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Flume and Toro y Moi Team Up for Breezy New Song "The Difference"

The "Never Be Like You" hitmaker's latest collaboration is with one of his favorite artists.

Flume feat. Toro y Moi - The Difference (Official Music Video)
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Since releasing his self-titled debut album in 2012, Flume has been no stranger to a good collaboration.

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MUSIC

Exclusive: Denitia Finds Clarity on the Edges of the City

"I want to feel like how we think we felt when we were younger. That's the kind of energy I want to bring to the now, the present."

Denitia, Kelly De Geer

The sound of Denitia's Touch of the Sky is how walking by the ocean feels.

Listening through, you get a sense of vastness, a kind of vertigo at the sight of the unending horizon, and an appreciation for a network of things much vaster than yourself. Though the waves of sound can grow ragged and powerful, there's a sense of underlying peace, a transcendence to be found in the cyclicality of the ebb and flow.

It makes sense that the album was born in the Rockaways, the New York peninsula that most city-dwellers only know as the end of the A line. Denitia moved there to escape the city's congestion; from there, something opened up and she began to reflect on the structures that underlie our visible reality.

What arose from those meditative sessions by the beach is Touch of the Sky, a masterful album that fuses glossy electronica with glitchy guitar and smooth vocal lines. It's composed of rich images and sounds—tides of psychedelic synths tangle with muted house rhythms; guitar lines dance like fractals of sunlight over a roof in the early morning. It's fractured and cohesive, awake yet relaxed, the product of an artist fully coming into her own and communing with some sublime creative force.

We spoke with Denitia about finding peace in the city, finding nostalgia for the present, and what it means to dream.


You produce all of your own work. How did you get started with producing, and how does it influence your work?

I basically played everything, wrote everything, and arranged it all, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've known for a while that I could do it. I had this vision for my sound, and there was always something I felt was missing, and I think I needed to make my own work and start fresh. I really just needed to make this record for myself and express myself with every layer.

I got into production five years ago or something, when I moved into this artist house in Brooklyn and there were a lot of people living there at the time. We had this studio, and a lot of amazing artists lived there. That's when I really started to get into self-production and recording.

You mentioned this record felt different from your past ones, in that you were able to talk about things you haven't before. How was it a fresh start for you, either musically or in another way?

I started out playing guitar and writing songs, and then I got super into electro-pop and electronic music, and I put the guitar down for a while. It's cool because I've gone full circle and picked the guitar back up on this record. I was able to hear guitar textures in the way I'd always wanted to hear them.

Your sound is so vivid and full of imagery. I've read a bit about you doing production out on the Rockaways and I was wondering how that influenced the record, and what other places or images went into inspiring the record?

That's also one of the reasons why I've been thinking of this music as cinematic. I worked in the Rockaways in this bedroom studio, and my room was next to this huge deck and big windows, so every day I'd open my eyes and see this wide open, gorgeous sky. And I'd look around the corner at the ocean, and the ocean just represents infinite possibilities to me.

So much of our bodies are water, so much of this planet is water, and I felt this traction with infinity and the depth of that body of water, so much that it made me feel like anything is possible and it made me feel free. Visually, the ocean and the wide open sky over the ocean has everything to do with the sound of this music. It's in me now.

I moved back to Brooklyn a couple of months ago, but I can still feel how integral that experience was to unlocking who I am. Moving out there at that time in my life when I felt like things were tumultuous and crazy and jumbled helped me return to myself and my purpose, which I feel is making beautiful music that moves people and allows them to feel.

That's definitely a tension I think a lot of people—New Yorkers or anyone—can relate to: wanting to be in the rush of the city and wanting to find space to reflect. How are you finding the move back?

I love New York City. I'll always love this place. From the first time I came here when I was twelve years old, I just felt like I belonged here. I feel like I can be myself here, and I feel free. Something about the kinetic energy just feels inspiring.

But you can go to the extreme, you know, so since moving back to Brooklyn—it's important for me to take walks and have quiet time and not to over-commit like a crazy person to different things. There's a lot of stuff I say no to. I say no to chaos, I say no to nonsense. I just like to keep my life chill and focused. I just want to be connected to my purpose, spend time with my girlfriend and my purpose and, like, call my mom.

