Feels are a new member of the Spirit Level family, and we’ve been curious to find out more about what influences their bouncy creative electro-pop.
Their style of uninhibited free-flowing dance-music is refreshing to hear, with self-sampling and detailed percussion at the fore-front it comes across as being post-IDM but with less chin-stroking and more dancing. We spoke to the duo (Elise and Rosie) about five their favourite percussionists to gain some insight into their own rhythmic compositions.
Jlin – Challenge
“The instrumentation in this track is the most exciting thing to us. 2 minutes 43 seconds of American corps drumline cadence meets multi percussion/hand drum solo. Dream come true. There are no rules or boundaries when it comes to Jlin’s tracks and everything she puts out continues to be very inspiring to us as percussionists in electronic music. What a queen.”
Machinedrum – White Crown
“Machinedrum has been a massive influence for both of us. Love the high-energy frantic melody lines in this track – rhythm is the main focus of ‘White Crown’. While the track sounds quite chaotic, it is very much organised in the rhythmic groupings and from Percussionist perspective, it is simple yet effective. Basically, we just really froth on a solid 4/4 kit beat coupled with frantic melodic ideas.”
Steve Reich – Six Marimbas
“This is like a warm bath to us. Our favourite thing about Steve Reich is that he lets the listener be the composer – in the sense that the listener can pick out melodies that stand out to their ears, in the busy polyrhythms that are all happening simultaneously. We definitely seek to do this within our own music, and like all percussionists, we worship Reich.”
Four Tet – Jupiters
“The most important thing about this track to us is that is forces patience onto the listener. We love the concept of ‘earning’ the climax of the track. Hearing the melodies and rhythms gradually develop over time, noticing small satisfying changes, eventually bringing the listener to the peak, is so much more exciting than a instant tension release. ‘Jupiters’ is a great example of a slow build with massive reward.”
Holly Herndon – Morning Sun
“This track immediately lays down a really exciting bed of rhythm, created by vocal chops of Holly’s voice. It’s a technique that she does so well and this track is a great example of using the voice as percussion instrument. While many producers use vocal chops, not many use it as the driving force behind the whole track – which is what we really like about her production. The drums that enter later in the track act more as a counter rhythm to the original voice loops, mmm tasty.”
While Feels’ work on new music to be released via Spirit Level, you can listen to their past releases on Soundcloud and follow them on Facebook here.
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