lmkwyt

Yeah, capital M and S. Yes, that song, by James Hinton of Providence, a.k.a The Range. Rather, how good is Metal Swing, the last track of well received 2013 album Nonfiction. It got "best new track" in Pitchforks review, where they called it a stand out track of the album, which simply couldnt be more true. It is miles ahead of any other song he made, not because the other pieces tend to be bad at all, Nonfiction is overall quite decent IMO, 2014 release Panasonic is O.K i guess, and he has clearly made a lot of progress since The Big Dip which i hadnt heard until recently. It has, admittedly, a quite substantial faint of amateurish insecurity to it. But Metal Swing plays at an elite level IYAM. I have listened to it probably a 1000+ times. The way it grows steadily better for every second that passes is truly remarkable, and despite it not being divided into particularly clear "parts" in the traditional sense, you feel a different sensation when you hear the introduction compared to when you hear the building stage and lastly the beautiful climax. It's impact on me surely has something to do with the voice sampled throughout the entire song.

Mike Powell of Pitchfork described the way Nonfiction behaves towards the listener very nicely. In an excerpt from the 8.2 review;

"Even if you listen to Nonfiction—and even if you like it—it probably won’t inspire you to call anyone up and say, “[Expletive], I just got back from the library, or the office, or picking up [friend’s name] at the airport, and I had this new Range album on at a reasonable volume the whole time, and it totally increased my general sense of well-being!” What it might inspire, though, is a kind of passive, slowly gestating admiration—the kind usually best measured in iTunes plays three or four months down the line, the kind you tend to recognize several hours into a workday in front of your computer, the kind that doesn’t surge like a fire but instead grows patiently, like a vine."

Browsing Bandcamp yesterday i stumbled upon this piece by Phoenix-based Youceff Yunque Kabal, or YUS, who himself puts his songwriting and style of production in the experimental electronic pop category. That's about all 2 minutes of googling will let you know about him, cause there really isn't a lot of information around. Anyway, his album is due June, 21st and after hearing this song and Nowadays, another single, i am quite looking forward to Monday and the full release called Talisman which i simply had to pre-order. 

The first half of 20 Million features a nice amount of vigorous mellowness, which i suppose makes the average listener feel content, but not much more. Certainly not too excited, but pleased with what you are hearing, for sure. You might add it to your up alone late at night, can't stand too much pace-playlist, because of it's sleepy, longish kind of semi-hypnotic intro. When you reach the halfway mark, however, you find out that relative chaos has been imposed on order when YUS leaves the original melody intact but adds to it a neat touch of powerful, abrasive yet very humble energy, and that's when you realize you are listening to a talented act and a very neatly developed tune. 

Notably, he has also animated the music video himself, and i like it a lot. Click the image to listen.