My haircut would be right for a Silent Disco – no volume what-so-ever. New post time!

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Good Afternoon to you (Borderline Evening) – I am Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s finally time again for me to get scribbling up about your track of the day on the blog, as per typical, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Bandcamp is a truly excellent resource for finding some rarities from some of the world’s independent creatives, and one of my recent discoveries has been Iden Kai’s new album, ‘Disco Fortuna’, which was released to the app and wherever you stream your music on January 15th via Neon City Records. I could find very little information on Iden (Which is pronounced as “Eiden”) when I had searched him up on the web, other than knowing how he pronounces his name and that he is a Mexican DJ and Electonic Funk record producer. However, he seems to be gaining some rock solid traction with those who enjoy their Future Funk and Disco revivialist anthems – for instance – he currently has 3.3k montly followers on Spotify and ‘Disco Fortuna’ has amassed over 10k streams on the platform as well, which is pretty good going for someone so off-the-radar online. Check out the single, ‘Disco James’, below.

Iden Kai offers up his mixes to the currently popular ‘Future Funk’ sub-genre, which, if you are not familiar with the name of this style of music, it pays homage to the viral culture of Synthwave, Chillwave and Vaporwave, but ultimately takes on a more hyper-melodic and anime-style visual work that is defined partly by it’s samples of rare smooth jazz, R&B and lounge Jazz recordings of the 80’s. In more simpler terms, it’s basically the most “poppy” music that you could probably come across, with young artists who share their material around places like YouTube. It’s sometimes seen as quite a trashy and disposable style of production, but like with any good art, it just depends how you treat the genre and what credibility you strive to add to it. ‘Disco James’ is actually a nice way to get acquainted with the relatively new sub-genre. It strips away the more ‘trashy’ qualities of the early-2010’s internet meme culture for me, and it provides an update to 90’s house that feels driven by more Japanese influences. The sound is strikingly upbeat, as Horn melodies and synth instrumentation provides a throwback feel designed to get the party grooving. Meanwhile, the vocal samples are chopped up and screwed up, the lyrics barely inaudible, to also carry across a Metropolitan aesthetic. The keys are playful and the effects experiment with nostalgic moods, with a breakdown towards the end of the track that feels less Jazz-influenced and more video game sound directed. Of course, there’s quite little here in the way of original material from the artist – but it seems like the goal for Iden was to re-purpose these prominent samples of vintage tunes for appeal towards a fresh audience. While it probably won’t appeal to everybody for it’s disposable approach to art, depending on who you ask, it’s earned a few good repeat listens from me. Super melodic, emphasizing on fun and knowingly nodding to the 80’s with care, there’s enough here to keep the party dancing all through a long night.

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Thank you for checking out my latest post – I did try to beef it up! This one should get the extended bank holiday weekend moving in style. The festivities continue tomorrow with our ‘New Album Release Friday’ section – where we take a sampler of one of Good Friday’s new album releases. Tomorrow’s track comes from a fresh South London 4-piece group who have been fusing witty, jumbled Spoken Word sections with Post-Rock guitar shredding to unanimously praised effect! If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/