Further new releases from Cate le Bon, Lifeguard, Nastazia Bazil, Amelia Blackwell and Tesni.
RIP Magic by Beth Boswell-Knight | Words: Hazel Blacher, A.L. Noonan, Brad Sked, Joey Hollis, Lloyd Bolton
RIP Magic – 'Loot / Dox'
Featuring members of indie/post punk outfit Sorry, RIP Magic have substantiated the buzz that has swathed their path with curious underground whispers over the last year, and their sizzlingly fresh dual-debut single 'Loot / Dox' digs into the murkier recesses of the Y2K frenzy that is taking hold of youth culture right now. Positively jacked with an aloof, desaturated grit, the emerging London group's barbed, burly trip-hop beats pout into the same grainy and underexposed lens that a shredded, tank-topped 90s-era Brad Pitt might be found nonchalantly robbing a bank or simply smoking a cigarette looking brooding. Opener 'Loot' towers with a languorous potency and gristle, looping astringent sawtooth synths over wide, heavy-gaited drums, and this is overlaid with glitchy, machine-esque vocal samples that further its gritty, narcotising quality. Second track 'Dox' is a lighter, faster and more melodic version of this formula, and here Marco Pini's lead vocal line is smothered with a flattening, lo-fi distortion that blends holistically into the track's spiky, industrial production style. London's coolest kids have just been gifted with a new band to get completely obsessed with, and it's RIP Magic baby. (Hazel Blacher)
Water From Your Eyes – 'Life Signs'
In the last few years, New York has seen a resurgence in its experimental guitar output. From the machine gun chattering of YHWH Nailgun to the leather clad techno stylings of Model/Actriz, the Big Apple is once more offering weight, power and grit. Brooklyn duo Nate Amos and Rachel Brown of Water From Your Eyes are in no way to be ignored from this list of innovators. With the release of 'Life Signs' from their upcoming LP 'It's A Beautiful Place', Water From Your Eyes are as ferocious and jutting as ever. 'Life Signs' stutters and starts with quickly calculated time signature shifts, jerking forwards and backwards like the inside of a penny arcade. Amos' guitars jolt and moan while Brown sits above the chaos with vocal flourishes akin to early Modest Mouse, but with way more indifference. Jumping between hardcore, psychedelic and even pigfuck textures, Water From Your Eyes still retain a keen pop sensibility, showing that in their delivery, balance is still paramount. (A.L. Noonan)
Shame – 'Cutthroat'
Announcing the new Shame album of the same title, 'Cutthroat' catches the band at their most immediate, this brilliantly layered song spilling forth a procession of addictive hooks. Verses are half-rapped against winding guitars, evoking a synthesis of hip-hop and indie that can be found in so much of the most exciting new alternative music today. In the chorus, a line about "the boys and the girls" has a redolence of Britpop, but the nonchalant delivery and playful "why not!?" sees the whole track take on the cool of Parquet Courts. Synths stab, riffs evolve, and Charlie Steen is in fine rabble-rousing form, with the "Murder! / Right now!" section even echoing one of The Stooges' greatest moments - the breakdown in 'T.V. Eye'. 'Cutthroat' simply has everything you could want from an indie rock single. (Lloyd Bolton)
Cate le Bon – 'Heaven Is No Feeling'
Cate le Bon is back with the announcement of 'Michelangelo Dying', her first album since 2022 collection 'Pompeii'. 'Heaven Is No Feeling' draws on a similar palette to that record with its flanged guitars and soaring saxophone lines, a sound that feels eerily postapocalyptic in its mix of artificiality and primordiality. Though le Bon always writes with precise obliqueness, this track feels a little more directly emotional, and a little rawer, than the abstractions of 'Pompeii' and 2021's 'Reward'. The outro loop, "Hello? What does she want?", is placed and delivered such to suggest a kind of isolated vulnerability, even though in another context the line could feel mundane or even silly. This single is a reminder of le Bon's masterful ability to control such details. (Lloyd Bolton)
Lifeguard – 'Like You'll Lose'
Serving as the final single from their debut album 'Ripped and Torn', released today via Matador Records, Lifeguard's 'Like You'll Lose' rasps at the sweet spot between clangourous anarchic dissonance and highly complex, richly textured harmonic intention. Said to have been inspired by Lee "Scratch" Perry's signature dub sound, here the Chicago trio juxtapose this style of drums, processed with reverb and delay, against their signature mucky DIY garage aesthetic. Despite clawing frictionally at the semitonal junctions that guide composition into more esoteric territory, the track's grounding bassline pulls the blaring, bristly guitar lines back into that coveted arena of highly interesting music, where it hits all the right nerve endings whilst never doing quite what you expect it to. (Hazel Blacher)
Nastazia Bazil – 'Take me to the beach oh yeah!'
