Sofi Tukker makes a mountain out of a molehill
When you're just starting out, you often have to stretch your resources to make ends meet. While this often manifests itself in the form of wrapping shoes in duct tape to avoid buying new ones or taking a walking tour of Costco free sample stations for dinner, new artists Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, known to a rapidly increasing number of fans as Sofi Tukker, have taken the stretching of resources to the next level. With "Drinkee," one of the two tracks they have released to date, the duo was able to build an absolutely addictive five minute track centered around nothing but a four-line poem written in Portuguese and a four-measure guitar riff.
Starting off with nothing but the satisfyingly loop-friendly electric guitar pattern, then gradually adding African drums and the Portuguese spoken-word vocals repeating the words of a poem written by Brazilian poet Chacal, "Drinkee" finally takes on its final form: a beautiful blend of house and the broad-brushstroke genre of world music. While house music typically has a consistent beat throughout with two distinct peaks (drops), "Drinkee" forgoes that model and instead features two distinct halves of the song with a drawn-out pause in the middle, a feat rarely attempted by dance music artists. Sofi Tukker's use of alternative percussion, foreign language lyrics, and European deep house-inspired synths give "Drinkee" the feeling of what more modern world music might begin to sound like. Already gaining popularity around the world after the release of only two songs, we can expect big things from Sofi Tukker with the release of their EP Soft Animals to hit the shelves later this year.