GRIMES ~ OBLIVION
When it comes to new(ish) pop stars to get excited about, it doesn't get much better than Grimes and her freshly dropped third album, VISIONS.
Having been around releasing ethereal, detached, bedroom productions for a while now, Grimes, real name Emily Bucher, from Canada, has exploded colourfully into a wider audience's visibility with a giant stomping piece of dance pop, which also somehow manages to maintain that low-fi DIY atmosphere that made her earlier work so charming, despite the lavishly shot HD video.
Understandable comparisons with the Knife may be made but this is in no way derivative or unoriginal. Perhaps the similarity is that Grimes has taken retro 80s/90s sounds and stark atmospherics and made them into something intimate and dreamlike while still making a song that makes you want to dance. Harmony and dissonance mix to make something brilliantly wonky and unique.
It's incredibly hard not to be whisked away by this song, or beguiled by Grimes and her faded rainbow hair...
TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS ~ TAPES & MONEY
Another emerging electropop artist who has been hovering around on the border between left field and mainstreamland is 27 year old Oxford born producer cumbersomely titled Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. A name which hardly rolls off the tongue (although it is definitely hard to forget) which would explain why he's shorted it to T.E.E.D., not that that's much better to be honest but with a name like Orlando Higginbottom it's clear this is a man comfortable with large amounts of syllables. Anyway enough about the brilliantly odd name, the music is really good! This is a light-as-a-feather club hit that pushes all the right buttons of the genre (upbeat, catchy, pumping) without falling into the pitfalls of the majority of other contemporary club songs (banality, mindlessness, migraine-inducing cacophony) so get's a big thumbs up from me. There's something of the Tough Alliance to it, or a general Swedishness that makes it hard not to love.
AFRIQUOI ~ KUDAUSHE
The boys from Wormfood London, Andre Marmot and Nico Bentley, are stepping out with a new project which successfully combines some of the sounds of UK bass and the London club scene with the instrumentation of West Africa, on this track featuring the skills of Zimbabwean musician Kudaushe Matimba. Here is their first video that shows some live footage from the awesome and award winning Brixton venue Hootenanny's. The track is a wonderfully uplifting dance anthem that deftly melds the basslines of soukous with the beats of an electro DJ, making this a true piece of 'world' music. Expect much more from them very soon soundcloud.com/africquoi
UNITED VIBRATIONS ft. CONRAD THE SCOUNDREL ~ LONDON BRIDGE
Quite a fair few acts have attempted to sum up the post-riot sense of detachment and political exasperation that so many people in Britain are feeling, but few have done so as eloquently and prophetically as United Vibrations. Filmed in and around the Occupy St Paul's protest camp and featuring some Chomsky-esque lyrics of socially awakening brevity, this is a visceral multi-genre torch song for 2012. The lines between hip-hop, funk, reggae, soul, afrobeat and ethio-jazz are blurred seamlessly here, and the lyrics make you want to punch the air in agreement. Righteous grooves!
ALAA WARDI ft MOHAB ~ WAHASHTENY
Everyone's favourite middle eastern multi-tracked one man band is back with another vibrant video that separates all the different ingredients it takes to make a densely layered song and lays them all out for you to stare at in awe. This isn't quite as kinetic or infectious as some of his previous efforts but it's still further proof that he is an amazingly talented individual not only musically but also at video editing. Make sure to download his stuff over at iTunes where you can now legally get hold of his tracks.
WARNING
I'm afraid the mood is about to change...
CONOR MAYNARD - CAN'T SAY NO
Proof that people will literally listen to anything if you get someone young enough and pretty enough to sing it, dress them in current fashions and film them posing inanely in a glossy enough video. Which by the way looks like Justin Bieber meets Skins (yes it IS as bad as that sounds). Don't even get me started on his incessantly 'cool' finger wagging and hip-hop posturing, gurning away like an 80 year old man who's just quadruple dropped the strongest ecstasy tablets known to man. And why is he trying so hard to sound, and act, like an American? Desperate to conquer the other side of the Atlantic much? I don't know, the actual song isn't as sonically offensive as a lot of the stuff in the charts is at the moment (watching music TV these days induces a feeling that must be close to the pain of water boarding) but that said it's still pretty much dreadful. The verse and bridge have a feeling of crescendo towards what must be a really catchy chorus right? Wrong! The chorus is so gapingly devoid of melody that it's any wonder a sentient being could be able to sing it without experiencing profound shame.
Hordes of morons who are too young to know who Lady Gaga is are saying he is the new Justin Timberlake, a claim so ridiculous it begs belief. For whatever you think about JT, he is a performer who has etched out his niche over an entire lifetime in the business, can sing, dance, write, produce, play instruments and act to a level that has made him one of the most famous people in the world over the course of many years. A 17 year old kid releases a couple of (frankly terrible) songs and people are acting like it's the next big thing. Is it really the next big thing? Or have some publicists just told heat magazine to say it's the next big thing? Does anyone care?
LMFAO ~ SORRY FOR PARTY ROCKING
While I am obviously aware that LMFAO's tongues are firmly within their cheeks, I can't help but find them astoundingly cynical. Since when did it become acceptable to have not one, not two, but THREE different product placements in your video? And not only that, but these brand names are even worked into the lyrics of the song, the most heinous name dropping ever surely? People laugh at them and their crazy outfits and mad antics, while grooving to their infectious electropop-on-steroids music, all the while unaware that their brain is subconsciously being told to go out and buy stuff. We have to put up with enough invasive adverts plastered all over youtube as it is, we really don't need them hidden within the music as well. Fuck this.
MADONNA ~ GIRL GONE WILD
What's that you hear? Oh, it's the sound of a barrel being scraped...
Madonna's questionably titled album MDNA is forthcoming (Madonna disapproves of her collaborator M.I.A. raising her middle finger on stage, but advocating drug use when you know you are popular with young children? Oh, that's totally acceptable.) and let's hope it has something better to offer than this awkwardly staunch attempt at a dance anthem.
Of course, the gays will love it and so will her many fans who have patiently ignored the fact she's been making less than impressive albums for a good decade now, but there's no escaping that this is clammy, unimaginative, secondary fare. It has all the ingredients of what should make a truly epic club banger, but when you assemble such a piece of music as systematically as this must've been, the end result is wooden and boring, despite the recruitment of the Benassi brothers. The likes of Roisin Murphy, Robyn or Katy B have been making this kind of music to much more encouraging effect over the past few years, and it just seems like a failed attempt to emulate the hands-in-the-air euphoria of something like Rihanna's Only Girl in the World, yet as has been the case for a while now, Madonna seems to be desperately chasing trends rather than setting them...
