Mvuent’s Bad Boy Bashment Bonanza

The Boxing Day Rodin the Shawn storm one’s on is brilliant. Apart from the first bloke in this mix, everyone was great on it:

Should have picked the black Ryno one instead of Shawn storm I think.

Someone (version?) described the intencw track as like a voice refracting through a Crystal. Squash ‘prodigal’ has The same effect this weird harmoniser on his voice so you’ve got multiple layers of his voice all happening in unison. I think all the g6ix lot do it. Maybe barstool don too. It’s a new thing they’re doing and it’s great.

Maestro don, not barstool don. That’d be like seasick Steve.

luka said:

This happens every now and then in dancehall. Usually a bad sign if they start using the word 'motherfucker'

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The spoken word introduction’s really embarrassing like that

You might prefer this on the same riddim

mvuent said:

anyone lurking want to give this a shot tonight or tomorrow? it looks like a good one, nice colors.

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Doing this list was frustrating because there were loads of songs I couldn’t include because they don’t sound right played at their original speed; they’re pitched up in the dances which gives them more velocity for one thing and also chipmunks them so they sound more alien and otherwordly.

A pitched up version of this track can be heard at 1.57 of this and it’s better than the version on my playlist.


This song’s a crossover between two paradigms. One is what I’d call the “sugar rush”; this is cloyingness taken to its extreme so as to induce a diabetic seizure. It’s fizzy drinks, anime hair, garishness, Candy Crush, 8bit, K-Pop, ADHD, overstimulation, 13 year old YouTube vloggers screaming into their distorting headsets. The Lord of the Flies but with loads of video games and artificial colourings.

The other is “shimmering Pentecostalism”. This one I tend to hear when these seemingly Ibiza-fied tropical muzak dancehall tracks get pitched up and are suddenly rendered a seraphic gold. They’re transformed and glisten like the gates of heaven. They go from being awful Love Island girl getting fingered music to becoming William Blakes’ ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. The naff trance euphoria signifiers are suddenly reimagined through gospel music and stop being an annoying over-friendly Dutch bloke (not Yyaldrin) on E and become eschatological elation. The rapturous ascent to the heavens.

This track combines those two sensibilities. It’s one of a kind really. Can’t think of anything quite like it.

mvuent said:

another option for a write up

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sadmanbarty said:

kartel's tenderness in the face of enormity; the tacky majesty of the strings. sweet and mourning all at once. poignant. kartel as woman. he becomes his own camille.

i like that croaking, sawing sound in the verses. like a crocodile with an electric toothbrush.

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mvuent said:

really like all the vocal edits in all these. the goblin voices at 0:18 are a great example of peripheral weirdness. so is the faintly wailing ghost at 0:58.

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there's definitely this apparitional quality creeping in in the last few years and this notion of possession. that layered vocal effect i was talking about on the squash track sounds like linda blair in the excorcist.

the actress who did the voice of the demon in the excorcist was picked specifically for her androgynous tone of voice; simultaneously deep and feminine. tommy lee has a very similar voice.

the reverb in these tracks sounds spectral as do the ghostly vocal samples in a lot of the riddims.

the thing of switching voices has always been there in dancehall- from eek a mouses bizarre falsetto to major mackerel's dolphin squeeks to bounty killer's squawks- and it works really well in this context too with alkaline or tommy lee switching from gruff growling to imp and whatever else as if they're channeling spirits.

sadmanbarty said:

for example tommy lee starts his verse 18 seconds in as a gruff, guttural bloke, but within the space of a few seconds he's crossfaded into this brattish cyborg. he briefly dips back again at 29 seconds and by 39 seconds he’s become a muezzin from the 30th century, which quickly fades as he becomes a normal bloke and so on. like someone’s constantly changing the chanel on his personality.

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i also said "flicking through the snap chat filters of his cognition" at one point.

mvuent said:

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his voice rising in pitch like that makes no sense, in that it’s not referencing anything about how voices normally work. a new kind of inflection. transhuman.
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it plays into that idea of hypersoul technical augmentation of emotional expression.

he's straining his voice to the peak of its natural limits with that dizzee delivery; his body is inhibiting from expressing himself fully. then you have that pitchshift come in and push it to a point where he can then tap into 19th century notions of feminine hysteria. there's an undercurrent of gender dysmorphia in this; he literally isn't able to express himself with the physical attributes of a man. hence this:

you liked deep sleep

there was a great run of war songs from 2016-2018. the past couple of years have been tons of girl songs, but its on the turn again now.