See the end of the post for the Weekly Playlist featuring all the tracks I loved this week.
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Nuovo Testamento
Dream On
Hello, I’m Niall and I have an addiction.
This addiction is called Italo Disco.
“Italo is what happens when disco starts getting made with drum machines and synthesizers – a loveable curio of romantic pop, a tasteless yet tasteful novelty item.”
We did a podcast about Italo in the past.
Nuovo Testamento are an LA band who are among the prime purveyors of modern Italo. There really aren’t many live bands doing this kind of stuff and Nuovo Testamento bring that ’80s synth Italo pop vibe to the fore in an earworm fashion, sounding like early Madonna and Stock-Aiken and Waterman hits in the process.
The track is from an EP out July 25th.
I previously hammered out ‘Heat’ when DJing over the last two years.
Crayon, Eliza, FKJ
Diamond Miner
Paris-based producer Crayon links with the UK R&B singer ELIZA (who I am a fan of) on the vibey soul of ‘Diamond Miner’ which also features French multi-instrumentalist FKJ.
A debut album Home Safe is released October 24th via Erased Tapes. The album explores the meaning of “home” across cultures and collaborations, and it features anaiis, Rhye, ELIZA, Yamê, Arthur Teboul (Feu! Chatterton), JPL (Tora) and more.
The album’s beginnings were formed in a shared Paris apartment, where Crayon and jazz pianist Bastien Brison hosted intimate Sunday jam sessions.
Fred Again.., Skepta, Doechii, Denzel Curry, Plaqueboymax
Victory Lap Two
Fred Again..’s happy-go-lucky can’t-believe-his-luck demeanour may get a little grating but he continues to capture the zeitgeist through astute collaboration and his hard work ability to drop into various genre zones and pull something out of people he works with.
Never far away from a marketing idea, his latest track, an edit of a Doechii verse from the Rico Nasty’s song ‘Swamp B*tches. was premiered on American streamer Plaqueboymax’s Twitch channel recently.
Skepta jumped on the original, and Curry here adds some transAtlantic urgency to this raspy bass dance track.
Brògeal
Tuesday Paper Club
![Brògeal - Tuesday Paper Club [Official Video]](https://nialler9.com/wp-content/cache/flying-press/c64d33b1719e430dfc4e17ddcb92f626.jpg)
Scottish trad-punk indie band Brògeal announced their debut album Tuesday Paper Club is out on October 17th via Play It Again Sam.
Drawing comparisons to The Pogues and The Mary Wallopers’ raucous trad-folk, but transplanted to Falkirk with accordion, banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, and whistle, trad is the new rock seemingly.
Brògeal’s more indie stuff is less interesting to me but looking forward to hearing the album in full.
: “I wrote ‘Tuesday Paper Club’ initially as a poem when I worked behind the bar at an old man’s boozer in Falkirk called the Wheatsheaf. It was a Tuesday and there was about 3 punters in, all sitting in silence reading the papers. So out of boredom this little poem came about and ended up being more about older people’s views on the young and how they can be so bitter about us as if they weren’t doing the same, if not worse when they were younger. I added some chords to it later and took it to the lads and it instantly became an absolute foot stomper and it’s one of our favourite songs to play live now.”
Frontman Daniel Harkins.
The album was recorded at Black Bay Studio on the Isle of Lewis with Irish Producer/Engineer/Mixer Richie Kennedy, who is based in London and worked with artists such as The Libertines, Cardinals, The Last Dinner Party, Interpol, Dua Lipa, Kylie, and U2.
Danny L Harle
Starlight (Feat. PinkPantheress)
Harlecore. This is one of those rare pop / electronic crossovers that sound like it will blow the minds of nascent pop fans with its trancey Eurodonky neon production with PinkPantheress nicely fitting the track’s boomy dramatic dynamics.
It’s Danny L Harle’s debut single for XL Recordings.
“Starlight reaches for a kind of euphoric melancholy – a guiding light in all of my music. It’s shaped by my love of the melancholic songwriting traditions of Europe from composers like Monteverdi and John Dowland, all the way to 90s Eurodance and the uplifting trance of the 2000s – artists like Gigi D’Agostino and Alice Deejay. PinkPantheress is the dream collaborator for this song, her love for ornamental melodies and hypnotic lyricism fit perfectly into my sound world”
Songs I also loved this week:
Also added to this week’s playlist:
- Big Thief – All Night All Day
- Fever Ray – Now’s The Only Time I Know – Therapy Session
- KiiKO – July
- Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying
- Poor Creature – Bury Me Not
- Mac DeMarco – Home
- DEBBY FRIDAY – Bet On Me
- Lighght – Aftermath
- Pebbledash – Cartography
- Laura Groves – Deep Blue
- Adebisi Shank; Yvette Young – Orange Splash
- Unique Freaks – Somebody Special
- For Those I Love – No Scheme
- WHY? – Circles
- Laurie Torres; Nailah Hunter – Correspondances II
- LCD Soundsystem; Tom Sharkett – Home – Tom Sharkett Edit
- Cain – Forged from Bagpipes
- SPRINTS – Descartes
- Vaticanjail – MIEL
- Brighde Chaimbeul – Sguabag/The Sweeper
- Matthew Herbert; Momoko Gill; Herbert – Babystar
Nialler9 Weekly Playlist
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
