Alright, so when you first heard Lemonade’s 2012 owning single Neptune (wait, you did hear it here first, right?), what did you see? If your answer was “a girl having a shower and then brushing her hair, before having a cigarette”, then it your singular definition of the perfect accompaniment to Lemonade’s impassioned R’n'B slow jam is shared by House Plants and Weird Days, who produced the video. As far as quickly forgotten music videos go, it’s certainly one of them. Sure, you don’t have to watch it, but on the other hand, it does have lady nipples. So you probably will. In other news, Neptune is still a great single.

Diver will be out on the 29th of May via the effortless True Panther Sound.

Alec

The XX have been largely silent since this surprisingly huge debut album dropped into the lives of the music listening public all the way back in 2009. Sure, Jamie has been somewhat busy enjoying blog success over his solo output and working with the sadly departed Gil Scott Heron, but the rest of the gang have been up to very little, besides updating their clothing for the new season (tip: black is still in).  The kids been therefore getting back into the gentle sway of things with a handful of low key gigs in London in preparation for the forthcoming festival season, where, at one of those gigs (Chats Palace, if you must know) they unveiled an all new song with all the pomp and ceremony you’d expect from them (none). So what does this as-yet-untitled song sound like? Well, without spoiling anything, it sounds very much like The XX, who would’ve thought it. The video is available to take in below, with your senses.

Alec

A.D Bainbles (or Adam Bainbridge to those less familiar) is a pretty nice guy. Sure, he’s not quite Lil B levels of lovely, but generally, he’s a pretty grand sort of chap. He’s also the sole imagination behind Kindness, an act which has been hopelessly fawned with on this very site more times than we care to remember (or share with the court). To that end, you can consider these words yet another foolish attempt to fall in love with us and not just name songs after our background colour. The official video for the confirmed-as-excellent House finds Bainbles deconstructing pop music, the indifferent “cool” of  modern musicians and even finding time to teach a young boy how to perform the single himself; an act that is, of course, extremely sweet and heart warming, yeah, but that kid was touching a Linn LM-1. He didn’t even take a moment to shed a few tears of joy. He must be a monster. 

See the video above, and while you’re at it, get the entire album, it’s really good.

Alec

Presuming you’ve been a good [gender], aside from a moment or two you’ll be blissfully unaware of the general magnificence of Sigur Rós’ new album Valtari. For all those who’ve resisted the temptation of that low-bitrate rip (fun fact: it came from an airplane), then Jonsi an his merry band of three blokes who do the music ‘n that have a special treat for you. It’s called VALTARI HOUR, and although it isn’t quite capitalized like that anywhere else, I do admire the sentiment of an entire hour of the day being specifically dedicated to listening to Valtari. The event will be taking place at 7pm in every single timezone across the world, meaning all you have to do, wherever you are, is point your browsing machine over towards this pretty little link right here to join in on all the hedonistic action that typically follows a Sigur Rós album broadcasting. How they’re going to handle the fact that Valtari is only 54 minutes long, I’ll never know.

To all those twitter kids, they’re asking you blindly promote the event both before, during and after with the hashtag #valtarihour. Stay safe.

Alec

Oh, Gold Panda, apple of an entire years (2010) eyes. It’s been two years and five days since I first scribbled your name all over these cyan walls of mine, it’s just flown right on by, hasn’t it? Those days and nights spent hanging by the computer screen, hopin’ and a wishin’ that you’d just go ahead and release something all official like, they passed in the blink of an eye. So this is it, Gold Panda’s first new material (not counting Companion, which featured his previously released EP’s), coming straight at you in the form of a new 7″. Both Mountain and it’s accompanying b-side Financial District are cut from much the same cloth as his previous work, meaning the same heart tugging combination of traditional Chinese music, Indian drone and modern IDM is ready to please your ears once again. Now, just don’t leave me hanging for another couple of years, aight?

Mountain/Financial District is dropping via Ghostly on the 5th of June, pre-order it here.

