Preditah – 21 Seconds
The Brummy producer Preditah has kindly, er, “re-produced” this So Solid Crew jam, and I think this particular comment on SoundCloud sums the whole thing up: “for all those middle class salior (sic) shoe softies who rip da piss outa 21 seconds… Go and raid yer grannies shop…”
Word of advice – I wouldn’t listen to this on a laptop – it’s quite sparse without the lows. I think Preditah has the only aural watermark (at 1:12) that actually improves the songs he produces, and if for some god-forsaken reason he’s reading this, I’d just like to ask him to please use this for his next tape’s cover.
Demdike Stare – Collision
This track proves to be a something of a new direction for Demdike Stare, who have spent the most of their career sitting in a puddle of last.fm tags like ‘ambient’, ‘drone’, ‘dark ambient’, ‘dub’ and ‘experimental’. Needless to say this 8 minute monster delivers all of those, er, ‘qualities’, before punching you in the face 4 minutes in with a whole mess of breaks leaving them sounding like a slightly more restrained, yet much more relevant version of Venetian Snares.
Shlohmo – Bo Peep (Do U Right) feat. Jeremih
We have Adidas Originals and something called Yours Truly to thank for this one. I’m not quite sure what or who Yours Truly are, but it’s probably worth checking them out for putting Jeremih & Shlohmo in a room together. And as for the song, well, they did it again, and it’s just as good as the other one (which you should listen to now if you don’t know what I’m talking about). I’ll leave it at that, cos these tunes kinda speak for themselves.
L-Vis 1990 – Ballads EP (teaser)
This one isn’t exactly a song, it’s 3 clips from L-Vis 1990’s new EP, ‘Ballads’, forthcoming on his own label, Night Slugs on 2nd April. There’s a lot of nostalgia here. The first track sounds like how that Benga & Coki video looks, the second track reminds me of playing video games in school uniform, and the third track sounds like what would happen if Skinny Puppy managed to invent grime in the early 90s. It’s really good, isn’t it?
Phoenix – Entertainment (Blood Orange remix)
Um. This one’s absurd. This remix consists of Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) doing his mental ‘tumblr-era Prince’ thing, which generally involves making that French band sound a million times better than they are and having a, er, guitar solo that somehow sounds great in an R&B song that was made in 2013. Oh yeah, and it’s got Sugababes in it too.
