Simple and effective. This sounds like an early DFA cut with a slightly more British slant.
Stream: A Friend - Formation
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Stream: Beggin For Thread - Banks
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Banks has her most pop moment yet on this new track lifted from her forthcoming album. Just give us the album already, dammit.
Stream: In Silence - Octave Minds
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I've been a fan of Gonzales' beautiful solo piano work, production work for the likes of Feist (whatever happened to...?) and his more dance orientated work. Boys Noize are a bit less on my radar these days... Having been part of the French-led noisy distorted dance movement championed by Justice and Ed Rec, German producer Alexander Ridha feels like something very much of that era.
Together here as Octave Minds you get the sense both have something to gain - Gonzales has already benefited from a glossy sheen on Ivory Tower, a record produced by Ridha, and this represents a great opportunity for Ridha to move on to something a bit less, well, noisy and overtly masculine than Boys Noize.
This single precedes a full album, is available to download from Soundcloud for free and pretty much delivers to a standard as good as either artists has achieved on their own.
Stream: Twin - Oslo Parks
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Likened to Metronomy, Junior Boys and Blood Orange, this debut track from Oslo Parks for new London label X Novo is ticking the boxes.
EP Review: Fame - The Acid
This new project from Adam Freeland, together with Ry X and Steve Nalepa, blows my mind. I've always harboured a soft-spot for Freeland, long after he ceased being 'cool', but this is probably his best work yet... The kind of sophisticated ambient pop hinted at on his remixes on GU32.
The original version (featured in the video above) doesn't feature on this remix EP, but it's a gorgeously wasted sultry dubby track full of loose rhythms, slow synths and gently picked guitars that evoke Spanish sunsets.
The second surprise is that Jesse Rose, whom I haven't heard a thing from since minimal was the new hot thing, delivers a gorgeously subtle remix. The synths are accentuated and the rhythm track tightened giving the track an even more dreamy, spectral sensation. It is like floating 500-feet above the world as it goes around its all so busy parties and hectic nattering, whilst we are several steps removed, relaxed yet slightly saddened by the distance. It's like tapping against the glass of sobriety when you know you can't quite remember what it felt like.
Rose also provides a dub, which strips out the vocal and some of the synths to further emphasise the warm bass.
Finally Factory Floor provide a much more robotic interpretation, full of their usual Germanic mechanical wonder but filtered through the same dreamy gaze of the original to create a weirdly balanced piece that blends warm humanity with clinical efficiency.
All three mixes plus the original are great. I've not had the chance to listen to the album yet but based off of this release I definitely will do - you can currently stream it in full on Soundcloud below. Order the album now from Amazon.co.uk on CD or MP3 [affiliate links].