Jamie Woon Returns With “Sharpness”

It’s been four years since London singer Jamie Woon’s last release, Mirrorwriting, but today he’s back with a new single. Well, sort of — Pharrell and Disclosure both played “Sharpness” during radio shows recently, unbeknownst to Woon’s team. The track’s electronic R&B leanings land it within James Blake’s idea of true dubstep rather than thefrat-noise misrepresentation of the genre. It’s tenderly soulful, like an exposed wound: “Everyday is the day that you save me/light into darkness/cut on the sharpness of love.” Woon meanders through an uncharted land of damaged lovers. Listen to Woon’s matured R&B sound.

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Having recently made a series of UK live appearances, including performances at Manchester International festival and London’s Field Day festival, DeMarco will return in September for a number of headline shows. These include two dates in London, plus gigs in Glasgow, Bristol and Birmingham. He will also play End Of The Road festival and Manchester’s Beacons Metro festival.

Speaking late last year, Mac DeMarco said that recording his third album ‘Salad Days’ stopped him from “being a little butthole”. Discussing the change in tone between 2012 studio LP ‘2’ and this year’s offering, DeMarco cites touring as the main inspiration: “I didn’t have anything to be frustrated about before, but for this record it was ‘touring is pretty sweet, but it’s slowly killing me with all the alcohol and it’s pretty insane’.”

Continuing to explain how he translated these feelings into reasonably upbeat songs, the Canadian musician went on to say that it pushed him “out of the slump”. “This record’s purpose was to bring the spirits up. It did for me, take all this stuff you’re feeling and then pop yourself out of the slump,” he said. “When I’m complaining, it starts off like, ‘Oh boy, I’m tired’, but then halfway through the songs the chorus comes in like, ‘Shut up you little prick, you’re able to go round the world playing shows!’ I’m stopping myself being a little butthole.”

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Rabit and Strict Face release split single on Different Circles: stream ‘Tearz’

Both tunes have frequently appeared in Mumdance’s Rinse shows and club sets. Rabit’s ‘Tearz’ takes the zero-gravity aesthetic of Different Circles’ Weightless Volume 1 release and coats it in red, with a schlocky 80s feel that’s somewhere between Castlevania and Cop Land. Strict Face’s ‘Into Stone’ is more romantic: in Mumdance’s words, “it has a real innocence and sense of brooding about it, which reminded me of when I first heard Functions On The Low by XTC.”

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We’ve sang praises for Icelandic music many times before, and with the just-released self-titled EP from singer-songwriter Júníus Meyvant, we’ve more music from the island to give our attention to. From said four-track EP comes “Signals”, our favorite track of the bunch, and with it, we see echoed our love for the land’s wholesome folk sound. It really stands out with its epic-sounding string sections, cascading, layered synths, and click-clacking percussion, however, and we think that you’ll enjoy it on account of all that it has to bring. is more than capable of steadying “Deuce” on his own.

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If prolific Fife folk singer King Creosote’s last major collaboration, with Jon Hopkins on Diamond Mine in 2011, earned him a Mercury prize nomination, his new one should win garlands from Scotland’s pro-independence lobby. From Scotland With Love, an audio-visual project for the cultural festival that accompanied Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games, had director Virginia Heath scouring the Scottish Screen Archive for footage of mid-20th-century life and industry. Creosote (AKA Kenny Anderson) then wrote a soundtrack of songs for the documentary, inventing lives and stories around these grainy faces snatched from history.

Played in full along to the 90-minute film, an old world gleams anew. Antique double-decker trams traverse the monochrome streets of Partick to the strains of a winsome accordion. Flat-capped shipbuilders hammer out the support struts of transport ships to a pounding drumbeat. There’s even, set to a stirring Celtic crescendo, rare black-and-white footage of Scottish football fans celebrating.

We’ve sang praises for Icelandic music many times before, and with the just-released self-titled EP from singer-songwriter Júníus Meyvant, we’ve more music from the island to give our attention to. From said four-track EP comes “Signals”, our favorite track of the bunch, and with it, we see echoed our love for the land’s wholesome folk sound. It really stands out with its epic-sounding string sections, cascading, layered synths, and click-clacking percussion, however, and we think that you’ll enjoy it on account of all that it has to bring..

Read the rest of this article at The Guardian