The first submissions to TrackNorth came from Philadelphia, Seoul and further afield, and one of the three submissions below isn't in English. It didn't matter much. What they share is production that carries the weight: an R&B song built between two friends that sounds like more than a first attempt, vocals run through a cassette four-track, and beats licensed from seven different producers.

MidSummer – "Take Another" (Philadelphia, ambient R&B). The opening sits in the same room as The Weeknd's House of Balloons: dark, close, a little smoky. Then the vocal arrives and the song lifts, lighter without giving up any of its rawness. MidSummer made it with a close friend, Ayush, aiming for R&B that leans nostalgic rather than purely dark, and the track settles between the two. It's a first original release, and it doesn't sound like one. An album is on the way.

Start here: "Take Another" on SoundCloud

HanSeong – The Insect of Coming Spring (Seoul, experimental hip-hop). The beat on track 1 is the first thing to point anyone toward. It's a concept album about a newly born creature named O, slowly mutating into something dependent and grotesque, and the music mutates with it, moving through psychedelic pop, doom metal and free jazz. HanSeong chopped samples on an SP-404, then ran his vocals through a Tascam 488 cassette recorder for compression and tape noise before layering them back over the beats. Track 6 is the head-nodding one: controlled chaos, working in the record's favor. The lyrics are in Korean, and the story comes through anyway.

Start here: The Insect of Coming Spring on Bandcamp

Nethery – Emo Rap Dead (emo / cloud rap). A rage synth carries the intro straight into the first track, and about a minute in the beat drops and the song finds its gear. Track 3 does it again, with a beat switch thirty seconds in that resets everything. Seven producers made these beats: lilbuscuit, ftplaya (with banjaminrollzshawtyz on one), cvs, grimgrand, dirtymirrors, judahbudah and kzbsmiko. Nethery licensed them, then recorded, mixed and mastered the album himself, which is how thirteen tracks from that many hands hold together as one record. The vocal sits low in the mix, so a few lines blur into the beat.

Start here: Emo Rap Dead on SoundCloud

Want to be in the next one? Submit your music at tracknorth.co. Everyone who submits gets a personal reply.