New music guide The Neu Bulletin (Esther Joy, Tica Douglas, Sasha & more)
DIY’s essential, weekly guide to the best new music.
Neu Bulletins are DIY’s guide to the best new music. They contain every single thing that’s been played at full volume in the office, whether that’s a small handful or a gazillion acts. Just depends how good the week’s been.
Alongside our weekly round-up of discoveries, there are also Neu Picks. These are the very best songs / bands to have caught our attention, and there’s a new one every weekday. Catch up with the most recent picks here.
Esther Joy – Samgel
“Samgel is the name I use for the dark presence I experience and write about a lot in my music”, London-based Esther Joy explains. On her new single of the same name, that same dark presence comes to the fore, laid bare for all to see. Heavy, glitchy synths run through the track, with Esther’s voice transforming from vulnerable to a banshee wail in a moment. It’s a fitting introduction to her singular vision of electronica, one that plays with the line between pop conventions and industrial intensity. (Eugenie Johnson)
Tica Douglas - My Friend’s Exes
“I went to your reading last week, all your exes were there,” goes Tica Douglas’ ‘My Friend’s Exes,’ delving straight into the difficulties of small-town dating without even half a glance backwards. Witty, incisive, and explorative - usually all at once - Tica Douglas hails from Queens, New York, where they study Theology. ‘Our Lady Star of the Sea, Help and Protect Us’ (the follow-up to the musician’s under the radar LP ‘Joey’) is drenched with the kind of divine reference points you’d perhaps expect, then, dissecting queerness, religion, and the very meaning of words themselves atop intricately woven melodies. (El Hunt)
Sasha – Picking Flowers
‘Picking Flowers’ isn’t really going about heading into a meadow and making daisy chains. It’s London-based Sasha’s metaphor for a person who picks up and drops lovers on a whim. With that in mind, you might think it’s a bit of a heavy, emotional affair (pardon the pun) but not so. Sasha’s latest single is as light and airy as pollen drifting through the breeze. Still, pollen can give you grief, and in the intricate, careful layering of electronic and analogue elements, small flourishes of strings and beats gliding in and out, Sasha creates an underlying sense of melancholy that befits its weightier subject matter. (Eugenie Johnson)
Haloran – Processor 019
If you listened to Haloran’s debut track ‘Losing’ a couple of months ago, then you’d have heard a woozy, lilting dreampop number. Fast forward to now and Haloran is back, but don’t be fooled by the washed-out guitars that kick the track off. This certainly ain’t more of the same. Instead, ‘Processor 019’ develops into a glacial, ambient number, complete with melodic electronic flourishes and icy drones. It’s vaguely similar to Nicolas Jaar at his most amorphous and ambient, but treads its own atmospheric path too, pretty much becoming the perfect soundtrack to hazy twilight hours. (Eugenie Johnson)
With Bob Vylan, St Vincent, girl in red, Lizzy McAlpine and more.