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The 10 Best Songs We Heard This Week: Savages, Laurel Halo

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we are, as ever, rounding up the best songs we’ve heard this week, which to be honest is a rather pleasant distraction from all the other fucked-up stuff going on in the world. This week we swooned (again) at new material from Savages, were intrigued by the return of Laurel Halo, enjoyed the new Daft Punk song (albeit perhaps not quite as much as everyone else), and elsewhere generally got down to new stuff by Com Truise, Gunslinger, Tempers… and Black Sabbath, whose new song actually isn’t that bad at all. Who’d have thought it? Anyway, click through and get listening. … Read More

Music

The 10 Best Dark and Weird Electronic Albums of 2012

By Russ Marshalek on

We’re not ones for preemptively compiling “best of the year” lists, particularly in music. There’s always one or two records or, as is coming increasingly more common, a small flurry of mixtapes that drop at the tail end of December that cause us obsessive, neurotic critics to compulsively rearrange our lists (see: last year, and The Weeknd’s Echoes of Silence, his surprisingly perfect ending to a trilogy that most thought lagged a bit in the center). That said, we’re ready to put a lock down on 2012 as it relates to the year’s releases in the brilliantly flourishing “weird” dark electronic scene. We’re living in a post-witch house landscape now, where the pop music landscape is slurring and blurring into a weird, dark hybrid of what we used to know… and that’s an awesome thing. It allows for the likes of Charli XCX’s Super Ultra tape to rub against the epic void of releases from Blackest Ever Black. So, in this festive time of year, let’s get dark. … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Tame Impala, The Antlers

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week it’s remix central, with another excellent Tame Impala remix from Canyons and a similarly worthy Antlers remix from Tricky, of all people, along with Laurel Halo vs. Lianne Le Havas and Peaking Lights vs. TEEN. Elsewhere, there’s the return of Crystal Castles and Jason Molina, fine new tracks from Beacon and Guards, and plentiful other goodness. Since all this action costs precisely nothing, what are you waiting for? All the download links await after the jump. … Read More

Music

10 of the Most Interesting Women in Experimental Music

By Tom Hawking on

Laurel Halo’s debut album Quarantine is out this week, and it’s just as good as we were hoping it might be, full of strange and wonderful sounds, all topped by Halo’s distinctive vocals. Experimental music has a long and proud history of female involvement, from the work of electronic pioneers like Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire through Cosey Fanni Tutti and Ikue Mori and Laurie Anderson to latter-day examples like Diamanda Galas and Gudrun Gut. To celebrate the release of Quarantine, and the fact that there seem to be more fascinating female experimentalists around than ever, we thought we’d put together a selection of contemporary talents whose work we love — some you’re probably familiar with, some you might not be, all of them are great. And, of course, let us know your suggestions. … Read More

Music

10 Albums You Need to Hear in June

By Tom Hawking on

Summer is here, and June is shaping up as a bumper month for album releases. As ever, we’ve pored over release schedules and reviewed our own personal wish list and come up with a list of the ten records we reckon will be worth hearing (and hopefully worth repeated listening) over the coming weeks. They include everything from cerebral 4AD-approved hip hop to the return of Patti Smith, along with something that we’d really, really like for our birthday. What’s on your shopping list this month? Let us know in the comments. … Read More

Music

Chill Out: 10 Icy, Dark New Albums for Summer

By Russ Marshalek on

The great outdoors. Picnics in the park. Going to the beach. All of these activities are summer staples for a reason: warm weather and longer days are a natural catalyst for carefree fun. But sometimes, we’ll admit it, all the sun and sand and Best Coast songs about weed and cats blasting out of iPhones just makes us feel a little, well, antisocial. In the same way that at times we just want to curl up with a devastatingly sad book, sometimes we really want to rock out to some bleak tunes. If you, like us, are having “glass is half empty” tendencies at this point of the year, fear not: summer 2011 is bringing with it a bevy of excellent releases for those of us who are a bit more…moody. So crank up the air conditioning, close the blinds and remedy summer overload with these records. … Read More