New Artist Highlight: Take a ‘Butcher’s Hook’ at Unconventional Breakbeat Act, The Nylon Admirals [Video]
Everybody loves a little bit of Cockney rhyming slang: “up the apples and pears” for “up the steps” or “what’s this field of toys” for “what’s this noise?” et al. are examples of the cheeky wordplay which, although most prevalent in Victorian East London, nonetheless snakes its approach into the fashionable vernacular. As a nod to these cheeky UK cultural signposts additionally contained in its musical composition, Seattle duo The Nylon Admirals’ latest single might solely be known as “Butcher’s Hook,” the Cockney rhyme for “look.”
Extraordinarily cheeky in their very own stylistic proper, The Nylon Admirals are already identified to like homage, with their J-pop/kawai tackle Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (vocals by Hastune Miku) off final yr’s debut LP Drama being one among their most-streamed on Spotify to-date. Certainly a lot of their work is a genre-melding spitfire of not-quite-experimental electronica that makes use of the amen break so liberally you’d suppose we have been really again in 1991 on the cusp of UK hardcore and jungle. That’s, till the composition of The Nylon Admirals’ tracks comes into focus.
Additionally clearly followers of prog rock, classical composition, opera and early, Switched-on Bach-style electronica, The Nylon Admirals prefer to mash up actually all music eras and genres with their much-loved ameny breakbeat basslines. For instance, their most up-to-date “Sono Binario” single combines operatic vocals, industrial beats and online game synths. From Drama once more, “The Blind Watchmaker” brings in literal opera and analog classical piano to an ordinary breakbeat whereas “We Have been Romans” samples 80s techno stings with classical choir, navy battle calls and, um banjos? Did we simply hear that proper? It really works, nevertheless, regardless of usually sounding just like the spaghettified random noise that will in the future attain a distant star through a black gap. If Zappa had made digital music, it will have been near this. On the very least, he would have appreciated it.
“Butcher’s Hook” is mercifully extra cohesive and fewer everywhere, however with no much less mashup flare. Once more mercifully grounded by an ameny breakbeat that type of straddles 140 and 170, the primary synth is type of an outdated sea shanty-style melody that appears to be performed on a zither or comparable, additionally accompanied by a celestial vox-and-strings secondary melody that takes the observe into The Nylon Admirals’ different vital calling card: flawless ambient sound design. In “Butcher’s Hook,” maybe due to it not being fairly so chaotic, the sound design and theatrical background work – a component that’s prevalent in all their tracks, thoughts you – is on full show and actually sells the sound right here. That is EDM crossover stuff; no marvel the duo named Hans Zimmer as one among their influences; they’re rattling shut with this observe.
Accompanied by its cool, steampunk-styled video, “Butcher’s Hook” guarantees to be an precise hook for the bigger EDM viewers to expertise the fantastic weirdness that’s The Nylon Admirals. Whereas their wacky, well-composed, we-didn’t-even-know-that-could-be-fusion fusion electronica is probably not for everybody, it’s positively, because the duo themselves say, “digital music for thrill-seekers.”
“Butcher’s Hook” is out now and may be streamed with the remainder of The Nylon Admirals’ discography on Spotify. Take a look at their different movies and remixes on their YouTube channel.