A few years ago I stopped drinking, which put me in this whole space in my mind. I get up really early in the morning now, and that's where I find my quiet, meditative time. It's really about balance and quality of life. I think that can be achieved in the city, still, if you really work on it.

So what's coming next, and what do you have on the radar?

I'm gonna dig deeper. This music is very visual to me, so I'm gonna dig deeper into making more filmic visuals to accompany the music and really put on my art director hat.

I'm never stopping making music. I'm a creative person, that's when I'm at my best, so I'm just gonna keep working on music and fleshing out the album in a visual way.

Kelly De Geer

All the songs are so unique, and I was wondering if there are any stories about any of them you'd be interested in sharing.

For the song "23," the first song on the album, I was getting up every day at like 6AM… I had an endorsement for this livestream app, and I'd get up and livestream me making tracks, and one day I grabbed some drums that I had been working with and started building this track. The words "23" came to me, and I was like "What about 23? I want to feel like we were 23, I want to be as free as we seemed."

I started thinking about being a young person fresh out of college. I was living in Nashville, I had this apartment that was on the tenth floor… As we get older, I think there's this romanticizing of the past, like oh my god what if we could just be 21 again or 23 again. So I started to unpack that illusion of nostalgia.

When I was 23, I was f*cked up. I was worried about what I was gonna do with my life; I was in crazy relationships that were non-reciprocal. I was anxious about everything. That song plays with that idea, well I want to be as free as we seemed we were. I want to feel like how we think we felt when we were younger. That's the kind of energy I want to bring to the now, the present.

I think often there is this idealization of youth or just other places or other ages, so it's cool to think how can we use that in the moment.

You released a video alongside your album. What was the inspiration for that?

I met Hugo Ferrocko, the director, when I opened for a premier of a movie he worked on. We hit it off, and when we got together, he was like, I love your music, let's make something… We had this idea to make something that was documentary, part music video—something that starts to unpack some of the themes of this record, which are love and the power of love, identity, consciousness, awakening—and surround it with the beauty of the Rockaways.

Hugo came to me with that treatment after we had that conversation, and I was just blown away. He's a visionary filmmaker. I'm really glad to have had the chance to work with him; he's gonna have an incredible future making things.

Denitia - Touch of the Sky (Short Film)www.youtube.com

You mentioned themes of consciousness and awakening, which are kind of loaded terms, and I'm wondering how you feel like those play out on the album?

I hope this always happens to me in life, but when I pulled out of Brooklyn and went to the Rockaways and when I was writing the album, I felt like I was going through this other level of awareness. Inevitably there was a slowing down, and that led to a lot of reflection and looking around and asking, What is my place in this world, and how do I fit here, and what are we doing?

It was less of a conscious thing; I was just musing and looking around in the world.

On the track "Touch of the Sky," I was thinking about how in black neighborhoods, there are cops everywhere, and it's infuriating. I was hearing so much about black people dying wrongfully at the cops' hands, and I was thinking about how sometimes we wait until people die to lift them up and to lift up their spirits, to focus on them and give them their flowers, so to speak.

That song was written in stream-of-consciousness, when I was thinking, I want to be lifted up now. I want us to have an anthem about being lifted up now, and getting this touch of the sky now. Let's fly now, while we're still alive. Let's raise each other up now.

I'd never really written about anything like that before, and, even so, it's pretty abstract, but I feel like it's another step in my reaching this awareness in thinking about the world around me.

I think consciousness plays out in a lot of different ways in the record. I talk a lot in the record about dreams being essential. In the end of "Touch of the Sky," there's this poem that goes, half my life's been spent dreaming. That's about the power of dreams in marginalized communities and among people who are struggling. Dreams are essential for us. Of course I'm going to be dreaming. My reality is not what it should be, so the dreaming is essential to push me forward into the life that I want.

Follow Denitia on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and her website.

