Glitch hop: Virtual Riot

Not too long ago I was going through my YouTube back catalogue (a playlist in which I keep songs I encounter but haven't properly listened to yet) when I stumbled across Everyday by Virtual Riot. It's a glitch hop song with a cool beat but also with some surprisingly tranquil elements. The bird sounds make you long for spring and the calm voice of Yosie has a very soothing quality to it. This prompted me to look further into Virtual Riot.

Virtual Riot, real name Valentin Brunn, is a producer from Germany who released his first music in the early 2010's. He started out with some Pendulum-like drum 'n bass work but rapidly moved towards the dubstep sound made famous by Skrillex. And while I'm not the biggest dubstep fan I really enjoyed some of this early work. Especially Evil Gameboy, which as the name implies incorporates some retro-gaming Gameboy sounds, and Creepstep which has a ghostly piano melody in it. In the years after he kept perfecting the genre, releasing more balanced songs like Fuck Gravity and Lunar. These songs alternate more calm melodic parts with hard hitting bass.

The change to a more glitch hoppy style became apparent in his collaborations during the last couple of years. Songs like Flutter, Lost It and Still Kids have found themselves a permanent place in my playlist. Whenever I'm feeling low on energy these days I put on the peculiar blend of calm and energetic parts and I'm good to go again.

Other favourites: Earth & Sky, Paper Planes and Turn Up

Check out more videos on Virtual Riot's YouTube channel

Alon Mor

The first thing you will have noticed when you started reading this post is that the genre is missing from the title. This is not a mistake, but a conscious choice. In preparation of my blogs I usually do some research into how other people classify the artists I discuss. However nobody seems to know how to categorize Alon Mor, a young and very talented producer from Israel. "What am I listening to?" is what I was thinking the first time I listened to Alon's song Jasmine. It starts out with a jazzy/Latin intro, followed by a middle-eastern sounding synth-melody and turns into a future house track. At 1.40 minutes there's a breakdown where the jazzy part returns, followed by ambient music and some classical strings which seamlessly flow into the house part again. I fell in love with the song and it became one of my favourite tracks of 2016.

In the 10 minute long song Demons Alon manages to put in even more genres. The song starts out with a spacey bass line followed by some dark techno but is then followed by middle eastern sounds, classical piano, Spanish guitar, chiptunes and even an church organ.

Two other superb songs are When Silence Kicks In, which is a blend of a fairytale soundtrack and future bass, and Adra De Khal, a very moody, more classical song featuring a concert flute.

You'd think that combining so many different styles, genres and instruments would result in a messy track, but I think that Alon manages to mix everything together in such a way that it becomes a very coherent piece. To get an idea of Alon's versatility check out some more songs below, each one is completely different from the others.

Other favourites:                 Intermission (Dark House

                                            Vega (Glitch-hop)

                                            Scattered Clouds (Electro waltz)

                                            Pablo's Place (Latin)

Check out more songs on Alon Mor's Official YouTube channel.