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View Winners → Archive Mar 01, 2013
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This past Tuesday, Check Yo Ponytail 2 hosted a veritable lineup of electronic musicians at the Echoplex, with the synth-smitten Com Truise headlining alongside experimental lo-fi and dream pop acts XXYYXX and Giraffage. Hazy melody-maker Teen Daze was originally slated to perform, however, visa issues prevented him from joining us stateside.
Having built up a considerable amount of buzz from his recent LP, Needs, Giraffage was a more than appropriate replacement. The San Francisco-based musician, also known as Charlie Yin, is one in a spate of producers (including fellow performer, XXYYXX) adroitly lifting samples from popular R&B songs of the 90’s and 00’s; warping and pitching the vocals to accompany dreamy melodies and lo-fi textural soundscapes. Playing such tracks as “Home” and his remix of The-Dream’s “Shawty is the sh*t,” Yin played a solid set, closing out with “Even Though,” his collaboration with XXYYXX, and a trap song we can’t seem to recall the name of.
Fellow sample-connoisseur, XXYYXX (aka Marcel Everett) started out the night teasing the crowd by playing a snippet of 2 Chainz, eliciting both laughs and cheers from the crowd. At 17 years old, the Floridian is but one year shy of being legally aged but is far from being an amateur musician. Deftly moving from 2 Chainz to his Jeremih-sampling track “Luv u grl,” XXYYXX‘s set had us nostalgically rushing to guess the tracks sampled (“No Scrubs”, anyone?) and head-bobbing to the smattering of trap scattered throughout.
Last but not least, headliner Com Truise (aka Seth Haley) stepped up to the stage, accompanied by Rory O’Connor, who provided live drums. Not unlike fellow electronic musicians such as Kavinsky or Justice, Haley is fond of analog synths. Okay, let us rephrase that: Haley is obsessed with analog synths. The bearded producer’s retro beats are smooth and seductive. Laced with funky slow-moving grooves, Haley’s is a brand of funk (perhaps better labelled as “synth wave”) that left us in a beautiful 80’s stupor.
With such a talented run of producers and musicians heavily drifting toward retro and old-school vibes, we guess we don’t mind waiting a while to travel back to the future.
