The Murder Capital, a post-bunk quintet, have released their new three-song EP Live from BBC Maida Vale, today. The EP features their full March live session for Annie Mac at BBC Radio 1.
Talking about the EP, the band stated: “When Annie asked us to do a live session at Maida Vale, covering FKA Twigs was an easy decision. “Cellophane” especially encapsulates such a poignant landmark of heartbreak, and its innately exposed nature further allowed us to really connect with it.
The process itself was exciting for us, as we came to reshape its original mould, and impart our own sound and emotion onto the sentiment of inadequacy that she embodies so selflessly on the track.”
Electronic artist BABii has shared the music video for her single ‘Beast’. Made entirely in her bedroom while in quarantine, the video features BABii alongside shots of celestial imagery as it appears she is controlling the weather.
In a statement, BABii explained the inspiration behind the video:
“Somehow this whole EP has become all about my childhood and this video which I made entirely by myself in my bedroom ended up being based on a lie that I told when I was in primary school. I didn’t have a Mum growing up so I used to tell everyone that my mum was Mother Nature, that’s why my name was Daisy and I could control the weather, and that I would go to secret weather meetings in an abandoned bread factory. Totally unbelievable, I know. Anyways one sunny day in year 3, loads of kids started trying to make me prove it, and knowing that it wasn’t true, I closed my eyes and tighten my fists, and to my surprise the sky darkened and the heaviest rain poured from the sky. I felt like a 7 year old god.”
‘Beast’ is taken from BABii’s latest EP, iii. The song was produced by Kai Whiston, her collaborator in the GLOO collective also featuring Iglooghost. According to BABii, the song is about “being far away from someone but still feeling emotionally close to them, and realising the opposite could be much worse, being in close proximity to someone but emotionally feeling distant from them.”
Nyah Grace, a rising star in the world of music, has released her latest single Sooner or Later, not long ago. The song carries on the streak of ear-pleasing songs that showcase the wonderful voice of Nyah Grace that we have come to adore. If you’re looking for something refreshing, this one will be for you.
Jarreau Vandal Nothing Nice
Another brilliant addition to our Sound Selection is by the exciting Dutch producer Jarreau Vandal who released his latest single Nothing Nice featuring Kojey Radical and Gaidaa. The song features some mellifluous vocals that go hand in hand with the stunningly smooth production that carries them
Evie Irie Worst Enemy
Raw and exhilarating are just two ways to describe Worst Enemy by the superb Evie Irie. In this track, Irie delivers a beautiful range of thrilling vocals that get you hooked on within a few seconds. This one is for the playlists.
Style, colour or collar? Nope, none of them. An Oxford shirt is distinct not because of the collar or shape, but the particular basket weave style fabric that is unique and now attributed to the Oxford shirt; in fact, they were initially made in Scotland and not in Oxford, England.
Oxford shirts tend to be thicker and thus bring out a more casual look. They have become a household name in men’s fashion and have grown more popular through marketing strategies and the use of its name. Other than that, Oxford shirts tend to be perfect for a variety of looks due to its nature, thus making your life easier when choosing an outfit for the day.
Taschen has delivered some brilliant books on fashion, art, film and music — over the years. One of my favourite series of books they release are based on advertisements in different eras. Mid-Century Ads is a decade old book that presents some classic adverts from the 1950s and ’60s.
If you’re a fan of the TV series Mad Men, you’ll love this book.
It’s been four years since we last got an album of entirely new material from Car Seat Headrest. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a huge gap – but in roughly the same span of time, before signing to Matador, Will Toledo released no less than 12 albums on Bandcamp under the same moniker. But 2016’s Teens of Denial was a turning point for the project – an indie rock juggernaut that came to be scrutinized as much by critics who praised it for its dynamic yet catchy song structures as it was by fans who analysed it interminably in Reddit subforums.
Not that Toledo has been entirely absent during this time. In 2018, he released a re-recorded, polished version of his 2011 project Twin Fantasy, to more critical acclaim. He continued repurposing old material with 2019’s Commit Yourself Completely, this time through the live album format. But most intriguingly, he put out two albums with drummer Andrew Katz as 1 Trait Danger, a comedic EDM ‘side-project’ where Toledo could cheekily poke fun at the very same system that had crowned him indie rock royalty. Wit and humour had always been among Toledo’s strong suits as a songwriter, but for the first time, he could enjoy making something defiantly silly and balls-to-the-wall fun, with absolutely no regard as to how it would be received.
