Taped-out French Funk Master 'Onra'

Somewhere in between the shadows cast by the groove-gods of the past (Dilla, Dre) and the poolside parties of today's chillwave-kids (Toro y Moi) we find the instant-classic beats of Onra. Speakers or headphones, it shouldn't matter--blast this shit (I should note that subs improve the experience tremendously--the slippery basses will cover you in wetness).

Send Me Your Love
High Hopes (feat. Reggie B)

I'm really intrigued by his heavy use of funk/r'n'b. It's like, before hearing this, I thought R'n'B was tasteless and boring, but Onra's dreamy pads and sequenced-out leads create an atmosphere that is not only mind-blowing, but also completely fresh. Fresh like summer, fresh like cool cucumber on a hot day, fresh like a handfull of 'chill bros' drinking oberon w u at 5pm after a day of boating.

GO BUY THE ALBUM

Baths

Heard about this dude earlier this week from my pal Brian over at When We Were Younger and Better.

Baths is the solo project of Will Wiesenfeld, hailing from Los Angeles, and currently about to start a residency at LA's infamous Low End Theory. The sound seems to be a modern match of the broken hip/hop of FlyLo, and recent Bibio with the pop sensible vocals and side-chain compressed synth-bliss of Toro Y Moi.

"Maximalist" does an incredible job of mixing together bibio styled hip-hop beats with some gorgeous synth textures and vocal samples: A real killer track for the getting your summer started right.

If you think you've got him figured out from that one track, take another look. "Hall" comes across at first with a spazzed-out speed-altered-samples intro, and blisses out when the beat is joined by his soothing falsetto and gorgeous harmonies.

mp3:

Baths - Maximalist

Baths - Hall

Be on the lookout for his debut full length "Cerulean" out on June 22 via Anticon!


-djdr

The Apple iPad / Toro Y Moi / New Apples in Stereo

"It's true that when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical. and that's exactly what the iPad is"

Wait....so knowing absolutely nothing about how it works is supposed to be a selling item?

I'm really torn here.  Create Digital Music had a really interesting post on Apple's new iPad today.  Combining it's closed software app-ness, with the fact that it's not even a real computer OS (The new iPad is essentially a glorified BIGGER iPod Touch).  CDM has a mindset that I tend to really agree with: that a lot of great things in the way of creativity come out of open source ideals.  Personally I'm a strong supporter of creative commons licensing, and all that stuff, so I can really see where CDM is coming from here.  Apple has a unique opportunity to create an incredibly universal touch screen computer with seemingly endless possibilities in music and art, but instead the ONLY jack on this new iPad is the iPod dock, and ALL software has to go through apple's iTunes store and their approval process.

I'm sure some incredible things will come out of this, like new spin offs of rjdj, beatmaker, etc. for a giant touch screen: making MPC style drum pads a much more realistic possibility for live performances for one thing.  However, it really hurts to think about how fucking awesome it would be to see Ableton or maxMSP patches on a multi-touch screen computer.

---

On another note, Toro Y Moi just came out with a video for Blessa last week.  The song of theirs that initially got me hooked on this guy's sound towards the end of '09.

also....NEW APPLES IN STEREO ALBUM:

"I wanted to make a futuristic pop record, to reach out to the kids of the future. It is what I imagine their more highly-evolved pop might sound like: shiny soul music with robots and humans singing together, yet informed by the music of our time. So we are sending a pop music message through time, hoping they will decode it and be into it,"

Words form Robert Schneider on the new album, Travellers in Time and Space, due on April 20th of this year....yeahh I know what you're thinking.

I've been a big fan of Elephant 6 for a long long time, and am really excited for this one...

Apples In Stereo: Travellers In Time and Space Track List

---------------------
01 The Code
02 Dream About the Future
03 Hey Elevator
04 Strange Solar System
05 Dance Floor
06 CPU
07 No One in the World
08 Dignified Dignitary
09 No Vacation
10 Told You Once
11 It's All Right
12 Next Year at About the Same Time
13 Floating in Space
14 Nobody But You
15 Wings Away
16 Time Pilot