Christian Löffler – Veiled Grey
Christian Löffler’s second album, Young Alaska, is set to be released on the 5th May. Veiled Grey isn’t the first soundbite we’ve heard of the new album (All Comes was put up on Soundcloud two months ago), but it’s the most interesting. It carries on in much the same vein as his previous work, exhibiting a tenderness and fragility rarely seen in music of this ilk. It’s a crisp, frozen morning of a track, leaving the listener with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It’s also available for free download, so grab it while you can.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144526847″]
Kane Ikin – Warehouses
Kane Ikin’s Warehouses is the antonym to Löffler’s Veiled Grey. Where one’s delicate, refined and ethereal, the other’s batteringly, broodingly oppressive. Ikin builds and builds the track, creating a tense affair, underpinned with a bassline that bullies your ear dreams, while a cacaphony of discordant drones taunt them from the middle distance. It’s gritty, cumbersome and unrelenting. Eventually the pressure tells and we’re abandoned in an industrial workspace for Ilkin to work us over some more. At 9 minutes, Warehouses is a full on listening experience. It’s intense and challenging but those that make it through are more than adequately awarded.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/140130038″]
Lorde – Tennis Courts (Flume Remix)
2013 was Lorde’s breakthrough year with Royals laying the ground work for Pure Heroine’s success. Her distain for almost everything else in the pop world percolates through her music. Tennis Courts, huge in it’s own right, has therefore probably been remixed by exactly the right man. Flume doesn’t do things the easy way and in doing so creates and reinvents music in a way few others can. When his tracks drop, he eschews the obvious, and he holds that drop just long enough that at times it comes damn near awkward. You earn your oats with this remix and it’s bloody refreshing.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/146159376″]
Jacques Greene – Feel What
We featured No Excuse last time out on Head In The Clouds. Feel What is another of the tracks to feature on his Phantom Vibrate EP, released April 28th. Where No Excuse featured lilting, yearnful, almost nervous, incantations, Feel What instead trades in anthemic, joyous vocals. It’s sure what it is and that makes it a really energising and uplifting listen; a rousing baptism of a track.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/146854717″]
Vic Mensa – Down On My Luck
Down On My Luck is quite simply a piece of R&B gold. It’s clear that having spent a large chunk of last year out on tour with Disclosure has had something of an effect on his output with this being the most accessible of his tracks to date. It really deserves a wider audience and I can imagine this racking up the plays as summer draws ever nearer.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147084396″]
Inventions – Inventions
Inventions is a collaboration from Matthew Cooper (Eluvium) and Matthew T. Smith (Explosions In The Sky). Both are obviously absolutely huge players in the post rock scene and as a result big things are expected of Inventions. Temporary Residence have made the entire release available to stream on Soundcloud. It’s an interesting listen and for a handful of tracks it’s particularly clear which of the two have led the way. The highlights, however, come in the tracks where the collaboration between the two is most evident and the output is absolutely mind blowing. In particular, Entity and Peaceable Child are spectacular reminders of the sheer talent that these two possess.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/32695672″]