Music Submissions Roundup: September
A selection of our favorite music submitted by XLR8R+ members last month.
Music Submissions Roundup: September
A selection of our favorite music submitted by XLR8R+ members last month.
With Christmas on the horizon, we’re back to present the latest round of submissions to our XLR8R+ portal. As per usual, we’re delighted to welcome back some familiar names—the mysterious Vibenacci; Yulio, from Chile; and New York’s Yasin Hazim have all featured before—but there’s plenty of new ones too. Ross K, a London composer, has collaborated with Romanian violinist Ioana Selaru on a track that will melt your problems away; with a cool slice of R&B, Manchester’ ZULA and glue70 have delivered a taste of their upcoming EP; and Dean Durrant from South Africa has shared with us a brooding techno roller of the highest order. We’ve intentionally kept this list a bit shorter than previous editions but the quality remains sky-high. Thank you for sending us your music. Now, please, dig in!
Editor’s note: we’ve made a point of linking each artist’s Bandcamp page, or a place where you can buy their music, and we encourage our readers to support these independent artists by buying their music. Let’s keep independent culture alive!
For those unfamiliar, XLR8R+ is a member-supported music community and curated music experience. Every month, you will get three exclusive tracks—sometimes more—by a wealth of amazing artists that XLR8R has supported over the years, as well as access to the member’s area where you can submit tracks and DJ mixes to be showcased in this feature series and to the XLR8R+ community. There’s also exclusive editorial content, mixes, FREE passes to music festivals and events, playlists, and more. You can find out more here.
Lidia “Wash”
Lidia is a producer based in London, and that’s pretty much all we know. In 2017, they released a digital track called “With You,” and now they’re back with “Wash,” with its heavy snare rolls, hazy rhythms, and blissed-out pads. It’s one of three tracks from Lidia shared this year, and we suggest you check them out too, here and here.
Ross K and Ioana Selaru “Lost Song”
Ross K is a composer based in London who released his debut LP, Braedalyn, last year. His latest project is a single-track collaboration with Ioana Selaru, a Romanian violinist. Composed between Vancouver and Bucharest, and recorded in single takes on both ends, “Lost Song” is a deeply emotive piece of work that’s partly inspired by whale songs, lost in the depths of the ocean.
Amanaz “Kale” (Yasin Hazim Edit)
Growing up around Paris, Yasin Hazim learned about music through both his classical music training and his family’s Moroccan and Algerian roots. From these influences, which also broadly encompass the likes of Leonard Cohen and Keith Jarrett, he draws his own style, ranging from blues and folk to psychedelic disco. Last month he shared a slow burner rework of “Kale” by Amanaz, a five-piece combo from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. It’s available as a free download now along with some of these other edits, too. (You might note that Hazim, now based in New York, featured in our roundup of August submissions with a mix inspired by a painting in his childhood home.)
“Elevate Me” is a refined R&B offering that fuses ZULA’s sugar-sweet vocals with glue70’s molten beats. The collaboration was forged in the small hours of big nights out and amongst the daylight hours soaking up inspiration from the pair’s home city of Manchester. It’s incoming on Havêa Records and offers another glimpse at the new EP, SKIN44, which is due for release later this month and features recently released singles “Cute” and “Neighbours,” featuring rapper KinKai.
MOFW “Multitempo”
doubledoubleu, a label based in Milan, Italy, has shared a new single from MOFW, an alias for electronic experiments around hauntology. “Multitempo” is an uplifting lo-fi track that we’ve been enjoying at the XLR8R offices.
Frank Cogliano “Any Other Way“
Frank Cogliano, a producer based in Brooklyn, began creating multi-track experiments on tape around his tenth birthday, and since then he’s proven himself to be a skilled sonic manipulator. His focus is blending stringed instruments like guitars with synthesizers to create his own musical identity. Formerly the guitarist in international R&B group Sugarbad, he is now striking out on his own and that began with CRT, his debut EP. “Any Other Way,” an intelligent and soothing composition, serves as a precursor to the full release, available now.
Dean Durrant “Lured To Freedom“
Dean Durrant is a DJ-producer from Pretoria, South Africa. His productions are shaped by his love for analog sounds and dancing, but he’s also influenced by classical music, psychedelia, trance, and metal. “Lured To Freedom,” a brooding techno roller, is the title track, and the opener, of Durrant’s latest EP, available now.
Michael Keever “The Ruse”
Michael Keever is a producer and vocalist based in London whose music is inspired by the record digging in charity shops that consumed his youth. He’s recently started to meld samples with his own instrumentation and vocals, and “Fear the Real Virus,” which comically reflects on the ongoing pandemic, landed in our November 2020 roundup. “Don’t Fool For The Ruse” is one of his latest tracks, released over the summer,
Vibenacci “Downcast”
Vibenacci is a mysterious artist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. They don’t have social media presence, and they’ll never reveal who they are because their focus is solely on “creating interesting music that has never been heard before.” Drawing influence from hip-hop beats and electronica soundscapes, they try to blend both to create a twisted sound that sits somewhere in the middle. They featured in our May submissions roundup, and now they’re back with a new experimental downtempo single called “Downcast.” For this track, they wanted to recreate that eerie moment of clarity when your mind is transported to a place in time when you’re on the verge of “bitter nostalgic moments, when you feel sad and melancholic about it but end with relieving thoughts afterwards.”
Yulio “Krafoptical Releases Selection 2021”
Earlier this year, Yulio, the alias of Julio Muñoz, a Chilean artist based in Croatia, contributed the track “Robots 2040” to the second-anniversary compilation of Santiago’s Panal Records, and we featured it in our July submissions roundup. Now Muñoz is back with a new podcast that draws exclusively on material from Barcelona’s Krafoptical label, aiming to show the “new sounds coming from the furthest corners of the universe. You can see the tracklisting here.
