The Ineffable Beauty of Tropical 2

Last broadcast today, 01:00 on BBC 1Xtra.
SYNOPSIS
Q is back from Ibiza and plays out his set from Toddla T's room at Space. Plus some brand new exclusives from the Boy Better Know compilation Tropical 2.

― r|t|c, Wednesday, 10 August 2011 11:47 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OMG royal-t, dj q and preditah have tracks on there

and it's out on sunday

a tremendous sense of destiny and personal vindication accompanies my clicking of the play button here, not gonna lie to yall

― r|t|c, Wednesday, 10 August 2011 11:53 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OMG that gif.

Agreed, this sounds exciting and (for you) vindicating.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 10 August 2011 21:15 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha you know you've probably gone too far when you feel gently ribbed by someone agreeing with you.

the clips sound pretty great, although as with all sequels it'd be foolish to expect much more than a banging celebratory tribute to the first rather than anything approaching its still-unearthly occult power. such a slam dunk of a postscript tho, 5 years on!

everyone seems to be darkly hinting at a super special guest producer on it as well, i'm trying to work out who's big enough of a deal. #thankyoubasedtodd?

― r|t|c, Thursday, 11 August 2011 09:11 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't even listen to tropical 1 that much tbh, maybe once a year? but that one time is like a seance. in my inevitable rambling descent into marcelloblivion i should like to do a 33⅓ book on it someday probably.

― r|t|c, Thursday, 11 August 2011 09:20 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Haha that "for you" isn't meant to be as damning as I realise in retrospect it comes across.

― Tim F, Thursday, 11 August 2011 11:33 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/tropical-2/id456852136?affId=1503186

― r|t|c, Sunday, 14 August 2011 10:58 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

2 weeks pass...

Tropical 2 is great! Everything is excellent and DJ Q esp. fits right in. But my favourite is still JME, still sounds like music beamed in from another galaxy entirely.

― Tim F, Monday, 29 August 2011 11:54 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh good, i was meaning to bump this thread but i didn't wanna harp on. yes i think it's wonderful! (and far better than i was expecting).

i'm particularly taken with the way it follows on from 'holiday' in characteristic sunny, determined fashion (preditah and dj q as seamless skepta and plastician stand-ins) and then how the royal-t and todd tracks seem to correspond to some kind of emancipatory release; 'cool down' this exhilarating, exultant blast of pure air and bright outside daylight streaming in through an unexpected yet somehow always destined fissure, 'the stranger' (obsessed with why this is called this!) a carefree frolic through eden warm and benevolent. and then... then the fall, turning its back on redemption, spiralling and plunging deeply back down to unfathomable abyssal depths so disquieting in their ultimate sense of benumbed ambivalent comfort and poisoned sweetness, cheap and familiar as the titular closing common commercial sigils of tropicana and easyjet.

i applaud these young men for enhancing further the scope of their strange work.

― r|t|c, Monday, 29 August 2011 16:04 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes, LOVE "Cool Down", not at all the contribution I was expecting from Royal-T!

― Tim F, Monday, 29 August 2011 20:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This. Fucking. Album.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 11:23 (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Album of the year maybe.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 21:36 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't get why it's not listed from the Boy Better Know audio page. Unless I'm missing it.

rtc is so right about the flow of this mix, the way it plunges from the exhilarating heights of "cool down" and "the stranger" to the mysterious depths of "sandy beach" and "easy jet", although really diverse the whole release still sounds so singular and
cohesive in concept.

I was all set to listen to Terius's shoddy knockoff album but fuck that now.

I'm sayin', bro!

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8nCWTdrZEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZnAKwrGYu4&feature=related

yeah this one is great, hasn't left my car stereo in weeks. how about those preditah tracks? 'new york' is like if someone ground up the voices from 'getting me down' in a blender and painted their guts all over the wall, wonky stans (do they still exist?) ought to be swooning. though maybe someone can explain why the mixing is so... i mean i appreciate starting it with 'holiday' but what's the point if the next track is basically vomited onto your lap?

idk i couldn't say any of the transitions have struck me as "jarring" in the finer sense of the word - queasy, rushed (rushy!), ungainly sometimes perhaps but never anything that's dispelled the flow; in fact they've only intensified the tracks, in strange and curious ways.

