Earlier this year, an exciting and creative movement of
music caught my attention and has had me hooked ever since. The wave of
electronic music I’m referring to cannot be easily categorized, save to say it
takes influences from trap, grime and many other sounds whilst operating mainly
around the 140bpm mark. Generally the sound is ambient, but with incredible
emotional depth and heavy bass. The scene for this sound exists mainly on
Soundcloud at the moment and so is very easily accessible, with much of the
music available for free download. In fact there is a strong sense of independence
and autonomy about the music – it is free from definitive genre, free from
music labels and often free or very cheap for the listener to download. The
artists also seem to be based all around the globe, from London to New York to Tokyo.
The genre seems to truly be the product of the internet and the social media
age; it belongs to everyone.
My personal journey into obsession with this sound came
about during my final year at Uni. A friend recommended I check out the
incredibly talented Spooky Black’s ‘Leaving’ EP, and after having it on repeat whilst
studying for my finals, I knew I had to find out more about the producer – hnrk.
Hnrk is and always will be one of my favorite electronic music producers; a few
hours surfing his Soundcloud and I was hooked on his sound - totally new to my
ears, exciting and emotional. If you haven’t already you need to put on some
decent headphones and lose yourself in some of his frankly beautiful work, tunes
like ‘fjarlaeg’, ‘Mantarochen’ and ‘Nesting’. Next I discovered drip-133, who collaborates
with hnrk frequently and is a fellow part of the teamSESH crew, and fell head
over heels for ‘utlimum' along with the rest of his ‘girl
and boy’ EP. After a few more hours, the rabbit hole had well and truly opened
up and I was enthralled by the sounds of artists like Klimeks, Misogi and
Kareful, to name just a few. This is the reality of the movement on Soundcloud.
Once you start digging, you discover that there are just so many artists
contributing high quality, exciting music, that there really are no limits to where
it might go. There seems to be a real sense of inclusion and community to the
scene; some of the most talented artists I’ve come across only have a few
hundred followers, but their work gets re-posted and promoted by other artists,
making it easy to access. As a result, the movement seems to focus less on the
individual producer and more on the constant flow of new and exciting sounds.
Other than gathering a growing following in its own right
via Soundcloud and other listening platforms such as Bandcamp, the movement has
recently seen a fair bit of promotion from DJ, producer and general tastemaker
Plastician, something which I and other cloud-heads are really pleased about. As
well as regularly using his Rinse FM podcasts and own Soundcloud feed to
showcase talent from the movement, Plastician also recently put together a mix
entitled ‘The Wave Pool’, which you can listen to here, purely with the aim
of shedding light on the scene and encouraging others to explore it. His title
couldn’t be more apt to reflect the sound’s lucidity and infinite depth. If you
are at all interested in the scene, please check out some of Plastician’s amazing
mixes and what he has to say about it. I am hopeful that with his support the
movement can grow even further and receive some of the wider recognition it
deserves.
I hope to use this blog as a creative space to follow the
sound and its development, look into particular artists and their work in more
depth, conduct interviews with artists and just generally express an
appreciation of the sound. Since the movement has grown and developed so much over the past year and 2015 is drawing towards its close, I thought now was a perfect time to begin to reflect on it. If anybody would like to get involved in
contributing to the blog, has anything they would like me to write on, or just
any constructive feedback on how to grow the blog then please let me know – my email
is sf.plant94@gmail.com. There currently isn’t anywhere near enough of this
sound being showcased to live audiences in my opinion; despite Plastician’s
recent assessment that a lot of this sound ‘wasn’t built with the club in mind’,
I would love to hear more of this stuff on sound systems, and hopefully with
enough support and attention there will be a high enough demand to make this a
reality.