HIPSTER BEAT THREAD [ELECTRONIC, LO FI, CHiLLWAVE, ETC]

INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

for those that don't know, hipsters have taken over the beat making throne. hip hop producers have drastically fallen far behind the cusp, and this thread will serve as evidence of that. this is an ongoing thread in dedication to underground electronic artists, local as well as international.

feel free to contribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWtAeQC0GcM

waterproof · June 2011

Yo im feeling that Active Child, i might have to check them out...even though im a soul, jazz,blues, hip-hop dude i can ? with that Active Child...but electronic is the cousin of hip-hop just like Funk.....Bambatta and the Electro scene out here in cali in the 80's. but i think hip-hop producers are evolving and pushing hip-hop foward because Fly Lo, Terrace martin, Thundercat, waajeed is picking up where Dilla Left oFF. But i ? with DAM ? .

But Great thread because threads like this is helping people to get rid of their musical prejudice.... i always thought techno/house was whiteboy and mexican ? , but was shocked wheni found out it was invented by some black youths in Detroit.

Post some ? and i can get hip to it...anymore ? like that Active Child

INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

waterproof wrote: »

But Great thread because threads like this is helping people to get rid of their musical prejudice...

no doubt, honestly that was the sole purpose for the creation of this thread

here are a few more bangers to sift through. much more to come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxnAoTiqDQo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbxjYgXlNPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI34mboSjnI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kxdGKKYDIw

INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzi97vh-lgE

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INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

tom krell leads a double life. During the day, he's a research fellow currently translating a book of "post-kantian philosophy" in cologne, germany. But after work he's making narcotized, below-fi r&b as how to dress well. In october of last year, krell started posting batches of his clouded tunes to his blog. They're marked by his piercing voice, which bears a resemblance to bon iver's justin vernon, or even justin timberlake at his most fragile and falsetto-y.

At this point, he's got nearly 30 songs up for download, and the recently p4k-highlighted tracks "decisions" and "ready for the world" (which is due out as a 7" single on lefse soon) are great places to start. Krell plans to make his live debut with a few european shows before returning to the u.s. In august.

I recently chatted with krell about kanye west's blog, the-dream, and trying to escape yourself.

pitchfork: one of your first live shows is going to be in sweden soon, which makes sense since how to dress well warps the same r&b and hip-hop sounds as some current swedish acts like jj.

Tk: I really liked the way 1990s hip-hop and r&b signifiers came through in the music on the first jj album. But their second album showed me that the way in which they relate to those signifiers was not as savvy as i thought-- it seemed to use them in a kitsch way. When i heard the first track on the second album, ["my life"], i thought, "? , this is lame." i really love 90s r&b. It's not a joke to me. "twisted" by keith sweat is a ? masterpiece.

pitchfork: on your blog, you posted kanye west's latest rant about "creativity," which is pretty out there but also weirdly relatable to me. What's your take on it?

Tk: Kanye's blog is one of the great living works of art. So when i read a post like that i just think he deserves credit. At first i was not a fan of kanye but, with each album, i was more and more convinced he's a really serious artist. Especially on 808s and heartbreak. There's something quasi-ineffable about how everything in kanye's life hangs together, from the style to the emo record to his guest verse on jeezy's "put on".

pitchfork: what's interesting to me about how to dress well is that it has this basis in something like 808s and heartbreak but at the same time you're kind of hiding behind these lo-fi techniques. The beauty of somebody like kanye is how clear he is-- he didn't hide behind anything on 808s.

Tk: I don't want how to dress well to be about me in the way that kanye wants it to be about kanye. For kanye, music is a vehicle for personality and self-expression. But music allows me to depersonalize. It's a lot more about sound design than my personality. Kanye is really self-advancing. That's not what how to dress well is about-- it's more about delivering a feeling.

In movie terms, kanye is like the bourne identity-- he's obviously better than that, but still, the bourne identity is a ? good-ass movie. I don't do the bourne identity. I do something more like au hasard balthazar, but instead of having it be the life of a horse, it's like the life of soul for real and keith sweat and me growing up.

The first time i remember hearing the concept of a "year" was when i was five in 1989. I was like, "whoa, i live in history. This is a year." so my music is inspired by that time, driving around in my parents' car listening to the radio. Another thing is i was a little bit of a late bloomer so my voice didn't change until later; i kept singing along with girl r&b songs for longer than most dudes. I've always loved singing but the only way i could ever sing in high school and college was to scream in rock bands-- there aren't, like, a lot of venues to be a pop singer when you're 16. I switched to doing stuff like how to dress well a year ago when i stopped playing the guitar.

pitchfork: did your experiences in college or learning about philosophy contribute to the how to dress well sound?

