Track of the Moment: Hey Mami by Sylvan Esso

What do you get when you mix Purity Ring with Fiona Apple? That’s a question most don’t ask, but Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn did. And boy was it a question worth answering.

Amelia Meath is the frontwoman of Mountain Man (it’s ironic and they’re folk, so you know they got mad hipster cred), while Nick Sanborn is the bassist for Megafun, a psychedelic folk band. 

This is almost a surprising combination – who would think that folk vocals would think that folk vocals and electronic music would work so well together? But Sanborn’s beats are slow, pulsing, match perfectly with Meath’s soaring and almost mournful vocals that harmonize at just the right moments. The electronic crescendos are impressive; they both grab your attention and fade into the background into a deep, pleasant hum. They fade away almost completely at times, allowing Meath’s voice shine through, before coming in and lifting the entire song up far past anything each element could do on its own.

“Hey Mami” is a great example of this. The first half of the song sounds like a recording of a street performer, the din of the city faintly heard in the background as Meath casually sings. The lyrics are about a sexy girl who is the object of desire of all the guys in a most likely Hispanic district of New York, referencing an ass that draws the attention of all the boys she passes (not actual lyrics, but damn if that’s not a decent line). Her voice is strong and powerful, heartily belting out lines about bodegas and cat calls. Sanborn slowly begins adding claps, then bells, before finally coming with distorted electronics. While Purity Ring tends to aim for the glitchy, fast paced instrumentals, Sylvan Esso takes their time with more static notes, letting them linger, letting you absorb the sonic landscape as it gently floats by. They only exist to make the song bigger and bolder, a selfless act that has created an amazing piece of art.

So far, they only have a 2 song EP out, if you can even call it an EP. The vinyl has both the songs, along with the instrumentals and the accapella, so that’s cool, if you’re into remixing. You can also get the songs on iTunes and Amazon, if you’re a filthy casual who may or may not be into remixing

I’m usually very verbose, as any of my reviews can tell you, but Sylvan Esso has left me speechless. They don’t have much out right now, but I can see good things in their future, and I’m awaiting their next release. In the mean time, I'll just have to like this.

Track of the Moment: Get Free by Major Lazer

 

In my last article, I mentioned the song “Get Free”. I love the song, even though it’s been out for a little while. It was released about 5 months ago, and the music video came out a few weeks ago. I was going to wait for the album, but that doesn’t come out until November, and I couldn’t wait that long to talk about this song.

Major Lazer is known for 2 things. The first is the main producer/DJ, Diplo. Hailing from Philly and naming himself after the Diplodocus, he’s one of the biggest producers around today, working on mega-hit songs with Beyonce, Usher, M.I.A. (twice), Chris Brown, doing some production on No Doubt’s new album, and helping out with Snoop Dogg’s transition to reggae.Originally, Major Lazer was Diplo and another DJ named Switch, but Switch left due to “creative differences” (which everyone knows means trouble in bed). Now Major Lazer is just Diplo and whoever he's working with at the time. Diplo also tours around the world, playing around 300 gigs a year. On top of that, he owns his own label, Mad Decent, a charity, Heaps Decent, and co-runs club/music collective, Hooked on Hollerphonix. He’s a rather busy man, but damn is he good at music and business. Oh, and he’s the only white guy who could make Jamaican dancehall music and be featured in a video like this one, which can only be described as “so fucking ratchet, people from Malibu can only see a series of welfare cutback initiatives.”

The second thing they’re known for is not being subtle. Watch this video for “Pon De Floor”. I almost made it my track of the moment, because not only is the song good, but just watch that video. It features the dance style popular in Jamaica called “daggering”, which is what swing dancing would be, if it dropped all pretense and featured 150% more hip gyrating. If that sounds stupid, you haven’t finished watching that video. It would rival Psy’s “Gungnam Style” in viral-ness, if the Youtube video wasn’t age restricted. I mean, just look at what happens at 3:13! (Here’s a gif of it, if you can’t watch/are too lazy to watch). Holy ass loving christ! I’m like 95% sure that wasn’t CGIed. There’s no way someone didn’t break a pelvis. And the music is pretty indicative of their style – loud, lots of bass, and some strange samples played on top. Pretty standard dancehall fair.