For Toledo, keeping the two projects separate didn’t seem like the more interesting option, and so Making a Door Less Open marks the grand introduction of his new persona, Trait, to the rest of the world. Inspired by the Bob Dylan mantra “if someone’s wearing a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth”, this new character finds Toledo wearing a gas mask (talk about bad timing), partly because it simply makes him feel more comfortable during live performances, but perhaps also as a way of separating the himself from his art. With all the fame and scrutiny that came with the intensely personal Teens of Denial, you can’t exactly blame him.
Musically, too, the sounds Toledo has been experimenting with on his side-project find their way on Making a Door Less Open. Not too dissimilar in style from fellow mask-wearing, genre-mixing alternative duo Twenty One Pilots, Car Seat Headrest’s latest presents itself as the classic ‘indie rock band experimenting with electronic production’ album, from the droning synths that open ‘Weightlifters’ to straight-up EDM jams like ‘Deadlines (Thoughtful)’. But MADLO is harder to figure out, as it sounds like it’s trying to be as much of an appeal to the masses as it is an off-kilter experiment – on one end, there’s ‘Deadlines (Hostile)’, which might as well be a cover of a Killers song, and on the other, there’s the utterly chaotic ‘Hymn (Remix)’ (one of three version spread across the album’s different formats). Neither of them are exactly bad, by any means, but it feels like Toledo’s not willing to commit to either direction fully.
Which, of course, is kind of the point. Rather than trying to open a new door, Toledo seems to be frustratingly caught in between ones he’s already opened, different sides of him that are at odds with each other. On the one hand, there’s Trait, who looks at the stupidity of the world and screams about how it “makes him wanna puke” (‘Hollywood’) and sums up the futility of the creative process by pointing out that “You are not unique/ Everything you’ve done has been done and will be done again” (1 Trait Danger’s ‘Unique’). And then there’s that other side, the one that still yearns for meaning: “Please let this matter,” he sings out on ‘Famous’.
If it weren’t for the upbeat electronic beat that guides the song, ‘Famous’ wouldn’t feel out of place on any other Car Seat Headrest record. In fact, with the exception of tracks like ‘Hollywood’, which sounds like the long-lost cousin to My Chemical Romance’s ‘Teenagers’, the majority of the album doesn’t stray that far from Toledo’s usual songwriting tropes – take the acoustic cut ‘What’s With You Lately’, for example, or the soaring ‘Life Worth Missing’. Neither does Trait’s snarkiness overshadow the kind of soul-searching Toledo’s become known for. Of the songs that do tread new sonic ground for the band, though, ‘Can’t Cool Me Down’ is the most memorable one – Toledo’s uneasy hum cooing brilliantly against slowly-unfolding, Radiohead-esque electronics.
It’s not that other experiments here aren’t successful, but there’s a kind of messiness to the album as a whole that makes it hard to make sense of. Which, again, for an album that’s about feeling lost, is probably intentional – the questions Toledo poses remain largely unresolved, so it only makes sense for the songs to lack resolution, too. On the 7-minute epic ‘There Must Be More than Blood’, he sings: “There must be more than blood/ That holds us together/ There must be more than wind/ That takes us away/ There must be more than tears/ When they pull back the curtain/ There must be more than fear.” Unable to find an answer, he closes the song by repeating the lines “There must be more, there must be more, there must be.”
Toledo knows that there are no answers, but a part of him is still unable to fully let go and just have fun with it. “I am not that shallow,” he declares on ‘Deadlines (Thoughtful)’, “I am not that deep.” As intriguing as that conflict is, one does wish that it was explored in a bit more depth here – as it is, the album can sometimes feel aimlessly disorienting in its ambivalence. But while it doesn’t reach the same soaring heights as Teens of Denial – something Toledo has pointedly avoided trying – there are still plenty of worthwhile moments on MADLO, even if the subtext is sometimes more interesting than the album itself.
Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, the well-respected studio based out of Valencia, Spain which was founded by Fran Silvestre, presented an eye-pleasing, modern project which is named Hofmann House.
Writing about the project, they stated: “A consolidated landscape surrounded by gardens, a large and elongated plot with a distant view of the sea and a pleasant breeze. This is the searched and lucky starting point trigger of this story.Three elements make up the project. An extruded cover in the longitudinal direction of the ground with a “T” shape is the framework in which space is inhabited. This geometry let us feel the sea, protecting from prying eyes, having the sense of living without neighbors. It helps control the southern sun during summer and lets it pass in winter. The walkable roof becomes a sort of belvedere enjoying the entire surface of the plot. An exempt cabinet houses the structure, distributes spaces and filters privacy, opening up possibilities in the way of movement and use of space. The main room, shaded by the cantilever is arranged in continuity with the outside. The interior of the unit includes wetted parts and limits the scale of overnight areas that are located in the quiet part of the garden. The study opens on the corner with the best views.”
