Tropical House (steel drum synths, sax, "syncopated" beats and old school acapellas?)

This genre is pretty popular huh? One of my friends made a "Work It" mix and got 150.000 plays on Soundcloud, incredible! I'm sure there are a lot of interesting thinkpieces out there about appropriation and revivalism. Is Matoma the missing link between Norway and The Notorious B.I.G.? I don't know much about this genre, but I know that Kygo is really popular (1 million + likes on the Facebook) and that this remix is full of joy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb3XfrCtjVU

Brought to you by "Chill Masters" - makes sense...

Have you been spying on my Facebook conversations with deej?

Boehm remix of 2Pac's "Dear Mama" is best.

Though Matoma is probably the master of the form - even his remix of Maroon 5's "Payphone" is amazing.

Basically I became obsessed with this stuff by hanging out in beach bars in Seminyak last week.

Haha, my friend who's also obsessed at this point caught Matoma fever in Thailand.

Dear Mama is a good one! This Fresh Prince mix is also rather irresistable even if it's terribly corny, was a good five minutes when this came on the car radio the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9tbbXRpVPY
(the "orange juice out of a champagne glass"-chorus is p great)

There seems to be a whole aesthetics to the genre, down to the Youtube-thumbnails etc. Very focused on chilling out, looking good, sunshine etc. I can just imagine the sort of party where these songs would be played, having a harder time imagining me attending or fitting in. But maybe I should just throw my own.

I thought Klingande - Jubel was a v good track too, something about the harmlessness/good vibes remind me of soft/yacht rock, in a good way. Better with rap vocals, but still a jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6vSf0cA9qY

I am playing to throw one as soon as it is warm here again

TY for this thread! Enjoying http://www.tropical-daily.com/'s blurbs, like a malfunctioning comment-bot version of saer with forests swapped out for the beach.

Great blurbs indeed. Funny that a genre with such a strong Norwegian base fetichizes beaches. Speaking of, the Matoma Miami mix which "will surely be a winner at the beaches this summer" is nice
https://soundcloud.com/matoma-official/will-smith-miami-matoma-remix
Any clue why so many of the songs seem to start rather abruptly? is it out of necessity or a cool genre signifier?

Biggie's acapellas are really good for this - his slow flow works well with the upbeat music as does the dynamics of ghetto/beaches ambition/success

https://soundcloud.com/paxelmusic/the-notorious-big-can-i-get-witcha-paxel-remix

There's something funny in the juxtaposition of the celebratory beat and the opening "another day in the ghetto" with dope fiends etc, not sure how self aware wrt irony the genre is, but I'm sure it's all very good humoured

Is this actually played on Danish radio??? Cool. I need to listen to radio more, I think.

It sounds really nice, nice with tropical sounds to a wet and cold summer.

IME it's surprisingly difficult to find good music on Danish radio, so I'd much rather recommend Soundcloud for the pursuit of tropical vibes - but yes, the Fresh Prince mix was in fact played on one of the more commercial stations (cannot recall whether it was NOVA, ABC or 100 FM since I do a lot of skipping stations). Maybe has something to do with responsible dj, Le Boeuf, apparently hailing from tropical Copenhagen.

The strobing the

There's something funny in the juxtaposition of the celebratory beat and the opening "another day in the ghetto" with dope fiends etc, not sure how self aware wrt irony the genre is, but I'm sure it's all very good humoured

I thought this as well at first but now I don't think it is that actually, in particular because the music is never *just* celebratory, it's also kind of melancholy?

Maybe part of the reason that this stuff typically draws only for the most super-obvious rap is so that a sense of nostalgia/collective-memory is immediately hard-coded in, like when you hear Biggie saying "believe me sweetie, I have enough to feed the greedy" over these bittersweet winsome synth chords the effect in part is a kind of memento mori, a reminder not of literal physical death but of the death of all past moments, and these conflict-ridden tales (sex / violence / wealth / excess) all end up seeming sepia-toned and hazy and halcyonic in retrospect, a callback to when life was so exciting and vital.

The first part of my post was gonna be about the strobing synth chords in the second chorus (beginning "If happy ever after...") of the Matoma remix of Maroon 5's "Payphone", which I increasingly adore - it really captures that sense of intermingled joy/melancholy I'm talking about above.

Good points! The more I listen the more I notice the underlying melancholy / sentimental vibe. Maybe the payphone also works as a motif that triggers nostalgia / collective memory? No coincidence that Matoma's biggest hit is called Old Thing Back...

