tiananmen square dance //

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)

MEMORYHOUSE - “LATELY (TEENGIRL FANTASY REMIX)

In keeping with the theme of yesterday’s post, we’ve got another classic cut here that you may not have heard. In terms of iconic chillwave singles, Memoryhouse’s “Lately” ranks right up there, along with Neon Indian’s “Deadbeat Summer” and Toro y Moi’s “Still Sound”. As a result, there are more than a few remixes, covers, and samples to be found. This early 2010 Teengirl Fantasy rework ranks among our favorites, along with ASVHI’s re-imagined version of the jam. Employing that spacey, Balearic vibe that put Tracer on the electronic music map, the Teengirl Fantasy remix of “Lately” fades in with the lush found sounds of running water and tropical bird calls, quickly evolving into a dark, yet luxurious fantasy landscape of sparse synth sounds and Denise Nouvion’s ghostly chanting. It’s one of the single most liberal reinterpretations of a single we’ve heard thus far, and that’s exactly why it works. Non-Western trip-hop sounds give the tune a very pronounced jungle edge, further compounded by the decidedly early 90’s IDM influence present in the filtered digital instrumentation. Here, the warm mid-day bedroom soft focus of the original track is traded in for a surreal midnight romp at the foot of the pools on the rainforest floor. All in all, this Teengirl Fantasy remix of Memoryhouse’s popular single “Lately” is one that ranks among the better ones that we have heard, and it’s a shame that it has not received as much airtime as it should have. Do tha right thing, and grab a free MP3 download after the jump, and be sure to check out both artists’ respective portfolios as well. Pretty much everything Teengirl Fantasy touches is gold anyhow.

MP3 Download of “Lately (Teengirl Fantasy remix)”, by Memoryhouse (from Lately 7” single)

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

TAQUWAMI - “ALL MY LIFE”

Taquwami’s slow, sensuous glo-fi jams are always best served with a side of wonky, which explains his frequent collaboration with Ruddyp and his sizeable collection of remixes. “All My Life”, a standalone single from last December, stands firmly along with the bulk of the faceless, silent Tokyo artist’s output in that the hazy, meandering atmospherics fully envelop the featured wonky beats and melodramatic melody. That said, the strongest aspects of the jam, in our opinion, are the whispering pitch-shifted vocals and the relatively clean feminine cooing that continually peeks in and out of the shadows. Taquwami’s technique seems to typically be to cast vocals aside in favor of a very controlled synthetic atmosphere, which is why these very pronounced Stumbleine-esque vocals really pique our interest. They work really well too, adding a thick layer of hushed emotion to “All My Life”. Glo-fi being a very inclusive genre of electronic music, it’s refreshing to hear a cool concoction of syrupy ambient synth, urban beats, and experimental pop vocalization right from the pages of the Tri Angle Records playbook. Do tha right thing, and grab a free MP3 taste of this evolution of our favorite Japanese glo-fi artist. You can get “All My Life”, by Taquwami, right after the jump, and be sure to take a look at his 2011 demo Dawnz as well, if you like what you hear.

MP3 Download of “All My Life”, by Taquwami

MIRROR KISSES - “RUNAWAYS”

George Clanton, despite jumping on the all too familiar bandwagon of modernized new wave, has really tapped into a gold vein in terms of radio friendly pop sensibility, while still retaining some serious hipster cred (*cough* Diamond Rings *cough*). Not only has Mirror Kisses’ Kickstarter page for their new album already hit goal (with five days left to go), but their new single “Runaways” is definitely one to remember. Released for free only hours ago via their Bandcamp page, the titular A-side on Runaways b/w Kameron bears all of the glittering neon vibe and exotic chic present in today’s collection of modern synth-funk and VHS-wave “hits”. The twilit synth leads are right at home in any throwback 80’s dance party, the jangly guitar perfectly channels the boogie sounds of times past, and Clanton’s melodramatic vocals and lyrics are the very manifestation of synthpop itself. The featured video, “a compilation of things that have happened in the past 2 weeks”, is hopefully a pretty exact representation of the live Mirror Kisses experience, something we’d kill to experience, by the way. Hopefully, once Heartbeats is inevitably pressed on vinyl, some tour dates will be in order, because we will go out of our way for Mirror Kisses’ retro 80’s-inspired fanfare. Do tha right thing, and grab a free download of the first two official tracks in the form of Runaways b/w Kameron here, or just grab our pick below. If you like what you hear, toss a bone to Mirror Kisses in appreciation. First, though, you have to watch his video about the project here. George seems like a really funny guy, and we think he may actually be a bigger fan of 18 Carat Affair than we are. Wait, no. That’s impossible. It’s on, George!

For fans of: Future Unlimited, The Ice Choir, or Warm Ghost

MP3 Download of “Runaways”, by Mirror Kisses (from Heartbeats)