Yellow Wings and Caribou in Sweet Harmony flooded with Pretty Lights. Could This Be Real?

Here's a few recent tracks to whet your tastebuds for a hench plateful of 'is-it-the-best-thing-since-DJ-Shadow' sampling genius, that's Pretty Lights.


Caribou - Odessa

Bear with those funky noises in the intro (I realise it sounds like some kind of muppet orgy), although the psychedelia does continue, it becomes more interesting. Hazy vocals seem to narrate some sort of odd eighties acid trip musical comprised of funky guitar, tambourine, tacky bass and, yes, muppet orgasms.

Keepaway - Yellow Wings

Still pretty psychedelic here, this all very Animal Collective. Chanty samples and tribal tom beats precede reverb-laced and chunky-toned guitar (oddly reminiscent of Friendly Fires) and VERY Animal Collective vocals, those campfire harmonies easily ripped off of My Girls. Still, influence-bordering-on-thievery is prerequisite these days so no harm done, and it does sound very nice.


Danny Byrd - Sweet Harmony (feat. Liquid)

It's already been B-listed by radio 1 (even better than his massive Red Mist VIP achieved) so grit your teeth and prepare for its day-time hammering by Jo TWATTING Whiley amongst others. Apparently a re-work of an early-nineties classic, that would make the (also good) Jungle Mix a remix of a rework of an original track. Nice. Well Danny's done well (despite his horribly bald head), fitting the classic 90s piano riff and vocal to some updated liquid breaks and enveloped bass. Also that 'let's go' sample will seem familiar from being used (more effectively) on The Prodigy's Everybody In The Place. Also the midpoint of the track boasts a mightily cheeky jittery bass dive. Still, the Jungle mix is a bit more obviously satisfying, the similar mix being inevitably torn apart in CLASSIC Danny Byrd fashion with a cheeky sample, some jungle rolls, DnB klaxon and bleeps. Very reminiscent of his eclectic and bouncy Shock Out. Noice.

Still hungry? Better be.



Derek Vincent Smith (yeah, name as badass as his hat) AKA Pretty Lights is a BLADDY magician with a sampler. As you can see from the clip above, all he needs is a fucking box with lights on (that's a monome for anyone who gives a shit) and a few gadgets to seamlessly cut and loop samples with the cold efficiency of a Bosnian general.

To be honest, his music isn't really anything like the aforementioned DJ Shadow (top picture, those ignorant please for the love of god check out Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt, ...Meets His Maker and Midnight In A Perfect World) but there haven't exactly been all that many alternative white baseball-cap-wearing hip-hop-sampling artists with as compositional an attitude as it's possible to have when using ONLY samples - at least not on my radar, and they do look very similar. DJ Shadow's Entroducing... made it possible for artists (I think it's fair to say the man has transcended the title of DJ to artist) like Pretty Lights (bottom picture) to stick with the free and adventurous philosophy of creating individual, rich and profound music without technically 'composing' anything. What's also amazing about both of these guys is their record collections - how the fuck can anyone find SO MANY amazing samples from presumably obscure soul, funk and hip hop records?

Pretty Lights' sound is a lot less dark than DJ Shadow's , sampling warmer soul/disco/funk records in as melodic but usually less atmospheric way, more modern hip-hop snippets and old school hip-hop beats adding punch to an otherwise warm and accessible sound. The closest his sound gets to Shadow's (and probably his most impressive track) is More Important Than Michael Jordan which lays atmospheric piano down and teases the stereo extremes with poignant spoken samples and echoes. What separates the man from Shadow is a slightly more eclectic range of genres (the bass wobbles on this track come close to dubstep) and a more progressive feel to most of his tracks. Also, while he doesn't boast QUITE the variety of sounds Shadow manages, there is the odd deviation from squelchy, warm and soulful (best encapsulated in Hot Like Sauce, ) such as his rarely short and sweet ode to the badass How We Do. More recently released and proof he's still shit hot was Fly Away Another Day from last year (again with plenty of wobbles, the man makes more clear why Snoop Dogg, Rihanna and hip-hop in general are feeling some links to dubstep).

What's also pretty impressive about his music is that there's a whole fucking lot of it (just the one double-disk album Filling Up The City Skies lasts a hefty near three hours) and all for free. Seeing as the man deals only in non-original material he's been kind enough to provide EVERYTHING for free download on his site, although the music itself merits a donation, which you can do alongside the downloads. The only thing I might say critically about the project is that each track packs an individual punch, but (as with many albums) when you listen to entire album the dynamic is diluted a bit, which isn't surprising given that each track averages six minutes or more. But that's no reason not to scoop it all up like gold dust. Munch away.

Oh, and


Sub Focus - Could This Be Real (Sub Focus DnB Remix)

Cos I'm Sub Focus' bitch. And the original was pretty shite...