Drums:
The most important thing about this drum production to me is the imperfection. Without these little quirks the programmed drums sound dead to me. Number one, is the slightly late hat on beat one, or if you like a slightly early kick. Other than it working as a 'humanising' element that difference in timing stops the hi hat from masking the kick on beat one (where it's most important). In fact, I believe that keeping your hats off time as much as sounds acceptably fitting in your production is a good idea. That's my 2 cents on drums anyway.
Scratch samples:
The track opens with a lot of 'squeaks' that actually loosely follow the melody of the piano when it comes in. The samples sound like short chopped samples from someone's scratch set. They certainly suit the style of this music and the time it came out. I miss scratch in modern music, it's always the thing that sets a lot of DJs apart but I think it sounds interesting as an instrument in music too.
Vocals:
This production plays a lot with vocal looping and layering of looped vocal lines. The "let the drummer kick" loop that introduced the track remains fairly constant. While this continues, a number of variations of enter the mix alongside it. They're phrasing is different, which is my favourite thing about it. Some thought would have gone into finding two rhythmic variations of that line that go well together. These loops are effected with some lo-fi filter as to keep them separate from the lead vocal that takes over in each verse. There's a call and response between voices in the second verse. It follows the convention of a close voice interacting with a distant voice.
Last thoughts:
That piano lick sounds so great in this track. It's a perfect sample in the context of the other sounds. It's short and sharp to stand out from the pad synths behind it and in parts feels like it's in tune with the scratch. This is an extremely cool track that I hadn't listened to until today and I regret that.
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