What’s Tre Listening To is a new series of posts where our host shares highlights of his listening habits this week: old, new or anywhere in between.
MYRNE – In Search of Solitude
Electronic music has a somewhat unfair reputation for being impersonal. There’s a conception that heavy synths and precise drum patterns don’t have any real capacity to convey the spectrum of thoughts and feelings that everyday people can relate to in the same way they can with someone playing a guitar or a piano. Others may balk at the thought — finding a clear understanding of the intent present in tracks like “Strobe” or “Divinity” without a hitch — but the idea of all electronica being strictly for the purpose of mindless dancing has been a hard one for the scene as a whole to shake.
There’s a crop of producers making waves these days, be it intentionally or not, whose approaches bring together the analog and the digital to make music that pushes forward by looking back. These artists — San Holo, Kasbo and Illenium counted among them — have embraced the vocal traditions of indie rock and pop, as well as some of the instrumentation, with the intent to blur the traditional divisions between electronic and other contemporary genres. MYRNE — a project from Singaporean DJ Manfred Lim — joins this group with “In Search of Solitude,” a lavishly made solo debut album that highlights his diverse sensibilities.
Lim keeps the record’s sound atmospheric and consistent across tracks, but resists settling for one style for the entire tracklist, resulting in an album that stays engaging throughout. “Me ++ You” opens things up with a lengthy build and a pumping, march-like drop, while “Another Life” cuts a smooth vocal line into chops over a harmonious instrumental that ebbs and flows in and out Robotaki-style.
“All Night I’ve Been Waiting For You” brings the album the closest it gets to MYRNE’s earlier Monstercat-era singles, having a RAC-like late-night neon aesthetic about it that feels like what happens when Lim finally catches the colors he once chased after dark. “Hyperviolence,” meanwhile, bridges the gap between his current work and his earliest releases by pairing a soft, piano-driven opening with the album’s hardest-hitting, glitchiest drops. It might just be the name, but the open sound Lim employs on “Worlds Away” with Karra on vocals has serious Seven Lions vibes, though perhaps without the American dubstep elements.
While at its core a rumination on the nature of being alone (it’s right there in the title), some of the album’s best moments come about thanks to the collaborators Lim enlists to get the perfect sound. With California vocalist Lost Boy riding shotgun, “Higher” takes the record own a dark pop highway. The funky vibes on the Rynn-assisted “You Could Stay” bring Kasbo’s work to mind, cleverly evoking the singles from last year’s Places We Don’t Know with MYRNE’s own take on the style. Grabbitz creates a one-man chorus with himself on the soaring “Otherside,” and Sophie Tweed Simmons’s turn on “Starsigns” is an exceptional moment of bittersweet closure when paired with Lim’s kinetic drop. “Good At Being Alone” closes things out with a similar moment of vulnerability, with both narrators admitting that they’ve seen better days (and have resorted to self-medicating to try to improve things).
If MYRNE is In Search of Solitude, he knows exactly where to find it. This debut album further reinforces the staying power of his sound, and impresses with a level of emotional range that places him among the vanguard of producers in the still-growing future bass scene.
In Search of Solitude is available now on all streaming platforms through Ultra Music.
planet Jane – Queen Johanna
Chilled-out, instrumental hip hop is the name of the game on planet Jane‘s Queen Johanna, the latest effort from the Chicago-based chord reckoner and founder of Diamondfish Records (whose other artists include Philly one-man band Silence and Secrecy, the ever elusive Infimace-5, and a bastard robot who needs to write another album already).
On “Metal Gender (Pts. I & II),” Jane combines a classic hip hop-styled beat with birdsong and a set of bleepy synth samples that feel as if they were recorded deep under the sea, while on ” Hexenmaedchen / BLOOD RED,” Jane distorts conversational clips beyond recognition over a deep, ambient soundscape.
It’s easy to imagine clips from the foreboding “The Hallz of Pittsboro” or the punny “Linx Awakening / NEVER (Reprise)” over bumps on Adult Swim airing long, long after one ought to have gone to bed. (Jane earns bonus points on the former for introducing herself with a sample of a long-forgotten Kids’ WB show.)
Tracks like “Moonbeach Lakehouse / WHERE.I’M.FROM” and “Lotus Hotel Suite” highlight Jane’s stylistic interests in exploring the middle ground between lo-fi hip hop and plunderphonics, while the interlude-esque “NEVERLOOKBACK” and “Under The Yawnin’ Sky (Whisper of the Heart) / Radio Ron” have a sensibility to them that isn’t quite vaporwave, but wouldn’t be out of place in the context built by that scene. Jane’s music isn’t for everyone, but her curiosity toward making unique sounds is admirable.
Queen Johanna is out October 11th on Bandcamp via Diamondfish. You can find it and the rest of planet Jane’s discography on her Bandcamp page.
Alina Baraz – To Me
“It’s been a while since you heard from me / I stay alone, protecc [sic] my energies,” Alina Baraz croons on her newest record. A surprise release dropped to commemorate the singer’s 26th birthday, “To Me” represents the singer’s reemergence after going quiet for a year.
Baraz’s last record, The Color of You, was an EP that intended to establish her presence as a solo act after the viral success of her chilled-out collaboration with Danish producer Galimatias on Urban Flora, with tracks like “I Don’t Even Know Why Though” and “Tainted” moving away from the slick, chillwave/future bass tones of her early work in favor of something more akin to the current R&B landscape — still electronically minded, but with a heavier focus on Baraz’s own vocal abilities and style.
While it doesn’t serve as the reunion between Baraz and Galimatias that longtime fans can’t help but clamor for (instead being produced by Doxa and Ilophiile), “To Me” brings some of the vibes present on Urban Flora back in a new way, pairing her silky vocals (“Here’s to good people, good nights / Good highs, good health / Some tears, some stress / But I count my blessings”) with a stirring acoustic guitar.
“To Me” is out now on all streaming platforms through Mom + Pop.
ilo ilo – habits
ilo ilo haven’t told us much about who they actually are yet, beyond the fact that their name, pronounced “e-low e-low,” means “mom and dad aren’t home/come thru,” and that they’re pretty good at making seedy electropop. That was the case earlier this year with the release of the mysterious act’s debut EP, “wish i said this to u sooner,” and it’s still true today with their first single since, a glossy record about being stuck on an old flame called “habits.”
The record combines a few different traditions: the group’s own future bass sensibilities, as heard on previous songs of theirs like “come over” and “let me go,” the theatricality of M83’s most captivating work, and a remixed variant of the blacked-out hedonism of Trilogy-era The Weeknd. They’re still on the come up, but with an already fully-formed aesthetic, an opening spot on Louis the Child’s latest tour, and more tunes on the way, it’s only a matter of time before ilo ilo hit it big.
“habits” is out now on all streaming platforms through ilo ilo LLC.
Mr. Oizo – Flat Beat
Just another day in the office.
“Flat Beat” is out on all streaming platforms through F Communications.
Got some tunes to share? Send me a DM on Twitter @trespeak and I’ll take a listen.
Mind the Weird 
One response to “What’s Tre Listening To? (10/7/2019)”
[…] stuck with me since then. It’s a nice postscript to the kind of ideas MYRNE explored on In Search of Solitude, and pairs well with Manila Killa’s own work on his EP […]
LikeLike