The recipe Kasey posted today on eating/sf is chocolate, almond and hazelnut toffee. And it is delicious, crisp and each bite is guaranteed to put you in your “happy place.” It took will power, but we put a little aside to bring with us to Ohio because we know it’ll be the most popular new Christmas snack to hit Beavercreek, Ohio (at least with my dad). So that meant I needed to look for something newly popular for today’s pairing. And ‘chillwave’ seems to be the most popular new musical genre of Fall/Winter 2009, and so that is where I looked to seek my inspiration. Chillwave, if you haven’t been following along to the genre-name-game at home, is the label that has been slapped on a huge number of artists who record reverb-drenched, shoe-gazey, bedroom recorded electro-pop (think bands like Neon Indian, Memory Tapes and Washed Out). Does it sound like it might be a fad? Maybe. Is the backlash less than 2 months away? Definitely. But that isn’t to suggest there isn’t a lot of talent swimming around with that label attached to it. Take, for example, Coral Springs, Florida’s Mike Diaz who releases music under the moniker MillionYoung. Diaz just released a free EP titled SunnDreamm that is as ethereal, sun-drenched and feel-good as the title would suggest.
Sunndreamm may have been released in the middle of the Fall on September 29, but it certainly sounds a lot like a summer album: hypnotic melodies are set afloat with lo-fi rhythms, bright tropical guitar riffs, and shimmering synths. This is music for a laid-back after party with friends after a day at the beach. The album’s highlight is the almost ecstatically contented “Hammock,” which features bright, blinking guitar swirling in the air alongside a rhythm that wouldn’t seem out of place on any electro-pop or even house-music track from the past decade while Diaz’s vocals are cheerily reverbed across the room and back again. Without any question this EP would have made my Best Free Mixtapes of 2009 list if I had only heard it when I posted my list. You can download a copy here. MillionYoung’s follow-up EP, Be So True, will be released on January 19, 2010 via Arcade Sound Ltd.
MillionYoung – Hammock
MillionYoung – Youthless
Head back to eating/sf to read the recipe for chocolate, almond and hazelnut toffee.
