Our favourite two Frenchmen lost in London The Penelopes recently reMixed fellow London denizens, Electro-Indie band Glitches forthcoming single, Dust & Shadow. This Bethnal Green/Whitechapel soundclash has resulted in one of the funkiest Indie tracks of the summer.
This reMixes plays to both Glitches and The Penelopes strengths. Glitches dual range vocals belt out in an epic style. Emotional and passionate, the vocal track sits perfectly on The Penelope’s bass led DiscoPop. Driven by a bassline you can help bobbing to, this track lays the shimmering synth lines on thick. Bright melodies play against otherworldly pads and energetic arpeggios to create an organic sounding synth symphony that seems to evolve naturally as it progresses. It’s got a groove that guaranteed to keep the dancefloor moving too.
In the past week the most underrated artist producing today, France’s Monsieur Adi let loose a couple of new (or old in some cases) demos on his SoundCloud account. Adi talent cannot be contained by genre, and it’s amazing to hear him branching out in terms of styles and sounds.
The first track, Paradis, is a brooding dark affair. The darkest we’ve ever had from Adi. Ominous droning synths and menacing whispered vocals lean the track an Industrial quality whist keeping an analog French Electro sound. This use of an Electro pallet with an experimental flavour makes for a track that’s as unsettling as it is fascinating. Of course, Adi’s emotional arrangements just ass to the songs involvement. Joyride was apparently written for Madonna, during Adi’s reMixing Madonna phase, but he presents it here as sung by Javi. It’s an excellent Pop track, and Madge is truly missing out with this one. You can kinda’ tell it was written with her range, and style, in mind and it would have been something new for her whilst obviously referencing classic Madonna. It’s about time the music industry at large paid attention to Adi, he could be knocking out hits for any number if stars right now if they’d let him. Joyride is a sweeping, rich Pop tune with added helpings of Adi’s musical majesty. The demo is from last year, but Adi plans on devolving the track further, we can’t wait.
The next single taken from ‘90’s leaning ElectroPop hero Bright Light Bright Light’s excellent album Make Me Believe In Hope will be the ‘90’s House tinged Feel It. Just so you know, it’s pretty hard to talk about a Bright Light Bright Light release without saying “90’s” a fair few times, so that’s happening.
Feel It is definitely a good choice for a single. It kinda’ encompasses everything Rod Thomas’ work stand for. One the one hand it’s classic ElectroPop, beautifully written (Rod’s major talent is pure songwriting), and on the other hand it’s luscious early ‘90’s House, complete with dropping breakbeats, infectious piano hook and gospel backing vocals. And as with the very best Pop that utilises Gospel vocals, Feel It is epic and uplifting and destined for the dancefloor.
♫ Bright Light Bright Light – Feel It (Single Edit)
Bright Light Bright Light’s Feel It single is released 29th October.
Right then, I had written quite a long post about The Presets’ new single, Ghosts, when it was released, but unfortunately, the record label or PR people or whoever deemed that providing a stream of the track somewhere in order to get, essentially, free advertising from music websites was just too easy and not allowing the song to be streamed was a much more challenging route. So despite having written the tracks praises, we could not feature it until now. Weeks after the single’s release there is a new video for the track (I don’t know who handling the release track for The Presets, but they need a better calendar, a video should be promotion for a single, not an afterthought) so we can finally feature it in some for. This is what we had wrote previously, but been unable to post:
It’s not just a crazy dream, they really are back! After the storming first single from their forthcoming album Pacifica, Australian ElectroPop/House gods The Presets are unveiling yet more teasers for their third proper album. Overnight, Ghosts has had exactly the reaction that a good The Presets song should have. Very divided opinion. Mostly negative comment have come from the kind of person who got ‘into’ The Presets quite late and only really knows the hits. The Presets were never about producing ‘bangers’ or whatever, regardless of how some people like to see them, their output has consistently, from the beginning, been about producing intelligent, left-field electronic Pop music that often contains surprises. And this they have done once more with Ghosts.
Hypnotic is the best way to describe Ghosts. Like an electronic Folk tale, the urban narrative found within Ghosts tells a tale, maybe a warning, for the 21st century and it is sung as such. The warm, heavy, bass and enveloping strings just invite the listener to stay and pay further attention. Ghosts is a gentle track, despite it’s dancehall groove, with The Presets showing us that the new album isn’t going to be all about the kind of musical assault that we’d heard with the previous single, Youth In Trouble, and this is excellent news. The Presets are always at their best when doing intimate, emotionally resonant songs.
Here’s a Friday treat from Cassette Club. Just ahead of the release of their Flash reMix package on Modal in the coming weeks, the duo of Ben Macklin and Tom Hammond have dropped this previously unreleased Cassette Club tune. Talk To Me (despite having exactly the same title as a certain forthcoming release, grrrrr) is an insanely good slice of Poppy Electro Boogie. The mind boggles as to why it wasn’t released, it’s out track for the weekend!
This is Cassette Club doing what Cassette Club do best, amazingly rich ElectroPop, although this time with an injection of Funk that’s slightly stronger than their other tracks. Talk To Me, I believe, dates from around late 2011 and is loaded with slick Disco licks, punchy retro synths and impassioned vocals and, quite frankly, could give Chrome a run for their money in the Funky ElectroPop stakes. It the weather hold out for the weekend, this tune should be your summery weapon of choice.
Time for some full-on retro dancefloor action now in the form of Johan Agebjörn and Le Prix, who are once again release under the name Plexi Grace. For their forthcoming new single they have teamed up with German singer Sylwia Van Der Wonderland for some early ‘90’s awesomeness.
And Midnight Boy totally brides the gap between early ‘90’s dance and Disco. The bassline that is pure Bomb The Bass alongside some classic orchestral hits bring that ‘90’s excitement to the tune while the smooth grooves are covered by a slick Italo-Disco feel. While all this electronic greatness is going on Sylwia’s sultry croon fills out the track, sliding from husky to ethereal with relative ease. Stick around, the track descends into an Acid workout toward the end. this is the kind of shit that make you want to go out and party.
♫ Plexi Grace (Feat. Sylwia Van Der Wonderland) – Midnight Boy
After a couple of recent, stunning reMixes for the likes of Little Boots and a series of ace originals over the summer, American Disco don Moon Boots is keeping up the pressure with this new reMix of Alison Valentine’s Peanut Butter, which seems to be universally loved.
The last time we featured Moon Boots we called him “one of the best Nu-Disco producers working today”, and once again he is proving that to be true, only this time he’s working a little House into the mix. Ms. Valentine, the latest addition to The Knock’s Heavy Roc Music stable, is treated to a bass heavy, summertime, workout. Spacious production gives all the cosmic synths and Tropical percussion room to breathe amongst the infectious House piano and ‘90’s DancePop beat. It’s an amalgamation of funky fresh electronic styles all wrapped up in Moon Boots’ Disco sheen. And the perfect sunshine jam.
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