Eurovision 2012 - The Official Album

This week we got a shiny copy of the official Eurovision 2012 album in the post, so we thought it’d be a good idea to put down just a few of our thoughts on what turned out to be a very entertaining year for the show.

While it seems, as usual, to have rubbed up the ‘serious’ music fans the wrong way, with the usual ‘We should pull out forever!’ cries, personally, we reckon the real irony is that the show actually felt pretty close to a fair chunk of the dance pop in our own charts this year. Take the excellent Swedish entry from Loreen for example – Euphoria could easily be the latest global smash from David Guetta or even the follow-up to Tulisa’s current club anthem.

If there’s one genre that really speaks across borders, it’s dance, and the longer the UK resists this, the more they’re likely to lose out. In all truth, it’s no surprise Humperdinck’s Love Will Set You Free stalled at second to last – it was a torrid, stale old snoozefest of a song that felt 40 years out of date.

Honourable mentions need to go to the vastly underrated Danish entry Should’ve Known Better, and France’s whistle-athon Echo, an up-tempo stormer of a track if ever there was one. What all these entries proved time and again was the importance of a stonking great pop chorus, copious dollops of fun, and outfits that actually kept your eyes glued to the screen rather than wandering back to that beer you’d been nursing all evening.

As a showcase in the art of the three minute pop song across Europe in 2012, you can’t go far wrong here.

Northern Soul: 20 Original Classics Volume 2

Now here’s a compilation with real class. And not just that, consistency too. Because there’s one thing you can be sure of here, and that’s genuine, proper soul. From the Bond-esque brass and spy movie flamboyance of You Didn’t Say A Word to the gloriously upbeat Can’t Satisfy, these twenty Northern Soul classics come together to form an album of universally sublime vocals and wonderfully rich production.

In a world so attuned to the retro-revivalism of Mark Ronson productions and Aloe Blacc, it makes for a fascinating trip to journey back in time and hear the genuine article, the real fire beating at the heart of great soul music. The tracks here stand the test of time remarkably well, perfectly chilled enough to accompany the coming summer nights, but underscored by a series of irresistible grooves.

As a whole, this is a record that feels remarkably at ease with itself – far removed from the disparate jarring qualities that often mar ‘various artists’ compilations. Indeed, as a snapshot of a time and genre, this makes for as good an introduction as any, as well as a lovely reminder of undeniably great music for everyone already acquainted with these classic tracks.

Download: Terry Callier – I Don’t Want To See Myself / Dusty Springfield – What’s It Gonna Be / Yvonne Baker – You Didn’t Say A Word

Northern Soul: 20 Original Classics Volume 2 is out now and available to purchase on Amazon.

Soulsavers - The Light The Dead See [Album Review]

As far as production duos go, Soulsavers feel pretty unique. With past work including remixes for the Doves and Starsailor, a fair smattering of collaborations including work with Richard Hawley, and one of their songs appearing on Grey’s Anatomy in 2007, it’s far to say their existence is one of much variety. But from variety oft springs the most intoxicatingly fascinating results, and teaming up with Depeche Mode legend Dave Gahan to provide lead vocals for the entirety of your new album is about as brilliant as you can go when plotting the course of your latest studio effort.

And new album The Light The Dead See is nothing if not fascinating. With Gahan in the driver’s seat, the record feels purposed with a profound elegance that shines through in the beautiful gospel overtones of Just Try or the languid, Western tinged expanse of blankness in Bitterman. There’s that gaping sense of isolation, like a lonely soul, lost adrift in endless miles and miles of desert.

It’s fascinating to see Gahan outside his usual darkly seductive synth-pop Depeche setting, though in many ways he brings so much of the gravity and gospel-like malevolence of his band that the results with Soulsavers are often sonically rather similar on a wider scale, just with electronics replaced with delicately plucked guitar and surging sweeps of brass.

In some of its more introspective moments, like Gone Too Far, there’s a sort of Doors-y blue-jean vibe; the openness of the American highway, again so indicative of the way Depeche Mode were always so much more than just the synth blokes from Essex, but a band to be fully embraced by every aspect of the world market. Two minutes in, Gone Too Far explodes into a medley of grinding percussion and Gahan’s vocals are set to full-pelt, crying out as if with his last breath. It’s staggering, breath-catching stuff and long-time Depeche fan that I am, there’s moments when I’m still amazed at just how good Gahan’s voice is – all the more impressive when you consider his near flirtation with drugs and death in the 90s. Moments like the epiphanial Presence of God touch and caress like some angelic host force, all string-swept magnificence.

