The third release as part of Singles Club on Slugabed's brilliantly named Activia Benz label, this is 'Bright As The Moon, But Darkened By The Drama' by a musicmaker named Morgan Hislop (also the drummer for futuo-R&B outfit Tropics) whose intergalactic track 'Small Rooms & Nocturnal Thoughts' – released as a standalone single on cool label Astro Nautico – we wrote about earlier this year.
The wonky hook of the track is a pitch-shifted vocal sample, chopped to catchy rhythm, appearing throughout in varying forms of iteration, and stands out amidst the bustling fluid beat of the track. Half-dakly cosmic and half-retro-minded, the track features as many ambient washes of sound as it does robust piano chords and sunny joyful synth jollities; at one point the beat feels as if it could have been lifted from an early '90s hip hop track; at other times, it is heavily accented and future-facing with trilling snares and stuttering plasma-vision synth.
It also features English artist James Bright aka Hairy Hands on vocals, whose words arrive stoned and chewed up with echoing harmonies of hazy sound, with phantomatic ad-libs sounding like a giant cat's purr in places, suiting the bliss and clatter of Mr Hislop's unplaceable style. Someone else suggested it sounded like "Aphex Twin gone pop" and in some ways – with the samples and bristling beat – they're not entirely wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment