"Definitely and I think when it came to writing as well with One Direction, […] him and Harry were like, you know, they really kinda steered the directions of the songs I think. Which is quite cool because you can definitely see it as they come out the back end that both their solo careers are pretty massive &, though the rest of them have definitely smashed it as well. But I just feel like they are definitely the two like, main heads of One Direction."
-Callum Wilson from the Snuts on Louis and Harry’s writing in One Direction. (28 June 2022)
It was Freedom Fry’s infectious and disarming folk pop that first enraptured us early in our love affair with the French-American duo’s indie offerings, but it’s their more groovy and psychedelic offerings of late that have amplified our affection and strengthened our devotion to Bruce Driscoll and Marie Seyrat’s ever unpredictable stream of fine music. The pair are preparing to release their Strange Attraction EP this month, and the alt-folk duo have shared a funky swinging, disco pulsating new tune named Party Down alongside a new music video, too. We’re more than ready to party down to the funky strutting, spacey sashaying jam, which reminds me of some of fellow Los Angeles indie partnership POWERS’ earlier singles, with a 70′s alt-folk twist. “Party Down is a song about getting through the grind of your daily life and wanting to make the good times last longer – having the foresight when you’re in a good moment to realize that once it’s over you’re going to miss it,” Freedom Fry comments. “We were playing with synths as lead elements, which we haven’t done very much as a band. We wanted the beat to feel like a cross between Michael Jackson and the more danceable songs by The Clash. Once that was in place the rest of it just came together.” Once Strange Attraction arrives on September 7th, Freedom Fry will be bringing their ever endearing, always kinetic live show to Los Angeles on September 9th at the Sunstock Solar Music Festival. Revisit the Los Angeles based duo’s prior singles on Soundcloud, here.
“Oh a hundred percent, definitely a hundred percent. The crowds honestly like, they make you feel so confident of what you’re doing because it is like they will lose it to like, nearly everything they’ll be, it feels almost like beetlemania, and like you were going into the hotel and there was like a thousand people outside the hotel just screaming waiting on the bus like for anybody like tour managers like […] like anybody was getting a [...] Jordan was smoking a cigarette outside the airport, […] and the fan ran up grabbed it and put it in a bag and then ran away. Do you know what I mean, it was, it was wild. And Louis can party. Like he can proper, I’m not joking, like, see before they go on they’ll just be in the dressing room and they got all these mad drinking games, so they’ll just be like […] people just going around like smashing like ten shots before they go on. Everybody absolutely wrecked. And then afterwards we kinda went back and partied with him at his hotel. And he’s just constant shot, shot, shot, shot, but it was really nice actually getting to break it down with him. Because he’s kinda like a Rockstar that’s one thing, you know you spend all that time in One Direction and it’s like, it’s a massive part of his life, but you can see that the direction he wants to go is definitely more left field to that. And […] like he, like he fucking sits in his house and just has a smoke and plays guitar and that’s just like, do you know what I mean he just, he’s just a normal guy. But it was really, it was quite inspirational going out with him because it just shows you what crowds can be like. And it shows you what, what you can have if you work hard enough.”
-Callum Wilson from The Snuts on Louis and being on tour. (28 June 2022)
And so, on from part 1, we continue. This is more dreamy synth-dub that sits perfectly next to the Harrow album: Richard Norris is another artist with an extraordinarily long and illustrious career but who also has never lost the exploratory urge and total delight in sonic finesse.
Honestly Uruguayan-in-Ireland Lila Tirando a Violeta is right up there with the very best of the "deconstructed club" generation - dark, gothic, complex, VERY WEIRD - and this collab with Berliner Sin Maldita is up there with her best. It's really, REALLY intense!
Just impossibly beautiful elegies from ambient harpist Mary Lattimore which builds towards the final track collaboration with Slowdive's Rachel Goswell that is so lovely it will single handedly bring back swooning as a popular pastime.
Officially an EP but there's enough here to cement Nia Archives's place as a heavyweight - add "Off Wiv Ya Headz" and that Jorja Smith remix, and she's had a humdinger of a 2023....
Saw some discourse suggesting that Burna Boy is resting on his laurels here, but I don't hear it. Maybe it's the fact that the cover looks dashed-off? But musically, this bangs: it expertly joins so many dots but keeps his voice and personality right at the heart of it.
I mean come on there was no way a collab between Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist was going to be anything but good, right? Just purest essence of deep and dreamy stoner hip hop. Yet another small (27min) but beautifully formed album - definitely a trend there.
Feels kind of (literally) sacrilegious to say I prefer Cleo Sol's more personal, less scriptural records (e.g. Rose in the Dark) - and this is, top to bottom, a gospel album - but the conviction to her performance and the whole realisation of it here is still really magical.
