The weather’s getting colder, but the charts are heating up with some great (and surprising) singles. This week, the old guard returns to revamp a modern classic, we highlight some EDM from across the ocean, and time-travel back to the 80’s, so plug in your stereo and crank up this edition of Headphones
Album: After 2012’s Mecanic Puppet EP, promising French electronic artist Arure is back with a full LP featuring some of his best music to date. From the opening ambiance of “Let Me Tell You A Very Old Story” leading into the Eastern infused “The Way of the Warrior” feat. Pascal Heinrich a.k.a Squall the listener gets a sense that this album is going to be something near impossible to label beyond a very broad term “electronic”. Trip-hop, dub-step and virtually every sub-genre style comes together, seemingly in every track on this LP, and even if every track doesn’t land perfectly, the sheer scope and ambition is impressive. Take the haunting “The Future Eve”, which sounds at home in a late 90’s horror film, followed-up by the “found sounds” aesthetic of “Found Objects”, only to hit us a track later with a sitar-laden “Aquarius”. Sure, there are a few tracks on Found Objects that play a little more amateurish than rave-ready, but overall Found Objects is well worth the low price tag, and is available on bandcamp, just by clicking the link
Single: This week’s single was almost “Yellow Flicker Beat” by Lorde, from the upcoming Hunger Gamesfilm, but the young Kiwi got the boot when the one true goddess of R&B decided to tackle the newest titan on the block. The upcoming album title Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics is perfectly exemplified as Adele’s biggest hit gets tackled by the woman dubbed by Rolling Stone as the greatest singer of all time. Just how good is Aretha’s cover? It feels so classic Aretha you’d swear “Rolling in the Deep” was a deep cut from Lady Soul that Adele covered decades later. The seamless transition into an epic soul mash-up at the three minute mark might be the most perfect thing you’ll hear all week, and the queen retaking her crown with this brilliant track is the best thing to happen to R&B in years.
Music Video:
Electronic: The Beast- Imogen Heap
It’s not a danceable track for any but the most inventive club-dwellers, yet Imogen Heap’s thoroughly enjoyable and utterly minimalist video for their haunting new track is sheer perfection.
Hip-Hop: Run N Hide- Cannabis Club
In a world where Hip-Hop videos are contented with, as Steve Berman once put it, “blunts, 40s and bitches”, its always a treat to see something take itself seriously, and get cinematic in scope (sampling master composer Ennio Morricone is always a good choice).
Pop: Better Call Saul- Junior Brown
Breaking Bad fans have been chomping at the bit to see footage from the upcoming spin-off Better Call Saul, and that opportunity finally comes in the form of an unsettling, Lynch-esque music video for the show’s theme song.
R&B: It Girl- Pharrell Williams
Taking unique approach to the theme of the “It Girl” while solidifying Pharrell Williams as the single coolest nerd in history, this video can be enjoyed immensely for its great color and video game aesthetic, so long as you can cope with the fact that this seems a few moments away from being one of those creepy anime you see in the back corners of Comic-Con.
{Steel Panther - Steel Panther - Pussywhipped}
Rock: Pussywhipped- Steel Panther
For anyone who has yet to experience the trapped-in-the-80’s madness of LA staple Steel Panther, “Pussywhipped” is as good an intro as any. Steel Panther has the self-aware silliness Weezer wishes they had, simultaneously immensely meta and unironic, as though attempting to create a nightmarish examination of what a world post-Parental Advisory would have been like had hair metal not died away.
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