Don't You - Danglo

Fresh summer electronic jive for your overly clammy self as we head into August with little sign of any of this glorious weather abating. On hearing this new single from Danglo label WotNot claimed they simply had to have it.

The press release likens 'Don't You' to Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur's 'Garden' but with an audible London-influence and they aren't far wrong. The playful yet urgent vocals of Ivan Franco and Tokyo Lopez play up against each other with a certain intimacy. Danglo's chilled but sunny music combines hollow low-end bass and some skippy beats to give the track a future soul sound.

Along with an instrumental the single comes with a dubby mix from DA-10. On this the track has a elastic, cosmic feel with near-horizontal bass work and layers of stuttering vocals. It is almost like a continuation from the original version in the way it extends the distance and confuses the communication between the vocalists.

Don't You is released through WotNot on 5 August, available to pre-order on MP3 [affiliate link].  Stream the original via Soundcloud below:

Artist page : http://soundcloud.com/danglo Press Release: The second we heard this track, we had to put it out. WotNot Music bring you a tasty slice of summer pop, with a hazy synth-pop remix from DA-10 for those balmy August evenings.

Album Review: Field Of Reeds - These New Puritans

These New Puritans initially came out amongst a flurry of post-punk influenced bands loosely associated with the nu-rave tag back in 2006. Sometime after their first album, Beat Pyramid, came out it felt a little like they were already irrelevant as far as I was concerned. It's therefore as much a surprise to me as anyone that Field Of Reeds, their third album, is one of the most exciting and innovative albums I've heard this year.

From the bizarre opening - a warped cover of Herb Alpert's lovely 'This Guy's In Love With You' - it is clear something here is different. There is a jazz-like quality to the instrumentation, warm horns and woodwind instruments give an unanticipated depth of sound as female Portuguese vocalist Elisa Rodrigues sings a cover in a way that suggests she has never heard the original.

View fullsize

Field Of Reeds - These New Puritans

Field Of Reeds is at times incredibly tense, the sound of something inside vocalist Jack Barnett's head about to snap. But it never quite does - the music broods and threatens but holds back, and the fullness of the instrumentation lends Field Of Reeds a sense of heightened drama. 'V (Island Song)' builds and flows, moving in a tidal fashion with a series of intense and then more subdued moments over its near 10-minute length. The strings encapsulate a haunting refrain that encircles and traps the band and listener like a slow-forming whirlpool.

There is a clear effort involved in the creation of this album yet it is surprising just how human and alive it feels. The attention to production and detail never risks overwhelming the actual music and only serves to strengthen the delivery. It lifts These New Puritans towards greatness, providing a level of mass they previously lacked.

'Spiral' and 'Organ Eternal' demonstrate this weight best, in its most rounded and realised form. 'Spiral' uses the many instruments that feature across the album to make a slow, creeping piece of music with sense of freeform experimentalism in a structure that just gently unravels. 'Organ Eternal' uses its titular instrument to form a warm electronic wrapper around a swirling track with some of the best orchestrated strings on the whole album. It is then quickly followed by the lonely jazz intro of 'Nothing Else', and by this point it is all already so unlike anything else you will hear from anyone else this year that it is very hard not to be somewhat bowled over.

 Field Of Reeds is out now, available on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Stream via Spotify below:

Album Review: Immunity - Jon Hopkins

Stunning time-lapse photography of crystal growth and chemical reactions soundtracked by music from Jon Hopkins' upcoming album Immunity forms the basis of this new audiovisual experience, produced in collaboration with The Creators Project. Read more: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/microscopic-images-of-food-dye The video is a collaborative effort between art director & typographer Craig Ward, biochemist Linden Gledhill and Jon Hopkins.

Jon Hopkins has quite the cv... The press often make much of his collaborations with Coldplay but to just focus on the fact that he's been busy adding the best bits to Middle England's finest would do him a great disservice. Hopkins first came to fame playing keyboards for the cultish female vocalist Imogen Heap, he has worked with David Holmes and his soundtrack to the (rather excellent) independent sci-fi movie Monsters was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award.

Hopkins also collaborated with Brian Eno on the frantic Small Craft On A Milk Sea, and it is Eno's work that this, Hopkins' fourth solo album proper, feels closest to. Immunity is an extradonairy accomplishment in both beauty and focus.

View fullsize

Immunity - Jon Hopkins

With an entrance that douses the listener in crafted distortion and beats fractured like glass Hopkins' new approach initially appears to be mostly focused on delivering experimental IDM. Yet within that first track, 'We Disappear', there is a nagging melodic refrain that wins through in the end, a somewhat distressed piano loop emerging from a frenetic whirlwind of electronics.

Immunity sounds something like a car crash slowed down to 1,000 times its original length, like a Justin Bieber record stretched to the point where it is transformed from abomination into something staggering, beautiful and pure. The early tracks are intense and rapid, the crunch of distorted rhythms echoing the crunch of metal on metal on 'Open Eye Signal'. Piano is once again weaved into 'Breathe This Air' in a way the feels like humanity and perhaps tinkling glass in amongst the broader chaos of a slamming four-four beat... But things gradually begin to slow down.

