Neu This Week In New Music (19th October 2013)

While new music showcases popped up all over the world - CMJ’s Music Marathon in New York, Swn’s slightly more intimate but no less important Cardiff hangs - a couple of acts still managed to give further indication of future, heady heights. All three of the below aren’t strictly rooted to shows - one of them’s yet to play a single gig, another’s midway through their first UK tour - instead patching together their forward-thinking ideas through oddball, electronic means.

Here’s the best of what happened this week in new music:

TRACK OF THE WEEK
JUNGLE - Lucky I Got What I Want


It’s not quite a genre-shifting curveball - JUNGLE still sound like the same, steroid-addled funk dudes - but ‘Lucky I Got What I Want’ is very different, by their standards. ‘Platoon’ and ‘The Heat’ were about as good as it got for a debut double-up of tracks, but they did sound remarkably similar, like someone had hit pause on the microphone midway through recording both tracks in the same session. This is a looser, more melancholic - dare we say - take on things, which puts actual emotion in the music of a ‘collective’ who’ve shied away from showing their faces beyond some smoky UK gigs. There’s essentially nothing JUNGLE can’t do, at this stage. Apart from, y’know, tell us who they are.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
East India Youth - Looking For Someone


This week witnessed two of the strangest, maybe even more disturbing videos in recent weeks to arrive all at once. Woman’s Hour’s ‘Darkest Place’ channelled an uncomfortable, visually stunning FKA Twigs ‘Papi Pacify’ feel. Any other week and that would’ve stood out a thousand miles beyond other new music videos. But East India Youth’s spiralling, skyscraper ode to falling gives off a strange new feeling, something previously unencountered. William Doyle’s mastered melancholia and all its trimmings and in this preview of a debut album he takes liftoff, being sent straight back down to London’s brutal, concrete streets.

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
The Acid


The Acid first popped up on Neu a few months back, symbols pouring from their sleeves, cryptic clues the only thing backing up their progressive, nigh-on numb electronica. They’ve since followed this up with very little else, bar the above video for ‘Animal’, which strips its recorded version of all consciousness, sending it into a dazed, inky mess. Expect a great deal more to come from these guys; a trio apparently immune to location, claiming to come from Berlin, Prague and goodness knows where else.