Midwife has shared a new track, ‘Rock N Roll Never Forgets’, lifted from her forthcoming album No Depression in Heaven – out September 9 via the Flenser. Following the previously released ‘Killdozer’, the single arrives with a music video directed and edited by Alana Wool, with additional cinematography by Sam Killinger and Andy Magill. Check it out below.
Midwife’s most recent full-length was 2021’s Luminol. Last year, she released a collaborative album with Vyva Melinkolya called Orbweaving. Revisit our Artist Spotlight Q&A with Midwife.
Braxe + Falcon – the French electronic duo of cousins Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon – have teamed up with Bibio for a new song called ‘All This Love’. Check it out below.
“In 2023 I received a remix request from Warp Records for a beautiful song calling ‘S.O.L.’ by Bibio featuring Olivier St. Louis,” Braxe explained in a statement. “Bibio was happy with my remix and afterward we started to talk about music in general and music gear until the point we felt like doing an original track together would be a lot of fun. So I sent him a very basic demo DJ Falcon and I did, and from there we started to build the song remotely – actually for now we’ve never met him in person. We chose addiction for the song’s theme; it’s not specified if it’s an addiction to substances or a relationship, it’s more about the inner combat to recover from such situations.”
“I first discovered Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon back in the late 90s when they were releasing music on Roulé,” Bibio added. “Their music was part of the soundtrack to my youth and also an inspiration to me as a budding producer. Music like theirs proved that less is sometimes more, and that if you have the right ingredients and know how to use them – the recipe can be simple. After they sent me a demo, I recorded parts on guitar, bass guitar and keys, and we’d bounce files back and forth to each other. E.g. I’d play a bass line, they’d tweak it and send it back, I’d learn the tweaked bass line and re-play it on bass guitar to keep it sounding live. It was a new way of working for me which kept things feeling fresh. Alan gave me a theme for the lyrics, but I wrote them in such a manner that they could be interpreted in different ways, which is something I enjoy doing with lyrics. We wanted the song to sound bittersweet but hopeful – the chords move between contrasting emotions so I wanted the meaning behind the words to fit with that.”
Braxe + Falcon returned in 2022 with the Step by Step EP.
Toro y Moi has teamed up with Kevin Abstract and Lev for a new song, ‘Heaven’, which interpolates Broken Social Scene’s ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl’. It’s the second preview of Toro y Moi’s forthcoming album Hole Erth, following lead single ‘Tuesday’. Check out its India Sleem-directed video below.
Toro y Moi had this to say about the new single:
As a musician, you’ll occasionally hear stories about these songs the songwriter said, “…Just came out of thin air.” Or they were written in a matter of minutes or hours– they just have a nonchalant magic to them. ‘Heaven’ was just that. It was my first day of the ‘Hole Erth’ sessions at Different Fur in San Francisco. I asked Grace Coleman, the engineer to open a random session from a batch of demos from my studio. Within an hour of opening the session I found myself wrapping a second verse and it occured to me I might have a song worth finishing. It was a moment of literally letting go of these songs and into someone else’s hands (and computer) and taking on the song writer role fully, no thinking about production or the mix and just listening to my thoughts. I ultimately found myself writing about moments of processing and realizing that the journey of the musician is a constant practice, paying attention to one aspect only allows room for something to slip away. How does one make a decision when the options presented are all poetically polarizing?
Luna Li has dropped ‘Golden Hour’, the latest single from her forthcoming album When a Thought Grows Wings. The track comes with an accompanying video directed by Issac Roberts. Check it out below.
“I wanted this song to feel soft and sensual, while also peeking into a psychedelic world,” Li shared in a statement. “’Golden Hour’ tells the story of an afternoon I spent with someone a couple of years ago in a meadow sitting six feet apart, drenched in rain water and uncertainty, but having a wonderful time experiencing a slow descent into love.”
Magdalena Bay have announced their sophomore album, Imaginal Disk. The follow-up to 2021’s Mercurial World will be out on August 23 via Mom+Pop. It includes the previously released single ‘Death & Romance’, as well as the new song ‘Image’, which arrives alongside a music video directed by Amanda Kramer. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
1. She Looked Like Me!
2. Killing Time
3. True Blue Interlude
4. Image
5. Death & Romance
6. Fear, Sex
7. Vampire in the Corner
8. Watching T.V.
9. Tunnel Vision
10. Love Is Everywhere
11. Feeling DiskInserted?
12. That’s My Floor
13. Cry for Me
14. Angel on a Satellite
15. The Ballad of Matt & Mica
“It takes a certain kind of bravery to fully trust your instincts,” Yanya said of the inspiration behind ‘Call It Love’. “It’s about allowing your calling to lead you, to let it guide you somewhere. Let that consume you and destroy you.”
My Method Actor, the follow-up to 2022’s PAINLESS, is set to arrive on September 13 via Ninja Tune.
Sarah Tudzin has released the title track from her upcoming illuminati hotties album POWER. It follows lead single ‘Didn’t’ featuring Cavetown. Check it out below.
“‘Power’ is a reckoning with mortality,” Tudzin explained in a press release. “It was the song I avoided writing every time I sat down with a guitar until it finally fell out of me. In it I’m asking over and over, how am I supposed to participate in earthly existence after the passing of my mom, who so selflessly gave me her confidence, who instilled my power? There is no answer, and there is no sign.”
Bartees Strange is back with a new single, ‘Lie 95’. Co-produced by Strange and notcharles, with additional production from longtime collaborator Graham Richman, the song features vocals by Kacy Hill and Charlene Gibbs. Check it out via the accompanying video, directed by Vincent Martell & Jordan Phelps of VAM STUDIO, below.
