Stuff of the Month #12

The best of the best of June

Welcome back to an absolutely STACKED Stuff of the Month. June has been perhaps the best month for new music and I’ve been having so much fun going down rabbit-holes for some of the great music I’ve recommended here. I also finally travelled up to Dublin to see the second Catacombs show which I covered recently. I went up there for fun and with no pressure to write an article about it, but it was still an experience to remember. Finally being able to meet some of the people I had only spoken to online was fantastic and the show was really one to remember. Shoutout to everyone who talked with me after the gig <3

Without further ado, here’s a selection of my favourite music from June. Let me know if I put you on to anything new and, as always, the Spotify playlist is at the end of the article.

100% PRODUCTION TECHNO/DONK/HARDCORE SET - DJ Bax

The world of DJ sets online has been swamped by audiences of Fred Again wannabes throwing off-beat finger guns and it-girls wearing crop tops that say “CUNT” or something at a Boiler Room set or another Israeli-funded fest of choice. There are definitely exceptions to this rule (NTS, The Lot Radio and Elevator Music are still doing top-notch, community focused DJ sets), but it’s easy to forget that DJ sets are meant to be fun. I stumbled across DJ Bax’s set in the midst of the YouTube algorithm and it is beautiful. Just one DJ playing for a handful of friends in a basement with a shoddy green screen in the back—so shoddy that the Peroni bottles the friends sip on often morph into it— and a deluge of face-melting donk tracks. DJ Bax serves up donk remix after donk remix that will make your neck snap from doing too many double takes. Scream & Shout by will.i.am? Young Thug’s Lifestyle? A mashup of Chic’s Le Freak with Eminem’s Shake That? The Minecraft parody of Usher’s DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love?????????? Yes, it’s all very easy to find this gimmicky, but it succeeds just through the sheer fun of it all. It’s a hangout with friends, passing vapes around and drinking beers while DJ Bax, in perhaps the peak of the set, takes off his shirt to reveal Ed Sheeran merch while playing a Lil Jon and Lego House mashup-to-end-all-mashups. Insanity.

Machine - lucequartz

Before I start talking about this song, please just listen to it. It’s barely two minutes. I’ll wait here, you won’t miss anything.

Odd, isn’t it? I’ve been struggling to come up with the best way to even describe this song because I have zero point of reference for it. I guess it, um, kind of sounds like, uuuuuuuhhhhh…… I mean there was that one JLovely song I featured a while back which suits the minimal vibe? Sorta? But that one didn’t include the lyrics “So many notches in my shins that a blind bitch could read them and tell me all my sins”, so, uhh, I guess we’re back to square one. Okay, let’s try again. The top comment on the reel that first introduced me to him said “How Bladee sounds when you try putting your friends on”, but even that seems reductionist. Maybe a bit of meat computer? I don’t know, and that’s what I love about this song. Its serene melancholia completely resets your entire brain. It’s both extremely brainrotted, with effects galore, and completely set apart from everything happening on the internet right now.

PB&J - fillette0318

autoportrait - fillette0318 (feat. ivvys)

Next year, I’ll be studying abroad, in Montreal, Quebec. I’ve being getting a little sense of dread recently knowing that I will be 5,767 kilometres away from Ireland and the rising underground scene. I don’t want to lose touch with the great music happening at this very instant. Instead, I’ve been filling that hole in my soul by checking out the underground in Quebec. I’ve heard a song from fillette0318 before but this double-whammy of songs, both released this month, have cemented her as an i’ll do it tomorrow favourite. fillette0318 is a Quebecoise graphic designer that moonlights as a SoundCloud rapper. It has the goofy charm of early hyperpop mixed with good-old reliable Gucci Mane typebeats. The benefit of being Quebecoise is that you can glide through English and French with ease (“Ils me disent j’ai un swag stupid crazy”) and she hits you with glitchy, robotic vocals (like how she says “chronically online j’suis partout sur internet” or “chaque fois que je rap je parle de nourriture-ure-ure”) that appease my digitally-eroded brain nerves. She’s joined by ivvys on autoportrait (who himself has a crazy song that came out recently that earned a Pitchfork Best New Music) with a verse that feels completely out of place in the best way possible too.

Trust Nobody - Fatt Macc (feat. Choppababy)

“N**** lookin’ like a lick, he sweet as hell, Mom can we keep him?”

Mr Maker - 6survival

6survival is a man of duplicity. He’ll just as easily rap about having Barry Keoghan swag and being steezy as he is to tell the listener to invest in themselves and remind them that they only have one life to live to the fullest. The same happens here on Mr Maker, both celebratory as it is sober. One line he’s boasting two phones, the next he confesses “Text her on the iPhone that I miss her”. What was it A$AP Rocky said? “I got three phones—business, conversation and relation”, except 6survival turns it into a half-hearted brag. Speaking of A$AP Rocky, 6survival’s production is another reason he stands out, opting for a vintage cloud rap palette akin to Rocky’s early work and Clams Casino that compliments his introspective musings. It’s hard to get a good read of 6survival (he says it himself best—”they ain’t know me, they don’t really know”) and the end result is a lucid portrait of a human stuck somewhere in the middle. But while I’m still trying to figure him out, 6survival has a phone call to make—”I’m freaking out, asking her if we can have a chat”.

Smoked - Hayden Pedigo

This month I travelled on the train up to Carlow and back. I’m not a train connoisseur, and I’ve only been on the train once before as a child going to Kerry with friends. On your own, it’s a trip where your only companion is whatever is zipping past you through the window and you’re deposed at grey stations waiting for a change of train with nothing but you’re headphones and people who look just as miserable as you. The emptiness is lonesome and weary. While on my travels, I listened to the latest album from Hayden Pedigo, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away. Pedigo’s music is a slice of ambient Americana, as plucked strings ebb and flow gently and create spiral rhythms to hold on to. It’s a perfect album to listen to when on the train as it has its own feeling of emptiness to it too. Pedigo lets chords drift off into nothing, allows gaps in notes to stretch and uses ever-so-gentle reverb, piano and strings to cast a light cloud over the music. This is my favourite song on the album, a meditative and sincere piece that gently unfolds over the space of five minutes, ample time to forget you’re waiting in the rain at Kildare station.

Agenda - snoa

Emotionally potent, loud, brash, tender, impactful, blissful, harsh, honest, crucial, crushing, strained, taut, bombastic, evocative, indecipherable, urgent, sprawling, claustrophobic, freeing, euphoric.

That’s all for this month! Let me know if I’ve put you on to anything new and I’ll see you guys soon.

-Leo