Lana Del Rey announces new album and makes new single available to stream

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die

At a time of year when there are always a gaggle of new bands and artists lining up to have a go at making 2012 their own, Lana Del Rey remains the most talked-about (in certain circles) act around. The Is She Real? debate has been thundering on for a while now – focusing on her biography and lips at different points though, tellingly, rarely her music – and we’re all a little closer to hearing a big chunk of new music from her. Del Rey will release her debut album, Born To Die, on January 30th 2012 through Polydor and she’ll release the title track as a single the week before, on Sunday 23rd. In the meantime, you can stream the single, and watch her hug some bloke in front of the American flag, below. … Continue Reading

Oneohtrix Point Never, London, St Giles Church

Oneohtrix Point Never

By Greg Salter

November 24, 2011

A church seems like an appropriate venue to hear Daniel Lopatin present the music he’s been making as Oneohtrix Point Never over the last few years. His albums, particularly the sci-fi ambience of 2010’s Returnal and the more fractured, abject tracks on this year’s Replica, are meditative, insular, cerebral things, best heard all the way through, on your own. What’s more, it seems kind of fitting that an artist who has just created an album out of samples from television adverts from the late ‘80s and ‘90s (long forgotten, useless artefacts) should be performing in a relic of a building – though St Giles is still very much an active church, you sense that Lopatin might have enjoyed performing in a space never intended for his strange, haunting experiments. … Continue Reading

Hear new material from James Blake’s Love What Happened Here EP

James Blake

James Blake‘s 2011 has provided as many musical left turns and surprises as his 2010 – his self-titled LP brought his vocals to the fore, while his more recent Enough Thunder EP included a collaboration with Bon Iver and a selection of more expansive compositions. Love What Happened Here, his new EP due on R&S records on December 5, looks to be a return to the experimental, introspective beat-driven music of last year’s CMYK and The Bell’s Sketch – as ever with Blake, these aren’t rehashes – he’s still pushing forward. All three tracks have been played on various radio stations around the world in the lead up to the EP’s release – you can listen to streams below and we strongly suggest you put a pre-order in if you like what you hear. … Continue Reading

Sepalcure – Sepalcure

Sepalcure - Sepalcure

By Greg Salter

Sepalcure is the space where Travis Morrison and Praveen Sharma overlap. Morrison has been working as Machinedrum for around a decade now, and achieved something of a breakthrough with his Room(s) album from earlier this year, which combined elements of footwork, juke and dubstep in a series of dense, poppy tracks – it sounded like a warmer, more welcoming companion to Ramadanman/Pearson Sound’s recent work. Meanwhile, as Braille, Sharma has been a fixture of the house revival over the last 12 to 18 months. It’s fitting, then, that the duo have found a home on Paul Rose’s Hotflush recordings – a label that has been unconcerned with genre boundaries since its inception. … Continue Reading

Listen to the new Sepalcure album now

Sepalcure - Sepalcure

On 21st November, Hotflush will release the self-titled debut LP by U.S. duo Sepalcure – aka Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Praveen Sharma (Praveen & Beonit). It follows two strong EPs also released by the label – Fleur earlier this year and Love Pressure, which came out last year. You can listen to the LP below, via Hypemachine, and pre-order it if you so wish. Check back next week for our review. … Continue Reading

Hear Rihanna’s new single ‘You Da One’

Rihanna - Talk That Talk

The build up to Rihanna‘s new album, Talk That Talk, is in full swing – she’s made ‘You Da One’, the next single from the album and the follow-up to the Calvin Harris-produced ‘We Found Love’, available to stream – and you can do so below. You’ll be able to buy the song from all the usually downloady places on Sunday.

‘You Da One’ reflects what those who have heard Talk That Talk have been reporting – it sounds a bit like the ground somewhere between Loud‘s sunny, playful material and Rated R‘s moodier pieces (check the inevitable dubstep breakdown). Apparently, another track on Talk That Talk – ‘Drunk On Love’ – samples The XX’s ‘Intro’, which is good news for her, good news for us and good news for The XX, who will be able to invest in new all-black wardrobes with those royalties, I’d imagine. Hooray! … Continue Reading

Memphis Industries presents Lucky Thirteen at Koko, London, Wednesday 30th November

Memphis Industries presents Lucky 13

As part of celebrations for their 13th birthday, indie label Memphis Industries are taking over Koko in London on Wednesday 30th November 2011 for one special night. A few of the label’s bands will be performing – expect sets from The Go! Team, Field Music, Dutch Uncles and ColourMusic. On top of all that, the label’s giving away an exclusive 13 track compilation of “past, present and future Memphis Industries tracks” to everyone who buys a ticket from their website. To get you in the mood, you can stream a selection of tracks by Memphis Industries artists below. … Continue Reading

Atlas Sound – Parallax

Atlas Sound - Parallax

By Greg Salter

Broadly speaking, parallax is the difference or alteration that seems to occur to an object when it is viewed from different angles or perspectives. It’s a concept used in astronomy, to measure distances between planets, stars and galaxies – as the earth orbits, scientist can use the changing position of stars in the sky to work out how many thousands of miles away from us they are. The human eyes use parallax for depth perception too, and you could also talk about parallax in terms of experiences or ideas – seeing things from a different angle, changing your viewpoint. On the title track of Parallax – Bradford Cox’s third album proper as Atlas Sound – it sounds like parallax is adopted out of necessity. “Your pain/It’s probably equal”, he sings on the chorus – to what, he doesn’t say. … Continue Reading

Hear new Drake songs, featuring Rihanna, Jamie XX, Rick Ross and The Weeknd

Drake - Take Care

Drake‘s new album, Take Care, is due early next week and over the weekend a few new tracks made their way online as a bit of a teaser – you can listen to them below. First up, there’s the album’s title track, which features Rihanna and production from Jamie XX, based on his remix/collaboration with Gil Scott Heron, ‘I’ll Take Care Of U’. You can also stream ‘Crew Love’, a track that features the distinctive vocals of The Weeknd (he’s also slated to appear on a number of other tracks across Take Care), plus there’s ‘Lord Knows’, which features Rick Ross. … Continue Reading

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

By Greg Salter

Daniel Lopatin is quietly marking himself out as a unique innovator in modern music. The release of his last LP as Oneohtrix Point Never, Returnal in June 2010, brought him to the attention of a much larger audience than he had ever known (not least because the album included a track that featured one Antony Hegarty, though his voice was chopped and processed to the extent that it was unrecognisable). Returnal actually followed Rifts – a sprawling early career retrospective that brought together previously hard-to-find full lengths and experiments. On these albums, Lopatin perfected a kind of sci-fi ambience – simultaneously nostalgic and otherworldly, it sounds indebted to his roots in noise music as much as ambient and electronica. Returnal, for the most part, is as blissfully evocative as contemporaries like Emeralds or Walls. … Continue Reading