WIDE Recomienda: #0019
This week WIDE Recommends comes packed with collabs by cool people, a return from hiatus and mythical half-snake half-babe creatures from the oldest traditions of the east: if you’re need of a dose of bounce, dreamy breakup nostalgia vibes, streetwise meanness or heartfelt intensity, well, we’ve got you covered, homes!
1. SIETE CATORCE – 124 / 140
Prolific mexican producer Marco Polo Gutiérrez comes back into the business along with the electronic music collective Naafi,, with a track that can only exist within those clubs where one winds up taking their clothes off: A rhythm with a crystal clear afro-caribbean metric, focusing on percussion. As little melody as there’s to be found is brief and inarticulate, glitchy and noisy synthetic metal tones joining the drum’s parade: the image is of extra-terrestrial bedouins coming from desert dunes into plains, to shake whatever they may have in the way of buttcheeks around the fire, until the break of dawn.
2. Bru-C Feat. P Money – V.I.B.E.
Yo, for the non-native listener this might be a bit hard to keep track. Geez! We really hope that Genius page pops up soon. The These two aggro bass music representatives shoot bars like hemidemisemiquaver machine guns, but we can definitely tell they’re getting hyped up in there, they’re certainly talking tough in there, laying lyrics upon a beat that can only come across as the purest Grime, an instrumentally stripped-down track with a very shady bass synth pumping digital harmonics as thick as yo’ mama and crackling hyper compressed drums: forget about cheesy jazz samples and chopped drum breaks, this track is M.E.A.N.
3. Cuco x Clairo – DROWN
Are we witnessing a viral love talking about falling out of it? Well, we’re not a gossip publication, but it’s kinda cute to see these two prominent, young independent artists – who’ve both gone viral thanks to internet magic – working together. With a funky and playful synth bassline and a just-out-of-a-bubble-bath R&B atmosphere, Boston’s singer and songwriter joins with that from Los Angeles to have their troubles out with a tongue-in-cheek tone and grumble about the post-breakup madness which awaits them.
4. Petite Noir – Blame Fire
Petite Noir can’t quite help himself when it comes to creating his own stuff. Literally, all his stuff. From scratch. On a molecular level. Back in 2015 he made up a genre of his own. The phrase “Blame Fire” is his own way of saying “Thank God” using some obscure symbolism that only the careful listeners and his creative director RhaRha truly understand, as it alludes to the current cultural movements in Africa. Three years past the release of his first album, Yannick Ilunga returns with the very distinct sonic persona that earned him a rather noteworthy entry in the world of independent music, with lyrics resounding of his inter-cultural upbringing, the struggle of African peoples and the never-ending process of becoming.
Listen to our last series of new music recommendations (0018) here
5. A-Trak feat. Todd Terry – DJs Gotta Dance More
A-Trak joined up with one of house music’s most prominent contributors for a back-to-the-basics piece of the eternally majestuous 4/4 musical architecture of punchy kick drums, crispy snares/claps, luscious hi-hats and jazzed-up samples. Both the DJ and the scientist may benefit from the knowledge that Terry drops on the beat: where theory must be met by praxis, DJs Gotta Dance More, not only must onL go diggin’ endlessly at the most remote corners of the internet and the world, but get down on the floor, feel the music and the energy of the crowd tuning the production to a very intimate experience of the dance music field: make it funky. Y’all heard the man.
6. Sevdaliza – Shahmaran
Stepping up her already buff audiovisual game, Sevdaliza once again partners up with Ghanian director Emmanuel Adjei to produce a video beset by allegory and cool cultural references from the Punjab. “Shahmaran” alludes to a mythical creature characterized by themes of deceiving appearances, transcendence into truer states of mind and the powers and wisdom of femininity. The video achieves a commendable revamp of the myth whilst dealing with the more mainstream subjects of race, alienation and lifestyle alternating with images of futuristic and otherworldly structures of the gods (or maybe pre-human alien civilizations, if you really wanna go there).
