Sorry – Showgirl
“We would traverse any sector of London to see Sorry play — even west!” local band and fellow members of the scene coming up through Brixton’s The Windmill, Shame, told i-D last year. “They are not here to impress anyone or write songs they feel would give the A&Rs in the crowd a boner, they are here because music is truly their passion.” What a lovely testimony! Wholeheartedly agreeing with the sentiment, we asked the foursome to play our stage at The Great Escape tomorrow and (thankfully!) they agreed.
Like a lot of the best bands, founding Sorry members Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen (both in their early 20s) were childhood best friends. Having joined forces with Lincoln Barrett on drums and Campbell Baum on bass, they’ve since signed to Domino and — a lifetime of making DIY home movies coming in very handy — have so far released two visual mixtapes. The latest, Home Demo/ns Vol II, came just two months ago, inviting fans to fully immerse themselves in all things Sorry.
Aside from the mixtapes, grungy single 2 Down 2 Dance got us truly hooked back in February. Intelligent and visceral, it knowingly flirts with the realities of depression and almost definitely helped to bag them a support slot on the Sunflower Bean tour they just came off.
Today we’re stoked to give you an exclusive first look at the video for Showgirl, a new single about “awkwardness, lusting from afar, desire and disgust” produced by Frank Ocean and James Blake collaborator Sean Oakley. Shot by Johnny Goddard, it’s all shadow play, bad wigs and dark rooms illuminated by a red glow — simultaneously giving us flashbacks of both Twin Peaks and Goosebumps. Dark. To celebrate the release, we quizzed Louis and Asha on their first impressions of each other, their TGE rollercoaster plans and how much we’d have to pay them to live at The Windmill and never leave again.
Read the rest of this article at i-D
Chromatics – Black Walls
One-third of the way into the video for “Black Walls,” vocalist Ruth Radelet can be seen holding up a copy of a cracked vinyl album. The image should be sweet torture for Chromatics fans. Last year, claims surfaced that Johnny Jewel, the project’s label head and production guru, had destroyed every physical copy of Dear Tommy, the new Chromatics album that was first announced almost four years ago. A promotional photo for the group’s suitably eerie appearances on “Twin Peaks: The Return” even teased a broken Dear Tommy LP. They’ve dashed our expectations time and again, and this new single—which coincides with official word that the follow-up to Chromatics’ staggering 2012 effort Kill for Love is now due out in the fall—asks us to take the risk of crushing disappointment once more.
“Black Walls,” though, almost makes all broken promises worth it. Absent from previous Dear Tommy tracklists, despite the fact that the long-delayed album was purportedly going to be the same as the obliterated version (except “better”), the song is quintessential Chromatics. With frosty vocals, urgent guitars, ominous synths, and crisp beats, all within a sumptuously designed soundscape, it finds Chromatics concocting a gorgeous new version of themselves that feels the same but also somehow reborn. They’re “turn[ing] water into wine,” perhaps, as Radelet sings, in the haunting lyrics. Later in the video, which has the neon glow of a ’90s glamour shot if it were set in a retro sci-fi dystopia, the camera drifts across a vinyl record by one of Jewel’s other groups, Glass Candy. This feels like a reminder that Jewel hasn’t actually been gone at all. Maybe it’s Chromatics who’ve been waiting for us.
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Pusha T – If You Know You Know
Since his days in Clipse, Pusha-T has been mastering the punchy album opener. He knows exactly how to set the tone for his coke rap epics. His new Kanye West-produced album, Daytona, kickstarts with the sublime “If You Know You Know,” a grand reintroduction to his gaudy lifestyle, his incredibly brusque and thrilling raps, and his off-white world.
Half the intrigue of Pusha-T songs now is that the one-time Virginian smuggler is still coming up with such amazing coke parallels. “If You Know You Know” is his most forceful rapping since he had his brother standing beside him. It’s easy to catch a contact high; not from his loaded memories of moving nose candy but from his supreme hustler’s confidence. Most of Pusha’s one-liners are clever on their own; the message never changes but neither does the conviction.
Pusha is an audacious and pitiless victor: “Dance contest for the smokers/I predict snow, Al Roker/I only ever looked up to Sosa,” he spits, still empathizing with villians in his narcotic fantasy where the smartest (and most unapologetic) corner boys become kingpins and sophisticates. He keeps living out his rise on a loop, as if trying to savor every second. “If you know you know,” he reiterates, shrugging off the cycle you’ve stepped into once more. As Pusha-T again asserts command over his dominion here, it’s hard not to be impressed by his ability to keep making the same powerful first impression.
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The Pump Girls – Get On It (Pump Boys Edit)
he Rye Wax homies are back at it with the fourth offering on their label West Friends. Since the imprint was dreamed up in the basement of the Peckham record shop and venue last year, they’ve been peddling the family vibes through their releases from FYI Chris, Medlar, Tom Blip and Ishmael.
Maintaining that local ethos, the first instalment of 2018 also marks the beginning of a new VA series titled Simply The West. Our pick of the bunch is the Pump Boys edit of Pump Girls’ weirdo hip-house stomper that brings the tempo down a notch, adding hypnotic notes and tropical rhythms to create an altogether trance-inducing cut.
Read the rest of this article at Stamp The Wax
MIKE – POSEIDON
Listening to New York City’s teenage rap wunderkind MIKE, you often get the sense that his observational songs are all about searching for meaning. “I know I’m doing something, don’t know what it is,” he rapped on May God Bless Your Hustle’s “Forever Find Flight.” His half-muttered soliloquies are performed as if just out of earshot, personal musings unpacking a benign existence in a big city. He’s feeling for a light in the dark, and stumbling on an unpretentious sort of epiphany in the process. “Poseidon,” a hookless one-off that won’t appear on his upcoming album, Black Soap, is among his most gripping yet self-effacing tracks, finding purpose in living up to expectations, honoring promises, and simply providing for others.
Fittingly, if not facetiously or ironically, tagged “#R&B & Soul” on SoundCloud, “Poseidon” deals with matters of the soul itself, along with the struggle of being, using those genres as touchstones for a rap confessional. MIKE’s earnest lyrics linger amid radiant keys, stirring, disembodied vocals, and pattering drums. “Soon as one entrance close I’m headed for another door/Can’t see my brother poor/Why would I get a day job? I can juug for more,” he raps. He can be remarkably expressive in only a few words and he compares his mastery of flows to that of the epic Greek water god: “I’m Poseidon and my trident gold/I control the waves and you ride the boat.” MIKE’s baritone raps ebb and flow calmly, as he seeks solace through his preternatural talents. Where many MIKE songs depict a young man lost at sea, “Poseidon” spots salvation off in the distance.
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