SHEEESH by Sydney-born producer MXXWLL is out today, and we’re here to take you through how each of his tracks came about.
Stacked with a massive track list, SHEEESH marks itself as an album to be reckoned with from MXXWLL, featuring an enormous amount of artists from platinum-selling artist Aloe Blac and Melbourne’s own Kaiit, to a handful of musicians that should entirely feature on your playlists.
Chock full of those classic LA sounds, even with samples from when MXXWLL first landed in the Californian city, SHEEESH captivates listeners by throwing track after track down with absolute force, as each song transports the listener right across the Pacific ocean.
Described as “a straight up G” by collaborator Kaiit, MXXWLL is noted to keep the vibes bumping, and is someone who has “such beautiful and warm energy” and makes his collaborators feel comfortable enough in the studio to express themselves wholly.
MXXWLL’s latest album SHEEESH is out today. Take some time to sit back, relax, and give it a spin as it takes you through 17 tracks filled with samples and collaborators you either know, or will come to love, and check out what MXXWLL has to say about his new album
Check out ‘LIGHT TURN GREEN (feat. John Givez, Rae Khalil & Carrtoons)’ by MXXWLL:
1. ‘AA72’
“This track was to symbolise the beginning of a journey to LA, the place I always strove to get to and make music. The title is a flight number (SYD to LAX) and takes place at the airport having just arrived in LA. It’s got the sound of the Uber driver pulling up, putting down the windows and the driver is listening to some G Funk.. something you always see and hear in LA…”
2. ‘PLAYER 1 START’
“This track starts with sparking one and inhaling, it symbolises entering a game. That’s kinda how arriving in LA felt to me. Like a different dimension in a game I’d entered. Interesting and kinda nerdy note, but all the sounds are made using only the sound chip from a Nintendo NES console which I manipulated to make sound like drums and instruments.”
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3. ‘ROLLITUP (feat. Kaiit)’
“Kaiit and I started working on a collab track back in 2018, but we only ever got around to writing the hook. A couple years later, I found the a cappella of that hook on an old hard drive and cut the vocals to use as a sample on a new production.”
“Kaiit is a close friend of ours so I sent it to her straight away and she flipped out and vibed with it super hard. It has one of those recognisable west coast sounding synth lines which I think helps to give the feeling of being in LA.”
Check out ‘OG Luv Kush p.2’ by Kaiit:
4. ‘O O O’
“This was actually the most recent tune that was made, I attended the FalconUltra writing camp in Sydney two days after I’d come back home… Ended up in a room with Anthony Tupai on bass, Maysa Tippins on vocals, Chunkyluv on guitar and we just spent an hour recording freeform jams to be flipped as ‘samples’. I really liked this one and when it didn’t get used at the camp I decided to sample it myself!”
5. ‘LIGHT TURN GREEN (feat. John Givez, Rae Khalil & Carrtoons)’
“I tend to think there are two ways a track is made, sometimes the creation happens slowly with session files back and forth, and other times it happens in one night. Light Turn Green was the latter. I’d just arrived in LA and I was hitting up all the US homies I’d only gotten to speak online with. Hit up John Givez, he came through to chop it up, we ordered burgers and the track was created that night. We were playing unreleased vault tracks we had and then we had the idea to make a song which narrates just one car trip, kind of a-day-in-the-life.”
“At one point I must have been scrolling instagram and noticed I was tagged in a video. I had recently put out a sound pack for producers to create tracks and someone had purchased the pack and made a dope ass bass-line using it and tagged me.”
“We thought it was so fire that we put the bass-line in the track. It’s crazy how long ago it feels cause now cause Carrtoons is the homie now. But at the time, it was just one of those perfect timing things. Rae Khalil and her manager came over the next day, at the time our managers were just having a meeting so we got in the studio, she jumped on the hook that day and that was that.”
6. ‘MSSNU (feat. Nehemie)’
“I put a post up on Instagram for any singers/writers to send me their unused a cappella from songs they’d written and said that I’d pick one to make into a feature on the album. I downloaded over 250 a cappellas and saved them into categorised folders…”
“I saw this one from Nehemie and this a cappella she sent sounded like some famous classic 90s sound. So I sampled it and ‘MSSNU’ was born. I actually ended up picking two a cappellas from Instagram DMs that day, the other one is on ‘WOAH’, track 12 on the album.”
Check out ‘X KeysOpenDoors Those Chords’ sound pack from MXXWLL:
7. ‘THINGS U DO (feat. Kyle Dion)’
“I had started chatting with Kyle on Twitter many years earlier and then there was a year or so where neither of us said much… I was working on ‘Beats Vol.1’ and he was working on ‘SUGA’… Fast forward a year or so and I had just moved to LA, we linked up at Blue Dream Studios and I showed him this beat I’d made after listening to a shit-tonne of Bootsy Collins… Kyle and Bijou Choder wrote and recorded all the vocal parts in one session.”
8. ‘SLOW WEST’
“I wanted to make some crazy slow sound and was heavily inspired by one of my favourite tracks, ZAPP’s ‘Computer Love’.
9. ‘FOUND IT (feat. Ill Camille & SiR)’
“I met SiR at Jazzy Jeff’s ‘Playlist Retreat 2016′. From 2016-2019 we remotely worked on a couple of tracks that never saw the light of day, but being in LA i reached out. We linked at the spot and I showed him a track Ill Camille and I had started a couple days earlier. She had done this crazy 32-bar section of just solid RAPS. SiR was with it and started humming ideas for the second half of the track…”
“I left the room to take a call for 15 or so mins and when i stepped back into the room this dude had seen i was using Cubase, engineered himself and recorded basically every vocal part you hear for his section, BVs and all! (What’s crazy is that almost nobody I know uses Cubase so i was really trippin’ when i see dude casually engineering his own session on it).”
10. ‘RNRN’
“This track samples Electric Empire track ‘Little Things’, as well as LA native, Raquel Rodriguez gracing us throughout on a couple sweet runs which I flipped and chopped into samples using layers of instrumentation to get that ’90s R’n’B sound.”
“Fun fact, this track actually had a completely different sample in it up until the day before uploading it for release. At the last minute I was playing around with the production for it and decided to switch up the whole track, stayed up all night to mix it and master it and uploaded an hour before my deadline at 7AM.”
Check out ‘Little Things’ by Electric Empire sampled by MXXWLL:
11. ‘INTERLUDE FOR SENSEI’
“When my Facebook videos first started getting traction I would get all kinds of messages through Facebook with peoples comments of support or questions about what I’d use to create the sounds, etc. One message that stood out consisted of a single voicemail and I thought it was so good I saved it.”
“Years later I came across that same voicemail saved in a random folder so I laid instruments over the top. What you’re hearing is the whole voicemail that was left. Still to this day don’t know who sent it as Facebook had automatically erased the messages those years later.”
12. ‘WOAH (feat. Jackson Powell)’
This track is probably my favourite track on the album, I think I just really dig the weird high hats that still smack and I like that its head nod-able but still a slow jam in its own right. When I was making the track I put out an Instagram post to ask any fans to send a recording of a vocal line and said I’d make it a feature on the record. Jackson Powell sent through these crazy vocal cord and I chopped them into it.”
13. ‘RELAX (feat. Guapdad 4000)’
“Guapdad came through one day and I played him a bunch of beats I thought he’d be into. I’d made a folder of trap beats to go with what I based on previous releases was his style.”
“He wasn’t hugely vibing on them and I accidentally played this production, a ’90s R’n’B sounding jam which to my surprise he was super down with and asked me to play again. We made the track and laid the vocal on it that same day. ‘RELAX’ is a track about not tripping on negativity and enjoying where you’re at.”
Check out MXXWLL in his collaboration with ‘Purple Emoji (feat. J Cole)’ by Ty Dolla $ign:
14. ‘CHARGE IT (feat. John Givez)’
“I got sent a voice memo of a rehearsal with one of my homies and thought it would sound dope flipped into a sample. I made the production and that afternoon John Givez came round to hang out. He walked in as I was finishing the beat and jumped straight on the mic. We were on such a vibe we finished it that same day.”
15. ‘CRZN’
“This track is inspired by G funk era sounds, it’s not a track designed to make any big statement, more so tryna capture that feeling when you’re just cruising around listening to some shit that makes you feel good.”
16. ‘SMOKE W U (feat. Aloe Blacc)’
“Aloe was visiting Australia a few years ago, he came around to my studio back when I was living in Sydney’s northern suburbs. We got some Thai takeaway and cooked up a track but as happens to so many tracks, it ended up in the vault and neither of us had gotten around to using it.”
“So a couple years later I came across his a cappella of that track, remembered how dope it was and flipped the hook onto a new groove.”
17. ‘UHHH (feat. JD Beck)’
“JD Beck is one of those kid prodigies. Dude was 16, or so, when we made this track he’s one of the most gifted drummers I’ve ever collaborated with. Saw him on Insta playing drums with a friend of mine and reached out to work. As the last track on the album, toward the end it flips into an 8-bit section. Bringing back the idea of still being in the game.”
Check out SHEEESH by MXXWLL:
