EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Project: Komakino - Syndrome (The Horrors Remix)
(Photo: Dean Chalkley)
You know what you're getting with these two - dark-eyed London gloom and glower, mostly, even if The Horrors' latest album seemed to be throwing confetti at its own funeral. The strangest thing about this, though, isn't that it's pensive, or that it's moody - it's that it seems to have sampled its drums from Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing". So even though Project: Komakino all look like their parents just died, really - deep down - they're having fun with it. Probably.
Sounds Like: Blondes, Cluster, Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing"
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Allez Allez - Slump
French name, German sound, London's Allez Allez take a break from releasing legendary Seventies bands to issue a single of their own that sounds like the national anthem for a new krautopian state. Buffeted along on a steady, driving beat, "Slump"'s curious synths find a home on the b-side of "Defeatist", the blogger/remix duo's debut single for Kompakt's Kickboxer imprint.
Sounds Like: Harmonia, Blondes, The Emperor Machine
DOWNLOAD: Blondes - Moondance
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My, my, my. My, my, my, my, my. This is fantastic. Blondes have done it again, "Moondance" picking up where "Spanish Fly" left off, sounding great because it sounds like the greatest song ever, or weren't you listening to "In The Light Of The Miracle" that time you walked home alone in the rain and didn't care that you were getting wet? Heartbroken, ecstatic and flushed with synth colour, soak this in now and take aim at the weekend ahead - ten odd minutes of bliss right here, your weekend starts right here.
Sounds Like: Teengirl Fantasy, Arthur Russell, Inner City
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EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Harmonia & Eno '76 - Sometimes in Autumn (Shackleton Remix)
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I don't quite know how they pulled this one off. Amazing Sounds - run by the two gents from Allez-Allez - is a fledgling label. This is their first release. And it features Harmonia, Brian Eno and Shackleton. What?! The disbelief slackens somewhat when you hear what the dubstep-techno pioneer has done to "Sometimes in Autumn" - originally part of a 1976 collaboration between Eno and the kosmische masters, Shackleton's remix keeps ahold of the motorik beat and the psychedelic washes so beloved of Harmonia, but strips everything back. His presence on the track is felt in its emptied spaces - in the echo chamber of a chastened snare, for example - but he's respectful, keeping what needs to be kept so this feels less like a remix and more like the English-born, Berlin-based producer has been transported back in time to help birth something lurking, sullen and terrifyingly brilliant. At this point you wouldn't blame Amazing Sounds if they wanted to quit while they were (miles and miles) ahead, but after this comes out in November - on limited edition white vinyl and digital download - there's more gold: cuts promised from Dan Deacon, Luke Abbott and Hudson Mohawke. Keep an eye on things by signing up to their mailing list at the Amazing Sounds website.
Sounds Like: T++, Radiohead, Throbbing Gristle
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Allez-Allez Remix)
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(Photo: Johan Renck)
Allez-Allez's transformation of "Triangle Walks" is remarkably thorough: London production pair Steve Nolan and Sam Willis robbing the original of most of its vocals, steel pan peels and stretching the rhythm out into lean, determined motorik 4/4. That it manages to sound just as brooding as the Fever Ray cut without Karin Dreijer Andersson's spectral vocal is a triumph, this refit full of suspense and dark, dank corners harbouring disco ghosts. At the start, all you can hear is your pulse replicated in minimal bass throbs, by the end you're unhinged, mania flaring up in a panic of synths. The track will be available from July 20 as part of a "Triangle Walks" download single package also including remixes by Tiga and Spektre, while Karin heads to the UK before that for a set of live dates beginning July 11.
Sounds Like: Invisible Conga People, Ricardo Villalobos, New Order
Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Allez-Allez Remix)
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EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Banjo or Freakout - Mr. No (Allez Allez Remix)
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London-based Alessio Natalizia has given up a lot of his own time to refresh other people's tracks, so it's good to hear someone repaying the favour. Well, perhaps 'repaid' is the wrong word - this is no samba-refit by Amy Winehouse and Thurston Moore isn't here throat singing, but DJ duo Allez Allez are one of host of acts who've been brought in to rework parts of the Banjo or Freakout repertoire. Their synth-driven, destined take on "Mr. No" stars on a CD-R of remixes available when you order Banjo's new Upside Down 12" at Rough Trade or direct through Half Machine Records.