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MUSIC

Blood Orange's "Angel's Pulse" Mixtape Is a Colorful Coda to "Negro Swan"

Pulse is minimalist but carries a message, beckoning listeners to figure themselves out while he's also trying to self-reflect.

Blood Orange

Last year Blood Orange (né Dev Hynes) released the acclaimed Negro Swan, a stream of consciousness that served as a treatise on identity politics.

He explored what it meant to be black and depressed in a heteronormative society that seemingly rejects those who are different. On his new release, the Angel's Pulse mixtape, he continues his existential journey with 30+ new minutes that complement his catalogue like a colorful, free-flowing coda.


Like on Swan, Hynes fuses elements of R&B, hip-hop, and alt-pop to create tracks that are chillwave-adjacent. On board lending their talents are Toro y Moi, Kelsey Lu, Ian Isiah, Project Pat, Gangsta Boo, Tinashe, Porches, Arca, Joba of Brockhampton, Justine Skye, and BennY RevivaL, but the production and mixing are all Hynes's unique voice and flow.

"I put as much work and care into it as I do with the albums I've released, but for some reason trained myself into not releasing things the rate at which I make them. I'm older now though, and life is unpredictable and terrifying," said Hynes in a statement.

Pulse is minimalist but carries a message, beckoning listeners to figure themselves out while he's also trying to self-reflect. "What is it you notice all that way down? Our vacant sounds can help you figure it out," he sings on "Baby Florence (Figure)."

His ideas may individually seem like abstracts, but Pulse is an introspective downtempo collection that casts a much wider net, navigating pain, a broken heart, confusion, and the fear of lost connection. On "Tuesday Feeling (Choose to Stay)," he laments choosing "to ignore blues," while feeling scattered and misunderstood. "I want the lifestyle for free, I want the p**sy for free, an arm around me to grieve, a sleep without sweat and me, my self doubts in a tweet, my mood rests on coffee, try to understand me."

As with past releases, he's anxious about merely existing, yet confronts those feelings of unrest head on. On "Happiness," he asks, "How do you know when life will choose to fade away? How do you know if you've been wrong?" Fifteen years and five releases later, Hynes is still searching for meaning and answers in these tumultuous times.

Blood Orange records have always been about stepping out and owning one's differences. Musically, his mellow, moody beats and macro concepts make him a standout, yet thematically Hynes appears uncertain and wavering...and it's a relief to hear someone cop to that. On the mixtape's closer, "Today," he sings, "Loose touch and confidence never seems the same, eyesight stays clearer when selfishness became number one and chewing gum you were afraid, big mistake in stepping out...Nothing good today."

Hynes has always boldly represented himself with his originality, lush melodies, and poignant creative direction, never failing to unravel new layers of himself, both sonically and spiritually. On Pulse, Hynes proves to be the genre-spanning auteur we always knew he was. By continuing to focus on his insecurities and anxieties, he shows us that everyone—everything—is a work in progress and that recognizing imperfection is our greatest strength.

Angel's Pulse


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MUSIC

Tycho's New Album "Weather" Takes a Conventional Turn

On his fifth studio album, Tycho goes in a different direction.

Purple Sneakers

Scott Hansen—better known by his pseudonym, Tycho—is nothing short of a modern-day Renaissance man.

In addition to composing and producing organic, vintage, and chilled-out electronic music, he is also an accomplished visual artist. Going by yet another name for his photography and design work, ISO50, Hansen is the rare sort of artist who border-crosses genres and artistic media with ease. In fact, taking a look at his blog will indicate that Hansen does not seem to view visual art, design, and music as being as separate or compartmentalized entities. Often in posts, he will pair his highly stylized and evocative works of art with his music, creating a multisensory experience for the consumer

And anyone who is familiar with Hansen's music knows that, typically, Tycho privileges mood, ambiance, texture, and emotional gravity over lyrics and conventional song structures (verse, chorus, verse, bridge, etc.). Instead, Tycho's music tends to unfurl effortlessly—with chords, melodies, and harmonies seeming to merely occur, as opposed to being composed and fit into a rigid or pre-determined structure. Tycho's music is like a lucky snapshot of a mountainous landscape bathed in dusky light, sounding as if it has always existed; all Hansen had to do was record it.

