the eponymous question over a garbled male taking care of the verses and chorus, all of which is paired nicely with a very lo-fi Vimeo collection of vintage sporting footage. Skateboards, roller skates, bicycles, and the like. If showcasing this rarity is Elite Gymnastics’ unique way of telling listeners that his brand of Square-Enix-inspired witch house-and Warp Records-era club music is coming back in full force, we are fully on board. You have our attention, James, and we eagerly await your resurgence. By the way, are you really dating Grimes? If so, holy shit.

MP3 Download of “Is this on Me?”, by Elite Gymnastics

LUSINE’S THE WAITING ROOM

The trouble with getting into increasingly specific obscure micro-genres of music is that one can quickly lose appreciation for solid, well-rounded cornerstones of that genre of music. What with all this underground hip-hop-influenced witch-house and intentionally lo-fi sample-based new wave that we typically feature here, we’re thankful that certain foundational electronic artists like Lusine are still able to wow us. Ann Arbor’s Ghostly Inernational is headquarters to a plethora of hi-fi IDM and downtempo artists, along with favorites of ours like Com Truise, Heathered Pearls, and Mux Mool. Texas’ Jeff McIlwain (Lusine) is a veteran artist on that label, having been producing laid-back, unassuming downtempo for the discerning ear since 1999, well before the inception of Ghostly. Lately, Lusine’s albums have typically followed a predictable, but nonetheless rewarding pattern of couching six or seven relatively radio-friendly vocal sample-based tracks between opening instrumental bangers and crashing loud-soft dynamic experiences towards the end. “Cirrus”, the closing track from 2009’s A Certain Distance(and one of our absolute favorite jams, literally, of all time) is a stellar example of this oft-used technique by Lusine, which is reprised fittingly in the unofficial followup track, “Stratus” (featured above). Other euphoric standouts, like opener “Panoramic” and closer “February” also follow that trademarked build-and-release pattern, gradually widening that warm, bassy rhythm synth track until it threatens to blister with its heretofore unseen kinetic intensity. Teeny tiny vocal snippets peek in and out plaintively throughout the ordeal, and official single “Another Tomorrow” of course features the best of both worlds: the vocoded vocalization and a post-rock-esque instrumental movement. For being so white bread amongst so many highly diversified electronic artists, that plain, unassuming aura is exactly what makes Lusine’s music masterful in scope and sound. This artist and his hypnotically apocalyptic work stand out as a landmark achievement in the annals of ambient IDM music, in our opinion. Do tha right thing and grab a taste of Lusine’s lastest effort, The Waiting Room, in the form of a free MP3 download of “Stratus” below. Afterwards, bump on over to the Ghostly Store and pay up for your own slice of heaven, or visit Amazon or iTunes if that suits you better. Either way, McIlwain deserves compensation for this magnum opus.

MP3 Download of “Stratus”, by Lusine (from The Waiting Room)

MP3 Download of “Another Tomorrow”, by Lusine (from The Waiting Room)

CHOONGUM - “INTERGALACTIC LOVE AFFAIR”

Choongum has an impressive array of sounds at play amongst the wide range of records he’s already successfully released. This multi-talented bedroom producer has covered everything from awful early 90’s IDM to psychedelic glo-fi to electronic post-rock. With his most recent release, Passion, San Francisco’s Choongum seems to be aiming for a more loops-and-samples-based radio-friendly sound, which is fantastic if the rest of the album resembles “Intergalactic Love Affair”. Passion’s unofficial single, the jam is almost stupidly simple, a cut-and-pasted vocal sample carefully rearranged to bring out the dreamy, emotional undertone backed by a soft digital beat and peaceful washes of atmospheric rhythm synth tracks. While that may sound contrived on paper, just press the play button, and we promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Owing to the pop sensibility of “Intergalactic Love Affair”, we’d rank it among the best of offerings by glo-fi mainstays like Galapagos, Giraffage, or Sun Glitters. Perfect for any mixtape featuring any sort of electronic music at all. Do tha right thing, and grab a free MP3 download of “Intergalactic Love Affair”, by Choongum, and check out the rest of Passion if you enjoy it. Be sure to fund his efforts if you intend to download the EP. We know he’d appreciate it.

