The best tracks of the week
5. Four Tet & Champion – ‘Disparate’
Two new 12″s on the way from Hebden.
Four Tet dropped two new songs this week from two different TEXT 12″ releases, an A-side and a B-side.
Both tracks are collaborations, one with Designer and one with Champion. The latter is my favourite of the two, an exotic rhythm with what sounds like Grimes on vocals. The tracks are making their way to record shops soon.
6. PJ Harvey – ‘The Wheel’
The globally-minded political song is from her ninth album in April..
PJ Harvey has returned with news of her ninth studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, on April 15th through Island Records.
Recorded in London’s Somerset House, the album was visited in a living exhibition called Recording in Progress where museum visitors could watch Harvey and producers Flood and John Parish make the album through one-way glass.
The album’s inspiration was taken from trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. in the lead up and the subject matter of ‘The Wheel’ is drawn from her global travels and addresses conflict and the innocents caught up in them. “Hey little children don’t disappear (I heard it was 28,000) / Lost upon a revolving wheel / (I heard it was 28,000).” 28,000 possibly refers to number of troops deployed to Kosovo.
The title of the album refers to Hope VI “a plan by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, meant to revitalise the worst public housing projects in the United States into mixed-income developments.”
