In The Blue Shirt "Cyanotype" (Maltine Records)
In The Blue Shirt approaches music from a molecular level. Take "Cluster A," the second song off the Osaka-based electronic producer's recently released "Cyanotype" album. He pulls vocal samples from artsy New Zealander Lorde's brooding "Royals" and makes them the core of his track. Yet he rejiggers them into a nonsensical whirlwind of syllables, made all the more sunny by chirpy backing music. It isn't shy in reminding you just which global hit In The Blue Shirt plundered, yet he has engineered it into something that gives off a completely different atmosphere — so much so that the source doesn't even matter.
Plenty of electronic acts around the world sample vocals from other songs to juice up their own work, yet few do it as precisely as In The Blue Shirt does. He lays out chopped-up singing in just the right order, adding extra swagger to the horn-guided "Secret Crush" and sweetness to the swelling "Everything Affair." The effect of this vocal rush is that of dizzying joy, capturing the sort of feeling that leaves you unable to form coherent sentences. "Secret Crush" also gets the remix treatment by Soleil Soleil and Quarta 330.
In The Blue Shirt extracts sounds from other songs and then labors over them like a scientist, but the tracks that come out of this Frankenstein process succeed in sounding achingly human.
In The Blue Shirt's "Cyanotype" is available for download via the Maltine Records website at maltinerecords.cs8.biz/151.html
