tiananmen square dance //

OWL EYES - “CLOSURE (GIRAFFAGE REMIX)”

R&B-infused glo-fi superbeing Giraffage churned out a quick rework of Owl Eyes’ “Closure” the other day, complete with all the fringe benefits one might expect from the San Franciscan producer. Free to download, the jam gives a hazy, magic hour vibe to the original composition by heavily appropriating the eloquent howls of today’s chopped and screwed musical movement. Notably toward the end of Giraffage’s remix of “Closure”, Brooke Addamo’s soulful vocals, the retro guitar, and sensual R&B time keeping fade into the background as Charlie Yin (Giraffage) slows that shit down, turning the last bit of the tune into a haunting Chris D’eon-esque concentration on the titular refrain. Do tha right thing, and grab a free MP3 download of Giraffage’s dreamtrap improvement on Owl Eyes’ Australian electro-pop single “Closure”. Afterwards, check out the original version of the track, and definitely grab a copy of Giraffage’s latest full-length, Needs, as well.

MP3 Download of “Closure (Giraffage remix)”, by Owl Eyes

DREAMS WEST’S </3

Considering the official release date of this album is February 18, 1990, but the opening track “199X” didn’t appear on Soundcloud until about four months ago, all bets are off as to when </3 hit the airwaves. After falling in love with Dreams West’s self-titled debut, we frequently revisited his spheres of influence in hopes of new material, and this LP just appeared one day, cohesively comprised of material created throughout the past couple of years. Some of the tracks seem to have been released as stand alone singles before Dreams West even came out in 2011. Your favorite producer’s least favorite producer is slowly but surely creating again, but not without this first releasing this beautiful montage of the many shades and facets of his work since the inception of Dreams West. Kicking off with a sprawling Chuck Person-esque mashup of found foreign sound, retro samples, and a wall-of-sound, “199X”, while easily the most experimental jam on </3, really prepares the listener for the coming onslaught of varying vintage sound palettes. Segueing perfectly into the retro Balearic vibe of “Disengage”, one of Dreams West’s better known singles, the album remains steadfastly lo-fi and mid-tempo, yet punchy and user-friendly throughout. Its predominant tone is chopped and screwed funk, boogie, and soul samples from the early to mid-80’s, with the occasional detour into ambient analog synth music and early 90’s dance, the above featured collaboration with Tokyo Hands being an excellent example of that. That title track is easily the strongest song on the release, being a thick colloidal mixture of tape reel-based synthwave and awful 90’s techno haze. It almost sounds like something that Pictureplane may have secretly engineered. “Battery View” and “Sweating”, both being short vignettes, add facets of warped, looped audio glaze and pitch-shifted vocal sampling to the heavily edited VHS-wave experience. “Mind Over MIDI” regresses pleasantly to that sunny, beachside turn of the decade tone, utilizing the synth leads and reverberating toms that truly distinguish the artist from his brethren. At the end of the colorful, exotic journey, the closing track channels Blade Runner- and Apocalypse Now-era Tangerine Dream with an eerie beatless synth symphony of space age triumph and a deep sense of impending doom. If you haven’t already heard the lion’s share of Dreams West’s newer full-length </3, do tha right thing and grab a download of the album at his Bandcamp page. He’s not asking anything for what we consider a fun-filled, nostalgic cinematic excursion, so we think you really ought to do him a solid one and at least pay what you would if you found it at a shop on record day. If you are already well acquainted with the album, then join us in begging Raleigh, North Carolina’s cassette obsessed beatmaker for another one, and soon!

MP3 Download of “</3”, by Dreams West (from </3)

MP3 Download of “Sweating”, by Dreams West (from </3)

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)

TOURIST - “TONIGHT”

Well, now, this is a nice little one we found today. The much lauded lead track from London producer Tourist’s upcoming EP, “Tonight” really creeps up on you, slowly building up into a ghostly deep house jam. Slow burning beats and echoing pitch-shifted vocal samples come together in breathless chorus as the tune reaches a head early on, closely resembling the early sounds of Disclosure. “Tonight” is a cold experimental electronic music track, it’s strength being its slow, breaking beats and the haunting digital textures at play with the synth leads, the witchy atmospherics, and the vocal loops. Fans of Disclosure, Holy Other, or Synkro will surely enjoy this dark hi-fi electronic entry by William Phelps (Tourist). We’d love to include a free MP3 download of “Tonight” after the jump, but were specifically asked not to, so streaming will have to do for now. If you enjoy what you hear, though, his sophomore release, the Tonight EP, drops February 18th via Monday Records.

