Featuring Shit Robot, Mount Kimbie, Mustafa, Yune Pinku, CABL, Sofia Kourtesis, Big Sleep, Casisdead, Connie Constance, Cándido, H31R, Quelle Chris.
Today is New Music Friday, which means there’s loads of new songs in the world.
Here are 10 songs released this week I loved from my listening this week, along with fresh ones in the New Music section.
See the end of the post for the Spotify playlist featuring much more than 10 tracks released this week, updated weekly.
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1.
Shit Robot
Breathe (Looking At Gibraltar)
Dubliner Marcus Lambkin aka Shit Robot has released a new 5-track EP today, plainly called 5 Songs, and it is an opportunity to spotlight this wonderful pulsating chugger featuring the vocals of Prinzhorn Dance School’s Suzi Horn.
2.
Mount Kimbie
Dumb Guitar
After last year’s split albums, Dom and Kai of Mount Kimbie have come back together and expanded the band as a foursome with live members Andrea Balency-Béarn and Marc Pel.
‘Dumb Guitar’ is the first song of this new era, and coincides with European and North America dates.
We started the song in the Yucca Valley in California, out in the desert, and we finished it in London. The song is loosely based around a couple struggling in their relationship and they make one last ditch attempt to salvage it by moving to a beach resort in China. And inevitably failing.
3.
H31R, Quelle Chris
Down Down BB
Wavey alt-hip-hop with a similar vibe to Shabazz Palaces from H31R (pronounced heir / air), who are the duo of New Jerse producer JWords and rapper maassai.
An album called HeadSpace is forthcoming and the duo released a fine video inspired by The Pharcyde for ‘Backwards’ recently.
4.
Sofia Kourtesis
Vajkoczy
There’s an interesting backstory to the Berlin-based Peruvian DJ and producer’s debut album Madres, and it involves the titular neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy, who the album is dedicated to, after he successfully operated on her mother.
Vajkoczy became a sounding board for the album, and the pair even went to Berghain together.
5.
Cándido
Over & Over
Billed as “the first Krishna House LP,” La Muerte de Occidente is a full-length album from a practising Hare Krishna artist Luis Schiebeler, from Buenos Aires in Argentina.
The synthwave electro stabs and ’80s drums of the album’s opening track was what grabbed my attention this week.
Prior to this LP, released last week, the producer played drums and got into underground rave scene. The album was made inbetween spiritual trips to India. The LP is out on Manchester label Natural Sciences.
6.
Casisdead, Connie Constance
Dream Job
An album track highlight from the London-based rapper, producer and director Casisdead’s debut album Famous Last Words on Warp Records, “as much a sci-fi film as it is a rap record, a labyrinth of vice, crime and faded glamour.”
The album makes memorable use of singers like Desire, Neil Tennant, Kamio, Later, and here, Connie Constance on those hooks.
See also: Desire.
7.
Mustafa
Name Of God
Toronto singer Mustafa Ahmed ruminates on the Islam faith and the death of his brother over the summer on this quietly devastating song from his forthcoming album that has been coopted as a song for those struggling in Sudan and Palestine.
The song was produced with Simon On The Moon, Aaron Dessner and Rodaidh McDonald.
The artist’s statement accompanying the song:
I never felt like the Nubian prince my father seen in me through his tinted lens. I try their dance, their prayer — I always fall short, & God’s name wasn’t always related to beauty for me, but to hopelessness, this Islam we share and Allah we call for while witnessing a constant violence that continues to bind us, I don’t think I ever felt completely Muslim among other Muslims.
All these sub-beliefs like borders. My aunts in all their wisdom and narrowness-one Sufi spinning into remembrance, one refuting the taking of a photograph.
When my big brother was killed in what will always feel like yesterday, knowing the suspected murderer was someone he held as a friend, someone he prayed with- it led me to believe that maybe his love was his end? Maybe where there is no love, parting from love keeps us alive? Maybe ending in love is the only way to actually begin? I don’t know.
The only clear memory from the days of his death were my parents reciting in unison, “oh Allah, we accept his passing, we accept what you ordained.”
I’m desperate to love God like them.
Our faith and our hearts are too often our demise- I know a field of young niggas dreaming that can testify to this. For better or worse we’ll uncover every bone beneath our hollow laughter, our confused affection; maybe its revealed in our final gasp for meaning.
Until then.
Bismillah, In the Name of God, 10.17.23
8.
Big Sleep
Fingerlickin’ Goodness
A highlight from Irish Italian indie pop band Big Sleep’s new Isn’t That Sweet EP, which takes inspiration from Alvvays, Spacey Jane and Big Thief and more soul and jazz sounds:
‘Fingerlickin’ Goodness’ is a track inspired by our love of soul and R&B artists like Otis Redding, Anderson.Paak, and Leon Bridges. Aidan and Naiara both come from a jazz background so it felt pretty natural when this song came about after a jam one day during rehearsals. It was one of the trickier songs to record on the upcoming EP but when we tracked the vocals, Naiara’s BVs really brought it all together and we knew it had to make the cut.
See also: ‘Maccy D’s’
9.
Yune Pinku
Killing Bee
One of the highlights from The Great Escape this year, was the Malaysian/Irish electronic producer Asha Catherine Nandy’s propulsive dance music.
Since then, Yune Pinku has remixed Hot Chip, and VTSS and covered the Cranberries ‘Dreams’.
‘Killing Bee’ is her latest solo song, a hypnagogic dancefloor number.
10.
CABL
Shoelace
After the recent song ‘B.1.’ described as “halfway between a Phoebe Bridgers sad girl pop banger and a sludgy DIIV shoegaze track,” the Dublin alt-rockers CABL have shared another recommended track drop the first single from the Chris Ryan-produced EP See You in a Year and a Half.
‘Shoelace’ features lead vocals from Ava Durran, and takes inspiration from Elliot Smith, Big Thief and Sonic Youth.
“The song as we first heard it with just Ava and an acoustic was so heavy and uneasy, that we instinctively knew we needed to create a dark and ominous but somewhat hopeful atmosphere sonically.”
Guitarist Luke White
CABL
Instagram | Twitter / Spotify
Also: Torann is a new D.I.Y. alternative club night organised by Luke White (CABL) in Drogheda with CABL, Pier and David OFMG on November 18th at Watch Tower Mc Hugh’s.
Nialler9 Weekly Playlist
Nialler9 New Music Playlist
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, hit up the Irish section for individual track features
For this and more Irish songs, follow the Nialler9 New Irish Spotify playlist.
