Colors of Love - Another Valentine's Mixtape

After being on the back burner for nearly a year, I present to you another valentine's mixtape. I say a year because immediately after I finished last years I had a handful f leftover tracks that I really wanted to have put in but missed their shot. Guess what this year's mix is made up of? I don't want you to feel like this is 'the leftovers' or anything, each of these tunes stands on their own! Stay tuned for a bit of commentary by me after the player and tracklist!

Tracklist:
Monk - L
Mitsunori Ikeda - Fallen Angel
Phil - Crazy & Ready
Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin'
R·O·N - Adult Bath
Tsutchie - Deeper Than Words
Clammbon By Nujabes - Imaginary Folklore
Röyksopp - In Space


I may have been a bit over-ambitious again this time, it feels to me a bit clunkier in parts than my last attempt at this kind of thing but I guess that's the price I pay for trying to put Eurobeat into Chromeo - the selection is unique at the very least! I tried this time to get a nice even balance of upbeat and downbeat this time - there's four tracks of each so it's balanced in a sense! We open with the beautifully hazy L from Monk. I was first introduced to this one from the soundtrack to OlliOlli2, which is full of other tracks with this style of hazy, compressed indie electronic, I love it but it's easy to have too much of it too. From there it's the one track that really pained me to miss out of last year's tape - Mitsunori Ikeda's Fallen Angel, yet another cut from the Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt soundtrack - which is also full of absolute stonking tunes. Fallen Angel is far too funky to just be an ending theme, and Aimee B just straight up kills it on the vocal front as well.

I spent a fair bit of time deciding what to put next... I knew I wanted some Eurobeat in there (after all a good 80% of Eurobeat lyrics are either about love or are innuendos) but the question was finding one that was mostly accessible. Which is tough when you're as into the genre as I am, it's kind of warped my perception of cheese a bit! But there are plenty of tracks out there that wear the disco influence on their sleeve, and Crazy & Ready is one of them, much closer to the House side of the spectrum of Eurobeat. That's not to say it's not still got that earnest cheese that I love - some of the lyrics are choice and the synth melodies should carry a warning label for how sugary sweet they are!

From there it's the surprising first appearance of Chromeo. And really what is there to say about them? They've been at it for well over a decade at this point and they are still doing what they do exceptionally well. I did almost put a track from their 'Quarantine Casanova' EP here, but I couldn't find one to mix well (and in hindsight it probably would have been in poor taste too). Instead I went for the tried ad tested fallback Bonafied Lovin' from Fancy Footwork. It's the album of theirs I'm most attached to but if you like the sound they have here, you could pretty much pick up their entire discography and not be disappointed. We're around the halfway point now and we begin our slide into downtempo, and what better way to signify that change than with Adult Bath. Perhaps not strictly electronic but I just had to include it for it's sound alone, and as I said just before it nicely sets us up for the more hip-hop final half.

Another track that I missed off of last years, Tsutchie with Deeper Than Words. I found Tsutchie during my dive into the world of Japanese hip hop a little while back and quickly became one of my favourite names in that space. There's no shortage of Tsutchie tunes that could go here - often super slick and smooth, it was no question of whether Tsutchie would make the mix but which one would I choose. Keeping it in that sphere for the time being, a super lush produced track from Nujabes. There are two versions of this one, Folklore and the one that I went with, Imaginary Folklore. It's one of Nujabes' more popular songs and it's not hard ot hear why, it's easily one of the best examples of his distinctly lo-fi production methodology and is just a gorgeous listen.

Finally, we round out with Röyksopp's In Space. I've been revisiting their debut Melody A.M. as of late - it turns 20 years old this year and it does sound very early 00's in it's overall style but it's aged very gracefully. and one that I still very highly recommend if you are at all into Electronic music, doubly if you like downtempo stuff as much as I. My heart told me to pick Sparks yet again as it's one of my favourite songs of all time, but I switched it up and went with a full instrumental piece instead. In Space perhaps shows off that turn of the 2000's sound more than most tracks from the album (a friend lovingly calls Melody A.M. 'Advertising Music - The Album') but it's still a lovely listen and I think closes this little selection out nicely.

