The Changing Sound of Ill-Advised
Artwork from BROOK’s “Hopefully Something Modernish” EP
Hey guys, Chris here again! Sorry it’s been so long since the last post!
one of the reasons it has been so long is because we’ve been hard at work here putting out a ton of new releases. This marks a pretty big shift in focus for the label, and I wanted to take a bit of time to go into detail about the overall “sound” of the label and what our goals are - and really always have been.
I’m sure that most of you reading this probably found this label sometime around Halloween, and it was probably either through one of our annual Halloween mixes, or the Dark Lofi Hip Hop mix, both of which feature beats by Dated (me). Those mixes blowing up the way they did was a crazy surprise that I could never have anticipated, and it really was the spark that turned this label from a quiet place to post my own beats into the beginnings of the real label that I wanted it to someday become.
The dark lofi is near and dear to me, and will always form the core of what this label does. We aren’t, however, a dark lofi hip hop label, and never really were. I myself didn’t start out by making these dark beats, and it took years of experimentation before I even thought to attempt that sort of sound. Before that, I was just making chill/oldschool boom bap type beats, and just having fun playing with dusty old samples. I was sitting at a bus depot waiting for my ride home from work one day while I jotted ideas for a new tape down in a notepad when I came up with the idea for The Weather Channel, and all the dark lofi hip hop that I’ve become known for since then has all stemmed from that moment.
Around that time however, we were still putting out other regular lofi beats, both in my own random side-beats, as well as the beats of Wayvee Tapes, who collaborated with me on the Half-Baked Beats tape. The dark lofi was one new direction of what I hoped would eventually become a wide-spanning range of different sounds as we found more talent for the label.
Fast forward to now, and you’ll find lofi hip hop, dark lofi hip hop, synthwave, experimental/industrial, darkjazz, trip hop, plunderphonics, and we have plans to branch out still to lofi house, synth house, and plenty more. With all of these different genres being released, what they have in common that makes them relevant to this label might not be immediately apparent.
If I had to describe our music on a really short tagline, I would probably just describe it as lofi and retro music. That pretty much covers all the hip hop and retrowave stuff, but it doesn’t really describe the core “essence” of what makes a release fit in here. our tagline often throws around the term “internet music” in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, but it is probably one of the more accurate descriptors. What genres like lofi, retro, experimental, trip hop, dark jazz, all sorts of electro, etc. have in common is that there are a lot of bedroom producers out there who are experimenting with the their genre, and who are more focused on doing something creative and honest than making the cleanest, over-produced radio music. What we primarily want to release is music by underground artists who love what they do, and who either bring something totally new to the label or compliment our established sounds well.
If you’re out there thinking “man, I have some cool music, but I don’t know if I should submit it”. the short answer is: yeah, submit it! The longer answer though, is does the music fit into a trend that is already proving popular on the label? If it does, we will almost certainly want you on board if the music is solid enough. For example, the dark lofi is easily our most popular genre on the label. I can almost guarantee that anyone who submits a really strong sounding dark-lofi project (not even hip hop, necessarily) is probably going to get signed, because the appetite for it is the largest. Fitting in isn’t the only way to get signed, however, as we also don’t want to paint ourselves into a corner. Our recent release by BROOK is super far outside of our most popular dark, brooding material, and that was one of the reasons it was appealing to me. it represented a range of emotions that have a place on this label, that work with the other material to provide something for everyone to listen to, no matter their mood. First and foremost however, that project just had a real soul to it, and some incredibly catchy tunes, which made it stand out immediately.
Going forward, we’re doubling-down on this mentality. You’ll see a lot more dark lofi material, but also a lot more music that spans other genres and moods. We’re also looking for ways to make this label more of a home for our artists than just a faceless Youtube page that spam-posts songs and tapes. as you may have noticed, we’ve just put out our first LOFI LIVE set, which will be the first of many. The plan is to put out sets by as many artists on the label as possible, complete with collabs and crossovers. We’ll also be looking into putting out more collabs between artists on the label. The eventual plan is to also start putting out more production-focused videos, either process vids or vlogs, or even tutorials on specific production techniques. The plan is to make this less of a song machine, and more of a bunch of cool folks that you want to keep up with and chill with while we share our art with this awesome community.
There are a ton of new things coming, so I hope you are already to come on this ride with us!
Have a question? Is there something you;d like to see us do? Drop a comment below!
(You can check out our first LOFI LIVE here: https://youtu.be/hN5EzrsI5Vg)