You ready to hear about some #OPM (other people's music)? I'm going to try something different this week and add all of the music I'm covering in one thread, with the blog containing slightly longer versions of all of these linked at the end. LMK what you think of this format.
A pleasant track that twists up the mellower side of drum and bass with an early ‘10s French reggae hit (Stand High Patrol’s “The Big Tree”). The breaks here are almost decorative rather than propulsive, so it feels aimed more at lounging back with a blunt than frantic dancefloor detonation, but that’s fine by me – I like my drum and bass on the chilled-out side these days.
The golden age of downtempo may be in the rearview mirror, but it casts a long shadow, and tracks like “World Within” prove it. Deeply inspired by the prime era of “back to mine” compilations, this is a super chill and jazzy slice of laidback breaks, upright bass, piano and an ephemeral vocal line. There’s also a nice synth line that comes in about halfway thru.
Well, would you look at that? Another downtempo track, this one leaning into drum and bass! We got a theme going! This one turns the chill up to MAXIMUM and the production to minimum, with some minimal breaks hung with shards of synths doing most of the work. About halfway thru the breaks kick up a notch (tho stay chill) and some nice strings float in to pretty things up.
A driving rock song with a touch of psychedelia covering that most heart rending of technological snafus – losing everything you’re working on to a crash. Buzzing guitars and a vocal that would have seemed at home on some early ‘70s garage psych track are the twin engines powering this song, but the real treat is the bridge’s brooding #psychedelic guitar riff that comes in just over halfway thru.
A pair of fairly different tracks show two different but complementary sides of Paul Griffin’s work. “Fat Wren” is jazzy and swinging, with a flute-like synth line and some pretty arpeggios draped over upright bass and breaks. “Caught” is a spacey ambient track with the expected hypnotic arpeggios and low end drones – easy to get lost in, if you so desire.
A concept EP about headaches based on an Aphex Twin-created instrument? Spicy! This one's for the adventurous listeners as most of this abandons any pretense of standard musical structures or instrumentation in favor of dark, intense and at times abrasive sound sculpting. Yeah, you’ll hear a piano or a recognizable human voice here and there, but in this context the familiar timbres seem all the more strange.
That's it for this week! I got a few more submissions toward the end of the week, so those will most likely be in next week's entry. I'll post a link to the blog, where I'll have a bit more to say about nearly all of these, tomorrow sometime.
In the meantime, support independent artists by listening, sharing, and when you can swing it, with your hard earned cash.
It's pretty late, but still technically Friday! Here's the blog with all 6 of these writeups, PLUS additional thoughts that wouldn't fit in the Mastodon character limit for nearly all of them.
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