generally speaking, such is the offworld microclimate they create that i tend to hear the tropicals almost as long single pieces rather than mixes per se - it seems unsatisfactory even to pick single tracks out.

although actually a key element of the jarringness you talk about is how it's indicative of the tropicals' grime dna rather than simply just being about a relatively smooth ukg homage. i do think of these as grime albums.

awesome towards the end of 'skippy swing' where 'cool down' is slowly coming in and the vocal sample sounds like "don't! - don't!" with the ominous synth rising... instant sense of danger, but slowly getting drawn in and seduced by it until - "cmon!" that 4/4 suddenly bursts out and totally sweeps you away

last three posts OTM.

Haven't had a chance to dig into this yet but really really happy Todd Edwards is part of this!

Loving this - listened to it after dark last night and it gave me that sort of giddy feeling of anticipation you get when you're getting ready and having your first beer before going out dancing. Love love love the Royal T track.

Album of the year maybe.

― Tim F

^^ this

Haven't had a chance to dig into this yet but really really happy Todd Edwards is part of this!

― etc, Thursday, 1 September 2011 09:30 (9 hours ago) Bookmark

havent had a chance to listen yet but basedtodd has an interview and mix on dj q's show this week just fyi

cosign

xp

but then, you know, I would

Also, I would like Tim Finney to list his albums of the year so far!

One of things I absolutely love about "cool down" is the inevitability of its staged levels of euphoria: cut up vocals into dirty bassline into chiming xylophone into swirling harmonies.

Adam I really don't have many! Mostly been listening to tracks and radio sets this year. Destroyer, Beyonce, Dawn Richard, PJ Harvey, E-40, mixes by Dave Nada, Ame.... And then of course unofficial mixes by DJ E1D, Ill Blu, Funkystepz, Andy J and S-T, Royal-T, Dillon Francis, Matthew Kyle... Perhaps you can tell me what I've been missing!

No, I'm clueless, really. This is good. PJ Harvey is good. I like Shabazz Palaces. Active Child. Robag. Locussolus. blahblahblah

Planningtorock would be in there for me.

I haven't heard that!

dirty beaches, too! (not likely to be tim f.'s thing, i'm guessing).

love this shit

omg at this

listening to this i feel like there is a large escalator in my body and the people travelling up it wear intensely reflective shades, oh yeah

dying

god it just EXPLODES with the royal-t track doesn't it

i keep singing "show me love" on top of it

haha yes! i thought the same thing

It just dawned on me that DJ Q's "Keep it Cool" samples the Lee Foss track of the same name. Either that or they both used the same sample source.

Great, great album.

Seems that the sample source for both tracks is "Baby" by Brandy. However, I swear that DJ Q took it from the Lee Foss track specifically.

I don't know who these people are or what this is, but it sounds pretty nice to me (based on the youtube tracks anyway) on first listen. "The Stranger," especially.

brandy samples are seemingly everywhere right now (or at least, the tracks that sample her stand out from all the other producers lazily c/ping r&b samples into their tracks) - this, lee foss, blawan's "getting me down"...

Don't know why I like this so much.

... because it's amazing?

Is the commercially available version as quiet as the (possibly dodgy) leak I've been listening to? It's by far the quietest dance music on my ipod at the moment.

i dont think its particularly quiet, and its only like £4.50 on itunes so its worth paying for

it is a bit quiet yeah (particularly the first track) but only really in the sense that i can't make my ears bleed with it like usual.

(mine's a rare purchase btw but i strongly doubt the leak would be any different)

obv coming from a totally different position but i can kinda sympathise with what rudipherous is saying - meaningless is probably the wrong word but the tropicals do seem so isolated from narratives or trends or whatever, for me at least i find them such an unusually blank canvas to dwell on. you really can fill them with whatever you want almost.

this unrepresentativeness is consequently also why i shy away from album of the year talk here; they seem more like the sort of thing you'd have lurking at number 3 in a year and then come back with them topping the decade

Is it that unrepresentative? It doesn't feel like that to me - certainly in the wider narrative of what else is going on at the moment, particularly with all the 90s references, Todd-biting etc. It's a grimier version of that obviously but tbh I tend to avoid Boy Better Know much of the time but that's mostly because I can't abide JME and Skepta's clunky MCing.

