Listen: Lose The Feeling by Jake Back x Nextlife

Jake Back appeared on BlackPlastic.co.uk last summer with the dubby, dark cacophony that was his disco infused workout, Lemme Tell You. Here some 14-months later, Back has teamed up with Nextlife to produce something quite different. Where Lemme Tell You was all about creating a feeling to get lost in, and potentially find connection through, new single Lose The Feeling is a more cerebral affair.

Opening with layered percussion and pillowy synth tones, the instrumentation falls back for a vocal that gently marinades in its own uncertainty. As the lyrics carefully lays out the individual components of a heart that is at the mid-point of breaking, depicting a growing sense of unease and uncertainty. Even if they reach an eruption, relationships never end in one moment, but through a series of small adjustments in how the participants view their futures. It’s this slow-moving demise through misalignment that Lose The Feeling so beautifully captures.

Much of the atmosphere Jake Back and Nextlife create here comes from the growing interplay between the vocals and instrumentation. As the song builds towards its central question, the lyrics are gradually wrapped up in abstract vocal harmonies and layered synths. Left sounding genuinely alone, the song ends with that question, ‘When did we both lose that feeling?’, to which there can be no satisfying answer.

The soft electronic mourning on display on Lose The Feeling reminds me of a song I haven’t revisited in years — 2011’s What I’ve Lost by Benoit & Sergio. Sung to a potential love interest, the magic of What I’ve Lost is how much it is about the hurt the past can still conjure in us. Both Benoit & Sergio, and Jack Back & Nextlife, have captured and bottled the sort of emotional experience that ultimate shapes who we become, for better or worse.

Watch: Soho House Valet by Gatlin

The new single from Florida-born musician Gatlin opens with the kind of piano refrain that Radiohead built their song Codex around. The sound hints at an emotional depth but wrapped in a kind of aloofness, the glassy sound evoking the sense of your ennui getting squeegeed off the windscreen of life. You don’t have the time to stop and unpack your emotional baggage because you’ll just end up missing your damn flight.

This is all an appropriate feeling for a song that is entirely concerned with those moments where you do, ultimately, unpack your shit. Gatlin’s piano playing might be trying to keep things moving along, but her vocal isn’t having any of it. She refuses to be silenced, describing how she is trying her best, but ultimately feels struck by a confrontation with her father ‘in front of a Soho House valet’. Gatlin goes on to acknowledge, ‘it would be more tragic if it didn’t sound so LA’. Side-note: the fact a Soho House, a kind of hipster institution born out of central London’s historic and tightly packed streets, has a valet anywhere sounds ridiculous to my ears. Perhaps that is half the point. So LA, in multiple ways.

Regardless, Gatlin briefly acknowledges , potentially, her father may have had a point, before apologising for the general discomfort caused by describing her emotional drama to us all. In an age where we are all often processing our own (sometimes self-inflicted) trauma, I think this is a common experience — back to my analogy, we are unpacking our baggage on the side of the road, causing the passing traffic so slow down and make room. It is difficult to know whether it is the self-processing here that is helping, or just the act of unveilling our deepest anxieties that enables us to move on. And with that, Gatlin’s depressed-yet-hauntingly-beautiful vocal is gradually accompanied by additional instrumentation — the reassurance of a burden shared, as a guitar, bass and eventually drums join her, carrying her emotional weight to a place where she can let it all go.

The heaviness described and depicted through Soho House Valet stems from Gatlin’s experience of being the eldest sibling, something her forthcoming debut album focuses on. Describing the song, Gatlin says:

‘I wrote Soho House Valet after my parents had come to visit my sister and I in Los Angeles and my father and I got in a fight right outside of the Soho House in Downtown LA. It was one of the most vulnerable things I’ve ever written. As the eldest daughter, I’ve always felt like I had to be strong and never burden anyone…but digging through stuff I never expected to share and then sharing this song anyway started a healing process.’

Soho House Valet is out now, and Gatlin’s debut album, The Eldest Daughtet, is due on 3 October via Dualtone Records.

Listen: I Like It Fast by Tony Pops

In case it isn’t clear, my jam is bruised falsetto vocals, clear eyed synths and warm vibes. My favourite kind of music feels like the kind of emotional security that is an invitation to just be yourself. Tony Pops’ new single, I Like It Fast, is exactly that.

Tony Pops is a multi-instrumentalist who started out drumming in bands on the East Coast, before moving into songwriting and music production in 2016. Embracing a sense of versatility, Tony is equally at home with R&B, electronic, pop and rock, and the diversity of his experience shines through in his music. Now based in Los Angeles, he has had music featured on shows across Netflix, FX, and MTV.

Opening with an Amen-style drum loop but pairing it with cool blue guitars and crisp synths, I Like It Fast is basking in light airy space from the moment it arrives. The juxtaposition of loose, stuttering percussion and a sunny electronics give the song a feeling that is both the warm sun on your face and the refreshment of cool blue water on your skin. It is a combination that feels like Tony bottled Mediterranean vacations and distilled them into something you can administer through a pair of headphones. Embracing little details, the producer twists his song back into itself, pitched vocals, a brief scream, overdubbing and glassy melodies all coming together to create something unique, detailed and absolutely thrilling.

Inspired by late nights and a reckless embrace of one’s own freedom, I feel like I Like It Fast stems from the same emotional centre that I sometimes find myself longing for. The song is described as being about ‘living fast and letting go, even when you know it might not end well’. Every so often you have to take a risk, be that in embracing the moment and cutting loose, or simply opening yourself up to experiences and people.

I Like It Fast is one of those songs that I got to live with for a few weeks before its release, and over that time I have found myself increasingly drawn to it. I like everything about it — the production, the delivery, and even the crisp, clean artwork is perfect. I know it will be on heavy rotation, particularly for those moments when I want to just let it all go, and live a little faster.

Listen: In Your Arms by Real Pleasure

Real Pleasure is the musical project of writer and producer Kevin Claxton, and here on In Your Arms we find him channeling French Touch by way of LA.

Single In Your Arms leverages a distinctive bassline and combines them with the kind of steely guitar licks that Daft Punk built their careers on. Unlike Daft Punk, however, Real Pleasure lets In Your Arms gently marinade, basking in a hook that is given plenty of space.

Inspired by small house parties in the later period of the COVID pandemic, Claxton wrote In Your Arms between 2022 and 2023. The lyrics were inspired a ‘tender group hug between friends on a living room dance floor at about 2am’, and are performed by LA-based artist Natalie Sawicki. The whole song was written by Claxton, and produced in Los Angeles, lending the song its slower, open aesthetic and a bright sunny style, yet combining it with an emotionally reflective feel.

Check out In Your Arms below, and look out for a forthcoming remix from rave outfit, Adam After Hours.

Listen: Felt by Tiberius

Tiberius was originally created as a solo project for Brendan Wright, before expanding to a rowdy Boston four-piece who specialise in the niche that Wright describes as “Farm Emo”. It is a label that suits the sound of new single, Felt, well.

Basking in the low slung stylings of slacker rock but with an anxious and damaged vocal, Felt sounds like a cross-over project between Death Cab For Cutie and Pavement. Loose drums skitter as layers of guitars gently howl, Wright’s vocals describing a moment of torture, wrestling with their own personal fear of being alone. Describing the song, Brendan says:

‘When I wrote Felt, I was fairly fresh out of a breakup and was spending a lot of time looking for distractions. Instead of tackling some bigger questions, and engaging in a healthy recovery, I was tucking away my feelings into compartments and distracting myself with casual dating. I was spending some late nights slipping into the backstories of strangers' lives - exhilarating, but merely theatrical. It never eased the issue at hand. I was alone, and I was terrified to sit with that.’

I appreciate the freewheeling and lackadaisical aesthetic on Felt, partly just because there has always been something enticing about the sound of a band operating in this way. It is like they are in slow motion, and letting things just happen, free jazz like. But the delivery also suits the subject matter here, of someone somewhat deliberately avoiding confronting what they are actually feeling.

Felt comes ahead of Tiberius’ forthcoming album, Troubadour, which is due via Audio Antihero on 14 November. Check it out below.