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Pitchfork: Washed Out – Within And Without

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The new Washed Out sounds really good, is a total grower, and may induce boners. Also: There’s nothing wrong with chillwave! Anybody out there really into it or even, really not into it? Curious.

Despite being the butt of jokes because of its goofy but actually spot-on name, chillwave as an idea and a sound is here to stay. Synthesizers are in; guitar-based rock has taken a backseat to diffuse, rhythmic dance music; and the sound’s key influences (broken, blissed-out electronica, hip-hop) have leached into most interesting music happening right now.

So, where does a significant subgenre defined by the less-than-lofty goal of manufacturing good vibes go next? The artists either do the same thing with the same synth presets to diminishing returns (Memory Tapes, Small Black, Teen Daze) or they pull a Toro Y Moi on Underneath the Pine and morph into something different altogether. The former creates music that can seem a little too comfortable, and the latter, while admirable, could come over as a bit alarmist– a calculated response to the critics…

Written by Brandon

July 11th, 2011 at 4:58 pm

Posted in Chillwave, Pitchfork

Pitchfork: AraabMuzik – “Underground Stream”

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You already know.

Written by Brandon

July 8th, 2011 at 10:16 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Cities Aviv – “Coastin”

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Wrote about the new single from Cities Aviv. That like, cheesy 70s MOR pop sample is just epic and perfectly fits the cover art above.

Written by Brandon

July 1st, 2011 at 11:21 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Cities Aviv – Digital Lows

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Best rap record no one’s talking or even really blogging about. This one’s particularly relevant given all the Memphis fetishism going on. Well, here’s a guy from Memphis who internalizes his hometown’s music history in interesting, never derivative ways. Imagine that! Download it here. Click below to read the review:

Cities Aviv begins “Fuckeverybodyhere” with a swaggering declaration: “I could say some chill shit, but fuck all that.” Given the song’s hazy production–Steely Dan’s “Midnight Cruiser” hammered into jagged boom-bap– the impulse to lapse into laconic stoner rap makes sense, but nothing plays out quite so predictably on Digital Lows.

And so, in a drunken RZA-like flow, the Memphis rapper narrates his heroic origin story (“Bluff City born with a mic in my palm, I came up out the womb spittin’ in the rarest of form”), hilariously big-ups himself (“In this 8-bit world I’m Bowser”), and mockingly croons the song’s shit-talk title. Even the usual hip-hop clichés are afforded specificity thanks to his expressive wit and precise determination not to use words in the same exact way as every other rapper. He describes the girls he’s pulling in by joking, “as a youngin’ jerkin’ off I could never picture this,” and refers to his haters as “voyeurs.”…

Written by Brandon

June 23rd, 2011 at 4:01 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: AraabMuzik – “Streetz Tonight”

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Wrote about maybe the most beautiful AraabMuzik track on the new album. Have you purchased Electronic Dream yet?

Written by Brandon

June 22nd, 2011 at 8:53 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Spaceghostpurrp – Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6 (1991)

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Yeah, this. It’s pretty much exactly the kind of music I want to hear all day every day, and I think it’s really vital music that, though steeped in tradition–-but a very weird and really specific tradition–-is updating and twisting and turning the hazy, fuzzy early 90s Memphis tape sound in creative interesting ways. It’s hardly derivative. Also, I think its important to identify and admit that Spaceghostpurrp and others as pretty much just bringing a chillwave sensibility to hip-hop (I’d label this shit “trillwave” if there weren’t already a corny Hood Internet mix with that name), which also means that all y’all scouring Tumblr for the most obscure rapper/producer are the rap equivalent of Chocolate Bobka or whatever. Think about that before you try to break the next, next, next, next big thing.

