Since I laid out my revolutionary Band Discovery Manifesto on ANBAD yesterday (TL;DR: pick bands at near-random, as the likelihood of finding something worth listening to is almost identical to any other method), it feels as if an snobby weight has been lifted from my snobby shoulders.
Now, all my stupid foibles are justified! Stupid band name? As good a reason as any. Photograph of band actually smiling for once? Why not? Reject Band X because they look like they probably play Landfill Indie without actually reading their blurb? Uh-huh.
So, I was intrigued, mainly, by the spelling of Ssssyyyyooooo, and thus ended up getting lost in his jittering, stop ‘n’ start music. Why so many letters? Why four S’s and Y’s, but five O’s?
If Ssssyyyyooooo’s music was 1960s architecture, it’d be something grey. concrete and Brutalist. If it was a car, it’d be a Volvo. 20120411 is music that values function over form, right down to its choice of song name. It is made out of blocks, and the corners are defiantly not rounded off.
Ssssyyyyooooo says his music is instrumental hip-hop, but actually is simpler than that: there may only be five or six individual samples in the whole thing.
In many ways, it’s too basic, too simple, too tuneless… but, just as early house battered warehouses full of ravers into submission with simplicity, after a while, the idea of anything more sophisticated seems totally pointless. You may not like the music, but you’ll appreciate the cut & paste aesthetics.