Perhaps, this is why Tycho's music is so versatile, why his songs make for the perfect backdrop to nearly any activity. 2011's Drive, for instance, is perfect for a quiet night in, perhaps lulling the listener to sleep with mellow and hypnotic flourish; but it works just as well as the soundtrack to a late-night drive to clear your head or let your thoughts wander. Awake, on the other hand, released in 2016, is great background music for hunkering down and getting some work done; it is also the perfect companion to an intimate conversation with close friends—its unassuming and chilled-out motion seems to guide the mind toward a peaceful state of focus.

On his latest album, Weather, however, Tycho takes a different approach. After four albums of doing more or less the same thing (making meandering mood music), Hansen has opted to give fans something a bit closer to that traditional song structure that he has spent years evading with grace.

The first song of the album, "Easy," places us firmly in the sonic world that we have come to expect from Tycho: synth-heavy and warm, calming, up-tempo, and largely instrumental. It serves as a segue from his previous work to the new directions taken on Weather, with a female vocalist singing words that cannot be clearly discerned underneath a heavy current of tranquil electronica.

By the second track, though, longtime Tycho listeners may be taken aback. "Pink and Blue" features a guest vocalist, an unprecedented move for Tycho's solo work. Saint Sinner's voice opens the song, crooning, "Oh pink and blue, yeah, you know I look good on you" with an airy and buoyant melody that sounds surprisingly natural alongside Tycho's signature soundscape, as unexpected as it may be on a first listen.

The rest of the album, too, features Saint Sinner heavily. On every track save two Saint Sinner's soothing voice acts as a perfect counterpart to Tycho's electronic meditations, grounding the music in more conventional structures without overpowering the sonic vistas Tycho paints. If anything, Saint Sinner's poetic lyrics and smart melodic sensibilities add a new layer of paint to Hansen's already lush canvas.

Weather, then, comes off as a distinctly collaborative effort. Yet, as easily as Saint Sinner's voice fits into Tycho's even and impactful mixes, the addition of a vocalist to Hansen's work does, at times, compromise what made Tycho, Tycho. In his richly layered and complex compositions the absence of lyrics always made plenty of space for you to inhabit—to fill in the blanks and let the song become whatever you needed it to be.

That's not to say Weather is not an enjoyable listen. It definitely is—from a production and songwriting standpoint. But, frankly, this doesn't sound as much like a Tycho album as it does a particularly successful album by, say, The XX. What made Tycho so different on his first four studio releases was the way in which his music served as a versatile and almost interactive experience between artist and listener. This was, for many fans, what made Tycho's music so special and unique: how every song on Drive or Awake could take on profound meanings in myriad unrelated ways. He would provide the vista, and you would decide how to interpret it. On Weather, though, Tycho paints the picture, and then Saint Sinner tells you what it means.

Weather


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MUSIC

Sports Coach Releases Sunny Slice of Life Music Video:"One For Feinberg"

Indie synthwave project releases home video full of sun, sand, and Super 8 film.

Sports Coach, the lo-fi synth wave project of Boston native Thatcher May, continues to produce engaging and reflective tracks and beautiful, retro-inspired visuals.

The visual for his latest release, "One For Feinberg," begins with scenes of a sunny California beach intercut with clips of waves, clear skies, and birds in flight. The idyllic locations we are shown match May's signature warm synth tones, which are utilized using analog equipment and tape recording techniques.

"This whole album that I'm putting out...with these tunes I would just wait until I was really inspired and then I would just knock them out," said Thatcher. "With this track, in particular, I wanted to keep it as minimal and as simple as possible so that it can be completely natural and I wouldn't overthink it."

The Blanco Pages directed video continues with scenes of Thatcher enjoying a day at the beach with his girlfriend and dog. The slice of life home video feel of the visual successfully ties together the track's carefree and affectionate mood, without taking away from Thatcher's poignant lyrics, especially on lines like, "If I wander off, I'll find it this time."

