Spread the Social Love:
No matter what crowd you’re in or what style you adhere to or shun if you’re, like, so totally awesome and beyond all that skin deep bullshit (you’re only fooling yourself), there are two things we all secretly and guiltily love, some pop punk and some rap music, it’s just one of those things, don’t deny it.
Well, here we have for you a band that manages to combine both pretty perfectly and not even remotely slide into guilty pleasures territory. Meet Castles. The side project from the mind of Ryan Rockwell, the vocalist of Ohio’s Mixtapes, and his pal Patrick Wright comes a fly by the seat of your pants kinda group that just happen to be making some of the most interesting, beautiful, funny, and god damned nifty music I’ve heard all year. Start with ‘Sandbox’which features Timmy Airborne and you’ll hear them combine Lost references with in jokes about Indiana Jones and a choir of pre-programmed Casio beats, after that you’re pretty much theirs. If it makes you angry that it’s so simple, but you could never do it then join the club.
What’s so great about The View From Down Here isn’t that it’s free (you can pay what you want on their bandcamp), but that it’s so overwhelmingly happy; ‘This Is Fine’ is like being slapped in the face by a beach party. It’s a record made by two guys who are doing this for no other reason than fun. It’s an experiment, a project, a labour of love and all the better for it. On ‘girlsong’ they embrace auto tune and the magic of shouting, “I say the same thing and I say it again, that’s a hook, that’s a hook, that’s a hook,” after sampling the chorus of Leona Lewis’ ‘Keep Bleeding’ is just delightfully clever. It’s this nature of parodying everything from genre traits to Brian Wilson and American Psycho that will make sure your attention is tuned in.
Their own personal brand of off kilter rap over break beats, classical violin accompaniments, spoken word, R&B, and straight up pop music is nothing short of charming. They’re possibly the best crossover band to emerge in recent history and it’s even better for the fact that they just don’t care. The chorus to ‘Tenth Avenue’ makes no sense: “I got a green drink, I got a purple drink, I got a red drink, I got a yellow drink,” but in the insatiable framework of classic hip-hop it’s crazy enough not to matter, elsewhere the lyrics are deliriously amazing: “You should start this song over again, or play it backwards and hear its secret code, rap so well they can feel me in morse code.” The dual vocals of Wright and Rockwell are so melodious you’ll feel like you’re in Ian Van Dahl’s 'castle in the sky' instead of just listening to a band called Castles. They double team the tracks with eager authority never letting the hooks take away from their staggering ability to rhyme on any subject.
Castles are thrillingly fresh and in it purely for the love of it and that right there is two reasons why you should be listening to them. Here’s how they’ll convince you: “Me and my friends we do the best stuff ever, write rhymes on the backs of flyers I’m clever.”
For fans of: Mixtapes, Childish Gambino, references to everything you ever loved.
Well, here we have for you a band that manages to combine both pretty perfectly and not even remotely slide into guilty pleasures territory. Meet Castles. The side project from the mind of Ryan Rockwell, the vocalist of Ohio’s Mixtapes, and his pal Patrick Wright comes a fly by the seat of your pants kinda group that just happen to be making some of the most interesting, beautiful, funny, and god damned nifty music I’ve heard all year. Start with ‘Sandbox’which features Timmy Airborne and you’ll hear them combine Lost references with in jokes about Indiana Jones and a choir of pre-programmed Casio beats, after that you’re pretty much theirs. If it makes you angry that it’s so simple, but you could never do it then join the club.
What’s so great about The View From Down Here isn’t that it’s free (you can pay what you want on their bandcamp), but that it’s so overwhelmingly happy; ‘This Is Fine’ is like being slapped in the face by a beach party. It’s a record made by two guys who are doing this for no other reason than fun. It’s an experiment, a project, a labour of love and all the better for it. On ‘girlsong’ they embrace auto tune and the magic of shouting, “I say the same thing and I say it again, that’s a hook, that’s a hook, that’s a hook,” after sampling the chorus of Leona Lewis’ ‘Keep Bleeding’ is just delightfully clever. It’s this nature of parodying everything from genre traits to Brian Wilson and American Psycho that will make sure your attention is tuned in.
Their own personal brand of off kilter rap over break beats, classical violin accompaniments, spoken word, R&B, and straight up pop music is nothing short of charming. They’re possibly the best crossover band to emerge in recent history and it’s even better for the fact that they just don’t care. The chorus to ‘Tenth Avenue’ makes no sense: “I got a green drink, I got a purple drink, I got a red drink, I got a yellow drink,” but in the insatiable framework of classic hip-hop it’s crazy enough not to matter, elsewhere the lyrics are deliriously amazing: “You should start this song over again, or play it backwards and hear its secret code, rap so well they can feel me in morse code.” The dual vocals of Wright and Rockwell are so melodious you’ll feel like you’re in Ian Van Dahl’s 'castle in the sky' instead of just listening to a band called Castles. They double team the tracks with eager authority never letting the hooks take away from their staggering ability to rhyme on any subject.
Castles are thrillingly fresh and in it purely for the love of it and that right there is two reasons why you should be listening to them. Here’s how they’ll convince you: “Me and my friends we do the best stuff ever, write rhymes on the backs of flyers I’m clever.”
For fans of: Mixtapes, Childish Gambino, references to everything you ever loved.
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