Tk: Well, the music that i was making for two years before how to dress well was experimental drone-y stuff. I listen to it now and think it's boring as a ? . But how to dress well is very un-reflective music. I don't sit down with an idea and spell it out. I just start singing. It doesn't make sense for me to compare it to philosophy because i just close my eyes and open my mouth and the songs come out.

I don't know if you've tried to parse any of the lyrics in how to dress well but they're mostly not there. The melodies are really immediate to me and i could take them up and make something a little more personality-driven, but then i would run the risk of being like some ? indie robin thicke-- i don't want to be the tall lanky white dude trying to be robin thicke.

The songs are organized like a pop song but still disorganized and experimental enough that you can listen to it as a means of selfless possession. The music that i love to listen to is twofold-- there's noisy soundscape-y stuff like black dice and alvin lucier all the way to, like, d'angelo and the-dream. I always wanted to hear them at the same time.

pitchfork: what do you think somebody like the-dream would think about your music?

Tk: My dream is to have the-dream appreciate my melodic sensibility. I sampled him on a song, but i probably shouldn't tell you which one. I think i'd have to explain myself to the-dream before he heard it, though, otherwise he would think some of the recording techniques are mistakes. The-dream made a video where he recorded an entire new song in like an hour and that's his absolute best song ever. When i heard that song i was like, "this is what i want my music to sound like."

pitchfork: i'm curious about the idea of fear when it comes to lo-fi acts, like do you think the way you record and treat your vocals is a result of being afraid to put yourself out there in a more direct manner?

Tk: I think i exorcised any fear over the last several years, actually. When i look back on the drone stuff i was doing, i can say that was a self-conscious mechanism. But that's not the case with this new stuff. Like, on my song "my body", my voice is really upfront. I'm happy that there's this lo-fi thing going on right now because it gets people to be more tolerant of lower fidelity recordings. But i don't believe that the lo-fi/hi-fi split applies to how to dress well in the same way. I'm not just in my dorm room on a four-track-- i'm working these recordings to sound exactly how i want them to sound. At the end of april, we're getting flown down to san francisco to go into a proper studio to smooth out some inconsistencies and flush out the low end of some songs.

And i want to get songs set up for the forthcoming live shows as well. I don't want to be a hater but when i see some people perform live, they stand behind a keyboard and hold one note and sing into a microphone with their head down to make it look like they're real musicians. I want to go the exact opposite direction. Kool keith says pop stars are like wack ass britney spears with headsets-- that's what i want to be. Like a pop singer.

pitchfork: will the live show just be you?

Tk: Yeah.

pitchfork: so when you refer to how to dress well as "we," who's "we" exactly?

Tk: I don't really know. [laughs] i don't want to sound difficult but the person that i am with family and my career and so forth doesn't correspond with how to dress well. I guess it's the royal "we." but it's just me. [laughs] it's annoying to have to be me all the time, so there's definitely an escapist element in it. I'm really happy to be living in europe when people started listening to my music because if i had to go to work at the cafe i worked at in brooklyn and have somebody say anything to me about my music in person, i'd just be uncomfortable.

pitchfork: that's kind of inevitable once you start doing shows.

Tk: [laughs] yeah, i'm ready for it. I really don't like what happens to singer-songwriters when they get attention for their music. You always want to be like, "you changed, man." they write the songs from their ego and they get gratification out of people appreciating them and i really don't want that. That's the point of the anonymity.

HOW TO DReSS WELL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxLY9l5Fmmc

INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hB3aVcQKlA

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Ounceman · June 2011

Ive been an electronic music head for the longest. and i am starting to see more electronic esque trends infiltrate the hip hop and even r & b scene. im not a purist so i think overall its good for the genre. and although i tend to lean more toward the abstract, drill n bass, glitch/idm side of electronic music i also appreciate the melodic, ambient side of it as well. chillwave i like alot. u can sort of say it evolved from new wave, dream pop and shoegaze which i am also huge fans of as well. washed out and neon indian are some of my fav. groups within the genre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoN2IvLlK8w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb2yFG76hbA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jma6Ojg2Vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWs4e7oTn9g

INFAREDSHAWTY · June 2011

nice drop. washed out and neon indian are definitely at the forefront of what would be considered chillwave. matter of fact, a lot of these new acts tend to feed off of washed out's production style.