News

Second-generation Jamaican, Floridian rapper Wahid has today shared his debut two-track EP “WILT/CORNERSTONE.”

Feeling carefree, Wahid shares this on the two tracks, “‘WILT’ is a record conceived after I drank a cheap bottle of Stroysky liquor in the studio with Kaelin and Iggy. I wanted to emulate carefree vibes on Isaiah Rashad’s ‘House is Burning’ album. With a lot of Damian Marley playing through the studio speakers, ‘CORNERSTONE’ is a direct inspiration from a song his father wrote (Bob Marley’s Cornerstone; 1970), which is one of my all time favorite songs. Meek shall inherit the earth, last shall be first.”

Through Wahid’s sonic storytelling he refuses to submit to negativity and fatalism. His hip-hop collective had just wrapped their first national tour. Their DMs were flooded with A&Rs offering deals and producers looking to collaborate. One major label president – who had signed some of the biggest artists of the last quarter-century – told them that they were on the path to becoming global superstars. Then the group split up. It was over before it even began.

The ensuing depression was all-consuming. There were days where Wahid didn’t budge from bed, drawing the blinds closed, and numbing the wounds with bottle after bottle of liquor. Despite his best efforts to salvage the wreckage, none of his attempts yielded anything positive. But through the duress, he discovered his inner resilience and perseverance. Stay tuned for more music from Wahid.

Read more about it on CLASH.

“an afrodisiac-filled, G-Funk house amalgam” - CLASH

Southern California producer-singer duo, comprised of songwriter tomee zero and producer JVMES JET, Charlie Vettuno have shared their debut EP Lime Juice.  Supported by Wonderland, CLASH and BBC Radio 1Xtra, the duo have built a devoted fanbase for their unique sonic tapestry not only in their hometown of Los Angeles but further beyond. EP highlights include the high-energy house-induced “Triggered” and vibrantly brilliant “Fre nch Toast Pt 2”.

The duo bring a dynamic blend of musicality and innovation to their craft. Their sleek club-rap tracks draw comparison to producers-artists like Cakes Da Killa, Channel Tres, Azealia Banks and Kaytranada. Charlie Vettuno's signature style has caught the attention of music critics and fans alike, earning them praise from notable publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine and leading them to work with the likes of Ari Lennox.

“Our EP Lime Juice is a narrative on fame.” says the duo on their debut project. “It’s told through the eyes of a lost but ambitious person who believes fame will solve their problems and through the journey they discover fame is not the answer. Each song dives into the spoils of fame, Ego, Luxury, Sex, Drugs & Rock n’ Roll but with our own twist. Ending with the realization they need to get back to who they truly are despite the new circumstances of their life.”

Listen/buy Lime Juice here.

"There’s a sense of the other-worldly to his music" - CLASH

“channels easy-listening exotica a la Stereolab” - SHINDIG

It was somewhere in remote Alaska that Michael Gold—who records and performs pop–infused psych-rock as Mirror Tree—began to realize that he was officially on the road less traveled. “I was flying around between all these native villages and all these little, muddy gravel air strips in a single-engine Cessna, in and out of snowstorms, and landing on ice-covered runways,” says Gold, who worked for several years as a pilot in the Last Frontier, and currently is based out of Los Angeles, and flies a 737 for a major airline. “Being a musician to me always felt like the path of least resistance a little bit, you know? And when I touched down in a place like Bethel, Alaska, I felt very firmly off of the path of least resistance.”

Until Gold decided to fly away from the world he knew, music was always right there in front of him. Gold’s mother, Sharon Robinson, is a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter who collaborated extensively with the late Leonard Cohen, co-writing some of his classics like “Everybody Knows.” Robinson was close friends with Cohen, and Cohen was Gold’s godfather: “He was definitely a big part of my world growing up, for sure,” Gold explains.

Raised in L.A., Gold was formally trained in classical and jazz piano, and the wonders and possibilities of music seeped into him. He continued pursuing music in college, studying jazz piano at nearby CalArts, where he lived in a barn in the remote town of Val Verde, which was at one point known as the “Black Palm Springs.” Around this time, he joined the indie-disco band Poolside as a keyboardist/vocalist, bouncing around the world on tour with them, as well co-writing songs like the disco-rock-fusion epic “Feel Alright.” (18 million streams on Spotify and counting.)