“This song is about searching for love all across the Northeast corridor (I-95) – my universe,” Strange said in a press release. “I’m thinking of Love in a broad way: partners, friends and community. This one’s for the highway…and everything I meet through it.”
Strange released his sophomore album, Farm to Table, in June 2022. More recently, he was featured in the star-studded soundtracks for Apple TV’s The New Look and A24’s I Saw the TV Glow.
Chicago-born artist Tasha has announced a new album, All This and So Much More. The follow-up to 2021’s Tell Me What You Miss the Most is out September 20 on Bayonet Records. Along with the previously released song ‘Michigan’, it includes a new single, ‘The Beginning’. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
“As one of the first songs I wrote for this album, ‘The Beginning’ feels like an introduction to the journey of self-discovery I found myself on throughout the year to come (and in turn, the songs that emerged),” Tasha explained in a statement. “While the song touches on uncertainty, sadness, and a desire for connection, the very first line – ‘This is not the end, it’s just the beginning’ – encapsulates the sense of hope and possibility I continued to arrive at after it all. For me, there’s a lingering excitement at the end of Greg Uhlmann’s spinning guitar solo outro – it can be hard to see in the moment, but big endings are so often openings to adventures you haven’t even begun to imagine.”
Tasha wrote the new album over the course of 2022 and 2023, right on the cusp of being cast in Illinoise, the Tony-winning Broadway musical adaption of Sufjan Steven’s Illinois. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Tasha.
All This and So Much More Cover Artwork:
All This and So Much More Tracklist:
1. Pretend
2. The Beginning
3. Be Better
4. Good Song
5. Michigan
6. Party
7. Nina
8. Eric Song
9. So Much More
10. Love’s Changing
Galaxie 500 have announced their first release of new archival material in nearly 30 years. Due September 20 via Silver Current Records and the band’s own imprint 20/20/20, Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 spans 24 tracks comprising the complete Noise New York studio recordings, featuring previously unreleased outtakes, B-sides, and non-album output. It was compiled by the band and traces their career from their earliest recordings in the studio to their last. Listen to two never-before-heard tracks, ‘Shout You Down’ from the Today album sessions and ‘I Wanna Live’ from the On Fire album sessions, and check out the full tracklist below.
Galaxie 500 recorded three classic LPs in three years over the span of five studio sessions with producer and Shimmy Disc label boss Kramer at his studio Noise New York in Manhattan. Along with those original albums — Today, On Fire, and This Is Our Music — Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 brings together all Galaxie 500 recordings at Noise New York during that period. This includes the restoration of no less than eight never-before-heard studio tracks, chronologically sequenced along with previously released but rare material. The set will be available on 2xLP, 2xCD, and 2xTape.
”Opening up these tape boxes was like looking into an old journal or databook,” drummer Damon Krukowski said in a statement. “I had forgotten most of this happened at all, but it only took a few quick details to put me right back in the drum seat. There are songs from all the Galaxie 500 recording sessions included here.”
”There is a sweetness in hearing the progression of us finding our own sound, our own collective voice,” bassist Naomi Yang reflected. The Proustian power of music. Listening to these early recordings I can hear myself figuring out how I wanted to play bass – finding my way up the neck to where the notes would cut through, where there could be a counter-melody to the singing. Making the bass my singing voice.”
Singer and guitarist Dean Wareham said: “I can see why we left some of these songs in the vaults, but there is pleasure in hearing them today; they sound very alive, like Galaxie 500 playing in the brick-walled room that was Noise New York.”
Talking about the scope of the set, Silver Current label owner Ethan Miller explained: “It isn’t just an ‘odds and sods’ collection, it is a secret history of the band told in music. It tells an untold story of the band in full as they move steadily across the arc of their growth and creative expansion. It reveals not so much an alternate history of the band, as a different perspective of their actual history, viewed from the other side of the mirror from beginning to end.”
Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 Cover Artwork:
Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 Tracklist:
(February 1988 session)
1. Shout You Down (previously unreleased)
2. See Through Glasses (previously unreleased)
3. On the Floor (Noise NY version) (previously unreleased)
4. Can’t Believe It’s Me (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
5. Oblivious (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, Chemical Imbalance fanzine 7-inch)
6. King of Spain (Today CD bonus track, Aurora Records 7-inch B-side)
(July 1988 session)
7. Jerome (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
8. Song in 3 (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
9. Crazy (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, European Today CD bonus track)
(February 1989 session)
10. I Wanna Live (previously unreleased)
11. I Will Walk (previously unreleased)
12. Cold Night (On Fire CD bonus track, Rough Trade BlueThunder EP)
13. Ceremony (On Fire CD bonus track, Rough Trade BlueThunder EP)
(August 1989 session)
14. Never Get to Heaven (previously unreleased)
15. Maracas Song (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
16. Victory Garden (On Fire CD bonus track, Rough Trade BlueThunder EP)
17. Blue Thunder (w/sax) (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, Rough Trade EP)
(June1990 session)
18. Cheese and Onions (Ryko BoxSet bonus CD, Rutles Highway Revisited Shimmy Disc LP)
19. Fourth of July (video mix)
20. Cactus (previously unreleased)
21. Moonshot (previously unreleased)
22. Them (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
23.Final Day (Ryko Box Set bonus CD, otherwise unreleased)
24. Here She Comes Now (This Is Our Music CD bonus track, Rough Trade Fourth of July 12-inch B-side)
