Stream: Look Back In Laughter - Hugh

This second single from Hugh has a lovely laid-back feel to it and I also totally love the message behind it... The things that stress you out today will almost certainly seem largely irrelevant one day.

Hugh is a new project from Joshua Idehen, who I've covered here both for his work with the excellent Debian Blak and with his other band Benin City. Hugh is a collaboration with Izzy Broox, Andy Highmore and Martin Kolarides that takes a more blissed out form than Idehen's more upbeat Benin City material, but it's just as good. Check out previous track Not Fair Too Far whilst you are here:

EP Review: WHOWILLLUVU - Frenchfire

WHOWILLLUVU is a haunting and emotive tech-house record that crafts feeling out of layered female vocals and an insistent synth melody. It feels more influenced by dubstep and Burial as anything produced within the confines of the house genre, granting it sense of isolation and urban sadness. The melodies resemble steel drums and it feels like a downtrodden and depressed reimagining of Jamie XX's uplifting Far Nearer. It is positively boiling over with pent up emotion.

Alongside the original is a mix for Lithuania's Vidis. His mix stays very much in keeping with the intent of the original, but with a slightly lifted pace and a greater focus on the rhythm track. That vocal still creates the main focus though, and the remix is just as good as the original.

WHOWILLLUVU is out now on Biologic, available from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link]. Check out a preview of the original in the Soundcloud player below or listen to the whole Vidis remix on YouTube:

Stream: Massive (KRTS RMX) - Fem Fel X PBJ

This remix of Massive by Fem Fel X PBJ from KRTS is all kinds of nice. I've been following KRTS since his excellent album The Dread Of An Unknown Evil and he continues to deliver the goods.

If you don't already know it, the original track is also worth checking out, the loose feel of KRTS' mix really adds a contrast to this.

Video: Heart & Soul - James Wolf

Heart & Soul feels a little too obvious in some ways... Nu disco / house painted a little by numbers perhaps, but there's no denying it's catchy as hell. Heart & Soul is produced by Tom Neville, whose credits include Kelis and Ellie Goulding - and you can feel his influence all over this track.

D/R/U/G/S was responsible for one of my favourite tracks of last year and here he provides a remix of Heart & Soul that pitches down the vocals to create something a little more moody and smokey:

Hearts & Soul is out on Monday through Herculean Records.

2014 Hype: Realize You - Empress Of

It seems almost impossible to get any information about Empress Of, which is kind of ridiculous because despite her aloof approach to PR she is screaming for some cross-over success. With slinky indie sass meets snappy synth pop melodies it's hard to figure how you could not love every one of the handful of tracks Lorely Rodriguez has put out as Empress Of.

Rodriguez is Brooklyn based and appears to divide her singing between English and Spanish, with her Systems EP featuring two tracks in each language. That EP is good - Hat Trick being a particular highlight. But the track that has me most excited and caught my attention in the first place is the the single she released towards the end of last year, Realize You. There's a high-art angle to all of this - a sort of synesthesia that comes from Rodriguez's experiments with colour, as explained on Dazed Digital last year when they interviewed her.

Realize You is a beautifully slinky yet stumbling and obsessive record. Soft bubbling electronic melodies and those gorgeous slightly Germanic, slightly techno drums. It is Rodriguez's vocals that steal the show though, her obsession shining through, scary yet alluring: I want to be your boyfriend / and I want to be your girlfriend / and I want to take you there / and I want to watch you do it.

Check out Hat Trick below:

There is also quite a bit more on the Empress Of Soundcloud page and a rather surreal video for Champagne:

This is probably the last in my series of posts on artists I'm tipping for big things in 2014. You can read the rest here and check out my Spotify playlist containing some of the bands best songs (and some bands I haven't had time to cover) here.