NLNL 8: Aves

"Aves paints in tropical tones about reveries, baffled moments and the mercurial line between dreaming and reality with bubbly textures, hazy motion and fresh pop-hooks."

There's little I could write to describe Helsinki's Aves without using at least some of the words they use in the above self-description on their Bandcamp page. The elusive Finnish act makes an artistic statement with their music - and from what I can see, it's something synesthetic. 
"Elise," polished off earlier this month at Stereotype Studio, doesn't limit itself to the half-time electro R&B you might feel coming in the first minute. That percussion section pulls it through with, well, the "bubbly texture" that Aves described. It's no lie. Listen to 2011's  "Shoreline" to bump up the chillwave just a few notches, too. 

Teen Daze' Restorative "Light & Love"

If Prom Sawyer has any avid followers, they might have noticed my tendency to announce new weekly features, and my subsequent failure to maintain them. For this, I sincerely apologize. I've had the flu for the last week, on the one front. But Prom Sawyer must also consider bringing in more writers.

In the here and now, I wasn't going to let this one slip past the nets while bedridden. Teen Daze hails from south and east of Vancouver, BC, smack in the middle of a hotbed of low-fi and chillwave producers just a little into the wildnerness outside the border Pacific region's many towers. I've thought about featuring a Teen Daze track so many times that I had to google the blog to check if I already had. Regardless, the modulating synths of "Light & Love" have an impressionist feel and a restorative power. The British Columbian just salvaged my day.

But "Light & Love" has a more tender touch and a far more significant goal: Teen Daze hopes to raise awareness and galvanize support for School of Seven Bells' guitarist Benjamin Curtis, undergoing cancer treatment. Read about it on Teen Daze' soundcloud here, or head to supportbenjamincurtis.com

Evening Fog Special: Wondr

Wondr, an LA producer and member of the 6 Bit Collective, released a five-song collection of ethereal downtempo on March 5 well worth a post. Down Love is at times a swim through siren-infested sea caves, at times a long journey in the passenger's seat of a car bound for wherever your lover is not. The rhythmic work in "I Learned" entrances me most. Make sure to check out the EP on Bandcamp - the link is above.

For downtempo of the same bloodtype, check out some other producers from 6 Bit Collective: Dreams and Caves.

Who Got The Jazz?

Der Weg des Geistes ist der Umweg. Aachen's FloFilz has satisfied my craving for the jazz. As a prerequisite condition for this, we Tribe might say, he got the jazz. The young German producer of "jazz sample based oldschool shit" holds his own with '90s Pete Rock and the current work of Blue Black. FloFilz doesn't even sweat an MC, though - check out the nasty remix of Tha Alkaholiks "The Next Level." If he keeps up this quality of production, every time he come home he'll have fifty messages. 

"The Scale" is his latest work, and delves a little more into the polyrhythmic trip-hop of the likes of Samiyam or Elaquent. Very cool. 

Back With Shelf Nunny

Santa Cruz beatsmith Shelf Nunny, whose euphonious "Cause I Had The Time" we featured earlier this month, has dropped a new track. "Waves of Phases," with its ethereal chimes and long, slow build-up, walks you down to the beach at 4 A.M., when the algae gives a phosphorescent glow just barely visible beyond the pier.

And the climax three minutes in is an introspective climax, where something stunning about your life and place in the world occurs to you on that beach, never to be recalled in the morning.

Be sure to check out Shelf Nunny's The World Around Me, and keep an eye on his Soundcloud 

NLNL 5 - Garden

Nordic Late Night Lounge returns, this week with a free download and a Proustian video from Swedish duo Garden, aka Julius Norrbom and Joakim Andersson. 

I at first mistook this track for Death Cab for Cutie's classic "License and Registration," a 2000s favorite of mine. I realized almost instantly it more resembles Poliça or Little Dragon. 

Aspiring to pump more Nordic water into the Mississippi, NLNL will return next to schedule next week. 

