Tom Banks, aka Lockah, spent the entirety of a recent Boiler Room broadcast playing early hip-hop, Miami bass, and electro records. This is a selection of musics that, in part, document people learning to party with new technologies, sounding sometimes like the A/V club's impression of a really hot time. Banks makes music that stands at the intersection of house, hip-hop, and R&B, but it doesn't sound like those awkward, searching records he spun in part because he's from a generation of producers who are very, very comfortable with technology. On Yahoo or the Highway, his debut album, he takes that old electro sound and smooths it out—hiding the seams, waxing the hood—resulting in a gleaming, hi-fidelity boogie that feels very modern.
Yahoo or the Highway follows a series of EPs for fashionable labels such as the Mad Decent-affiliated Jeffree's and Slugabed's Activia Benz. Last year's Only Built for Neon Nights EP established Banks, alongside the Range, as one of the two most promising acts on Brighton's Donky Pitch label. Because Banks' music is bright and informed by hip-hop—but also because he's Scottish—he is frequently compared to Rustie and Hudson Mohawke. Banks shares their maximalist sparkle, but his music isn't as exploratory or massive. It's also, crucially, more lighthearted, possibly because when Banks claims his tracks draw from hip-hop, he's talking about Melle Mel instead of Lex Luger.
Yahoo is digital music: forged by modern technology, it reflects the omnivorousness and immediacy spending time online. Banks, helpfully, is the kind of internet-clever that leads to plenty of #wordplay: "If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Wrong", "Summer Jorts (Some Cats Still Do)" and "Sharks Sad Mouth in the 1st Pic" all feature as track titles. His artwork is peppered with everything from Ninja Turtles to the type of hyperreal photo-illustrations (see above) found on recent Night Slugs releases. While it contains plenty of references, Yahoo is not nostalgic for its influences in the same way CGI is not nostalgic for old special effects—this is just the way things are done now.
Yahoo is so carefree and unconcerned that its occasional busyness—the crisscrossing melodies of "Ayyo Tricknology", the motorik, training-montage soundtrack that is "Every Song Was About U"—is ephemeral and easily brushed off. Banks succeeds when he paints in bold strokes. The confident breeziness of "If Loving U" moves in and out of a piano house breakdown; the tart lightness of opener "A Face Only Another Could Love" rolls out the red carpet for Yahoo's ballsiest bassline. The stuttering "Summer Jorts" is the sound of the Go! Team's cheerleading, sampledelic anthem "Ladyflash" rendered by someone who found if too stodgy and old-school.
Yahoo is uncool in a comforting way, especially given the circles these tracks travel in: it's easy to imagine Glass Swords and TNGHT teasing it in the cafeteria. Its nowness is lived-in and casual, a byproduct rather than a statement. But rarely does effusive, whimsical music get the widescreen treatment. All of this bombast and glitter in the service of some knobby basslines and jokes about jean shorts: some cats still do, I guess.
