Lady Gaga proclaimed by Tweet that her sixth album represents her “absolute love of electronic music”. Chromatica features EDM names such as Axwell from Swedish House Mafia, French DJ-producers Tchami and Madeon, bro’step superstar Skillex, as well as a good few more.
At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity. It opens with a cut called “Infection”. Looked at now, it’s bizarrely prescient.
This is an extremely impressive undertaking. how i'm feeling now was conceived, written and recorded in under two months, in isolation, with Charli XCX sourcing beats and artwork from a sprawling collective of regular collaborators and fans. The tracklist was finalised only in the last week or so, and even two days before release date, only “work in progress” promos were available, signalling that it was still in flux.
For underground music producers, there almost always comes a phase in life when they accept they're no longer young guns and embrace either massively complicated synthesisers, floaty new age music, or both. For Bristol-based Jake Martin aka Hodge it's the latter. This, his debut album after a decade releasing a couple of dozen EPs on connoisseurs' favourite labels and DJing around the world, has all the signifiers.
Given the times, theartsdesk’s New Music section is starting weekly round-ups of new streaming fare to liven the spirits and entertainingly pass the time during this lockdown. Here are our first five suggestions. Dive in!
Light In The Attic Showcase
Normally we'd put a descriptor - "cellist", "film maker", "techno producer" for example - in the title of this interview, but for Irina Nalis there isn't space. Like, "10 Questions for psychologist, ministerial adviser, festival founder, architectural consultant, digital humanism activist and techno veteran Irina Nalis" wouldn't fit across the page. But that's the multidisciplinary world for you.
Around the turn of the millennium, when Dan Snaith started releasing music – initially as Manitoba, then Caribou, and latterly also Daphni – he tended to get lumped in with the folktronica movement. In fact, the closest he came to actual folk was a heavy influence from the more delicate side of late 60s psychedelia.
It was hard avoid bleak in 2019. Then the election hit and everything went off a cliff. Watching the world turn to a shit-bowl of ignorance and greed, the raging nihilism of the year’s key film, Joker, suddenly seemed appealing. The 2020s will be about a response, clearly, but in the meantime spirits need lifting. The album that has served that purpose round my way since its release in April has been No Geography by The Chemical Brothers.
Liam Payne is a Simon Cowell-manufactured pop star worth tens of millions off the back of music that’ll be regarded in a few years’ time much as the Bay City Rollers or Curiosity Killed The Cat are regarded now.