Though nobody’s idea of the next big thing, Spaceghostpurrp, a 20-year-old from Miami who makes hypnagogic stripper anthems, received a strange co-sign from L.A. Weekly’s blog: They called him “Odd Future’s Cosmic Cousin.” To be clear, Spaceghostpurrp will not make a game-changing appearance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”, and outside of being another young skate kid fascinated by video games and Satan, he doesn’t have much in common with Tyler and company. If a comparison must be drummed-up to sell this very weird, really good, but inarguably niche stuff, let’s go with “Clam Casino’s evil druggie drop-out cousin from the South”…

Written by Brandon

June 2nd, 2011 at 5:48 am

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Beyonce – “1 + 1″

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Wrote about Beyonce’s “1 + 1.” This song’s way different than third-rate “Pon De Floor” wannabe “Run The World” and the A.D.D. marching band party of “Til The End Of Time,” and hey, I like stuff like that as much as anybody, but this one just destroys in a really traditional, classic songwriting way, and that doesn’t happen too much anymore. There’s a lot of loaded stuff behind what is ostensibly a love ballad that totally fit in on American Idol where it premiered. The way I tried to sell this to a few people and though it only sort of makes sense, it does sound good: Imagine TV On The Radio’s concluding Dear Science two-fer “DLZ and “Lover’s Day,” crammed into one cathartic pop ballad.

Written by Brandon

May 31st, 2011 at 7:34 pm

Posted in Beyonce, Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Joker – “Vision (Let Me Breathe)” [ft. Jessie Ware]

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Gonna guess quite a few people out there aren’t exactly feeling this Joker song I wrote about, but maybe I can convince you. It’s a typical Joker production that boldly takes on Top 40 dubstep, “bro-step,” and “post-dubstep” all at once. The vocals sound like the chick from your high school that was “a singer,” but that kinda works here.

Written by Brandon

May 11th, 2011 at 9:20 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Gatto Fritto – Gatto Fritto

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Reviewed this hard-to-figure-out album album for Pitchfork. Dude’s kinda just jamming together all of my favorite sounds and then stretching them out. It’s a grower. Also, ideal vinyl purchase because of the way the songs fall onto four sides.

UK producer Ben Williams, aka Gatto Fritto, makes exploratory, downright jammy electronic music. His self-titled debut is the sound of someone mining every nook and cranny of his influences for a few really specific sounds: the weird warmth of Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder’s chintzy propulsion, Detroit techno’s stalwart intensity, and the goofball sprawl of soundtrack-era Tangerine Dream…

Written by Brandon

April 25th, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Posted in Pitchfork

Pitchfork: Clams Casino – Instrumental Mixtape

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You already know Clams’ mixtape is brilliant and beautiful if you’re reading this blog but I did my best to try to put the awesomeness of this really ineffable release into words. I wanted to expand Clams’ work out of its “based” context because frankly, he’s doing so much more (compare this to say, Keyboard Kid’s interesting but only interesting mixtape to really get a sense of how grand this thing is) but I also didn’t want to align it too closely with anything else because it’s clear that Clammy Clams doesn’t know or care about hypnagogic pop or any of that stuff, though his aesthetic’s disturbingly close. Just look at cover comparison Joseph Ohegyi posted. Oh yeah, and while you’re at it, check out Sean Fennessey’s spot-on review of Wiz’s Rolling Papers.

“Based.” Lil B’s buzzword doesn’t really have a clear definition, but it has, nevertheless, spawned a distinctive aesthetic. A search through music given the “based” tag on BandCamp reveals a whole bunch of rambling rappers aping B’s free-associative flow and just as many oddball producers putting out home-recorded, sorta stoned-sounding beats that maybe– just maybe– Lil B will one day rap over. “Based” has evolved from a style of rapping (and a wonky world philosophy) to a know-it-when-you-hear-it sound. New Jersey producer Clams Casino is one of the sonic architects behind “based music.” His beat for Lil B’s “I’m God”, featuring a stretched-out sample of Imogen Heap’s “Just For Now”, is the “based music” blueprint.

“I’m God” isn’t included on Instrumental Mixtape; the beats here are even more diffuse, and it wouldn’t really fit. It speaks to Clams’ rarefied vision that he refuses to find room for an in-demand instrumental on a free download but includes an untitled final track, a bizarre, minute-long footwork-like manipulation of “Teddy’s Jam” from 1980s new jack swing group Guy. This collection of instrumentals doesn’t simply survey Clams’ production; it turns his rap beats into moody compositions and flips the basic beat-tape concept into an album-like collection of electronic music…

Written by Brandon

April 8th, 2011 at 5:29 am

Posted in Pitchfork

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