ISTHISFORREAL? is Purdy’s first full-length on Stones Throw since Little Dominiques Nosebleed in 2020. Across 11 new and original raw hip-hop tracks, the Los Angeles rapper and film-maker reflects on the news we hear about or receive through social media that sometimes you can’t help but wonder whether it’s real or not.
Alongside the announcement, Purdy has shared “Misophonia Love,” a tongue-in-cheek love song about him and his girlfriend who has misophonia, a condition where repeated sounds become so annoying that you feel enraged. Purdy recommends that you listen to the song after researching the condition.
Purdy began his career in music by selling mix-tapes across Los Angeles, and he’s since collaborated with Mndsgn, as Vivians, and the late Ras G, as 5 chuckles. You can read more about him and his work his XLR8R podcast here.
Tracklisting
01. Opening Confession 02. Fundrazors 03. Misophonia Love 04. Indifferent 05. ISTHISFORREAL? 06. Homeboys in Outerspace 07. History Tension 08. Something or Nothing? 09. Hellooo??? 10. Existential Landlord 11. An Endless Run
ISTHISFORREAL? LP is scheduled for July 22 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Misophonia Love” in full below and pre-order the album here.
Mood Hut will release the debut album from Local Artist, the alias of Ian Wyatt.
Wyatt is one of the co-founders of Mood Hut, but he’s also released his music on Proibito and Rhythm Section. As Slow Riffs, he put out the Gong Bath 12” on Mood Hut in 2015.
He’s also a spatial sound artist at Lobe Studio, where he regularly holds space as a creative mentor. His goal is to offer support for your stress cycles in our “chronically over-stimulated world.”
On his Expanding Horizons album, Wyatt takes us further towards the intimate end of the radio dial, recording music as a way of processing the emotions of watching his father and partner battle cancer before the pandemic. We’re told to expect themes of love, loss, and life emerge “in a moody brew to help you through.”
Tracklisting
01. Head Right 02. Expanding Horizons 03. Without You 04. Neo Wise 05. Rif Kibdani 06. Self Healing 07. Good Enough 08. Give You My Love 09. Distance Calling
Expanding Horizons LP is scheduled for August 19 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Head Right” in full below and pre-order here.
Last month, Ronald Lee Trent Jr., better known as Ron Trent, released What Do The Stars Say To You, a new solo album. It was his first full-length outing in more than a decade, and it arrived more than 30 years after he broke through with “Altered States,” a raw, futuristic techno anthem that he produced in high-school.
Off the back of the track, Trent established himself as a classy purveyor of soul-infused deep house, while running the mighty Prescription Records, one of the most influential house imprints of the ’90s. When he wasn’t making or curating music, Trent would be playing playing it out, becoming a staple in clubs across Chicago, Detroit, and New York, where he would host his own events at the legendary Manhattan nightclubs Vinyl and Shine. The foundations for his success came from his father, who ran a record pool in the late ’70s, and inspired Trent to diligently study, collect, and eventually produce records.
On What Do the Stars Say To You, though, Trent looks back to a time before “Altered States.” Before dance music became his life, he would indulge in the adventurous albums from the ’80s, and appreciate how, with a rich musicality and a smooth flow, great musicians could make seemingly sparse genres acquiesce. This is a side of an artistic repertoire that he’s rarely shown so, instead of making more music to make you move, Trent veered towards an album that prioritized collaboration, creating frameworks for some of his favorite musicians like Gigi Masin and Khruangbin to express their creative energies. The result is an album that traverses jazz-funk, new age, Balearic, Latin rock, and much more.
In celebration of the album, Trent has recorded an XLR8R podcast, on which he underlines his rich musical knowledge and skills in curation. Across its two-hour run-time, you’ll hear some of Trent’s favorite tracks from Larry Heard, French singer Isabelle Antena, and American pianist Rodney Franklin, plus several of his own works from the album. Expect a captivating sonic adventure designed to soundtrack a sunset drive, where hot nights cool down into slow cinematic moments.
