Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Cherry Chapstick


The Line b/w Precious Necklace (Be Good to Me)

For: Toro y Moi, Javelin / Daft Punk, Alan Braxe

Byline: Love the high you get from chillwave, but hate the depressing comedown? This smart single package has the best of both worlds and manages to leave you up. Way up.

There's something depressing about the whole chillwave aesthetic in general. I mean, the beats themselves are actually depressed. There's been a trend in the past year or so of artists (see Toro y Moi, or even Bibio to an extent) providing grooves that are sunken in on themselves. Beats like these a have real, massive sort of gravity that pulls the listener/dancer deep into its trap: a trampoline on quicksand. Montreal's Cherry Chapstick have absolutely mastered this style, taken the best pieces from the world's top players, and wrapped them up into a neat little package of a song they call "The Line." And the reason stuff like this works so well is that these beats that swirl in on themselves with pulsing, throbbing volume shifts in the bass, jive perfectly with the effectual melancholic backdrop of music. Cherry Chapstick themselves called it a "night-drive jam." Alone, driving at night - yes. That's where this song happens. A lone voice lamenting a recent break up. Time to think. But there's something there to pick you up just as your face is about to scrape the floor: a tambourine. It's there—silvery, glittering, unwavering: so there. Hope. God, I love that tambourine.

The second track is a remix of the band's "Precious Necklass" as refigured by Silly Kissers. If you needed a bit more of a pick-me-up after your little night-drive sesh, a beat the lifts up instead of sagging down, well here's your perfect cure. An punchy, poppy track with the fanfare synths of Alan Braxe and the syncopated, bouncy bass lines of Discovery-era Daft Punk. In fact, this one gives a track like "Aerodynamic" a run for its money.

Best of all, you can download this one for free. So do that, take it with you to the club, and whether or not your girlfriend just dumped you, pick your poison. Either way you'll be dancing.

—Craw'z 7/7/2010

Listen to "The Line":










p.s. The name of the guy who sent this single to us is Julian. I have no idea why I love that so much, but I do. It's just... perfect.


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