TYFTH had to take December off for many reasons, but things are slowly waking up again this month. The first important announcement is overdue, though I did share something on the FINRG discord – In Praise of Shadows is no longer available on the BigCartel site, and instead Booth is the way to go. It’s a Japanese site but fairly friendly in terms of English support, so placing orders shouldn’t be too much of an ordeal. It goes without saying, but feel free to get in touch via any of the usual places if you have trouble ordering and I’ll do my best to help. Without going into too much detail there are some financial perils looming over TYFTH HQ at the moment, which means that recent orders have genuinely been helping to keep the lights on at the TYFTH SoundCloud, and even the site itself.
What else? I was a bit disappointed by how TYFTH petered out at the end of last year, but even so it was one of my most productive years of mixing for a long time, with two or three sets that I’m still listening to regularly. The plan is to really give Twitch a good go during the rest of this month and next, which’ll mean some improvised sets in between the ultra-planned installments. Whether they’ll get the TYFTH Live tag or not, the hope is to step things up from the semi-monthly situation of last year and make freeform/NRG sets more visible again. In between there’ll be some bigger sets, including the postponed effort for FINRG. Things might even start this coming weekend, when I’m considering a 2024-only stream.
Stand by for some other posts, including some set recommendations that I’ve been sitting on for way too long. There’ll be other huge 2025 announcements as and when (too soon for anything just yet), but that’s enough to be getting on with for now.
You know a TYFTH Live roundup is late when the next installment’s already happened, but there’s plenty I’ve wanted to say about this one for a while. As the most melodic set I’ve played for years there was a lot I was trying out to make it a bit more TYFTH-friendly, so let’s have a little look back at how it went.
Of course one of the big goals of the set was to bring some more attention to the Chinese scene. After a few years of really top-quality releases it was probably overdue, but it was the release of show-stopping compilation Thoughost that really convinced me to give it a go. It’s so refreshing to see a new scene’s artists take on melodic freeform in a way that isn’t just chasing the sounds of Transcend, Substanced et al – something the Japanese scene fell into for a long while. Anyway, while I’m no expert on the melodic side of things I did my best to highlight some of the strongest tracks I’ve happened across so far, while still aiming for a smooth set that rewards a few listens.
Thanks to Thoughost I had a few tracks in mind right from the start, but it was Joulez’s beautiful Initiate the Massacre that really got the inspiration going. That intro is just superb, and I wanted to focus on the first half of the track before the atmosphere switches up. Although it took a heck of a lot of work to find the right track for that first transition, I couldn’t be happier with the way Helix slowly takes over. I really had to restrain myself not to overdo the transition, mind, and for a while was practicing a version where Initiate the Massacre came back in for a while. One of those times when less is more, I think.
One of the great things about putting the set together was the chance to use some favourite melodic tracks that I haven’t been able to fit in anywhere else – Meteorite is the first of those, as well as Into the Light, while jumping forwards a little the Phoenix Down – Invoker combo is one I’ve been sitting on since last year.
The first ‘new tracks’ transition is an example of something I worked hard on in the set, as I wanted to have more control over when and where the notoriously long melodic breakdowns would appear in the set. To help me with that I used quite a few breakdown sections as intros, or tried to time the previous track to finish halfway through a breakdown. That’s a nice way to keep the energy up (as with Universe Outsiderz into Garnet), but there’s also beautiful harmony potential aplenty when you mix melodies and strings/pads between the tracks (see 沉渊低语 (Whispers of Looming Shadows) into Dagor Dagorath). Into the Light and Now Or Never is similar, but here a combination of melodies and vocals. I don’t even like the vocals that much (it’s the Morita filters that get me), but the tracks work so well together that I couldn’t resist. The fact that I’ve known about the Attitude Problem transition for a long time helped too, and set things up for a more authentically TYFTH darker section.
Recall is another example of ‘shortening’ the breakdown, but in this part I was also trying to demo how effective a melodic track can be as a contrast in a darker sounding section. It took a lot of experimenting before I happened upon the combo with Access to your Soul, and that crossover point at the final part of Recall’s breakdown makes the change in atmosphere a lot more subtle than I would have expected.
I Think We Can Go To The Moon turned out to be the perfect intro for Whispers, so I repurposed a section of the Betwixt & Between tribute to help get through that section. I might have done some key locking/adjusting the first time around though, as something certainly sounds a bit off in this version. Either way, it gets us into the final section of the set, which I’m very happy with. The brilliantly-titled Lonely Ray is slightly shoehorned in at the end, but a beautiful track to finish on.
This was one of the most enjoyable sets to put together for a while, thanks largely to the inspiration of hearing new Chinese sounds, taking me right back to the early days of mixing Japanese freeform with FINRG. If this mix does a similar job of bringing more attention to the Chinese scene, then that’s mission accomplished. For now, at least – I’ve already got some darker Chinese tracks in mind for the long-in-the-works FINRG set.
The original version of this post was lost to the ether during TYFTH’s recent troubles, so let’s have another try at recommending Shimo’s excellent streamed set from last year. What this one lacks in studio set precision it more than makes up for with live energy, helped by that always top-level Shimo track selection.
That’s not to say there aren’t some very classy transitions – Japanese Ghost Train into Nightmare Freak 2009 is my favourite, but watch out for Take Off into Weather & Escape for an example of how to switch between two quite different tracks. This being Shimo, you can also expect to hear plenty of rarities and unusual tunes, with highlights here ranging from Labyrinth of mind to Desert Eagle.
The set’s progression is its strongest point as it moves from aggressive filters into more uplifting territory. In the orginal version of this post I rather laboured the point that this set wouldn’t have sounded out of place at NRGetic Romancer, but it’s true – there was an uplifting side to the event that especially showed itself during Full Circle and Guld sets. Here Shimo takes it a step further with the selection of Heavenly Beatz, a track I like a lot but definitely crosses the line for Romancer. Rather than flying off into happy hardcore territory, though, the set deserves a respectful nod for taking things in a very original light-and-dark direction for the final three tracks.
Highly recommended, then, for its constant energy and very original tracklist. Don’t forget that Shimo is still playing sets of this quality every week (including plenty of freeform) on her twitch channel.
You’re reading this on TYFTH, so clearly you’ve already checked out Alek Szahala’s Neonya!! Live PA. This post is less about sharing news, then, than it is for giving credit to Alek for the effort he’s clearly put into developing the technical and structural sides of his sets. One of his all time bests, without a doubt.
For more than a decade, Alek’s sets have tended to run the whole range from uplifting to dark, but this is definitely the strongest in the ways it smoothly switches up the atmosphere and cruises through the bpms. It makes you realise how active he’s been lately, with the first half of the set entirely made up of new tracks and edits (including Ascend to the Stars). I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with how the hour is put together – a Live PA is less about mixing in key of course, but this is a far cry from Alek’s sets of a couple of decades ago, where each track would reach its outro and the intro of the next would come in for a few seconds before the switchover. Back then the tracks were so ahead of their time that a simple approach still did the trick, but here there’s a real understanding of the flow of a set, cutting tracks in to maintain the pace or change the atmosphere, as well as some very well chosen longer transitions. The edits do a lot to help with that, the absolute banger of the Lab-4 vs. Strobeflux rework being one of my favourites, as it edits its way in underneath Tears and Whispers.
There’s even a touch of the Melancholias in the use of samples to add some consistency to the set, with ‘I am your only friend’ being a lovely addition that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in 2004. On that note, I’ll admit that the appearance of The Sample in Fuji’s breakdown made me tear up a little, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. The timely reminder of how much freeform can still move me, maybe? Whatever it was, it’s fittingly followed by a great cut into Blood from the Sky that signals the dark closing sequence, including a superb use of Origami Hearts.
This is next-level Live PA business, in short – if it sounds this good as a recording then it’s hard to imagine the impact it must have had live. Just a quick look at the soundcloud comments shows that some were hearing Alek for the first time, and that surely means there’ll be a few new additions to the growing 2020s freeform intake – this bunch starting in the best way imaginable.
What with all the recent melodic freeform releases on TYFTH and the unusually upbeat Live 012, this excellent set by Lyricals~ is nicely timed. There’s plenty on the tracklist that wouldn’t typically get a mention here, but one of the set’s most impressive points is how it keeps a fine balance between the light and dark(er) with some consistently interesting mixing. Although it appears that Lyricals~ has only been mixing for a couple of years, this mix is an easy recommend for just about any Horser (and far, far more advanced than I was at a similar point).
On a first listen the opening really caught my ear, as Ziki_7’s Ultra Spark is teased in with some nice cuts away from Kokomochi’s Beryl. The eventual switch over is abrupt, but that’s where the teasing does its job, the repetition of those earlier cuts doing a good job to keep things sounding more consistent. It’s soon obvious why Ultra Spark was chosen, as the transition into Nirotiy’s 沉渊低语 (Whispers of Looming Shadows) is top class and one of the best in the whole set. It’s such a hard track to mix out of though (as I learned recently), making the less smooth switch into Abandoned Metropolis understandable. I’m imagining the idea here was to sacrifice a bit of smoothness to keep up a similar atmosphere, which it does well, before starting a wonderful sequence from here to Hommarju’s Zusammengehorigkeit remix. Extra credit should be given for the looping of Zusammengehorigkeit while mixing in over (deep breath…) Large-scale Cryogenic Gravitational Wave Telescope.
That fantastic sequence comes to an end at Origami Hearts, but only just and that’s because I’m being extra picky – it’s one of those transitions that is so close to lining up perfectly that it’s hard not to use it. In most sets this would be one of the highlight transitions, but it falls ever so slightly short of the level that Lyricals~ is obviously aiming for here. Still, top marks for creativity and a moment in the set I enjoyed a lot.
Meanwhile, Lucius into Sunray is as good as you’re going to hear anywhere this year, superbly navigating the chasm between melodic UK/Japanese-style freeform and Alek’s unique atmospheres. More looping extends the transition, and the cut into Sunray is perfectly timed. I still await the day when we see a freeform mix with transitions of this quality from start to finish, but the switch into Neptune is a very worthy follow-up. A complex, lengthy transition, it’s another very good example of how to amoothly shift the atmosphere of a set. The introduction of Back Heaven is really impressive too – sudden in some ways (it would work a treat in a club environment), there’s actually a lot going on here, and the return of Neptune’s melody is a lovely combination of mixing styles that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
From this point the selection leans more into melodic freeform, buiding to a pacy, uplifting finale. Hommarju’s excellent Fall of Icarus had me half-expecting that things would carry on that style for longer (maybe with some ikaruga_nex, that kind of thing), but the switch into less filtery melodies is well-handled, especially from Calamity Drive into I.S.O.L.D.E. There’s a lovely touch of melancholy with Betwixt’s So Sweet Bitter Days, an extremely hard to mix track that I haven’t heard handled as well anywhere else. sustain stumbles in a little bit at the end, but I’d put that down to the brave use of So Sweet and the fact that it’s the last track – I’ve also been know to shoehorn in a transition at the end that isn’t as smooth as the others. It’s also a fine, uplifting climax that ends the set well, totally justifying its selection.
All of which is a lengthy way of saying that this set comes very highly recommended. While obviously not as dark as TYFTH’s In Praise of Shadows ideal, this set touches on some of those atmospheres in a new way, with some superb, considered mixing that’ll only get better as Lyricals~ becomes more experienced. Give it a try, I’ll be interested to hear what other Horsers make of this unusual, inspiring combination of new styles and some of our old favourites.
It’s highly likely that I missed an announcement about this at the time (especially now that I’ve escaped the clutches of most social media), but either way this is a first TYFTH mention of Carbon Based’s ridiculously good Kraateri EP. Apparently it sneaked out in the middle of last year, making it one of the best releases of 2023.
The first track is what you’d expect, a remastered version of the original that still stands up to anything in that bpm range of twisty-melodic NRG. It’s with Reincarnation that things really get interesting though, as this is a superb new version that takes the atmosphere to another level. Crucially it still sounds nice and gritty in the NRG filtering, but the goa influence that was always there in founding FINRG releases has more depth and clarity than you’d typically have heard in the early years.
This is one of FINRG’s strongest releases for quite a while, and deserves all the support if you’re like me and missed it the first time around. All the digital stores have their problems but I’m linking beatport here – it’s likely available elsewhere too.
Unprecedented scenes here, as a second TYFTH set goes online within a month (or so) of the last stream. I’ll soon be away again for a week, but signs are that there’ll be at least one more in March. Enormous thanks once again to everyone who joined the stream, it’s a genuine pleasure to share these tunes and catch up in the chat.
Special mention to ButterflyEffect, sneaking its way into the set to become the first UK freeform track I’ve used for many years. The goa-style acid in the second half made it a contender for the stream’s psychedelic theme, and layering it above and below Man Eaten and Ancient Universe made for a good intro (and covered up some elements I wasn’t so keen on).
I was quite happy with the rest of the set considering how quickly I put it together – the Qygen section at the start is overly long because there were originally some other tracks in there that were cut at the last moment (plus they’re two of Qygen’s more enormous tracks, of course). Otherwise I’m pretty happy with how the set meanders around some freeform-adjacent genres but gets back on track for the final third.
One of the not-exactly-freeform tracks was Zoonoodle’s 国, which jambt0 corrected to 掴 during the stream. edit: Thanks to some Sherkel sleuthing it seem that 掴 is the right choice after all. Apologies to jmbt0! Isn’t it a great track, by the way? It’s long been in the running for the next FINRG set (and might still be), as it’s minimal enough to use with just about anything while having a dark atmosphere of its own.
Next time might be the hard techno set I’ve mentioned before, as I’m banking on that being easier to put together in haste. Nothing definite yet though – let’s see what time allows.
Isn’t it nice to see all these new mixed sets alongside the newer track releases? Here’s another from the growing Chinese scene, and once again the focus is on oldies – which totally makes sense, what with many discovering the genre for the first time. RebalLance describes this set as a practice, and while it probably shouldn’t be top of your to-listen pile if you’re overly familiar with the tracks, the middle section in particular has some fantastic moments.
A shame, then, that the weakest transition of the whole set is right at the start, with the interesting combo of Absence and Why not really working out. The lopsided use of the tracks also hurts the opening, as Why plays out for a full 5 minutes or so after the quick transition. Stick with it though, to be rewarded with a lovely sequence through Tankobu and Extremely Dangerous, and a nice navigation into Fairytale. From there it’s into the strongest section of the set, the next four or five tracks linking excellently.
Although I’m not totally convinced by Iron Bottom Sound as a follow up to Cyclone, the transition into the Lush reveals the thinking behind that one. After that there’s a ferocious finale of anthems – al Megiddo into Nue Messiah takes me way back, while Man Eaten into Mohicans is a superb way to finish things.
Give this one a try then, is my advice – a couple of surprise selections and that brilliant main sequence make it well worth a listen.
We’ve already talked plenty about Blood from the Sky, Alek’s superb new dark freeform track, but surprisingly it isn’t releasing on FINRG after all. Instead it’s available for free on Alek’s own SoundCloud, which as a track of the year contender makes this a massive treat. If you haven’t already, support Alek instead by picking up 5396 miles and/or Ten Thousand Homeworlds from his bandcamp. Maybe even with a little extra added to cover Blood from the Sky?
It would be slightly odd if you’re here and haven’t heard anything about last weekend’s TYFTH Live, but here’s one last mention for completeness. I mastodonned during planning about how much fun I was having putting this one together – I’m holding back a lot of tracks for an upcoming FINRG set, and the restrictions made for a few unusual selections and new combinations.
I won’t give one of my long mix-constructing rambles this time, but Ordeal into Killer Loop would probably be somewhere in my all-time top 10 transitions, I’m immensely proud of it. The Aquanox melody with Ordeal’s bass and pads absolutely sounds like something new – I knew I was onto something when it gave me goosebumps the first time mixing it.
Other than that the set’ll probably get some listens for the Hellfire remix, which I found on an old hard drive about a month ago. I enjoy the sequence from there to the end, as things get darker and there are some other nice combos I haven’t tried before.
Now’s also a nice time to say another big thanks to everyone who showed up to listen, from the hardcore Horsers to the new listeners via Shimo’s raid. In big part thanks to the good response, I was hit by some inspiration and almost managed to put together another streamable freeform set for this weekend(!), but it’s not quite there and will have to wait for next month instead. Stay tuned, as (unusually) there’s plenty in the works at the moment.