01. What have you been up to recently? I have been consumed in everything surrounding my new album project that was just launched, so lots of interviews like this one and verbal engagements. I am working towards my record release party set in Brooklyn.
02. What have you been listening to recently? I have been listening to a wide range of music that includes revisiting my own album. In between my two radio shows, on NTS and WorldWide FM, I am consistently keeping my ear out for inspiration.
03. Your new album, What Do The Stars Say To You, has just landed. How are you feeling about it? I must say I feel great about the release. My team and I did a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure everything about the project represents the quality of our intentions. The responses have been great and people are receiving the project with open arms. There’s more work to do though.
04. When and where did you record this mix? This mix was recorded in my sound room in Chicago about a week ago. I normally like to record my radio shows at night. This mix was done at night and into the early morning hours.
05. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included? The tracks are designed for the theme “sunset drive mix tape.” So there are sonic selections that go well with city life, sunset drives, and the rhythm the city. You can insert a bit of Miami Vice in there if you like.
06. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out? Though most of what I play out is based on my own taste, every situation is different. There is not some sort of comparison to be made. Playing out is more based on the energy of the people and the room itself. Creating in my own space is an entirely different approach and sentiment. Two different worlds.
07. What’s next on your horizon? The continuous mission of creativity. More projects that deal with sonics and other forms. Most definitely my live show. Stay tuned!
This latest Web3 Wrap includes Part One of Water & Music’s ‘Music and the Metaverse’ research series and playbook, which looks at the key principles used to build a metaverse strategy; Refraction Festival’s creative grants program; Vic Mensa and Keyon Christ’s new music NFT release, which presents a new format and stems player; and Dequency, a new music rights and licensing platform.
Check it out below.
Water & Music Releases Part One of its ‘Music and the Metaverse’ Research Series
Water & Music has announced its Season 2 series, Music and the Metaverse.
The series will dive deep into the buzz-filled metaverse concept and find out exactly what the metaverse is and music’s relationship to it to develop a “more actionable roadmap for what truly innovative, digital-native music metaverse experiences could look like.”
Part One dropped today and features nine design principles for building musical metaverse experiences. The principles were based on “theoretical readings plus over 25 interviews with artists and music-industry professionals” and are designed to act as a playbook for forward-thinking artists and builders looking to explore new territory.
Coinciding with the release of part one in the series, Water & Music is releasing a collection of membership NFTs, priced at 0.1ETH and 0.3ETH (around $120 and $370, respectively). The 0.1ETH NFT offers annual access to Water & Music’s research and community, with the 0.3ETH NFT offering lifetime access.
You can read the first part in the new series here.
Keyon Christ and Vic Mensa Release New Music NFT and Stems Player, Powered by Zora
Keyon Christ and Vic Mensa have teamed up to release Ying Yang Twins, a new music NFT.
Ying Yang Twins presents a new music NFT format, offering an open edition that allows the owner to remix the track via a “spore” player, a Kaos pad-like interface. There is also the ability to unlock loops that expand the song.
The “spore” interface offers a range of functionality, such as the ability to loop sections of the track and adjust its attributes; pitch up and down; stutter and space, a control the effects and stutters sections; and wobble or noise gating.
The Ying Tang Twins release is powered by the Zora protocol and is currently on sale for 0.0888ETH ($108 at the time of writing).
You can check out the release and play around with the “spore” here.
Refraction Launches Creative Grants Program
Virtual music and arts festival Refraction has launched a creative grants program.
Running across Season 2 and 3, the creative grants program will be awarded across three funding tiers, totaling up to 100k $USDC, which will be divided between event and commission submissions.
The respective funding tiers available to pitch for include micro-grants, which are artist-managed projects looking for up to 1k $USDC in funding, such as written editorial contributions and radio programming; mid-weight, which include Refraction-assisted projects looking for up to 5k $USDC in funding, such as one-off IRL or metaverse events and NFT collections; and heavy-lift, which include projects looking to run “multi-event series’ incorporating both music and visual arts” that would work with established Refraction guilds (Curatorial, Editorial, Community, etc) to realize the project.
