By rough estimate, there are approximately 325,000 Soundcloud struggle producers trying to work the angle of post-Flying Lotus and Clams Casino bedroom beats. They can all be described using the adjectives, “aqueous,” “ethereal,” “ghostly,” and atmospheric. If you have a copy of Ableton, creating a mediocre facsimile might be the easiest thing to do in music. The hardest thing to do is create something worth writing about it. I’m not talking about something that inspires a think piece. Writing about disembodied beats is impossible. You can only offer context or biography or offer a string of pretentious adjectives. I do it regularly. Good times had by some?
The point of this post is to highlight Toy Light, who I wrote about last year. The LA-based producer has returned with a pair of songs that have graduated from the headless beat category. “Glass” features Jordan Raoufpur on vocals, contributing an effect that feels like Massive Attack, without the minor chords and gloom that would occur if someone was shouting “trip-hop back.” The other new track is “Don’t Trust Me,” which would normally cause me to invoke all of the above adjectives. But since I am not in the mood to start throwing around the ethereal card today, let me just say that Toy Light is doing something different that I can’t quite quantify. It is a tone that has been struck by many others, but not with this particular combination. It is music that makes me want to rent a house off the Adriatic Coast and let play while I read Ancient Roman literature and am fed figs by a team of beautiful chambermaids. It would be very atmospheric. Instead, I will play this on repeat to drown out the sound of my dog snoring. This is the next best thing.
