Osquello

Osquello is a singer, rapper, songwriter and producer from Leeds. Originally being a local musician, he moved to London to reinforce and expand his music career. Osquello is known for his fusing together of many different genres of music, like jazz, hip-hop, lo-fi, soul, indie, rap and R&B to create interesting and entirely new sounds. He often uses jazz and soul chords and melodies, combined with the modern sounds of synths and computerized drums. In an interview with Wonderland Magazine, he said “I’ve always been a fan of hearing different sounds of music coming together because it usually creates something new we’ve never heard of. Also, I listen to all sorts of music I can go from Nine Inch Nails to Roy Ayers from Gucci Mane to the Temper Trap.” (New Noise: Osquello, 2019). His music has been called ‘dream like’ and he has been called a ‘young visionary’, being only 20 years old and having so much success. He performed in LA at just 18 and has done songs with BROCKHAMPTON, Declan McKenna and Clairo. He also was the supporting act for Declan McKenna’s UK tour in 2019, which is where I found Osquello; I was in love with his music as soon as he started his performance, and I listened to him all the way home from Manchester after the gig!

His debut EP, ‘Good Morning Simulation’, is a fusion of jazz and hip-hop, tied together with ambient sounds which can be heard in songs like ‘Enter Simulation’. The EP is quite long, and could be even considered as a smaller album, and has features from CARLA and Poppy Billingham. The lyrics are often about his past experiences through life, and can sometimes get quite political during his rap verses. In the same interview with Wonderland Magazine, he mentioned that he had been working on this EP for three years, and started making music when he was just 13: “Been making music since I was around 13, started producing on a really old Dell computer through a program called Reason that my Dad gave me… I was getting more into rapping around 15 and from then I just joined it all together when I learnt how to use Logic and Ableton…” (New Noise: Osquello, 2019). One of my favourite songs from the EP is ‘Elevation Repeats’ featuring CARLA; it really influences me as a musician and gives me a lot of inspiration for how I want my singles to turn out.

Elevation Repeats

Overall, I really like this song, both as a musician and a music listener. I think the song is simple, but in such a way that it works, and the simplicity compliments CARLA’s soft and higher register vocals really well. The bass drives the song and I love the little licks from the saxophone as it keeps the song engaging. The chords on the mellow piano and guitar are dreamy and relaxing, capturing the essence of jazz and soul, but the bass and drums are very reminiscent of lo-fi and hip-hop; this fusion works extremely well together. I’d describe the song as quite easy to listen to, but the lyrics are very metaphorical and often can be hard to understand in terms of the meaning. I think this song is a great influence for me and this project as I plan to use vocals instead of rapping and I want to use hip-hop/lo-fi inspired beats along with jazzy and dreamy guitar chords.

The Instrumentation is very conventional of a hip-hop/lo-fi song, the main instruments being vocals, bass, guitar, drums, two types of piano, and a saxophone. This makes the song seem like the texture would be quite thick, however, these instruments are used quite sparingly, for example, the guitar is low in the mix, and the saxophone does not play through the whole song. Because of this, I would class the texture of this song as thin.

The song also uses harmonies, however, to up this thickness and this song is enjoyable as the harmonies come from both a male and female voice. The harmonies in the choruses come from the two singing in different registers, the female voice singing an octave above the male voice. The harmonies from the piano and guitar work well together as this harmony is diatonic.

The rhythms in the song are swung, and it has a fairly simple drum beat (snare on two and four, and bass pedal on one), but has some syncopation on the second half of the fourth bar in the four bar loop; this makes the snare hit on the ‘four and’ of the bar instead of the fourth beat. There is also a ghosted snare hit on the ‘e’ of the third beat if using the counting system ‘one e & a, two e & a’. Syncopating rhythms like this is quite normal to hear in hip-hop and lo-fi breakbeats or grooves. There are some changes like removing snare hits and changing the bass drum pattern slightly to keep the groove interesting and unique.

The structure is: intro, chorus, verse one, verse two, verse three (featuring CARLA), chorus *2, sax solo. This is an unusual structure as there is a chorus at the start when in most songs, the verse comes first or after the intro instead. The verses are bunched together in the middle with no breaks or different parts in-between, and the sax solo ends the song entirely with a fade-out, which I really like as an ending. I could try this in my song, but perhaps with a guitar or piano solo instead of sax.

The song’s tempo is 88 BPM (andantino) and this is quite leisurely, making the song feel relaxed and it reinforces the hip-hop beat. The time signature is 4/4; this is quite simple and most songs use this time signature as it is easy for listeners to follow and listen to, but it works well with the mood and genre. For my songs, however, it would be interesting if I experimented with some more difficult time signatures like 5/4, even though this is quite unconventional for hip-hop and lo-fi.

As the key is in A#Maj, the song uses the A#Maj and the pentatonic scale of this. The most notable melodies are from the vocals. The melodies in the chorus use lots of different intervals and notes; the first two bars are the same melodies, with a slight change to melody and interval use on the third bar, and the fourth bar uses much higher notes. The melody on the vocals for some parts is chromatic, but for the most part, it stays pentatonic. Another more prominent melodies in the song would be from the sax. In the choruses, it copies the vocal melodies and also plays licks during the verses to close any empty space in the form of a call and response structure. All of these licks have different melodies, keeping the song unique and moving along, but all of these melodies are pentatonic. The melody from the piano loop is pentatonic as well so it works well in any part of the song if the song stays in the same key, as a pentatonic scale doesn’t have any harsh-sounding tritones.