Would never want to listen to the M5 version but agree that the mix is v good
https://soundcloud.com/matoma-official/payphone-matoma-remix

Oh yeah, also, the whole death of past moments nostalgia seems an integral part of the beach party lifestyle as I remember it from, tropical sigh, younger days

These are super cheesy but I like them a lot. They remind me of the theme tune from Out Run.

dat café delmar

I think this sub-genre might have already peaked a year ago... this is a sort of summer-y playlist I've been listening to these past months and there's some fine tropical house tunes here and there.

https://open.spotify.com/user/moteldemoka/playlist/7mxHhrMyUGjK55aKZemx76

Problem is most of the great tropical house remixes I've heard are bootlegs or unofficial so soundcloud might be the best source to find the gems but you also have to dig through a whole lot of subpar songs to get to the good stuff.

Wow, I hate this on every level.

Next you'll say you hate Crazytown

I can't say I have anything nice to say about them

Rev what do you think of "Try Me"

This works better with a pop tune. The whole rap acapellas refitted as bachelorette party music for Rachels is a big part of what had me seeing red. This is still not it for me. I need my dance music to be either more percussive or gayer than this (or preferably both).

Rachels?

we don't say Becky anymore

Rev, maybe you're listening to the awful remixes that just add some steel drums in the chorus and call it a day. What do you think about the following three songs (classified as tropical house)?:

Goldroom feat. Chela - Fifteen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTe_1edk1mk

Poncho Warwick & Wally Callerio 'Who Will Comfort Me' (Guti Summer Loving Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RafU6e5yXqo

Perseus - Russian Girlfriends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey875l-XqgI

And I suppose you've heard the international hits from Klingande, Duke Dumont, Klangkarrusel, Faul & Wad Ad, Robin Schulz... even that omi remix by jaehn is considered tropical house I think.

There's heaps of mixes of this style out there obviously but this remains my favourite, been playing it all year. Some German dude, very blissed out.

megatief - summer ends

disappointed rev isn't into this stuff

There's a direct line of descent from Aeroplane, and the epicenter of this over the past four years surely must be Los Angeles (with satellites in Australia, Spain and Paris). I agitated for this for a while on the sounds like Aeroplane thread, but no one bit.

Still think no-one has outdone Perseus's Jeremy Glenn remix, from 2011. Most consistent purveyor has been Moon Boots.

garbage

I think this shit is too "balearic" for me, I've never really been about beach vibes in any sense. I find them actively offputting, really.

Of the tracks Moka posted, I really like "Russian Girlfriends", and the Pancho Warwick is cool, deeply h8 the Goldroom tho.

Most of that list isn't pop in the US, except for OMI and (kind of) Robin Shulz. "Waves" is a jam on the low, but I find "Cheerleader" just on the wrong side of hokey.

I'm going to love all this shit aren't I?

Beach vibes is played but this does it the right way, it's like if classixx's shwayze remix had actually been super influential

Also the bieber record would sound dope ~in the mix~

i don't see how this is particularly distinct from the domestic casual-type deep house that was(/is still?) popular in the past couple years. spread mostly by youtubes w/ background images of white skinny women in bikinis, appropriated vocals from 'collective memory'-type r&b records (filtered so that they sound not sung but almost whispered by the breeze), 'chill' vibes. like yeah i guess there wasn't as much sax in those (w/ some exceptions, like klangkarussell's "sonnentanz", which i actually like a lot) but otherwise like what is the difference? same lineage if not cut of the exact same cloth maybe?

Rap music is good and wallpaper house is bad (except when it is also good )

You gotta understand that this wedding of two of my favorite forms of music is basically an extension of personal aesthetic interests...I made these mixes about 5-6 years ago that was like, let's mix DOC out of crydamour, I'm glad the world is coming around

All of this stuff is post-Aeroplane, yeah, and I think I even heard that Jeremy Glenn remix in Seminyak, but the actual vibe on the beach typically was much much more distinct: lots of Matoma, Boehm remix of "Dear Mama", that remix of Mr Probz's "Waves", Major Lazer and DJ Snake's "Lean On".

Like yeah it's important to see the historical continuities but it's also important not to ignore the shifts - e.g. these tunes do not have vocals "filtered so that they sound not sung but almost whispered by the breeze" (which is a great description of what other, related stuff was doing a few years back, mind), it's much more literally "oh hey we all know this song let's sing along or at least wave our beers in time".