From Coventry via Skopje, man like NOT_MDK's first album in 23 years, and he's zooming into the deep flows that join grime and dubstep into the longer, deeper electronic funk continuum... These tracks are so crisp and crunchy!
She's from Turkey but Ahu's been plugged into the London Plastic People / NTS / etc scene for years - file this with Yazmin Lacey and similar LDN soul-jazz, also it's very Boho and vibesy and incensey, definitely one to light your best candles for.
Can't remember who put me on to this, possibly Radio 3? Anyway if cold wet misty Scottish hillsides are your jam Claire M Singer has you covered - these slower-than-slowly unfolding organ-led pieces practically smell of wet moss, and are extremely beautiful.
He's lent vocals to a who's who of electronic music, but it turns out Paul St Hilaire's own studio craft is the equal of just about any of them - this is just a stunning, ocean-deep album of dub abstraction and subtly potent lyricism.
Icelander Eva Jóhannsdóttir aka EVA808 has already made a name in the dubstep/grime world but this is her really spreading her creative wings. Mad psychedelia, elemental abstraction, movie-theme composition - there's not much she can't do. Big things beckon!
There's still SO much to say about amapiano, and so much incredible UK, SA and wider world stuff last year (this isn't even the only great DJ Maphorisa album - he had THREE out in 2023, including a mini album with Shino Kikai and a 25-track one with fellow originator Kabza De Small!!). Suffice to say this has gorgeous songs, primal grooves, endlessly sophisticated mixdowns and bass that'll take your breath away.
Just gonna link to my review for this one (it's got the music embedded) - but TL;DR Darren J Cunningham aka Actress is the holy prophet of the era of enshittification, yet for all that his music is constantly "off" and made for a world that is "off", he alchemises it into real gold.
Yeah I'm going to be THAT space-jazz hipster and say this is the record I wish Andre3000 (who is on it, and Carlos Niño co-produced his album) had made. It's just a more lavish, free, FUN way to cavort with the five-dimensional fractal machine elves.
Zoning in on the platonic breakbeat mathematics that underly Jersey / B'more club Chicago hip house, UK rave, trip hop etc, Bored Lord could seem arch or retro if her beats weren't so gloriously functional and bumping.
Fed up of generic records? You will never EVER find another one that sounds like IFS MA. Polish abstract slightly Autechre-y footwork / drum'n'bass with Japanese rapper MA sounding like a cyborg beat poet Taliban Trim and I.... 🤯
Every man jack and their dog are doing high bpm retro rave lately but you can trust Meemo Comma to put a fresh and uneasy twist on it. These tracks will get you proper buzzing up loud! I got to DJ for her live performance of this at Spiritland earlier in the year, hearing them on that system was a real treat.
You get a twofer with this one. Phil Kieran's ode to Belfast is gorgeous in studio form here, but he also recorded and released a version with the Ulster Orchestra that single handedly revivifies the idea of electronic music done classical style!
Two true underground troupers teaming up here - Jordan GCZ from Juju & Jordash and David "Move D" Moufang with some otherworldly good-dream ambient, deep house and space-soul jams heavy on the Fender Rhodes, fuzzy reverberation and sensually sweeping portamento.
My musical safe place for so much of this year. Brooklyn "electronic jam band" Purelink somehow burrowed into electronic music history and found the softest, happiest, warmest fur lined chamber and then invited us in. I cannot emphasise enough how LOVELY this record is.
More modular synth grooves from E Ruscha aka Secret Circuits, but no over-indulgence here and the grooves REALLY DO GROOVE. Trippy as a weasel circus and twice as funky.
Talking of trippy, here's Optimo Music's second acid-drenched entry, from the man formerly known as TB Arthur and the mighty Magda trading as Blotter Trax, it's a kind of parallel universe early 80s alt disco where everything gurgles and melts.
More from South Africa - King Mzaiza Sound via the reliably tough Parisian PSSNGR label - not 100% sure what you'd call this though it definitely has some gqom sonics, some trap drums, and some strident rap vocals... It's HARD AS NAILS is what it is.
EVEN HARDER - Nyege Nyege brought us a sampler of this (and I don't use mental health language lightly) FUCKING MENTAL shrieking, raging, solvent-huffing sound from São Paulo stewarded by the young DJ K, and it's extremely funky and scarily thrilling.
"Definitely and I think when it came to writing as well with One Direction, […] him and Harry were like, you know, they really kinda steered the directions of the songs I think. Which is quite cool because you can definitely see it as they come out the back end that both their solo careers are pretty massive &, though the rest of them have definitely smashed it as well. But I just feel like they are definitely the two like, main heads of One Direction.” Source (x)
Callum Wilson of The Snuts interview on Alt Disco:
