Follow the Nialler9 New Music playlist on Spotify. This week’s additions include new songs from Body Language, Alunageorge, Banks, Roisin Murphy, Trim, Darkstar and Fonkynson.
Check out the Songs of the week Soundcloud playlist.
1.
Talos – ‘Your Love Is An Island’
The Cork musician drops a lush new song.
Cork man Eoin French has a fine line in superior produced singer-songwriter electronic ballads as Talos.
Last week, he played Feel Good Lost’s Mitchelstown Cave gig, 200 feet underground at the Clonmel Junctions festival and there’s dates on the Iceland takeover in the next week with a six-piece band.
‘Your Love Is An Island’ is a beautifully brittle new song from a forthcoming O Sanctum EP, which will also feature remixes from Maps and Sin Fang.
The track was produced by Talos and Valgeir Sigurðsson, and mixed by Valgier at Greenhouse Studios in Iceland.
“Your love is an island, I’m scorched in the sands of it…”
“The image described in the last lines sum up what the song is about for me – the struggle to find that sense of peace that only comes from attaining ones dreams and desires. The idea of being so close but still so far from salvation – and not knowing if you’ll ever really find it even if reached.”
The video by Feel Good Lost is epic too.
2.
The Avalanches – ‘Like A Folkstar’
Clams has largely ditched the cloud for precision production.
16 years on from the release of Since I Left You and we have a followup. It’s like the sample-loving Australians never left (even if DJ Dexter did actually leave the group). Wildflower is a richly woven tapestry of psychedelia, hip-hop, familiar and rare samples, guest vocals and nostalgia.
The Avalanches are at their best when conjuring up a familiar yet melting beat fairytale, as they do on the Toro Y Moi-assisted ‘Like A Folkstar’.
3.
Factory Floor – ‘Ya’
Oof. Banger
Factory Floor started as industrial post-ravers but lately, it sounds like they’re coming out of the cold and into the club. ‘Ya’ is built on a propulsive synth line and a dumb vocal sample but is imbued with a rhythmic hardness and punk vision that means an economic and precise use of sounds for movement.
The new album 25 25 is out August 19th via DFA Records.
4.
Shura – ‘Make It Up’
Hotly-tipped UK musician drops a fine debut.
The tendency for artists who are plucked and preened through the BBC Sound of… Poll is an increasingly manufactured pop sound that shorns off the things that make them interesting in the first place. That hasn’t happened to Shura on her fine debut album Nothing’s Real.
Sure, it’s already a very pop atmosphere permeating the album but there’s also eighties pop, synth-pop and guitar band dynamics enmeshed in the songs too. Ultimately, Shura’s melodic gifts make the album (particularly ‘White Light’, ‘Touch’, “What’s If Gonna Be’ and the title track) one for the repeat list. ‘Make It Up’ encapsulates her appeal with all of those touchstones as well as being a super solid pop song.
5.
Mall Grab – ‘I’ve Always Liked Grime’
With a sample of Skepta & JME’s ‘That’s Not Me’..
Twisting what appears to be a sample of Skepta and JME’s ‘That’s Not Me’, ‘I’ve Always Liked Grime’ by the Australian producer Mall Grab sounds like one of those songs that unites many things: a love of grime, club soundsystem dynamics, lo-fi house, social commentary and a sense of humour in one.
That samples keeps rolling around that bassline for most of the song’s near seven-minute duration punctured by a rise and fall in arrangements but when a track is this deceptively simple it continues to hold your attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZcsZqO1sx4
6.
Jamie Lidell – ‘Walk Right Back’
The UK soul man is back and he’s a father now.
It’s always good to hear the voice of Mr Lidell singing a new song. Building a Beginning, the man’s sixth studio album is coming later this year and judging by ‘Walk Right Back’ he’s sticking to soul music with a bit of electronic and funk production in there. The album was written after the birth of his first son, and his wife Lindsey Rome cowrote it with him.
The band with him on the record are seasoned: Pino Palladino (bass, D’Angelo, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton), DaRu Jones (drums, Jack White), Pat Sansone (multi-instrumentalist, Wilco), Kudisan Kai, Traci Brown Bailey, and Tiffany Smith (backup-vocals, Chaka Khan), production from Justin Stanley (Beck, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney) and Ben Ash (Two Inch Punch).