And crucially, the album is more than just an explorative ‘production’ effort – it is every inch the ‘proper’ LP – a real body of work to sink your teeth into. It flows with sublime ease from track to track, an unfurling story of macabre power, and by the time lead single Longest Day kicks in, the theatrical scale and grandeur of the piece as grande-epic is plainly evident. Its envisionment is total, its execution perfectly reasoned, and on every number Soulsavers bring some new element to bear. Even short interlude La Ribera glimmers with spectacle.

Ultimately, and importantly, The Light The Dead See sounds much closer to Gahan’s relatively recent solo effort Hourglass than any Depeche Mode album in particular. Hourglass had that same, world-worn ghostliness to it, a sort of Teutonic bleak aspect that wrapped itself to Gahan’s essence like a tailored suit. And the same occurs here, with the Soulsavers’ richly tapestried production opening up like a book of verse, so often as deeply emotional as Gahan’s vocals. It’s a symbiotic relationship between voice and music, but one where neither party ever becomes overtly, dangerously dominant. If there was one word for The Light The Dead See, it could only ever be ‘sumptuous’ , because quite simply, it is. Employing Gahan’s assets always in the best, most respectful, of ways, it reaps a bounteous plethora of rewards – on paper, the formula seemed fascinating – in actuality, it becomes something far beyond that.

The Light The Dead See is released on the 21^st May and can be pre-ordered here.

Rupert Stroud - Chasing The Night [Album Review]

It's not often we come across a new singer-songwriter type who really, actively re-affirms our expectations of the genre and raises the calibre of the 'up and comer' to new levels. But Leeds chap Rupert Stroud is all about reaffirming the best parts of British songwriting for his own designs. With a voice and tracks that recall Richard Ascroft or pre-fame Coldplay, Stroud's album is a dark, smoky realm of lushly produced acoustic confidence. Where others of his ilk might be content to consume themselves in hazy, insubstantial ditties of whimsical affection, Stroud's record plays with real bulk and presence to it. You don't just hear these songs, but feel them too - the whole thing is brilliantly consistent for a debut too and marks Stroud out as a real talent to watch for the future. If anything, one can breath a sigh of relief that here at least, the art of the songwriter still beats with real life-giving intensity.

Download: Heard It All Before / Chasing The Night / Waiting For Me To Break

Chasing The Night is released on the 21st May.

Nik Kershaw - Human Racing [Re-Issue]

These days, his name might not court quite the same levels of teen-driven adoration that swept him to fame in the mid-eighties, but it's important to not forget that Nik Kershaw's debut album is a real pop gem in its own right. Listening to it in its newly re-issued format, what really strikes out is the quirky individualism of Kershaw himself - at once a proponent of quaintly charming geek-pop on Bogart or purveyor of big-time New Wave arena anthems on the likes of standout Wouldn't It Be Good. The remastering of both the original album and the bonus disc of extended mixes is top-notch, with the bass in particular really purring out beneath the reedy synth melodies. In a record that compares favourably with early a-Ha and Pet Shop Boys as well as Reflex-era Duran Duran, Kersaw's debut is charming as it is inherently 'him', and while for me his peak was subsequent album The Riddle, Human Racing is an esteemed exercise in the art of tightly crafted synth-pop.

Download: Wouldn't It Be Good / Shame On You / Human Racing

The Re-Issued version of Human Racing can be ordered from HMV now.

Dry The River - Shallow Bed [Album Review]

British folk music – the great ambassador of a nation these days courtesy of bands like Mumford & Sons. Ever since Dry The River began making tentative movements within the industry, people were quick to liken them with Mumford – and while it’s true they bear much in common, Dry The River offer a far richer palate of sounds, deftly coupled with a keen knowledge of great pop hooks. Their tracks feel looser, freer, and more spacious. It’s like the gates to England’s green pastures have been opened wide and the band given liberty to sow and reap their sustenance.

And what wonders they have grown. As an album, Shallow Bed is the richest of broths, a hearty concoction of good honest songwriting, guitar lines that shine out like the brightest of stars and string sections that swell and rise like the pulse of a living body. If that body be England’s own spirit, then Dry The River are the coursing sweep of its energies leaping out to all corners of its dimensions, and in the tapestry of material presented on the band’s debut, it welcomes all to its fold.

You don’t get pop more sweetly rounded than the likes of History Book and New Ceremony (two of the best tracks on the album) – all sugared harmonies and arts-n’-crafts jaunty cheer. They’re the kind of songs to lay out full-pelt come the Jubilee, long tables strewn down the road and people gathered round to share in lovely old fashioned companionship. Bible Belt is equally charming, beautiful too – a lover’s ballad of uncomplicated romance and emotion. Dry The River’s music goes beyond twee upkeepings of appearance and quaint gifts, it’s the stuff at the heart of what love really is – that gut feeling that sweeps you up in its arms and tugs you down a path you can’t resist.