This is Major Lazer's mascot, Major Lazer. He's a Jamaican commando who lost his arm fighting zombies in 1984. The US replaced his arm with a laser, and now he flies around on a rocket-powered skateboard killing monsters, partying, and making music for his club. He's my hero from when I was 10.

That’s why this song is such a pleasant surprise. Don’t get me wrong; the old stuff is great. “Pon De Floor” is what got me into Major Lazer and Diplo. But it’s not really my style. “Get Free”, on the other hand, is right up my alley. Now that Diplo is running the show with the rest of the Major Lazer squad merely helping him, Diplo’s unique style is able to shine through. And this song shows it. Heavily influenced by reggae, and featuring some great vocals by Amber Coffman from The Dirty Projectors, Diplo makes a great track. It has a slightly muffled, but amazing, keyboard riff and a funky bassline, and is just so perfectly loudly restrained. It has a full sound, but it’s also held back. Even the crescendos sound like a loud wall of sound, but coming from the next room over. Plus, it has a great music video exploring Jamaica and Jamaican culture.

I wasn’t too excited about Major Lazer’s next album, Free the Universe, until I heard this song. Now I can’t wait until I can get it. In the mean time, I guess I’ll just have to settle for this awesome song. Speaking of awesome and settling, it’d be awesome if you settled for liking our Facebook page to read reviews of all the newest and oldest music you should love.

Track of the Moment: Beba by PANTyRAiD

Now, before you question how I came across this duo, I was doing some… research on actual panty raids, mostly just when the first one occurred because I was… curious. However, PANTyRAiD (as it’s stylized), was one of many… other things that came… up during my search. Of course, even when I got down from my post-success euphoria these guys still… rubbed me the right way. However, I’ve been holding out on writing an article about them because I wanted to wait until Mark accepted my wager on me being able to make more than 5 sexual references in one article while still being on topic. I think I’ve won.

And I’m not just making these references on my own. The subtitle of their website is “Audio Fondling Your Girlfriend” (jokes on them, I don’t have a girlfriend! ...I’m so lonely…). The duo goes by PantyRaid (which I never understood the appeal of, but you can’t legally buy the kind of stuff I’m into, so…). And let’s not forget the female vocal sample in “Like That” and “Too Fine To Do Time”, or the cover of The Sauce and Superior, their album and EP respectively. Their entire image is built around making your downstairs area feel funny, both men and women. Well, that, and amazing, original beats.

A collaboration between Brooklyn-based MartyParty and LA-based Ooah that started up around 2009, give or take. They’ve done a few shows, but haven’t really put out much music in the 3 years they’ve been around; just their previously mentioned album and EP. Normally I’d expect a little more output from an electronic duo, but this is just a side project for both artists, so I’m not surprised. However, they have been doing shows recently, including an appearance at Sonic Bloom about a month ago, so hopefully they’ll be putting out some new stuff.

PantyRaid re-enacting of the first time me and Mark met

What’s interesting is the difference between their EP, which came out last year, and their first album, which came out in 2009. Their album features a more traditional, but unique, electronic sound, while the EP followed the current trends of electronic music and heavily influenced by dubstep. It’s still within their style (aka good) and focuses more on the lows than the wobble (as dubstep should), but it definitely has some modern influences to it. However, I’m going to focus on The Sauce, since there’s more there and it’s more interesting.

The Sauce focuses on melding a lot of different styles; dancehall, 2-step garage, electronica, glitch, and a little tiny bit of synthpop and chopped and screwed in occasionally comes in. If you don’t know what any of those genres sound like, I don’t blame you. I personally had to search through a rather long list of genres and figure out which ones applied, and I’m sure I missed a few, since there’s a lot of overlap and miniscule differences between subgenres and even genres. But don’t think that PantyRaid sounds like every other electronic act out there – they bring something new to the table. Like Squarepusher, these guys like to set up a rather standard melody made of loops for the first minute or 2, then break into some improvised cuts and interjections of synths. It’s hard to pick a particular song to share, but I’ll share “Beba”, which I love, and I feel shows off their influences and style the best. If you want more, you can stream their EP and album from their Soundcloud, like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. Oh, and if you like sexy sex, this article, or me, like Frogs on a Log on Facebook for updates on awesome music.

