Four Tet has shared a new song, ‘Scythe Master’, which appears on the new compilation Eat Your Own Ears Recordings EP 1. The collection also features contributions from Mount Kimbie and Sylvan Esso, as well as a previously released remix of Ride’s ‘Vapour Trail’ by the Cure’s Robert Smith. Listen to the eight-minute ‘Scythe Master’ below.
“Shout out the magical powers of EYOE and the Scythe Master,” Kieran Hebden said in a staetment. “Long may their musical offerings continue to bring bliss to this world.”
Hebden recently reached a favorite agreement in a streaming dispute with his former label Domino. He also dropped a song called ‘Look at Your Pager’ under his KH moniker.
The Beths have shared the title track from their forthcoming LP, Expert In A Dying Field. It follows lead single ‘Silence Is Golden’, which landed on our Best New Songs list. Listen to ‘Expert In A Dying Field’ below.
“I really do believe that love is learned over time,” the band’s Elizabeth Stokes said in a statement about the new song. “In the course of knowing a person you accumulate so much information: their favorite movies, how they take their tea, how to make them laugh, how that makes you feel. And when relationships between people change, or end, all that knowledge doesn’t just disappear. The phrase ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ had been floating around my head for a few years, I was glad to finally capture it when writing this tune.”
Expert In A Dying Field is set to arrive on September 16 via Carpark Records.
ALASKALASKA – the British experimental group led by Lucinda Duarte-Holman and Fraser Rieley – have announced their new album, Still Life, which comes out October 14 via Marathon Artists. Along with the announcement, they’ve shared a video for the LP’s title track. Check it out below.
In a statement about the new single, the band explained: “‘Still Life’ asks, is what is supposed to connect us on a worldwide scale being used more for vanity/ego, distraction or even surveillance/control? ‘Look at it breed, modern greed…’. It’s a bit of a cautionary tale, much like 1984…if you get my drift. Still though, there are glimmers of hope – ‘I’ve got the seed in my pocket….’ as in I’ve got seeds to sow, seeds to grow. Small gestures can make big changes.”
Still Life will follow ALASKALASKA’s 2019 debut, The Dots.
Still Life Cover Artwork:
Still Life Tracklist:
1. Growing Up Pains (Unni’s Song)
2. TV Dinners
3. Person A
4. Still Life
5. Pressure
6. Rise And Shine
7. Get Me High
8. Glass
9. Simple
10. Flowers
11. Long Lasting Pleasure
Following its placement on Stranger Things, Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ has entered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time ever, reaching No. 40 on the singles chart. Originally released in 1986, the title track from Metallica’s third album recently featured in the Stranger Things 4 finale. In the episode, titled ‘The Piggyback’, metalhead Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) shreds the song from the Upside Down (Tye Trujillo, the 17-year-old son of Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, recorded the actual guitar solo for the scene).
Last week, Metallica released a statement about the song’s inclusion on the show. “The way The Duffer Brothers have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include ‘Master of Puppets’ in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it,” the band wrote on Instagram. “We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did we were totally blown away… it’s so extremely well done, so much so, that some folks were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Joseph Quinn’s hands in the trailer!! How crazy cool is that?”
Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’, which has seen a resurgence after being prominently featured in the fourth season of Stranger Things, currently sits at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100. It also topped the UK Singles Chart, 37 years following its debut.
Irish singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson has announced her sophomore album: Smiling Like an Idiot arrives on September 23 via Faction. The follow-up to 2019’s First Prize Bravery is led by the new single ‘Shark Eyes’, which you can hear below.
“It’s about falling in love with a person and a place, which in this case is Dublin, and how those two are interlinked,” Richardson said of the new album in a statement. “I started to think about things that accompany that intense euphoria. The deep anxiety that can sometimes go with it. That feeling you get when you’re on a rollercoaster, ascending – it’s exhilarating and terrifying. I think fear is a very big part of falling in love.”