Lead single The Chambers & The Valves plays like the band’s calling card – a neatly composed three minute presentation of everything the rest of the album then goes on to explore. The almost tortured cries of ‘I loved you in the best way possible’ on No Rest function to similar effect, a heart-wrenching swipe at our feelings, and we’re thrown head-first into a love story we can all engage with. Big, rough-handed percussion give the songs an earthiness, and those everyman vocals that seem like more than just a singular individual, but instead an amassed collective of spirited yearning.

Yearning for what? For life. The essence of life itself. And a profusely natural, organic depiction of life at that. The lush minimalism of Demons is Dry The River at their most pastoral – a word that seems inescapable when summarising what the band’s sound encompasses, but the only one that really does it full justice. The track, like so many of Dry The River’s best moments, builds from small, village-like beginnings to an impassioned, forceful crescendo that breaks over the soul like a wash of birds’ beating wings. There’s a feathered elegance to Dry The River’s message, a moral capacity for empathy that strikes across all audiences – varied enough to appease the indie crowd, but with the precision and composure to sweeten the tooth of the pop lover.

The piano balladry of Family moves on to emphasise the values of home. Timeless, enduring concepts. There’s moments when every part of the band’s sound comes to bear – guitar, strings, brass, vocals – all slamming home at once. You’re knocked to your knees, not in submission – for Shallow Bed is never overpowering – but in the awe of raw adulation. In its near seven-minute glory, Lion’s Den is the apotheosis of this side to the band – a grandiose epic of truly baroque scales. The soaring guitar solos that underpin its sprawling outro are the stuff heaven is stitched from.

It takes skill to craft a good album, but it takes craftsmanship of artisan-like levels to go beyond that and create a debut record worthy of proper, acknowledging respect. Shallow Bed is one such album.

Shallow Bed is released on the 5^th March and can be pre-ordered here.

InMe - The Pride

Powerful fifth album riff-rockery from the Essex lads, The Pride’s real charm comes in its bringing together of straight-laced solid guitar hooks with a wide-ranging smatter of baroque influences. Strings, needling solos and choir-esque harmonies on Beautiful Sky Gardens, staccato electronics that wouldn’t sound out of place on the latest Enter Shikari album on Moonlit Seabed. Even on the slower numbers like the languidly decadent Escape to Mysteriopa, the band keep the standards high, sketching the tracks together with a binding unity that only adds to the quality of the individual songs. From the beating core of its heart, flowing outward, there’s just so much going on in the album, captured at its best in rousing closing number Legacy, which trips from the blissful flanged chords of its opening to the terrific Hollywood blockbuster-scale crescendo. The ambition of the album is palpable, its consistency assured.

Download: A Great Man / Legacy / Beautiful Sky Gardens / Moonlit Seabed

Young Guns - Bones

Following on from 2010 debut All Our Kings Are Dead, Young Guns continue with the morbid sobriquets on Bones, a steely summary of granite-like stoicism. Whether it be the intensely compressed, gritty wall of sound guitars that ring-fence the album or the big ‘hell yeah!’ choruses that beat at its heart, Bones is the kind of record to tug rock music to its feet and keep it soldiering on. Both Dearly Departed and the title track boast standout hooks, cutting across with viper-like accuracy. Brutal, anthemic, scimitar-sharp; the LP seems less crafted in a studio than beaten out raw from a blacksmith’s forge. Far more than mere bones, the Young Guns’ effort is coursing with the blood and muscle of upstart passion.

Download: Dearly Departed / Bones / Learn My Lesson

Bones is released on the 6^th February.

Lamb of God - Resolution

If Lamb of God’s sixth studio effort Resolution is characterised by anything, it’s sheer technical capability. Tracks like Ghost Walking mount a devastating assault on the listener replete with rapid-fire drum salvos and guitar sharp enough to shred bone. Resolution is a full bodied, meaty slab of rock virtuosity if ever there was one and the American groove metalists punch this truth home again and again. Cracking out the guitar solos on To The End and pledging to ‘save the devil’s soul’, the record reaches its evil-tainted climax on the malevolently hissing sprawl of King Me. Blackly sinister in the most loquacious of senses, Resolution’s dark side is its greatest asset, a thrilling journey into the heart of metal’s deepest bowels.

