Watch: Electric Carfé — Mflux & Kiku

Sat at 124bpm, Electric Carfé, is placed at the point of intersection between dancing and relaxing, creating the kind of progressive electronic music designed to lose yourself to, emotionally.

With a layered sound, Mflux combines deep, dark bass sounds, melodic synths and piano to create a sophisticated, clean sound. Having worked together with The Bass Rangers, Mflux has partnered with Kiku here, on Electric Carfé.

Kiku elevates the song with a vocal that paints a picture against the scene created by Mflux’s production work. That vocal is used very sparingly — just establishing the song at the beginning, before the instrumentation takes over.

The video depicts a late night drive through a city, shot in time-lapse, as Electric Carfé slowly builds. The video has a kaleidoscopic aesthetic to it, gradually transitioning through a series of visual motifs that create the sense of humanity moving through urban environments. The result is somewhat transcendental — an experience as much as a piece of music.

Listen: Softspoken Eyes — Sofi Gev

Having caught my attention last year with her wonderful cover of Bat For Lashes beautiful Laura, Sofi Gev is back with a new single in the form of Softspoken Eyes.

Softspoken Eyes blossoms with an organic-feeling blur of clicks and crackling instrumentation. Layered percussion and glitchy synth work provides texture to what is otherwise a distinctly naturalistic sound, guitars gently plucked as Gev’s vocal harmonies quiver in the air.

As the song progresses, Sofi hits upon a central vocal, layering vocals atop of one another. “Swallow the evidence”, she repeats, as she depicts the feeling of being infatuated with someone… An extreme desire to form a deeper connection becoming its own barrier, which only deepens the obsession.

The sophisticated layering and naturalistic aesthetic Gev deploys on Softspoken Eyes reminds me of the early work of Sia’s Colour The Small One, combined with the electronic-influenced folksy sounds of Norwegian musician Magnet. Regardless, Sofi has carved out an affecting and beautiful sound.

Watch: BOSS (Jonathan Snipes Remix) — Bloods

Australian garage punk trio Bloods unveiled their third full-length studio album, Together, Baby! back in September, and it is the kind of playful sound that reminds me of the wonderful Be Your Own Pet (who recently reunited and just released a new single).

BOSS is a thrilling assertion of riot grrrl energy that culminates in vocalist MC’s shouty performance transitioning into a joyful celebration of being female and in charge.

On 5 May, Bloods will release the expanded Together, Baby! Deluxe edition, which will feature two new remixes of tracks from the album alongside an acoustic version of Southern Light. One is a remix of ¡Radical!, by Ernesto el Defensor, and the other is the remix of BOSS that we experience here.

The remix of BOSS is a transformation of the original as Jonathan Snipes, of experimental hip hop outfit clipping., gives the track a makeover. The result is a grimy, post-punk influenced slice of taught electronic grunge. Guitars and tight 909-powered drums give this remix of BOSS the feeling of determined, sharp elbows. Elsewhere, Snipes deploys heavy reverb and unexpected clipped edits to give this an immersive, disorientating feel.

Describing the process of remixing the song, Snipes says:

“I love it when a great rock song can become a great dance track. Taking loose and raw punk performances and hard quantizing them to a grid is missing the point in the most glorious way. Chaotic energy ordered in metronomic time. The tyranny of techno imposed on lawlessness. I tried to add my own flavors of chaos and disorder, using some very unpredictable Max/MSP patches which take over the sequencing of the remix from time to time. All the sounds you hear in the remix are from the original track, with the exception of the Roland TR-909 drum machine. How could I resist? It's dance music, after all.”

To which front-woman MC adds:

“…I’ve been such a fan of clipping.’s approach to music making, and to hear Jonathan put his stamp on our sound was the collab you never knew you needed! It’s just so damn fun and cinematic — it feels like Michelle Rodriguez walking away from an explosion or a Michelle Rodriguez led car chase scene. If this song were a person, it would be Michelle Rodriguez.”

The combination of styles here reminds me of Evil Nine, whose late 00s jaunt into punky territory produced the wonderfully kitsch album They Live!, followed by an absolute gem of a mixtape in the form of Root Of All Evil. It makes me nostalgic for a time when there was a little more friction and tension at the intersection and overlap of genres.

Anyhow, for the moment we can put that nostalgia aside, and revel in the creativity on display here, both in Bloods’ original, and Snipes’ wonderful remix.

Watch: Taco Truck (Oh, wtf?) — Munnycat

Channeling the kind of eclectic vibrancy popularised by the likes of Kero Kero Bonito and the pop creativity of Charli XCX, Munnycat perform the kind of pop music that hits you like a truck. Probably one full of tacos. Catchy melodies sway against a percussion track that kicks hard, whilst blissful vocal harmonies give the song a candy-like feel.

Based in LA, Munnycat are duo K808 and Khaledzou, and they have been releasing a regular drip feed of singles over recent months. Taco Truck (Oh, wtf?) is the latest of those releases and, discussing the song, the band members provide two different insights into the creative process:

K808:

“It’s a song about the excitement and joy of falling in love with someone in a very unusual place. There’s like two different voices in the song representing the different parts of your mind when you first meet someone and reeeeeaaally like them. One part is trying to play it cool like ‘okay, he’s cute and stuff’ and the other is like ‘holy shit - this is love! Let’s get married and have tons of babies!’ It’s a delicate balance trying to maintain chill when you’ve met someone who instantly blows you way.”

Khaledzou:

“We wrote the song when we were recording in Portland. We were fascinated by the incredible food-truck culture there. We would wander around in the rain writing and coming up with new song ideas trying food from different trucks everyday. It was kind of magical. All of the songs we did there have unique sounds from the crazy amount of analog keyboards, samplers and stuff we had at our fingertips.”

I love how energised Taco Truck feels, perfectly capturing both the eclectic aesthetic of the food truck scene, and that chaotic energy that comes with falling for someone new.

Check out Taco Truck (Oh, wtf?) below:

Watch: 140 — Divorce Court

Opening with celestial piano chords and a weightless vocal, 140 initially occupies a dream-like space, free from the bounds of earth’s gravitational field. A low slung analogue synth styled bass line comes in during the second minute, and the contrast introduced by the song’s percussion and bass gives Divorce Court’s new single an even more orbital feeling.

The use of synths and reverb here reminds me of the work of Com Truise. Rather than embracing the straight lines of electronics, however, here the sound is blended with the kind of dream pop vibes more commonly found in the work of Washed Out, Toro y Moi and Tame Impala.

Divorce Court is the artistic vision of musician Lynden Williams, and 140 is the first single to be lifted from his forthcoming record Two Hours. According to Williams, the album “is about beginning to heal my inner child through my journey with psychedelics and therapy, without directly saying those things.”

The inner child feels like a theme reflected in 140’s music video too, which depicts Williams surrounded by children, who ultimate cover him in face paint as he belts out the song’s closing climatic chorus. It is a visual that reflects the emotional experience of being separate and isolated from the world around you — absorbed in your internal thoughts and feelings.

All in all, 140 has a healing beauty to it. Check out the video below, and look out for Two Hours, set for release on 8 July 2023.