#danny l harle

[knightofleo]

Oklou | harvest sky feat. underscores

[grrlmusic]

Oklou - harvest sky (remixes)

[tranboleyn]

[sixeye-sketch]

see you in my dreams

[ruinedholograms]

Nymph_o (2023)

[gastricotv]

Shygirl | Encore ft. Danny L Harle

[hardcoremagicalgirl]

I posted this in the Yeule discord years ago but never here because I wasn't active as much then

[dirtloversinc]

Ashes Of Love (Cordial Remix) - Caroline Polachek & Danny L Harle

listen to the full remix here 💚

[harlecore]

this is seriously still so insane danny l harle the man that you are.

[lovejustforaday]

2023 Year End List - #3

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You - Caroline Polachek

Main genres: Art Pop, Electronic

A decent sampling of: Downtempo, Alternative R&B, Dance Pop, UK Garage

Seizing the essence of life itself. The search for the meaning of everything. The sheer sense of adventure and danger that is going it alone for the first time.

Caroline Polachek has more artistic vision than just about any other pop artist out there right now. She takes a concept and runs marathons with it, working to achieve its platonic ideal.

This ethos is reflected in her intricate songs, laden with layers of meticulous, hyperreal production courtesy of her long-time co-producer Danny L. Harle, her commitment to weaving rich lyrical webs of different aesthetics, ideals, and mindsets that all fall into place like a great jigsaw puzzle, and her equally impressive, high-concept music videos that harkens back to the likes of other cinematically ambitious female artists such as Lady Gaga, Björk, and M.I.A.

Her voice has often been compared to the function of auto-tune itself, mostly thanks to how masterfully and seamlessly she modulates across complex melodies that jump notes seemingly almost at random, but actually follow an elaborated structure. Meanwhile, the timbral qualities of her voice are crystal clear and hyper-articulate, almost to the point of crossing the uncanny valley and into the supernatural.

So yeah, suffice to say, this was my #1 anticipated release of 2023. It certainly helped that she kept on teasing it, dropping the lead single all the way back in summer of 2021, and then another one in the first few weeks of 2022. It also obviously helped that her first album was simply one of the best art pop records in recent memory (eclipsed only in it's own release year by Twigs' Magdalene).

Polachek's solo pop debut Pang was a headfirst dive into painful love, and the act of relieving oneself from the shackles of self-doubt. The album played out like a series of short stories in a greater narrative storybook anthology, each song its own cerebral headspace, dissecting and sometimes psychoanalyzing the artist's own emotions. To put it concisely, my own interpretation was that of an album about learning to listen to what the self feels, needs, and wants.

This record then, broadly speaking, is about the restless pursuit of those wants.

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is like the flickering light from the torch's flame that illuminates the ancient wall glyphs inside of an old cave of ruins. It is the feeling of catching your breath, and quenching yourself with that vital taste of water after you’ve just ran a marathon. It’s a thrilling and euphoric experience from start to finish. Art pop with adrenaline and passion.

The prominent Alternative R&B elements that made her previous record more rhythmically complex and sonically contemplative take a bit of a step back on this project, peeking through every now and then on tracks like "Billions" and "Pretty In Possible".

But by and large, Polachek leans more towards sugary pop and dance-oriented songs with high art ambitions, with many tracks influenced by the hop-and-skip beats of the UK Garage EDM scene. There's also a fair bit of more atmospheric downtempo moments in similar fashion to tracks like "Go As A Dream" on Pang, but even they have a little more pulse on this record. A more extroverted sound altogether this time around.

There are also frequent references to Greek mythology, as well as a myriad of melodic motifs that are revisited and re-imagined between different tracks, like the opening melody of "Crude Drawing of An Angel" appearing in the second verse of "Butterfly Net", or the chorus of "Fly To You" being interpreted by a bag pipe solo in "Blood and Butter". Never underestimate Caroline Polachek's ability to tie an album's concepts together into a beautifully interwoven and interconnected symbiosis.

The album takes off with its central thesis, "Welcome To My Island", a declaration to defy all expectations and become desire itself. It opens with a single rapturous siren cry, soaring into the stratosphere and heralding the beginning of a new era. Suddenly, the song's aircraft comes to meet its landing strip. Bright, beady, bubbly little synths make pops and flares over the verses, before the unleashing of a total power chorus that showcases the very best of Polachek's ability to carry zephyrous long notes, meanwhile with her irresistibly cute and sassy "hey, hey ,hey, HEY!" chants forming the backing vocals. Every last ounce of her unapologetically bold artistic personality is lavishly painted over this ridiculously catchy and charming pop song.

"Sunset" pays homage to Spanish flamenco and appears to be taking some cheeky inspiration from the Gerudo Valley theme in Zelda: Ocarina of Time according to a TikTok that Polachek herself posted. This song tastes of the juiciest citrus fruits and the richest olive oil, pouring out of a marble chalice like a waterfall. An excellent demonstration of her artistic versatility.

"I Believe" immediately gets my heart racing with its crisp piano stabs and exhilarating 2-step shuffle. Makes me feel like some kind of JRPG mage, hopping through the air by casting levitation spells and gazing upon the cloudswept Earth below. Totally dreamy and life-affirming.

I find myself deeply immersed in the humid forests of "Blood and Butter". This downtempo track incorporates some very SNES era sound fonts, hand drums, kalimba, and acoustic guitars into a euphoric and ritualistic performance, with the atmosphere of swirling magic mists and even a left-field instrumental bridge featuring some very festive bagpipes. Simply impeccable sound design; listening to this one with headphones is like discovering a sixth sense I didn't know I had.

"Butterfly Net" is the sublime sunrise that turns the entire sky a goldenrod yellow. It's an auditory gateway to beautiful plains of crested wheatgrass, with psychedelic folk undertones and echoing vocals and digital landscapes that stretch off into the horizon for dozens of miles. One of her greatest songs yet, and one I couldn't get enough of for basically all of spring last year.

"Billions" would be my song of the year, had it not already been released in 2022. I cannot overstate, nor begin to describe with all due credit it deserves, just how fucking brilliant the production on this track is. If "Blood and Butter" was the sixth sense, then this is the seventh. Tantalizing, mystifying, erotic, bountiful, reaching towards enlightenment. Everything that must be and will be, maybe truth itself is contained somewhere hidden under the plentiful layers of beats and microbeats in this stunning art pop pedestal. Musically, it sounds ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and post-modern all at once. Also - maybe the best incorporation of a children's choir in all of music history? What a bold move to put this as the album closer. If this is the page she chooses to close this chapter on, I can only imagine what magnificence is to come next.

I thought for sure this was going to be my AOTY when it was announced. The fact it didn't end up being so and landed at number 3 instead is just a testimony to how brutally stacked this year's competition was.

I could still nit-pick this quite a bit if I really wanted to. "Hopedrunk Everlasting" and "Bunny Is A Rider" are not only both easily weaker than any of the other material here, but both of them seem to disrupt the respective flow of their placements on this record. But barring that, this is damn close to a masterpiece.

Naturally, this has landed on loads of other 2023 year end lists besides my own, and its definitely not hard to see why. Caroline Polachek is a staunch perfectionist and over-achiever, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon, and Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is an uplifting work of creative genius that only she could have made.

9/10

Highlights: "Billions", "Butterfly Net", "Welcome To My Island", "Blood and Butter", "I Believe", "Sunset", "Pretty In Possible", "Crude Drawing of an Angel"

[ashleighxcx]

CTM Festival

[purplealbumoftheday]

today's purple album of the day is: Pop Crypt (Skeleton Key) by PC Music!