Sofi Tukker – Photo credit: Nikolai Puc
With summer waved away, the coming weeks have some big releases lined up, Getintothis’ Howard Doupé shows off the very best in new singles this week.
Sofi Tukker – Purple Hat – Single of the Week
Man, this is one hell of a groove. Imagine an all-night VIP party at the re-opened Glam Slam.
This is the soundtrack, end of.
The single is exemplary of what made the world fall in love with the group, a joyous paean to communal dancing and letting your freak flag fly with a monster riff and playfully adventurous production.
The song is featured on their forthcoming EP Dancing On The People out September 20.
The group says, ‘We wrote Purple Hat the day after our first Animal Talk party. We started throwing these parties to bring back the wild and inclusive dancing vibe to the nightclub experience. Tuck was literally wearing a purple hat and a cheetah print shirt, people were climbing on top of people, it was over sold out and sweaty, our favourite people were packed in the booth, everyone was loose af and feeling themselves…If there was a song that included everything we are about, this would be the one.’
Forget the bossa nova 10-second snooze intro, oozing sexuality and suave voyeurism the drink and drugs can’t reach the dancefloor when this drops, baby.
People, people, people, dancing on the people with the people…and repeat!
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Peter Ibbetson – Goodbye
Completing an expansive new project Control Yourself EP, Peter Ibbetson delivers single Goodbye.
Since debut EP Rivals was released last year, Ibbetson continues to deliver the finest quality ambient techno, full of bubbling electronics and early morning comedowns, there’s no wonder he’s championed by both George Fitzgerald and Makeness.
The textured synths found here provide a truly unique polyrhythm cut, with plenty of comparisons to Jon Hopkins to be heard. The building of patterns and textures leave loads to explore and appreciate.
Bruno Bavota – Attesa
Acclaimed Italian composer extraordinaire Bruno Bavota releases Attesa, the second single from the forthcoming album Get Lost.
Earnest sounds, rich in emotion, draw upon the piano, not just as an individual instrument but as a living one, the resonance and the silence.
Bavotas musical discovery goes deeper with this track, one that seems to unfold and expose the more you listen, with a magnetizing accompanying video exploring the geography of the human body, Attesa is the complete package.
Go on, inhale and submerge into Bavotas world.
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Cara Hammond – Such A Mess
Returning with a sound unlike any she’s produced before, rising independent artist Cara Hammond reveals her synth-laden pop track in Such A Mess, her second of the year.
She’s been a busy bunny this festival season playing sets at Boomtown, Pennfest and HowTheLightGetsIn.
The lush deep techno feel is bang on point with her fellow peers, it’s a moody affair with love and infatuation at the heart of the vocal delivery.
There are elements of Lianne La Havas and Christine here, images of striking visual compliments the sound, her live performance should be a must, it’s a fine slice of pop that’s bound to find a home on plenty of playlists.
Late Verlane – Poolside
Here’s another piano driven track for you, Poolside is the debut release for Late Verlane (aka Swedish singer-songwriter Viktor Persson).
Based in Copenhagen, this young graduate from the experimental contemporary Rhythm Music Conservatory has sparked the interest in labels back home.
Poolside has a slow-burning 70’s vibe to the production, not everyone’s cup of tea but plenty to capture attention., it’s wide-eyed alternative pop with warm, androgynous vocals sitting atop lush melodic landscapes.
Clearly inspired by classic recordings of the 70’s there is a strange marrying of Elton John and David Bowie at play here, it’s an experimental take on a piano ballad, one where Verlane plays all instruments and co-produces.
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Jack M. Senff – Full Decay
Jack M. Senff is a Michigan-based songwriter who, after various projects, has decided to release a more natural, earthy debut under his own name.
Taken from recently released Good To Know You, lead track Full Decay is visceral storytelling with acoustic melodies.
With soft, delicate phrases Senff’s vocal on the very of dissolving at any time it’s a love note to Big Thief, the delicate tenderness is masterfully executed.
She Drew The Gun – Trouble Every Day
Louisa Roachs’ She Drew The Gun is back with new material, with, wait for it, a reinterpretation of a Frank Zappa original song.
Given the approving nod by the family estate, it’s a modern take on politically charged statements, Roach has updated the lyrics, successfully creating a scathing yet brutal observation on our current troubled times.
Where Zappa’s commentary reflected the Watt riots in ‘60’s LA, here we have our major 21st-century ills: London riots, global media corporations, climate change, rising far-right and Extinction Rebellion protests as subject material.
