Track Premiere: Spazzkid "Candy Flavored Lips" featuring Skymarines (bo en パネマREMIX)

Great remixes begin with great songs, and Spazzkid's collaboration with Philippine singer-songwriter Skymarines-"Candy Flavored Lips"-is most certainly one of the best songs to emerge from the DIY-internet underground so far this year. Anothercountyheard is proud to be able to debut this outstanding remix, from Spazzkid's Desire Remixes album, heavy with first-class contributions from the likes of  Saint Pepsi, Tours, Alec Ness, Justin De Guzman, KEVBOT, Tyord, mus.hiba, Meishi Smile, Hotwax, James Deen, Wasted Nights, Dinosaurus Rex, bo en, SVNDAZE, Thompost, Diego Mapa, Similar Objects, EXMN, Parkgolf, Hot Wax and Telephobia.

Brighton-based producer bo en transforms the track into a perfectly appropriate glowing  bossa nova,  dripping with tropical sunshine, without sacrificing any of the charm of the original song. Just in time for the high-summer heat, Desire Remixes drops Monday, June 24 on Spazzkid's Bandcamp.

And be sure to check bo en's Soundcloud for more of his outside-the-box summer-y sweets.

Spazzkid "Candy Flavored Lips" featuring Skymarines (bo en パネマREMIX)

Download: Finer Red by Shisa

 

"The whole album is spectacular, he essentially combines juke, which is fast paced, footworky old school dance music, with lush, ambient, psychedelic synths. Perfect for a dance party where everyone is too cool to grind to Katy Perry or Rick Ross." -- David Goldfarb of Drowning the Colossus. Shisa can be liked here and followed here.

Download: Verbatim by DataLife

 

DataLife's Verbatim is combines vaporwave chill-vibes with a penchant for upfront house slam, which is pretty unique. By turns noisy, ambient and bangin', Verbatim is an enticing debut album from an artist I am sure we are going to be hearing more from. There are other nuggets on his Soundcloud so check there too if you dig this.

Download: Really Really Real by Horse head

Experimental healing indie instrumental hi-hop from Santa Ana. Glows very nicely; I call it chillwave. Check out Horse head's  Soundcloud and Bandcamp too for other fine free shit.

Download: BUD AIR by KarmellOz

This new set by KarmellOz is state-of-the-art post-trap/post-everything psychedelic chill-pop. From the swelling funky pulsations of "Put Your Love Next To Me", to the Blade Runner-evoking saxophone ambience of "Fuji Xerox Australia", Bud Air is consistently interesting and unpredictable; trippy non-conformist freshness. "I was definitely going for quirky and trippy, a little sad and intellectual too," KarmellOz told me, and I'd say he hit the bullseye. He breaks out the jungle drums on "Popular Art", and the repeating vocal sample gives a clue to the music's possible inspiration. We had the pleasure of premiering an edit of "B.M.W." on Lumenous2, btw. "Wire Spine" thunders with bottomless dub-bass, "Bitches Like" raises the bar on vocal sample chopping, and "Ménage à Trois Bootleg", with it's "I keep shooters up top in the F-1" is just straight noise-trap of the most fucked-up kind. Fucking brilliant, really. And it's a free download. This shit is essential. From the always interesting Interscape Records Ltd 

The above was the original cover art, which was changed, possibly cos of an unlicensed photo. Dunno, but I love it.

Album Review: Coalesce Colors by Edamame

Edamame has delivered one hell-of-an album of intense music that sits comfortably in a folder with other substantial recent works like AygeeTee's FOOLS and RxGibbs' Contact. The term 'electronic music' is so vague and non-specific as to be almost useless, as is 'ambient'. 'Future bass' sounds like yesterday's papers, and I don't want to diminish it by calling it 'chillwave'. Maybe 'tribal electronic future dub', or something like that. Enough to say this is serious music crafted by an  artist working outside the narrow confines of any of the current musical memes. And he has his machines just precisely tuned.

Edamame is the recording project of Chicago resident Ed Harris, who says he draws inspiration from the 'great outdoors'. This is immediately apparent in the music. I  imagine Coalesce Colors as a virtual travelogue - a tour of diverse exotic landscapes; a journey through tropical paradises populated with aboriginal tribsmen, solitary cloud-swept mountain tops, ancient cities covered in jungle, but with undertones of menace lurking underneath, like crocodiles and great white sharks...

"Drunk Conversation" may be the album's weirdest cut, but it sets the stage for what's to come. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore (or Chicago, as it might be). When "Talking Through Tin Cans" drops, you'll know why I'm raving about this album. "Arnhem Land" is named after an area on the northern tip of Australia. "Bayaka" opens with the British actor John Hurt's voice; "Whether using a river as a drum-kit, or  incorporating animal calls into their work-songs, the Bayaka consider music to be their greatest gift from their forest..." These three songs form an intense set within the album, and the 1-2-3 punch has real impact; sortofa 'future-sound of Arnhem/last train to the outback' trip.

"Trees" lightens up a little, giving a needed break before the locale shifts again with the glimmering title track and it's clanging metallic bells. Then  fasten your seat-belt cos next the next two tracks are killer and addictive; "Nicotine",  with it's blown-out bass and beautiful piano and guitar arrangement [in fact a lot of the tracks benefit from tasteful guitar and piano additions to the electronics], followed by "Taste Of My" - possibly the best song on the set. "Wolf Talk" (featuring Nonagon) brings us back to earth after these celestial flights, landing in distinctly Asian turf.  How I will ever get back home from there, I don't know, but it's a damn good trip. The set ends with an alternate mix on a majestic track we had the privilege of premiering on Lumenous2, btw, here titled "Coalesce Colors Flamingosis Remix". This is the most inventive set of beats and rhythms I've heard lately, and is a no-brainer at 2$. And be sure to check out his Bandcamp for more like this.

Download: 日本人 by 日本人 (Japanese)

The torrent of high-quality, real vaporwave emanating from FORTUNE 500 has far exceeded my ability to digest it, but this release stands out; a month after downloading it, I am still listening to it.  I guess it's called "Japanese by Japanese". At any rate it's an album full of interesting rhythms and textures, tending toward the ambient/shoegaze-end of the spectrum, with a greater than average noise component. There's one track that really caught me, lodging in my head while I struggled for days to identify it. "Ramune", which contains another song embedded in it. It's circular, shuffling chant is utterly addictive and trippy.   Check out the ironically named "Dubstep" too. The album is absolutely free and you should absolutely get it.
日本人 Japanese