Tag: New Single

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Shares a Breakbeat-Inspired Banger

Throughout this site’s 13-plus year history, there have only been a handful of artists I’ve written about more than the wildly prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. 2023 has seen the French JOVM mainstay continuing to be as prolific as ever: 

  • Earlier this year, he released the five-track EP Zirconium, which featured material that oscillated between several different styles and genres, including tech house, breakbeats and more. 

  • Then he followed up with the seven-song EP Let The Drums Go, which featured material that frequently meshed elements of tech house, breakbeats and electro pop. 

Late last year, the prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay released the seven-song mini album Cross My Heart, which features one tech house track and mostly downtempo material. Earlier this week, I wrote about “Pillow Talk,” the mini-album’s only tech house track, a track that nodded a bit at Trans Europe Express-like minimalism before quickly morphing into a house music banger that pairs relentless tweeter and woofer rattling thump with glistening and bubbling synths, bursts of skittering hi-hat, chopped up vocal samples and the JOVM mainstay’s penchant for enormous hooks.

Cross My Heart‘s latest single “Chill Out” is a sleek and slickly produced synthesis of drum ‘n’ bass, breakbeat, ambient electronica and downtempo house that seems like a lounge friendly take on house music.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ Orgōne Shares a Slow-Burning and Soulful Lament

Tracing elements of their origins back to the 1990s, Los Angeles-based psych soul outfit Orgōne — currently Sergio Rios (guitar), Adryon de León (vocals), Dan Hastie (keyboards), Sam Halterman (drums) and Dale Jennings (bass) –is a pillar of the contemporary West Coast soul music scene, developing and maintaining a reputation for being an unmissable touring band for more than a decade, thanks in part to their arresting intensity, impeccable playing style and undeniable, irresistible chemistry.

2023 has been a busy year for the Los Angeles-based outfit: They were the studio backing band for JOVM mainstays Say She She‘s critically applauded sophomore album Silver. They then backed the JOVM mainstays on their wildly successful world tour. As the year is coming to a close, the members of Orgōne announced that they’ll be releasing their Sergio Rios-produced 15th album, Chimera.

Slated for a February 9, 2024 release through 3 Palm Records, the album’s title is derived from a mythical beast the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. Sonically, the album’s material weaves voodoo soul, thrumming Afro funk and psych rock and evokes a dreamlike odyssey, tripping through the hazy swamps of New Orleans, and features contributions from vocalists Jamie Allensworth, Terin Ector, and Congolese artist Mermans “Mofaya” Mosengo.

“The album really took form organically. It’s raw and dark with a hopeful thread throughout that’s highlighted by the incredible soul singers we work with,” the band’s Sergio Rios says of the album. “There’s a looseness to most of the cuts, giving the album the feeling of a shadowy dream.”

Chimera‘s latest single “Lies & Games” is a heart-wrenching lament that pairs Terin Ector’s soulful and yearning delivery with a slow-burning, 70s soul-inspired arrangement of vintage spacey synths, a sinuous bass line, some grimy rhythm guitar and Wailers-inspired backing vocals. While sonically channeling the severely under-appreciated Mandrill, in particular songs like “I Refuse to Smile” “House of Wood” and others, the song speaks of the rocky and uncertain road of forgiveness and redemption with a seemingly Biblical air.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: LutchamaK Shares a Mellow, Tech House Banger

Throughout this site’s 13-plus year history, there have only been a handful of artists I’ve written about more than the wildly prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. 2023 has seen the French JOVM mainstay continuing to be as prolific as ever:

  • Earlier this year, he released the five-track EP Zirconium, which featured material that oscillated between several different styles and genres, including tech house, breakbeats and more.

  • LutchamaK followed up with the seven-song EP Let The Drums Go, which featured material that frequently meshed elements of tech house, breakbeats and electro pop.