It’s another gun to the She Drew The Gun arsenal, one that’ll continue to draw people in, giving social consciousness’ a menacing hairdryer sucker-punch.
Perfectly soundtracking what we all know should be the forefront of our efforts as individuals and as a collective mass, Roach continues to address and provide charged pop at a time that’s vital and necessary.
Their largest headline nationwide tour happens this October through November.
Tony Steele & The Massacre – Bound To Collide
Tony Steele & The Massacre consists of singer-songwriter Tony Steele and his backing band, playing an explosion of Merseybeat Rock’n’Roll mixed with a twang of Americana to the honest and sometimes biographical lyrics of Steele.
After being seen supporting everyone from Cast to Peter Doherty it’s time now for them to set the world alight with some tunes.
Bound To Collide is the first single to be recorded with the new line up of the band and it’s a much more mature sound with a build up throughout, the music has grown up but it still has that beautiful Liverpudlian sound.
This is definitely, definitely their time la, deffo.
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Tuomo – Tindercaust
Tuomo (Tuomo Prättälä), a Finnish soul singer, jazz pianist, composer and producer makes music in a range of different genres, he’s best known for a series of successes on the retro-soul scene with his debut album My Thing, which was championed in the UK by Gilles Peterson, among others.
Tindercaust is fine, gentry-quality funk soul fusion, we’ve got laid back grooves, luscious harmonies and enough sprinkling of electronic wizardry to reel you back in for more.
With this change in direction for a once jazz-tinged Americana player with a history of dabbling in contemporary classical pieces, this is an admiral move.
Cunts – A Hero’s Welcome
Cunts, the snarling LA-based punk band featuring Michael Crain (Dead Cross/Retox) and Matt Cronk (Qui), release their self-titled debut album in November, testing the water first with the debut single, A Hero’s Welcome.
Since appearing on the LA underground scene in early 2018, Cunts have earned a reputation for their blistering, intense, and occasionally violent, live shows.
Equal parts catharsis and blood-letting.
No prizes for guessing what this is all about, loud, gnarly, riffed up to high, hell, Cronk describes A Hero’s Welcome as, “an indictment of zealotry, nationalism and the violation of human rights in the name of a common cause against a supposed enemy”, add in a few f-bombs and you’re there.
It’s pretty formulaic but bound to appeal to many who like their music served up bloodied and raw, with the forthcoming album artwork, they just might be trying a little too hard.
Jorja Chalmers – Human Again
Having played with Bryan Ferry for the past decade, Australian multi-instrumentalist Jorja Chalmers has just announced her debut LP Human Again is set for release later this month.
In the lead single off the album Chalmers longingly asks the listener ‘Hello, are you breathing? Can you make me Human Again?’
Written & recorded by Chalmers in hotel rooms after performing Roxy Music & Bryan Ferry songs drenched in sweat each night.
Finishing touches were added & distilled inside Ferry’s London studio & then brushed by Johnny Jewel’s glittering hands with Dean Hurley at the legendary Asymmetrical Studio in the Hollywood Hills, the combination is intoxicating.
Human Again bottles that stark loneliness the artist faces night after night on the road.
Sonically, the dark wave synth explores the spaciousness alive inside the minimalism of Bowie & Eno‘s Low, her vocal reflects early Laurie Anderson alongside the troubled smoke of Badalamenti‘s score for Lost Highway.
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Black Country, New Road – Sunglasses
So here we are, the pinnacle of modern indie guitar pop, heard on every ‘hip’ radio station in the western world.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s all scoff if you’re yet to hear of London-based Black Country, New Road.
There’s a melting pot of influences going on here from Pavement, brass tones, Iggy inspired delivery via Thurston Moore appreciation.
Initial press on 7” (limited to 500) of this belter sold out faster than a budget TV on Black Friday, hence, the decision to do a second run, puzzlingly limited to 250.
Frontman Isaac Wood had the following to say about the single’s themes:
“it describes a series of events, loosely connected, all yet to happen. The song was intended to be highly inspirational. The lyrics are sometimes concerned with symbols of wealth or affluence but they are not written from a critical or even external position.”
Despite scarce information available on the band up to now, their debut single Athens, France sold out in a matter of days, a precociously young seven-piece featuring both prominent sax and violin in their line-up.
Black Country, New Road have also announced a series of UK headlining dates for September/October.
Leave Kanye out of this!
Julie’s Haircut – Sorcerer
Italian collective Julie’s Haircut return with their second album In The Silence Electric next month, Sorcerer is the second single to be released from it.
