Everything Is Recorded – Show Love (Feat. Syd & Sampha)
Before Richard Russell was at the head of XL Records, he was a DJ in London’s rave scene and one-part of a scrappy electronic duo called Kicks Like a Mule. He garnered fame with a short-lived radio hit, a punky drum ’n’ bass track called “The Bouncer.” Recently, he’s stepped away from day-to-day operations of XL to work on his own music under the name Everything Is Recorded. Earlier this year, he released an EP called Close But Not Quitewhich recruited his label’s roster of artists to give a sampler of Russell’s wide musical interests—he offered everything from soul to techno on the project. He’s still clarifying the vision his EP started to sketch, and his new single “Show Love,” with the R&B singers Sampha and Syd bears some of the DIY spirit of his past work.
Partially, that comes from the muffled, demo-quality sound of “Show Love.” While this might point to messiness, in the hands of Russell, that roughness turns out to be sophisticated and affecting. The grainy singing offered by both Sampha and Syd sounds achingly personal, as if their lines about “growing up with no love” is delivered in the lonesome confines of a bedroom to a cheap laptop mic. As producer, Russell crafts a ramshackle drum machine beat, its blunt and machinic thud releasing flecks of static. The cold metallic feeling reflects nicely off the heated and emotional tenor of Sampha and Syd’s performance. The contrast draws out something more pained and confessional in their voices. “Show Love,” is so far, the most emotional song Russell has made as Everything Is Recorded. Working in that mode, he’s landed on the raw nerve his past songs only tried to.
Atlanta’s Danger Incorporated released their ‘WORLD WIDE WEB’ EP last Halloween, as if the soured, analogue beats didn’t already scream spooky mischief. It took the hedonistic rap of Yung Lean and the Weeknd and torched the ugliest parts. Their Awful Records debut hones these messy bangers into something more distinct, with churning choruses and fuller production. Louis Duffelbags sings in a twisted barbershop croon, every multi-tracked vocal screaming for your attention; Boothlord’s bars are gruff and decaying, more for jolts of energy than for lyrics, which are knowingly shallow, dealing in disconnection and intoxication.
Some call them the sound of the future, but frankly, they’re the sound of the past five years. The darkest sides of trap and cloudrap are soaked into every beat, and at points it becomes hard to draw feeling from these familiar sadboy mantras. ‘Birds Fly By Night’ crams a lot into 22 minutes though. It’s at its best when threatening to crumble, like on the vocal climax on ‘Downtown’, or Booths’ rabid verse on ‘Packed My Bag’. They’ll do well at house parties and graveyards.
It’s been six years since the intense, serious retro-futurist John Maus released his bleak, heavy album We Must Become Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves. And after teasing new music, Maus has now announced that he’ll release a new LP called Screen Memories this fall. Maus took time off of music to finish his doctorate in political philosophy, and he’s also been spending time making his own modular synths. He wrote and recorded the new album at home in Minnesota, and its first single is “The Combine,” a dark song about waiting to be chopped up by a combine harvester. Its video, directed by Tina Rivera, is a lo-fi, psychedelic vision of farmlands being harvested.
It’s always nice when good people create wonderful art together.
That much is a given, a general truism. So when The Twilight Sad’s James Graham, SAY Award-winning quine Kathryn Joseph, and producer Marcus Mackay went into the studio Clash could be forgiven for getting a little excited.
New collaborative project Out Lines brings the three together, with new album ‘Conflats’ set to emerge on October 27th via Rock Action.
Brooding new track ‘Buried Guns’ is online now, and that wheezing, droning accordion feels as though it were hewn from Scottish granite.
Kathryn Joseph’s voice intermingles with James Graham’s delivery, the track build into something quietly intense, unexpectedly epic.
It’s something that takes a little time to drift under your skin, but when it does the impact is devastating.
