Zhu’s Nightday is the first album to come out in 2014 that I’ve even liked. Most music I like these days are released as singles, which honestly work best for many artists, but it’s nice to get a hold of stuff like this when I can. Great albums are far more rare than great songs.
I’ve already featured Zhu’s Superfriends track off of Nightday and in it I hoped dearly he was a she (there was alotta mystery going around at the time). But now we’re pretty 100% he’s a man, especially while finding something interesting in our inbox.
While going through our email to find some info a PR guy sent out about Zhu — oh, and how do you people find my email? ******! — I found a gentleman named Steven Zhu hit me up about a few of his remixes almost three years back. Now most likely they’re not connected and I’m just becoming my own little gossip blog, but they do both claim to live in Los Angeles …Steven Zhu has taken down his YouTube & SoundCloud links and…
Never mind. Just found proof. Zhu’s first name is Steven. Hello, Steven :P
Deja vu.
… except Zhu does his own production.
If you had to pick between Banks, Lana Del Rey, Lorde & Lykke Li, who’d it be? Mine’s definitely the baddest bitch of the bunch. I don’t know what it is. And how long it’ll last. But I know it has something to do with how she slips her personality in her songs in such small spaces. How she sings “only then, can we begin” melts my heart every time I hear it.
Check it out in one of Lykke’s latest, ‘No Rest for the Wicked.’
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Like Luminaire’s latest, it takes a few rounds of repetition to get a full sentence out of Pasta’s PB&J, but once you do you’ll be glad it did in such a way. It’s all about the build in these two, and all music really. Along with the drops of course.
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Wave Racer layers his vaporwave classic with something new every time I hear it. With rap samples to Nintendo bits, ‘Streamers’ is as intricate as it gets and I can’t get pass this new electro sound from Japan. Even though technically Wave Racer is from Sydney. I just can’t imagine this sound originating from anywhere else.
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This is for sure my 420 anthem for the time being. At first I thought SUPERSEX420 was going a little overboard with their ‘420’ title, but once I heard Chi Lites chorus from the original ‘Stoned Out of My Mind’ I knew it was aptly named. SUPERSEX turns this R&B classic into a big brass romp around.
I may be a little late to this year’s 420 celebration, but it’s still technically 420-6. It’s better off as a 10-day celebration anyways.
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I found Blood Orange in a peculiar way, through people in person. I know it’s not peculiar to most, but it’s been mostly the internet for me these days. I did however dig into Blood Orange and found something fresh of my own.
It isn’t so much about that sweet soul voice, but that ‘Sutphin Boulevard’ melody and its variations repeated. Kinda reminds me of Frank Ocean’s ‘Lost,’ another obsession of mine, just a bit cooler. Orange might actually beat out Ocean, only in instrumentals of course.
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Odesza is going from the duo with a song that I love to the duo that I love. Even most good artists fall off after a few good hits, but Odesza is on their way to making the next stage in dance music. At least in my ears. But that’s more about their sound, lyrics is a different story.
I’m never one to pay too close attention to lyrics, I usually make up my own. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with Odesza’s latest, ‘Sun Models.’ Let me know what you think the chorus is singing and I’ll let you know what I made up, but my version is really just a well popularized phrase of three words. Odesza’s music, however, pictures it in a new light… even though they’re not even the right words.
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I swear I’ve heard Izzy Bizu’s White Tiger before, but the best ones always feel that at first. Izzy’s got a pop in that faint rasp voice and her piano counterpart Mika Barroux plays off it well. Kinda jealous of him right now – for that piano dexterity, yes, but more so this look she gives him in their music video.
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I don’t like throwin up previews, but someone won’t release their full ‘Instinct,’ so I’m gonna be all whiny about it. And I’m gonna praise Jade Blue on something I’m sure she like any female producer doesn’t really want to hear, but that’s what happens when you tease with previews!
I’ve gotta confession to make, I haven’t posted a female producer in a while. Ill-esha was probably our last. I know bloggers get too wrapped up in trivial things like this, but good female producers are rare. Good producers are rare.
And I wouldn’t be spoutin all this shit, let alone post it, if she wasn’t amazing. Just when I think Lxury is topping the best in the UK electronic scene, Jade Blue may be upping it one more. But we’ll have to see how the full version turns out first.
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I’m not gonna make this a bigger deal than it is, we’re not here for the imagery, but Spook Black did a piss poor job on his visuals (mostly video). His voice, however, has something I’ve only heard from a few others in the last decade – the first I can remember from our very own The Weeknd back in 2010. Though The Weeknd went the elusive route in the beginning, something Spooky should have considered.
We did save him for our one-thousandth post, so hopefully that’ll show our appreciation for his potential.
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