BEST NEW EDM: YAEJI - RAINGURL

"Raingurl” is a torrential downpour of misty synths and fizzy house beats from Brooklyn’s Yaeji.

There’s a stylistic line in the sand in electronic music in 2017. On one hand, you’ve got the clinically austere, pitch perfected, tempo-mapped-and-matched Beatport fodder, on one side, and rough-and-ready, weird-and-wooly homespun, arcane and archaic ‘lo-fi’ styles, like knackered house, footwork/grime, acid, or industrial techno. The ‘mainstream’ electronica of a lot of DJ Charts isn’t that dissimilar from what was going on in 2005, 2015, or even 1999, even if productions sometimes get more complex - as in the case of latter-day drum ‘n bass - or beats slow or rage, depending on the mood of the day. The productions are still silicon crystal clear,.never having tasted the corroding air, and neurotic intricacies are condoned, with tracks looking more like engineering diagrams than fun with your friends on a Friday night.

The mainstream trajectory of dance music makes much of it interchangeable and, ultimately, forgettable. It’s techno as commodity, meant to burn up exactly 7 minutes of your life, distracting you from the yawning existentialist pit just waiting to suck you under. This cookie-cutter condition makes lo-fi practitioners like Brooklyn’s Yaeji so essential to the musical eco-system; especially as she’s mining the best of two separate biomes.

YAEJI - RAINGURL

Yaeji’s beat-centric take on House Music is quirky and rough, of that there is little doubt. Her production favors a raw, real, straight-to-tape approach, with her roughened low-end and amorphous synths sounding slightly unmixed and unsteady. Over this motley quilt, Yaeji laconically drawls in a sleepy sing-song, somewhere between old skool rhymes, jump rope songs, and talking to one’s self.  On“Raingurl,” Yaeji’s latest in advance of her highly anticipated EP2, she comes off as a mixture of Salt ‘n Pepa, Biz Markee, and abstract beat soldiers like Floating Points, weaving intricate, fluttering bass and 8-bit drum machines to form futurist booty bass bangers. “Raingurl”’s got the goofy, fun charm of good, old hip-hop, disco, early house, MC, toasting, and even a touch of Vogue culture. You can imagine a bunch of divas getting down to “Raingurl” all night long, having the best night of their lives.

It says something that a $10 drum machine and decaying synthesizer can smoke the biggest budget producers. When you have something to say, a killer style, and a unique take on the world, you can really take on the world. Yaeji’s about to take over, if we have our way here at We Are: The Guard.