SAINT PEPSI I TRIED

As you can instantly see from the image for this post, the artist who is using this as an album cover has a pretty retro sound. The cover is great. It has a Saved By The Bell aesthetic, albeit with more muted tones.

So yeah, with that as an image, what on earth is the music going to be like? Well, retro, like I said. It harks back to the tack and sparkle of late-80s/early-90s and uses a few vocal samples that are absolutely soaked in soul. The song in any case is called 'I Tried' and comes from SAINT PEPSI, which is a bloody brilliant name if I may say so myself, who is actually called Ryan DeRobertis. He has been quite busy already in 2013, what with the multiplicity of songs on his SoundCloud and getting involved in the creation of an artist collective called New Generation: I read this somewhere, so I might be totally wrong. He is already being a part of (or signed to) Keats Collective - also KEATS//COLLECTIVE - alongside a number of likeminded artists including Spazzkid, whom I wrote about a few days ago. Is it a netlabel? A collective? I dunno.

There's not much else I could learn, even about where the guy is from, but what I've got is interesting enough. It seems that if "future funk" actually exists, then SAINT PEPSI is certainly one of the forerunners of this loveable and totally listenable genre of music. Lissun up yooo.

Smooooooth sailing, don't you think? It starts wonderfully soulful, a static-filled sample taken from 1970s R&B group Enchantment's hit song 'It's You That I Need', the lustrous vocal decoration that splashes the already-glistening surfaces of SAINT PEPSI's wonderfully crafted sound. Instead of a hip-hop vibe, which this R&B foundation could have decked up quite nicely, it's turned into a great bit of burning pavement chill, smooth-funky grooves and slow-dance sensitivities with all the epic glitter of 70s R&B which inspired this number. It's the kind of thing that I could leave on repeat all day. The tinkling bells, the percussion, the slow weave of the bass...

A very interesting sound though. It's like a modern reinvention of the past. Rather than being outright a copy of this or that era, it seems to have taken inspiration from a few different eras - a musical collage.

'I Tried' comes from Mr Ryan DeRobertis' new album Hit Vibes, available to download FOR FREE on bandcamp - I would certainly download it if I were you. What a damn good treat! Cause it's good, it's damn damn good yeah. Get it get it get it get it get it.

P.S. Ryan DeRobertis is also the mastermind behind The Cold Napoleons - listen to his multitalent on album Adversaries.

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