The other day, the prolific French electronic music producer released the seven-song mini album Cross My Heart, which features one tech house track and mostly downtempo material. The mini-album’s latest single “Pillow Talk,” its the mini-album’s only tech house track. At points, the song nods at Trans Europe Express-like minimalism before quickly morphing into a house music banger that pairs relentless tweeter and woofer rattling thump with glistening and bubbling synths, bursts of skittering hi-hat, chopped up vocal samples and the JOVM mainstay’s penchant for enormous hooks. It may arguably be one of the more mellow-leaning yet crowd pleasing tracks that LutchamaK has released to date.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Paris’ Nico and The Red Shoes Shares Euphoric “Time Is Love”

Led by a global citizen, who has spent stints living in Douala, Cameroon, Rome and elsewhere, the Paris-based outfit Nico and The Red Shoes has firmly established a sound that draws from and meshes several different influences and styles, including New Wave, electro pop, cyber pop, house music and more, paired with catchy melodies. 

With the release of 2015’s self-titled debut EP, the Parisian outfit emerged into the electro pop scene with material that drew from and meshed elements of New Wave and pop.

Earlier this year, the French electro pop project shared “Mathilda,” the first bit of new material in eight years — and the first single of their long-awaited and highly-anticipated full-length debut, Time Is Love. “Mathilda” is a sleek, slickly produced, Afrobeats-inspired, club friendly bit of pop built around glistening synths, skittering beats, tweeter and woofer rattling low end and remarkably catchy hooks paired with a bursts of funk guitar, a deep house-like breakdown and Nico’s soulful delivery. The result is a song that should make you get up and move.

Time Is Love‘s second and latest single, album title track “Time Is Love” is a late 80s/early 90s-inspired bit of dance pop built around twinkling synth arpeggios, a thumping backbeat, Nico’s plaintive delivery paired with rousingly anthemic, euphoria-inducing hooks.

“The song encapsulates the idea that true and meaningful expressions of love require an investment in time that is limited and precious to us,” the band explains. They add that Nico wrote the song during a moment of helplessness, when she thought she was going to lose her mother. “‘Time is love’ thus takes the opposite view of the expression ‘Time is money.’ This phrase encourages a perspective of love that involves shared moments, experiences and efforts to understand and be present for someone,” the Parisian outfit continues.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Lovelines Share Jazzy and Poppy “Low Fidelity”

Orlando-based sibling duo and JOVM mainstays The Lovelines — Tessa D (vocals) and Todd Goings (multi-instrumentalist, songwriting and production) — emerged into the scene with the late 2021 release of their debut single “Strange Kind of Love,” a slick synthesis of Amy Winehouse-like blue-eyed soul, jazz standadrs and Dummy-era Portishead-like trip-hop paired with Tessa D’s soulful crooning and a dusty production featuring twinkling Rhodes, wobbly guitars and an infectious, razor sharp hook. 

Over the past year, the Orlando-based JOVM mainstays have released material from their forthcoming full-length debut single-by-single over that period.

So far, I’ve written about two of their forthcoming album’s singles:

  • “May Be Love,” a slow-burning torch song-like take on trip hop and neo-soul built around shimmering pedal steel and congo-led percussion paired with Tessa D’s soulful vocal expressing an aching longing for love — and to be loved. 

  • “What Kind of Fool Would Want to Fall in Love?” a breezy pop song built around a looped, shimmering, finger plucked acoustic guitar melody and percussive percussion paired with Tessa D’s soulful crooning. On one level, the song views love with a healthy cynicism — but as the band’s Todd Goings explains, “What Kind of Fool Would Want to Fall in Love is a portrait of the fool in love. Do only fools fall in love or does love make us fools?“

The duo’s latest single “Low Fidelity” is a decidedly jazz pop/pop jazz take on their firmly established trip hop-inspired jazz that’s rooted in their penchant for incredibly catchy hooks, dusty, old-school inspired production paired with Tessa D’s soulful crooning.

“The song ‘Low Fidelity’ is the band playing with the dual-meaning of the phrase Low Fidelity,” The Lovelines’ Todd Goings explains. “We like listeners to spell out their own conclusions with our lyrics, so that’s what I’ll say, I guess. With the sound of this single, we have this concept of sounding poppy to a jazz audience, and jazzy to a pop audience I think of pop music as an arrangement thing, not a characteristic instrument or sound. If you arrange a jazz composition like it’s a top 40 pop song, and you can then use chord progressions and chromatic phrases that aren’t common in pop music with this tool. We love pop… but the colors in jazz feels truer to the human emotional spectrum than pop, life sounds more like a Gmaj7 than a Gmaj, it’s more grey… than black… or white, don’t you think? We’re experimenting with the fader on the spectrum between the jazz and pop spectrum. What’s too jazz, what’s too pop? We don’t know the answer (haha).”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: CZARFACE Returns with Swaggering and Mischievous “Czarimedes’ Death Ray”

Over the past couple of years, i’ve written quite a bit about CZARFACE, the collaborative project featuring beloved underground hip-hop duo 7L & Esoteric and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck. 

