Tag: Bird of Paradise

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Andries is an emerging  Oak View, CA-based electronic music artist, electronic music producer and sound designer for film and television. The Oak View-based artist and sound designer began making music while studying Media Arts at Chico State University. Initially starting out by making hip-hop beats, he eventually veered out towards more progressive electronic productions, inspired by Bonobo, Air, and Amon Tobin.

Upon graduation, Andries spent some time in Tokyo, gravitating towards sound design in TV and film. He’s spent the past decade working as a sound effects editor for a number of   shows, including Den of Thieves, Up in the Air, Lost in Space and a growing list of others. His music was sidelined for much of that decade, as he focused his energy on his profession; however, interestingly enough, his experience as a sound effects engineer has become an important part of his approach to arranging and mixing his own original work, work that has been influenced by Dan Deacon, Flying Lotus, Lindstrøm, Boards of Canada, Jean-Michael Jarre, and video game music of the ’80s and ’90s.

The Oak View-based electronic music artist, producer and sound designer’s latest single “Bird of Paradise”  balances a cinematic sweep with a club friendly thump in an ambitious yet incredibly accessible fashion. Centered around an expansive song structure featuring shifting moods and textures, the song is held together by layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, a soaring hook and a motorik-like groove, the song sonically speaking recall a synthesis of John Carpenter soundtracks, Kraftwerk, and Between Two Selves-era Octo Octa — but with an almost painterly attention to gradation and shading.

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Late last month, I wrote about Kalli Ma, an up-and coming, London-based electro pop production and artist duo, who with the release of their debut single  “Promises,,” quickly received attention across the UK and elsewhere, as the single revealed that the duo’s signature sound has been largely inspired by  techno, minimal wave and post punk. And as you may recall, their latest single “High Shot” found the duo employing both analog and digital synthesizers in a propulsive and kaleidoscopic, club banger, reminiscent of Soft Metals‘ Lenses, Factory Floor, Simian Mobile Disco, The Chemical Brothers and others, complete with layers of arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and a sinuous and sultrily sung hook.

Building upon the buzz they’ve received across the UK and elsewhere, the duo enlisted British producer Bird of Paradise to remix the song and while retaining the propulsive, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and arpeggiated synths and sultry hook of the original, the remix turns the song into an industrial house-leaning track full of the enormous clang and clatter of Kraftwerk’s “Metal on Metal” while expanding the song’s motorik-like groove and adding some cosmic ray bursts to the proceedings.