Watch: Boiler - Monoboi

Boiler is the latest single from German electronic musician Monoboi, who combines haunting melodies with self-made music videos in service of cross-media experiences that experiment with dark atmospherics and hidden meaning.

Arriving in tandem with the announcement of Monoboi’s forthcoming full length album, Year Of The Wolf, Boiler is the album’s first single. Both album and single deal with themes of the fear of loneliness within a composition that combines melancholy and hope.

The production brings together a glitchy, frenetic feeling with slow moving, peaceful melodies. Snatched vocal samples and layered percussion capture the restless nature of our minds against slow, thoughtful chord progressions that feel like the calm, constant change of nature. It’s a beautiful, emotive experience, with the video pairing the emotional feeling of serenity captured within the music.

Check out Boiler by Monoboi below:

Listen: Perpetual - Taroug

Perpetual represents both a refocus, and an official debut release from German-Tunisian electronic musician Tarek Zarroug. Working under the portmanteau of Taroug, he is making deep, experimental and cinematic electronic music reminiscent of the intelligent techno of Jon Hopkins.

As a track, Perpetual is conceptually deep - lyrics that describe the abstract experience of a wormhole in the human mind and depict the tension between imagination, or perhaps perception, and reality. Starting with gently layered electronic instrumentation and hushed, spectral vocals that feel deliberately hard to pin down. The result creates a sense of losing yourself to the music - crunchy, glitchy percussion builds the pace, and staccato melodies give this an overwhelming feeling. It’s dark and haunting, yet beautiful.

Check out Perpetual below:

After musical refocusing, the song Perpetual is the first official release by Taroug. A solo project by german-tunisian electronic music artist Tarek Zarroug. The lyrics are describing an abstract sight of a wormhole in a humans mind. The eternal dance between closeness and distance. Between imagination and reality. Like a mirage in the desert. The tracks artwork visualizes the idea from a first-person perspective traveling through dimensions. From here to there and backwards. From sciera to pupil. You devour me from the room, into the inside of your bloom. Spit me out behind the light ray, your shape is a step in my mind ballet. Composition, production, mixing by Tarek Zarroug Vocals by Niklas Genschel & Tarek Zarroug Mastering by Norman Nietzsche Artwork by Marie Brosius

Listen: Would You Catch Me If I Fall - Thoran James

Would You Catch Me If I Fall is the first single to come ahead of Thoran James’ as-yet-untitled EP, targeted for a late-summer release.

With writing, production and performance all coming from Thoran James, Would You... features a unique and emotive sound that mixes rustic, honest vocals with cinematic electronic melodies. James’ voice has a bruised feeling that, combined with the track’s production, reminds me of Alexis Taylor’s vocals on Hot Chip’s early album Coming On Strong.

The ensuing feeling created by Would You Catch Me If I Fall is one of lonely resignation. Sometimes the night ends and the only company comes from the thoughts in your head, the memories playing over and over. This song is those moments captured in amber - a feeling of solitude and a mixture of joy and sadness.

For me, Would You Catch Me If I Fall’s defining moment is the couplet that James delivers halfway through:

“Yeah it still fucking bothers me - I can’t turn back time but you can change your mind.”

I was recently playing with a phrase in my head, a draft for something never written, or maybe just an album not released... Just because you were right, it doesn’t mean that I’m wrong. Sometimes the hardest losses are those that never quite happen.

Listen: Flowers - Sleepy

Sleepy are a three-piece indie pop group from Sydney, and Flowers is their latest track, recorded across multiple bedroom studios in isolation. It bristles with a nervous energy, but with easy vocal harmonies that have a summer-like, slacker vibe about them, despite Sydney’s imminent winter.

Listening to Flowers, you wouldn’t know it had been created during the lockdown. Whilst there is a scuffed-up and silvery lo-fi sound to the song’s guitars and vocals, the song comes together with a cohesiveness that seems hard to imagine is the product of a band who couldn’t be in the same place at the same time.

Appropriately, Flowers is a song about distant relationships, in tribute to lovers “new, old and long lost”. From time-to-time I find myself thinking about the impact of COVID-19 on love... Those that are stuck apart, those that are together, and those that tried to leave. Most, I think of those new loves that had a spark before the vacuum of the pandemic stole much of the oxygen a new love needs to grow. How many people are hoping that the chemistry is still there once they get the chance to reconnect with someone after the lockdown is over?

Much like nature, I expect love will find a way... Not in the commercial, cinematic sense so much as that as long as there is light, carbon dioxide and water, plants grow... And as long as there are people and they can connect, they will find a certain pleasure in those other people they find. People that make them feel seen, whole, understood and secure, and those people that help them understand themselves a little better.

Listen: Leave - MAY BBY & Chris Hue

Leave feels like a lesson in restraint. At a little over two minutes long, it is hard not to be left wanting more. The production is so minimalist - small touches that enhance the bruised, emotional vocal that is granted so much of the centre stage. And yet as subtle as the production work is, this never feels remotely close to a capella. This is a track where the production and vocal feel at one, almost as though they came from the same instrument, and yet they didn’t even come from a same mind.

Based in the Netherlands and growing up near The Hague, Chris Hue followed a passion for music to study electronic music production at the Rock Academy in Tilburg. His debut EP has been created together with fellow-Netherlands based singer-songwriter MAY BBY.

MAY BBY draws her inspiration from genres as diverse as electronic, alt R&B and hip-hop, but brings them together with a pop styling to her vocals.

All of which is to say, here we witness Hue treat MAY BBY’s vocal performance with an incredible deftness of touch that betrays a confidence all to rare, particularly in a track from a debut EP. Similarly, MAY BBY’s vocal feels mature beyond her 20 years.

The result is fragile, MAY BBY sounds scared of the outside and yet scared of what exists within her: the ability to be hurt, sure, but also the ability to hurt. Leave speaks to the inherent inconsistency in our experience - the perverse reality that we can both be afraid of being left by someone, whilst also being afraid of just what happens if you are the one to leave.

For me, few tracks trigger such an instant, indelible reaction as Leave. Check it out below:

'Leave' out now! https://fanlink.to/MayBBY_ChrisHue-Leave Follow Chris Hue: https://spoti.fi/2wqd4Ja instagram.com/chrishuemusic twitter.com/chrishuemuisc facebook.com/chrishuemusic Follow MAY BBY: https://spoti.fi/2vJagXs instagram.com/mymaybby twitter.com/mymaybby facebook.com/mymaybby soundcloud.com/mymaybby Design by Chris Hue ‘Leave’ is a very raw and emotional song about the fear of opening yourself up to a new relationship. Being scared of getting hurt whilst also being scared of hurting the other person, a feeling that most people can relate to. Because of the minimal production, highlighting the fragile elegance of MAY’s voice, ‘Leave’ doesn’t feel like your ordinary ballad. It guides you through a wave of significant emotions, creating a cathartic-like experience. #GetMorePlays