Monday night EDM posterboy Skrillex used his recently launched phone app called Alien Ride to stream his forthcoming debut full-length, Recess (not to be confused with local kids’ musician Justin Roberts’s Grammy-nominated album of the same name). I haven’t listened to the entire album, partially because I’ve been stuck on a single song—”Coast is Clear,” which features Chance the Rapper and his band, Social Experiment. This has been a common experience I’ve had with many, many songs Chance has appeared on the past couple years, which should be obvious from the number of times I’ve written about him since he released his video for “Fuck You Tahm Bout.” In fact, I try to hold back on writing about the MC because I don’t want to overdo it. I’m making an exception with “Coast is Clear,” because I’m obsessed with a part of the track that doesn’t have a lot to do with Chance—it’s actually all about one of his producers and a member of Social Experiment, Peter Cottontale.
“Coast is Clear” begins with a recording of Peter playing a keyboard for a handful of seconds until someone shouts “Eyo, Peter” and the melody comes to an abrupt halt. From Peter’s partially inaudible response I get the sense he was in his own world, and I can picture him standing in the studio, fingers dancing on the keyboard in front of him, his eyes closed and his head slightly swaying as he’s concentrating on the timbre of every note. Peter sounds like he’s playing off in the distance, which gives the audio clip a field-recording quality and makes it a wonderful, short document of one musician’s genuine love of his craft. It fits the spirit of “Coast is Clear” pretty well, especially the part where Chance commands listeners to “dance like it hurts to stand still.” It’s a jubilant, catchy pop-centric dance tune that’s kind of about getting lost in a song just like “Coast is Clear” and celebrating that moment. Get lost in the tune after the jump.