Admiration is a state, if we can call it that, full of conflicting emotions. There’s a shard of envy in there, a dash of desire to complicate things, an extra helping of high esteem and unconditional regard. It is the recognition of an ideal. An ideal that music tries to reach. Pursuing said ideal and capturing the accompanying emotions, the Indie rock band Black Light White Light has shared an emotionally-turbulent single from their latest album, a project titled The Admirer.
“I think the album presents the band’s most personal, versatile and certainly most adventurous release to date,’ said Black Light White Light. ‘It delivers psychedelic rock, cosmic pop, and piano-driven ballads with wandering melodies, layers of keyboards, sizzling delay guitars, and manipulated effects to an intoxicating mix that jumps and has plenty of edge in 10 songs with personal lyrics about pain, doubt, love and confusion. My most personal songs to date.”
The single, ‘Epilepsy’, sees songwriter and band member Martin Ejlertsen pen a tale that disturbs but entices in its free-flow lyricism. Available now under the Forward Backwards Recordings label.
Grammy Award-winning and chart-topping artist/producer duo The Chainsmokers have joined forces with ILLENIUM & Carlie Hanson on their new collaboration, “See You Again,” out today via RCA Records.
The song arrives alongside an official video directed by That One Blond Kid, which was filmed in part when all the artists came together for a performance at Denver’s Mile High Stadium in front of 50,000 people, and also on a drive throughout the streets of Los Angeles with Carlie.
“See You Again” follows The Chainsmokers and ILLENIUM’s previous collaboration, 2019’s Platinum single “Takeaway” featuring Lennon Stella, which has over half a Billion streams to date.
The Chainsmokers continue to play shows and festivals around the world, including the biggest show of their career at LA Historic Park in California on August 19th, and two upcoming special shows at Red Rocks in Colorado on September 2nd and 3rd.
Irish singer, songwriter, and producerRóisín Murphy returns today with a brand new single, ‘Fader’, the third to be taken from her highly anticipated upcoming album ‘Hit Parade’ which is set for release via Ninja Tune. The bountiful 13-track album eloquently blurs genre and pushes sonic boundaries across its vivid and captivating runtime. “Fader” comes accompanied by a self-directed video and in a full circle moment is set against the backdrop of Murphy’s hometown of Arklow, County Wicklow.
Presented in striking black and white – influenced by classic Hip-Hop videos of the early 90s – and also conceptualized by Murphy, the “Fader” visual enlists the help of 150 Arklow locals, with the roads of Murphy’s hometown being closed off to recreate a street parade bursting with verve and life.
Murphy delves into the inspirations and process in her own words – “This idea came to me partly in reaction to making such surreal and ‘other’ imagery for the album artwork, and partly in response to the track itself. I felt I needed a totally authentic space in which to perform Fader. The song is about life & death & music and so I went home to where it all started for me. Just as in the music there’s a huge HipHop influence on the video and for me to have the sheer front for that, it needed to ring true and so my home town, Arklow was in fact, the only option. It was a huge task to take on, connecting with local government counsellors because we had to close the high street and then, with local groups of all kinds, musicians, dancers, scouts, majorettes, farmers etc and much of my family… doing something like this is a massive responsibility and it threatened to overwhelm me at times. But on the day we had Hollywood sunshine and just an incredible sense of goodwill. The people of Arklow made me so proud. It truly turned out to be one of best days of life…”
A polymath in every sense of the word, Murphy gives each release an entirely fresh and distinct visual identity, and beguiling “Hit Parade” is no different. Overseen by Murphy, the artwork features herself, photo-montaged into an AI generated image from artist Beth Frey, graphic design by Bráulio Amado and commissioned by creative studio Object & Animal (who have previously worked with the likes of FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek and Shygirl). “Fader” possesses a Daisy Age sampladelic hip-hop verve that practically transports the listener to another plane of sound entirely. The steady shuffle and swing of breakbeat drumwork rattles beneath Murphy’s prophetic lyricism – “off to meet my maker, when I’m good ready”. Lucid instrumentation and warping vocal effects are deployed by DJ Koze throughout the track with grandiose effect, providing a luscious environment for Murphy’s existential playfulness to thrive.
As anyone tapped into the digital grapevine knows, HBO’s new drama series The Idol has been a hot topic in the press of late. With TheWeeknd starring as the crazed self-help guru and cult leader Tedros and Lily-Rose Depp as the stardom-seeking lead, the show made its debut on the 4th of June.
Last week, The Weeknd released two tracks from the first episode of the series: the theme song, ‘The Lure’, as well as ‘World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak’. The theme song was written by The Weeknd and heavyweight producer Mike Dean and the second song was sung by Lily-Rose Depp and co-written by Abel and Asa Taccone.
Yesterday, The Weeknd released 3 new tracks from episode 2, which will feature alongside already released records like ‘Popular (with Playboi Carti & Madonna)’ and ‘Double Fantasy (with Future)’ on the official soundtrack album, The Idol, Vol. 1, which is slated for release on the 30th of June.
