donky pitch
Love this big track from Lockah - taken from his forthcoming five-track EP And Blue Brindle Too, Barcelona Drums demonstrates a more cinematic evolution of his sound. Following on from debut album Yahoo Or The Highway, Lockah's new EP represents a move towards using live instruments, with guitars provided by Mount Bank's Samuel Organ and drums by Lockah himself.
And Blue Brindle Too is released through Donky Pitch on 27 April.
Baby I'm Off Drugs And I'm Ready To Marry You - Starfoxxx
Baby I'm Off Drugs And I'm Ready To Marry You is the new album from Starfoxxx and the latest release on Donky Pitch, whose recent releases have included albums from Lockah and The Range.
Starfoxxx is the solo project of David Beltran and here he treats us to a modest smeared collage of dreamy, ambient pop. Baby... is nowhere near as sugar coated nor as dancefloor orientated as its title and cover suggest. In fact on listening you'll question if that title is played for laughs at all - this is an album that spends a good two-thirds of its body on slow moving introspection.
Despite containing no real lyrics the album flows like a concept album built around a storied night out. Club Entrance (Intro) captures the excitement of a night's opening moments before Bad Reception and Bae HD deliver the warmth you associate with a club, albeit through a wonky, slowed down lens. The latter represents the album's most immediate moment, full of warm synths and rhythms that unfold amongst scattered vocal samples.
From here things become considerably more psychedelic, perhaps those drugs not being so distant after all. My Cats Will Die B4 Me is a brief, spacey interlude that feels distant if not exactly sad, punctuated with meows. XTC Makeouts has layers of squeaking melodies layered atop deep bass stabs and trebly rimshots, a dubstep deconstruction.
No Text No Call feels like a dance floor track heard through the ears of someone caught in a maudlin trap of their own making, those moments of fun when you suddenly fall to earth through the realisation you still haven't heard from the person you most want to. The track has is full of bouncy synth crashes and yet it feel beautifully reserved.
The track Outro closes Baby... in suitably cinematic form, full of as much mystery as you would expect from such an odd album. It is like the uncertainty of the final glimpses of The Graduate, or the dazed and confused scene that closes Larry Clark's movie Kids. This is a strange and disjointed album and yet I can't help but be charmed by it's wonderful curiousness.
Baby I'm Off Drugs And I'm Ready To Marry You is out on Monday through Donky Pitch. Check out Bae HD below.
Lockah
The second full-length album release from the Donky Pitch stable feels like an altogether different beast to the experimental beguiling and at times beautiful Nonfiction from The Range. The debut album from Lockah, Yahoo Or The Highway, is thoroughly irreverent in comparison to Nonfiction, and whilst both feel thoroughly contemporary Lockah clearly filters his sound through the lenses of someone reared on 80s pop and 90s R&B
Much of the album appears to be delivered with tongue firmly in cheek, as demonstrated by several of the track titles (Some Velvet Evening and If loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong). In other words, you can't accuse Yahoo Or The Highway of taking itself too seriously. It knows how to have a good time though - 44-minutes whip past in a frenzy of melodic synth stabs, chaotic rattling percussion and scattergun samples.
The melodic heart of this record beats to the sound of 80s movie and TV soundtracks yet Lockah splices his pieces together to create something that is generally fresh and unique. His music is unashamedly populist - tracks like the insistent Summer Jorts (Some Cats Still Do) scream for attention and Lockah's album cares not for restraint. It is the layered approach to production that keeps things interesting though - tracks like Ayyo Tricknology, whilst not new to this release, still feels cacophonous and rapturous in equal measure. This seemingly intricately planned messiness rapidly seems to be Donky Pitch's calling card and Lockah is at his best when he manages to control his own vision, as on the fantastic Contact High Wit Big Lockah.
Yahoo Or The Highway feels a little like a sugar high. It is an undeniable pleasure, but a slightly guilty one. With all the bells and whistles Lockah occasionally pushes against the boundaries of taste and decency, but much of this record is a joy - so who cares?
Yahoo Or The Highway is out now on Donky Pitch, available to order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Listen on Spotify below:
The Range, credit: Hector Perez
The Range's debut album for Donky Pitch, Nonfiction, was one of my favourite releases from last year and this new EP proves it was no fluke.
Panasonic feels a little like the DVD extras to Nonfiction - at times a more direct celebration of the best music that inspired this sound originally, but mostly it is more of the same. Opener Slow Build is tight and direct and does what it says, layering samples, hi-hats and electronic stabs into a track that gradually builds to the kind of emotive break that made the album such a joy.
Two is much more reminiscent of some of the best moments on Nonfiction. Like that album's Metal Swing it melds and distorts an unnamed MC's rhymes as The Range builds a whirl of melody around it, like a bag of glass swirled around your head that splits to create a shower of tinkling chaotic melodies. It is the sort of three-minute wonder that sees The Range make 95% of electronic producers appear utterly irrelevant. Sony is equally impressive, a swirling dream of melodies and a child-like distorted vocal thrown together to create a modern hymnal experience.
Panasonic raises as many questions as it answers. Here are a clutch more tracks just as good as those on Nonfiction. Yet the question is where The Range goes next, having seemingly invented and mastered his kitchen-sink production style in the space of a single album. Whilst we wait to find out, this is a perfect stop-gap.
Panasonic is released through Donky Pitch on 24 March, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Check out Slow Build on Soundcloud:
Lockah, credit: Dean Gray
Fresh off of the back of releasing one of last year's best albums (Nonfiction by The Range), Donky Pitch kick start their 2014 with this storming EP from Lockah. The ironically titled If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong presents two original tracks as a prelude to Lockah's forthcoming album Yahoo or the Highway, and it follows up on last year's Only Built 4 Neon Nites EP.
Both the original tracks are presented in Lockah's usual style - a smear of pop across a grimey background of Miami bass. There are plenty of his usual rave-antics packed into this EP and it is suitably starry-eyed and uplifting.
Lockah, credit: Dean Gray
The EP's title track is a flurry of pitched vocals, rave piano and old school drum patterns that come together to create something totally in love with the optimism of early 90s dance but still noticeably contemporary. Ayyo Tricknology is similarly positive but focuses on a little bit of a more up-to-date, bass orientated sound, with plenty of echo and bounce creating a chunky rhythmic track.
If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong - Lockah
Both tracks come with a dub version. If Dubbing U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong loses the pitched vocal and instead focuses on tight drum patterns and scratching to create a track for the beat heads. Ayyo Bonus Beats is similarly rhythm obsessed, stripping out the synths to create a tightly wound drum track.
It is all further evidence that Nonfiction was no fluke - thankfully we only need to wait until April to hear their next full length offering.
If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Wrong is out on 17 February through Donky Pitch. It will be available through Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Listen to the title track on Soundcloud below: