EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Múm - Sing Along (FM Belfast Remix)
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I was pretty weirded out by Múm last time around. There was just something about the radio edit of "Sing Along" that was unsettling, despite the cutesy facade. Well, whatever that weirdener was, it's gone now; Icelandic quartet FM Belfast turning the track into a fuzzy-gutted romp of awestruck vocals and buoyant synths, even if at times those synths still sound like a bag of knotted nerves. I'll neatly shimmy past the obvious "worried mothers" gag and instead point out that this time next week Múm will be starting their European tour, at Voxhall in Aarhus, Denmark.
Sounds Like: Friendly Fires, MGMT, Depeche Mode before they got into S&M
Múm - Sing Along (FM Belfast Remix)
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EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Allez Allez - Slump
French name, German sound, London's Allez Allez take a break from releasing legendary Seventies bands to issue a single of their own that sounds like the national anthem for a new krautopian state. Buffeted along on a steady, driving beat, "Slump"'s curious synths find a home on the b-side of "Defeatist", the blogger/remix duo's debut single for Kompakt's Kickboxer imprint.
Sounds Like: Harmonia, Blondes, The Emperor Machine
DOWNLOAD: Peepholes - Airforce Trainer
"A 'peephole'," Wikipedia tells us, "is a small opening cut in a door, typically to allow people inside to see outside without opening that door." OK - so quoting Wikipedia is pretty much the laziest thing that anyone can possibly do, but for Brighton duo Peepholes the definition's too apt not to use, "Airforce Trainer" so obviously the result of two lonely people making music in a bunker somewhere. The great thing about the track though is that it'd sound equally at home spinning around and around and around in a jet engine, such is its thrust and the roar of its electronics. Tell me that when those synths rise up from the song it doesn't sound just a little like "Virginia Plain" - "Virginia Plane"?! No, because that would just not be funny in the slightest.
Sounds Like: Gentle Friendly, Roxy Music, No Age
DOWNLOAD: Future Trends - Moonraker
The louche, bedroom-disco cad behind Future Trends is one Andrew G Clark, resident to West Chester, Ohio. I don't know a great deal else about him, to be honest, but maybe that's for the best - the fantasy of these things is always better than the reality, isn't it? Of that spangled, suddenly vivid synthpop that always sounds born in its maker's latest drunken epiphany. I don't know if Andrew G Clark drinks a lot. I don't know that. What I do know is that this track is great, and you should listen to it. Because you definitely drink a lot, and we all deserve an epiphany every once in a while. Don't we?
Sounds Like: Nite Jewel, White Williams, Liquid Vega
DOWNLOAD: BMX - War
On days like today - Mondays, essentially - with the weekend's excesses catching up all at once, rendering guts godawful and heads empty, certain qualities are infinitely more tolerable than they usually are. Qualities like enthusiasm. Wholesomeness. Naivety. "War"'s something of a misnomer, because BMX have these qualities in spades, sounding not unlike a band formed in the waiting room at an audition for the next iPod advert. You know - clean cut teens, dressed colourfully, grinning, jumping. BMX don't seem like the sort of people who've ever suffered a Monday. I'm so jealous I might zip up my green romper suit and leave a dirty protest on the steps of the Apple store. Find "War" among others - including this from Yes Giantess - on Sister Phunk's new Sisters compilation.
Sounds Like: Yes Giantess, The Teenagers, Be Your Own Pet
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Wolf Gang - Pieces of You (Mondkopf Remix)
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I'd only just grasped the ability to spell when they ended, but if what I've been taught's correct, then the Eighties were basically ten years of gluttony, shoulder pads and cocaine. While in no position to dispute that, surely there must have been a few moments of clarity? Moments when the drug fug subsided briefly and allowed people to connect with each other on a genuine, emotional level rather than just indulge in ear-chewing vainglory? If those moments existed, then Wolf Gang - ably assisted by Parisian club whelp Mondkopf - has found one, "Pieces Of You" as heartfelt as the Eighties got, a window of vulnerability in a decade of cold shoulders.
Sounds Like: ABC, The Knife, Passion Pit
DOWNLOAD: CFCF - Monolith
So it's Thursday, and people still haven't figured out what to call all this incredible stuff that CFCF, Air France, Memory Tapes, Washed Out, Toro Y Moi, Teengirl Fantasy, Blondes et al are making. I guess all of them make it pretty hard to focus on stuff. Daydreams are one thing they share and there are others - an undefinable pop quality, a bleary-eyed love of house music, nostalgia and a certain cheese factor, all present and correct in CFCF's "Monolith", the latter courtesy of a piano player who starts fitting uncontrollably towards track's end. What do I think it should be called? F*ck knows. To me, it all sounds made in the world's balmiest, most debauched aqua park. It's all subjective, I guess.
Sounds Like: Jan Hammer, Teengirl Fantasy, New Order
Previously:
HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Remix)
DOWNLOAD: Air France - Gothenburg Belongs To Me
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(Photo: Teresa Jaksetic)
Try to tell Air France summer's coming to an end. For Air France, summer never ends. It's all clear, blue, utopian skylines and shirts four buttons undone. "Gothenburg Belongs To Me" is true to form, the musical equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA I can't here you coming, autumn" and then feigning surprise when it throws you weeping to the leafy ground. Check out the rest of the "GBG Belongs To Us" package, described as "a love letter" to Air France's home city - there's a tour guide and a video, full of shots of the duo yearning so hard for the sun not to set.
Sounds Like: Bizarre Inc, Serge Gainsbourg, Memory Tapes
Air France - Gothenburg Belongs To Me
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EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Au Revoir Simone - Grateful
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We imagine Au Revoir Simone as three little swallows on a snow-bitten branch. “Grateful” is the soundtrack for gazing through a wintry half-moon of glass above the bed. Gauzy swirls, tulip icicles and an entire tundra lies beyond these birds, but their hypnotic call quiets us. Such unabashed prettiness can unfurl our hearts to discover the meaning of gratitude, as it exists in our trivial and somehow all-important lives. There are no tricks on Au Revoir Simone’s third album, Still Night, Still Light, just Heather D’Angelo, Erika Forster and Annie Hart’s sweet harmony, their keyboards and drums whittling holes into a starless sky. It is both lonely and very, very, lovely.
Sounds like: Meiko, Rainer Maria, Snowblink
Previously:
Au Revoir Simone - Shadows (It's A Fine Line Remix)
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Maximo Park - Let's Get Clinical
Say what you like about Maximo Park and their strange taste in hats - what's proven is their capacity to craft interesting guitar-pop songs. Set to return with third album Quicken The Heart next month, the Novocastrian quintet decided to extend their remit this time around, looking to incoporate "strange noises" into the push and pull of the mix. So, "Let's Get Clinical" boasts an 808 fed through a guitar amp, Ibizan synth pangs and singer Paul Smith trapped in what sounds like an art-metal breakdown about two thirds of the way in. Chastening stuff. As usual, Smith's lovelorn lyrics tend towards the perverse, ("last night's dirty lips were wrapped around that glass / creeping past your flat next door, the empty bottles on the floor") but any raised eyebrows are calmed by the "oohs" and "aahs" of his band's backing vocals, the dutiful burble of guitars and sedated synths housing the singer's meticulous lust like a padded cell.
Sounds Like: Field Music, Dexy's Midnight Runners, XTC
Maximo Park - Let's Get Clinical
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