Flash Forest reminds me of a better time. It reminds me of back when Holly still posted on East To West and Flume was just a glint in his father’s eye. These days Flume is probably a father himself and and East To West is gone from the world, still awaiting reincarnating as Kanye’s second child. The injustice of it all.

Review: Good.

There’s been some heady praise for UV Boi the past 6 moths or so and in my opinion its been unwarranted. To lay the facts bare, I have never seen UV Boi perform live. I haven’t followed the story too closely, all I’ve really done is hit play on a few soundcloud streams and shrug a bit, wondering what was going on. This song is UV Boi realizing the hype, earning the praise that’s dogged him for months. Synths that sound like panflutes, generated strings and big big big vocals from Blair De Milo (a first for UV?) that sound straight from the mouth of the great Lord Craig David himself, this is a tour de feelings. Namechecking himself on every track isn’t a bad move either. He truly is the Jason Derulo of the beats scene. Upward, onward.

Hosted on Blair De Milo’s soundcloud so I don’t know if that makes this a Blair track or a UV track (or both) but it’s 2014 so those questions are less relevant than they used to be.

Super Magic Hats has never been a feature on Sound Doctrine because I’m a big idiot who needs to be beaten over the head with something before he’ll recognise its worth but consider me bruised because this track a top dollar production. It’s real easy like to chuck a few xylo’s atop a slow beat and cap the whole thing off with a healthy slathering of whispy vocal. I mean, it’s as easy as going to the effort of doing all those things, which still incorporates some level of effort but isn’t exactly a production masterclass, right? ‘Coastlines’ is the sort of production effort that you can exhibit next to one of the afformentioned tracks and immediately learn a lot from. Why does this one sound so much fuller? Why does the guitar part sound clearer? Why is the bass warmer? How come this sample comes in and out so much more smoothly? Can I cash in my McMonopoly coupons at Burger King? Sure there’s mixing and mastering involved in all that jazz but there’s also just a whole bunch of experience and this track is probably self mixed anyway so wipe the egg off your face son, you just got informed. [Real name] Rob Masterton has been at it a few years now and in the lead-up to a very strong EP out in late September, there’s never been a more perfect time to climb aboard.

He also runs a pretty strong twitter game.

When I wrote about the last Medium Punch x Matt On The Moon single I mentioned that the both of these artists were largely unknown. The first song piqued my curiosity with its intricate percussive loops and a buttery smooth voice. I was a little baffled by the way the track seemed to be two separate ideas smooshed into one, divided cleanly in half and then merged together at the end. Now, having heard the second single it’s fairly clear that this is the modus operandi for these collaborators and I suspect they won’t be all that unrecognised for much longer.

The new single is called Blue Sea Dwellers and it’s another schizophrenic track that spends its first half in the same territory as Jesse Davidson’s recent Ocean EP but the second half is, as last time, a whole nother place altogether. I think it’s more fun if I don’t tell exactly what happens and when but it terms of technical delivery and cohesion this song deserves high praise. The muted trumpet line that closes the song is a perfect production choice. It’d be easy to heap praise on Matt On The Moon for the vocal sections but this the beat end and sample choices are right on too. Shoutouts to 2:45 for the cut of that pedestrian crossing sound.

I wasn’t completely sold on the back of ‘Time Lord‘ but I’m all in now.

Here’s a pretty little number from Leaks, another of the Zero Thru Nine alumni. Somehow I switched my VLC player (the thinking man’s player) into 140% playback speed while listening to this and thought he’d developed a new faster paced delivery method which I was willing to accept without question, simply because Tom has a history of modulating pitch and with liberal abandon. It’s only on his past two singles that he’s begun including vocals on his tracks at all but his treatment of them shows he’s obviously not precious about the way they’re presented, manipulating them into instrumental sections rather than retaining them as crisp lyrical devices. I’m glad he hasn’t tried to enter that full voiced slow jam world that puts the vocal big, fat, front and center like a a hippopotamus on the empty open plains, woefully exposed and terrified that he may not be fulfilling his life’s true meaning. There’re enough producer vocalists out there trying to make over sung alt-R&B already and the most of them don’t stir me in the slightest. Lots of little arpeggio pieces and clever layering make this one feel sparse and cushioned, especially with that motorised base track moving up and down gears. Throwback to the last Leaks single ‘Often It’s You‘, also quite lovely indeed.

In other Zero Through Nine related news, I received my super special high powered auxiliary tuned micro four-thirds digitally stabilised quarter pocket 80% transparency Lower Spectrum vinyl arrived yesterday and though I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, it’s been emanating extremely positive auras at me all day so you know it’s gonna be good vibes when I get home with a perfectly aligned set of chakras. Scrawled on the pizza box it was mailed in, “Don’t trust cops”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