A revolving cast of contributors showcase some of the best new music releases from the past week.
Oneohtrix Point Never - ‘I Bite Through It’
The savage chaos of ‘I Bite Through It’ is impressive and captivating. It has a sense of random movement, but is served by a very deliberate emotional palette. The biting synth and reversed snare sounds halfway through the track seem to epitomise that idea - the colours in the song are all grainy and it’s as if you’re listening to the strain of an object being bent until it breaks.
Within the song, there’s just enough tension and relief as a contrast to the anger and frustration. The gentle interspersed guitar plucks which are layered with a warm, barely-there synth pad don’t quite serve as a break in the intensity of the song. Rather, it’s a careful addition so that the track doesn’t carve out a sense of overwhelming nihilism.
Oneohtrix Point Never has always been exciting, but this is the first single I have heard from him that has made me hit the repeat button so many times. Warp Records hit the ball out of the park in with Aphex Twin’s Syro and the eponymous Clark record. The forthcoming Garden of Delete, which is out mid-November, has the potential not just to equal those albums, but to define the sound of electronic music for the next few years. - Luke Jacobs
Baloji feat. Petite Noir and Muanza – ‘Capture’
Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and raised in Belgium from the age of three, Baloji’s very life is a testament to colonial forces. It comes as no surprise, then, that the first track off his forthcoming EP 64 Bits and Malachite is equal parts love letter and lament to the state of his homeland. The track was co-written and produced by Metronomy’s Olugbenga Adelekan, and features vocals by Cape Town’s Petite Noir (himself half Congolese) and Kinshasa singer Muanza. Anything lost in the translation of Baloji’s French lyrics to English subtitles is made up for by the relentless poignancy of his words.
‘Capture’ is a stunning tribute, both lyrically and visually, to the DRC - an African region that has been subjected to the most long-standing and egregious examples of primary resource extraction, from rubber and diamond in the days of King Leopold to coltan today. He knows that 40% of the phone and computer so intrinsic to his work comes from his birthplace in the Katanga region, so when he raps lines like “while brothers sacrifice their lives / for phones that contain their blood” and “the holy grail is mineral”, you get the sense that he knows his own place in the developed world’s dialectic relationship with the DRC.
History is never far away in a video that takes us on a road trip through Kinshasa in search of a lost statue of British explorer HM Stanley, capturing the everyday in the capital of the DRC. These visual moments of style, celebration, and pride are set against the lyrical backdrop of a stark neo-colonial reality (“Congo, my country, turned into a playground”; “The Congolese reproduce the thieves gestures”). ‘Capture’ is an homage to struggle and resilience in the face of centuries of relentless oppression - Baloji’s billet-doux to the DRC. – Sarin Moddle
Tim Moore - ‘Jeffrey’
Admittedly, I avoided this EP on my weekly new-music-on-Bandcamp trawl because the cover looks like the debut album of a music teacher from an Invercargill high school who just wants to 'inspire students to be the best they can' and such honey-dewed nonsense. Perhaps I am just making fun of poor old Steve Broad here. Sorry Steve. There's actually a lot of albums that come out like this and you have to avoid them because they are all heavy-handed 'singer songwriters' with the delusion that they are Cat Stevens-slash-Bon-Iver.
The truth is Tim Moore is a lot better than Steve Broad or Bon Iver, and 'Jeffery' is a particularly strange riff that begins upon The Velvet Underground's 'Rock and Roll'. Moore's delivery is dead-on Reed's, until his voice starts to break up and turns into something else entirely, a wailing even. Cue the delightfully understated guitar solo.
The VU comparison is apt, though my only niggle is that the lyrics be put up somewhere. They're delivered so fast that it's hard to keep up, and by my 10th listen Bandcamp was telling me I needed to open up my wallet and give Tim Moore some money and wouldn't let me play the track anymore. Such is the age of digital listening. In between the spurts of Moore's crooner-esque delivery, I did gather that Jeffery sure does like sleeping around - that's for sure. – Eden Bradfield
The Weeknd feat. Drake – ‘Tell Your Friends (Remix)’
As he is wont to do, Drake has again used an episode of OVO Sound Radio on Apple Music’s Beats 1 channel to debut a new remix: this time a freestyle over fellow Torontonian The Weeknd’s new single ‘Tell Your Friends’.
Dedicated to a lover physically reminiscent of Jane Birkin (which kind of contradicts his previous BBW loving sentiments but whatever), the ‘Tell Your Friends’ freestyle crystallises the kind of insane canniness that has become characteristic for Drake of late. From the choice of track - a Kanye West co-produced soon to be hit - to the inclusion of some pretty classic Drake-isms – “You were never a good girl / but you’re a better woman now” - the track combines the most salient ingredients possible within a brief yet completely captivating three minutes.
The choice to once again collaborate with (or capitalise on) so-hot-right-now compatriate The Weeknd is perhaps the masterstroke here. It’s mainstream enough to be lucrative, yet new enough to seem prescient, The Weeknd’s bad boy(friend) image is the direct antithesis to Drake’s nice guy mummy’s boy, and it is a juxtaposition that here he clearly enjoys.
Whether or not his much publicised, and pretty irritating, Meek Mill beef was the catalyst, Drake is on a roll that has all but erased such hearsay. While his output of late has been self-consciously contemporary, it feels shrewd rather than cynical. Released without buildup or fanfare, and free from the weighty context of an album, tracks like ‘Tell Your Friends’ are clean, concise, and stand alone with ease. – Katie Parker
What's your song of the week? Tell us about it in the comments section.