Find more work by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos here.
Charli XCX has shared the file for her music video for her new single ‘Claws’ for fans to download and play around with. Released last week, the video is directed by Charli XCX and Charlotte Rutherford and features the pop star performing in front of a green screen as a series of images appear behind her. Now, fans can access the unedited version of the video file via a WeTransfer link.
“claws green screen edit available now for u to download and play with,” she tweeted. “can’t wait to see me dancing in front of a load of rush bottles. go crazy angels.”
🌱🤪 claws green screen edit available now for u to download and play with. can’t wait to see me dancing in front of a load of rush bottles. go crazy angels 🤪🌱 https://t.co/NtGOmEucv8pic.twitter.com/T2sTrhrrdF
Following the track’s release, Charli XCX had also shared the stems of the song and put out a call for fans to remix it.
‘claws’ is taken from Charli XCX’s upcoming quarantine album, how I’m feeling, set to drop on May 15th. It is the second video the artist has released during self-isolation, following lead single ‘forever’, for which she also ran a similar experiment. According to a press release, ‘claws’ is about “the feeling of being close to the one you love every day [and] captures the manic jubilation of love in lockdown in a refreshing way.”
On top of writing and recording her follow-up to 2019’s ambitious Charli, Charli XCX has also been particularly active on social media, hosting frequent Instagram livestream events with guest appearances from the likes of Clairo, Christine and the Queens and Zara Larsson.
Boniface, a rising star in the world of music, has released a music video for his song It’s a Joke. The song is part of Boniface’s self-titled debut album which also includes songs such as Oh My God and Fumbling.
Part of 404 Guild, the South-London collective that started making waves with the release of two EPs last year, Elison 404 are the aptly titled project of members Sonny and Eliot. Their debut album Pebbledash, which we named one of the best albums of April, is the first full body of work to come out of the collective. Gliding through a diverse range of electronic and hip-hop influences, the album showcases a different side of the group, marking a shift away from the gritty, hard-hitting stylings that have defined their sound so far as they conjure a more meditative, dreamy aesthetic. Amidst haunting synths, evocative melodies, and vulnerable lyrics, Elison 404, also known as the Elison Research Project, explore their struggles with mental health, a subject that hits particularly hard following the tragic loss of 404’s Mina, aka Silvertongue, who took her own life in May of 2019. But the final message of the album seems to be one of hope rather than desperation, as the group holds on to mantras like “joy, not fear” on opener ‘Perfect Dark’ and “seeking tomorrow, together” on ‘PS2’, featuring fellow Dirty Hit signee Gia Ford. It’s a powerful sentiment that runs throughout the record, highlighting that sense of community that binds 404 together.
We caught up with Sonny and Eliot for this edition of our Artist Spotlight series, where we showcase up-and-coming artists and give them a chance to talk a bit about their music.
How did the two of you meet?
We met at school when we were about 10 years old. There’d been interactions here and there on the walk to and from school, but we became friends at an after-school reading club. We’d go home and watch Aliens on loop and play Metal Slug until our eyes bled.
How did you decide to form Elison 404? Do you see it as separate entity from Guild 404?
We had this folder of things we’d made since we started living together. The catalyst for it forming as an entity was Sonny’s laptop breaking. We starting sharing one computer, everything we had became one. That’s when it started to feel like a different person.
Elison is a subsidiary of 404 Guild. I think everyone in the Guild has their own world, but together we have a solar system.
Could you talk about the making of Pebbledash? What were some of the ideas that went into the album?
Elison started with an archive of material we’d built up over a long time. We had hundreds of demos, loops, fragments of writing that we rediscovered and began finding connections between. At the same time we were trying to reconnect with people in our life. On reflection that’s a big part of what the album’s about; connection with people, places, sounds – over time. A sort of emotional cartography.
How was your approach different from your previous EPs?
The research that went into this project began as an aimless way to pass the time. Recording our EPs was a careful and meticulous process, which was probably necessary to facilitate a vision shared five ways. Pebbledash came together by accident.
Could you talk a bit about the meaning behind “Seeking Tomorrow, Together”?
It is the aim of Elison Research Group. No one wants to be alone, trapped in time.
Where do you see yourselves going forward?
Currently in the early stages of setting up a biological preserve on a island just off Costa Rica. It will be unlike anything the world has ever seen.
