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Daily Doses: Kumon Plaza “River Spot” From River Spot Single (2011)
“When I leave, I’ll just disappear. At least until the day I show up, sit in your favorite chair, and pretend I was never gone.”
Having released the beautiful (And free!) LP Cliff in July of 2010. Dylan of Kumon Plaza has since been employing the time honored artistic tradition of doing whatever the hell he feels like under whatever name he feels like, releasing tracks and EP’s as Happy Trendy and Gay Boiz as well as a few other beautiful ambient works that he has since told me will not see the light of day.
While I love all of these projects, it’s great to see him return to the minimalist style that informed his early Kumon Plaza tracks.
“River Spot” lazily coasts about, building on some basic keys with some 606 drums and swirling synth work. It’s a song for drifting along quietly by yourself. Observing without action.
Lovely.
Download Kumon Plaza’s “River Spot”
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Daily Doses: Happy Trendy “Skinny Ghost” From Old Friends (2011)
I love starting the new year off with new releases, and old friends.
Happy Trendy is the new (Side?) Project by Kumon Plaza’s Dylan Khotin-Foote, the 17 year-old wunderkind from Canada.
Knowing Dylan pretty well, I’d hazard a guess that this project has a bit of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone inspiration. On “Skinny Ghosts”, The dry vocals that concentrate on their inner emotion to deliver, minimal drum programming and, obviously, casio keyboard sounds all conjure up the minimal sounds of Casiotone, without sounding directly derivative.
Which is perfect, since someone needs to carry on torch for minimalist Casio synth now that Mr. Ashworth has decided to retire the moniker.
Download Happy Trendy’s Old Friends For Free From His Bandcamp
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Daily Doses: Coma Cinema “Her Sinking Sun” Kumon Plaza Remix (2010)
Kumon Plaza’s back!
Dylan Khotin-Foote, the young genius behind Canda’s Kumon Plaza, was most recently featured on Dead As Digital as one half of Gay Boiz. Here he goes from the acoustic beauty of that track back to his electronic roots with an apocalyptic remix of Coma Cinema’s brilliant “Her Sinking Sun”.
Changing instrumentation behind a cover as emotionally charged as this one without losing the feel is always difficult, but here that challenge is met impressively. Opening by taking the low-key Casiotone intro and replacing it with a driving synth bass hook, the track builds flawlessly from there with just the right amount of synth color and vocal changes. Khotin-Foote’s deft touch throughout this remix scream of a love and respect for the original artists that’s beautiful to see.
I rarely post remixes, but if they were all this good, that would quickly change.
Download Coma Cinema’s “Her Sinking Sun” Kumon Plaza Remix
Visit Kumon Plaza’s Bandcamp For A Free Download Of His Debut LP Cliff
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Daily Doses: Gay Boiz “Mat” From 429-2649 (2010)
When Dylan From Kumon Plaza mentioned he’d be doing a project with Rachel Levy of Kiss Kiss Fantastic in which they recorded everything on mobile phones, although I have the utmost respect and love for both artists involved, I thought it would most likely be an awful sounding, tinny piece of novelty.
That’s not to say it wouldn’t an interesting, maybe even amusing tinny piece of novelty. But still, more of an inside joke than a side project. So when I got a message from Dylan early this morning that the tracks were available, I was extremely curious to see how they pulled it off.
In some ways I was completely wrong. The songs on 429-4629 are some beautiful pieces of synth pop, well crafted and structured. “Mat”, the album opener, is a great piece of anthemic rock, disguised as a lo-fi lament. “Disco Banger” the albums second track is just an awesome pop song, coming off as a lost b-side to Blondie’s Parallel Lines.
However, where I was correct is that the restraints of the recording medium is an extremely noticeable factor in the end results. Admittedly this does give the songs a character all it’s own, which I’m sure was it’s intended purpose. But I just have to add, I hope that the stems for these songs are available, because there are some absolute beasts locked down in the production of these tracks.
Download Gay Boiz’ 429-2649 For Free From Their Bandcamp
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Daily Doses: Kumon Plaza “Hans Kruger” From Cliff (2010)
In a world of micro-genre’s tossed, coaxed, prodded, and blown up to all encompassing macro-genre’s with little to no sense of identity beyond a few increasingly uninspiring adjectives, it’s nice to see someone identify themselves as plain old “Experimental 8-bit Synth-Pop from Edmonton”.
That person would be Dylan Khotin-Foote, the one man party behind Kumon Plaza. Under that moniker, Dylan creates soundscapes that utilize 8-bit gleeps dashed about underneath synth spreads to create beautiful tracks that drift about underneath your consciousness, invading it until they become a part of it. Pulsing out a score soaked in nostalgia and dappled with 8-bit sunshine.
Download Kumon Plaza’s Cliff For Free From Bandcamp