And Matt DC I think you would!

idk dyl, I like the british pop-deep house stuff, if that's what you're talking about

side note: usually when I see youtubes w/ background images of white skinny women in bikinis, I assume it's not for me

it's funny how small the gradations can be, cause I totally rock with shit (not necessarily proud of such, mind you):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5wppgR1HH4

Oh yeah don't blame you for that at all, and I often suspect north euros of being the worst virulent racists. None the less and give or take a hamfisted record or three I feel as if playing some of these songs to diverse audiences would work p well given the right conditions

Just heard Kygo's "Stole The Show" on the radio B-)

Two songs later it was Felix Jaehn's cover of "Ain't Nobody".

they're pushing this stuff in the states too, kygo's marvin gaye remix is getting spins out here

also i suspect justin timberlake's single moving this direction is indicative of where the market is moving generally

*farts*

i def like (much of) the british pop/deep house stuff too rev! i am just confused about what the relationship between that stuff and the topic of this thread is, if there is one -- like is one a subset of the other or no? did they evolve in parallel or one after the other?

they seem to be super similar other than what vocals are used -- is that the main difference? idgi

*farts*

― WD-40 (mattresslessness), Sunday, August 30, 2015 12:30 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool opinion shithead

huh this is what I've been hearing; "Stole the Show" is currently #2 on the French charts and "Ain't Nobody" #4 and "Lean On" #7. It's been a hot summer.

Selena Gomez One Last Time is also totally this stuff, it already has infiltrated everything.

Beach vibes is played

Lol I was starting to get all eyerolly at this but thinking about it, the ~balearic~ spirit has been migrating inland for the past few years and now it's all tropical rainforests instead of sun and sand... i'm probably totally not otm here but whatever

like i know ronnie & renzo were hot 5 years ago but that vibe seems to have permeated and lingered... anyway offtopic

The tracks Moka posted are cool but they don't fit my idea of tropical house - too housey, not tropically enough. To me it seems genre is defined by slight "carribean-style" syncopation and synth-effects and the melancholy beach vibe Tim F mentioned.

Is the mix that Siegbran posted representative?

eh not really. The borders of this are of course very porous so you see a lot of mixes with slight tropical house vibes interspersed within a more amorphous "chill house" / "deep house" setting.

Still think Matoma (who's something of a tropical house purist) is the best starting point.

This 17 minute mix of his own tunes he did is kinda hilarious, albeit jarring;

https://soundcloud.com/matoma-official/one-year-one-love

Thomas Jack also has a 'Tropical House' DJ mix series featuring a lot of the key players but, again, most of the practitioners are a bit too subtle to play like an entire hour of tropical in a row (which is a shame almost, the thing that really struck me in Bali is how the more of the same style that's playing the more involving it is).

One way to think about this style is if Afrojack circa 2010 had "gone balearic". Anything that's actually balearic/deep is perhaps a bit too nuanced/tasteful to capture it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-QR5_58xPk

this music gives me bad feelings

it will make you renounce everything you believed in

ha well i didn't mean Iasos.

stay away from Iasos, i repeat, stay away from Iasos!

this stuff is so hit or miss!! help me find more hits

also i suspect justin timberlake's single moving this direction is indicative of where the market is moving generally

― mods = chickenshit idiots (D-40), Saturday, August 29, 2015 9:47 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i meant bieber, lol

this is my favorite of the (non rap) examples bc it violates all rules of tastefulness & is still a banger imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RCx712GKqU

haha, "John Mayer - Free Fallin' (Matoma & Nelsaan Tropical Mojito Remix)" - truly you can't make this stuff up...

cool song!

I feel like this stuff was engineered and optimized just for Spotify playlists - Ultimate Chill Out Beach Party, Summer Vibes Relax.

Matoma is just some kind of sunset vibe mining algorithm, right?

So pleased you're on board with Matoma, Miko!

