The glaze of future funk, glossy vaporwave offshoot, sparkles in the big city flavours of 'NY Is Red Hot', broiling in cola sweetness and carving out a groove that bubbles with feel-good-ness, and in fact with summery red-hot-ness as well. In Amelia Airhorn's single, with its wanna-join-in communal-feeling vocals, the guitar chords hit with a robust shimmer of funk, the brass blares triumphal like beacons of upscale uptown sheen, strings glimmer like streetlights, the bass croons in subtle columns weaving with the deep thump of the beat, the jostle of it all a whirlwind of disco and dancing, the keen future funk fade-ins and fade-outs providing not only subtle parallel to builds and drops in terms of dynamic feels, but also with its irregular amplitudinal consistency conjuring a real life setting: moving through a club, nearer further from the speakers, outside for a cigarette, leaning in for a warm lips-to-ear conversation.
This track, at once flavourful both in danceability and in the inherent nostalgia-summoning, somewhat filmic nature, is or at least was a common feature of the earlier music of Ryan DeRobertis aka Skylar Spence, the pop-infused retro sample collages that awoke from then-vaporwave component Saint Pepsi. This is one half of Amelia Airhorn—the other being The Knocks, a duo with a similar penchant for funk though with a more polished surface, more KitsunΓ©-ready, more mainstream friendly: they never had to contend with actual Pepsi Co.'s legal team, for instance (DeRobertis' moniker change occurred in 2015).
The evocative yesteryear collage nature of the track plus album artwork and the retro airbrushed typography, this mirrors the collaborative cocktail. On its own 'NY Is Red Hot' brims with energy and noise, shines bright in the nocturnal glitz that surrounds it like mist, conceptually frames it; but with context, this merging of underground SoundCloud musicmaker and pre-initiated pop producers represents a meeting of the new unexplored avenues of making a success in music and the well-trod halls of namedrop beatmaking, traditional and unconventional, past and now, the span of time and attitude that is the foundation of future funk.
- π This single is taken from Amelia Airhorn's 18-track debut release, The Knocks & Skylar Spence Present...Amelia Airhorn. You can download it for free from ameliaairhorn.com, where you'll also find fun background on characters in the Amelia Airhorn universe, i.e. NYC itself.
☟ Skylar Spence Internet Presence ☟ facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ SAINT PEPSI BANDCAMP ⚘ twitter ⚘ wikipedia
☟ The Knocks Internet Presence ☟ facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia ⚘ beatport
No comments:
Post a Comment