Amaebo — LK.GAM.25

For those who wanted to hear a sequel to John Talabot’s “Depak Ine” (from the album ƒin, which I wrote about here), I encourage you to check out the enigmatically-titled “LK.GAM.25“. It’s the first we’ve heard from the elusive duo Amaebo (the pairing of Liam McLaughlin, who was once my music editor, and Rory Rea), and it comes a-clattering with tropical percussion and richly analog washes of synth. In the second half, the elements coalesce to give a chilled take on the Balearic beat, with muted Oriental bells chiming in and out of the primordial soup.

Hot Chip — Night And Day

The first song to be previewed from Hot Chip’s forthcoming album In Our Heads was a whistle-stop (quasi-pun, I’m afraid) tour around the world in seven minutes. The first single, ”Night And Day“, is not. Instead, it’s a slice of bouncy disco that wouldn’t look out of place amongst Joe Goddard’s record collection. There’s an elastic bassline, a helium-voiced chorus that recalls the Bee Gees (or, if you’re a little young, Scissor Sisters). Neat production tricks abound, from the odd squelch in between phrases, to the knowingly shadowy vocal fills at the end of the verses.

It’s less of an instant earworm than previous Hot Chip lead singles (“Ready For The Floor” and “Made In The Dark”), but I fear it’s going to work its way into my brain before long—even if it’s just the deadpan bridge with its black-humour couplets telling us to “Quit your jibber jabber”.

Spiritualized – Hey Jane

Jason Pierce has a way with bad luck, but he’s also got a way with making fatalism triumphant. “Hey Jane“, which is the opening track on Spiritualized’s new album, Sweet Heart Sweet Light, is a case in point. “Hey Jane, when you gonna die?”, Pierce asks, resigned to the titular heroine’s destiny, but also rejoicing in her life.

Beneath Pierce’s burnt-out vocals is the kind of jangly, frazzled guitar popularised in The Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man”, and a wordless children’s choir who sing out to the heavens. Halfway through, the song collapses into the sonic equivalent of a mental breakdown, like the apogee of a Sufjan Stevens concert. But then it rides back in on a soulful motorik groove for a coda that hints at ascension.

The video, which sort of fits with the tone of the song but also sort of doesn’t, is genuinely harrowing. It follows a black transvestite prostitute, and that’s all I’ll say. Watch it.

Liars — No. 1 Against The Rush

After two more guitar-focused albums, 2007′s Liars and 2010′s Sisterworld, the permafrazzled three-piece Liars return with the largely-electronic WIXIW (pronounced ‘Wish You’, since you ask), to be released this June.

Whetting fans’ appetites is the first single “No. 1 Against The Rush“ (see above), which drifts in on a burbling lake of electronics. The beat is dry and motorik, and the usually-scuzzy guitars are limited to textured fills and atmospheric vibes. Frontman Angus Andrew sounds pretty chilled; certainly more so than you would if you had recorded an album directly beneath a Los Angeles freeway, in a grimy, vice-ridden subway. There’s a definite link to The Horrors’ “Sea Within A Sea“—it’s there in the rhythm, and in the graceful array of notes played on an analogue synthesizer. The outro finishes what the intro started: highly resonant, percussive pings rattle between the channels while guitar feedback oscillates wildly, bringing the song to a juddering, but not threatening, close.

Here’s hoping there’s still some room on WIXIW for the bloodsucking yuppy vampires of old.

The crazy world of MiniCritch

Back when I was at school, the guy alphabetically proximate to me in class was into a lot of teenage emo and pop-punk. Think Fall Out Boy, Green Day, I don’t even want to remember the names of the others—he’s already going to hate me for saying this. Anyway, he went to university, switched things round a bit, and now puts the name of MiniCritch (named in honour of our old Latin teacher) to his music, which veers between caustic house and the glitchy brand of reggaeton known as ‘Moombahton’. You should definitely check his stuff out.

His latest track is “Doctor Black” (see above), which rides along a seriously fat ground bass line and has frenetic lead synths that syncopate with the four-to-the-floor beat. There are also some comedy cut-up vocal samples, which give the whole thing, like the rest of MiniCritch’s stuff, an endearingly DIY feel. Near the end, a highly-resonant line kicks in an octave up, before the track cuts out like a dying robot.

Be sure to watch out for his next move: he drops new tracks and remixes whenever he’s busy being pedagogical.

Floating Points — ARP3

I wrote previously about Floating Points’ ambitious techno, which aims for a cerebral corner of the galaxy, and doesn’t mind getting jazzy. “ARP3” is perhaps the most syncretic cut on his recent Shadows EP, with foreboding bass peregrinating between delicate pulses of synth. Beneath it all a snazzily Leslied Rhodes piano plants down the chords, while the first half rides along a shaker- and hi-hat-heavy rhythm track.

Halfway through, the beat drops out, the synths get more granular and fuzzy, and then there’s just the mother of all drops. It’s like standing on a platform attached to a space station, and then having that platform pulled out from beneath your feet.

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“ARP3” is taken from the Shadows EP by Floating Points, released on Eglo Records in November 2011.