Right, the commentary was a little longer than I expected but that'll about do it for us. I hope you like some of my selections here, and I'll be back soon enough with more. And as always: Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Beats To Blog By

There's been more than a few times where for years I've not checked out an artist no matter how often they appear in my recommends. It's a bit of a quirk of mine, one that sometimes pays off because I can visit them if I'm ever in need of something new to listen to. This post centres on one such occasion like that; it's about Japanese hip-hop producer Nujabes.

Exploring the work of Nujabes is a bit of a minefield, he has a cult like following that means that you get weird relics of misinformation that I thought we'd left behind in the Limewire eras (more on that later). His style is distinct and often imitated (sometimes poorly), it's not very difficult to see why he's gained such a following, between featuring on some soundtracks to the recent explosion of LoFi YouTube it was almost a perfect storm. For a crash course in the overall style to expect, look no further than the closing track from Modal Soul, Horizon. It's a little long at 7 minutes but it has all the elements that you can come to expect.



As much as I dig it, the style is very much formulaic, usually centred around an (admittedly well chosen) sample. Not that that is by any means a knock of his skills, Nujabes is primarily a producer after all so it only makes sense. Do note that I'm probably artificially amplifying that a bit by choosing tracks that I like, which just so happen to have that structure. What I'm trying to work towards here is that while these solo instrumental pieces are nice, Nujabes especially shines when fully embracing that producer role. More on that after this 'un. (Ed note: the version on Spotify is a good few seconds shorter than the actual release, so it ends kind of abruptly)



Jumping back to the first paragraph for a second to talk about one of my major gripes around the fandom: often times you will find the full soundtrack to Samurai Champloo credited to Nujabes when it actually included a bunch of other artists such as Fat Jon and Force Of Nature. Likewise with some other tracks out there that are produced by Nujabes sure, but they're not released under his name. Super nitpicky I know but it just reminds me of all the fake 'Daft Punk' and 'Aphex Twin' tracks floating around the 'net, and I believe the artists deserve proper credit. Anyway, here's a standout example, Nujabes' production really shines when twinned with a vocal accompaniment, doubly so with those additional scratches courtesy of DJ Top Bill.



Rounding out with a track not by Nujabes at all, production or otherwise. It appears on a release that is potentially the cause of all this confusion in the first place, titled Modal Soul Classics By Nujabes. Between that and the album already listed here just called Modal Soul, it's not too hard to see how some wires could get crossed, in reality he compiled the album, but it's made up of artists who inspired him. And there's some real treats on there, my favourite being Takero Ogata's Omnipresence from 1999, you can feel the influence had on Nujabes' own productions from the jump, and I personally adore that MIDI as hell pan flute that sounds like it was ripped from a Nintendo 64 soundfont (though I will admit it does sound a little out of place).



I do love the idea of that kind of compilation album too, it makes me wish that some other artists did similar, as not only do you get to experience their influences, you also get a laundry list of other artists to check out and broaden your horizons. Which brings me back around to my opening point, if you can narrow down what it is you like about a specific artist's style you can get more apt recommendations. Here's hoping I've done that for some of you here today! As always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Belated 2019 Spotify Selctions

I've been putting this off for a while, and there's not really a good way to say it. Simply put: I beefed it majorly when it came to the monthly playlists, I chalk it up to having a pretty crazy winter period and some familial turbulence in the past month or so along with other naff life elements. Regardless, I wanted to break away from that and so we won't dwell and will instead talk about the tunes I have lined up again.



Now I think about it, I was a little worried about using potential tracks that I would've included on the podcast but I'm trying not to fret too much this year. And with that in mind I made some lovely downtempo / trip hop (and all the other umbrella terms) selections for you. In stark contrast to me agonising over the stuff to include in last week's podcast I threw this list together shockingly quickly. Not to say it's sloppily done mind, I even had to cut some here and there for flow reasons. There may be some repeats from last year's playlists in here but there's far too many of them to check (and to be fair all of them on here have earned their place.) Let's jump in.

