What is it that people want? Like realllly want? Do they want fame? Or do they want the quiet life? I’m a little confused…

The glamorisation of the party lifestyle that goes with notoriety, the alcoholic excess and the bevy of buxom girls that wear those shorts that don’t even cover a whole bum cheek, is omnipresent in the media. Thrust down our gullets in a torrent of overhyped mass budget music videos and faux-reality shows that only really succeed to tear a hole in the notion of how fickle and plastic some of the world’s population can be, with one hand, we’re cushioned and massaged by the flip side of the fame with the other. Case in point, Drake’s new song ‘Marvin’s Room,’ it’s a woozy, repressive look at the plights of fame, told perfectly in first hand by someone who’s living it and rebelling against the stupidity of it all.

There’s a personable and incredibly human aspect to Drake’s inward gaze; it feels like that moment when you’ve gone too hard for like a week, with multiple hangovers collected, lounging in idyllic surroundings with a vista stretching out to the Spanish coast, pondering just how the fuck you can make things work the way you want in between deep sighs and moments of severe anxiety. Everybody reacts different but everybody reacts…

The music of Finnish producer Teeth stirs up some of that same uncomfortable energy in me. The slowed up, torturous boom and sample chop of his breakthrough ‘Shawty,’ recently released on Oneman’s 502 Recordings, is a measured display of brooding. Defined as much by the thin, incisor like hi hats as the cloudy pads that support the “what your name is” mantra its purposefully eerie, a perfectly produced 140bpm exercise in making you feel on edge. His follow up 12” on Noppa, ‘CMT’ b/w ‘Low Cut Champagne,’ is built from the same sound palette, all crystalline and hazy synths with a massive emphasis placed on how heavy the drums hit, and as a result it maintains that reflective quality I’ve been aimlessly hinting at in this introduction.

His Sonic Router mix, #90 in our ongoing series, also makes similar in roads into a world that feels warped and greyscale. I guess it’s just the way he sees things…

http://www.sonicrouter.com/2011/06/sr-mix-90-teeth-502noppa/

Teeth – Need A Refix [dub]
Addison Groove – Fuk Tha 101 [Hessle Audio]
Trusta – Feel So [forthcoming Swamp81]
Kuoyah – Convex Gravity (Desto remix) [dub]
Mele – Pyrex Vision [Truants]
MIA – It Takes A Muscle (Pearson Sound refix) [XL]
Myrryrs – Feel U (Bambounou & Teki Latex remix) [Sound Pellegrino]
Headhunter – Sex At The Prom [Tempa]
xxxy- Kerpow [All City]
Jamie Grind – Don’t Think (dub)
Teeth – Take A Stand Overhead [forthcoming 502 Recordings]
Dark Sky – Reflex [Pictures Music]
Jay Weed – On The Nile [Grizzly]
Late – Fool (dub)

http://www.sonicrouter.com/