But the call of the wild never stopped pulling Gold—driven in large part by adventures he would go on as a kid with his dad to places like the Mojave Desert. And, after getting his pilot’s license, he decided to trust his instincts (and some good advice from a fellow pilot) by heading to Alaska. “I basically just bought a plane ticket, and knocked on all of [the local airline services’] doors with my resume in hand,” he laughs. For the first time in years, Gold wasn’t thinking like a musician anymore, and went back to enjoying some of his favorite bands—like Stereolab and Broadcast—solely as a listener. “It just kind of changed the way I heard music,” he explains. “I wasn’t analyzing it for the purpose of learning, for the purpose of becoming a better musician anymore. I was just kind of feeling it.”

But he couldn’t stay away from making music for long. After coming back to L.A., Gold began writing and recording again, and soon teamed up with former Poolside bandmate Filip Nikolic to develop his sound—something like a mishmash of Supertramp and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. When the two were honing in on the vibe they were going for, tapping into Spaghetti Western soundtracks and Tropicália, they realized they would ideally need a Farfisa organ, which Gold conveniently happened to have in storage—but hadn’t ever used before, and wasn’t sure would even work. Sure enough, though, “We plugged it in and it fired right up,” Gold marvels. “And that just became the backbone sound of that whole album.”

With Gold serving as the main writing and performing force of Mirror Tree, and Nikolic producing the set, while co-writing and performing on some tracks as well, Mirror Tree took flight. Gold would demo out songs and at his home studio, and then bring them to Nikolic’s studio, where they would work together to create grooves worthy of ELO for the chillwave generation. Songs like “300 Miles” and the title track “Mirror Tree” take the vintage Farfisa reverb and twist it into something modern, infused with a non-Western sensibility and a simultaneous Western accessibility. On rippers like “See It Through” and “Echoes Competing,” Gold combines his virtuosic keyboard abilities with earworm choruses and subtle poetics: “Cigarette thrown in the wind,” he sings in his falsetto on the latter track. “Mirror shows the glow / Driving on alone.”

As the project went on, the image of the Mirror Tree stuck with Gold—a metaphor for the way that light and life bounces off of people and things around us. Soon he realized that it was the appropriate title for the album and the band at large—and served as an ethos for everything that brought him to where he is today: “I’m not a super spiritual person, but whenever someone dies, I really get a lot of comfort that they are just kind of being constantly reflected on everyone,” he says. “Their presence—you get to keep it through the people that they affected.”

Mirror Tree's self-titled debut is out now and available to stream, buy digitally or buy physically.

Read more at Northern Transmissions.

Toronto-based DJ and producer BAMBII shares a new single from her highly-anticipated EP Infinity Club, out August 4th. Hailed as one of the central voices elevating jungle in Toronto by Rolling Stone, BAMBII continues to bridge the gap between diaspora Caribbean communities with new single "Slip Slide," calling on North London producer and artist Ragz Originale (Skepta's "Shutdown," FKA Twigs, SOPHIE) and Amsterdam-based producer Lamsi, along with a self-directed video.

"Slip Slide" invokes the essence of the classic femme fatale archetype layered over reinterpreted dancehall, garage and jungle sounds. The new track follows her previous releases, "Wicked Gyal" featuring Lady Lykez, and "One Touch," which was deemed Best New Track by Pitchfork and featured in Apple's new MacBook Air commercial, all of which contribute to the atmosphere of Infinity Club.

Infinity Club finds BAMBII building on her already-impressive sonic repertoire, encapsulating the sound of a generation of Caribbean youth living between two worlds. On the heels of bringing her kinetic production style to Kelela's recent album Raven, this new EP establishes BAMBII as a trailblazing voice in the intersecting worlds of electronic and Caribbean music. The project opens the door to a limitless space that blurs the lines between memories and dreams, anchored by ecstatic production by BAMBII that centers on the solace one can find in the middle of a crowded dance floor. In BAMBII's telling, Infinity Club soundtracks an anonymous space holding a community of bodies all flowing to the same rhythm: "Infinity Club knows no age, or social construct. It's for everyone, everywhere. In all ways, always."

See CLASH for more info.

