a few funky fresh record reccs
13-08-26
Good afternoon! I’m in the middle of my exam season right now, but I'm taking a little break from studying to recommend some albums. I got bit by the Naganuma bug last year when checking out the Sonic Rush OST during the SONIC STREAM SPECTACULAR, and what a bug bite it was…
I’ve been getting into producing big beat (I hope to make it a core musical identity for my current big artistic project), and wanted to share some funky fresh albums that I’ve had on repeat lately.
2 Mello - Memories of Tokyo-To
2 Mello is an artist I recognised from the Celeste remix album and, strangely enough, the Bop-It! soundtrack. He also appears on the Bomb Rush Cyberfunk soundtrack too, with an excellent track from the sequel to the album I am currently recommending.
Memories of Tokyo-To is a very loving tribute, with tracks that sound like they could’ve been produced in the early 00s. There’s loads of dynamic range, strangely un-electronica song structures, and it’s sample-driven in a way the other two albums in this article aren’t. A few of the tracks could have used a bit longer in the oven, but I love the scrappiness. Standouts are Here I Go and 24 Hour Party People.
Starjunk 95 - Industrial Sunset Memories
Recommended by a friend at a party two weeks ago, Starjunk 95 is a prolific house producer that has a modest following on YouTube. YouTube EDM scares me and I don’t go there often, but the album format is something I can get my head around. Industrial Sunset Memories is a tight 41 minutes of deep house and hardcore.
The individual tracks themselves don’t offer a lot to latch onto… I’d struggle to remember the unique characteristics of most tracks other than Space Radio Strut and Concept of Grime. But the album taken as a whole is a well-paced and well-constructed journey through a glittery galaxy of detuned chord stabs and heavily-chopped rap vocals. It has a lot of fun with itself! And I have a lot of fun with it too.
Make sure you check out the Jet Set-inspired music video for Beat Keep Rockin’, too!
This is the one. The funky fresh style cranked up to the max. I stumbled across CHROMATIK buried in the RYM big beat charts with 14 ratings, and it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. It’s brash, loud and groovy. Its opener, PRESS START, is everything I could ever ask from the big beat style.
A lot of the tracks on here sound like caricatures of the style, brought to an incredibly sharp aesthetic focus. Retro samples pulled from funk and hip-hop mix CDs garnish sophisticated and finely-tuned glitch hop and breakbeat backing tracks. It’s wonderfully inspiring and fun to listen to (even though the energy dips for a little too long near the middle). Please listen to this one!