Tim F & i were talking about exactly that re spotify lifestyle playlists

lol played a lot of this stuff around pool parties where people were smoking a lot of w33d. they seemed to think it was OTM

its crazy how bad the main purveyors of this sound are at djing it... i tried the kygo and felix jaehn mixes w/ thomas jack on soundcloud and i had to turn them off w/in two songs

total wet blanket house

the next step of course is 8 min long instrumental versions of afropop records obv

ooh gimme that

I wasn't really feeling that Matoma mix although it had its moments. This thread title piqued my interest because it got close to my long-held non-existent fantasy genre that melds the syncopated, socafied end of post-UK funky dance music with the bouncier end of nu-Balearic, but then there's quite a bit of afropop tilting in that direction right now as it is.

i like that this stuff is sort of tasteless but i also don't

none of the matoma remixes touch classixx/shwayze edit to me

I wasn't really feeling that Matoma mix although it had its moments. This thread title piqued my interest because it got close to my long-held non-existent fantasy genre that melds the syncopated, socafied end of post-UK funky dance music with the bouncier end of nu-Balearic, but then there's quite a bit of afropop tilting in that direction right now as it is.

― Matt DC, Monday, September 14, 2015 1:51 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its def just a strain of the broader technical genre of 'tropical house' that's worth listening to & fantasy genre is totally a part of its appeal...tim's right that matoma as a central figure makes better sense than anyone else, but even w/ him there's a few records which just don't work (any eminem remixes for example)...you def have to dig through crap to find the worthwhile shit but as DJ tools the best stuff is great as a kind of genre nexus imo

the matoma mix is just a bunch of his own remixes lined up right? that's obv not the idea way to experience this stuff ... I'm more seeing these as DJ tools where individual songs work & some don't but they're not afraid of incorporating rap which has been an issue w/ balearic zone of fruitless disintegration since the mid 00s revival

what is fruitless disintegration

if only coyote records had rapping on them

what is fruitless disintegration

― the late great, Monday, September 14, 2015 2:11 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an attempt to joke on 'fruitless intensification' but more implying castles made of sand falling in the sea eventually due to diminishing audience interest the further you go into the nu balearic essence

total wet blanket house

Not to be confused with Toadal Wet Sprocket House.

as jordan noted on uk dance thread this song has a great & shameless tropical vibe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozx898ADTxM

GAH STOP WITH THAT SONG IT IS THE WORST

haha it's certainly the popularest, #1 in uk last week?

even though it's a bit fast&hard/housey compared to other t house tracks, it has a lot of core elements imo - throwback acapella, naive aesthetics, steel drum synth breakdown, joyous melancholy

it is distilled shit

the logical shit endpoint of the already shit "wish you were mine" by philip george

Don't see that at all - "wish you were min" has a kind of minor key piano riff that's much more late 90s techno (I think?), no tropical vibe

they both xploit 70s acapella's though (but the MJ one is so much better than the weirdly pitched Stevie one)

that's what i mean by "logical" - the sigala track is angled specifically to capitalize on summer 2015. i just don't see any creativity, originality, bangin-ness or guilty pleasureness here at all.

well, I guess it is kind of vapid - and not sure I'm a fan

but I thought it worth posting since it's a smash belonging in this thread, in that respect completely agree it's "logical"

ha ok fair enuff :)

hehe... also I guess it kind of follows the workings of tropical house industry - from what I gather this started out as an amateur Soundcloud post

i agree with j0rdan on this one

http://gawker.com/is-disclosure-a-victim-of-its-own-good-taste-1733745303

I don't.

Haha, that review was great

Mind you, normally I'm on board with arguments that things with taste are bad and tasteless things are good.

Nice one J0rdan.

I had forgotten about that Ed Sheeran track.

tasteful/-less really isn't an indicator of value either way

Love that review, J0rdan.

I remember this argument about tasteful dance music when Everything But the Girl started experimenting with drums 'n' bass and house.

My biggest problem with Caracal is that it sounds all too reminiscent of "Latch," not that it's too tasteful.

ty guys

I think Disclosure's tastefulness was a big part of what drew me to them originally, but then its unabashed upward mobility felt like a reaction to an insistence on rawness/undergroundness/complexity. Now it's just pushing an open door.

did we have a thread about razrs? i def remember reading all the other ones

lol ok i have fallen by "here for you" by kygo despite hating the vocals

ooh thanks for that tip, vox are not that great but instrumental rocks!

enjoying the "call on me" vibe on this one https://soundcloud.com/sigalamusic/sweetlovin

most of the auth tropical by kygo et al feels so cold and clinical, but i love when it gets warm & is fronted by pop stars lol

any tropical eoy lists?

that bieber track sure is something

Justin Bieber – 'What Do You Mean?'

oh well, I guess the Bieber and MØ tracks topping lists count

this is new and good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRxdrus-I5c

relatively new

Hits the spot

http://www.magneticmag.com/author/ben-houston/
https://soundcloud.com/bhoustonla/sets/the-trop-15-the-15-best

i mean u kinda have to hand it to this guy no. like why does everyone come online now to read/aspire 2 be some uselessly generalist dork-at-large when the post of Tropical House and Chillwave Editor is available

Haha I love this post, best music writing 2015

So many lines I want to c&p into every thread.