'Abandon Window' marks the entrance of Immunity's second half and second act. The turning point in this album is a cinematic moment of gently stumbling piano playing that deliberately plays with the timing to once again create something that sounds very alive. It's the rear-windscreen being removed and the friendly hands of a rescue worker - compassionate and warm, the piano is surrounded by ambience, layers of found sound and musique concrète. It sounds like Trent Reznor's best work with Atticus Ross.

The three tracks that follow 'Abandon Window' use it as a template, all being slower than the album's first half and letting melody come to the fore. 'Form By Firelight' combines shuffling beats and clicks with distant melodic keys that gently hammer out a fragmented melody. The title track closes the album with traces of a vocal performance and it creates a track that feels like a balance - it is more in time and seems more content than anything else here, and it closes the album on a high. Immunity is quite brilliant.

Immunity is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links]. Preview via the video above or listen on Spotify: 

EP Review: Taking Over - Joe Goddard

One fifth of Hot Chip, Joe Goddard has been teasing his EP for a little while now, having first snuck out the rather lush 'She Burns' back in May on Soundcloud. 

That track maintains much of it's crystalline beauty, Mara Carlyle's vocals wispy and delicate against Goddard's fuzzy melodic tinkering and unpretentious bass work. It's the rest of the material on this that interests me most though, and it's a varied collection of tracks in ambition and focus if not quality...

View fullsize

Taking Over - Joe Goddard

Taking Over starts with 'Step Together', a collaboration with Boris Dlugosch, who… Is apparently still alive? And thankfully appears to be sens-Moose T. Which is a relief. Dlugosch seemingly gives the track it's Spanish influenced keys whilst Goddard lays down a vocal in his trademark under-stated and bruised fashion... It's enjoyable but undeniably the least interesting thing here.

The title track is more pop than dance, a spectral electronic ballad with gently picked guitar melodies and Goddard's softest possible vocal delivery. It's a beautiful track and it feels surprisingly personal, dealing with the love of the music as it starts to consume you at that moment in a night out when everything comes together… Mind altering substances optional, of course.

Immediately before 'Taking Over' and potentially from the same inspirational source but very different in terms of it's execution is 'Bassline '12'. The most heads-down track on the EP it's a slow building house track with a crescendo of stark metallic keys that expands over nine-minutes to make it the longest track here. Goddard manages to combine a sense of upfront danceability with the sort of melodic and melancholic depth Hot Chip are known for. Goddard's work with Raf Rundall as the 2 Bears was always more about the nightclub than Hot Chip but at times it felt laking in depth in comparison. 'Bassline '12' is a more considered and ultimately stronger offering, suggesting Goddard may have a lot to offer on his own.

 Taking Over is out now, available to order on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link]. Stream in full on Spotify:

EP Review: L'Année Du Dragon - Hotel International

Franz Kirmann is a somewhat profilific producer but there's a good chance you haven't heard of him... At least not yet. That's in part due to the fact that he has worked under a number of aliases and the banner of many projects, but this new one as Hotel International also appears to be his most populist release yet.

Having previously used the Hotel International name to remix Eskimo Twins and Simple Minds' 'This Fear of Gods' it sounds like the inspiration of the latter has rubbed off on Kirmann just a little bit. 'L'Année Du Dragon' is a dusty and moody Ballearic track that riffs off of the sound of 80s new wave. The core melody is actually pretty much directly lifted from Don Henley's 'The Boys Of Summer', something Kirmann readily fesses up to, saying "I was jamming with a synth and started playing that line that basically sounds like a rip off of Don Henley's Boys Of Summer… In the end I decided to leave it on the track as it gives a nostalgic feel."

The track is aiming for something that's pop and yet cinematic and 'L'Année Du Dragon' achieves just that. If anything Kirmann's a little overly dour and dismissive of his own creation, labelling it cheesy despite enjoying its familiarity... But if there is a certain whiff of fromage it's really just down to the inspiration he has drawn on. This doesn't actually sound that far away from the sort of thing the critically adored Italians Do It Better label would release, and it would fit right in within Nicolas Winding Refn's ultra-violent Drive.

Two remixes feature. First up is Canada's Jokers Of The Scene, who draw the original out to epic proportions. The first few minutes lack any proper drums, providing a level of tension that ultimately threatens to boil over once the track kicks in proper with a solid four-four and a bubbling acid-line... The mix moves through three main acts and each of them almost deserves their own mix, it's 11-minutes long but justifies its own duration. The second mix comes courtesy of France's Morgan Hammer and she jetisons the main riff of the original to create a doped-up twisted take, complete with heavy reverb-drenched drums and fizzy bass melodies that give the track a much darker feel.

L'Année Du Dragon is out on Monday through Days Of Being Wild. You can pre-order on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk [affiliate link] or listen and purchase through Bandcamp below: