With their debut EP Soft Animals out today, NY based duo Sofi Tukker are about to go big and to celebrate they have just unveiled Moon Tattoo, one of the tracks off of the new EP. Melding together pop, dance and indie the pair create a lovely soft ballad that shuffles gently in the heat. Having checked out most of the tracks from their EP, I have to say this is my favourite - restrained and irresistible.
Check out the Sofi Tukker Soundcloud for more.
The first track from her new solo project, Camden Cox has just taken the wraps off of Focus, a crunchy sun-flecked dose of summer R&B. Produced with Barney B, the two of them creating the song in his West Country barn.
Before Focus Cox had released Kinda Like on Little Boots' On Repeat label. Focus is a track dedicated to that feeling when your desire for someone is so strong that you can't focus on anything else - on the track Camden says:
"Focus is about losing track of everything because you’re so consumed by someone that they take over your mind and body. The feeling is exciting, amazing and confusing and the track is about trying to make sense of all of those things while trying to stay in control.”
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."
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.
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:
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.