Sounds Like: The Field, a scrubbed-clean Crystal Castles, Dan Deacon
Banjo or Freakout - Mr. No (Allez Allez Remix)
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EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Phantom Band - Crocodile + Burial Sounds
At the heart of every great band is a contradictory crux. A problem that anyone giving ears will feel compelled to somehow resolve - witness the play between pop and noise that helped define Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground and so many others, the opposing tugs toward the traditional and experimental The Beatles felt. I'm not saying The Phantom Band sound like any of those guys, aside from the fact that they have their own riddle; theirs asking you to untangle a merging of pastoral, heartland folk and a cold, kraut drive that remains eternally future. It's a combination not seen too often - most tend to be zealots for either past or future. In accepting both, this Glaswegian sextet can't help but carve out their own terrain and, in terms of their mission and their number, that terrain is suitably ample; "Burial Sounds" a spree of swooning guitar and sultry percussion, while "Crocodile" remains entranced with a repetitive motorik beat before taking off upon distorted guitars for the last two and a half minutes. Both tracks are pulled from Checkmate Savage, recorded with The Delgados' Paul Savage and released on Jan 26.
Sounds Like: Robbie Robertson, NEU!, Nick Cave
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Higamos Hogamos - The Illumanoids
Beatnik duo Higamos Hogamos were unsure of what it was they were looking for in a genre. Torn between the smart, cerebral, longevity of kraut and the f*ck n' run machismo of '70s rock, Londoners Tony Jenkins and Steve Webster did what any sensible, love-laden man would do: got drunk and tried to batter the two together. The result is something that sounds for an odd few seconds like chamber music, before the synths step aside to allow a familiar motorik beat swaggering passage through the middle. After that, as you'd expect I guess, it breaks down into something weird that I'm gonna call 'militia funk', before resolving itself in a wet mess of whorehouse guitar licks and aggressive kosmische synth flutters. As brilliant and incomprehensible as their name, then, Higamos Hogamos seem to revel in finding new ways to fox your ears and SEO.
Sounds Like: Harmonia, Gary Wilson, The Cramps
DOWNLOAD: Teengirl Fantasy - Now That's What I Call Volume 2
When I was younger my sisters used to lock themselves away with this game called Dream Phone. From what I can gather, the basic premise saw a queue of potential sweethearts forming when plucked from a deck of cards, leaving my sisters to figure out which cheesy suitor actually had the balls to pick up the phone and make his pitch down through the lurid pink handset. Teengirl Fantasy duo Logan and Nick seem to share the giddy infatuation of the adolescent female, though theirs is with an array of studs pulled from what you could vaguely call the dance music stable – “Now That’s What I Call Volume 2” shares the shapeshifting, saccharine delight of Lindstrøm's work, though doesn’t touch heavily on any of Hans Peter’s methods; leaving them free to meld the cool drone and glistening synth lines of kraut Godheads Harmonia with dubstep’s busy hi-hat hiss. As snares crack and ecstatic female vocals flutter ecstatically toward the back of the mix, you can hear Teengirl realising that it’d be impossible for any one individual to live up to the clubland pinup their minds had conceived – but they find conviction in that, retreating blissfully into the impossible dimensions of their own daydream.
Sounds Like: The Samps, Andy Stott, Jonas Reinhardt
NEW DOWNLOAD: Gyratory System - Utility Music
Interstellar nomads cut adrift from previous incarnation One More Grain, Gyratory System take that crew's narky jazz undercurrent into awkward disco realms for slow but eventually infinite aural pleasure. Four-to-the-floor but oddly unhinged, "Utility Music" is the light-year weary remnant of an alien marching band sounding the same braying horns as Valerio Cosi and Theo Parrish - but where those two curl old brass into protective, melancholy loops, the Gyratory System takes less care of its soul, crashing wantonly through newer nebulae with several cracked ribs but nary a word of complaint.
Sounds Like: Pivot, The Pop Group, NEU!
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