Toronto seems to have cemented it’s reputation as a “music city” with a particular style: the emotional, prescription assisted crooning of the Weeknd and Majid Jordan, Drake’s undeniably emo rap game dominance, the larger than life EDM oeuvres of Zeds Dead, Deadmau5 and others playing off the carefully considered work of Ryan Hemsworth, Tennyson and River Tiber, at it’s root, and even at it’s most over the top, it all taps into a particular sense of loss and longing buffeted by legions of sharp bedroom producers that draw on the city’s unique intersection of cultures.
Dancehall riddims stand shoulder to shoulder with indie rock influences, Drum and Bass is still heard in the streets, while austere, icy techno travels across the warehouse spaces of the city and everyone, everywhere seems to love being sad.
Into this often gloomy, yet feverishly fertile scene steps Eytan Tobin, DJ and producer behind Bedroomer, one of the cities hottest new properties; a mixed media collective stacked with an ever changing roster of producers, singers, rappers and artists. With a style that lands somewhere between the so-self-aware vaporwave scene and the no frills Chicago footwork music of Spinn, PayPal and the late DJ Rashad (with an obvious influence of shoegazing indie songwriting.)
With his latest EP “1990”, Tobin shores up the title track (which debuted on XLR8R earlier in the year) with a full EP of material, starting with the stand out “I Fell Light”, featuring contributions from crew members Kare and Veles on vocals and the aforementioned Tennyson on keys. Like opening the window on a concrete courtyard just to let some light in, this track stands above standard Future Bass offerings with one-note optimism and touches on something deeper. Floating on a footwork backbeat, the delicate instrumentation and soaring vocal performance solidify Bedroomer’s rightful place in Toronto’s tastemaking elite. Tobin says of the track:
“I Feel Light” is very dear to my heart. I started working on it at Redbull Bass Camp last year when out of nowhere Luke Tennyson runs into the studio and throws the most beautiful vocal pad keyboard take over the whole beat. I continued to arrange the song with Ben Landau aka Veles, who then wrote the sadsad lyrics to go along that he sung with Kara aka Kare.
While the whole thing has a tongue in cheek feel to it, there’s no denying the solidarity the crew shows for their own in each release, a breath of fresh air in an often too-competitive community. ‘1990’ is now available vie Bedroomer’s Bandcamp page for free, followed by release on all digital networks April 7th, the same day Eytan performs alongside gender-bending computer pop sensation, Sophie.
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