Mysterious yet accessible, impeccably cool but with a mischievous wink, Made in Heights’ new LP, Without My Enemy What Would I Do, hints at hip-hop and EDM delicately encased by smart, graduate-level pop song craft. At turns romantic and bombastic, danceable and ruminant, producer Sabzi and vocalist Kelsey Bulkin made a stunner in WMEWWID.
Sabzi dropped this “albumixtape” in the inbox this morning as a little gift to the fans. Thanks, Saba! Seems like The Woods is a preview of what’s to come in 2014 from Made In Heights, his side project with vocalist Kelsey Bulkin — an unexpected and welcome surprise! Happy Holidays and stay warm, family.
Haruki or Takashi? The former has a thing for cats. So, him. Time travel. Lucid dreaming. Shifting reality. Words and stories. Made In Heights read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and made a song.
Made In Heights seems to get busiest during the Holiday season. Winter Pigeons found the first light of the internets in December three years ago. When we caught MIH’s first live show in Brooklyn last month, my fiancee described their music as “romantic”. I agree, and what better time of year for romance than the Holidays. “Pirouette” is a delicate ballad to curl up to.
The gradual rise of Made In Heights (Blue Scholars’ DJ/producer Sabzi and vocalist Kelsey Bulkin) has been a slow but intense burn. For a time, shortly after their relatively low-key but intensely beloved debut in early 2011, the duo topped this blog’s “most searched-for” list for about 30 days straight.
206UP has been a fan since the start. MIH is that rare electo-pop act that finds the perfect balance between the glaring computerized elements of its compositions (Sabzi), and the organic humanist component of its vocals (Kelsey). Success for groups like this depends on existing in the harmony between. (See also: Lorde.)
Made In Heights appeared live on stage for the first time at the Blue Scholars show in Brooklyn, about a month and a half ago. A lot of the songs they played were like the new one you hear below: calculated, bombastic and, at times, seemingly frantic. What remains most impressive about Kelsey Bulkin is how she uses her upper register to neutralize Sabzi’s digital bluster. This new track is called “Death”, but it’s really all about how much life this impressive singer breathes into a modern musical device that is, for all intents and purposes, inanimate without her.
Click album cover to D/L.
Made In Heights recently released a new 11-track EP, Aporia: In These Streets, on Bandcamp. For those new to the duo, Heights is composed of Blue Scholars’ DJ/producer Sabzi and New York-based vocalist Kelsey Bulkin. They arrived on the internet scene last December with Winter Pigeons, an excellent collection of atmospheric electro-pop that vibed perfectly with a particularly brutal Northeast Winter…
Click image for D/L link
The title of this week’s post is erroneous by way of a not-so slight technicality. The download included here is not really hip-hop. It’s more along the lines of electro-pop with an underlying hip-hop spirit. Sabzi, the producer responsible for the music on Made In Heights’ free EP, Winter Pigeons (get it, here), is better known for his rap successes with Blue Scholars and Common Market, which adds a little more validity to this post. But enough with defending the liberties taken, let’s just move on.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 