fri 29/03/2024

Singles and Downloads 3 | reviews, news & interviews

Singles and Downloads 3

Singles and Downloads 3

Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs rate the hottest slates and cyber-platters

Zinc ft Ms Dynamite, Wile Out (Zinc)

It takes a lot for an artist to admit they've taken a wrong turn and return to what they do best. So kudos to Ms Dynamite for ditching the dreary, wholemeal attempts to become a British Lauryn Hill and taking her rightful place again as one of this country's best rave MCs. With the irresistible electro-house beats and bouncing bass of DJ Zinc, she's turned up the attitude and created a very British twist on dancehall that almost, but not quite, betters her 2001 debut "Booo!".

In slang terms, "wile" means "wild", thus "wile out" means "go wild"; the intimate locking together of beats and vocal couldn't be more conducive to doing exactly that, or at the very least wiggling your bottom inappropriately. That Zinc's production on the b-side is underpinned by a frankly rude wobbling bassline added by Croydon dubstep master Benga just adds to the gloriously, brilliantly stupid-smart pleasure of this package that's worth a thousand worthy sociology lectures with acoustic guitars. Zinc ft Ms Dynamite at Amazon (JM)

viv_albertine_mainViv Albertine, Flesh EP (Ecstatic Peace)

Viv Albertine was a member of punk's vanguard female band, The Slits. She returns after 25 years away from music with an EP for Ecstatic Peace, the label owned by Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. The most predictable card she could have played would have been to make impenetrable art-noise akin to The Slits at their most cacophonic, making her critics fawn for fear of not proving their impeccable avant-garde credentials. Instead, she whisper-sings sweet simple songs, light guitar pop but holly-spiked and wistfully bitter, enunciated in a crisp English accent and playfully firing out couplets such as, "What is with the universe, just having a laugh? / I wish I was Neil Young and could explain my heart". It comes across as the dignified, intellectualised protest of a woman wounded in love and is the more touching for it. Viv Albertine MySpace. (THG)

SadeSade, Soldier Of Love (Sony)

Nay-sayers, when not busy saying "nay", have lately been claiming that this record is "just" a trip hop groove. And I suppose maybe it is -- in the same way that beef wellington is "just" a meat pie or The Sopranos is "just" a story about some guys doing stuff. The production and arrangement of this song are simply astonishing, and while it all lopes along with what is nominally a hip hop rhythm, beneath the smooth surfaces there is all kinds of peculiar stuff going on, from the tiny, jagged outbursts of heavy metal guitar to thrums of dubstep bass. The military drums that run through it actually take the lead at points, forming part of the hook along with the vocal, and as the song unfolds in its own sweet time over the course of six minutes, the mood ebbs and flows with a dreamlike combination of triumph and ominousness. It's a world away from the tame soundscapes of, say, the new Massive Attack album: if this is "just" trip hop I'd love to hear the other stuff that it sounds like. Sade at Amazon (JM)

grasscutGrasscut, Muppet (Ninja Tune)

"Musically it had to go from a pop song to total self-destruction," Grasscut's Andrew Phillips says in his blurb in support of "Muppet", a song apparently based around a snippet of friends gossiping surreptitiously recorded on a mobile phone. Phillips may have very loose definitions as to what constitutes a pop song but he's right about the destruction bit. He and partner Marcus O'Dair (an Artsdesk contributor) muster a rowdy electronic stew of bleeps and distorted vocals -- their take on "pop" presumably -- before letting loose with a wash of fuzzed electronic orchestration akin to bombastic French shoegaze revivalist M83. This builds, explodes like a sonic firework display, then leaves behind a minute of quiet, ecclesiastical choral singing in its place, the whole thing a few acres distant from any chirpy verse-chorus-verse-chorus  The icing on the cake is a Nathan Fake mix which attaches the synthesized sweeps to a crude pulsing beat, and drags Muppet's wilful noisiness onto a cacophonic dancefloor. Grasscut's Muppet on Amazon. (THG)

hot_chopHot Chip, One Life Stand (Parlophone)

"One Life Stand" is a strong song, but does succumb to one of Hot Chip's common faults which is throwing too many pots, steel pans and kitchen sinks into the mix. The b-side "Build A House", however, is a lesson in understatement, a perfect dance pop song that paces itself neatly with Alexis Taylor's fragile voice sounding as moving as it ever has in its nostalgic plea "let's build an old-style house". Hot Chip have been called emotionless and clever-clever, but this, like all their best work, is full of flawed but warm humanity. Hot Chip at Amazon (JM)