Sorry that last sentence is a bit garbled, I mean to say I don't know how it fits in with whatever else BBK are doing at the moment.

... because it's amazing?

But I hate lots of amazing stuff! One thing I like about it is the way the balance between parts (and I guess I partly just mean balance between treble and bass and that sort of thing) seems very precise and distinctive. I'm not enough of an audiophile to begin to break it down though.

Maybe this is my way of describing the quietness others are hearing.

am kind of wondering whether i'm hearing the same thing as everyone else: i love love love this but i hear no quietness at all, and also "ineffable beauty" isn't the first phrase i'd think of to describe it

My copy (the leak) is pretty quiet compared to everything else I've got. I'd buy it to compare but I don't see where to buy a digital copy in the states.

Yeah, my leaked copy is pretty quiet. I'd buy it, but again, not available in the US.

the copy i found is actually a purchased itunes copy

it's naturally quiet

i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon
i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon
i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon
i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon
i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon
i'mnotperfectthoughsometimesi'm OFF TRAAAAACK butthenigetbackon

rly tho

amazing track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFvSbwiP0g

here's some roll deep x predz for a laff

riddim is - appropriately enough looking at scratchy in his dotage - called 'gargoyle'

haha wait is manga wearing a cassie shirt there...?

just in case some ppl in this thread dont check pitchfork - http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15888-tropical-2/

I read Tim's review, and what I find interesting is that I get very little sense of darkness or creepiness in this music. I want to give this another listen with the review in mind. Of course, most of the review just goes right past me with it's reference to the larger dance music context. (Also had not realized UK funky was so new!)

darkness and creepiness from that review? i think that's a misunderstanding of the mix of rough and smooth being "estranging and disquieting." (or "the ineffable beauty")

What Preditah-- and everyone else here-- recognizes is how mixing in the smooth with the rough simply makes the latter more estranging and disquieting.

I don't agree with this, as a general rule, or even here specifically.

This is very subjective, but I think, if I had to, I'd interpret the most jittery, chopped up, disquieting part of "New York" as a reflection of the external (urban) world*, and the smoother parts as internal. And all, or maybe almost all, of what sounds uncanny on Tropical 2 I identify with longing, so it doesn't end up feeling particularly alien. Though in the last sentence of the review, Tim brings that alien-ness home to us as individuals. I still feel too much sense of recognition to want to describe what's here as alien.

*And pretty sure I'd hear it that way minus the title.

Agree with this:

Best of all are the interstitial moments between tracks when one contorted, molten shape deliquesces into another, beats interlocking in strange patterns of the residual and emergent while melting hiccup vocals form impromptu harmonies.

Listening to "Skippy Swing" now and thinking, geez, maybe yes to darkness after all. Still not really eerie, because I recognize all of it as a reflection of familiar feeling.

(Once again, I almost want to say excuse my presence on a dance thread, but I'm pretty sure the only new (and not just new-to-me) music I've really clicked with this year has been "dance music.")

Maybe I just have a particularly and troubled weird inner life.

Also, to talk about one minor detail, I love the "goin' down" vocal repeat near the beginning of "The Stranger," although it's not anything particuarly out of the ordinary.

I think in some ways this music seems so intuitively eerie to me (esp. the JME tracks, ad obv. not "Cool Down" or "The Stranger") that it may not have occurred to me to unpack that as much as I should - but I definitely don't mean darkness. Apart from the Super Mario Bros reference, an example of comparable eeriness (in feel/tone, not sonics so much) would be stuff like Jungle Wonz. Or Foul Play circa "Being With You".

For the sake of comparison here's "Being With You":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVZmtuiUQg0

The part you disagree with here - the idea of the smooth and the comforting simply underscoring the exotic or the estranging - is perhaps the key point to me! Though the caveat is that all of this sense of eerieness/mysteriousness/estrangement is not any barrier to intimate enjoyment of the music, rather it's the thing that keeps me coming back because for all that I totally clicked with this music immediately I still feel like there is more to discover and uncover there. It's like at the early infatuation stage of a relationship where the bits of the other person you don't understand seem really fascinating and compelling, all thrown into relief by the great sex and the fact that you find them really attractive etc.

The Ineffable Beauty of DJ Beez's Bassline Dubz With A Buzz

loth as i am to prostrate myself but did anyone get round to sampling these more rudimentary familial pleasures

first 14 tracks in particular i had in mind

stupid question i guess - can i get this on cd or vinyl. or wav.

is it seriously itunes only or am i just a google feeb.

guess it's mp3 only. shame! i mean, this thing is amazing.

Boy Better Know's set here is pretty massive
http://rinse.fm/2012/01/rinse-boxing-day-fabric-room-1-sets/

can anybody hook me up with tropical 1? can't find it anywhere

i have this http://grimepedia.co.uk/wiki/Boy_Better_Know_(Edition_4)_-_Tropical

Can't find it for download anywhere.

There's a new DJ Q cd out. Anyone know if it's Tropicalish/generally worth getting?

that's what i'm after, moullet. can you hook a brother up?

i don't have time tonight but if no one's done it by tomorrow lemme know rev

ive got it, but only 128kbps?

yeah i've been looking for it too :/

lex, do you have it in better quality than that?

y

uh anyone who wants it, webmail me your email address or something? i am not planning on posting any links here

i have it 192 kbps. its in your email the reverend. (:

yay! thank you

ooh, full "The Stranger"

http://soundcloud.com/todd-edwards/the-stranger

would love a full "cool down"

yeah, the "Cool Down"/"Off Track"/"The Stranger" segment is the best run of the album imo

Oh wait, apparently such a thing exists, too.

http://soundcloud.com/royaltmusic/rinse-presents-royal-t-12-1

full 'cool down' is here

tho tbh it's such a key moment in this i don't think i'm that interested in listening to it as a standalone

I love that Cool Down finaly came out, to many of these tracks where kinda lost since they only came out on itunes or whatever they deserve to be on wax somewhere. Royal T has an album on the way for Rinse too, can't wait for that.

:o

tho tbh it's such a key moment in this i don't think i'm that interested in listening to it as a standalone

same (though i will anyway)

^^^ yeah that entire sentiment

Main value of having this standalone is being able to drop it at parties, I think.

something immensely satisfying about hearing the stranger at that speed

Yeah the percussion is actually more slamming slightly slowed down. And that intro is tremendous.

"Inside The Ride" is really good too

Todd's new EP is so fucking good

I like how the ghostly background keyboard sounds on parts of "Skippy Swing" (just the beginning? I forget) sound like something that would be leaking from the flip side of a cheap Arabic music cassette.

Right before the rewinding tape sound on the song, actually.

backspin sound

http://butterzisthelabel.tumblr.com/post/40639688277

http://soundcloud.com/preditah/la-playa

wonder if "the sunset project" isnt a tropical 3 dealio in the works http://i.imgur.com/S6udB.gif

massively late on this but i dont think anyone posted it b4? could do without c4 hosting tbh (couldnt he have got bbk to do it?) but still fun

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

Logan Sama Tropical Mix

Preditah - Off Track
C4 - Loosen Up (JME Tropical Mix)
Terror Danjah - Fruit Punch
Disclosure - Stimulation (Preditah Remix)
Flava D - Comfort Me
DJ Q - Tropical Oh
C4 - Beach
Royal T - Cool Down
Preditah - Old School
TC4 - Beta
Flava D - Take Me Up
Preditah - Bass Down Low
JME - Cocopina
DJ Q - Skippy Swing
Solo 45 ft JME - Higher
Flava D & Royal T - On My Mind (Version One)
Maxsta ft C4 - Wrong

nice!

Preditah - Bass Down Low

good track

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CPVc1q6W8AAmA8d.jpg

So who's flying me to Southhampton?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nldlfuT6zz4

homage so flawless it took me a month to realise it was even him, or even a new track

awesome towards the end of 'skippy swing' where 'cool down' is slowly coming in and the vocal sample sounds like "don't! - don't!" with the ominous synth rising... instant sense of danger, but slowly getting drawn in and seduced by it until - "cmon!" that 4/4 suddenly bursts out and totally sweeps you away

― r|t|c, Thursday, 1 September 2011 01:35 (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

The greatest moment ever.