Stream: Darkest Hour - Lyves

Darkest Hour is the new track from Lyves, her first track in almost a year and the result of a period of four months making music based in Italy.

Since we last heard from Lyves, real name Francesca Bergami, she has left her job in mental health to return to her family's hometown so she could focus on songwriting and production. Moving across her entire bedroom studio in two large suitcases. Bergami set herself up in a small attic space and spent almost every day since writing.

Darkest Hour is the first track to come out of that process, and the first that sees Lyves taking the driving seat on production. It was written by Lyves and produced by Lyves and Crada.

Stream: Clay - Hudson Scott

Hudson Scott first got into music upon seeing a local brass band as a child. After his mother borrowed a trumpet for him, the then seven-year-old refused to give it back. Growing up listening to jazz greats like Miles Davis and Chat Baker together with Bowie and Marvin Gaye, Scott would ultimately end up providing backing band supporting Foals and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.

Clay is Scott's debut track, a beautifully low-strung pop record. Check it out below:

Stream: Bourbon - Gallant

Ahead of his debut album Ology, Gallant has just unveiled new track Bourbon and it is another soaring future R&B anthem. On the new album, new 6 April on Mind Of A Genius, Gallant says "I've waited a long time to say everything that I'm saying in this album and it's terrifying to think that people will hear it. But I couldn't be more proud of this body of work and I hope people take it in a way that's as honest as I was when I was making it."

Check out Bourbon below:

Stream: Sincerely - Stephen

Back for 2016 with his first track of the year, Sincerely follows on from Stephen's track Crossfire, which topped Hype Machine back in December. 

Sincerely features a fractured beat, buzzing synths and an earthy guitar solo amidst Stephen's earnest vocals, with a big focus on the message behind his words. 

Sincerely is taken from the forthcoming debut album Sincerely, Stephen - due on Halfway House Records on 26 April. 

Album Review: Jurassic Technologie - Pr0files

Pr0files have been on my radar since LA duo Lauren Pardini and Danny Sternbaum unleashed their single Forgive, a track that channels Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive to create an infectious throbbing electro ballad.

Forgive was back in October 2014, wind on a little over a year and off the back of a slew of individual singles we now have the band's first full length album, Jurassic Technologie. And it very much takes the sound we know and applies it to an album format - what we have here is a collection of songs in the trademark Pr0files sound, albeit with two additional interluds. These include the breathless Missing You Tonight, which repeats the song's title as its single vocal refrain over a slow moving electronic melody that sounds like a off-time heartbeat, and the instrumental title track. 

Aside from the shorter interludes Jurassic Technologie consists of nine tracks that could all as easily be singles, and many of them will be known to anyone who has followed the band's drip feed release of new material. There is no real concept here to tie this together, but for a band's first release that is perhaps understandable - instead we simply have a collection of storming electronic ballads, and they are all at least good, and several of them are great... The only catch being that there is a good chance you have already heard this album's highlights - Forgive and Get It Up.

Jurassic Technologie is a solid intro to Pr0files, it just doesn't add as much new material as it could have. At eleven tracks, including those interludes, it's a brief but enjoyable affair. Where Pardini and Sternbaum go from here is entirely their call...

Pr0files' Jurassic Technologie is out now and currently available to stream in full via Soundcloud below: