Support Filipino vocal house music! Have a free listen.
Source: SoundCloud / nightsofrizal
Shift
You start forgetting days, start counting
your life in minutes. You reference places
where you never are, even talk about the weather.
You mute your slips of color.
Composing your thought-by-thought,
you finally hear that sunshine
too many singers sing about—you liken it
to a California summer. As afternoon’s bursting
through your jalousies,
you no longer shift in your sleep.
You do it for customer care, you give in
because it’s company policy. Begin
with phonological control: permit your muscles
to forget. Learn with your mouth
the meaning of “liaison”, drown your vowels out
with schwas; pop your P’s and T’s, seduce your ears
with a brand new consonance. It’ll come naturally, as in
a dream, as if you’d been inspired. One minute,
the voice in your head has changed.
Scuba’s Personality: a review
The big daddy of my favorite UK label Hotflush Recordings returns on February 27th, 2012 with another full-length collection of Electronic Dance Music after 2 years: Personality.
The new LP is in many ways NOT a follow-up to 2010’s brooding dubstep/future/bass album Triangulation. It’s easy to call Scuba’s Personality “multiple”, noting that this pivotal UK (post-?)dubstep producer seems to have drifted completely away from the shuffling, heaving, moody beats, synths, and atmospheres that have so far characterized his music. In fact, the album introduces itself with a very floor-friendly electro groove in “Ignition Key”, which sounds a bit alien even in the context of his other, house/techno-driven project, SCB. His tracks range from 4x4 grooves in “Underbelly” to almost-cheesy-80’s-synth-laden club tunes in one of my favorites, the very catchy “July”. He even evokes new (perhaps “nu”?) jack swing in “NE1BUTU”! If in Triangulation Scuba seemed to be brooding, in Personality there are quite a few moments where he seems almost ecstatic.
What seems a deliberate nod to his previous work though is the track “Cognitive Dissonance”, which is similar to the halfstep track “So You Think You’re Special” from Triangulation. I love the track title and I wonder if Scuba (aka Paul Rose) might be referring to the psychological term in a marketing context, which is the theory behind advertisements published for the sole purpose of (re)assuring customers who have already purchased a given product that yes, they made the right choice. “Cognitive Dissonance” features that familiar pulsating bass, that distinctly cut-up, echoing breakbeat; and it seems to reassure me that regardless of huge leaps in style, I am still listening to Scuba. “Action” and ”The Hope” are also somewhat reminiscent of his earlier sound, but then again, not really. Overall, I think Personality has managed to coherently tie a myriad of sonic ideas and ambiances together; that said, this might just be Scuba’s moodiest release yet.
I'm a songwriter working under the assumption that songs aren't simply pieces of music embellished with words, nor are they simply poems set to a melody. I was formerly a Comparative Literature student, and also, the frontman for a now defunct (funk) band. When I'm not busy trying to birth freakazoid mutant children of these two past selves, it means I'm in Makati: in a long-sleeved polo shirt, slacks, and black leather shoes, wishing I was somewhere else.
