19 Apr 2018

Essential Happenstance


I had one of those funny little coincidences today.

I was catching up on Peaches' show for NTS and Sonos Berlin and she dropped Joe le Taxi. Not the original by Vanessa Paradis but Hanoyo's grinding electro classic.


You might recognise Hanoyo's Joe le Taxi from 2ManyDJs' As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt.2, where it crops up pretty early. I had to have a quick wiki of that seminal mix album, and picked up on a few things:

1. That's Elton John underneath the brown paper bag
2. Wikipedia classifies it as 'Bastard Pop' (I now have a new favourite genre)
3. It was voted the greatest Belgian dance album ever

Bam! I cracked open S Memo to write about this when I got home.

And then during a proper slow burn of an afternoon, I decided to browse Instagram to avoid writing about Huawei mobile phones.

Another bam!

Soulwax announced today they're releasing a new album in June called Essential. I say new, I understand it's made up of the stuff they recorded for their maverick approach to the Radio 1 Essential Mix. If you don't know the story, the first hour of Soulwax's Essential Mix in 2017 was an hour of new music they recorded on the theme 'Essential'.

The mix has been uploaded quite few times to MixCloud and SoundCloud, if you want to check it out. But if you want to get your hands on the official release, Essential by Soulwax is out on June 22. Essential Four is streaming now...



Bam!

Image by University of Minnesota (Minnesota Internet Users Essential Tool) [Copyrighted free use], via Wikimedia Commons

16 Apr 2018

Still Buzzing


Another month, another album review for Buzz. This month I got Jon Hopkins and missed out on John Maus and African Scream Contest 2. More's the pity.

Once again I won't share my scintillating review until it gets mashed on to some paper. Keep an eye out in Cardiff for the magazine or sign up to their newsletter like.

Anyway here's a track off Jon Hopkins' new album Singularity, which is out on May 4th.



In other news, my reviews for April 2018's Buzz magazine are now up online. They were on Alexis Taylor and Rival Consoles. Knock yourself out.

See also:

Update: My review of Singularity by Jon Hopkins is now up on Buzz.