PICK OF THE WEEK
High Highs
Cascades (PIAS)
Good of Australian duo High Highs to release Cascades in this, the most miserable week of the year, when we all go back to work and look outside at the grey sky and go, “I am glad I made that resolution not to drink for a month.” This is like lying on a beach – not a scorching beach, but rather one of those late September beach days – as the waves are washing around you and a boy in $500 sunglasses is there, making you listen to him play the synth. Lovely.
KSI ft JME
Keep Up (Island)
This is set to be the Year of the YouTuber – when anyone dwelling in the past with their stick-in-the-mud questions such as “How does speaking quickly into the camera make money?” and “When did hyperactivity oust charm” will finally die – and now one of them, KSI, has branched out and done a song with grime MC JME about how good it is being on YouTube and having a Lamborghini. It’s basically just very loud boasting. But, hey, what do I know? I am pencilled in to be murdered by KSI on 23 March, the day I publicly utter the words, “How did this YouTuber get a book deal, though? What’s it about? Where am I?”
NERO
Into The Night (MTA)
Don’t know if you’re looking to soundtrack a football skills video – Gheorghe Hagi’s 15 best headers, something like that – but if you are you should check out Into The Night. Nero are one of those bands you’ve never heard of unless you’ve ever Googled “I have listened to every Skrillex song and now need to listen to something that is almost, but not quite, Skrillex”, but here they are, on their third album, releasing the kind of single you imagine the last remaining techno goths all have really strong emotions to. And good on them.
David Bowie
Lazarus (Sony)
Listening to this, David Bowie’s upcoming single from his 25th studio album, is a disconcerting affair, because basically it’s a really good, unmistakeably Bowie-y song. And that’s wrong. You’re 69 now, Bowie! Just phone it in, mate! Do a Starman (2016 remix) with KSI shouting “Keep up” over the top and be done with it! Stop innovating, you maniac! But instead we have Lazarus: moody, thrumming art-rock that you can almost hear the demon Bowie sold his soul to in exchange for eternal youth whispering over the top of.
Africaine 808
Balla Balla (Golf Channel)
Africaine 808 are a Berlin-based production duo comprising of Dirk Leyers and Nomad, two halves of the Closer Musik project, as we’re all keenly aware. And that’s basically all you need to know about Balla Balla: it’s very “I am listening to a Berlin-based production duo, right now, and they are two halves of another extremely Berlin-sounding project that came before that”. The top line is that it’s west African samples mixed with a Jamie xx-version-of-house vibe, but with distinct overtones of “having a poppers heart attack within the walls of a teutonic sex club”. In a good way.
