1. Wet Baes - “Midnight Caller”
This jam has had a special place in my heart ever since that first fateful day I happened to stumble across it while waist deep in the backwaters of Soundcloud. It’s the perfect dose of hypnotic – a mellow two-step that languidly swirls its way into the heart’s embrace, captivating the soul, and warming your insides like a thick winter cloak. You can feel the magnetic attraction all the way from your heart to your hips, love and groove existing as one, until the song and yourself in turn become one. For the few minutes the song endures you’re oblivious to the outside world, stuck inside yourself, swaying head over heels and churning through the haze of perfect harmony.
At least that’s how it was for me at any rate. As anyone who somewhat follows this site can attest to, I’m a man who’s drawn towards the chill side of the musical spectrum. The reign of Chillwave was the golden age of my musical journey. Music during this time was a religious experience - a baptism of sorts. It was a period where I found myself falling deeply in love with an aesthetic. I submerged myself in the genre, taking a headlong dive until I was swimming in the reverb, absorbing it into my bloodstream and melding it with my soul. So needless to say, even though the world of music may have moved on sometime after 2010 – I never really have. I’ll forever be entranced by the genre, and fortunately I’m not the only one, as artists like Wet Baes continue to keep the genre alive, carrying the baton of chill as they build upon and propel the aesthetic forward.
This particular offshoot is like the love child of Funk and Chillwave. It’s the frozen eggs of a distant past dabbling with the languid warmth of a recently retired future. Together they create an altogether new genre often bequeathed with the title ‘Future-Funk’, which like everything post-modern is doused in irony, hearkening to the past while simultaneously paying homage to the future. However, this particular jam tends to take after its father, adhering more closely to the chill side of the family tree. In fact, if chill were compressed into song format, I suspect that it would sound something like this – which of course should make it no surprise that this track found its way to the top of my list.
This jam is pure sedated seduction. It’s a thread barren soul donning a glossy exterior of cool. It’s the internal yearnings of the heart made painfully public - the sort of passionate crooning that can only exist in the recesses mind, forever relegated to the imagination and hidden behind a stifling barricade of ego. Nonetheless this track gives us a glimpse of the unguarded heart, and what we get in return is a radiant track that’s oozing with love. It’s as if the feeling itself is seeping through the cracks of the subconscious to smother all conscious thought, burying it beneath the slow and viscous waves of passion. In fact, you can picture the protagonist willing his love from a distance, conjuring it with each smooth keystroke and then propelling it forward with each cushioned beat of the drum machine. It’s a sludgy assault, a fantasy playing out methodically across a metaphysical stage. As the audience you can sense the love rising up from the heart to float above the dance floor and scope the scene. It momentarily lingers as it mixes with the miasmic vapor of sweat, gaining confidence with each beat, before navigating through the twinkling lights toward the heart of its all too oblivious love interest. It’s an effusive poltergeist, weighed down by its fullness, slowly rotating in the swirling air like an astronaut twirling amidst the stars, forever creeping its way toward the looming horizon of darkness embodied by the barren shores of unrequited love. Yet despite it all it maintains a sense of earnest innocence - a heartfelt honesty that can’t help but vitalize the soul. It carries forward, resonating and giving the song a spark of warmth despite its pervasive chill. The protagonist knows that it’s a hopeless gesture, but nevertheless persists. They burn with love even while they’re extinguished by doubt, holding on to an unwavering hope, a pureness of belief – in the self and the love that could be, but unfortunately sometimes belief just isn’t enough.