Chord changer, life changer

It’s the rule that 80 per cent of what’s written about James Mercer’s The Shins should refer to Natalie Portman’s gushing endorsement in Garden State.

“You gotta hear this one song — it’ll change your life; I swear”,

is what she said in the 2004 film, referring to “New Slang”. But I don’t think The Shins changed too many people’s lives, mainly because Mercer’s creativity seemed to have dried up soon after the release of 2007′s Wincing The Night Away. That album was clearly the work of an auteur and his sometime bandmates—emotionally disenchanted, studio-laden, heavy with storytelling—and the story behind this new comeback album, Port Of Morrow, does little to dispel the prevailing attitude. Very publicly, this time, Mercer shoved away his old band, bringing to bear the idea that they were only ever bit-part players. Very privately, he holed himself up in studios with Greg Kurstin, an old hand who has worked with an array of chart-friendly pop singers, to create a subtle and elegantly understated gem of a record.

John Talabot, voyager

There’s a young Barcelonan called John Talabot, who’s making waves in techno like he’s our generation’s Ricardo Villalobos. Well, he’s not nearly so minimalist, but there’s certainly an economy to his production style that gives his work a capacious quality. His début, the conclusively-titled ƒIN, explores a diverse range of styles, flirting with chillwave and glo-fi (two genres I usually think pale in comparison to their illustrious forebear, Panda Bear) but also reaching far-out places that evoke comparison with someone like Floating Points.

“Journeys”, which features a guest turn at the microphone from Ekhi, takes the Panda Bear connection a step further—not only are the vocals a facsimile of Noah Lennox’s, but the music has a bouncy, carnivalesque feel reminiscent of Animal Collective. Opening track “Depak Ine” (see above), meanwhile, is more expansive, with a combination of croaking frogs and intergalactic rhythms that’s part Gang Gang Dance, part Matthew Dear. Elsewhere, things are geared more explicitly at the 2AM dancefloor, with “When The Past Was Present” giving off a Balearic headrush, and the closing track “So Will Be Now…” riding along squirming acid house bass, rather like The Rapture’s “Olio” back in 2003.

The range displayed on ƒIN makes it a sometimes disjointed listen; however, it’s to Talabot’s credit that it sounds even half as self-contained. Taken individually, his tracks bear traces of specialness that we associate with someone who is surely going to hit the big-time pretty soon. Prophetic listening is advised.

Hot Chip — Flutes

“One day you might realise / That you might need to open your eyes.”

We know a fair bit about Hot Chip‘s love of wonky, garage, and house. We know this from songs like “Don’t Dance”, “Bendable Poseable” and “We Have Love”, and we know this from Joe Goddard’s various side-projects, like The 2 Bears. On Hot Chip’s last album, One Life Stand, they sounded sometimes exhilarating, frequently lovestruck, and occasionally like they were sweatily getting down on the dancefloor. But they never conjured up all these moods at the same time.

Until now.

Our first taste of what Hot Chip in 2012 sounds like comes via “Flutes” (see above, in a head-spinning in-studio video). At once euphoric and romantic—perhaps that’s a symptom of the cheesy cut-up vocal sample, overlaid with warm analogue bass and chords—the song builds and builds, taking on new and exciting layers of vocals, synths both arpeggiated and wailing, and pulsating percussion. It’s like a carnival, walking through a renewal of one’s marital vows.

That this marathon workout never collapses or feels like it’s treading ground is evidence of Hot Chip’s maturity as songwriters, which has progressed even further since One Life Stand. On that album, they constructed sweet pop songs with interesting production and instrumentation; on “Flutes”, they’re pushing the boundaries of pop music, with a composition that travels round the world and is still back home in time for supper. The roly-poly electric piano finale is the icing on the cake.

The effect is like putting Joe Goddard’s “Gabriel“, itself a modern classic, on steroids. And it bodes super-well for the rest of the album, In Your Heads, which drops in early June.

Floating Points — Myrtle Avenue

An old friend pointed me in the direction of Sam Shepherd a.k.a. Floating Points, who is a neuroscientist by day, and a groundbreaking musician during all other hours. Shepherd’s music streams and fizzes through 2-step, the gossamer-thin electronica of Four Tet, and the glitchiness of the Brainfeeder label; forces coalesce on the Shadows EP, which opens with the mesmerising “Myrtle Avenue“.

Like a supernova, the song expands into a burst of luminescence that briefly outshines the galaxy. Free-rolling Rhodes piano trills waft over a beat that recalls early Flying Lotus. The bass is intermittent, occasionally acquiring mass as if reacting with the Higgs boson. Four minutes in, we get disco-from-the-end-of-the-universe chords, pulsing from a creamy analogue synthesizer. Above it weaves a warbling, tremulous lead, far removed from hoi polloi. Near the close of an extended coda, the faint voice of some unidentifiable soul diva beams in; it’s there only momentarily, buzzing like a heavenly insect trapped in a faraway fridge.

Times crawls forward, but inside “Myrtle Avenue” you feel like you’ve lived through from the Big Bang to the birth and death of a civilisation.

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“Myrtle Avenue” is taken from the Shadows EP by Floating Points, released on Eglo Records in November 2011.