Kid Smpl Remixes Jhene Aiko’s “3:16”

The brilliance of the Night Bus sound (more on Night Bus here) is the tension it evokes out of the urban environment. Simultaneously dense, intimate and dishearteningly cold, it forces the listener to answer difficult questions that don’t always have comfortable answers. Seattleite Kid Smpl aka Joey Butler is at the forefront of the Night Bus sub-genre. His teetering pop remixes (see here) flip convention on its head, forcing Rihanna, Drake, or whoever (does it really matter) into an icy haze of clipped vocals and reverb. His latest, of Jhene Aiko’s “3:16”, might just be his most uncomfortably tense rework yet. Aiko’s vocals are completely unrecognizable and the track comes dangerously close to falling into a witch-house like malaise. Butler walks the line like the experienced producer that he is though, throwing the original into the abyss without acquiescing one bit of distraught sentiment. Stream and download below.