We open with the gorgeously dreamy and subtly bossa nova-y sounds of Delarosa And Asora. I was turned onto this LP fro Miss Kittin's Radio Caroline compilation and this tune has been waiting for its time to shine. It opens my Yellow playlist, firmly planting the whole sound of it from the get go. A word of warning to those who check out the LP proper; it isn't all in this style and is much more IDM in parts, still worth a look if you're into the same stuff as me tho.

The next one comes with a bit of a tale, this is the first submission I've received from Reddit of all places. Not complaining like, I'm just used to tweets and DMs at this point. Saying that, while I don't have my Reddit listed on here but I'm sure you can guess the username. Anyway, I've publicly mentioned several times my love of all things Adult Swim form way back when: their use of Warp's stuff for one, their support of indie musicians second and of course their overall aesthetic third. I've also lamented that for better or worse, the scene that popped up around it with all kindsa folk making fan-made bumps and sometimes questionable beats has been and gone. Well, that's not entirely true, I had also stopped looking because of the sheer volume of them, and as it turns out there are some folk out there keeping that flame lit as evidenced by what landed in my inbox. Voker's Is This Lo-Fi Or Chillhop to be exact, kicking off with a sample of the famously dodgy voice acting from Sonic Adventure which is a bold choice. Perhaps a little on-the-nose with the title and all but I think we're all at least a little guilty of that.

After that it's a tour of all things that scratch my itch in that vein, from the big hitters MF Doom and Nujabes down to the more obscure, like my favourite cut from DJ Mehdi's debut album The Story Of Espion, a beautiful piece that makes me wish he were still around to bless us with more tunes, and oddly enough a track from the Bojack Horseman original soundtrack too. So I hope to be back on track from here on out, I hope that this makes up for me missing January and I'll see you all next month with more!
-CVF

Do You Want To Build A Snowman

It's winter for half the world right now. Now for some people that means getting to play in the snow, but for me, it means it's just bloody cold. Bringing all you southern hemisphere dwellers my winter list, packed with crunch and things that are perfect for watching it rain. Not a 'dancing in the rain' kind of playlist, more of an 'oh bugger it's raining' type.

Chewed Corners is another exceptional album from µ-Ziq, and one of my personal favourites. With a new EP Rediffusion set to release in August, I recently started going through all of his recent material; and I'm excited. Of his entire collection, I chose the final track from Chewed Corners, Weakling Paradinas.
With smooth bell types and a thumping kick to start off, the song comes off as a little lost. It quickly finds itself, with quality µ-Ziq pads and a more definitive beat. Gradually adding complexity and layers throughout, Paradinas build the tune into something magical. The baseline comes in soon after a slight lapse, and from there it only gets louder, more complex, and more magical than Houdini. Perfect for sitting and watching the frantic world go past as it simply buckets down.




Reversing now to a really downtempo jam from Nujabes. Even though the lyrics are in Japanese, simply the softness and smoothness is enough to calm all storms.



Back to the basics of staying relaxed, Clams Casino. Again, a good one for slowing everything right down, heating you up with warm silky bass underneath all the icy high end distortion. 



Lastly some Crystal Castles. Another nice one to sit and relax to when it's gently cascading from the skies, little pure souls blessed to end.



Stay frosty,
-Sulphites

Feel the Music in your Heart

Hey guys, it's Nite. I apologize if this post seems a bit random/short. I had intended to do either an album review or a record label post initially. However, my Stepmother just passed away this past Sunday, so I'm not really up for doing that post at the moment. Instead, I'm going to post a bunch of tracks that I really like. So yeah...Enjoy.




                                                                                                         

Chris.SU · Björk - All Is Full Of Love (Chris.SU Remix)

Daft Love everyone,

Nite