BLU KOBINA, who KOBINA?

Sometimes you come across brilliance but for whatever reason your mind isn't ready for it yet. So when it comes back around into your life it hits you twice as hard. 

I discovered BLU KOBINA back in January of 2023 with Jury (2018) and it went right over my head like the idiot that I am. I came back to him earlier this year and found more songs that I liked but still blind to the art behind the music. 

This morning, God knows why, it has finally sunk in and now I have to go through his whole career as a musician. 

Dark, rich and full of nuanced autotuned vocals BLU KOBINA's trap is just something else. I've been going crazy all morning trying to find information on the artist. There is none. I followed him on Instagram and I have the theory that he's Canadian. But there is literally nothing besides the fact that he's called Seth.

Everything is done by this one dude. ALL OF IT. And nobody knows him. There are no interviews on his music, nothing. I can't believe it. For me, he's up there with the current best. The music sounds so much fuller than what you would expect from a home trap production. The layers to the main vocals and the backups, the instrumentals, all of it. 

His latest album, Wizard (2023) is a no-skip album. An absolute corker from start to finish. But I will say, you are not allowed to hit it off with such a banger as Angel X. What even is that? I tried to find the original song from which he sampled the female vocals but it was impossible. I went to YouTube, the place of answers and he had deactivated the comment section. It just makes everything even more appealing, the mystery of it. We love ourselves a dark king. 

Anyway, Angel X is like the abstract at the start of a dissertation paper. It's the bottled essence of the album's mood. Particularly, the harmonies he does with himself are very smartly crafted. Every layer of his own voice is stacked but each track has its unique autotuned twist to it, making it sound like different people all at once. The instrumental has a booming kick to it, an occasional deep bass string oozing in and out that sticks with you. The sampled elements of the song sound taken from traditional East Asian music (is my guess) which gives the whole tune a graceful and elegant spinal cord. Ten out of ten trap music.

Next album down the line, Slay Thy Demons (2022). Phwoa. He does one of those album transitions where one song (an interlude most likely) turns seamlessly into the next track. That's how the album starts and when he hits it off with that first beat in the album you feel it somewhere hidden inside your stomach. He takes the whole experience to an even darker place or deeper into your entrails with La Lune. He samples something which I know I know but I can't figure out what it is. [2h later]. I HAVE IT *manic laughter* It's the same sample as HAARPER's The Alchemist and the original is Fontane di Roma, p106:I. La fontana di Valle Giulia all'alba (the Ichiko Aoba version). That was going to annoy me so much if unsolved. BLU KOBINA uses a philarmonic orchestra version of the track. 

Okay because I could continue for ages I'm just going to highlight a few more. silk from Castle in the Woods (2021) because it's sexy as hell, burn the flowers (from that same album) because it's a little bit more upbeat and emo in a fun way. Carbon, a 2020 single, is very powerful as it plays with reverberation effects. It has a Travis Scott feel to it, which works very well with the instrumental. Wolf Blood is a single from 2019, that has a softer more melancholic rhythm to it. I understand that this might not be for everyone so this is an exclusive recommending for my sad homies. 

Do you believe in life after ODIE?

Bruv, you made me cry and I can't even bloody come up with words to describe this 

All I can say is: 

Anti Heaven: So accurate it hurts

 I have a new music obsession that I can't seem to quit. It's one random song from a random album from some random guy.

I don't know what brought it on, maybe I've been having too many happy thoughts lately that I needed to be reminded of what hopeful melancholy sounds like. This is the song. 

It's called Anti Heaven but before I get into the song I'm gonna talk a bit about the man behind it. 

Ben Shirken or as I came across him, Beshken, is an indie-electronic music producer and instrumentalist based in New York. After winning me over with his 2021 EP Tendryl, and in particular, Like You Do, I listened to more of his stuff and found that he's capable of making these deep soundscapes that wave you away for a while. Going for fast-paced high-hat usually and faded-off into the distance vocals, the whole thing just screams of spending a relaxed evening in a trance. 

