yeongrak: can't remember

I'm always really interested to see what's occupying spaces formerly occupied by vaporwave. Solid (former-?) vaporwave label Business Casual 87 have been branching out lately into some seriously accomplished productions, and (among others) it's resulted in a gorgeous, rich EP of cloudy beats from yeongrak, ASCII GIRLS. Sealing that family connection between cloud rap and vapor, it comes a bit out of that Tri Angle sound (but isn't derivative) and yet has something of vaporwave's feeling of water condensation on the glass walls of a steamy Utopia. I like the main hook of 'can't remember' best - it somehow manages to strum a marimba AND suggest a hand swishing through a stream. But on a giant scale. 'stuff garden' is good too.

sentinel: MELT​-​BUGATTI_

Previously just a Soundcloud account containing a few brilliant sketches and some mixes that'll give you a great guided tour of the emerging hi-tech world, sentinel's debut hybrid dropped yesterday on Bandcamp and it has me by the heart and lungs. Like an airborne nanocyte invasion. Essentially it's a compilation of those Soundcloud tracks (no longer there) but it's no less electromagnetic for that, and now they come in nutritious, terrifying FLAC. I name-checked sentinel (or SENTINL, then) in the recent System Focus on DBHB/E+E/FL/TCF/TF/YB, but really the Baltimore producer is part-way between their stuff, alien grime, Night Slugs' / Fade to Mind's machine club, Ferraro and hi-tech experimental noise too. So the soundworld isn't entirely unfamiliar, but it's still abrasively fresh, especially in this one's hands - sentinel is getting its armatures in there as well as anyone, creating something that is integrated, unpredictable, very affecting, almost incomparably future.

'MELT​-​BUGATTI_' is my favourite. Not metal vs muscle, nothing so C20th. Organic matter [user] <> non-organic matter [user] > graphene, smart surfaces, plastics, carbon fibres, breathables, exotic plant matter, gels > sudden peristalsis in the newly bleached gullet expels amniofluids > may cause initial nausea > protocols retracted and re-injected in new entrainments > human senses exhaled.

(via the amazing Hi-Hi-Whoopee)

Syrrup: A1 come over

This one's a little old (August 2013), but cmon, ain't it the sweetest. I've been listening to Syrrup's R+B on the way home every day for about a week, since it seems made for those summer nights where the heat gives way to the breeze and the birds give way to the rustling leaves (save for that distant nightingale). But this Viennese producer's music is so gentle and loving it can take you home wherever you are. Lil bits of R and lil bits of B roll in and out like stars from behind the clouds, while moonlight drones softly light up the sleeping world around you. S/he also has an equally beatific cassette album out on Illuminated Paths. Yeah, come on over.

RAP/RAP/RAP: ASHIKAGA TAKAUJI

RAP/RAP/RAP is one of my most cherished finds of the past couple years. I still struggle to pinpoint exactly what it is that's so powerful about beats so deceptively crude. First time I listened, I just mistook them for those of another drum machine pretender, but slowly I found that the thick air of heaviness and dissonance (tonal, textural, cultural) they so insistently explored was their unexpected attraction. You end up imagining the sort of subjectivity these tracks embody - a person/ world/viewpoint  that is slick and hi-tech yet brainless, too cool and yet too tough. I tried writing about it in an article that looked at RAP/RAP/RAP alongside two other vaguely similar producers, a i r s p o r t s and Karmelloz, but didn't manage to diffuse his power. The Portuguese producer will provide the latest release on Lisbon's very exciting Golden Mist records, and the teasing preview is above. A chunk of house, a shade too slow, spins wide-eyed next to metal objects from another dimension, senpai voices her anxieties but hey the water's fine fiiiiiiine.

Subaeris: POOLSIDE 女の子

Ohh, I really love White Colours. Consistently interesting and well-crafted releases. Very online-savvy. Great name. Brilliant visual design. The French label is run by Too Much Too Young (né Frédéric) and Rainbows (né Clément), who just find artists they like over the Internet and invite them to release EPs or singles with fantastic covers (here's an interview they did). They've barely had a dud in over two years of under-recognised activity. Even when their tracks take on traditional genres, there's something in the production, or the way it's put together that pulls me in. I could live in a White Colours world.

I particularly liked this recent EP of theirs, Existence by Subaeris. Subaeris turns out to be a really good post-vaporwave beatmaker, strobing those NEW CORPORATE AGE CLOUDS with cybermotor perc and bars of blue ice. Difficult to pick a favourite cos the release remains at a high level and has a nice stylistic coherence, but I'm into the low staccato tones of 'POOLSIDE 女の子.' I think the best coldness manages to find that sonic contrast between the continuous gaseous drones and the sudden, sometimes violent hits of hi-tech. If you like it too, Subaeris has a decent album out on Dream Catalogue and more great stuff on her/his own Bandcamp page so have a look.

pepsi7up: BITTERMAN

The perfect track to kick off an mp3 blog dedicated to online weirdness. The music of pepsi7up is mysterious, superlatively bizarre and full of baffling but undeniable love and beauty. I wrote about him a while back. Checking in on the Soundcloud account recently I noticed a few new tracks had gone up, the first in about a year. Some of them get into the most out-there experimentalism, but 'BITTERMAN' (I can't even begin to think why that name) is easily one of the most charmingly infectious tracks to have gone up since the two versions of 'Over the Rainbow' (now removed, but which I uploaded to YouTube). Like those tracks, 'BITTERMAN' uses a software orchestra and garbled vocaloids - advanced tech - but this time the style is dream indyrock from the late 80s / 90s in a twitching polygon body. As before, it brings you right into a future utopia that's just that much more detailed, more persuasive, more poignant, more otherworldly and more heavenly than anyone else's. The distinction distances and isolates him from so many listeners, but in my book, even with so little material, pepsi7up is the very height of the new online weird.