News This Week In New Music (31st August 2013)

Anyone sticking their neck out or raising their limp hand and politely slash smugly claiming ‘music isn’t progressing, y’know’ need only scroll below and have a mind-melting epiphany. There’s enough that’s emerged this week to convince all naysayers that christ, we might actually be moving forwards. Neu’s Track of the Week, at the very least, is a royal game-changer. The Discovery of the Week? Don’t even pretend you’ve heard anything like it before.

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

TRACK OF THE WEEK
Angel Haze - Echelon (It’s My Way)


Is this real hip-hop or is this fantasy? Angel Haze - NY rapper with all the hype to render a buzz congregation obsolete - has announced herself, wiped out the competition, stood top of the pile, with one flick of a switch. This comes in the form of ‘Echelon (It’s My Way)’. She spits, she sings, she oversees some deranged production. There’s almost definitely a Gameboy Colour sample. There’s 100% some synths that have come straight out of DJ Tiesto’s Ibiza megamix. There’s some trembling, ‘baroque’ instrumentation, too. Mary-Kate and Ashley references? You got it. Oprah dissing? Pretty much. Angel Haze is more fucked up than we gave her credit. This is a proper future-gazing triumph.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Chela - Romanticise


What. A. Song. It’s like having a beige carpet swept up from under your feet. Bye bye, boring. Out bursts a flock of colours previously unseen to the naked eye. Fireworks, too. Leagues of the stuff. To hell with it: A sea of animals burst forth too, straight from Noah’s abandoned ark. They’re invited. Everyone’s ecstatic, happy to be in the presence of ‘Romanticise’.

Maybe that’s a little over-the-top. Chela’s ‘Romanticise’ is a very good song. It’s in awe of click-clack happy spree 80s pop and its video is super-referential to the decade that follows. Like a malfunctioned MS Paint that just so happens to spray out something Jackson Pollock-esque, it’s more accidental than the precise punch of the song itself, but who’s complaining?

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
White
This Morning by White

Vocoder rock? What a world we live in. Where something like this can exist and stand out in a crowd and sound like the future. Half of those who listen to this will hate it - but that’s part of the magic. Mexico City kids with all the pedals they could ever care for have created something that points forward and forces all pretenders to play catch up.