With a driving, mantric intensity, like something the band Suicide would have locked into, Sorcerer fully embraces a fury and incandescent splendour that also reminisces the more menacing end of Stereolab‘s psychic assault.
All is subsumed by a bold singularity of intent, amidst a colourful firestorm of electronic monomania and indelibly memorable vocal hooks. Oh, you can catch them live too throughout October.
Moon Duo – Eternal Shore
Moon Duo share the final pre-release single, Eternal Shore taken from their new album Stars Are The Light, out September 27.
Featuring Sanae Yamada’s hazy vocals drift over reverberating synth and flitting guitar licks.
She says, ‘The lyrics are about the search for a sense of belonging and for the truth of one’s inner being, beneath the masks we’re conditioned to wear in order to function in society.’
Taking disco as its groove-oriented departure point, Eternal Shore shimmers with elements of ’70s funk and ’90s rave, Ripley Johnson’s signature guitar sound is at its most languid and refined, while Yamada’s synths and oneiric vocals are foregrounded to create a spacious percussiveness that invites the body to move with its mesmeric rhythms.
With Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) at the mixing desk in Portugal’s Serra de Sintra, (known to the Romans as “The Mountains of the Moon”) the area’s lush landscape and powerful lunar energies exerted a strong influence on the vibe and sonic texture of the album.
Nice!
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Adam Green – Engine Of Paradise
Downtown New York’s finest songsmith is back with Engine Of Paradise, an album title track that brings to life his graphic novel of the same name.
After coming to the fore in the anti-folk scene at the end of the nineties as part of The Moldy Peaches and subsequently a solo artist.
Talking about the project Green says, ‘Engine of Paradise is some soil to plant yourself in. It’s a place to relax, like being in a movie theatre, where the players are jewellers of melodic time.’
Exploring the same themes as the upcoming album, Greens first graphic novel, a psychedelic war epic called War and Paradise set in the colourful universe of his film Adam Green’s Aladdin.
The graphic novel will be released concurrently with the album.
The satirical war epic is about the clash of humans with machines, the meeting of spirituality with singularity, and the bidirectional relationship between life and the afterlife.
Blackwater Holylight – Death Realms
Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts, it’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once.
Typically, Death Realms is anchored to riffs, but rather riffs come and go in waves.
It’s a hypnotic sound, with orchestral structures that often build tension and intrigue before turning the song on its head, they expertly subvert the implied heaviness of a part, dissecting it and splaying the song’s guts out to seep across the sonic spectrum.
Death Realms is perhaps one of their poppiest tracks, based around soaring shoegaze guitars and interwoven light vocal harmonies.
Soft piano notes, occasional woozy whammy bar dives and a driving tom-tom beat solidify its hooks.
Now, having toured extensively following the band’s wildly-successful breakout self-titled debut in 2018, Blackwater Holylight has honed their sound and identity to a powerfully captivating beast.
Their live set is all about the slow build, seeming to combine the melodic tension of early Sonic Youth crossed with the laconic fever-dream blues of the first Black Sabbath album and wiry experimentation of post-punk and krautrock.
push baby – Thor
Thor is the lead single from British pop outliers push baby’s debut EP, woah out September 27.
On their latest single, push baby once again deliver a song evocative of their quirky and distinctive take on pop.
‘With thor, I wanted to share a vulnerability not often voiced from a male perspective. The song touches on themes of toxic masculinity- unrealistic expectations and stereotypes set for males which contribute to insecurities, especially as it relates to body image and expressing one’s emotions,’ says frontman Jake Roche.
Re-imagined, re-envisioned, and recharged as push baby, the group’s four musicians, Jake Roche (vocals, guitar), Charley Bagnall (guitar), Danny Wilkin (bass, keys), and Lewi Morgan (drums) first joined forces for multiplatinum pop phenomenon Rixton.
Alana Henderson and Joshua Burnside – On Board
Our final selection this week is arguably the most delicate and beautiful. On Board most recent single from Northern Irish artist Alana Henderson featured on forthcoming EP Museum.
The track sees Henderson team up with fellow Northern Irish artist and friend Joshua Burnside in a folk-tinged lament, building from low-fi guitar to a climax of atmospheric and expansive electric guitar, synths and vocals, like distant sirens calling to sailors.
‘The song is about dropping your guard enough to let love in,’ says Henderson. ‘It’s a kind of battle of wills between someone who feels unsteady and afraid to risk hurting or being hurt in love and someone who is fit for that challenge and very persuasive!’
Henderson and Burnside previously worked on his song Holllllogram, taken from his Northern Irish Music Prize winning album Ephrata in 2017.
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