News Tracks: Sky Ferreira, Jacques Greene, BOOTS & More

It’s a Friday, and a bloody great Friday at that. Rare species of British wildlife such as the icecream van are beginning to creep out of hibernation, and you can even get away with sunglasses without looking like an Alex Turner impersonator. With this in mind, are we all ready to vibe out to this week’s selection of new tracks? a) yes b) yes. Please proceed.

Sky Ferreira - You’re Not The One (Cid Rim Remix)

Sky Ferreira’s assured and ultra-damning ‘You’re Not The One’ is a barrell of frustration manifesting itself into a colossal, no-prisoners pop song. But there’s a sweet side. LuckyMe producer Cid Rim takes every speck of gold from Sky’s original and flicks a shiny synthetic switch. Drums rattle along to the sound of a sped-up heartbeat. The chorus line - initially a proudly bellowed blast of noise - gets pitch-shifted into star-nodding outerspace. Talk about a reinterpretation. (Jamie Milton)

JUCE - Call You Out

‘Call You Out’ is brilliant because it triggers endless musical nostalgia, and not in a self-aware ‘we listened to ‘Loveless’ that one time and now we make shoegaze’ way, either. It’s highly stylised, this video, complete with berets, shaky camcorder footage, and subtitled bits with captions like ‘no more fighting about boys’. Its a tongue-in-cheek homage to magazines like Girl Talk and Sugar - those terrible rite-of-passage tween-bibles that taught the girls of the 90s how to coyly wave at their school crush in the canteen. It’s not the stylisation that pisses me off, actually - just the moment where an iPhone inexplicably appears. Details, ladies! Aside from the inaccuracy of failing to include a Motorola RZR in their video, JUCE can do no wrong, and their soulful, playful twist on pop makes me wish I was back in the playground passionately arguing about the merits of All Saints vs Spice Girls. (El Hunt)

BADBADNOTGOOD - Can’t Leave The Night

BBNG are moving exactly like Dynamo the Magician and that Jesus fella in the build up to III. Every track released so far is like a firm step on water - unsinkable, effortless and miraculous. I’m still perplexed as to how Dynamo and Jesus did it, but BBNG perform the musical equivalent by pushing the already lenient boundaries of instrumental hip hop/jazz improv to another dimension only they exist in with ‘Can’t Leave the Night’. In good old BBNG fashion the drumming is titillating and full of vigour; the lulls and creeping ascents are impeccably placed too, but this time around these BBNG staples are accompanied by some East Asian sounding synths, and they give the track an unshakeable confidence in its exploration of unsettled audioscapes. On a nerdy and kind of dumb side note, it’s like a reimagining of the Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden games in instrumental hip hop form… Which is badass to both the child and manchild in me. (Nathan Butler)

Tirzah - No Romance

Trying to find a grain of rough in Tirzah’s ‘No Romance’ is like trying to find a speck of sand on Brighton Beach. This is sweetness defined, a Micahcu-produced track from a forthcoming EP that practically taps the sun on the shoulder and tells it to divert its attention ol’ Blightly. With ‘No Romance’, Tirzah claims, you don’t get any of the other baggage either: No lies, no heartbreaks, no rejection. Come to think of it, being alone isn’t so bad. So there’s a definite message within this track, but it’s hard to see past the gleaming middle, the musical equivalent of licking a Solero that never melts. (Jamie Milton)

Sum Comfort - Watch Your Step (feat. Ji Nilsson)

Stockholm based production team Sum Comfort, consisting of Fredrik Lövgren and Anders Persson, are readying their debut LP ’Flying Kites’ for a release later this year, having previously worked with some of the finest names in the Swedish hip-hop and r’n’b community. This week they finally shared a first taste from the project that is sure to give the talented duo a wider audience; ’Watch Your Step’, on which they’ve teamed up with the Swedish artist and songwriter Ji Nilsson. Nilsson is another rising Stockholm act, who low-key released two of the finest Scandinavian pop tracks of last year, and she provides a gorgeous vocal performance for ’Watch Your Step, working her way around Sum Comfort’s lounge-y beat, telling a story of forbidden love. (Johan Alm)

BOOTS - Autumn (Lude 1) ft. Kelela

I’ve spent a fair portion of my week confused by BOOTS’ spaced out colour-trippy video for ‘Autumn (Lude 1)’. I’ve concluded it’s two super slowed-down matches, burning and getting eaten up by chemical corrosion, before triggering a massive heart shaped fire that implodes on itself to the sound of an answer phone message by the end. Deep. It sounds like an avant-garde soundtrack to Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 - from those intentionally shit drum sounds to rap delivery that channels just a hint of Denny Blaze. Those, by the way, are not criticisms - they’re the touches that give this song its appeal. When Kelela comes in around the middle-mark, though, production takes a murky, eerie turn, and that’s when ‘Autumn (Lude 1)’ really begins to smoulder. (El Hunt)

Jacques Greene - No Excuse

Jacques Greene’s 2013 output was virtually flawless, but it half-relied on other contributions. The How to Dress Well-featuring ‘On Your Side’ spun misery into future-gazing electronica, while a take on Ciara’s ‘Body Party’ made an ultra-minimal approach sound like a work of genius. Big achievements, but the producer’s yet to release something so unwaveringly assured and confident as ‘No Excuse’, up to now. A simple, swerving vocal sample is the muse, but it’s the harsh, stamping percussion that makes this work what it is: A stunning balance between the rough and raw and the unerringly beautiful. (Jamie Milton)

Eccentronic Research Council - Touch The Leather Cock of the North De-Mix (Fat White Family)

The Fat White Family are perhaps best described by a collection of similar-sounding adjectives starting with ‘s’: scuzzy, squalid, seedy, sleazy and in every term of the word, sick. When they’re not busy dodging bathtime, they make diabolically creepy tracks oozing with the explicit, and to the mild-hearted listener the illicit; gradually mobilizing a Salivation Army of the unwashed and drooling through their chaotic live shows. Yet, nudging their infectious black humour and erratic experimentation aside, their tracks have arguably been missing the hooks or panache to consistently enrapture and encapture. The equally fantastically named Sheffield oddballs Eccentronic Research Council, however, have solved this dilemma with a ‘Cock of the North De-Mix’ of the Fat White Family’s latest track ‘Touch The Leather’. They’ve turned a glorious sonic mash into an absolute banger, stuffed fool of elevated hooks and zany synthesizers that worm into your ear like a drugged-up earwig. Now the Fat White Family’s music is infectious, as well. (Kyle MacNeill)

Ecstacy - Requise

With a deeper musical understanding of creating the feeling of euphoria than most of the inane, cheesy dance producers that stem from Europe, synthpop wizards Ecstasy are endearing in the way in which they craft the most buoyant of melodies in a highly eloquent manner. With ‘Requise’, the quintet take the dainty electronic stylings of Chvrches and intensify them into a pulsating joyous groove that soars higher and higher into synthesizer heaven as it floats onwards. Rounded off by an equally as radiant vocal that glides through a series of intermittent key changes effortlessly, ‘Requise’ is a track that takes the drawling shoegaze formula and injects it with a serious dose of happiness and sunshine. (Joshua Pauley)