The project’s name is derived from a fictional character that the trio created that’s patterned after comic book super villains and aspects of the personalities and quirks of each individual member, the project can trace its origins back to when 7L & Esoteric and Inspectah Deck toured together.

That tour led to a series of collaborative singles including “Speaking Real Words” off 7L & Esoteric’s 2001 album, The Soul Purpose and “12th Chamber” off their 2010 album 1212, and a number of other singles. The act officially formed in 2013 and since then, they’ve released

Since the act formed back in 2013, they’ve released a handful of critically applauded albums: their 2013 self-titled debut, 2015’s Every Hero Needs a Villain, 2016’s A Fistful of Peril, 2018 saw two collaborations, Czarface Meets Metalface with the late MF DOOM and Czarface Meets Ghostface, with Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, 2019’s The Odd Czar Amongst Us and 2021’s posthumously released collaboration with MF DOOM, Super What?

The trio’s ninth album together, CZARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is slated for a December 1, 2023 release through Virgin Music. The action-packed odyssey continues a run of material influenced and informed by comic books, and features guest spot from Logic, Kool Keith, Nems, Frankie Pulitzer and a cast of others. “We’re back with that off-kilter, no filter,” CZARFACE’s Esoteric says.

The album sees the trio continuing to weave the unfiltered essence of OG braggadocio, introspective story-telling — and as always, the exploits of superheroes and supervillains that’s as engaging as when you used to flip through the pages of your favorite comic book or graphic novel. The album’s guests join CZARFACE on missions and side-quests — and the result is material that playful and lovingly explores the intersection of cosmic hip-hop and comic book culture. “The new album comes equipped with chaos, order and everything in between,” Esoteric explains. “It’s like a swirling vortex of cosmic carnage, but we bring it down to earth in places. We are, after all, in a new era. I hope what we made resonates with the people.”

CZARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE‘s latest single “Czarchimedes’ Death Ray” is built around a trippy production featuring boom bap beats paired with woozy, reverb soaked psychedelic guitars and old-school scratching. Each of the super talented emcees spits mischievously dexterous and swaggering bars full of pop culture and comic book references, while referencing the supervillain’s unique stash of weaponry. “Czar never resorts to conventional weaponry, thus the illustrious Death Ray – a sonic homage to the Greek mathematician Archimedes,” Esoteric says.

Yesterday saw the official release of an already almost sold-out Record Store Day “Stole The Ball” version of the album. The exclusive limited edition vinyl-only RSD Black Friday version of the album features two bonus tracks and special cover with artwork illustrated by their longtime collaborator, Lamour Supreme. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Tilburg Shares Cinematic “The Whale”

Dutch prog rock duo Tilburg — Timo Janse (guitar), Whisper of the Dragons’ M Hopkins (keys) — released their full-length debut, Tales of the Spanish Kings last year. The album is a concept album influenced by 70s prog rock movement — but with harder, more modern metal-like guitar and electronic sounds. As the duo explain, “The goal of the album was to bring a new progressive rock sound along with honoring the greats who came before us.”

The album can be traced back to recording sessions that began in late 2009 with a band named Kinder Voss that featured M. Hopkins, along with Kiwi guitarist Brendon Wright and German vocalist Gabby Koss, who had stints with Haggard, Nota Profana and Equilibrium. Because of Koss’ scheduling conflicts, recording sessions were faulted and the album was eventually shelved.

Hopkins went on to do soundtrack work but he decided to revisit the album. eventually recruiting Janse to complete the material. By last Spring, the duo had finally finished the album and decided to call their project Tilburg, after a town known for being a populate site of rock shows in The Netherlands.

