Last week an interesting beat-making newcomer appeared on our radar. Coming (or supposedly coming) from the biggest Black Sea port of Constanţa, Anadolchioi is secretive about his true identity. His name is taken from the name of a Constanţa neighborhood in whose proximity he lived (Anadol is also a former Turkish car brand).

“While my neighbourhood (Tomis III) is inhabited mostly by ethnic Romanians, Anadolchioi is home to Gypsies and the biggest Turkish population in Romania and is also a lot poorer and ghetto-like. For me it’s a symbol for the segregation between “high” and “low” culture.”

The beatmaker, inspired by Eurodance, the Romanian turbo-gypsy-folk Manele and Juke tries to “sneak in “unaccepted” and “naive” elements in a “hip” and “intellectual” context in order to blur the lines and hopefully make more people realise the arbitrary and unfair nature of this division.”

Currently working on an 90’s party-mix inspired EP, Anadolchioi will play a debut performance at the upcoming Rokolectiv Festival 2012. 

“This is the music I wished I could make when I was 9. My personal musical experience is in this case irrelevant as I’m trying to start from scratch with this project as not to include any stylistic preconceptions.”

Hazy Memories is a project by a 19-year producer from Husi in Romania. His debut EP Out Of Place is an exquisite entrée onto the Romanian beat scene, where a young generation of producers like Montgomery Clunk, Minus, Polochord or ViLLΛGE further explores the sonic territories of glitch/hip hop, wonky, bass and club-oriented electronica.

Out Of Place is a relaxing, soulful EP whose hazy nostalgic mood is sometimes almost meditative. Its first two tracks I Got You and She’s My Autumn, flow with a slow bass pulse, and the Burialesque percussions on the latter one remind us of Nocow’s Pulkovo Heights minus the dark, brooding athmosphere. 

4. Sleepwalk by Hazy Memories

The laidback sound continues on Star Projectors, that borrows influences from juke and its way of working with vocal samples. The chopped and looped vocals are overlaid over smooth, relaxing ambient synthlines to a great effect. The biggest hit of the EP is however the emotional Sleepwalk. Starting very inconspicuosly, with reverbed guitar chords against a backdrop that sounds like the crackle of vinyl, it later drops a touching bass-heavy atmosphere with a wonderful key-progression on top of it.

Hazy Memories’ EP Out of Place is out now as a free download. 

Remember about the call to submit re-edits of Dvorak´s ouevre that we posted a little while ago? The resulting audio versions, which oscillates between ambient, beats and “a random trippy deconstruction of Dvorak” courtesy of Romanian but also Czech producers /Sky to Speak/ can be checked out here.

The Local Records selection, an alternative version of the competition results found in the above link, is below:

Tom Wilson is a British Bucharest based journalist, BBC radio correspondent and DJ and one of our connections in the city while we were there on our exploration journey in 2010.

What’s the highlight for you in Romania’s music scene?
The highlight of my year had to be either the Rokolectiv festival or Romania’s continuing global take-over of the charts with Europop artists like Inna, Radio Killer and Alexandra Stan. You literally couldn’t turn on the radio in the UK or the US without hearing one of them - which is a truly great thing for Romania.

It’s better ‘nation branding’ than anything that could be dreamed up by some ad agency. I know it’ll wind people up if I say that Alexandra Stan’s ”Get Back (ASAP)” was the highlight of my year instead of some obscure netlabel release, but for me, piano-driven laminated europop with utterly incomprehensible lyrics just doesn’t get any better than this. 

Rokolectiv Festival 2011 | documentary from Rokolectiv on Vimeo.

What is the low point for you in Romania’s music scene? 
The low point of the year was the fact that there wasn’t some kind of horrific plague that struck down Romanian parliamentarians that caused them to expire in indescribable agony.

Discovery-new artist of the year /in Romania/?
There’s lots to chose from: Montgomery Clunk has had a great year, and is probably my number one Romanian artist at the moment. Also, the Legendary 1979 Orchestra deserves a mention for having a nice vinyl release, and boys from Future Nuggets put out the superb ”Forever Unreleased” which has introduced lots of fantastic new producers to the world.

Forever Unreleased Vol. 1 by future nuggets

Local Records also put out some great bits and pieces, with an honorable mention going to Rusu and Flore for their debut EP under the ‘Poor Relatives’ moniker, which deserves to get much more press - it’s a release that really rewards repeat listening.

The Future Nuggets guys also unearthed a producer called Rodion who’s been making music for the past 40 years or something. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to chose music from the mid-1970s as my Best New Artist, but I can’t wait to hear what other bits of his stuff they’re going to put out.

Rodion - Cântec Fulger by future nuggets

Personal tips and wishes and plans for 2012?
I’m currently stockpiling food for peak oil / the implosion of the eurozone / zombie apocalypse.  

What is the relevance of local scenes in a globalised culture? I would argue that it´s increasingly important. A similar conviction is probably held by the guys behind Local Records, a Bucharest based record label which also functions as a promoter of Romanian independent artists. We have met Bogdan at Local Rec. whilst in Bucharest in 2010 and his vision of Local seemed enthusiastic. After several gigs for Romanian artists hosted in cities like Barcelona or Berlin and a monthly! release schedule, they have decided to capture 2011 in terms of Romania´s music scene.

The 14-track compilation is a sonic journey through dreamy, dancey electronics with some of the names benowned to us - eg. Montgomery Clunk (he played at Easterndaze curated night at the Sperm Fest in Prague in April), Hipdiebattery or Minus, but there are some new names too. Overall, the tracks conjure an xmassy vibe, perfect for end of the year melancholy-dreaminess, starting slowly and gradually climaxing into 4x4 territories.

[LCL11] V.A. - Buzz.RO! 2011 by Local Records

You can listen to our 2010 audio travelogue from Romania for Resonance FM here.