© Noga Erez (via YouTube)
© Noga Erez (via YouTube)
© Noga Erez (via YouTube)
Recently rediscovered Noga Erez through her relatively current single Nails (feat. Missy Elliott) and I can’t fathom how nonfamous she still seems to be despite her obvious talent.
Just listen to the new song and those amazing performances of ‘Views’ and ‘End Of The Road’ from her 2021 Album ‘Kids’ —which is still available as limited coloured vinyl:
© Amistat (via YouTube)
Please treat yourself kind
Give yourself a gentle year
The next lines we’ll receive from you will tell the storm has cleared
Folks, we’ve entered melancholic-music-season again! Let’s celebrate with this hauntingly beautiful stripped-down version of Brave by Amistat recorded during a Live Session From Home.
© 4AD (via YouTube)
It finally hits me, a mile’s drive
The sky is leaking, my windshield’s crying
I’m feeling sacred, my soul is stripped
Radio’s painful, the words are clipped
The National is always a win, and so is Bon Iver. The yesterday released song Weird Goodbyes is just as hauntingly beautiful of a collaboration as you’d expect from those two bands.
© Beyoncé / SME (via YouTube)
A new single by Beyoncé with a somewhat surprising sound; BREAK MY SOUL heavily relies on (classic) house samples, really curious if her whole new Album Renaissance –dropping 29 July– is going to sound similar?
© Phoebe Bridgers / Dead Oceans (via Youtube)
Another beautiful piece of music by Phoebe Bridgers. She wrote Sidelines for the soundtrack of ‘Conversations With Friends’ where a lot of the great-looking footage for the music video was taken from. The melancholic song furthermore is featured in the Trailer of the Hulu series.
© Sigrid (via Youtube)
When the world is on your shoulders /
And the weight of your own heart is too much to bear /
Wеll, I know that you’re afraid things will always be this way /
It’s just a bad day, not a bad life
— from Bad Life by Sigrid feat. Bring Me The Horizon
Looking forward to the second album “How To Let Go” by Norwegian singer and songwriter Sigrid to be released on Friday, three years after her debut “Sucker Punch”.
© Nina Simone (via YouTube)
After a wonderful, warm and sunny Sunday with the family, this is my current mood —or at least it was before turning on the news: My Baby Just Cares For Me by Nina Simone remixed by HONNE.
Loving the vibes of the video as well, I really can’t wait for summer to begin and travel again. It has been years since I’ve dipped my toes into the ocean.
© KUMMER (via Youtube)
Ich wär gerne voller Zuversicht /
Jemand, der voll Hoffnung in die Zukunft blickt /
Der es schafft, all das einfach zu ertragen /
Ich würd dir eigentlich gern sagen /
Alles wird gut
— aus Der letzte Song (Alles wird gut) von KUMMER feat. Fred Rabe
© Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel / Andrea Love & Phoebe Wahl / Hornet (via YouTube)
My goal was to make it the cutest, coziest, warmest video ever. It’s supposed to be a little over the top, but almost in a ‘I can’t stop watching this and I need more’ kind of way.
— Andrea Love about the stop-motion music video for Merry Christmas, Happy New Year by Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel
hellohornet.com/andrea-love.html?project=merry-christmas-happy-new-year
Kunzite – VISUALS
»Ride on the rays of the farthest sun«
About a decade ago I came across the electronic rock from Ratatat for the first time because of their features on one of my favourite albums, Kid Cudi’s masterpiece ‘Man on the Moon: The End of Day’. The recognizable sound the Brooklyn-based duo was contributing to the tracks ‘Alive’ and ‘Pursuit of Happiness‘ –probably one of my favourite songs of all time– lead me to listen to their music quite extensively back then, first and foremost to the extremly catchy tunes of their earlier released album ‘Classics’.
Just recently –six years after the last vital signs of Ratatat– said album (which nowadays is available on YouTube in its entirety) popped into my head again while listening to ‘VISUALS’, the just-released second longplayer by a band called Kunzite. Only after doing my habitual research on the music project unkown to me hitherto, I discovered my association is not by chance;
The 2018 formed duo is a collaboration between the musicians Agustin White and Mike Stroud, the latter being the guitarist of –you guessed it– Ratatat, for which he plays a variety of instruments. I guess a lot of the infectious groove on ‘VISUALS’ caused by synthesizers, pipe organs and lap steel guitars is to a great extent attributed to him, at least it undoubtedly sounds a hell lot like his other music project.
In fact the whole record sounds like Ratatat got inspired by the island vibes of Hawaii –where White and Stroud recorded large parts of the longplayer, decided to dial back the weirdness just a tiny bit and, most notably, add hypnotic pop vocals to their repertoire.
The result is a psychedelic joyride and probably one of my favourite albums of 2021 so far. I can’t wait for ‘VISUALS’ to drop on vinyl later this year (November), until then I have to be careful not to listen to it repeatedly ad nauseam in its digital form —especially since it oozes summer fun and therefore matches the current late summer sun way better than the dark winter months ahead.
There’s rumored to be an exclusive track with the grande Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry on the physical record, though, so I’m going to put it on as soon as I get my hands on it, no matter how often I’ll have played it already till then.
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
© UMG / Xavier Rudd / Axel Massin (via YouTube)
Music is a memory machine —one reason why I enjoy collecting records so much. Xavier Rudd for example was one of my favourite artists over a decade ago when I was still a student but already transitioning into a completely new phase of life. His old album ‘Solace‘ –I still own on CD– awakens a lot of happy memories of said carefree days whenever I put it on.
Currently my life is changing to a greater extent than ever before and even though I’m not trying to live barefoot, planning to move to Berlin and thinking about getting dreadlocks anymore –ironically I do have long hair for the very first time nowadays–, Rudd has been on heavy rotation again with his new song latterly. Now Stoney Creek for me will inevitable be linked to the life events of the challenging yet incredible fortunate last weeks.
Coz baby, the wind is blowing /
And there ain’t no other place I’d rather be /
And the wind owes me nothing /
But it’s blown me here with you /[…]
This is home
© Ed Banger Records / Because Music / Genesis (via YouTube)
We were really attracted by the epic visual appeal of cymbal making: bronze, fire, hammers —something almost mythological and elemental like Vulcan or the Nibelungen. We chose Bosphorus Cymbals in Turkey because they had this very traditional process that barely changed in centuries; in this video I am just a link in the chain of production and quality control, after all these cymbals have been melted, hand hammered, and lathed into a musical object.
I’m not sure why Gaspard Augé created only such a short teaser video for the first single from his upcoming solo album, even though Force Majeure is already out in the –seemingly– full version on Spotify and YouTube (without a proper video). Either way I really would’ve liked to see more of the shown traditional craftsmanship paired with the driving electronic music —probably because Augé’s music helps me to cope better with the recently announced break-up of Daft Punk.