And even though that EP is quite strictly electronic music, the artist has a habit of surprising you with each new single or album. His music reminds us of jamming jazz rhythms and quirky piano melodies, at times he brings his indie voice closer to the spotlight and uses more organic sounds that can ground the track into the psychedelic indie genre. 

He's like smoke tendrils and moving in and out of your ears. His 2019 single Cursed particularly captures the experience and the song (Focus On) that follows it on the album (Aisle of Psalm) vibes in the exact same fashion. 

His latest release is the 2023 EP Pressure Bump. On there he takes us to darker sounds but you can still feel his essence. He gives it his absolute all on the final track Mother. 

Now Anti Heaven. It's part of the 2022 album Pantomime which has other great tunes on it such as Self Defense, Social Suicide and The Ocean, El Diablo just to name a few. The song feels like the soundtrack to a moment of reflection. It feels like standing on top of a hill over the sprawling city in a cold sunrise. The city lamps are still on but the sun already made the sky lighter. The drums come in and sound like total chaos, but there's a meaning to each and every one of the beats. There's a specific feeling behind the speed of them and the harsh delivery at times. At the same time, a deep piano melody takes you along for the ride and that leads our vocalist into the first first to take off and get us to the heart of the song. It reminds me of the Weird Fishes/Arpeggi conundrum that we find in Radiohead's In Rainbows (2007 only fuller. 

I can't wait to be stuck in a skyscraper hotel room in Chicago at night looking into other people's windows and wondering the meaning of life itself. Again. Next week I'm gonna be feeling like a side character in The Bear having their little moment thanks to this song. 

I'll leave you with a quote from Beshken: "Finding excitement in the abstraction of human existence allows for the flow of endless ideas."

Music is in its hot summer era

What is it about summer that everything just screams and bursts with colour and taste? The sounds coming out of my headphones lately certainly are keeping to the style of the season and everything sounds a lot richer and rounded.

Loud and deep, reaching into the pit of my stomach and swirling me around as if high on daylight, heat and music. This is not specific to one genre, one artist, one mood. It's how the medium feels right now. Is that just me?
I'm using this entry to clean my monthly list just so I don't have a stupendous mental breakdown at the end of the month and I have to delete 50 songs because they don't fit. Three silly songs that I will be keeping in.

So, what's been getting me all hot and bothered lately? Aside from life itself:

1. Trey Wxxds - HERE FOR A MOMENT (Album)

Mystery rapper Trey Wxxds released an album last week and against all odds, it's surprisingly closing ranks and becoming one of my favourites this 2024. Highly recommended is the Robinson Park (Freestyle) at the start of the album that even has a little snippet of Alec Guinness' Obi-Wan sampled. It has an admirable flow and bottled female soul backing vocals towards the end that give it a heart. It's got a classic beat that feels light 90s. I'll also give a solid mention to Been Here Before which is just weird and feels more like an interlude than a full song. It's nostalgic and druggy, two big favourites of mine, but particularly one of the artist's strong points. I'll also recommend These Days for beachy afrobeats on the instrumental. It's summer after all.

2. MRD - Let Her Go (2023)

If techno is the natural progression of the mainstream use of the synth, MRD's Let Her Go is a step in between. It's as if someone went full techno and then decided to scale it back one notch. As a result you get a dark and fast techno album Løvehjerte (2023) with postpunk electronic drum arrangements and full gorgeous melodies with simulated guitars and Dave-Gahan-sounding vocals. In one of my moments of rest at the gym, Midsommar, in collaboration with Narciss came on and I immediately felt hooked. After looking into the album a little bit, Let Her Go is a clear favourite. 

