Fluxblog 523: I DID IT FOR THE RUSH
New music from Darkside, Haim, Playboi Carti, and Artemas
This is what I wrote about Darkside’s “S.N.C” back in January, before I knew something crucial about the song:
The first minute and a half of “S.N.C” is about what you’d expect to hear from Darkside – moody, muted palette, sensual but not overtly sexual – and it’s gorgeous. They could have stayed in that mode through the whole song and I’d love it. But then it gets much more interesting – a Stevie Wonder-ish clavinet riff struts into the mix, the funkiness gets dialed up by 90%, and suddenly there’s a reverb-soaked vocal that sounds like it’s superimposed over the rest of the song. It sounds like if God was a member of The Bee Gees. It feels profound, like some kind of divine intervention by way of overlapping radio signals, even if the voice is singing “I did it for the money, I did it for the time of my life and the thrill.” It’s one of the coolest things I’ve heard in a song in a while.
The crucial thing is that the clavinet/Bee Gees parts of the song actually are superimposed over the rest of the track, and that it’s sampled from “Rock ‘n’ Roll Band,” a song from 1982 by the very obscure band Duke Jupiter. Hit play:
This is one of the most impressive uses of sampling I’ve encountered in recent memory. It’s A+ crate digging, because the source material is pretty good to begin with. But they also upgraded it – the faux-Stevie Wonder riff sounds much better at this tempo, and the vocal goes from kinda normal to cosmically profound as it’s transposed into that Bee Gees range. There’s so much art in the specifics of how that vocal is manipulated, and how it moves through the sound design of the track. I have no idea how Darkside realized this random song could complete their own composition; what could have gone into realizing they somehow found the key to open this lock. I’m not sure I want to know how they pulled off this magic trick. It blows me away every time I hear it.
When An Innocent Mistake Turns Into 17 Days
Haim “Relationships”
When Haim shared “Relationships” a couple weeks ago they made a point of noting that “this one took us 7 years to crack.” Which is to say, they knew they had an amazing song on their hands and worked hard to fully realize it. I think you can hear all that work in the finished recording, but not in the sense that it feels overthought and overproduced, or that it’s got that stale chewing gum feel to it. It’s the best case scenario for this sort of thing, where if you’re paying attention you can hear all the little smart decisions that add up to a finished product that skillfully balances familiarity and eccentricity.
There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen for this one – the three Haim sisters, producers Rostam Batmanglij and Buddy Ross, and collaborators Ariel Rechtshaid and Tobias Jesso Jr. I’m not entirely sure who did what, but whoever wrote that fluid, low-key funky bass line is the clear MVP of the song, and I can hear Batmanglij’s skill for building richly detailed yet spacious and airy tracks guiding the track. But all of this sound and structure is just a frame for Danielle Haim’s vocal performance, which is the melodic through line and soul of the piece. She’s singing about feeling ambivalent and frustrated about relationships in general and one that may or may not be falling apart in particular, but with a spark of romanticism that contradicts her most pessimistic lines. The lyrics essentially ask “ugh, why do I even bother with this?” in a dozen different ways, but everything in the music and Danielle’s voice is answering “you know why…because the trouble is worth it.”
Buy it from Amazon.
Vamp Life Spooky
Playboi Carti featuring Kendrick Lamar and Jhené Aiko “Backd00r”
It’s impressive to make a rap song featuring Kendrick Lamar in 2025 where he’s maybe the third or fourth most interesting thing on the track. So what am I putting ahead of him? Well, there’s that sample loop. It’s a very Kanye sort of sped-up R&B vocal, and we’ve now got enough distance from his artistic prime that the chipmunk soul aesthetic is as nostalgic as the music that gets chopped up to make it. But I digress. The interesting thing is how BAD the loop sounds. It’s lo-fi, but not in the “4-track cassette” way, but a low bitrate mp3 with severe artifacts way. It’s fascinating to hear that sound get aestheticized, but as Brian Eno once said, “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.” It was inevitable that this would be the thing for mp3s.
The other interesting element is Playboi Carti’s vocal, which I suppose isn’t tremendously different from a lot of his output, but comes across very well on this particular song. He’s a slippery presence, and he often sounds like he’s flirting with the beat. There’s rapping going on here – hashtag rapping, no less! – but he has a way of making it feel weightless or invisible. It’s all little bursts of enthusiasms and sensuality, sorta like if Lil Wayne stripped out all his technical prowess to focus entirely on his charming ad-libs.
Buy it from Amazon.
I Just Want To Ruin These Sheets, Oh Yeah
Artemas “Southbound”
Artemas seems like a cultural inevitability – of course someone growing up on The Weeknd and the more synth-heavy end of indie music would eventually merge the aesthetics and the result would go over well with a mainstream audience who were immersed in the same music. The last time I wrote about Artemas, the indie X factor was Tame Impala, and this time around it’s more like St Vincent in gnarly electronic rock mode. It’s a great combination, like dark chocolate and raspberries.
The other notable thing about Artemas’ music is that it’s extremely horny stuff, but in a way that strikes me as very porn-brained. The lyrics aren’t particularly demeaning or gross – I’d actually say they’re fairly respectful of the woman being addressed – but his desires seem like they’ve been largely shaped by porn. I’m not reaching here, by the way. He actually sings “just wanna fuck you all night like a porn star” at the end of a verse. There’s a few lines here that give me “Steve Carrell discussing the sand-bag texture of breasts,” but on the whole I don’t think the lyrical perspective is cringe or even unusual. It’s just anthropologically interesting to me, and I suspect we’re going to be hearing a lot more songs in the years to come that are explicitly sexual but seem more rooted in PornHub bookmarks than personal experience.
Buy it from Amazon.
LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE
Here’s some footage and live reports from shows I’ve seen recently.
Madelline, who I think is ready to hit the big time with her witty pop cabaret act.
Cute Door, the emerging queen of erotic horror hypnosis trap.
Darkside, who went above and beyond my expectations. Truly astounding show.
Of Montreal, who I saw perform all of The Sunlandic Twins at the District Music Hall in Norwalk, Connecticut.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• The Associated Press’ Maria Sherman reported on how Visa fee hikes and other rising costs are making it increasingly difficult for international acts to tour in the United States.
• I only just recently heard Josh Santana’s jazz version of Charli XCX’s Brat, and I like it a lot. I love that it sounds like “we absolutely MUST create a version of Brat that would be palatable to Donald Fagen of Steely Dan!”