Chilled triple with The Portland Sound, James Bright, and Aleko #Chill #TripHop #StudyBeats
In the dog days between Christmas and New Year chill seems the order of the day. Here’s a range of chilled tracks from The Portland Sound, James Bright, and Aleko.
The Portland Sound is a musical collaboration between UK songwriters/producers Jon Dye and Matt Champness. They say that their output is “eclectic and original, ranging through pure electronica, folk, some classical influence, pop, and whatever else takes their fancy.”
Here’s Left For You from the Just Can’t Help It EP. It’s a lovely mix of electronics, acoustic and samples. In some ways it feels like the more sombre end of Lemon Jelly’s output – and that’s a high bar for me.
The keyboards are allowed free rein with washed drums and electronics. It’s all late summer haze and the far off conversation was hard for me to make out. But it only added to the track’s found sound charm. The ripple of the guitar gives the track a plaintive feel which the trumpet accentuates.
Marvellous melancholy.
Staying in the UK for James Bright. He was born in Kent but moved to Macclesfield when very young and is still based there. He formed LUX with Steve Miller (AFTERLIFE) in 1999 and went on to produce tracks, including for the classic Cafe del Mar album series, and a range of remixes. For more, there’s a rather good interview with him from a couple of years back here.
James’ new release is Wayfarer EP. Here’s an edit of the title track. This takes the late 90s chill model and runs with it. There’s some rich piano chords alongside some dubbed piano lines, and wood blocks and beats. It’s all terribly beach based and warm in a lush sort of way.
Everything burbles away but in a lovely lying down sort of funk manner. Wave your sarong in the air chill music.
And so to Aleko. This is a Romanian-born but since 2010 Italy-based producer. In 2021, he started a new journey by producing lofi beats. After 3 albums and many singles, he is releasing a beat every month so he can be more connected with his listeners. He’s got a strong hip hop background. This is apparent on his new track Mom&Pops Store.
Mom&Pops Store mixes far off vocal fragments with a big phat hip hop kick. It delivers a perfect bit of blunted head nodding appeal. Aleko says “I tried to achieve that New York sound, cause it’s one of my favorites: punchy drums, big bass, sax & guitar! In the second half of the song I used some vocal chops to give more warmth & vibe to the song.”
The combo of the drum and the tinkling sounds are what really delivers here. A kinda yin and yang between bass and treble, dark and light. An oxymoron of musical delicate heaviness.
ACID TED 