3. James Blake, Lil Yachty - Bad Cameo (2024)

If I was given a choice of artists that I would have loved to see collaborate, the combo James Blake and Lil Yachty would have been right at the top. After both released two albums in 2023 that absolutely blew me away, I can't imagine anything more harmful to my emotions. The album definitely feels as if Lil Yachty is swimming in an ocean of Blake. There is enough of his signature sound and signature lyrics to give him the spotlight many times but the sign-off is that unique James Blake production sound. Already hitting it off with Save The Savior I was shaking my head and practically begging for mercy. If looking into the gaping hole of destiny had a sound, it would be this. Strong contender for my favourite track of the album also was Run Away From The Rabbit which has an incomprehensible ending. As in I cannot wrap my head around the magnificence of it. Missing Man also made the list for like a minute but on the second listen I knew that I was kidding myself. Clearly, the best song is Bad Cameo. It feels like getting lost between two very different dreams. Lil Yachty's autotune echoes in the ribcage while Blake tickles your spine on the keys. Just when you think it's already pretty good and could leave it at that, Lil Yachty's autotune is almost gone making him human again "In due time, we'll be fine" and it's Blake's artificial falsetto that brings the robot back in "Don't you want to see the morning?". And right there is where I cried. I continued to cry but "Don't lead me down a dark path" just felt like still getting punched when you've lost consciousness. There really is no need. You're a clear champion mate.

Reflecting on Steve Jones, The Sex Pistols and punk as a concept

 I'm currently reading the autobiography of the notorious Steve Jones. The guitarist from The Sex Pistols. Every time I get my hands on a book about musicians or bands I get hooked and end up wolfing the whole thing in a couple of days. Just to be able to catch a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes is enjoyable enough. These iconic legends live, their road to fame and sometimes their catastrophical demise. Yeah, getting through the Sex Pistols' lifespan as a band and coming out okay the other end? Not easy. 

Despite not being the most famous Sex Pistol, Steve Jones is immediately my favourite. He's funny, direct and doesn't care about laying it all out, the good and the bad. He's honest, remorseful but unapologetic. It was what it was. Jones had a shit upbringing which does trully justify a lot of the shit he was up to. That's sentence summarises the whole first part of the book. I don't mean it in a bad way, it's really interesting to read but it is literally one ghastly event after the other and he's not even 20 year-odd.. He came from an extremely working-class family, had an absent father, a neglecting mother, a nonce for a step-dad, undiagnosed ADHD/Dyslexy for sure, and more predatory pedophiles roaming the streets of Battersea than eyes to spare. 

As I was reading I kept thinking, yeah, no wonder punk happened. You can see why there was a growing community of young people that were unsatisfied with the hand that life had dealt them, who were angry at how things worked and didn't want to sit quietly and accept their bleak future. So the answer was to let out all the rage somehow. Loud and bold it's easy to see why the movement attracted so many people. It's easy to see how the movement was part of the working class struggle to improve their situation and why it identifies politically with the left. Although it's no wonder that the neo-nazis had a good go at taking claim of punk. They were also loud and angry young offenders, it's just that their anger was directed at the wrong people. 

The Sex Pistols weren't the most vocal punk band of the age, I mean, yeah, they said outrageous shite on NME Magazine, but they weren't as political as The Clash or Stiff Little Fingers. The Clash cared, they were openly antifascist and antiracist. And you can hear it when you listen to the music, you can hear reggae beats, influences and lyrics that make a difference. It's bands like them that command my respect not so much the Pistols. The Pistols were just annoyed at pretty much everything. Sid by all rights shouldn't have even been in the band and John Lydon has turned out to be a massive Tory twat. 

According to Jones' biography, he was never a racist or a homophobe or anything those neo-c***s trying to take hold of punk were. But he does say that he didn't really care enough to understand the way things were at the time. He had enough on his plate worrying about nicking stuff, getting drunk to forget traumatic experiences at an early age and trying to escape the greyness of the London life in the sixties when you didn't have two pence to rub together. 

