- Frank Ocean- nostalia/ultra: a feast of samples ranging from Coldplay's 'Strawberry Swing' to Radiohead via dialogue from Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT. This eclectic samples jukebox is delectably meshed with Frank's toffee-sweet silk voice. And it's sexy TO BOOT.
- Saint Pepsi - Saint Pepsi: speaking of samples, holy shit. This album is a banger, if it doesn't get you moving you should check your pulse. It also has a fantastic sense of humor that shines through the well chosen dialogue samples from Woody Allen's EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU. Goddamn buy it here for £0.32/$0.50, I MEAN REALLY JUST DO IT.
- Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid: this album is absurdly good. The scale here is huge and the stakes are high. Orchestral instrumental sections, hip hop, dance, folk, collaborations with a variety of compelling artists (Of Montreal & Big Boi, for instance), Monáe oozes talent and a big vision. This is cinematic.
- Talking Heads - Remain in Light: this album has one of my all time favorite Talking Heads' tracks: Once in a Lifetime. Uplifting and golden.
- Grizzly Bear - Shields: What a treat. Recently rediscovered after seeing them at the fantastic End of the Road festival last year (2012). Melancholy and plaintive, dramatic and complex, each track demands your attention and in return graces you with a meaty layering of guitars, percussion, piano and Edward Droste's fine-ass vocals.Unexpected, jolting layers, bound beautifully by the vocal harmonies. It's thick and textured: it's just great.
- Grizzly Bear - Yellow House: I'm only recently strong enough to listen to this fella again, I find it has this soulful misery that is not healthy for black days. However, on a re-listen tracks like The Knife combine that home-sick, sea-leg sorrow with an unexpectedly uplifting rise: 'Can't you feel the knife?'. An intuitive poetry not for the faint of heart.
- Miami Nights 1984 - Turbulence: It is what it says on the tin, a glittering, neon-nights instrumental album. Turbulence takes you on a bitchin disco cruise from start to finish, punchy, fun, and kitch in parts, it rocks the synth, what more can you want?
- Kanye West - Yeezus: this is what a fist fight to the death sounds like. Dark, aggressive, utterly addictive sounds. My personal favorite track is Black Skinhead, dat crow screech, and the PANTING and the baaasssssssss. It's bleak, but it's beautiful, compelling, an angry confession in parts and uproarious battle cry in others. Ideal shower music.
- Django Django - Django Django: like a Western on crack. On each track guitar riffs that are fit to burst get all up in your balls, it's catchy, it's keen and it makes you want to tear across a desert on horse back with a mother fucking pistol. Great.
Any one familiar with any of the above? What have you guys been listening to this week?
Kate x