Some writers may think that tropical house is a bubble that will burst, and even some artists like Thomas Jack are coming in hot saying that they want to distance themselves from the sound. To them I say, it’s just getting started and evolving outside its stereotypes so sit back, grab a cold brew and quit trying to bring down music that has the inherent ability to make you smile and want to run into the ocean butt naked.

RIP guru josh

I contend The Magician's Magic Tapes has been the curatorial center this subgenre for 5 years now. Among 200k listeners, he surely had a few producers.

My favorite 2015 thisthready thing was Cyclist - Heartbeat Speed (ft. Jocelyn Alice).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPVG7iMb8dY

For 2016, I await the Darius album like the Second Coming (of Aeroplane).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JckhXz8aktY

classy stuff!

matoma is playing my town in two weeks, kinda thinking abt going... small venue, 20 $

gospel mentasm trop-step

https://open.spotify.com/track/2NaEg8lTZXUg0TgYOiqSzN

i'm not sure that's true, about the magician, but then the trop house pulse is like lab designed for me not to find

did anyone take anything from bhouston bro's list

i liked mazde - pitch black a lot, it scratches a similar itch that goodbye by feder feat. lyse does, but it's not really trop house

so much of this stuff just sounds like slowed down euphoric trance - trance-bahton? - even down to the insistent chugging one-note basslines

yeah try pitching terje's remix of balearic incarnation up, it's totally progressive trance

cue Tim F for the obligatory reminder that 'the differences are more interesting than the similarities' which is probably true in this case too i guess? as far as the uses to which this music is put, if nothing else

but i am pretty far removed from the 'run into the beach butt naked' massive, so i don't know - and that does pain me

Love this genre. That John Mayer thing up top was ridiculous!

These guys do a good job of culling through a lot of this stuff (along with bits from other genres) each week: http://noonpacific.com

cue Tim F for the obligatory reminder that 'the differences are more interesting than the similarities' which is probably true in this case too i guess?

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 10 January 2016 17:43 Bookmark

yes

haha first name i recognize when quickly scanning the page is kaytranada

because that site is also wrong

Which site?

ur one. idk i looked thru a bunch and to me they were tropical but not Tropical

What's the difference? Not trying to be pushy, I'm genuinely interested. They definitely post a bunch of tracks that are not tropical (Tropical?) house, but I've discovered a bunch of good TH stuff through them...

yeah sorry i know i'm not being v illuminating, mainly bc i hate this stuff and generally try and examine that urge from a safe distance

the distinctions tim makes upthread seem sound to me and i think have been consistently overlooked. capital TH in a popular wave sense is an overripe inbred mutant cousin to the lighter chillout/deep/tropical subscenes that may or may not occasionally coalesce in their uninteresting ways. idk it's also probably already dead?

(Kygo isn’t familiar with the term Balearic, the eclectic, slower D.J. style of late-1980s Ibiza that is tropical house’s clearest dance-music antecedent.)

:-)

from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/arts/music/kygodelivers-dance-beats-with-a-side-order-of-pan-flute.html

Matos!

The original balearic scene was much smaller en less known than the Ibiza chillout/downtempo scene of the 90s and 00s, which is what Kygo is the actual successor to.

Compilations like this:
http://www.fantazia.org.uk/Mailorder/images/HedKandi_BeachHouse2000_2CD.jpg

into this even tho the title is a van halen false flag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJb6uypm5s

tropical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MwltueD5ak

So has anyone actually listened to the kygo album yet?

5 tracks in sounds a lot like what you'd expect

So many steel drums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTYOkcRH220

every now and again injecting a little life into the formula appears to involve exhuming a deceased icon huh

Anyone heard the new I think album “Tropical House Cruises to Jamaica “ ?

Saw a mention on twitter

Oops , I see that the 2020 collector’s edition of that 2017/2018 album is still getting attention in some circles