I'm Yours is the new gloriously sun-kissed single from Hans Island, a collaboration between Canadian producer Mawhs and Scandinavian singer Marie Dahlstrøm. It's a record of blind infatuation, Dahlstrøm's vocals enraptured and besotted. The soundscape Mawhs creates is gentle like waves that lap gently against the shore - sensual, intimate, and just a little bit hard to resist.
Envy is the latest release from UK artist Peter Lyons, and on it he weaves dubby, looped R&B production, classical strings and Thom Yorke-esque vocals to create this stunningly dramatic track.
The track is taken from Lyons' forthcoming EP Oh, To Pull You Up and follows on from his debut single Leave Me back in March. Lyons also features as one half of pop-folk duo Peter & Kerry, was featured on Bonobo's Late Night Tales album and has composed music for Sadler's Wells.
Oh, To Pull You Up will be released on 2 October 2015.
Death Magic arrives more than five years since Health released their last full studio album amid a swirling cacophony of noise and smoke that seeps out of the speakers like a sort of toxic presence. It sucks all the air out of the room before accusingly asking you what the hell you have been up to for the last half a decade, because Health have been doing THIS.
Following Get Color and their second remix album ::DISCO2, Health's soundtrack to the Rockstar video game Max Payne 3 pointed to their future. More cinematic in scope, the sound exhibited on that record felt distilled and amplified. Where the lo-fi production of The band's first two albums helped create the aesthetic the band are known for, their newer sound is all the darker for removing the blinds and letting the sheer volume stand tall and pure. Sometimes a little polish actually lets you hear more.
On original song Tears, taken from that Max Payne soundtrack, Health experimented with a more melodic sound combined with their trademark wall-of-noise - the result was an emotive centrepiece for the game's climatic final scenes, but more than that it stood out as the band's strongest work to date. Death Magic is what happens if you extend that widescreen ambition, a heart of darkness and an ear for pop music into full album territory, and it sounds a lot like the future.
After opening track Victim seeps into your skull it is brutally savaged by the slamming and acerbic bass of Stonefist, a track that feels like a break-up letter from your soulmate delivered wrapped around a brick. It is a stunning statement of how Health see music in 2015. Having toured with Nine Inch Nails in 2008 it is easy to see the LA band as Trent Reznor's natural successors, and if they are then Death Magic just might be their Downward Spiral.
The melodic edge and pop melodies introduced on Tears, and now here on Death Magic, only make what surrounds them feel more ferocious. The synths and big chorus of Flesh World (UK) rumble through a darkly blank vacant space, like Joy Division lost in the corridors or a warehouse rave, complete with lasers and a smoke machine.
And between those brief moments of light there is so much darkness. Early interlude track Courtship gets a sequel, and it is a pummelling assault on the senses. Even when the vocals echo through the darkness with innocent melody the vocals are often loaded like a switchblade, deeply cynical tells of a relationship so dysfunctional.
Only on Life, positioned at Death Magic's middle, does this apparent discomfort ease... Chants of "I don't know what I want, know what I don't, know what I want... No, nobody knows, nobody does, nobody knows" sound like they could be a confused anthem for a confused generation. It's weirdly uplifting - an abandonment of trying to understand and control everything.
The feeling you are left with is that Death Magic is what happens if you extend a widescreen ambition, a heart of darkness and an ear for pop music into full album territory. And it sounds a lot like the future.
Death Magic is out now through Loma Vista Recordings. Order on iTunes.
Stockholm artists MIYNT has just unveiled the video for her sultry debut single Civil War. Taking the vocal stylings of Banks and applying it to some bone-rattling bass, Civil War hits like a wall of sound. The video and song play with the concept of waves, an analogy to the shifting power and rhythmic cycle of love.
Civil War / Nick Drake is out on B3SCI Records on 21 August, available for pre-order on 7" or through iTunes here. Check out the video for Civil War below, or stream both tracks from the forthcoming single together with MIYNT's stunning cover of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time.
Hailing from the cool Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, three-piece R&B outfit CHINAH recently dropped their debut single Away From Me, layering vocalist Fine Glindvad's silky vocals over Simon Kjær's guitar-work and Simon Andersson's minimal electronic production to form a delicately constructed track with bruised confidence.
Toronto-based producer Michah has transformed the gentle original into a smooth and slow house version. Michah applies a deft-touch, giving Away From Me a lift that sees it transformed whilst retaining the gentle sophistication of the original - the production wide-enough to fall right into.
On the original version, the band explain: "'Away From Me' was written in the early spring of 2014. It was the first song from our EP, and it really made us find the sound we've been confident about for the rest of the EP. We wanted to cut the song to the core with as few layers as possible."
Check out the premiere of Michah's remix below, and the original further down.