It was somewhere in remote Alaska that Michael Gold—who records and performs pop–infused psych-rock as Mirror Tree—began to realize that he was officially on the road less traveled. “I was flying around between all these native villages and all these little, muddy gravel air strips in a single-engine Cessna, in and out of snowstorms, and landing on ice-covered runways,” says Gold, who worked for several years as a pilot in the Last Frontier, and currently is based out of Los Angeles, and flies a 737 for a major airline. “Being a musician to me always felt like the path of least resistance a little bit, you know? And when I touched down in a place like Bethel, Alaska, I felt very firmly off of the path of least resistance.”

Until Gold decided to fly away from the world he knew, music was always right there in front of him. Gold’s mother, Sharon Robinson, is a Grammy-winning singer/songwriter who collaborated extensively with the late Leonard Cohen, co-writing some of his classics like “Everybody Knows.” Robinson was close friends with Cohen, and Cohen was Gold’s godfather: “He was definitely a big part of my world growing up, for sure,” Gold explains.

Raised in L.A., Gold was formally trained in classical and jazz piano, and the wonders and possibilities of music seeped into him. He continued pursuing music in college, studying jazz piano at nearby CalArts, where he lived in a barn in the remote town of Val Verde, which was at one point known as the “Black Palm Springs.” Around this time, he joined the indie-disco band Poolside as a keyboardist/vocalist, bouncing around the world on tour with them, as well co-writing songs like the disco-rock-fusion epic “Feel Alright.” (18 million streams on Spotify and counting.)

But the call of the wild never stopped pulling Gold—driven in large part by adventures he would go on as a kid with his dad to places like the Mojave Desert. And, after getting his pilot’s license, he decided to trust his instincts (and some good advice from a fellow pilot) by heading to Alaska. “I basically just bought a plane ticket, and knocked on all of [the local airline services’] doors with my resume in hand,” he laughs. For the first time in years, Gold wasn’t thinking like a musician anymore, and went back to enjoying some of his favorite bands—like Stereolab and Broadcast—solely as a listener. “It just kind of changed the way I heard music,” he explains. “I wasn’t analyzing it for the purpose of learning, for the purpose of becoming a better musician anymore. I was just kind of feeling it.”

But he couldn’t stay away from making music for long. After coming back to L.A., Gold began writing and recording again, and soon teamed up with former Poolside bandmate Filip Nikolic to develop his sound—something like a mishmash of Supertramp and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. When the two were honing in on the vibe they were going for, tapping into Spaghetti Western soundtracks and Tropicália, they realized they would ideally need a Farfisa organ, which Gold conveniently happened to have in storage—but hadn’t ever used before, and wasn’t sure would even work. Sure enough, though, “We plugged it in and it fired right up,” Gold marvels. “And that just became the backbone sound of that whole album.”

With Gold serving as the main writing and performing force of Mirror Tree, and Nikolic producing the set, while co-writing and performing on some tracks as well, Mirror Tree took flight. Gold would demo out songs and at his home studio, and then bring them to Nikolic’s studio, where they would work together to create grooves worthy of ELO for the chillwave generation. Songs like “300 Miles” and the title track “Mirror Tree” take the vintage Farfisa reverb and twist it into something modern, infused with a non-Western sensibility and a simultaneous Western accessibility. On rippers like “See It Through” and “Echoes Competing,” Gold combines his virtuosic keyboard abilities with earworm choruses and subtle poetics: “Cigarette thrown in the wind,” he sings in his falsetto on the latter track. “Mirror shows the glow / Driving on alone.”

As the project went on, the image of the Mirror Tree stuck with Gold—a metaphor for the way that light and life bounces off of people and things around us. Soon he realized that it was the appropriate title for the album and the band at large—and served as an ethos for everything that brought him to where he is today: “I’m not a super spiritual person, but whenever someone dies, I really get a lot of comfort that they are just kind of being constantly reflected on everyone,” he says. “Their presence—you get to keep it through the people that they affected.”

The artist explains that lead single, "See It Through", is a "lyrically self-aware piece of music - a song that took so long to write and underwent so many different versions that it ended up written about the process of writing it," while the second single "Tuesday" is "an instrumental palate-cleansing interlude inspired by classic film scores with an emphasis on string instruments and some 60’s inspired backing vocals."

Pre-order the upcoming album out on September 8th, 2023.

Read more about it on Clash.