The Sixty-One is a wicked place to be. A whole host of websites attempted to tackle the marriage between of social media and music discovery – think digg/reddit imprinted on your music listening habits – but no one handles it better than t61. Artists post their music, users vote on their favorite tracks, and the top voted songs get widespread attention across the site – and what makes t61 the frontrunner of the niche are the myriad ways in which it funnels recommendations directly into your lap. Trying to find a good song on that site is like trying to get wet in a thunderstorm – all you have to do is go outside.
I’ve discovered a fair number of excellent artists in that particular section of the internet tubes (so many, in fact, I organized a t61-exclusive electro compilation – more on that in a future post). One of the raddest blips on my radar is proj::echts (did I stutter?), and his latest effort may very well be the song that graduates him from “promising” to “arrived.”
It’s kind of dreamy, kind of sleepy, and drenched in liquid, like an insomnia-driven walk through a persistent drizzle in the darkest hours of the early morning. You’ve got about three different pads sharing space at the outer edges of the mix, ducking in and out to provide a drony, atmospheric feedback, while the stutter-step drum beat starts out confident but trails off like a daydream near the ends of certain bars. Ten or twelve listens in, I’m starting to notice the subtle details that pull this whole song together – like the near-demure wobble that brings the entire track back into focus, seemingly snapping the drums awake again. In this case, I can’t say much more than what’s felt – grab the mp3 and pay him a visit for a few more looks at an artist I hope to hell will make the step into the public view soon.