Fashionable Indietronica
The other night I was in my favorite local pizza shop, Vinnies, and they were playing some pretty sweet Chillwave slash Trip-Hop-tronic slash Washed-out slash Indietronic music that I’ve never heard of before. Those guys at Vinnies are dope like that. The pizza-man told me who the artist was and the name of the track and handed me my slice to send me on my way. By the time I got home (it was a five minute walk) I had already forgotten the name of the artist…
In any case, it put me on a search to find some new Indietronica music.
Crickets Make Math – What Once Was (I’m Better Now)
The first artist I found was “Crickets Make Math.” I’m not sure if it was his name that piqued my interested (do crickets really make math??) or the way he labels his music… The genre of his tracks can be labeled with anything from “Fashionable Indietronica” to “Instrumental Math Post-Rock” to “Ganja-Dub Glitch-Step.” In the end, it’s the math-tastic music with all it’s clicks and ticks and wobbly bass driven melodies that had me hooked.
Crickets Make Math (aka CM2) is an experimental project run by Daniel Stoeltzing, a western New York native living in Fort Myers, Florida. He has a bunch of loose tracks and collaborations on his soundcloud page, and a couple of EP’s on the Crickets Make Math website. My favorite track is “What Once Was (I’m Better Now).”
Kouta – Granola
We get quite a lot of artists emailing us their tracks every week, and it can be a bit daunting at times. So it was refreshing when Luca Young, the San Francisco based producer behind Kouta (pronounced, “Ko-u-ta”), emailed us with one of the kindest emails we’ve gotten to date. You could tell that he took time to personalize his message and not just send out an automated blast to a hundred websites. More importantly, the stuff he is working on is dope! His self-released EP, “Orinda” is a four track album of glitchy smoothness that just washes over you. Reminds me of some of the stuff Giraffage, Gold Panda, or Bibio is putting out, but there is a certain softness to the fractured syncopated beat that sets him a part. The single I’ve included here entitled “Granola” builds quickly from a simple beat with a digitalized record quietly cracking in the background to a swaying track of shifting vocals and vibrating bass melodies.
Buy the full EP on Kouta’s Bandcamp page, and give him some love on Facebook.
Radiohead – Bloom (Jamie xx Rework Part 3)
An original Radiohead mix is usually so good that you don’t want to hear it get reworked, but this Jamie xx’s rework part 3 of Bloom is an exception to the rule. THere’s a sharp driving rhythm counted off by a flatly cracking snare and an underlying tech-house bassline complimented by delicate bells and chimes. Thom Yorke’s voice hauntingly drifts in and out of the song … words don’t do this track justice. just listen to the track.
Lusine – Tin Hat
We’ve been keeping an eye on Lusine ever since the Ghostly International EPs and our theory still holds true. everything that this Seattle based producer jeff McIlwain puts out is fantastic. unfortunately he hasn’t put anything new out since 2010 (there is some talk that he has been working on movie scores as of late). However, since his body of work is quiet extensive, I thought it might be nice to summon his presence (and perhaps a new EP) by bringing back a track off of the “A Certain Distance” EP that has a galloping bassline and is wonderfully peppered with little 8-bit arcade beeps and boops.