Amin PaYnE's Dusty Fingers

A few months ago Prom Sawyer talked up Broke and Repeat Pattern's Badminton Club. Melbourne-based, New Zealand-born, Amin PaYnE is another avant garde hip-hop producer off of Paris-based Cascade Records.
Labelling himself a "consistent crate-digger," Amin PaYnE aims to rejuvenate the soul-sample based beats of the '90s with modern production techniques. Earlier projects of Amin PaYnE's demonstrate this well - check out his Gil Scott Heron tribute album (and just dig that shuffling beat on "I Miss You").

That blend of young and old comes out clearly in the instrumentation: there are the deep funk bass hits so characteristic of Madlib (think "Tape Hiss") or Pete Rock's The Surviving Elements, but the warbling synths of Elaquent or Samiyam also find their way in.

I suppose the New Zealander stands somewhere in between. Keep an eye on Amin PaYnE - there's a true beat artist at work down under. In the meantime, put an ear to his latest release off Cascade, Cosmic Disfunktions.

Evening Fog Special: Bonobo - Cirrus

Shakespeare left us no memorable quotations to describe the hollowing feeling of a Sunday night in February. Prom Sawyer plans to stay up past 3 AM tonight to watch the rain melt the snow at the junctions of the Jeffersonian grid. Franzia's Chillable Red will assist these efforts (it "pairs well with lighter foods").

Simon Green, aka Bonobo, will provide the late night soundtrack. This song has no real beginning or end - put it on repeat and give the weekend some inertia.

Also, look for Bonobo's new album The North Borders this April.

Thanks to the pioneering House of Disco for this, their track of the day earlier. 

Along the Riverbank: Shelf Nunny's Twilight Soundscape

The Electric Mississippi stretches far to the West this week. Shelf Nunny hails from Santa Cruz, California, cranking out beats since age 15, when he "torrented his first copy of Fruity Loops," as the folklore has it. In that time he's mastered a lethargic, bass-driven electronic sound that refuses to conform to any definitive genre. The deep tones lull "Cause I Had The Time" (featuring his fiance Briana Kranich) into a half-time stupor, where it chills, and chills, and chills. In Shelf Nunny, electronic music gains a West Coast version of Young Montana?, complete with splashy cymbals and a touch of psychedlia. 


But these are not just soundscapes for the foggy shores of Northern California - try out "Grand Theft Audio"while walking through the icy snow of the Great Plains today. "My World" is a Prom Sawyer favorite - always a fan of muted vocal harmony. 
But before you walk out the door, check out the video for "Cause I had The Time" produced by Zynthesized. 

I can't wait to listen to this around sunset. Thanks, Shelf Nunny, for the submission.

NLNL 4 - Ms. Henrik

That picnic table is where I spend time, warm nights, when the crickets still chirp in the Mississippi Valley. Lately, I've spent nights driving snowy freeways to places I have to do work.

Now this marks the return of Nordic Late Night Lounge - and a day late already, I fear. It's been over a month-long hiatus. Prom Sawyer wanted a track to glam-glaze the crowds that huddle indoors for the colder nights of the year. Spend a night extroverted with the Jim Reid-esque vocal and Starfucker synth lines of Göteborg's Ms. Henrik.

This track has all the new flare of synth-pop, but there's something reaching out from the early 80s - just a tweak of David Byrne, perhaps in content as well as music.

And dig the video. And the free download. Chic, chic, chic. 

Evening Fog Special: Gold Panda - Trust EP

Gold Panda writes of his most recent EP from Ghostly International, "Trust," that:

“I think I’ve stripped out a layer of my music since lucky shiner, maybe it was feeling too cluttered, I think these tracks and the tracks for the new album have more space, but don’t feel empty.”