Refraction’s Curatorial guild will assess applications and select those to bring to the Community Snapshot for voting and selection.
There is an open call for submissions running until July 31. You can read more about the grants program and apply here.
Music Rights Portal Dequency Launches
Earlier this week, music rights portal Dequency launched.
According to the platform, Dequency is the “first-ever decentralized music sync licensing marketplace” that offers music licenses for “digital art and virtual worlds,” directly from the artist or rights holder. The platform is currently in Beta, so many features are still not live yet, including user upload functionality. Dequency has a small selection of artists already live, selected from their close network of artists.
Dequency sync licenses are smart contracts on the Algorand blockchain, which allows instant payment to creators with very low fees. Although Dequency licenses live on the Algorand blockchain, the rights and licenses are not blockchain-specific.
Nance introduced himself into the public eye as a filmmaker with his 2012 Sundance Film Festival debut, “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.” He produced V O R T E X, his debut album, along with the help of long-time friends and collaborators Solomon Dorsey, Nick Hakim, and Nelson Bandela.
Most of the songs on the 11-track album are arranged as diptychs that “swell and fold in on themselves in a dizzying oscillation,” we’re told. Nance highlights Stevie Wonder as a major source of inspiration.
Sonically, we’re told that the record defies easy categorisation but is forged with the same spirit of experimentation as Andre 3K, Solange, Serpentwithfeet, Nelson Bandela, and Moses Sumney. And also, Brainfeeder head Flying Lotus.
V O R T E X also draws on the literature of Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison, as well as the drawings of Ruby Amanze, whose voice is featured on the album.
Tracklisting
01. V O R T E X 02. Terence’s — Love 03. In Contemplation of Clair’s Scent 04. Stay 05. Infinince or Infinity? 06. Dragon 07. I Miss Things I Never Had 08. Sanity Envy 09. A Moment of Disguise 10. The Merchant of Flatbush 11. (S)he Forgets
V O R T E X LP is scheduled for August 19 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “In Contemplation of Clair’s Scent” in full below.
Imogen Richmond, better known as IMOGEN, will release her debut solo EP on Voitax.
What? spans breaks, electro, IDM, and hardcore across five new and original tracks. Richmond wrote them all during a five-day isolation period following a lengthy bout of writer’s block.
We’re told that there is a “roughness and edginess” to the entire EP that reveals a “strong connection” to her 808 and modular system, which has helped her to create unique textures and granular soundscapes. With these machines, she manages to fuse the punky style of ’90s rave culture with futuristic sound processing.
What? comes after Richmond’s recent collaboration with TripSixVivo and Paàl on Neosynthesis, released via Club Qu. In March, she joined forces with Ben Pest for Tunnel Vision, an EP on her own label, Wigs.
Last year, Richmond contributed to XLR8R+32, which also featured tracks from Sweely and Galaxy Lane.
Tracklisting
01. Up to No Good 02. Running 03. Beneath 04. Look What You Made Me Do 05. Granular Tears
What? is scheduled for July 25 release. Meanwhile, you can stream clips below and pre-order here.
Los Angeles experimental artist Sarah Davachi will release a new album in September.
Two Sisters is a collection of nine extended compositions that abide by the same harmonic language that has occupied Davachi’s solo and chamber writing for the past several years.
Perceptions of suspension and resolution are in some cases severely extended over a long period of time and in other cases are made to be circular, so as to undo the more typical sensations of sonic progression and pacing. The album combines rare acoustic instruments, such as an Italian tracker organ from 1742 and the third largest carillon in the world, with sin tones and electronic drones.
Conceptually, there is a loose thread that runs through each composition, in that they’re influenced by the perpetual balance of restraint as delight and necessity.
As a composer of electroacoustic music, Davachi’s work is concerned with the close intricacies of intimate aural space, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures that emphasize subtle variations in texture. You can read more about her in her XLR8R Influences podcast here.