Alec

Remember how earlier this year, 90′s legends Guided By Voices together once more to thrash around and produce a record with the worst album art ever (yes, that is what appeared on the sleeve)? Remember the mixture of comfort and disgust you felt seeing them awkwardly move around the stage once again? Of course you do, it’s painted on your face, for all time. But if you expected them to stop producing music now, you were deeply, deeply wrong. They’ve got a whole new record coming out on the 11th of June entitled Class Clown Spots A UFO (naturally) and this is the first cut from that forthcoming record. Thankfully stripped of the “we’re still hip!” lo-fi abstraction that plagued even their most recent release, CCSAUFO (yeah) instead highlights their frankly legendary talent for writing properly  irresistible hooks. Greater than that, it’s even got the length of a normal pop song. Who would have thought they had it in them, ey?

Hear it above, where you can also download it, for your SUMMER PLAYLIST 2012 DO NOT EDIT folder.

Alec

You seem like a straight sort of individual, not the kind of fellow to be downloading music illegally over the internet, no sir. You wait for the day of release, take a walk down to your local High Street Multimedia Store™ to purchase it for the sole purpose of listening alone, in a sound proofed room. I know your type, you’re alright, you are. But what if I offered you the opportunity to -get this- listen to two entirely new (but previously leaked) albums for the paupers sum of nothing at all. Oh yeah, you heard right, free. But wait, dig this; the albums are The Cribs properly 9/10-style brilliant “In The Belly of the Brazen Bull” and Beach House’s out and out pretty “Bloom” LP. For those of you here for The Cribs, you need only look below, whilst those ready to go out in a haze of dream pop glory, head over here.

Alec

Ten (or ten or TEN, depending on your attraction/aversion to capital letters) are, in their own terms an “experimental/ambient band from Leeds and London England which is led by musician Dominic Deane”. What they also happen to be, are creators of overwhelmingly beautiful music. Their third EP, East of the Elm, self released on the 9th of April is a triumph of quiet power, of expertly judged instrumentation, a well of unspoken but consistently understood emotion. It is a superb EP, cinematic and yet insular and always brutally engaging, you could do a great deal worse than falling in love with it.

Not only that, but they’ve got two other openly wonderful EP’s (the earlier clue of this EP being their third) practically begging for your ears loving and undivided attention. You can stream East of the Elm below, or purchase it here alongside their other releases.

Alec

Jamie Stewart fucking loves pop music. In between clattering abstraction, desperate cries and regular strokes of outright genius, he’s wont to throw in more than his fair share of dissonant pop MEGACHOONS. One such example appeared on the groups great 2012 LP “Always” under the name Honeysuckle, offering one of the groups finer moments of youcouldplaythistoafriendandtheymightnhateit-manship. Even more than that, it’s  got itself a video all of its own, helpfully eliminating the need to construct those pesky image associations yourself. You’re welcome.

YOUTUBE COMMENT OF THE DAY: “Damn, XiuXiu is still around? It’s good to see he’s still at it even if he is a bit of a wanker” - sophinana

Alec

Given the amount of anticipation surrounding the perpetual motion machine of hype that is new My Bloody Valentine material, you’d be forgiven for expecting clouds to have parted for a deity crafted from mangled distortion peddles to descend to earth. Granted, you’d have to be near some fairly forgiving people for that kind of theory to fly, but you’d be forgiven nonetheless. Of course none of that happened, we just got what we asked for, namely, a new EP and LP due for release at some point within the lifespan of a normal human being. The EP, a collection of previously sort-of-difficult-to-hunt-out EP’s ’Feed Me With Your Kiss’, ‘You Made Me Realise’, ‘Glider’ and ‘Tremolo’ will be packaged with 7  rarities whilst the groups third LP, 16 years in the making (suck on that, Chinese Democracy) will also be released this year. Here’s what Kev Kev had to say!

“It didn’t come out at the time because I didn’t really like it… But in retrospect, the reasons for not liking it anymore. It was just, like, I didn’t like the tone of my voice or something. But now I’m quite happy for people to hear it.”

Hooray for diminished expectations!

Alrc