UK electronic songwriter/producer Dornik just released an excellent debut single with PMR Records, also home to Jessie Ware, Julio Bashmore, Javeon McCarthy, and a few others. The song was released with little context, but we do know that Dornik is a former drummer for Jessie Ware’s touring band. And it seems Disclosure are also big fans. Check out “Something About You” below.
David Grellier is a 33-year-old French electronic musician and founder of the collective Valerie. Since 2005, Grellier has created music under the moniker “College.” Most notably, Grellier contributed the song “A Real Hero” to the soundtrack of the 2011 film Drive. Following College’s albums Secret Diary and Northern Council, Invada is set to release Heritage on August 26. Check out two cuts from Heritage below, as well as some words Grellier recently posted on the Valerie site about writing the album.
If you’ve found Yeezus, join our ongoing Comment Party, and feel free to revisit our song of the summer kick-off to nominate a song from the album. Amrit and I are at Bonnaroo this weekend, and you can follow us at @scottgum and @amritsingh for reviews, photos, and ZZ Top Vines. But first, relive your best and worst comments of the week below.
Michael Gira prefers to call the version of Swans that emerged in early 2010 a reconstitution rather than a reunion. It is easy to see why the word choice matters to him; the term “reunion” comes with a great deal of historical baggage that simply does not apply to the band’s current iteration. They have been very busy, but not with nostalgia — only one pre-hiatus song regularly appears in their set list. Instead, they have gone on a creative tear, releasing two new albums that stand tall among one of the starkest and most powerful catalogs in rock music.
Guys, Yeezus leaked. You don’t need music videos right now. You need to just play that real loud, let blood fill up your vision, luxuriate in the angry anxiety. If, however, you somehow need a break in between Yeezus sessions, or if you’re one of those weird and virtuous people who waits until it’s legal to hear something, or you’re one of those godless motherfuckers who doesn’t love Kanye West, we’ve got five good music videos for you below.
It’s here! If you’re a certain kind of internet music dork (guilty), you’ve been practically holding your breath all week waiting for this moment. Up until now, we hadn’t heard a single finished CD-quality studio track of any song from Kanye West’s new album Yeezus. Now, we get to hear all of them, if we’re willing to click around the lawless internet hinterlands. And if you live in a major urban center, there’s a decent chance you can just open your window or walk out your front door and absorb it that way. Either way, Yeezus has come to Earth. Let’s get this bitch jumping like Parkinson’s in the comments section below.
And while we’re talking about it, Kanye is going to be projecting more things on walls around the world tonight. Check the global map at Kanye’s site to find your closest location.
This week, Queens Of The Stone Age scored their first-ever No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with …Like Clockwork, the first album Palm Desert native Josh Homme has released with QOTSA in six years. It’s a richly deserved honor, and one that had been long overdue. With a host of different bands — and different lineups within those bands — Homme has now presided over, and provided for us, a vast catalog of energetic rock music dealing almost exclusively in hooks and distortion.
In my music-consuming history, it’s the rare band that cause me to feel genuinely unsettled. MS MR and Yeasayer, however, are two bands that have somehow managed to rattle me. “The Children” from Yeasayer’s Odd Blood isn’t particularly scary, but catch it at the right moment and the slightly discordant piano line will conjure up one too many Damiens in your head. Even more personally disconcerting is the rainbow vomit-filled video for MS MR’s “Hurricane.” Here, the two groups unite, but the results are not internally jumbling in the least. Yeasayer take the cinematic track and blossom it into something kinetic and warped. Take it on an emotional bender below.
