Another great track from Oakland-based Aussie Hazel English, coming in the wake of the equally dreamy Never Going Home and It's Not Real earlier this year. Fix is another slice of California sun-tinged shoegaze-pop that beckons in the start of autumn. Taken from English's debut EP, out later this year.
After a number of EPs and three albums Girls Names took a typically nonconformist move to mark their return, launching 11-minute long single Zero Triptych, which got played in full on Radio 1 but doesn't feature here at all. Instead Arms Around A Vision distils the Belfast band's dreary-yet-dreamy outward looking vision into twelve tracks of sharp post-punk.
Discussing the album, frontman Cathal Cully states, "We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life ... For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art."
Like their contemporaries The Horrors and Interpol, Girls Names wear their influences proudly. You can hear plenty of elements of Can, Neu, Joy Division, Brian Eno here, together with traces of the New Romantic movement.
The warm electronic interludes of (Obsession) and (Convalescence) divide Arms Around A Vision into three acts, acting as brief moments of reprieve between the bursts of aggression. Self-produced by the band and engineered by Dan Rejmer, they carve out a soundscape that draws from a number of Europe's modern movements - Italian futurism, Russian constructivism and German's Zero Group. There is a modernist bent to Girls Names' sound - their music at times drowning in the simultaneous riot of conventional instruments played unconventionally together with unconventional instruments. Drums and guitars combine with sax, sheet metal and deliberately broken guitars.
Whilst the style isn't new, it is delivered with significant with aplomb. Arms Around A Vision storms in with the foreboding and appropriately named Reticence, a track of two-halves that at first weaves a slowly coiled threat before unraveling to leave something far more loose and free-willed.
Recent single A Hunger Artist still feels effortlessly cool - it is the perfect snub, a coy little 'fuck you' tied up into a bow... Harsh strummed guitars aggressively drive forward as Cully sounds a little nonchalantly delivers his passive aggressive play. The screeching brass amid a wave of distortion creates a chaotic feeling that the whole song could fall over at any moment, making it all the more exciting in its slow building cacophony.
Closing with the pregnant and menacing I Was You, Arms Around A Vision crawls to a darkly cynical conclusion that also grants the album its title. Cully's vocals swoop around the nightmarish musical landscape before leaving the band to fade to black. An album that achieves much through style and attitude, even if it feels like there might not be much left underneath.
Arms Around A Vision is released on 2 October through Tough Love. Stream I Was You below and watch the video for A Hunger Artist:
Great track and video from Irish post-punk outfit Slow Riot. Demons is taken from their forthcoming Cathedral EP, due out on October 23 on Straight Lines Are Fine. I'm revelling in the dark and moody sound of this and can't wait to hear more... Autumn appears to be upon us.
Wilinout is the new track from Brooklyn-based musician IYVES, who originally hails from Boulder, Colorado. Previously operating under the name Hanah, IVYES' new track has been created with production work from Tei Shi and Ryan Egan collaborator Luca Buccellati.
Wilinout is a laid back melodic soul track featuring soft keys, big swatches of sound and IYVES' hushed vocals. It borders on chill-wave, a little like an R&B take on Tears For Fears' Pharaohs. Can't say much better than that.
In her own words, IVYES describes Wilinout: "While writing 'Wilinout' I wanted to tap into an old school R&B/soul melody and bring a nostalgic sensibility to the song. I wrote this song during a pivotal time in a relationship. It’s that moment where you realize that a change needs to happen but something is holding you back. Sometimes the fear of change can paralyze you and this song is discovering that state of being in between."
There is a certain irony here... The life of the big super club brands has been in question for years, and yet when you go into your local supermarket you are guaranteed to see a slew of branded compilation CDs. Staring out at you en masse, filling the music compilation section, it is hard not to left wondering if Ministry of Sound's CDs have outlived not only the era of super clubs, but the era of CDs themselves. Plastic shiny discs. Perfect for the car. Ideal as a present. Totally benign and universally relatable.
It is with this world that Ministry of Sound's Underground 2015 album enters, a cardboard package complete with two whole circles of plastic-coated metal full of music. As I contemplate what from the plethora of technology in my house will actually still take the data from these discs and convert it into sound waves, I consider for a moment how this package feels. And my conclusion is: empty. Underground 2015 feels physically empty.
When I pored over every detail of Ministry of Sound's albums in my youth I remember all the details: the fluorescent jewel cases, the detailed liner notes and aspirational photography, the textures, the credit card sized guides to clubs and nightlife. Perhaps some of Ministry of Sound's albums still have all of this, and teenagers still revel in them sheer exuberance of the production... Perhaps Underground 2015 is simply too 'underground' for all that... Yet it feels considerably more likely that somewhere along the way the super club mix CD shed all that weight just to stay alive. Another example of simple pleasures the digital world has robbed us of. Your pocket now contains far more information about nightclubs than you could fit in a million wallet-sized pieces of folded paper, but there was something more fun about having something to look at in your hands as you listened to the music contained on those old albums.
Whilst the packaging feels lacklustre against the backdrop of my memories, the music on Underground 2015 is both generous and far classier than most things that featured on the MoS label at its peak. They still release a whole range of populist albums - music to run to, music to chill out to - but this is something a little more authentic. The two-discs contain forty tracks of house, tech-house and techno, bubbling with bass and spitting with acerbic treble.
The highlights are numerous - Denney's appropriately low-end Low Frequency throws bass and high-hats against an appropriately instructive vocal sample. Dusky's Skin Deep is a thick and heavy UK garage influenced cut with a swirling break that serves to give the album a far bigger highlight than you expect just four tracks in.
A series of tracks on disc one create a momentary soul movement, spanning Claptone's remix of Gregory Porter's Liquid Spirit, Enzo Siffredi's Sometimes (which borrows from the same material as Moby's Honey) and Larry's Garage by Juliet Sikora. It is a highlight, off-setting the taught and restrained electronic production with loose and soulful elements.
George Fitzgerald's Full Circle featuring Boxed In opens the second disc with an introspective piece of electronic soul. A few better known tracks feature in its wake - a recent remix of Jon Hopkins' excellent Open Eye Signal also by George Fitzgerald and the Tale Of Us & Mano Le Tough remix of Caribou's starry-eyed Can't Do Without You both stand out. Caribou's inclusion actually somewhat breaks the flow - it is just so recognisable and big in comparison to its surroundings here.
Recondite's Levo creates a stark and dramatic atmosphere, Dense & Pika's TEX is darkly alien and Kölsch does his thing and brings the album to a suitably climatic conclusion.
In comparison to some of Underground 2015's highlights there are chunks that feel insipid in comparison. Seth Troxler and Sasha both feel irrelevant in comparison to some of the younger hands on show. A fair portion of the album feels unnecessary and Underground 2015 could have been a great single disc album... Instead we settle for a good two-disc release. There is lots here to enjoy given it comes from such a label with such a mainstream reputation.
Ministry of Sound Underground 2015 is out now and available from iTunes. Check out the Ministry of Sound website for an overview of their compilations.