Singles : June 25th

 
Music

Jamie XX – All Under One Roof Raving

Living in Hackney, you’re lucky enough to have Radio 4 right next to Flames Radio on the FM dial. One twitch of that analogue wheel and you’ve switched from Jenni Murray earnestly questioning teenage burn victims on Woman’s Hour to DJ Dizzle going apeshit while he pulls up the new DJ Mustard banger. In all my years of living in London, that little dial twitch has summed the city up more than anything else I’ve come across. It’s bloody great. Anyway, Jamie XXs new track is a bit similar, except instead of Woman’s Hour he’s got a whole load of 90s rave documentary samples, and instead of DJ Mustard he’s got his steadily perfected steel drums and bass pulse aesthetic. Good work bruv.

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Head High – Megatrap EP

What about that rave kid who got his little finger ripped off and carried on skanking eh? What a trooper. I’m telling you, few more of that little tyke about And Britain’ll be great once more. He’s like the fucking terminator. I’d get him to write reviews for me, but I get the feeling he only listens to militant drum n bass and the sound of his own blood rushing through his eardrums (or out of his spurting, fingerless knuckle as the case may be). It’s a shame, cos it means he won’t enjoy this quality breakbeat techno from Head High, which is a bit utopian and a bit jack boot to your nuts, as though St Peter had the day off and a bunch of Skinheads went rampaging through the Pearly Gates. There’s 9 tracks of it as well, which makes it the value pack Lidl choice of this week’s releases.

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Kid Who – Mirage Sequence

The thing that no one remembers about the 90s is that it was really, really hard to get a drink after 11. None of yer all night offies back then, I tell thee. Once those shutters were pulled you were screwed. You’d have nothing but the cooking wine at the back of the cupboard and vicious DTs to keep you company til daylight. It was crap. Plus you actually had to pay for pornography. So on balance I prefer the hazy 808 State–esque house music 90s that Kid Who is imagining on this EP to the no booze and over-priced porn 90s I lived through. Thanks Kid.

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Floating Points – King Bromeliad

When I went to play this, YouTube blasted me with 20 unskippable seconds of a band of cunts called 5 Seconds of Summer playing a truly terrible song about a girl in American Apparel underwear. Then the Flash Player crashed. There’s no way that – comparatively  – the Floating Points song can be anything other than the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. This review is proudly biased in favour of music that isn’t horrific tweeny pop punk made to market icky branded sex to 12 year olds. Having said that, 4 minutes into this sleek, slightly smug jazz work out and I’m starting to miss the sheer blinding rage I felt when the Flash player crashed. I might need to deal with some anger issues in my life.  

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My Nu Leng – Masterplan (remixes)

For the most part, being a mugger must be a total hassle. First you’d have all those long empty hours standing around in dank pissy subways, then, when the right size of drunk sucker finally lurches on through, you’ve got to go through with the whole rigmarole of grabbing them, snatching their bag, threatening to jab them in the larynx until their hammered brain understands you actually mean them harm, then running off with the goods while the rozzers GPS the phone you just nicked. I feel sorry for you muggers. Maybe you could enliven your time by listening to these aggy bassline menacers from Zed Bias and Chris Lorenzo. Or maybe you could just get a proper job.

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