Belay – far away (from here)
First up from this dig into the mailbox is a verdant dream of a cut from Portland-based duo Belay (JOIA and Monotrope). Perched on the most tranquil branch of 2-step electronica, this meanders along dendridic fractal paths, led by reconstituted vocal fragments, with flashes of bird song, muted plucks, and a steadily developing wide chord pattern. This track is from Belay’s recent self-titled LP, which is ambitious in its breadth, ranging from the serenity of this first offering and others in the same vein, to a couple of full-on dancefloor cuts, and everything inbetween. To give a little more of a taste of the album, I’m also including a second track that represents well the scope, balancing chilly synth textures with warm drum design and an ambitious level of production detail and field recording easter eggs. You can grab the album on bandcamp or find it for streaming all over.
Belay – “far away (from here)”
Belay – “Bubble Blaster”
Velocity Made Good – One Night In Between
Next up, a really compelling pair of tracks from Groningen-based live duo Velocity Made Good. Both grounded in live instrumentation, these are songs nonetheless inspired by the heyday of late 90s electronic music. The first sounds like chilly IDM from somewhere in the Warp-universe, with icy synths, indistinct vocoders, and pleasantly sloshy live drums. The second, for which the duo’s latest EP is titled, Is Big Beat through and through, harnessing the full potential of the drum kit and feeding the pair’s synth collection through a wall of amps, for something that would make the Chemical Brothers proud. You can grab the new EP on bandcamp, or stream it to your heart’s content.
Velocity Made Good – “One Night In Between”
Velocity Made Good – “Big Breakers”
Domy Castellano – Terra Bagnata
Morouj – Before Sunrise
Finally, two more ventures into nature’s ambience from the Signal Alchemy label, releases from which I’ve now featured several times. The first, from Italian artist Domy Castellano, is a stroll in the forests, crushing fallen leaves underfoot, and mashing damp earth (that’s what ‘terra bagnata’ translates to), and letting the warmth of the sun mediate the cool autumn air. The second, from Egyptian artist Morouj, is very early morning on the beach — gently lapping waves trace a tractable and benign rhythmic underpinning for clear solar pads and a far-flung piano melody, giving this a nearly-not-there level of soothe to calm an overactive mind. No bandcamps for these, unfortunately, but Signal Alchemy is generous as always, providing mp3s to post here — you can also find their whole catalog for streaming.
Domy Castellano – “Terra Bagnata”
Morouj – “Before Sunrise”