Talking about the new song, she explained:
‘Shark Eyes’ is about being totally infatuated with someone who you know isn’t as interested in you as you are in them. It’s about following your darker and more destructive impulses and allowing yourself to be taken for a bit of a ride, partly out of boredom and curiosity, but also partly out of a lingering hope that maybe this time it will end differently. I think I wrote it as a way of admitting to myself that that relationship would never be anything more than it already was, but I wanted it to still have the sweetness of a love song. Sometimes there’s a real lightness and relief in coming to that realisation about someone and knowing and accepting the limits of your relationship with them.
It was the first song I wrote for this album and the first thing that Alex and I worked on together since we made my debut album First Prize Bravery. I think it acted as a bit of a green light to keep going.
Smiling Like an Idiot Cover Artwork:
Smiling Like an Idiot Tracklist:
1. Archie
2. Shark Eyes
3. Spotlight Television
4. Stalemate
5. Purgatory
6. 525
7. Good Intentions
8. Hard to Fake It
9. Holiday
10. Jackpot
11 .Smiling Like an Idiot
Ahead of its release on Friday (July 15), Steve Lacy has shared a new track from his sophomore album, Gemini Rights, a duet with New York artist Fousheé called ‘Sunshine’. It follows the early singles ‘Mercury’ and ‘Bad Habits’. Check it out via the accompanying video below.
Los Angeles art-rockers Goon have a new album out this Friday called Hour of Green Evening. Today, they’re previewing it with the advance single ‘Emily Says’, which follows previous entries ‘Angelnumber 1210’ and ‘Ochre’. Give it a listen below.
Frontman Kenny Becker wrote the new song about his wife Emily Elkin, who plays cello in Angel Olsen’s live band and has worked with Olivia Rodrigo, Halsey, Troye Sivan, and more. “This song is about how her and I meeting each other was the most joyful thing to ever happen to both of us, but also didn’t cure either of us from our anxieties or depression,” Becker said in a press release. “I wanted to focus on the heart-wringing conflict between those two things.”
Rachika Nayar has released a new single titled ‘Nausea’. It follows ‘Heaven Come Crashing’, the eponymous track from the Brooklyn musician’s sophomore album, which featured Maria BC and made our Best New Songs list. Listen to ‘Nausea’ below.
“Around the time of writing this song, I was listening to a lot of 90s trance from labels like Eye-Q Records,” Nayar explained in a press release. “There’s just something incredible about how they wring such heart-wrenching dance floor anthems out of the plainest melodies and chintziest digital synths, one of which I used on this song (the M1 piano).”
London quartet Modern Woman have put out a new single, ‘Ford’, following up their 2021 debut EP, Dogs Fighting In My Dream. The track was produced and mixed by Oli Barton-Wood, with mastering by Jason Mitchell. Check out its music video, directed by Sandra Ebert, below.
“‘Ford’ has been one of the oldest songs in our repertoire,” bandleader Sophie Harris explaned in a statement. “I wrote the bassline loop for it a long time ago, one day when I only had a bass to hand. I structured the song and added guitar and simple vocal. I wanted to give it a raw and slightly sinister feel to it. We can spend an incredibly long time working a song in our practice space before we ever play it live, so we wanted to make sure that energy resonated through the recording.”
She added: “Lyrically, it is about a girl who borrows her brother’s Ford and drives it around. For Juan’s vocals towards the end of the song, I went with a William Burroughs-esque cut up technique and collected different car-related writings, chopped them up and reformed them.”
Gordi, the moniker of singer-songwriter Sophie Payten, has shared her new song ‘Inhuman’, the title track to her forthcoming EP. Check out a video for it below.
The new song was inspired by Payten’s experience as a healthcare worker. “When I wrote ‘Inhuman’, I was thinking about the blackened roadsides on my drive from Sydney to Lismore in 2019,” she explained in a statement. “I had to turn back halfway because the fires were too out of control. I was supposed to start work in Lismore Hospital on the Monday, where I would meet countless patients who couldn’t be discharged because their homes had been destroyed. Hearing one story after the next made me numb, and being numb to that sort of tragedy feels like forgetting to be human.”
Gordi’s Inhuman EP arrives August 19 on Jagjaguwar. It includes the previously unveiled single ‘Way I Go’.
