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Music

Pop Punk and Baile Funk Collide on Organ Tapes' 'TELL ME IM THE ONLY' Mixtape

He stitches together global sounds into a gorgeous, unexpected tapestry.
Photo courtesy of the artist

Of all the talent rustling around the undergrowth of London's experimental club scene, few producers have gripped me more forcefully than Organ Tapes, born Tim Zha. He spent his youth spent traveling between China and the UK—his diasporic perspective informs his wide-eyed, heart-wrenching productions and vocal pop songs (for labels like Tobago Tracks and Bala Club), which flit naturally between a vast spectrum of sounds.

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Under his DJ Corpmane alias, he draws on a wide spectrum of global sounds—Midwestern bop, experimental dancehall, Chinese pop, and beyond—stitching them together into paper-thin tapestries of hypnotic beauty. Today he's blessed us with the premiere of TELL ME IM THE ONLY, a collection of tracks that a visitor from 2006 might blithely refer to as mash-ups. Zha deftly stitches together rhythms from Brazil and Lisbon with alternative rock, rap, and ambient textures. One particularly inspired pairing called "Leaving Mi Vida" finds a morose AFI deep cut enlivened by a chunky MC Bin Laden sample, while "Tape Bandit" masterfully blends an elegiac vocal from Cincinnati rapper Prince Bopp with Radiohead's "Videotape." There's nothing gimmicky about what he's doing—in line with the work of Elysia Crampton, these compositions feel organic, rough around the edges, almost handmade. The sounds come from wildly different sources, but they fit snugly into each other, knotted together by the similar emotional qualities Zha identifies beneath the surface.

Perhaps the most intriguing song on the mixtape is Zha's gorgeous remix of Brazilian baile funk star MC Pedrinho's "Nosso Amor," the only track that features his original production.

"I heard this song by MC Pedrinho and I kept expecting drums to come in but they never did," Zha explained over email. "It has a really beautiful melody and there's no percussion, just the guitar and voice, so I thought I would try and make something with it. Most of the other songs on this collection are just blends and various samples mashed together, but this one is basically just a track I made from scratch with another song inside it."

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Listen to the full collection below.

Tracklist:

1. Prayer (DMX x Ashanti x Why Be/Sky H1/Elysia Crampton) OT EDIT

2. All In Paradise (Wet x Bsn #Crzy)

3. 2MOHCOTA (DJ BBoy x Shura)

4. Fodencia Dream (Anna Domino x DJ Puto Anderson)

5. Leaving Mi Vida (AFI x MC Bin Laden)

6. Like Swinging Machines (Trim x Corta Venas x "Blackdiadem" x Wishdasher)

7. Like The Wind Do Motor (Patrick Swayze x Tomas Urquieta x MC Bin Laden) OT EDIT

8. Nosso Amor OT VERSION (MC Pedrinho)

9. Paleta Tee OT CRASH TEST (Kamixlo x Lil Peep/Yung Bruh)
10. Tape Bandit (Prince Bopp x Radiohead/Phaseone)

11. Believer's Ascent (Brian Eno x Susanna & the Magic Orchestra)