The Berlin-based English remix artist seems to have found the smooth jazz to his own bebop - the same polyrhythms that characterized his earlier lounge sound made famous in 2010 are there, but muted, like trees on the soundscape. Check out the title track, "Trust." Very film noir. A perfect Evening Fog Special given another day of freezing rain in the central Midwest. 

Believe the Hype: New Onra and Breakbot

Brooklyn's Hypemachine, Boulder's ThisSongIsSick, OnSmash, Gorilla vs. Bear, Best of Hypem, and dozens of other bold, music-loving perusers of the interwebs have taken up these torches in the last day and a half. Prom Sawyer doesn't usually like to reblog things that have already floated their way down the Electric Mississippi, but none wish to see a good beat go unnoticed. So here's the latest from Parisian producer Arnaud Bernard (Onra) and his fellow French national Thibaut Berland, better known as Breakbot.

Onra sliced up Second Chance in 2011, but only released it yesterday:

Breakbot's respin of Defiant Order sounds like a perfected Karate Kid soundtrack in all the right ways:

The January Sound: Jakarta Records

Jakarta Records hails from Cologne. They spread from afrojazz to hip hop - they hit a lot in between. They have a classy homepage, designed like an old-time newspaper, with videos, links, downloads, blogs (check it out). All this places them solidly in the arc of French and German labels with eclectic artist bases that have popped up in the last decade.
But there's more to the story than that. Notice that they host only a few artists at one time. Among them are names we know - Blitz the Ambassador, Akua Naru - breakthrough African hip-hop with acclaim enough to attest to the success of Jakarta Records. That is to say, Jakarta Records has an unbelievable quality to their production and an unparalleled grasp of instrumentation on the part of their signees. I speak not in hyperbole. Check out their Soundcloud - every single song merits a searching out and a download.
It's not my place to speak of what makes good soul, and good disco. But my understanding is this: it does not anticipate itself, but rather allows a listener to wander in a soundscape of the instrumentation, not desperate for a chorus to keep the groove going. It shares that with jazz. And so I must say, this is a visionary label, and they have captured the January Sound on the Electric Mississippi. Enjoy the reggae-disco grooves of Lord Echo's "Thinking of You" and Fabulous and Arabia's "Up to My Neck in Shit." Dope realness on the river - there's something at work here.

Choice and Variety: The OM Records Winter Sessions

Prom Sawyer likes to make his own playlists, and doesn't usually just repost a mix already making noise in someone else's territory. But the Electric Mississippi would really dig this one - the OM Records Winter Sessions. OM has been around the block - starting in 1995 - and they stick to their guns. The San Francisco label has carved vinyl for the likes of Groove Armada and Lovebirds, and this mix gathers house names and up-and-comers for an hour and eight minutes of fresh electro. King Kooba's lead off track sets the tone with some deep lounge -fit for any electro fan wintering in the Electric Mississippi valley. Dig this track - it's Prom Sawyer's favorite.
The tracklist and full video are included below, and download links, etc, can be found on the OM Records site.



1. King Kooba – Sans Filtre 
2. 
Samantha James – Deep Surprise (Florian Kruse Deep Dub Instrumental) 

3. Naked Music NYC – It’s Love (King Kooba’s Conscious Groove) 
4. 
Pezzner – Chapter Two 

5. King Kooba – Dub Whey 

6. Camoflaug3 – Fake DJ (DJ Sneak’s Gangster Mix) 
7. 
Hot Toddy – Won’t Let Go (Erdbeerschnitzel Remix) 

8. 
Ian Pooley – Give You Up 

9. Wagon Cookin’ – Come Into The Light (Ammie Graves Remix) 

10. Dirty Vegas – Emma (Bachelors of Science & M3 Dub) 

11. Hot Toddy – Mutha Sucka (Ron Basejam Remix) 


Sieren's Electronic Melancholia

Berlin's Sieren blends FlyLo-style lounge sounds with pumpy synth lines to make for some dance melancholia well worth a listen. Check out the way Sieren's remix of La Boom Fatale's "Passmiss" teases you with the four-on-the-floor syncing in and out. Echoey vocals pervade. Is this house, or something better? 

