5 songs you should hear this week – w/e 13th April
Every day we play you a track that has just grabbed our attention. As soon as we hear it, we send it into the digital ether for you all to enjoy. Sometimes it's an exclusive, sometimes it's a favourite artist and, at other times, it'll be someone brand new. Here's this week's choice selection. Just click on the links to see the full Just Added playlist:
Spoon - Can I Sit Next To You (Ad-Rock Remix)
This Austin band, beloved by Adam Buxton, released the original version of this song on their 2017 album Hot Thoughts. Now the track’s been remixed by Ad-Rock - AKA Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, whose talents have been diverted more towards acting of late. His take on the track is shorter and punchier, with bigger beats and looped vocals. Check-ch-check-check-check-ch-check it out.
Gruff Rhys – Frontier Man
This is the taste of Gruff’s fifth solo effort Babelsberg which was written a few years ago, in a “feverish three-day session”. Trump was on the ascendant, and on Gruff’s mind, when he wrote this track about “the pitfalls of whimsical behaviour and the cult of personality.” Lyrics aside, he’s channelling some delightfully widescreen Glen Campbell vibes. The album was recorded by Gruff, Kliph Scurlock (Flaming Lips), Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo) and Osian Gwynedd, before the BBC National Orchestra of Wales added their magic. The album’s due out in June and we’ll ask Gruff more about its creation, when he joins us next Friday, at Spillers Records in Cardiff.
Goat – Let it Burn
Let it Burn was written specifically for a climactic scene in Killing Gävle, a short film about a giant straw goat in Sweden. Every Christmas, local custodians try to protect the Gävle goat from being burnt down by mischievous pagans (they’ve failed most years, since the tradition began in 1966). Goat’s music was the obvious choice and their back catalogue is used throughout the film which, until now, was the only place you sample this 6 minute epic (complete with tribal drums, flute breakdown and strings). Now, you just need to get your hands on one of the limited edition vinyls, being randomly distributed around the world. Good luck.
LUMP – Curse Of The Contemporary
LUMP is a new collaboration between Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay, the founding member of Tunng (whose production credits include Speech Debelle’s Mercury Prize-winning debut). They recorded an album in Lindsay’s subterranean London studio, which will be released in June, and this track’s the first we’ve heard. The pair are keen to stress that LUMP is a creation that “passed through them” (we’re assuming more like a spirit, than a dodgy meal) and they look upon it “parentally.”
TVAM – Psychic Data
TVAM is the moniker for the Wigan-based producer Joe Oxley, who cites Boards of Canada, Suicide and My Bloody Valentine as musical touchpoints. This new single is described as a portion of modern day paranoia about “a world in which information seeps under your door and pools by your feet. You’ll let it in, under your skin”. And this dystopian vision is meant to be more fully realised in a live setting, where TVAM will use “long-dead technology and haunted sloganeering to broadcast his self-styled psychic data.”
You can hear all the tracks via the Just Added Playlist
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