Orson Wilds – Mothers Daughters
I barely understand how the most simple elements of science work. I’m the kind of person consistently amazed by the light coming up at the hit of a switch. What I’m trying to say is that I’m a naive fan of the great physicists, engineers, and other clever people.
Similarly, I absolutely love modern pop production. Don’t quite understand it and not sure I’m not its target audience. But, oh boy, do I greet it with an endless sense of wonder. At its best, like on Orson Wilds’ Mothers Daughters, modern production techniques can make a hurricane of guitars, drums, and vocals sound like a hush, quiet enough to accompany a pop-folk tune.
In that sense, Mother Daughters, by these aficionados of coloured apparel, Orson Wilds, is a wonder of modern technology. It’s a tense composition with vocal layers and a seeming post-rock group buried underneath it all, fighting it out. Still, this is not the kind of music that might accompany a confrontation in a bar, but rather the type that would’ve lively up the atmosphere at an outdoor summer festival.
indie-pop
6IX4EVER – Screaming Balloon
First, the modern hip-hop acts and trap artists found metal and began incorporating nasty guitar riffs and distorted vocals into their songs. More recently, usually with the help and backing of Travis Barker, the same kind of artists have discovered pop-punk.
Artists like Machine Gun Kelly have used it as the basis to create a new form of pop music. Old-time punk-rockers may scoff at this as some kind of bandwagon jumping, but that’s missing at least part of the point. Pop-punk should always sound fresh and hopeful, and that’s what a lot of modern rap production is able to offer it.
Screaming Balloon is built on the urgency of punk, the convenience of pop, and the urban allure of modern hip hop. The trio rides of the tune, trading rhymes, sharing their world-weary wisdom and creating something wholly modern and palatable.