NLNL 3 - Mmm...

We travel from the electric Mississippi all the way to the Oslo for this week's NLNL, where the nights are currently eighteen hours long. And Mmm, the face-painted duo pictured to the left, has been hard at work night and day crafting a soundscape for dancefloors, apartment parties, and late-night lounges alike. Check out the magic high-hats, elusive cowbells and snappy snares that carry "Dark Motion" through all four minutes and eleven seconds.
To make a somewhat local comparison, this track loosely reminds of a darker, synthier Miike Snow with a little less pop for dancing with headphones, and just a bit more electro texture. And in the age of esoteric electro lyrics, how many acts can get away with the line "I will never sleep with you again, if I tell you I'm not the girl?"
To make a trans-Pacific comparison, try Cut Copy without guitars - this is even the same chord structure as "Hearts On Fire."
But at the end of the day, this is cutting-edge Scandinavian electro, complete with crowd appeal and an incredible knack for songwriting.

NLNL 2 - Rough Days for Diamond Trade

There's something eerie going on here. Quite the change of pace from last weeks Nordic Late Night Lounge bit. Rough Days for Diamond Trade couples with a Friday night spent alone - either reluctantly, or because all you could do on the dancefloor was feel sorry for those dancing on their own. At once melancholy and unquenchably vengeful, the Danish producer has a long name and a longer list of fans ahead of him after he released the free  single "Anywhere." Prom Sawyer's required reading (and gold mine for the NLNL series) Nordic by Nature, picked this one up pretty quick.

Much Sorrow In Itself My Love Doth Move

More my despair to love a hopeless bliss.

British producer Sorrow is a sentimentalist - strikingly so. He writes on his Soundcloud page, "to anyone who ever slandered or disrespected me, I forgive you." And his music captivates, it envelopes. With a title that could be an Al Green song, "Girl I Miss You" is like sonar, mapping an underwater emotional landscape. "My Love" is the love of Greco-Roman epic, a soundtrack to Venus and Adonis, Dido and Aeneas. The echoing vocals, barely audible above the shuffling beat, are the timeless cry of nostalgia for a place one hasn't left. The preview for the soon-to-be-released "2 Much Gassin'," reveals a strong influence of earlier instrumental acts like Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73, speaking to Sorrow's diversity as a producer. 

Check out Sorrow's Art Is Dead EP on Bandcamp. This is music for the yellow dawn of a Sunday on the electric Mississippi. We hope you enjoy. 

Norwegian Chillwave - Pandreas

Bergen's Pandreas, 21 years old and fresh this year to the music industry, digitally released his self-titled EP last month. Broken into binary, "Glimt" permeated the blogosphere and travelled from Norway throughout Europe, reaching England, across the Atlantic, now floating down the electric Mississippi. Allow those bits to tell your speakers how to fluctuate, so your speakers can share with your heart the visceral loneliness and youthful freedom Pandreas feels in the video below. That's him with the Bulls cap and the ten-speed.

Choice and Variety: DJ Krush

Veteran Japanese producer DJ Krush (Hideaki Ishi) has kept busy. With a career beginning in 1987 with Krush Posse, Ishi pioneered the Japanese hip-hop scene at a time when American artists enjoyed rap hegemony. His first solo album, Krush, appeared in 1994, with an ambiguous blend of trip-hop, jazz, and old school instrumental hip-hop. His work, since then, has varied.

For the bulk of his career, DJ Krush was signed to Mo' Wax records, a British label and the main vein of trip-hop during the 1990s. The label is rumored to have since folded, but Krush remains highly active, touring almost constantly and even building a small collection of photography.

Between 2011 and 2012, DJ Krush released 10 "monthly singles," the choicest of which, in the opinion of Prom Sawyer, is listed below.