Two Sisters follows Davachi’s 2021 album, Antiphonals, also released on Late Music.
Tracklist:
01. Hall of Mirrors 02. Alas, Departing 03. Vanity of Ages 04. Icon Studies I 05. Harmonies in Bronze 06. Harmonies in Green 07. Icon Studies II 08. En Bas Tu Vois 09. O World and the Clear Song
Two Sisters LP is scheduled for September release. Meanwhile, you can stream “En Bas Tu Vois” in full below and pre-order here.
Dan Snaith will release a new album as Daphni, titled Cherry.
Cherry is the first new Daphni music since Sizzling, an EP he released in 2019. In the years since, Snaith has been putting his energy into his Caribou project, releasing the album Suddenly in 2020.
Snaith recorded all 14 tracks of Cherry over a prolonged period and incorporated new gear into the production process. “As is often the case when you’re working quickly and intuitively, new pieces of equipment played a part,” Daphni explained. “It’s weird that when the tracks were put in what felt like the right order it took on a new coherence where it pings quickly from one idea to the next and, at least for me, hangs together in way that feels unified.”
Speaking about “Cloudy,” the album’s lead track, Snaith explained: “The essence of this one is keeping it aloft, like occasionally nudging a balloon that’s only just heavier than air to keep it afloat.”
Last year, Snaith released a Caribou song called “You Can do It.” He released Joli Mai, the last Daphni album, in 2017.
With July upon us, we’re ready to share with you the latest list of our favorite XLR8R+submissions, this time coming from May. What we’ve been digging for this particular edition have been some hard-hitting tracks from Alonzo, whose album on Cultivated Electronics draws influence from bleak urban landscapes and old city ruins, but there’s also “Section 30” by CSV, which is almost certain to have you jumping around. For the softer touch, you might head towards Adam BFD’s “Sonar,” taken from the French producer’s latest release on Lost Palms, or “Thick Of It,” a taste of the debut album from Boy With Boat. In terms of mixes, the bass-heavy, warped out sounds of Erica Van Berger’s podcast caught the attention of the entire XLR8R team, so do, please, dig in, but there’s much more. As always: thanks for all your submissions. We’ll be back with our latest picks soon.
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 mixesto 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.
^L_ is the moniker of the Brazilian producer Luis Fernando, who started making music as a teenager, citing bands like My Bloody Valentine or Nine Inch Nails as the inspiration for his first shoegaze-leaning excursions. In 2014, he released his debut album, Love Is Hell, through the Berlin label Antime, the same place he released a more dancefloor-focused EP called The Outsider in 2016. The older he has grown, the more eclectic his tastes have become, and his output now oscillates between film score-inspired sounds, acid techno, and noise. “LONER,” an acid techno track, is taken from Luis, his fourth full EP for Antime.
Originally from Miami and now based in Brooklyn, New York, Alonzo has previously released on W.T. Records, Zement, Phormix, and Lost Soul Enterprises. He also forms part of Lithium Parasites alongside Vidrio. Earlier this month, he put out They Come In Twos, a new album on Cultivated Electronics, the London based Electro label headed up by Sync 24. Across eight hard-hitting electro jams, Alonzo drew influence from bleak urban landscapes and old city ruins, turning in a must-have album for fans of bass music.
With “Section 30,” CSV—an alias of Chris Speed Visuals—has released another genre-bending cut into his garage-infused collection that spans labels like Sheffield’s Off Me Nut, Human Error, and The Games We Play. The London artist’s dark sound comes from his teenage years spent immersed in dingy east London club nights. Nowadays, he draws on a myriad of influences including grime, jungle, and dubstep, plus algorithmic compositions, to make boundary-pushing results. “Section 30” pulls in samples from around his home, which he combines with intense bass, bullet casings, sword slashes, and pitched down vocal chops.