I can definitely see why the band made it big though. I can understand the effect their attitude would have on young folk with similar feelings of hopelessness and resentment. They were all raging because life was closing in around them and they had no positive outcome, just because they were born skint. These unfortunate souls turn to music, as we all do when in need of comfort, company, community or in need of a jolt to the soul. These young Brits melted into each other's sweaty bodies at shitty venues to scream, jump and batter the shit out of each other. Why not? You're fucked anyway so why not shove each other violently until someone loses consciousness or at least forgets there's an outside world while the music still blares from the amps. 

Every generation has been the same since then. In every generation, there is a musical movement of discomfort and discontent. Punk, ska, grunge, rap, trap, post-punk, you name it. There is always a group of working class folk that have fuck-all going for them, feel like they're getting shat on and make groundbreaking music just to ease the pain. It brings us all together. The lowest of the low find new outlets of expression, they become the focus of the world for a while and hold up a mirror on stage to call on fellow scumbags who are unhappy with the unfairness of the world. It's shortlived, eventually the movements degenerate until they become a parody of themselves. The OGs fuck off into a better world or completely sell their souls out and the emerging scene is plagued with posers. 

Everything just sort of feels stale until the next big new movement from the working class rises, always one step ahead, ready to bring a fresh monster to life that will take the rest of the world by surprise. This will continue until World War 3 starts and there is no longer a surplus of angry young people. But at least with that loss, we will gain the return of the war poets. 

PS: I listened to Never Mind the Bollocks this morning. It still holds up. Holidays in the Sun is one of the best ways of opening a punk album the world has ever seen. 

Direct line to my heart

 The time has come again. I've made yet another playlist with the sole purpose of breaking my own heart. Not because it's sad music, but because be it because of the lyrics, or the melody or even just where the silences drop, it has a direct line to squash my heart for the briefest of seconds or the longest of minutes.

I've titled it "I'd rather be chainsawed in half" because I really think that taking a Milwaukee 2727-20 to the ribs might hurt less than listening to some of these tracks.

The list could be closed but I'm thinking there is a chance I'll come across more of these painful songs in the near future. The algorithm has been fed quite a bit. 

Here it is. 

I'm only going to go through a few of these but all of them have ended me one way or another.

1. Teleharmonic - The Smile

I don't think there is another artist better fit to inaugurate this list than Thom Yorke & co. Teleharmonic. Where do I even begin? It's part of Wall of Eyes, an album that The Smile released at the end of January this year and hit me like a brick in the face. I gave it a quiet listen one day and when I realised this was on it I completely lost my mind. I had originally heard the track two years ago when the final season of Peaky Blinders was released. It was just the soundtrack to one of the scenes in the series. I became obsessed and tried to find it but it hadn't been released by the band and apparently they had no intention of doing so for the foreseeable future. After a few months, I lost hope and sat with resignation listening to shitty edits on YouTube. 

I can't explain accurately enough what this song makes me feel. It's nostalgia and beauty and peace it just fills my chest with whatever life itself is made of. I cannot comprehend how a song can have so much power over my emotions and even my body as I physically react everytime I hear it. Unfortunately for The Smile, despite it being an objectively excellent album, I don't really give a toss about any other song that isn't Teleharmonic. 

3. Yesteryear - urbanation

Teleharmonic's power resides in the melody, the voice and the sheer weight of the atmosphere it generates. Yesteryear is a much simpler song in those terms and it's almost stripped back to an acoustic tune. Her sweet voice and matter-of-factly delivered details of heartbreak through the lyrics make me want to sway forever in it. What does if for me in this one is the universality of it all. 

It was released by urbanation back in 2018. Remember 2018? No? Me neither. It was released as a single. Everything this girl does is released as a single and she's been off-grid since 2020. I really hope she's cooking a corker of an album or something because people really have no right to drop a bunch of great songs and leave you wanting for more for four years. 

After opening the heart with this vein of music, I left it open for a few more songs that are in the same style as Yesteryear. 

4. BahBah - Insightful

Insightful released a new album, Broken Man, last Friday. He may be a broken man but that album broke me too. As a result, I decided to go through everything he has ever made. Again. 

