Sorting through the week’s new singles and songs that have surfaced online over the last seven days, Jamie Skey (@jamie_skey) presents five songs you need to hear this week…
As Bjork proved with her multi-platformed, universe-probing masterpiece Biophilia, not to mention NASA’s recent solar-system scouring hook-up with a host of rock space cadets including Spiritualized for the The Space Project, music and science have a deeply symbiotic relationship. Continuing popular science and pop’s courtship, Bat For Lashes has contributed Skin Song, a Lana Del Rey-esque warm bath of goose-bump inducing melancholia, to next year’s Body Of Songs project, which will see the likes of Goldie and Ghostpoet join the dots between music and modern medicine.
Scottish prog-punks Alarm Bells boast members of the politely barmy, wall-of-hugs initiating goof rockers Dananananaykroyd, but the former take the frenetic formula of the latter and blasts it into orbit, much like the cosmic-upgrade At The Drive-In experienced to reach The Mars Volta. Their latest EP Part Two,’s lead-off track Hold Down pings with Yes-like grooves and Fugazi-channeling fury, and will probably prompt barmy barnets to come back in fashion down in mosh pits.
London trio Sykes’ new single Gold Dust was produced by Cam Blackwood, who’s previously harnessed the heart-swelling sounds of Florence + The Machine and London Grammar. He sprinkles yet more of his own brand of glittery magic on this track, a spectral synth-pop banger that’ll continue to reverberate in your ears a while after your first hear it.
On Distant Camps, Percussion-loving London trio Mountainear recast the new-age pastoralism of Enya for the Y Generation – it’ll make you drift off peacefully. That is a good thing in this instance.
Australian post-rockers Lowlakes find common ground between Jeff Buckley, John Martyn and Mogwai on the vaporous Now, She Said, taken from their forthcoming album Iceberg Nerves (out 1 September).
