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Back with a brand new single and video, Small Talk is Ekkah's first new track since the Last Chance to Dance EP in 2014 and their first track since signing to Song/RCA.
Produced by Tourist, Small Talk is an infectious little pop track, swirling synths bubbling up to create a warm disco bath of a record. London-based duo Rebecca Wilson and Rebekah Pennington have once again managed to make a charmingly infectious record.
Musician Vallès, real name Marc Costa, is currently residing on Ibiza making laid back electronic tracks like this gently looping track Sorrow. You can sense the inspiration of the white isle in both the sounds and the video for this track, which layers snapshots of rose-tinted memories to create something almost otherworldly.
In addition to Ibiza itself, the track takes in a variety of sources as inspiration. Costa claims 19th century impressionism as an inspiration, together with jazz and the work of Gil Scott-Herron and Roy Ayers. The track samples the Temptations' track Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me), and combines it with some sunny and wistful guitar work. The video, directed by creative collective L'Odre, is suitably dreamy, but emphasises the darkness that lies within the heart of the track.
Following the L'Étranger produced original, Vallès forthcoming Sorrow remixes EP will feature new takes from Freddie Joachim, Conrad Clifton and Skygaze. You can grab the EP when it is released on 5 February.
Following on from its recent release, Fickle Friends have now unveiled a fresh video for their single Say No More. Despite hailing from Brighton there is a warm California vibe - the video is full of contrasting pastel colours and perfectly matches the feel of the song.
The band have just announced their biggest ever UK tour - the dates are below and you can grab tickets here. Those in the US can catch the band at SXSW next year.
Fickle Friends Feb / March 2016 tour dates:
02/02/2016 Guildford Boileroom
03/02/2016 Cardiff Moon Club
04/02/2016 Bournemouth 60mp
05/02/2016 Falmouth MONO
06/02/2016 Bedford Esquires
07/02/2016 Leicester Scholar
08/02/2016 Bristol Louisiana
09/02/2016 Chester The Live Rooms
10/02/2016 Stoke Sugarmill
11/02/2016 Stourbridge River Rooms
16/02/2016 Liverpool Studio 2
17/02/2016 Reading Oakford Social
18/02/2016 London Dingwalls – Huw Stephens Presents
19/02/2016 Southampton Joiners
20/02/2016 Totnes Devon Arts Centre
21/02/2016 Colchester Arts Centre
23/02/2016 Norwich Waterfront
24/02/2016 Nottingham Bodega
25/02/2016 Manchester Sound Control
26/02/2016 Sheffield Leadmill
28/02/2016 Newcastle Think Tank
29/02/2016 Edinburgh Electric Circus
01/03/2016 Aberdeen Tunnels
02/03/2016 Dundee Beat generator
03/03/2016 Glasgow King tuts
04/03/2016 Stockton Ku Bar
05/03/2016 Lincoln Engine Shed
07/03/2016 Hull Fruit
08/03/2016 Leeds Oporto
09/03/2016 Birmingham Rainbow
10/03/2016 Oxford Bullingdon
11/03/2016 Aldershot Arts Centre
12/03/2016 Brighton Patterns
Electronic Parisian act TOYS have just released this gorgeous short film / music video to accompany their track Fire. The video is the creation of French director Louis De Caunes staring Blue Is The Warmest Colour star Adèle Exarchopoulos opposite her real-life partner, Parisian actor and model Jérémie Laheurte.
This video is an edited version Apnee, a short film to be broadcast on French TV channel Canal Plus on 1st December. The full short features an extended version of TOYS' single 'Fire' as the soundtrack.
According to director Caunes:
Apnée' is about the birth of a love story and the intense and contradictory feelings you can experience at the very beginning of a relationship. Toys scored the short film and it felt right to also release it as a music video for the theme song of the film, 'Fire', as it talks exactly about the feelings depicted in the film by Adèle Exarchopoulos and Jérémie Laheurte. We have an ongoing collaboration with Toys that started with a music video and continued with a couple of commercials that they scored. Now this. It feels to me like it just gets better and better, but I might be blinded by love.
Check out the non work safe video below:
After a number of EPs and three albums Girls Names took a typically nonconformist move to mark their return, launching 11-minute long single Zero Triptych, which got played in full on Radio 1 but doesn't feature here at all. Instead Arms Around A Vision distils the Belfast band's dreary-yet-dreamy outward looking vision into twelve tracks of sharp post-punk.
Discussing the album, frontman Cathal Cully states, "We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life ... For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art."
Like their contemporaries The Horrors and Interpol, Girls Names wear their influences proudly. You can hear plenty of elements of Can, Neu, Joy Division, Brian Eno here, together with traces of the New Romantic movement.
The warm electronic interludes of (Obsession) and (Convalescence) divide Arms Around A Vision into three acts, acting as brief moments of reprieve between the bursts of aggression. Self-produced by the band and engineered by Dan Rejmer, they carve out a soundscape that draws from a number of Europe's modern movements - Italian futurism, Russian constructivism and German's Zero Group. There is a modernist bent to Girls Names' sound - their music at times drowning in the simultaneous riot of conventional instruments played unconventionally together with unconventional instruments. Drums and guitars combine with sax, sheet metal and deliberately broken guitars.
Whilst the style isn't new, it is delivered with significant with aplomb. Arms Around A Vision storms in with the foreboding and appropriately named Reticence, a track of two-halves that at first weaves a slowly coiled threat before unraveling to leave something far more loose and free-willed.
Recent single A Hunger Artist still feels effortlessly cool - it is the perfect snub, a coy little 'fuck you' tied up into a bow... Harsh strummed guitars aggressively drive forward as Cully sounds a little nonchalantly delivers his passive aggressive play. The screeching brass amid a wave of distortion creates a chaotic feeling that the whole song could fall over at any moment, making it all the more exciting in its slow building cacophony.
Closing with the pregnant and menacing I Was You, Arms Around A Vision crawls to a darkly cynical conclusion that also grants the album its title. Cully's vocals swoop around the nightmarish musical landscape before leaving the band to fade to black. An album that achieves much through style and attitude, even if it feels like there might not be much left underneath.
Arms Around A Vision is released on 2 October through Tough Love. Stream I Was You below and watch the video for A Hunger Artist: