Still Parade – 07:41

A project initially clouded in mystery and intrigue, Niklas Kramer’s musical venture Still Parade grew in recognition throughout 2013 with their soft, dream-folk rock sound. After various stints playing at an array of summer festivals in Europe, however, the Berlin-based Kramer began to experiment with new soundscapes and techniques upon receiving a new tape recorder as a gift from his father. It marked a change in stylistic direction for the German producer, trading fully-equipped professional studios for the minimalistic surroundings of his own bedroom acoustics. Now, Still Parade retains the dreamy aspect of previous releases in new track “07:41,” but the presence of prominent guitars are replaced by more experimental-sounding efforts, and shimmering synths emerge in the absence of folkish instrumentation. Kramer’s vocals ride the atmospheric currents smoothly, but his lyrics are not the focal point; rather, the production of the sound is to be taken as a whole, a pop dissonance tied in with a lofty and galactic feel.

Read the rest of this article at Stereogum

London based Tom Misch dropped a new single called “Twinkle Twinkle”. With some awesome harp action and a Kaytranada style beat, the young producer is testing out new grounds. The upbeat and melodic vibe is not new for Tom, but if you’ve been following his Twitter feed, the wish to find a way to recreate a Kaytra-style beat has been on his mind for some time. The result is absolute killer and thus it is nearly impossible to sit or stand still while listening to the track.

Read the rest of this article at Music You Wanna Listen To

Brolin – Kingston

Two years on from stepping out with a mask and a healthy dose of mystery, Yorkshire-based producer Brolin is putting it all on the table with debut album ‘The Delta’.

Soul lines every seam of his first work (out 30th October), and it’s the complete opposite of an anonymity-first, smoke and mist affair. Standing out is ‘Kingston’, an emotion-drenched but neat, clever take, highlighting the newcomer’s expert spin on pop. There’s drama around every corner, strings backing his moody vocal, but peering through the clouds is enough light to put a spring in its step.

Read the rest of this article at DIY Magazine

Back in February, Antony Hegarty announced that she was changing her name to ANOHNI and working on a new album called HOPELESSNESS with two very different electronic music producers, Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. Today, she shared the project’s first single, “4 DEGREES,” along with a brief message:

In solidarity with the climate conference in Paris,
giving myself a good hard look,
not my aspirations but my behaviors,
revealing my insidious complicity.

It’s a whole new world.

Let’s be brave and tell the truth as much as we can.

Anohni x

Read the rest of this article at Stereogum

BAMBOO is a sublime new project from Nick Carlisle (of Peepholes, Don’t Argue) and Rachel Horwood (of Trash Kit, Halo Halo). Their music is vivid and deeply poignant, locking into a magnetic attraction between between Rachel’s flawlessly resonant folk cadence and Nick’s pristine synth pop production. Far from being a one off, or dare we say side-project, BAMBOO is very much a fully realised pursuit, with the band working on multiple records simultaneously from their Brighton and London base camps. ‘Prince Pansori Priestess’ is the first album to see the light from this pairing of talents.  ‘Prince Pansori Priestess’ was recorded between spring 2014 to spring 2015, this was before the band expanded to a four piece for live performances, showcasing BAMBOO as a very original duo with a sound-world very much their own. The title references a Korean genre of musical storytelling alongside notions of majesty and faith that are all streams that weave their way through the record.

Read the rest of this article at Upset The Rhythm

Scott Weiland: Rock’s Greatest Poseur

When my grandma died, my dad inherited her house and, along with it, a shitty crimson Oldsmobile sedan. Legend had it my grandma paid extra to have the air conditioning REMOVED from the sedan because she didn’t care for it. That was the car I got to drive to my busboy job and back every summer when I was home from college. The Oldsmobile had a tape deck, and I always had to max out the volume when I was driving so that the music could out-muscle the noise of the wind whipping through the open windows (again, no air conditioning).

I had a black Case Logic tape case sitting in the passenger seat, the kind of tape case that looked really sharp back in the ’80s and early ’90s. I pictured myself owning a sweet condo in Miami and having that tape case resting on one of my many manly-looking bookshelves to impress the womenfolk. Inside I had all kinds of rock goodies like Metallica and GNR and Alice in Chains and Sugar and whatnot. I wore them all out, including—yep—my copy of Purple, the second album from Stone Temple Pilots. I sang along to the whole thing. I got all fired up for the zipper guitars of “Vasoline” and then I would get all sensitive and sweet for “Still Remains” and “Interstate Love Song.” I sang those songs to all my imaginary girlfriends. They were way impressed.

Another memory: boarding school. We lived in an all-boys dorm with a single television down in the common room. More often than not, that TV was always tuned to MTV, and then we would argue about whether the video playing was worth a shit or not. This was back in 1992, when hair metal was giving way to grunge and the Big Four of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, AIC, and Soundgarden were taking over the channel. Stone Temple Pilots wedged themselves into the rotation jussssst after those bands came along, so when “Plush” hit, everyone in the room was like, “Hey! That guy is imitating Eddie Vedder!”

Read the rest of the story at GQ

Why the death of rock (not the digital age) is the NME’s worst enemy

At a point in life when I was done with boyhood but had not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to land a staff job on the New Musical Express. I was 22 years old and raw as sashimi. Then I stepped through the back of the wardrobe into a drug-soaked Narnia.

If I was young for my age – and I had never seen a woman pee until I joined the NME  and went on the road with a band – then my colleagues, just a few years older, were world-weary sophisticates who had done it all twice and got bored with it the first time. On my first day, the journalist chain-smoking in the review room told me he was feeling a bit rough as he had just spent the weekend with “Keith”. Another told me that his friend “David” had been round to his pad where they had spent the night playing Stax, Motown and Atlantic soul records. And if I understood immediately that “Keith” had a day job playing lead guitar for The Rolling Stones then it took me a while to realise that “David” was Bowie.

My colleagues did not just write about rock stars. They stayed up all night with them. On my first trip to the printers, they passed me a joint so powerful that I melted. But then these boys had spliffed-up with Marley – or “Bob”, as they all knew him. My colleagues were so cool that they wore dark glasses in Camden Town’s Dingwalls, even if it meant bumping into tables and sending someone’s Tequila Sunrise flying. I did my best to catch up and soon I had Iggy Pop sitting on my desk and Debbie Harry on line one. I was staying up for three days and nights in a row, that point when the amphetamine turns to mescaline in your liver and you start to see things. Before long I was as full of myself as everyone else up there.

Read the rest of the story at GQ

50 Years of ‘Rubber Soul’: How the Beatles Invented the Future of Pop

Happy 50th birthday to Rubber Soul, the album where the Beatles became the Beatles. It was the most out-there music they’d ever made, but also their warmest, friendliest and most emotionally direct. As soon as it dropped in December 1965, Rubber Soul cut the story of pop music in half — we’re all living in the future this album invented. Now as then, every pop artist wants to make a Rubber Soulof their own. “Finally we took over the studio,” John Lennon told Rolling Stone‘s Jann S. Wenner in 1970. “In the early days, we had to take what we were given, we didn’t know how you could get more bass. We were learning the technique on Rubber Soul. We were more precise about making the album, that’s all, and we took over the cover and everything.”

Rubber Soul was the album where the moptops grew up. It was also where they were smoking loads of weed, so all through these songs, wild humor and deep emotion go hand in hand, like George Harrison and cowboy hats. (No rock star has ever looked less stupid in a cowboy hat than George on the back cover.) In addition to everything else it is, Rubber Soul is their best sung album. You can have a great time just focusing on the background vocals: Paul McCartney’s harmonies on “Norwegian Wood” are as rugged as John ever sounded, while John’s backup vocals to “Drive My Car” and “You Won’t See Me” prove he could come on as cute as Paul. It will always be my favorite Beatle record — even if Revolver is actually a little better. (I’ve made my peace with that contradiction.)

Read the rest of the story at Rollingstone