Hello all. Today is going to be an interesting post for two reasons. Firstly, its just me (Aslan) solo today, no Estée. Secondly, we are going for a real change in direction with the nature of this post. What sort of direction? Well if you have not already guessed from the title, I am going to give you guys some music suggestions.
I have some time to myself on a beautiful Sunday and I was just listening to music in the background and I decided I should do something a little productive by treating you guys to a little aurgasm. (To the confused, that was a pun and this is post will not be sexually related at all, so calm down and stop getting too excited).
If you are a little sceptical at this point (in a way I am a little too), I say don't jump ship right at this moment: stay. We are going to find out together if our scepticism is true. Bear with it and give it a go and perhaps possibly you might just have discovered a song (or maybe even an artist) you love.
I am going to give you just 5 tracks (it was very painful to get the list just down to 5) suggestions and they are all going to be electronic music. This area of music has gotten a bit of a bad rap because of popularity of horrible 'dubstep' and people like Skrillex but there is so much more happing in this genre of music at the moment that it would a crime if some people did not get to sample so of its real golden moments.
1. "Before I Move Off" by Mount Kimbie.
These two guys from London formed this amazing electronic brotherhood that has created some of what is arguably the most important music post-2010. "Before I Move Off" is probably the most popular song off their 2010 debut album (Crooks & Lovers), which one is well worth a listen. Critically acclaimed, they are often seen as being partially responsible for the rich world of 'post-dubstep' music, with many successful artists (like James Blake) taking heavy influences from Mount Kimbie. The thing that I like about this song is that you can tell right from the beginning there is a tinge of sadness about it (the title kind of confirms this) which adds a nice human element and makes me want to get up and just do something, no matter how mundane. I love listening to this when I just get off the tube and start to walk home.
The official video for the song is great too, fits it so well: just get up and go somewhere, do something.
2. "Cushing" by Blithe Field
From the most successful and know in this list at number 1, Blithe Field is the least successful. This is one guy from Ohio who makes music on his laptop and this song is just one beautiful nostalgic journey and this song comes from his 2011 LP "Two Hearted". His songs are often litered with speech samples that sound like they have been taken out of a the perfect Americana childhood. Blithe Field is one of the best examples of the greatest attribute of electronic music at the moment. You do not have to be popular or have a big studio to create great content. The internet is littered with thousands of artists who create amazing tunes and give them away for free. Here is a link to Blithe Field's bandcamp where you can download all his music for free.
Whoever created the video to the linked youtube song was a genius too, work great with the song.
3. "M.O.P.E" by Ambassadeurs
3. "M.O.P.E" by Ambassadeurs
Don't really know much about Ambassadeurs; I think he is a British DJ/Producer. But what I don't know doesn't really matter because this track is so catchy and the vocals are distorted in such a delicious way that me want to play this song over and over. Incredibly well produced track, the baseline and the clap tie in so well with the vocal samples; and the way they just all seem to organically and effortlessly melt away and combine with each other is done with such skill that I bet many DJs who listen to this are a little jealous.
4. "Numb" by Clams Casino
Clams Casino is a Hip-Hop producer from the USA, who is has risen to fame recently as he produced records for Lil B, The Weeknd and the great debut from A$AP Rocky that made into a lot of critic's top 50 lists back in 2011. When you listen to just his work on its own (rather when it is being covered by rappers), it is not too beat based, he seems to thrive on creating textures rather beats on their own, there are so many things going on but they all come together and makes something intensely atmospheric. This song is a great example of that and is one of the highlights from his mixtape titled "Instrumentals" that he released in 2011; this song is also used in A$AP Rocky's mixtape under the title "Demons".
5. "4D" by Koreless
This song is great way to demonstrate how dubstep is not all rubbish crap that teenagers everywhere dance to in terrible clubs and equate music as "tranformers having sex". Strictly speaking this is a dubstep track, but it manages to use not only basslines but vocals and some nice timber sounds to create a catchy track. Koreless is a 20 year old DJ/Producer from Scotland, who has gained some success and was even featured in one of the Boiler Room sessions recently (a kind of holy grail for emerging electronic artists). This song comes from hise 2011 EP titled "4D/MTI", the second track ("MTI") is also well worth a listen.
Well done if you have stayed with it this far and listened to all the tracks, I appreciate the effort. I hope you might have stumbled across some music that you like and if it features in some of your playlists then that would make me a happy man. Please tell me in the comments what you did like, what you did not like and maybe even why.
Also tell me if you would like these sorts of posts in the future. I know this is an unusually change from the usual blog posts you see on here, so any sort of feedback about that would be much appreciated.
Talk to you guys soon,
Aslan
P.S. Before I go here are some honourable mentions that you can delve into if this has piqued your brain cells (they are all linked so just click away):
