Listening to Avantdale Bowling Club is to be immersed inside the mind of Tom Scott, a rapper from New Zealand. Scott's lyrical content is introspective and dark, with subject matter including damaged and lost relationships, poverty, substance abuse, and mental health issues. Scott has a nihilistic, at times defeatist worldview that is nonetheless fascinating and relatable. Backed by a fantastic jazz band, this is a record that can be compared to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly in many ways, except recognition.
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Lighthearted, nostalgic house music with a soulful singer-songwriter slant is what comes to mind to describe the three tracks on this EP. The upbeat groove of the song Flowers is juxtaposed cleverly with pessimistic, glass half empty lyrics such as "the prettiest days can sour" and "sunshine turns to rain." This is sweet sounding stuff, with sticky synths and bouncy bass. An acoustic guitar or piano will pepper the songs with a more organic, human feel that is sometimes absent in electronic music, but even without the instrumentation, nobody could miss the life-affirming vocals that give so much personality to these songs. Ashong has a light, airy presence that accentuates the somewhat muted and breezy dance music.
This record starts off sounding like a quiet piano is at the bottom of a well surrounded by swirling synths. Slowly, IDM inspired percussion and dreamy female vocals drift out from the well. This is music that creates its own space to live in, always anchored down by that solitary piano. The album flows between beautiful ambient passages that build into percussion breakdowns and pop-adjacent dance tracks. The atmosphere throughout is ethereal and cerebral, a record you can get lost in as it flows past.
A kaleidoscopic mix of hazy music that fuses elements of hip-hop, jazz, soul, and psychedelia into shimmery, ill-defined pop songs. A distinguishing trait of music that I really enjoy is that it doesn't seem to fit clearly into a genre. Well, this record certainly satisfies that criteria. This is truly a lush collage, meshing live instrumentation and vocals with samples and electronic elements, stocked to the brim with pleasing sonic vignettes. Soulful, detailed, clearly labored over and loved by its creators, Standing on the Corner is certainly a record that deserves more attention than it got back when it was released in 2016 and has since.
I decided to start a blog because I love music, and I love to write. This blog will feature records that may have slipped by the wayside or deserve more exposure, in the form of short blurbs highlighting what I love about the music.
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