MP3 Download of “Intergalactic Love Affair”, by Choongum (from Passion)

Nueva Forma, home to The Bear and the Sea, hosts a handful of other pleasantries and eccentricities with which we’ve been urged to familiarize ourselves. Del Dot, creator of the above jam, “Roll a Hard Six” fit this bill perfectly. The tune is a wash of deliciously clashing genres of electronic music, successfully meshing the drum n’ bass ethos with a pronounced Boards of Canada-influenced lo-fi downtempo vibe. Glitchy IDM percussion marches to its own beat, skittering to and fro, as subtle synth leads whine sonorously over mangled vocal samples and sparkling digital noises. “Razor sharp beats over candy coated hills” is the name of the game to Anuj Girdhar (Del Dot), as a carefully balanced melding of frail synthwave fantasy and nitty-gritty pop realism seem to dance together throughout the short duration of the tune, at times at odds, and other times in solidarity. “Roll a Hard Six” is over just as soon as it starts, much like the eye of a storm, and it begs one to put on a pair of high dollar headphones and hit the “repeat one” button. Truthfully, we are beginning to notice a deliberate pattern with Nueva Forma’s audiovisual releases, filling that gaping void of organic electronic artists that adhere closely to the braindance aesthetic. While there are a number of labels that we support very vocally here due to the predictable quality of their micro-niche output, we feel that artists like Nueva Forma’s Gap Between and Del Dot will go on to usher in a new era of neo-IDM, being referenced hereafter as forefathers of a brand new revival of a tried and true formula. Do tha right thing, and grab a free download of Del Dot’s “Roll a Hard Six” above, revel in its digital pathos, and check out the remainder of the album, You Can Play These Songs With Cords, afterwards.

CHRIS D’EON - “TONGUES”

Just wanted to be sure that we called special attention to this jam by Chris D’eon that was featured on the lesser known pre-LP split EP that he did with fellow Canadian musician Grimes last year. “Tongues” starts off with a distinctly 8-bit slant, eventually morphing into his typical dark drum n’ bass-influenced soft rock fare. Little flecks of light from the tune reflect an inkling of what it sounds like would go on to become “Transparency, Pt. II”, and we feel like there’s also a little bit of the inspiration for “Al-Qiyamah” buried in there as well. Either way, though released some time back, this slight offering by Chris D’eon, in the form of a collaboration with Grimes, should not be overlooked. “Tongues”, despite the man himself calling it “bad-time music”, well personifies the artist’s unique blend of classic 8-bit and IDM influence, Tibetan mysticism, and pop writing sensibilities (in our opinion). If you are an über-fan, this post may be a bit superfluous, but do tha right thing and grab a free MP3 download of Chris D’eon’s “Tongues” below. If you like it, consider purchasing a copy of the Darkbloom EP with Grimes via iTunes, Hippos in Tanks, or Arbutus Records afterwards. Good stuff.

MP3 Download of “Tongues”, by Chris D’eon (from the Darkbloom EP)

THE BEAR AND THE SEA - “PIXEL RIDDLES”

I won’t even mince words here. Some random dude started following us on Twitter, and when we finally checked out his jams, we were very pleasantly blown away. The Bear and the Sea already has a good number of tunes under his belt, so we just picked the first thing on his Soundcloud that we could download, because we’re all music hoarders up in here. “Pixel Riddles”, a track released four months ago for a forthcoming full-length, made for quite the first impression. As stated at his Soundcloud page, Damon Sheeley (The Bear and the Sea) was “raised on jazz, 80s synth-pop, Mama’s classical music, MTV, and poverty”. Among the droves of young, unsigned artists, he managed to snatch our attention and occupy our one-track minds today with his early 90’s ambient IDM synth samples, his retro trip-hopping swagger, and his obvious love for the sweeping sheets of chillwave synth. “Pixel Riddles” is a DOS-based peer-reviewed study of Com Truise and Shigeto’s post-fight make-up sex. It’s the nostalgia of old, unreleased Boards of Canada songs and the new wave of Rimar’s R&B swag, all rolled up into one radio-friendly three-and-a-half minute package. Do tha right thing, and download the memorable melody “Pixel Riddles”, by The Bear and the Sea, and check out the rest of his repertoire at his Soundcloud page today.