Track of the Moment: The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black by Jóhann Jóhannsson

When I chose Jóhann Jóhannsson’s IBM 1401, A User’s Manual as one of my top 42 albums, there were a lot of “huh?”s and “who’s that?” floating around the room, but I didn’t answer them, mostly because Steve threw me into the Writer’s Cellar for picking an artist he didn’t know (Steve likes to think he knows every band and artist in existence). After a few weeks of being deprived of sunlight and human contact, Steve thought I should go back into the Writer's Cellar to actually write an article about this Icelandic dude (that joke is a grower, not a shower).

Being in Iceland must be like living in a time machine; the IBM 1401 computer was discontinued in 1971, and yet it took until 2006 until it was used to create music. Well, featured in music. Also, Icelandic  people must be living in wooden houses, cooking over a campfire in handmade parkas, reading this article via Morse Code. Luckily I don’t know Morse Code, so I can’t read their hate mail. But anyway, Jóhannsson is a modern orchestral composer who kicks a lot of ass (mostly because of his name, but his music is good too). He’s in the same vein as Soap&Skin, in that he takes classical instruments and adds an electronic element to them. It’s hard to tell where the classical starts and the electronic ends, mostly because it’s all so beautifully composed and integrated together. His music is also very sad, but open and slightly ambient, perfectly replicating the feeling of living in Iceland.

Probably his most well known song is “The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black”; it was featured in the teaser trailer for Battlefield: LA, which, given how bad the movie turned out, seems to be the least likely source to have introduced me to such beautiful music. As for the song itself, it features the recording that inspired this album, a tune created by Jóhannsson’s dad on the IBM 1401 computer, which he did maintenance on back in the day (which was 2006, no matter what the internet tells you). Bringing together a 60 piece orchestra, he created an open, beautiful piece featuring the mournful voice of the IBM 1401 singing. The music slowly builds, and the short vocal recording fades away, bring the song into a sad, but hopeful tune as the music peaks. Finally, it ends with an almost happy resolution. The last few minutes remind me of the end of an Indiana Jones-esque film, where evil has been vanquished, the hero got the girl, and everyone is smiling and watching the sun set as the camera slowly pulls back into the sky. It’s a fantastic song from a great composer, and is definitely worth your time.

Track of the Moment: Bill Gates/Never Leave by XXYYXX

If you follow what I write (which is a whole bunch of people, or at least that’s what I tell myself to make me feel better), then you know I’m a huge fan of open beats and lots of lows/bass. However, I’m generally not a fan of chopped and screwed songs, and that’s where XXYYXX doesn’t sound like he would appeal to me. However, there are a few artists who are good at it; The Weeknd on the track “Initiation”, Pogo (who will get his own TotM soon enough), and XXYYXX.

For those that don’t know (which I assume is most of you, if you haven’t already Googled “Chopped and Screwed”), is when the DJ takes a vocal track and divides it up into small pieces so that it’s mostly just fairly unintelligible syllables, although the bits can be long enough to include a word or 2. Once the DJ has his “chopped” vocal samples, he then “screws” them by playing with the pitch and length of each sample. While it may sound like it would hectic, a good artist can do some amazing things with it, and use it the same way someone would use a guitar or synth. Which XXYYXX does better than most of what I’ve heard.

He’s currently got 2 full albums and an EP out, with XXYYXX (that’s his 2^nd album) and Mystify (that’s the EP) being the good ones of the trio. XXYYXX features more of what I like; very calm, open beats with minimal sounds, relying on extended chopped vocals and the occasional synthesized sound. It’s rather ambient, but it’s the good ambient – the kind that you put on in the background, but still find yourself splitting your attention.

However, Mystify is a crossbreed of XXYYXX and Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma, which, if you remember, was one of my top 42 albums. While it does have a few chopped and screwed vocal elements to it, it mostly stays in the soft-jazzy realm with multiple layers (but nothing that approaches FL’s controlled chaos), crackly beats, quiet and omnipresent low-frequency synths, and a variety of MIDI beeps and boops (which sometimes get replaced by a cool synth). It’s a bit more fun than the album up there, but still XXYYXX’s own ambient sound.

Check him out on Band Camp. His stuff is only a $1 there, so it’s a pretty low-risk investment. You can also stream all of his stuff off of Band Camp, so you can try before you buy. But to save you that extra step that we all know you won’t take, here’s a little something off of Mystify, and a solid track from XXYYXX.