Stream: Alright - Young Summer

DC-based musician Young Sumer hasn't appeared on these pages since her 2014 track Severing Ties, but this new track more than merits your time. Since we last heard from her, Young Summer (real name Bobbie Allen) has unveiled a number of tracks and matured her sound.

Arriving ahead of her new EP, due this summer, Young Summer's new single Alright is a wistful yet hopeful track about that most bittersweet of things, unrequited love. It's the kind of synth-laden pop song that suits up in sonic armour, protecting the exposed sensitivity beneath. As Allen herself explains:

"'Alright" is about unrequited love, loving someone but being unable to confess it," she explains. "It’s the trepidation we all have when we don’t want to get hurt but we can’t help but feel the way we do for someone. One of my favorite moments in the song is the line, 'Am I allowed to love you?' because so often I've felt that way. In that line there is the long awaited relief of a confession.

"'Alright' is a song that articulates fear and insecurity but maintains a protective armor sonically with its confident, glossy production. I love to juxtapose the meaning of a song with its sonic identity. An extremely personal song about fear and insecurity with upbeat, sparkling production is like sneaking vegetables into the listeners’ dessert and also a way for me to distract while I confess."

New single "Alright" from Young Summer's EP, to be released this summer! www.youngsummermusic.com twitter.com/young_summer facebook.com/youngsummermusic instagram.com/youngsummermusic

Album Review: Late Night Tales - Ólafur Arnalds

Picking up the batton on the latest release in the seemingly never-ending Late Night Tales series is Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds. More often known for his modern-classical inspired music, here Arnalds combines diverse soundcapes spanning techno, folk, pop, R&B and more classical sounds.

Upon hearing this album it is clear that Arnalds has poured considerable effort and heart into this album, his first real attempt at something like this mix. In his words, when he was first asked to do the mix his reaction was "This will be fun and easy, only a couple of days work. No problem!"... He claims he was still working on it six months later, weaving together music from his life, his friends and his collaborators, his influences.

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The album opens with the dreamlike Jómsvíkingarímur Ýta Eigi Feldi Rór by Hjálmar Lárusson and Jónbjörn Gíslason before melting into Julianna Barwick's Forever... Both are like fragrent vapour hanging in your soul, softly billowing and gently pulling you in.

Odesza's How Did I Get Here appears in an exclusive instrumental form that transforms it into a slow and considered piece of leftfield beauty. Odesza give way to Anois' A Noise - a stilted moment of melodic folk that recalls The XX's male-female vocal harmonies and stripped production.

Jamie XX himself is here, providing remix duties for Four Tet on Lion, creating the kind of slow moving ambient beauty only he can. Jai Paul's Jasmine shows up like the guy everyone knows at a party, but it's still always so good and therefore hard to resent. Spooky Black's Pull is a liquid post-rock ballad, melodies slowly tumbling in freefall to create a monument to the dramas of human emotion.

The album's only real misstep is in Arnalds' own contribution in the form of three exclusives... His techno side project Kiasmos has the slowly building Orgoned and includes Kinesthesia under his own name - these are both fine if somewhat unspectacular. It is on the staple Late Night Tales cover-version where Arnalds properly stumbles - his take on Destiny's Child transforms the original into the sort of earnest folk cover that I thought we had all grown out of. It lacks all the sass of the original and if I were the subject of the song I'd only be further convinced to never say the singer's name again.

Olafur Arnald's Late Night Tales maintains the series' record for high quality and thoughtfully created mixes, only it loses its way in the final third... Yet everything up until that point is so strong that it balances it out to make the album a valuable listen.

Late Night Tales by Ólafur Arnalds is out now - check out the preview below:

LNT: http://po.st/olafurLNT iTunes: http://geni.us/LNTolafurarnalds Bandcamp: http://po.st/olafurBC Standing at the intersection where techno meets classical music, Ólafur Arnalds directs the new Late Night Tales. “When I was asked to do the next installation of the Late Night Tales series I thought "This will be fun and easy, only a couple of days work. No problem!". Six months later, I was still pulling my hair out in some kind of quest to make the perfect mix. As someone who has never really done mixes before, I learned a lot of things along the way and the whole experience was very inspiring. I decided to approach the mix in a similar way as I would one of my scores. This is the soundtrack of my life. I included songs from many of my friends and collaborators and tried to deliver a mix that represents who I am as an artist and where my influences are coming from - both personally and musically.” - Ólafur Arnalds, March 2016 Follow Late Night Tales: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latenighttales1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LateNightTales Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/latenighttales Instagram: http://instagram.com/latenighttales

Stream: Faufile - Charlotte Cardin

Announcing her EP Big Boy, French-Canadian musician Charlotte Cardin has just unveiled this new track Faufile. With a title that means to slip or sneak away, Faufile is a delicate but sultry piece of classically inspired jazz-influenced pop. Cardin's vocals tread a delicate path - both haunted and soulful at once.

Stream: Help - Amy Milner

Following on from her debut single Have It All, musician Amy Milner is demonstrating the stark beauty of songwriting on new single Help. Hailing from my part of the world, the Suffolk artist wrote this piece on the same piano that she learnt to play on at five-years-old and inherited from her grandparents.

Help teeters somewhere in between bravery and oblivion as Milner carefully teases out its gentle melodies. A lovely moment of peace...

'Help' is out now on @aesoplabel, find it everywhere below: Stream and follow me on Spotify - http://po.st/jmm0Li Stream and follow me on Apple Music - http://po.st/pFGjdI Download on iTunes - http://po.st/d1MC0H Artwork by David Drake - www.daviddrake.co.uk

Stream: Never Dance Alone - Maya Killtron

Sometimes things don't need to be overly complicated. Maya Killtron has just turned in this 80s-inspired funk / groove number and it's epic. Horns, low-slung bass, massive vocals and a cover that features a permanently peeling HMV sticker - this is unashamedly retrographic but I don't care because I love it. Maya describes the record as follows:

Never Dance Alone' is the record I’ve always wanted to make. I spent a lot of time writing music that was chasing trend but when I finally got in the studio with Miloš (Producer) he reminded me how important it was to be myself. I’m a trained classical violinist and jazz arranger who loves to sing funk and soul. The can work together. I finally figured out how to write without apology and to be proud and fearless of the music I hear in my head. That is what 'Never Dance Alone' is. I was able to touch every part of the process this time around, from charting out and arranging the horns and strings to singing every single background part and lead.

So yeah. Play it, dance it, enjoy it.