♫♪  Nick James - “Axis”

After releasing The Hawk last year, Nick James (a.k.a. TMTer SCVSCV) is back, and he’s got some conceptual AMMO. Just last month, he released the electronic monstrosity that was Airbnb Sutras, and on June 16, he’s dropping Drago (via Asystems), which is described as “a violent consideration on the imperialism inherent to any ‘Great Beauty’,” a release so aesthetically jarring yet conceptually intriguing that I’ve decided to finally entertain the tricky, conflictual idea of writing about a TMTer’s music for once.

“Axis,” the track we’re premiering below, is an obvious first single for Drago: upbeat, melodic, playful as fuck. But its complex orchestration of syncopated synths, bouncy melodies, and tinkling pianos are aggravated by distortions in the system, chugging rhythms that stutter awkwardly amongst the clinking and clanking that drag this epic through the digital stream. It’s a mechanical celebration with no obvious event, a 20th-century ceremony rotating around the axis of 21st-century everything-time, whipping excess narratives throughout, all of it in costume and in accordance to the kind of disruptions already well-articulated by Asystems.

“Axis” comes with a website (design/images by Music For Your Plants’s Norman Orro, coding by The Actual School’s Xander Seren) and a video by SCP22, all of which say much more than the words above.

Drago is out June 16 on Asystems. Catch Nick James at Hopstoch 2015.

• Nick James: https://soundcloud.com/nxjames
• Asystems: http://asystems.co

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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