Review Summary: Drive out on a quiet night, blast this with the windows open and experience bliss
Skeler is an Australian electronic music producer known as somewhat of a pioneer of the 'Wave' genre which has subsequently spawned a number of closely related subgenres. N i g h t D r i v e スケラー touches on several such sub-genres such as Drift Phonk and Hardwave. Since this type of music is rarely discussed on Sputnik, allow me to provide a bit of background to contextualize the review.
Wave is a heavily produced electronic music style which relies heavily on sampling vocal passages and sometimes entire sections of well known songs. Some would call this remixing, and perhaps rightly so. I personally feel that so much has been done to reinterpret and reproject these ideas that these samples become integral parts of entirely new songs. Whichever way you may lean, the style incorporates a lot of droning sub-bass atmosphere, slow to mid-tempo hard hitting beats with diverse, heavy driving synth lines, plenty light toned keys and risers to contrast the generally melancholic tone. Some tracks may contain a distinct trap influence with a grittier hip-hop inspired vocal and beat pairing, whereas others veer towards trance territories with plodding beats and ghostly vocal passages. There is certainly a mixture of styles, sounds and textures presented here that become a more cohesive whole the more familiar you become with N i g h t D r i v e スケラー and its follow-ups.
This type of music, which became popularized in online spaces like Soundcloud and Youtube, is heavily connected to contemporary car culture, particularly JDM-style tuner culture. In this space, drivers often customize their (often Japanese import) cars in terms of uprating the performance and heavily personalizing the appearance of the car and building mind melting audio systems into them. Pull up any video by
Skeler or any related artist and you will see many such cars featured, often in a very iconic cinematic style. This is where the N i g h t D r i v e スケラー connection comes in clearly. See, this music is positioned as the type of music people belonging to such car cultures would blast in customized cars during their nocturnal escapades, or the music they would pair with showcase videos demonstrating the hard work poured into their project cars.
Though I'm not a car guy like those alluded to above, I cannot contest that this music is absolutely perfect for a night drive. Driving around in the small hours of the morning, on roads normally bustling with traffic and activity with these tracks playing in the background can be a transcendental experience. Cruising along roads you would have to crawl along only hours earlier with ice cold air rolling in through the cracked window, the world at peace and the lights gleaming brightly while being transported by these enrapturing beats can be an almost magical experience with little equal.
This driving bliss is greatly facilitated by the heavily emotional but easily processed nature of the emotions elicited by these tracks. A particular favourite of mine is
'Never True' a particularly slow song which curiously samples a 1950's
Ella Fitzgerald jazz track interpretation of a 1926 song called
'Someone to Watch Over Me' by George Gershwin. Though as I stated earlier, the sample is processed to an unrecognizable degree. The track is defined by low rumbling sub-bass, a low BPM primary beat and an abundance of flute-like sounds paired with numerous synth risers all of which melt spookily around Fitzgerald's sample making for a haunting track filled with a consuming longing. Other samples include
Rihanna's
Umbrella for a slightly more uptempo track.
Lea Rue's
'I can't say No!' makes for possibly the slowest track here. On the higher energy side is the track
Ashes which samples 90's Memphis rapper
Princess Loko, featuring a much higher BPM and pedal-pressing momentum. Likewise, modern 2010's dance track
'You Got Me' by
BoxinLion & Lexie is sampled to create the
Skeler song of the same name for a track filled with white-knuckle energy.
As you can see,
Skeler samples a wide and frankly odd range of artists. Despite this, there is a clear identity given to this entire work as he infuses these songs with his own unique soul and sound. In my opinion there is not a single bad song here, and despite some stark contrast, they all blend wonderfully into a cohesive whole.
Skeler's recognizable processing of the samples and his distinctive beats fuse to become a wonderfully curated collection of musical influences under a singular musical vision in quite an exciting way. You can simultaneously enjoy these samples as presented here, then go back and find them to be exposed to a world of diverse music. The stellar production values afforded by the electronic production style ensure a dense, clean low end which will move powerful speakers, with a clear mids and highs for a utterly satisfying audio experience.
Early on I said calling these tracks remixes does them a disservice and after writing this I agree even more than before. If a standard remix is the equivalent of a highschooler's book report referencing a handful of sources and blatantly lifting their writing,
Skeler's N i g h t D r i v e スケラ is PhD thesis which expertly cites a number of works and seamlessly weaves them into a perfectly synthesized, coherent thought process.
