Following on from Jack Garratt's Remnants EP earlier this year he has a new version of the EP to come with a set of remixes included, to be entitled Remnix. The Son Lux mix of I Couldn't Want You Anyway can be streamed above and is a lovely emotional minimal electronic soul track. Give it a spin and then listen to the original below. The Carassius Gold mix of Remnants is also on Soundcloud now.
Remnix is out next week.
Caribou's last album Swim won him a lot of new fans, the way he blended dance music styles in an organic way enabled him to bring music fans from a wide spectrum together in his celebration of warm electronic music cultivated from his experience DJing.
Sonically Our Love is a continuation of that same journey, far closer in style to his previous album than his normal for Dan Swain, who far more often changes direction between releases. This album is a much more personal one however, consistently focused on aspects of human relationships, good and bad, and presumably to a certain extent channeling the highs and lows Swain has himself experienced.
Things start with early single Can't Do Without You, which remains Caribou's most instantly welcoming track and is a confident highlight of the album. A whirlwind of baggy rhythms, soaring synths and deep electronic grooves, there is something irresistibly honest about it as a piece of music. Incessant, obsessive and utterly devoted, Snaith's vocals nag nag nag: "I can't do without you... You're the only thing I think about..." Never has a piece of music landed so smack bang in the middle of painting the haunting and overwhelming feeling of love and sense of connection artificially enhanced by MDMA.
Not all of Our Love is as positive... All I Ever Need is the flip-side of such a strong state of neediness - the feeling of dependence on someone not as interested in your happiness so much as their own. Silver portrays a story of break-up, Snaith representing someone leaving their lover despite a series of nagging thoughts that maybe he is the one being left behind. The vocals on these tracks weave into the music itself, which bubbles with a level of detail and feeling only possible with analogue equipment.
Second Chance features a guest vocal from fellow Canadian musician and R&B star Jessy Lanza, who creates a sultry moment of exposed femininity that mirrors Snaith's own. It is one of the most pop moments of the record, and you can hear Lanza's own style blending with Caribou's on this analogue heavy R&B house track.
There are also a number of mostly instrumental tracks on the album, whether the introspective shoe-gazing Dive or the most uptempo numbers such as Mars and Julia Brightly. The latter proves to be another of Our Love's highlights, a fizzy energetic tribute to Caribou's sound engineer, who died earlier this year... It's a touching and moving moment that pays tribute without any excessive sentimentality.
Our Love ends with Your Love Will Set You Free - a melancholic middle-of-the-night bought of exposed emotional vulnerability... Vocals mourn regretfully a love left behind, perhaps that same one depicted in Silver. It is a sad and reflective close, but the final repeated lines - 'your love will set you free' - offer a little solace, or at least a little blind hope.
As an album, Our Love is an emphatic testament to not just one love, but what it is to be human and what it is to love whoever it is you need to most. The roller coaster contained within reflects all the energy and fatigue and excitement and uncertainty that comes with the most profound of our emotions.
Our Love is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links]. Listen in full via Spotify below:
Cool new video for Hackney R&B duo Panes' track Stills. As with much of the best R&B coming out of the UK at the moment this portrays a real contrast between the robotic, mechanical production work and singer Tyson McVey's vocals.
This is taken from the EP of the same name, which has been available since May, but this is due as a single on 23 November. You can grab the EP on iTunes or listen on Spotify.
I've been a bit of a fan of Coasts since their original mini-album dropped into my inbox a few years back and Stay remains a firm favourite. They've just previewed new track A Rush Of Blood and it has just been named as Zane Lowe's somewhat hyperbolic Hottest Record In The World...
If you are into the more epic sounding side of post-rock and enjoy a bit of indie pop A Rush Of Blood has a lot to like. It's Foals, with candy scattered on top, and sometimes I just want that emotive hit.
Vocalist Chris describes A Rush Of Blood as:
“a song which explores the strength of a new relationship with the feelings of paranoia and self-doubt that can sometimes become synonymous with that ... AROB EP is a collection of songs that helps to shed more light on what we are about as a band, offering up a few different elements that people have potentially not seen yet. We’ve experimented quite a bit with structure and different genres of music and so it’s a body of work that we’re really proud of and can’t wait for people to hear”
The A Rush Of Blood EP is out on 1 December, but if you pre-order on iTunes you will get the title track to download now.
They may sound like an Amazon consumer electronics product but this Paperwhite are actually Brooklyn brother-sister duo Katie and Ben Marshall. Together they make warm synth-heavy pop music, with Katie's vocals delivering a sense of positivity. Pieces is taken from the Magic EP, which covers their first year making music.
Pieces is a track about that feeling that overcomes you with love at first sight. In Katie's words "Pieces describes the trance and magnetism of love at first sight" explains Katie, continuing "While it questions if they're the one, it's backed with an energizing spirit and hopefulness that they are. It makes me want to dance, move and forever stay in love."
Also featuring on the EP are Magic, Take Me Back and Got Me Goin (all below) together with two yet to be heard tracks Gold and Galaxy.
Magic is released through Duly Noted Records on 17 November.