new Forest Spirits - "Soda Spooks"

Brand new track from Auckland's Forest Spirits, the first we've heard since last year's excellent Summer Sleep/Storm Clouds release.  Taut with a giddy, fidgety beat, a constantly repeating female vocal sample and melodic synth tones and tweaks, "Soda Spooks" is a freshly-oiled robot fumbling about, or The Postal Service on Prozac.  Follow Forest Spirits on bandcamp. 

Forest Spirits - Soda Spooks

Beaú - "Glitter" & "Venice"

Glitter by Beaú

Venice by Beaú

Follow Beaú on SoundCloud.

New Phaseone - "Murk Unit"

It's been two months since we've heard an original joint from Phaseone.  The dude recently packed up his game and moved from St. Louis to New York, so now seems like the perfect time for a new tune.  "Murk Unit" is tagged as belonging to the "killa" genre.  I'm not quite sure what that entails, but the song itself is pretty much "killa" and then some.  Buttressed by a sample* of The Luniz's "I Got A 5 On It," the song features the same trepid-sounding tubular bells as the original, with Phaseone adding some extra bleeps and plenty of bump to the mix.  Sounds like an unreleased hip-hop theme song to soundtrack a crime documentary about, well, "killas."

Phaseone - Murk Unit by PHASEONE

Get more Phaseone at SoundCloud and Tumblr.

(*Props to my buddy Tony for knowing his shit and name-dropping The Luniz.  I knew I'd heard the sample before but had no idea where to look.)

Teams - "Whxt Txrns U Xn"

Knoxville transplant Sean Bowie has been making quite a name for himself as Teams.  His sample-based beats began bubbling up across the blogosphere last spring, and the hype has only increased since then.  Following up on last year's We Have A Room With Everything EP for AMDISCS and January's collaborative 12" with Star Slinger on Mexican Summer,  Teams is readying his Dxys Xff LP for release on AMDISCS this March.  With the above artwork and a name like "Whxt Txrns U Xn," you might think we're in for more of the "porn step" of earlier track "Stunts," yet the song has a relatively simple beat/gaze/glam structure.  It's a channel-churning, constantly building whirlwind of hip-hop beats, spinning metallic plates and chopped up vocals.  And it promises very well for Teams' debut full-length.  Check "Whxt Txrns U Xn" and a demo of "Dxys Xff" below. 

  Whxt Txrns U Xn? by T E A M S
 

Follow Teams on bandcamp / Facebook / Last.fm / MySpace / SoundCloud / Tumblr

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - "Round and Round" (Pional Remix)

Guyanese ambient beatmaker Pional turns Ariel Pink's brothers-in-arms pop ballad into a shuffling slow-burner, backed by a disco beat, with tribal drums, synth stabs and woodwind tones. 

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round and Round (Pional Edit)

Here's Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's original, which was one of my favorite songs of 2010:

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round and Round

And an original from Pional, also a favorite of 2010.

Pional - In Another Room (Pional's Reduxed Version)

Phaseone - "True Romance"

We first heard a dub version of Phaseone's "True Romance" on the December 2010 mix he made for XLR8R.  A standalone version now streams below and at the St. Louis-based beat producer's SoundCloud.  Backed by soaring atmospherics, vocoder vocals, woodblock beats and some Eastern-tinged synthesizers, I believe this is the longest and most laid-back track we've heard from Phaseone.  And I'm not complaining in the slightest. 

Phaseone - True Romance by PHASEONE

Phaseone on Facebook / MySpace / SoundCloud / Tumblr / Twitter

New Two Inch Punch - "Love You Up"

Poppin' fresh pulses from producer Ben Ash, who records blush-pop glitch-hop as +Two Inch Punch-.  "Love You Up" just dropped yesterday, while "Breaking Hearts" is a few weeks old.  Dude is seriously becoming a front-runner in my best hope/most anticipated artist of 2011 list.  Music so fresh and great is basically demands a record deal.  I'm thinking Ash needs a debut 12" like right now.  I'm talking to you, Ghostly International.

  +++ Love You Up. --- by +Two Inch Punch-

  +++ Breaking <!--3's --- by +Two Inch Punch-

Follow +Two Inch Punch- on MySpace, SoundCloud and Twitter.

---

Previously:

+++ Her Heart Moves --- by +Two Inch Punch-

+++ Luv Luv --- by +Two Inch Punch-

Halls - Halls EP

Pretty much blown away by this self-titled debut EP from UK-based, bedroom/beat producer Halls.   It took only thirty seconds of "Chakra Drums" streaming on No Modest Bear and I was at Halls' bandcamp, hoping the rest of the EP held up.  I was ecstatic to find it definitely did.  As Halls, artist Samuel Howard manufactures ambient soundscapes buttressed by skitter-step beats.  This is hardly the first time we've heard a solo artist produce hazy, reverb-heavy tracks, but Halls' music is more ambient than the anthemic, dance-oriented songs of, say, Washed Out.  Perhaps a better reference, then, is Foxes In Fiction.  Halls' songs are also a tad drab and dreary.  The resulting sound demands an intensely personal connection to the music, one that invades your headspace and clouds out the extraneous details of the day.  Perfect for a lazy, lonely listen.  I mean that as the highest compliment to the artist and as a recommendation for you to listen. 

Halls - Cave Days
Halls - Kaleidoscope

Buy the Halls EP for ₤1 (less than $2) here.

Follow Halls on bandcamp and SoundCloud.

(via No Modest Bear)

Forest Spirits

Forest Spirits is one Liam Fitzpatrick, a twenty-something college student from Auckland, New Zealand. If his glitchy, dubbed-out hip-hop beats belong to Los Angeles or London, his sampling skills are entirely his own, unique in style and yet universally appealing in their dream-like quality. With "Summer Sleep," we're being romanced by a French girl, bumping to an 808 beat even as we travel down Avenue Gustave Eiffel in a Peugeot 403 - a mash-up so misconstrued in time and place only deep R.E.M. sleep could reconcile it.  Likewise, even with "Storm Clouds" on the horizon, we're dreaming old-school Disney, our cartoon caricatures unconcerned as they twirl umbrellas and skip across a sun-swept field. Beautifully evocative, fantasy-filled, even romanticized beats. Dreamstep? I think so.

Forest Spirits - Summer Sleep
Forest Spirits - Storm Clouds

Follow Forest Spirits here.

Props to Rose Quartz for pointing me in his direction.