BahBah was released in 2022 as part of his album 33 and it's exactly what wishful daydreaming sounds like. If I had to soundtrack a fantasy, this would be it. The looped guitar, the ticking noise which sounds like a metronome on speed and is our main percussion sounds along with a reverbed bass drum every once in a while. The moment the backing vocals come in I know I'm in trouble, but it's not until those soft violins enter the scene that I don't fully feel it in my heart. It is absolutely heartwrenching because just like a daydream it finishes and you're left there clutching the remains of that useless organ that keeps you alive. 

It is one of my favourites on the list although it did take me a while to decide what Insightful track to pick. He has a habit of reaching for my tender side. 

5. K - BEASTIE

I can't really give a lot of context, it came to me thanks to the Spotify algorithm I've been training for the best musical finds Olympics. The artist has next to no followers and only two ruddy songs on the profile. One of them is K, released in 2023. Because it's new and nobody knows who this artist is. I'm gonna give it a bit of hype. 

BEASTIE, WHAT ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU? It could be a female voice, a male voice, I don't know. I'm in love. What a sweet guitar and what an angsty voice. Listening to this made me a teenager pining in my bedroom for a crush that would most likely turn out badly. 

I also secretly like that they might be singing about me. It's my song people, a song for me. And it has all that I enjoy in this bedroom pop music, unrequited love, reverbed guitars of different kinds, high pitches cries and great loops. Made for me I tell ya'. 

Say Sorry by Kenneth Whalum serves as a great transition with the sweetest of apologies. The first time I heard one of the bridges on the song I thought I heard one of my ribs crack, Damn that pain in my chest. Damn you Kenneth. 

6. Chelsea - St. Paul & the Broken Bones

We transition to the land of soul or soul-infused music and hit it off with Chelsea by St. Paul & the Broken Bones. This band is something else entirely and mainly, that leading voice. I think it really is beyond human to have that tone and that emotion. And it's not just that, it's the lyrics too. 

Chelsea is sung to an unborn baby and it sings about future happiness and hope. It reaches a point where it is almost godlike and religious. Maybe Chelsea is the unborn baby of sound and light because that's what it sounds like. It's the softest lullaby ever and what a start of an album. The band released Angels in Science Fiction in 2023 and in my opinion (fact) it was one of the top 5 albums of the year. What a beautiful work of art. I can't wait to ball my eyes out when I see them live, I hope they crush me into tiny little specks of dust. 

7. Sorry - Johnny Ruiz & The Escapers

It is safe to say that there isn't anything that Pinrose Records puts out that I will not like. Every single artist they carry is just one of those old souls of soul. And Johnny Ruiz & The Escapers has that onirical sound that The Flamingos used to have back in the day. This song is another soft tune. It's like a tear falling slowly from a cheek and glistening in moonlight. It is a joy to hear and to feel deep inside. How can something so sad be so dumbstruckingly beautiful. 

This one grabs hold of the lungs right from the start and it's almost a breathless 2 minutes and 19 seconds. With the airy vocals and backing voices, and the instruments just playing their piece at the service of the sorrys and the forgiveness implored by our band. Simply delicious. 

Give the whole list a go because all of the songs share some of the elements of The Magnificent Seven and honestly, they are all good enough to make you cry and be happy you're alive. 

What do you mean it's not the original?

Cover versions. Love 'em or hate 'em but they've been a part of music since it very beginning. 

 I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I get annoyed every time I find out that a song I've loved forever is a cover version because then I go to the original and it doesn't sound right. Songs like Tainted Love by Soft Cell have been played so much more than the original (Gloria Jones' version) that in my head they no longer constitute a cover version. They become their own song in their own right (which is unfair to the original). 

On the other hand, cover versions of iconic songs can go two ways. Either they're a great rendition and the artist knows how to add their personal touch to make it differ from the OG or it's absolutely devoid of feeling and it just feels like the white brand version of the song. 