Will Olsen, better known as Boy With Boat, is an Australian producer based out of Brisbane. His dynamic take on melodic techno, progressive house, and electronica has attracted the attention of labels like Recovery Collective, Interfonic, Ballroom, and Open Records. “Thick Of It,” scheduled to land on Open Records in late July, is the first taste of Olsen’s debut album, which is filled with “14 stellar tunes across the full spectrum of his sound,” we’re told. Olsen wrote each one of them while juggling working on the frontlines of the pandemic as a pharmacist and studying for his PhD.
Guillaume Marie, better known as Sensitive Golgoth, is a scientist in ecological modelling by day and musician by night. Based in Avignon, France, he releases a breed of house music that’s smooth and warm, and in March he released the beautiful “SwingPool84” via his Bandcamp. If you like that, we’d also recommend “Echoes in the Storm,” which you can stream here.
The career in music of Anthony Manning, from France, dates back to the ’90s but his new music represents a departure from anything he’s released before: it makes no use of synthesizers. There is no plan to this project, besides Manning’s desire to reconnect with the joy of interacting with a physical instrument. “#38,” the first track from this collection, started as an experiment, and a first attempt at using microphones. 10 months passed between the first notes being struck and this version emerging, but we can’t wait to hear more.
Marcio McFly is an electronic artist based in Italy whose music is based around the intelligent use of his vintage analogical synthesizers. “Portofino,” a dreamy synth-pop track, is taken from Conservare le Macchine è un Dovere (meaning To Preserve Machines is a Must), an ambitious release where dancefloor tracks are with techno-pop songs. It’s almost eight years old but it still sounds good today.
Originally from Normandy but now residing in Paris, DJ-producer Adam Boufeldja (a.k.a Adam BFD) has made a name for himself with his emotional breakbeat productions that fuse tear-jerking melodies and cinematic euphoria. In March, he put out an EP on Lobster Theremin but “Sonar,” with its assertive kick-drums that punch beneath a wistful melody, is the standout cut from his debut on Shall Not Fade’s Lost Palms label. Innervisions, the release, is Boufeldja’s fourth EP of the year.
Yavor Zografski (a.k.a SMYAH) is a music producer based in Bulgaria whose sound draws from broken beat, left-field bass, and movie scores. Earlier this month, he submitted a mix that he recorded especially for XLR8R, exploring the depths of dubstep and grime, and featuring a lot of his own material. We highly recommend.
Erica Van Berger is a researcher of experimental electronics and, earlier this month, he delivered a podcast filled for Phormix, a Greek platform. Filled with bass, beats, and tribal sounds, it’s a warped out mix that we highly recommend.
Later this month, Brock Van Wey, better known as bvdub, will release Decades on Divided Stars, the latest release in a career that spans more than 50 albums and two dozen singles of emotional ambient techno. Featuring four lengthy tracks, the album is Van Wey’s first release on Affin, the label of Joachim Spieth, founded in 2007. Few artists are able to release music with unrelenting quantity and quality.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Van Wey wrote his first pieces of music when he was around the age of 12, before devoting his teenage years to the local rave community. He began by DJing and promoting his own deep house and ambient events through the late ’80s and early ’90s, first under his real name, then under bvdub, before he began to produce his own music in 2006. You’ll find his music sprinkled on labels like n5MD, Glacial Movements, Darla, Echospace, and Kompakt, but he’s also self-released it through Bandcamp. For years, he called China home, keen to “escape the state of a scene he could no longer accept,” he tells XLR8R.
Nowadays, back in the United States, Van Wey is busier than ever, adding to a discography that knows no bounds. Over the next 18 months, he’s scheduled to release no fewer than seven new albums and his first original cinematic score, but first there’s his XLR8R podcast—a whirlwind of IDM and pulsating ambient music with rough textures and time-stretched vocals that he recorded at his studio in Nevada. Press play for just over an hour of hypnotic electronic music that’s beautiful, melancholic, and emotionally intense.
01. What have you been up to recently? I’ve been mostly attempting to adjust from the better part of the last 21 years living in the urban chaos of China to now living in the middle of nowhere in Nevada so I could be closer to my Mom—an adjustment I handled unsuccessfully in every imaginable way until recently, when I began to score some small victories. It’s hard to deny one of the main advantages: the fact I was finally able to build my first permanent studio structurally from the ground up since it’s my house and no one can tell me not to!
