Vaporwave meets avante garde post-rap. Just listening to this forward-thinking glimpse of the future causes your thoughts to occur up to 40 seconds before they normally would have.
Month: September 2015
Duck Sauce – aNYway (2009)
French House by numbers right here. This could’ve been a Discovery track in an alternate universe — everything from that phaser’ed clean guitar to the bandpass sweeps. Coup critique!
Even though I’m mostly underwhelmed by the Korg Volca series (see previous entry), I must admit that this is an extremely enjoyable hour of improvised bloops and bleeps on the lil’ gizmos. Very nicely done.
Yamaha CS5 + Kenton Pro Solo MK2
My posting this here is very dangerous to my personal finances, as I have been eyeing the Yamaha CS synths for well over a decade, and currently you can pick one up for the same price as two of the (extremely underwhelming) Korg Volca synths — or less! — and adding the MIDI-to-CV Kenton Pro Solo MK2 gives you MIDI sequencing control over this badboy, in addition to it having a full-size 3 octave keyboard… oy vey. In debt thousands of dollars. But to finally have a Yamaha CS in the arsenal… difficult times in the world of discretionary debt-based money havers.
Not only is this truly classic house music from 1988, but that is so obviously FM synthesis at 1:58, and almost certainly a Yamaha DX-7 (or any of the DX series really). I feel like I’ve used that patch before. If not, it’s highly reminiscent of the obscure MS-DOS game God of Thunder being played through an AdLib / SoundBlaster card powered by a Yamaha FM chip. Stuff: It’s Cool!
The Sound – New Dark Age (1981)
Kick ass, this is a super dark post-punk track that almost sounds like it could be a distant relative of the Duke Nukem 3D soundtrack. Very atmospheric and fatalistic, I’m way down. Thank you Joey Nicoletti, aka Liquid Shits, for bringing this to my attention.
This is a truly gorgeous composition and production, through and through. At times it sounds almost like a parallel universe lost Postal Service jam, though more focused. Magnifique!
Yamaha PSS-470 MIDIfied UMR2
Not only is this exciting because the Yamaha PSS-470 features the same FM synthesis engine responsible for your favorite AdLib / SoundBlaster jams in the early 1990s, but there’s a damn MIDI retrofit for it. The PSS-470 has a couple sliders on-board for tone variation, which is a nice touch, no pun intended. Also, this random demonstration song (the PSS-470 controlled by an Ensoniq) is truly gorgeous. Great job.
Danny Brown – Fields (2011)
Wow, impeccable flow and punishing beat. I feel like I’m there, minus all the bad parts of having actually been there.
Very pure hip hop, I love it. Brooklyn’s the residence.