I Am Oak, Sou Ka EP (Rainboot)

I Am Oak's sad-hearted translucent music doesn't sound much like anything else. Perhaps there's a little David Sylvian about it but where the ex-Japan singer has a tendency to let his songs become mere vapours of themselves, I Am Oak avoids Eno-esque ambience. The work of one Dutch man, Thijs Kuijken, this is delicate computer music constructed from ethnic acoustic instrumentation and accompanied by mournful singing. The overall effect is, curiously, one of gentle oriental ceremony, suggesting a remix of the stately percussion that occasionally accompanies Chinese shadow theatre (or has done, the very few times I've come across it). It's a curiosity, in other words, but one that ambles unselfconsciously off into new territories so well worth keeping an eye on and an ear open for. Buy I Am Oak single. (THG)

Archie_Bronson_Outfit_-_main_shotArchie Bronson Outfit, Shark's Tooth (Domino)

Cheeky electro-pop and R&B Auto-Tune monstrosities have put an end to the dreadful lumpen indie that ruled the charts before them. God, that was dull, some of the most boring pop music ever created. Happily there are those now willing to assault the indie formula and spray it with quirked out computer-generated entertainments. Archie Bronson Outfit are one such. The first single from their forthcoming third album wibbles jauntily along, the vocals fed through a mincer so you can't hear much of what's said but that doesn't matter, it sounds woozily exciting, jangles like indie should while also riding a pumping New-Order-gone-techno rhythm section. If we must have indie -- once meaning independent, now meaning Luddite guitar pop - let it be of this ilk. Archie Bronson Outfit's Shark's tooth at Amazon. (THG)

FlotillaFlotilla, Flotilla EP (Ho Hum)

Writing about faceless electronic music it's so very easy to get caught up in sub-sub-genres, which often rather detracts from what you're listening to and makes the writer look like a dork to boot. So while I could say that this four-track download EP combined delicate folktronica with a classic Detroit techno feel, passages of rarified musique concrète and a jungle approach to rolling breakbeats, it might just be better to say it's very pretty music full of interesting melodies and clever, funky beats, and it doesn't really sound like anything else. It's excellent, it comes with attractive artwork, and you might like it. Buy Flotilla. (JM)

Esben_film_BWEsben And The Witch, Lucia, At The Precipice (Too Pure)

Too Pure Records have a singles club which releases 500 copies of each 7", giving those who join a unique sliver of boutique vinyl from a band that might one day be huge. True, most of the bands concerned are more likely to trawl the circuit for three years before retreating, rock'n'roll dreams broken, into teaching and social work but, still, it's a nice idea and let's not be unnecessarily cynical. The throbbing Gothicism of the latest Too Pure Singles Club cut is from Brighton trio Esben and the Witch. It sounds a little like the sort of thing 4AD used to release in their moodily pretentious Eighties prime but with a very now prog-ness. A male-female duet that builds from sinister pulsing into something grandiose and fraught before descending into a mire of crunching electronic effects, it displays an unapologetically arch imagination over its six minutes. Order Esben & the Witch from Too Pure Singles Club. (THG)

DebruitdÉbruit, Spatio Temporel EP (Civil Music)

Early mixtures of global music with dance beats tended to be clunking affairs involving white men with dreadlocks. Thankfully more recently cross-cultural fusions have been less reverent and a whole lot more fun, and Parisian producer dÉbruit (sic) does it better than most. Warping and wobbling basslines, thumb pianos, Funkadelic vocoders and synthesisers, highlife guitars, Yoruba percussion and Persian strings are all chucked in the pot with hip hop and London pirate radio house beats to make what should be an almighty mess but actually sounds like globalisation is one big awesome party. And that's got to be good, right? dEbruit at Amazon (JM)

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Comments

Thanks for the Zinc and Viv Albertine reviews. Sent me on an excellent journey to Kings Road with Jah Wobble & Sid Vicious, then digging up all my Ms Dynamite vinyl to check on the relevance of Joe's statement about the 'wrong turn'... Its true she can still kill anyone on a mic - and I love her flow! She still on top like she was with So Solid. I don't entirely agree she went wrong though in between, as she put out some beautiful tunes in the meantime. Zinc's beat is OK, could be dirtier. But much credit to him for putting Dynamite on it.

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