In Strict Tempo, vol. 19: New Music Friday
More thoughts on the state on the industry, backed up with some great tunes!
I’m finally on the mend after being unwell for the last couple of weeks. As mentioned I didn’t really listen to a lot of music during the first week or so of my illness, but I’ve slowly started to get back listening to things now.
As a result I’ve got a bumper playlist of tracks that have been released over the past fortnight, but first a quick news roundup.
The Glastonbury line up was announced. The takes! My God, the takes! Everyones got something to say about the Glastonbury line up every single year. You want my take? If you’ve got a ticket, you could quite conceivably see nothing from that line-up poster and still have had the best time - alternatively, it could piss it down with rain all weekend and be utterly fucking miserable too. Standing in wet clothes watching Coldplay bang on for the tenth time? Not for me mate.
John Lydon was being a prick again, ranting about immigration from his US home. I’m not going to lie, I was well into the Sex Pistols when I was fifteen, but I was also into stealing golf balls from a local club too, both things that I thought were well edgy at the time, but were in hindsight pretty stupid. Anyway, the signs were always there with Lydon, who just comes across as a bitter old fool these days. Should have stuck with flogging butter, mate.
The Spotify debate rumbles on, as it will forever. It’s hard to hear, but having them pay a penny per stream won’t make a blind bit of difference to anyone other than the wealthiest artists. They could pay a tenner per stream and most musicians still wouldn’t make anywhere near a liveable salary from Spotify.
Fabric are releasing a live recording of a Craig Richards set. I know stuff like this is always bogged down in rights and licensing issues and things like that but I’d love to see more clubs release live sets from their DJs. I’d pay good money to own proper live recordings of some club nights I’ve been to in the past.
Time After Time
Anyway, onto this weeks music and as mentioned there’s a lot of it to get through.
Memotone lands on The Trilogy Tapes with a new album - more people should know about Memotone for sure. Hard to pigeonhole, this is kind of folky, pastoral music but with an atmosphere that’s slightly off - uncanny valley folk music if you will. It sounds great, and use this album as a starting point to look into his other stuff on Sahko, Disktopia and others.
In a similar vein, but weirder is this Milkweed album - I saw this on The Quietus a while back and dug into them - I can hear lots of influences on this from all over but it’s definitely worth checking out.
Can you believe Kim Gordon is 70 years old? I didn’t know what to expect from her new album but it’s a good’un, noisy, distorted and powerful. If I’m still doing anything as interesting as this when I’m 70 it will be a life well lived.
There’s a couple of new tracks from Olaf Dreijer. He teased one a while back, now here’s the others. I like what I hear.
Those Dome albums from Bruce Gilbert & Graham Lewis have all been reissued again. Essential if you don’t have them already - I remember when I first heard these tracks I was wowed by them. I think it’s just the first three that are reissued, but the fourth is good too.
Dance-y stuff this week: Luke Slater’s L.B Dub Corp alias has signed to Dekmantel. First track features Robert Owens, sounds just like you’d expect, which is good. Tresor have been really on point lately, some killer new releases from UFO95 and Kerrie coming up (check Kerrie’s EP on DBA from a couple years back too - highly recommended). LDLDN’s Natural Frequency label has been putting out some great stuff recently - a touch of classic house here, a pinch of electro there, if you know his show on NTS you’ll know the kind of gear we’re talking about here. Anyway, he’s got a new one out on a bit of an old-skool acid tip. There’s a compilation coming soon too.
That’s all for this week - thanks as always for subscribing, replying and engaging! Enjoy the tunes.