According to the singer, using Super 8 film to make the video is the visual equivalent of his choice to never pass his music through a computer unless it's ready to be shared on the Internet. "All the music is made on tapes and I think it fits and it embraces the vintage aspects of things. We went to our favorite spots that we go to every day and we wanted it to be a natural thing that reflected this time in our lives."

Sports Coach's upcoming album, Sports Spirits, is a collection of 12 tunes that will be released by Spirit Goth Records on June 21st. It will be available on limited edition vinyl and cassette tape formats.

Check out Sports Coach's "One For Feinburg" music video below!

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MUSIC

Belau's New Video, "Essence," Reminds Us Bliss Comes From Within

A premiere of the group's new music video, as well as a Q&A with member, Krisztian Buzas

Electronic duo, Peter Kedves and Krisztian Buzas, better known as Belau, have been making music together since they were ten years old.

And that remarkable history and chemistry can be heard in the group's uniquely organic sound. It is rare that you come across an electronic act that can trick the ear into forgetting about the synthesized sounds that go into it. But the song behind Belau's latest video does just that – the duo blends both ethereal and earthen sounds into a hypnotically relaxing soundscape that begs the listener to let go of her daily stresses and be whisked away to a calmer place of introspective bliss. And the video for their latest single, "Essence," which features Sophie Baker (of Zero7 fame) on vocals, captures this sonic transportation perfectly. Belau's Krisztian Buzas kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the "Essence" video, working with Baker, and Belau's origins (as well as their future destinations):

What is the story behind the name, Belau? How do you see it connecting to the group's sound?

Peter and I have been friends since we were 10. We grew up together and have always loved geography. We would browse world maps for hours. However, it took a long time for us to notice that minor country in the middle of the Pacific ocean, Palau. Aboriginal people, however, have a slightly different name for Palau: Belau. The word is indicative of pleasure, being by the sea, and looking within oneself. Just like the music of Belau. We were always driven by the intention of bringing people to another state – where they can redefine themselves and dive inside themselves to find a sense of serenity, which glows just like the sun on the waves of the ocean. However, we have to admit: we have never been to Palau, but want to go so badly.

The video for 'Essence' follows three solitary women who all drink from an apothecary jar of sorts. When they do, they are each doubled and tripled shown, then to be in the company of other versions of themselves, no longer alone in a sense. Can you speak a little bit to the vision behind the video, and how you see the themes connecting to the song (either on a lyrical or sonic level)?

Through the song, we were trying to capture individual milestones of existence – isolation to freedom, solitude to interaction. We were trying to inspire people to discover their lives outside of physical boundaries, by drinking the so-called 'Belau cocktail' when they suddenly start to see more sides of themselves ... things that they did not know before, experiences that they've always wanted to have, and emotions that they want to feel, even if they have never felt them before. The three girls represent the human, who seeks greater truth from within.

Sophie Baker is the guest vocalist on 'Essence'. What was it like to work with her? What was the writing and collaboration process like?

Sophie is a very down-to-earth woman who always welcomes you with a warm heart and a gentle smile. In the middle of the process, she told us that she has some Hungarian ancestors from the city of Esztergom (a wonderful town in northern Hungary). We met in London, where we were playing a symphonic set at St. Covent's Garden. It went very well. We even tried to create the basis of the rough vocal melodies and the lyrical theme for the instrumental [that night]. Afterwards, she sent us some demos, I wrote the lyrics for it, she flew to Budapest to record the song, and we had some great times together. I think it turned out pretty rad.

What can fans expect from Belau moving forward? Any albums in the works? Tours? More videos?

We are working on our second full-length, which will contain "Essence" and "Breath" [a 2018 single] as well, and try to go on with the job what we have already started with "The Odyssey." We are upgrading and improving (both live and in the studio). And yes, we will keep on the touring this summer. Our next big opportunity, for example, will be the Primavera in Barcelona, but we will try to impress the audience this year at Sziget [festival] and at Electric Castle as well. We have some big things coming soon! Get ready!

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