Then there are the GREAT cover versions. Those are the ones where artists take songs that are the opposite of the genre that they move in and bring them to their home turf to make the perfect symbiote. For example, Lost in Music which is a disco song by Sister Sledge was covered by The Fall who made an ace job of it because the original is so popular you can recognise it right away but it still sounds like a Fall song. If you didn't know of the existence of Sister Sledge you would never say that it's meant to be a disco tune. The same goes for The Slits and their reggae-punk version of Heard It Through The Grapevine or Walk On Guilded Splinters by Paul Weller (originally by Dr. John Creaux). Although, a lot of it has to do with the fact that the original is such a good song that it would work in whatever genre you want to put it in. So kudos to the OGs. 

I've been making a compilation of excellent covers of songs. It's a work in progress and I'm missing all the biggies still (yes, Man Who Sold The World by Nirvana will be added eventually). Let's take a look at a couple of these. 

I want to point out Jackie Wilson's version of Light My Fire. It came out in 1968, a year after its original release by The Doors. And to me, it's odd to find a soul artist cover music from someone else. Soul artists do a million different versions of soul songs (see My Girl for reference, originally by The Temptations), but I have rarely seen them cover other genres and certainly not psychedelic rock. The great thing is that Jackie Wilson doesn't stray from his line of music at all so Light My Fire sounds like a great Motown song. There's no organ, and obviously, the dreamy reverbed Jim Morrison which gives it so much personality is nowhere to be heard. Instead, we have some great percussion work and some horn charts. And forget about being taken into a dreamlike trance with Morrison,  Jackie Wilson's voice is here to directly seduce you. 

It's one of those times that I wish my ears were virgin ears and I was listening to both versions for the first time just to see in which genre it fits best. 

Have a go at both and get back to me.

Okay, let's go now to the most annoying and at the same time one of the most beautiful songs ever written (in any of its forms). Forever, I thought that It's All Over Now, Baby Blue was a song by Them. And I remember thinking, wow I knew Van Morrison was good but this is something else. it was only last year that I found out by chance that it's in fact a Bob Dylan song (1966) and it was covered by Them, The Animals and probably a bunch of other people. Even Echo & The Bunnymen did a version (not their best work). 

Of course, to me, the version by Them is the best, even better than the original if I'm being honest. Van Morrison's bluesy voice, paired with the sweet guitar just works a treat to my ears. I've heard the Bob Dylan version and why is it, that if he's the one who wrote the thing, does it feel to me that there's not so much heart poured into it? I feel terrible saying anything remotely bad about Bob Dylan since he's pretty much the father of music but still, it's true. 

The only other version of the song that can compete is the recently released version by ANOHNI, who if you didn't know is the lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons only she went solo a few years back. This version just sounds like a different song altogether. The effects on her anguished voice and that damn guitar sends chills up and down my spine for four minutes straight. Direct line to the waterworks. 

Give the three versions a go and tell me I'm wrong. 

  

And now for a very odd finish. I don't know why, don't ask me but I have a very soft spot for Julio Iglesias. I DON'T KNOW WHY. I just do. Actually, I have a guilty soft spot for his son too but never mind that, it's completely generational. With Iglesias (father) there's something about being transported back in time immediately as soon as I hear his voice. He sings like it's an eternal summer in the 1970s. He's like the Spanish Tom Jones and I'm here for it. Julio Iglesias did a cover version of Solamente Una Vez which is originally by the genius Mexican musician Agustín Lara (1953). And as much as I love Agustín Lara's version (which also sends me back almost a century), with Julio Iglesias the lyrics feel true-er and I would happily give myself to the song and sway along with whatever he told me. To me it feels more paced, like the song is taking its time to get its point across. Like savouring a meal almost. I don't think I can explain it any better than that. 

I bloody love this cover.  

I could go on forever but I won't. Just give the list a follow and make your own opinions.