New Music: Ross From Friends - .Biz (The 405)

The votes have been counted, please stop submitting your entries, thank you all for your participation - the competition for the best DJ name of 2015 is over.

.Biz is the debut tune from South London producer Ross From Friends. Taken from his Alex Brown EP, brittle synths throb under an assortment of indiscriminate, broken samples, stuttering forward like a car about to run out of gas. There’s a groove here, but you couldn’t exactly dance to it, as it teases at a payoff that never quite arrives. Instead we are left with this innocuous piano loop, like we’re listening to a concert hall cleaner fiddling with the keys before he turns the lights off.

Released through London’s Breaker Breaker Recordings, Alex Brown is currently only available on Vinyl. Head to Phonica, Rough Trade, or Manchester’s Piccadilly Records to get your hands on it, and catch Ross DJ’ing at one of Breaker Breaker’s residencies at The Amersham Arms in New Cross soon.

http://www.thefourohfive.com/news/article/ross-from-friends-shares-biz-142

New Music: Of Montreal – Belle Glade Missionaires

Lousy With Sylvianbriar is album number twelve for Kevin Barnes and co, as the band from Athens, Georgia show a prolificacy maintained with impressive consistency over their fifteen-year career.

The new album from was recorded on a 24-track tape machine at the bands home studio as they delve further into 1960s nostalgia and away from the complexities and stress of the modern recording industry. Lyrical overstatement is as always, what drives Bell Glade Missionaries, as Barnes paints this fucking nightmare filled with the exploding schools, paranoid schizophrenics and cocaine steeling soldiers onto a playful canvas of hanging guitars and whimsical ooh’s and ahh’s.

The psych-folk Sgt. Peppers aesthetic from last months Fugitive Air is maintained in volumes here, and it will be interesting to see how they run with it on a full body of work. 

Lousy With Sylvianbriar is out via Polyvinyl on October 8.

New Music: Phantogram - Black Out Days

Phantogram are back. Finally. For anyone who got lost in last year’s Nightlife mini-album; it’s been a very long wait, especially if a year and a half with Don’t Move as your only go-to after party tune has left you banished from anywhere ten feet of a laptop.

The all out groove of Don’t Move is replaced with some upfront menace, as a dark web of synths and electronics underpin Sarah Barthel’s typically sensual vocals to create a sexual tension akin to watching Cruel Intentions with your parents in the room.

That is creepy as fuck, but Black Out Days is certainly a sign that Phantogram are moving away from the trip-hop, electro-pop of old and into a more psychedelic soundscape. A collaboration with The Flaming Lips earlier this year would hardly have helped, and with more new material seemingly on its way; I’m ready to get lost again.

New Music: Gold Panda - If U Knew (Reprise Long Live Take)

About to embark on a victory lap UK tour in support of the excellent Half of Where You Live, Gold Panda has offered this generously extended version of album highlight Reprise.

Earnest synths and a trickle of static quietly usher along that spliced, mournful vocal loop, as the Berlin based producer creates a soundscape that sounds like curtains opening on a particularly bright summer morning. It certainly is a brave gesture; closing such an abrasive and coarse album with a track this warm and this human. It is a welcome one though, and this extended version does indeed suggest a deep affection with it.

An EP supporting the single is due out next month, and will feature remixes from Manchester beat-machine Star Slinger as well as Getintothis favourite Fort Romeau. 

Catch Gold Panda at the East Village Arts Club on the 23^rd November.

New Music: GhostChant - Laid To Rest

London come Liverpool producer GhostChant has quietly been making moves this year, with acclaimed opening slots for xxxy, Paleman and Dirty Beaches and a deal with BBE Records (Barely Breaking Even) alongside the likes of Giles Peterson and you guessed it; Dj Jazzy Jeff.  New single Laid To Rest is the first cut from his unnamed debut album due early next year, and comes alongside two remixes from Birmingham’s BangaTang and Tru Thoughts alumni Chimpo.

Sharp, high-pitched stabs tip-toe impishly around a rolling metal on metal drum & bass beat and unsettling vinyl static. Textures build slowly as aesthetics are tentatively introduced around an affected, steady vocal loop, before we are taken into a blockbuster climax of sweeping synths and cinematic bombast, flooded with top-heavy string passages as a disturbed cry wails from some far off, distant corner. Cornwell’s skill is in creating textures that are evocative and grandiose without falling into the verbose. Like much of his recorded output to date, Laid To Rest forms this vast, expansive backdrop without losing control of its boundaries; using the intrinsic rhythmic qualities of the recurring  ‘You don’t know the way’ vocal loop to anchor the song, as if it’s the last remaining structure of a world that is crashing down.