MP3 Download of “Pixel Riddles”, by The Bear and the Sea

ELITE GYMNASTICS’ RUIN

Okay, lay off, fellas. We know; we’re late to the party. Elite Gymnastics’ debut full-length album Ruin was released a ways back on vinyl and digital download via Acéphale. We heard the duo’s jams via one well positioned CFCF remix and the unofficial single of their most recent release, the bonus remix package Ruin 4. Holy hell, are we glad we kept listening. One year later, we’ve acquired the album that started it all, and we’re here to rail and rave about it.

Kicking off with less than a minute’s worth of heavenly electric piano and violin riffs, Ruin wastes little to no time delving into a signature sound that Elite Gymnastics has crafted: a union of heavily processed whispers, early 90’s IDM percussion, and analogue orchestral touches waiting in the wings. The layout of the album is likewise unique in that there is a very distinct A-side and B-side, and that the sounds you will hear on Ruin adhere very closely to that formula. Both sides are about twenty minutes long, but the A-side is a touch longer, as it contains all of the original compositions. The B-side, on the other hand, is comprised of five redone versions of the six original tracks, most of which are slower, darker, and more stripped down. Every track from the first side gets a retouch on the flipside except for “So Close to Paradise”, which is a shame because that one is a real banger, in our collective opinion. Either way, though, listening to the B-side of Ruin is like listening to the dark underbelly of the whole album at night time in minor key. Standouts of the full experience include both versions of “Here, in Heaven”, the B-side version of which is featured above, and “Minneapolis Belongs to You”. “Here in Heaven” will always be special to us here at Tiananmen Square Dance because it is the tune we first heard by Elite Gymnastics, and the darkness collected in those three-and-a-half minutes make for the bleakest pop track we have yet to hear. Despite its heavily Squarepusher-influenced instrumentation, a brief sampling of the lyrics tell a dark, painful story of never ending loneliness and insufficiency. The drum n’ bass doesn’t fool anybody: the ever-present chanting in the background, paired with the scathing vocals undertone a serious social malfunction that the B-side featured above takes into even darker territory. “Minneapolis Belongs to You” offers a wistful marriage between tinny South Asian beach lullabies and the hard-hitting early Warp Records sound purveyed by British greats such as Aphex Twin and The Future Sound of London. Do tha right thing, and grab your belated copy of Elite Gymnastic’s Ruin by way of iTunes, Amazon, or Acéphale, and dive into this bizarrely successful juxtaposition of dance and dream today.

MP3 Download of “Here, in Heaven”, by Elite Gymnastics

MP3 Download of “Here, in Heaven 2”, by Elite Gymnastics

01.   HOLY OTHER’S WITH U EP

How could it be anything else, right? We here at Tiananmen Square Dance have such a priapism for this guy’s jams that we’re convinced that nothing else can even compare to the quality and influence of this tiny, five-track EP. It’s worth noting that there are several music publications that agree with us wholeheartedly! The music of Manchester’s Holy Other is seriously disturbing. Though it could easily be corralled by the chillwave or downtempo genres, there is simply a certain creepy mystique to it that is very hard to pull off. Other artists, like Dunian and Oneohtrix Point Never, have really tweaked the exotic facet of current artistic electronic music, but not to such a surreal point. Utilizing deep IDM beats, non-Western percussion, and snatches of heavily processed vocal yearnings, the music of Holy Other’s With U EP  makes its home outside the realms and planes of typical existence. A spiritual experience almost, the depth and darkness of this artist’s music evokes images of cultish ritual, twilight spectres, and dark, dead places like cobblestone alleys and cavernous ossuaries. Despite the obvious influence of modern technology and classic funk and glo-fi music, it is impossible to escape the heaviness or the shake the dread inspired by the With U EP. Any light shone onto tracks like “Know Where” and “Touch” just reflects right back from the shadows, but thankfully, the second half of the EP rescues the listener from panic with a soulful interlude from the disturbia (“With U”) and a howlingly emotional closer (“Feel Something”). This EP is easily one of the most unique experimental pop releases recently, and it is the single greatest collection of music we here at the blog have had the distinct pleasure of hearing this past year. It also helps that, considering the artist’s trademark mystery, we now finally have a face to put to the name of Holy Other. We absolutely cannot wait for “Held” to come out in August, and we’re pretty overjoyed about his upcoming American tour. So do tha right thing and get yourself a copy of Holy Other’s With U EP via Amazon or iTunes while there’s still time.

MP3 Download of “Feel Something”, by Holy Other

MP3 Download of “Know Where”, by Holy Other