I still work for my university in China, but that’s two evenings a week. (The advantage of being a professor is that you barely work, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!). So, the rest of the time is mostly locked in the studio, garage workouts, and shuttling my doberman to various parks where she goes nuts with her friends. I used to loathe the fact she made me leave the house. Now I’ve learned to like it, and I can’t lie, it’s a kind of necessary therapy to see her so happy.
02. What have you been listening to? I listen to very little music, because I work on my own for nearly every waking moment every day. Besides usually choosing to give my ears a rest, I consciously don’t listen to other music because it keeps my own free from subconscious influences. I listen to drum & bass if I listen to anything at all, but lately I’ve been working the shit out of my good friend James Clements’ (ASC) ambient drum & bass mixes. He’s obviously one of the all-time kings of drum & bass, but since the inception of his new label, Spatial, and the deeper, more ambient directions it has revisited, everything he’s doing hits every spot more than ever. I even bought a new speaker setup just to be able to listen to them in their full glory when I’m in the backyard staring into the void.
03. Your new album is coming soon on Affin. What can you tell us about it? It couldn’t possibly be a bigger honor for me to have this opportunity with Affin. Towards the back end of my DJ “career” in San Francisco, “You Don’t Fool Me” was such an absolutely seminal work for me. I don’t think a set went by that it didn’t find it’s way into. The track is so simple, yet so hypnotic and powerful; it’s one of those tracks that quietly changed history. I would never have thought to myself back then: “22 years from now I’ll bet I’ll be making my own music and on this guy’s label.” Add to that I’ve always been a techno head as well, and a huge fan of both Joachim and Affin way before I got to know him. It’s an amazing convergence of so many things. It’s really awesome Affin has taken on ambient directions as well, and to see that his label-base and fans have really responded well to his own ambient work. It’s always awesome to see artists being able to follow their own heart.
As far as what the album is about: I’ve never been able to put such things to words, nor do I think they should be, really. The music speaks for itself, and just like words, you’ll either understand or you won’t. Those who understand my work have, after more than 45 albums, developed an ability to understand exactly what I’m trying to say, sometimes even better than myself. In recent years, I’ve reached many revelations on my own work at the hands and words of the family of fans I am so fortunate to have in my life, and at my back. I look forward to learning something new about this one too.
04. Where did you record this mix? I recorded the mix in my studio, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada.
05. What can the listener expect? They can expect what they can always expect from everything I do, from my mixes to my own productions. The tales of a life, laid bare for us to examine, deconstruct, and put back together in our own way, teaching each other in the process. And hopefully learning as much about each other as ourselves. Anyone who knows what I do knows nothing is accidental. Everything is done with intent, and there is a specific tale to tell. My heart is always on my sleeve in everything I do (usually to my own detriment), and I would say this mix is no exception, but in this case I’d go a step further and say not only is it no exception: it may be the new rule. Stay way if you don’t wanna get emotional. Or if you hate vocals. But anyone who knows anything I do knows you should already stay away if either of those are not your strength.
07. What’s next on your agenda? I’m just gonna keep pushing, trying to build positive bridges, making and spreading music I love, and hopefully leaving some kind of mark on this world. I’m on a mission this year to just spread a lot more positivity, and to be a catalyst for good wherever I can, both inside music and anywhere I can in life. I’m fortunate to have met many others in recent times who see the same need, and we have a lot of amazing things coming. The world of music has seen itself sink into a selfish, dark, insular place in recent years. It has been unhealthy for everyone involved, from the scene at large to those who live within its midst.
There’s definitely change coming, and change that’s already here. I’m honored to be a part of it in any way I can. Other than that, plenty of drunk video-gaming trapped under a dog. Remember, you’re never drinking alone if your dog is home!
XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel to listen offline, or subscribe to XLR8R+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.
Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast below.If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