“The Whale” is an expansive and cinematic composition that meshes elements of prog rock, progressive metal and post rock in a way that recalls German post rock outfit Collapse Under the Empire while sounding as though it would be part of the soundtrack of a post apocalyptic sci fi or action film.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: isle&fever Share Breezy, 90s House-Inspired “Breakthrough”

Released back in 2020, isle&fever‘s “U Never Know” landed on Spotify’s Serotonin playlist and eventually amassed over one-million streams. During the height of the pandemic, the indie pop/indie funk outfit’s frontman Donald Eley moved to San Pancho, Mexico full-time while Tiger Smith (multi-instrumentalist and producer) remained in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, working through a folder of music ideas in his basement studio. 

Continuing to work remotely resulted in last year’s sultry Larry Levan-era house-meets Quiet Storm synth funk-like “On Yr Mind,” a track which further cemented the duo’s burgeoning reputation for crafting hook-driven, upbeat, funky pop.

The duo’s latest single “Breakthrough” is part of an EP with similar songs that they’ve released over the past two years. Built around glistening and blocky synth arpeggios, a strutting bass line, skittering beats, bursts of twinkling keys and congo paired with a chopped up and pitched vocal and a remarkably catchy hook. Sonically “Breakthrough” is indebted to late 80s/early 90s dance pop and house that possesses a summery breeziness while being sweetly autumnal.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: House of Light Share Anthemic “NYC”

Since the release of their full-length debut, 2017’s Nervous System, rising post punk outfit House of Light have been busy: They’ve toured across three continents, opening for the likes of Pete Doherty, Lydia Lunch, The Drones and others. And in an interview by The Smiths‘ Andy Rourke, the band was described as “evoking the romanticism of the 80s & darker turn of the 90s.”

Building upon a growing profile within the global post punk scene, the Aussie band’s sophomore album 21st Century Prayer was released earlier this year. Sonically, the album is a sleek, dark and hypnotic blend of shoegaze and post punk while further cementing their reputation for blending elements of the 80s, 90s and today. “This album is a reflection of our journey – it’s a nod to the past, a recognition of the present, and a step into the future,” the Aussie outfit explains. “We’re thrilled to share this with the world.”

21st Century Prayer‘s latest single “NYC” is a breakneck, post punk anthem built around an alternating quiet-loud-quiet song structure featuring an angular and propulsive bass line, plaintive vocals, swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures paired with rousing, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses. Sonically, “NYC” brings back found members of the 00s NYC scene — in particular, Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics-era Interpol, The Black Magic Show-era Elefant but with a sleek, contemporary sheen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Miami’s Diamondz Returns with Sultry “Speed Dial”

Diamondz is a Miami-based DJ and electronic music producer. As an open format DJ, who has blended genres together for crowds at clubs and venues across Miami, he has shared stages with a number of luminaries including Rihanna, Lizzo, T-Pain, Darude and Roger Sanchez. 

The Miami-based DJ recently stepped out into the spotlight as a producer and artist, and he manages to continue the genre-blending approach to his own original music with his work blending elements of hip-hop, electronic music and pop, influenced by producers like Diplo and David Guetta. 

Last month, the South Florida-based DJ released “Blind,” a song build around a slick production featuring glistening synths, skittering beats and a soulful vocal melody paired with twitter and woofer rattling house music-inspired drops. Throughout, the song’s vocalist tells a story of two people, who just can’t seem to see the love that they have right in front of them. The result is a remarkably crowd-pleasing, club friendly bop that seamlessly meshes elements of Billboard Top 40 pop and EDM.

Diamondz’ third single “Speed Dial” is a sultry, radio friendly club banger built around a pop-tinged production reminiscent of The Weeknd, built around skittering trap beats, atmospheric and twinkling synths and a yearning vocal melody. “Speed Dial” is the sort of mood-setting song that you’d hope would be playing when you’re trying to holler at that pretty young thing at the bar or the club.

It’s a nod to those late nights, leaving the party or the club and you get that call or text from someone you caught a vibe with,” the Miami-based producer explains. “The airy pads capture the aura of that late night drive to meet up while the allure of the dancing synth line captures the energy and feeling you get when you first link with that new person…the proverbial butterflies!”