This week's new tracks, including Nina Kraviz, Chvrches, and These Hidden Hands
PICK OF THE WEEK
Nina Kraviz
Mr Jones (Rekids)
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Russian producer Nina Kraviz finds herself cast as techno's Miley Cyrus, excoriated by bitter bedroom producers for supposedly using her looks to get on. It's pathetic, but as a result her beguiling music is often overlooked. Typically, the description "deep house" does scant justice to Mr Jones, which in its elusive, chirupping stop-start funk and Kraviz's lonesome, intimate vocals, is as bizarre and intricate as Matias Aguayo or Villalobos's idiosyncratic techno.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Chvrches
Lies (Virgin)
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Chvrches emerged from Glasgow's dissenting indie underbelly, but there's nae real awkwardness here. Big, blustery Lies is another electropop tune (see, Austra, Purity Ring, Tomorrow's World) mimicking the Knife of eight years ago, only not very well. Ignore it and put in the hard yards with the Knife's recent, testy album Shaking The Habitual instead. It's worth it.
These Hidden Hands
Remixes II (Hidden Hundred)
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German producer Ancient Methods' effervescent rework of Isopod, one of the tracks on this remix EP, transforms These Hidden Hands brutal Berlin techno into what sounds like a heavily-drugged Glitter Band playing through a collapsing Marshall stack, or a badly scratched CD of old Kompakt schaffel tracks. To be clear, that is high praise.
Erol Alkan
Illumination (Phantasy)
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All jostling claps, taut kicks and tweaking 303s, Bang – the standout track from Alkan's debut solo EP – sees the respected DJ mining acieed house in a way peculiar enough that it doesn't come off as pure nostalgia (a disease at epidemic levels in dance music). It is muscularly effective, but, for definitive dancefloor-destroying neo-acid revivalism, it can't hold a glowstick to Chicken Lips' recent remix of Headman's It Rough.
Metronomy
I'm Aquarius (Because Music)
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Like jazz, or the Fall's back catalogue, music itself increasingly feels too daunting to click through. It's a terrifying vertiginous wall of insurmountable free data. Hats off, therefore, to those cranks putting stuff out on cassette or, in this case, via a star-gazing phone app, in an attempt to at least to imbue "the product" with a little romance. Not that Joe Mount's music needs such help. A languorous, precise, very English take on R&B, I'm Aquarius reconfirms that he is that rarest of electropop producers. Not only can he turn a pithy lyric ("I'm aware of the procedure/ But normally it's me that leaves her"), but, clearly, Mount is as obsessed with songcraft as he is with vintage synths.
Leona Lewis
One More Sleep (Sony)
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Not, as you might expect, a moving rumination on watching a loved one pass at Dignitas, but a Christmas song. A Christmas song which, ironically, once you've heard it 27 times, will make you want to end it all.
by Tony Naylor via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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