This is an overview of the music that the 909 crew are feeling this month. Not focused on new releases, it serves as an insight to our musical journeys and the discoveries we make on the way.
CN – Stellar Awakenings
I listen to a lot of electro. However, every single time it’s always the one’s with the melodic twist that really grab my attention. This is the one that’s resonated with me the most this month. Those lush, regimented chords and tight drum production pleasingly complement the synth line; which is deliciously fleshy and progresses the song in a way where it feels like it’s really going somewhere. This doesn’t feel much like a club record, and is subsequently very accessible for home-listening. However, I imagine if deployed effectively in a club it could be magical. Its ethereal dreaminess would blow some minds for sure. However, I am all too aware that stuff like this is found wanting in club sets these days. I guess the masses primarily want chug and boom boom boom but I always find that the highlights of my night are the songs bursting with emotion and euphoria. I understand that the art of DJing requires some restraint in song selection – and that this is a full blown melodic crescendo – but music this good just deserves to be heard.
Savage – Don’t Cry Tonight (12” Version)
This song has effectively been the soundtrack of my daily commute to work for the past month, as I am absolutely in love with it. I’ve been really digging the deeper and more chuggy side to italo recently and this has been the standout track from that phase. Played by Zaltan at Dekmantel Selectors, it certainly has a Balearic quality to it that embodied the whole of Selectors festival. I feel that the song really takes its time to breathe, and its ultra-smooth build up is superb. The song really comes alive during the chorus at about 3 minutes. When the octave goes up and the twinkling synths triumphantly kick in… it is pure euphoria. The vocal is also gorgeous, and the chorus of ‘Don’t let me go, don’t cry tonight’ exerts both a deep happiness and a melancholy within me, which is a really bittersweet range of emotions to experience from a song. That complexity of emotion reveals the intelligence of the production, as it portrays such naked emotion with impressive restraint. That is exceptionally hard to do and is a trick that only the best artists can do. A really good similar example in my opinion is Prince’s Sign of the Times; the emotions experienced are certainly different, but the song feels continually restrained whilst being incredibly evocative. Maybe that comparison is a bit of a stretch, but I wholly believe that the same restraint is employed to a certain extent, and I’m sure that Savage would be more than pleased to be awarded with a production comparison to Prince. There’s not many better compliments you can give someone to be honest. It’s equivalent to saying you’re as good in bed as… well, Prince.
Geoffrey Landers – Say You’ll Say So
Music From Memory continue to pioneer their stellar track record of finding amazing, impossibly rare music and making it available to the world. Perhaps the label with the purest ethos in the music industry, they’ve struck gold with their new release; a self-released album by this dude called Geoffrey Landers. This is my personal highlight of the album, and it is so very classy. The vocal is really Phil Collins-ey admittedly, but I love the general haziness of the song. The soft, dreamy chords working underneath the snappy guitar and the omnipresent bassline gives it a really easygoing, new wave feel to it. The whole song has a kind of DIY vibe that makes it clear that it’s a one man show. The drum machine kinda gives it away that it’s not a band, but this does nothing to retract from the quality of the song. Everything about it is solid, and I particularly like it because it’s not something I’d usually listen to. Again, Music From Memory has opened doors to genres of music I never even realised I liked before. I highly recommend going through whatever door they ever open for you.
Slowdive – Machine Gun
I like to think that the music I’ve been listening to this month has been particularly detached from a club focus, and it’s led me to listening to a lot of weird, yet insanely beautiful stuff. This is the perfect embodiment of that. I found this through Avalon Emerson’s Brilliant Corners set, which affirmed my belief that the sky’s the limit for her, and that she’s easily one of the most exciting artists in the game at the moment. This song shares the dreamy, ethereal quality of the previous tracks of this month thus far, and it consequently feels like a satisfying climax to this listening session. The soft, whisperey vocal is hauntingly angelic, and I’ve no idea what she’s singing about but it doesn’t matter. The emotions are clear, and that is enough for me. The music is also fantastic. It’s hard to dissect what’s going on really, but the general vibe for me is an amalgamation of indie, psych-rock and dreamy synth-pop. Wikipedia tells me that this genre is dubbed ‘Shoegazing’, but I haven’t a scooby as to what that actually means so indie, dreamy, psych-synth pop will have to do for now. Probably a catchier name than ‘shoegazing’ anyway…
LNS & DJ Sotofett – Jugando Con Fuego (Club Mix)
I swear to God, I didn’t even want to include another DJ Sotofett track here. This is the fourth month in a row and it’s getting a bit ridiculous. But… just when I thought I’d heard his best work of the year, this comes out. This is just a straight up masterpiece, both on a production level and as a piece of art. The guitar, the pads, the flute and the piano chords all do one heck of a job in trying to outdo the other, and although the first 3 minutes are a bit of a euphoria overload, it never at any point feels excessive or indulgent. The combination of the guitar melody and the luscious pads create a really intimate atmosphere within the song, as if it’s a auralisation of a personal memory of yours. As you can see, this is the club mix, and so at about 4 minutes it turns into a rather standard piano house tune. The quality persists however, and this easily outshines any other house cut that has been released in the past few months. I should also note that there are 3 different versions of this on the EP, with the Sunrise mix being equally as incredible, but is devoid of any percussion. The club version is the best exemplary of the song, and thus why it’s here. I’m very proud to announce that I managed to grab a copy of this record, and considering how Sotofett’s stuff almost never gets repressed; it is straight black gold. This song has tipped me over the edge I was bordering on for a long time and I can finally now announce that DJ Sotofett is my favourite producer in the industry. Period.