Released alongside the debut album from Nastazia Bazil, 'Take me to the beach oh yeah!' encapsulates the joy that runs through the record and Bazil's artistic identity in general. The song is a live favourite, particularly for its singalong chorus, and is so endearing because of its liberated simplicity, avowed by a knowingly direct appeal to an elemental source of joy: the beach (oh yeah). Recorded with the basic ingredients of melodic piano, call and response vocals and seaside sound effects, the whole thing exudes the punk simplicity of "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band". As the full album attests, this freedom outweighs all the musical adornment you could think of and is our best source of power in a world that wants to destroy us. (Lloyd Bolton)
Amelia Blackwell – 'Body of Water'
MPTL Microplastics' mandolin maven Amelia Blackwell has released her first single from her self-titled solo project. 'Body of Water' begins curled up in a state of come-down fragility before gradually unfurling into a passionate display of enigmatic vitality. The sparse and subtle instrumentation that has defined Amelia's solo work to date is embellished with the addition of James Moss on Piano and Kalimba, and the single culminates in an enticing insinuation of a larger live sound to come… Blackwell's rueful and mesmeric approach to songwriting deftly situates itself downstream from folk revival's acoustic icons. From the melancholic reveries of Sibylle Baier; to the wistful listlessness of Connie Converse; and the entrancing elsewheres conjured by Bridget St John: Amelia is alert to the many affective complexities made possible in the rich vein of the singer/songwriter. Listening to 'Body of Water' where it was written, in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, the squeaking slides of Blackwell's acoustic guitar sound as if they are mimicking that strange inhabitant of nature's threshold - the parakeet. And indeed, what better totem could there be for Amelia's musicianship than those bright escapees whose very song transforms the urban and mundane into the dreamlike and surreal. (Joey Hollis)
Tesni – 'Nothing's New Again'
Bathed in a pure, bucolic glow, as crisp as untouched snow fizzing in quiet pockets of the earth, 'Nothing's New Again' is a stirring and introspective new offering from newcomer Tesni. Mainlining straight to the heart with the same delicate beauty and emotional sensitivity of say, early Joni Mitchell or Adrienne Lenker, on her new single, the Welsh born, Manchester based singer songwriter lays bare her innermost vulnerabilities within an earthy palette of stripped back indie-folk. Crystalline vocals lilt earnestly above intricate acoustic guitar fingerpicking, subtly bolstered by additional folk instrumentation, and, capturing so sublimely the innately human frailties that tenderise our often-hardy exteriors, Tesni makes her mark as an emerging artist to keep your eye on. (Hazel Blacher)
big long sun – 'a casual dance between friends'
A case could be made that the capital for emerging music right now is Brighton. The breezy South Coast city seemingly on a weekly basis sees some of the most exciting and forward thinking artists to surface and big long sun are yet another from the city of seemingly infinite wealth of talent. The latest single from the outfit comes courtesy of Miohmi Records, and 'a casual dance between friends' is a glorious space-psych-funk jam. A hypnotic, heady groove with mind-toasting intergalactic synths, 'a casual dance between friends' is a cosmic folly, akin to a shaman ceremony party at Stonehenge hosted by aliens that crash landed on Earth and that want to teach us mind-altering ways. Alongside the new single, big long sun have shared news of 'whatever (whatever), their second album, set for release July 24th, along with a headline tour. (Brad Sked)
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