STUMBLEINE’S THE NIGHT BEFORE

Prolific Bristol producer Stumbleine has always had a penchant for the dark, sentimental side of this new wave of electronic music. Pairing his heavily pitch-shifted vocal samples with Hammock-esque ambient guitar and thick trip-hop beats straight out of the Sun Glitters playbook, Stumbleine continually resurfaces and reforms, releasing EP’s, singles, and full-lengths’ worth of moody dream pop. His new album Spiderwebbed was just released today, but what we’re here to praise is the short July release The Night Before, which is kind of like an EP, featuring four solid entries and a cover at the end. Having evolved from very shoegaze-influenced early work to a pronounced experimental R&B phase, Stumbleine’s newest offerings are continually honed to a perfect point of emotional ambience, largely piano- and guitar-driven. Heavily processed vocals still abound—thank god—as the artist uses them to such great effect, revealing an otherworldly yearning and impassioned crooning present in tracks such as “Glacier”. The clunky found sounds that comprise the percussion create a very pronounced downtempo mood, in addition to the atmospheric tracks that waft in and out, setting the scene with rain drops pitter-pattering on the roof of a chalet or the sounds of a crowd cheering triumphantly. The true gem on The Night Before, in our collective opinion, however, is the stark opener, “Strawberry Blonde”, featured above. An unofficial remix of Southern Shores’ sunny Balearic jam “Night Is Young”, the Stumbleine version completely reinvents the tune, trading in tropical samba sounds for ominous candlelight lullabies. The vocal samples are really the only things that resemble the original work at all, and this refix stands very strong in its own light (or lack thereof). There’s even a very clean-sounding cover of Radiohead’s timeless hit “Fake Plastic Trees” at the end of the collection to lead the listener out. We would love to recommend Stumbleine’s second most recent release, The Night Before, so do tha right thing and fetch a download of it for only ₤2.50 (about $4) over at his Bandcamp page. Afterwards, check out his back catalog, especially Ghosting and Sunshine Girls. Fans of ambient, downtempo, dream pop, shoegaze, trip-hop, and witch house all have a place reserved around Stumbleine’s warm bonfire.

MP3 Download of “Strawberry Blonde”, by Stumbleine

MP3 Download of “She Stole the Beach”, by Stumbleine

SONS OF THE MORNING X RAFIQ BHATIA - “IV”

Downtempo producer and stellar remix artist Prefuse 73 has recently teamed up with fellow beatmaker Teebs to create Sons of the Morning (possibly a subtle reference to Lucifer, the fallen angel). Voltron-style, the twosome came together to rehash a selection of jazz-influenced composer Rafiq Bhatia’s beats, most notably “Sunshower”. “IV”, the rework that seems to be getting the most internet attention, smacks of classic Prefuse 73 vibes, with its whimsical intermingling of muted underground hip-hop beats with ambient analogue samples. Vocal samples chime in periodically at various junctions of the jam, punctuating the found sounds and clarinet lead, and the tune fizzles out early on a decidedly fulfilling ambient fadeout. Sons of the Morning’s “IV”, at nearly two-and-a-half minutes resembles what we imagine a glitchy Pogo creation built out of a Mux Mool remix of a Shigeto track might sound like. It’s widely acknowledged that Prefuse 73 seems to have the Midas touch when it comes to remixing other artists. Do tha right thing, and indulge in a free MP3 download of Sons of the Morning x Rafiq Bhatia’s “IV” below, and follow that up by checking out the recently released Strata Remixes EP by Sons of the Morning (via Rest Assured).

MP3 Download of “IV” by Sons of the Morning x Rafiq Bhatia (from the Strata Remixes EP)

CLAMS CASINO’S RAINFOREST EP

Clams Casino, best as known as the producer behind several rap and hip-hop acts (A$AP Rocky, Lil’ B, Mac Miller), released a five-track EP last year on Tri Angle Records, home of Holy Other, How to Dress Well, and several others of those ghostly electronic artists. Amid all the hype over his two Instrumental Mixtapes, which were quite good, by the way, the Rainforest EP sneaked by us, and we intend to put in our two cents now. We’re kind of ashamed to admit it, but were it not for our Clams Casino Pandora station (which is fucking amazing, by the way), we would have probably never known that Mike Volpe (Clams Casino) even released an EP comprised solely of original works.

The material that makes up the nearly twenty-minute outing is the familiar vocal loops, blistering basslines, and slowed down hip-hop percussion, but the atmosphere is much more atmospheric and lush, kind of like the EP’s title and cover artwork implies. Very much a concept album of sorts, the Rainforest EP is a dark experimental hip-hop ode to raw, untamed nature: lush, thriving biospheres far removed from the footprints of mankind. The above official video for “Natural” features footage from a German 70’s film called “Aguirre, the Wrath of God”, and it perfectly encapsulates the bleak heart and soul of the Rainforest EP. The music evokes a wilderness that is equally beautiful and powerful; a wild, primitive sanctuary that entrances men and subsequently swallows their minds whole. The steaming sheets of synth noise utilized by Clams Casino perfectly recreate the boiling humidity of, say, the Amazon or the Congo. The tribal beats, end-of-the-world basslines, and ethereal chants in “Waterfalls”, the EP’s standout jam, are a perfect manifestation of the heart of darkness that only a bewildering expedition into the wild unknown can uncover. In our collective opinion, this short, concentrated collection of Clams Casino’s experimental hip-hop tunes is his best work to date. Do tha right thing, and grab yourself a copy of his little known Rainforest EP via iTunes, Amazon, or Beatport. Don’t be like us. Be in the know.

MP3 Download of “Natural”, by Clams Casino

DREAMS WEST’S SELF-TITLED

Thanks, guys. Nobody told us that Raleigh, North Carolina’s Dreams West released his debut album on Bandcamp last December. Considering how fly this collection of jams is, it would have been really nice to hear about it then. James West (Dreams West) is an independent retro lo-fi synth producer that came to our attention via Hearing Gold’s stellar collection Midnight Cassette. Perpetuating that sub-genre of chillwave that’s marked by funky vintage synths, lo-fi 80’s samples, and found VHS sound; his album Self-Titled really adds a lot to the nostalgic scene of lasers, magnetic media, and suburbia that we used to think looked futuristic. While he may not really be spinning out anything that we haven’t already heard by the likes of 18 Carat Affair, Teams, or Vektroid, Dreams West’s unique take on the slo-mo synth-funk movement underway is not something that should be missed.

Self-Titled draws equally from a plethora of musical palettes, including but not limited to italo-disco, new wave, funk, and even the occasional tropicalia-infused eighties rap tune that you’d expect to hear out of Miami right around that time. The work as a whole bears that intentionally degraded quality of magnetic recording popularized by bigger (haha) names like Com Truise and VHS Head, resulting in what can we like to call “Instagram-ized” music. Take the energy of a Giraffage song, add some jungle percussion and some early hip-hop crooning, and then warp the shit out your mixdown with a dirty tape deck and you have the lion’s share of the sounds you’re likely to hear on Self-Titled. You won’t hear us complaining. Just watch that two-and-a-half minute montage of Japanese Celica commercials and bitchy early nineties fashion choices up top, comprising the video for our favorite track on the album, “Super Gran Turismo”. In summation, if you closely follow the sound of weathered, chopped and screwed audio collages, do tha right thing and pay the meager $5 in exchange for Dreams West’s super fun debut full-length. While the limited cassette running is out of print at this time, it’s still worth funding this artist’s endeavors for a digital download at his Bandcamp page right here. Looks like he just did a split EP with Lust too! Saturate yourself with the early Saturday morning cartoons, the action heroes, and the 16-bit role playing games of the era with Dreams West’s Self-Titled today. Hell, we would have paid far more than we did for this album if we had the chance.

MP3 Download of “Super Gran Turismo”, by Dreams West

MP3 Download of “Tapedecks”, by Dreams West