Download: King Me / Ghost Walking / To The End

Katie Melua – Secret Symphony

The riotous thrill-ride of William Orbit produced masterpiece The Flood aside, you generally know what you’re getting with Katie Melua. With Secret Symphony – the singer’s fifth studio effort – Melua treads her traditional baroque path through a collective of melodious acoustic numbers. The record plays things safe – Secret Symphony is as MOR as adult pop comes – but as ever, the sheer elegance and sensuality of Melua’s vocals elevate the tracks out of the samey mire that could easily have affected the record. Indeed, the string-laced virtuosity of Gold In Them Hills and Forgetting All My Troubles reach movie-soundtrack levels of sumptuousness.  Beauty is an oft underrated quality in an album, and in every sense – musically and vocally - Secret Symphony has beauty in abundance.

Download: Gold In Them Hills / Better Than A Dream / Forgetting All My Troubles

Howler – America Give Up

Surf-pop revivalists Howler seem to be gunning to take up the mantle The Vaccines fulfilled last year – the youthful upstarts the indie scene can pin their hopes on for another twelve months. And based on rowdy debut Give Up America, they give it a fair shot. The hooks are loose, the guitar scratchy, but the pop appeal of Back Of Your Neck and the twee 50s nostalgia of America are undeniably enjoyable. At heart, Give Up America feels like a return to the home-built DIY college rock that spawned The Strokes (Told You So is particularly Casablancas-esque), a record that understands the charms of simple noisy brouhaha – and all in under thirty-five minutes.

Download: Back Of Your Neck / America / Told You Once

Skint & Demoralised - This Sporting Life

Skint & Demoralised is the kind of name that’d lay you in expectation for an album of dreary odes to a broken Britain, as they’re so fond of these days. But while This Sporting Life, the second album from the former Mercury-signed performance poet Matt Abbott, is certainly full of honest depictions of life and its many sins, it never once loses its sense of optimism and cheeky glass-half-full spirit.

Drawing its inspiration from British New Wave cinema of the 60s, much of This Sporting Life sounds like a speculative stab at what the Jam might be like if they were still young twenty somethings carrying on today. There’s touches of more contemporary influences too though, flavours of Libertines in the casual stroll of tuneful shuffling ditties.

At its heart, This Sporting Life is inoffensive indie, but there’s also a surprising degree of pop sensibility to tracks like Hogmany Heroes and All The Rest is Propaganda - a clear awareness of the merits of a good hook.

Tracks like 43 Degrees - ‘I’m sick to death of England...’ - sound like cousins to The Enemy, tales of provincial towns, dreary days and exciting nights. The guitar-work feels vital, keen, alive. Meanwhile, Maria, Full of Grace sounds like a Mardy Bum for 2012, an accented domestic tale possessed of a cheery sense of Northern wit.

As Abbott’s second album, it feels like a considered effort – one enlivened by the knowledge of the industry and life itself. Wisdom comes with age, they say – and This Sporting Life feels like a wise album. It’s street-smart, rough and ready, always knowing with its stories of lives on gritty streets. Voluntary Confinement is a definite mid-LP highlight, working in a lattice of lovely flanged Smiths-esque guitar.

It’s a recapturing of the past, a This Is England style revision of a lost nation, offering one last glimpse at the world we thought we knew. It finds its twin in album closer Lowlife, the best track on the record; a fiery slow-fast combo that affirms the praise levelled at Skint & Demoralised from all corners of the music press.

‘I am a chatty bugger...’ boasts Abbott on The Lonely Hearts of England, and chatty he is indeed – the lyrics throughout the album flow like an engorged river – if anything, Skint & Demoralised is as much the lad everyone wants a pint with down the local as it is a musical project.

Right now, the indie scene is eagerly looking for successors to the Arctic Monkeys’ throne – the Vaccines were almost there, almost the right kind of band to step up and accept the gauntlet. But not quite... Could it be Skint & Demoralised? Maybe, just maybe...

This Sporting Life is released on the 12^th March, preceded by the single All The Rest Is Propaganda on the 5^th.

The Weeknd - Echoes of Silence

For the Weeknd's third mixtape, the focus is all on widened horizons and a greater sense of ambition than ever before - it's plain to hear right from the start in the bombast and swagger of Michael Jackson sampling opener D.D.

The Echoes of Silence mixtape, third in the singer's critically acclaimed trilogy, feels all at once more precise yet more loose than the previous two efforts. The electronics are more precise, more melody based, the vocals more wrapped up in a sense of hook and response. The beats verge out more to a position where they lead the track, where previously they curled and smoked in the background.

Montreal feels almost tribal in the way it paints the picture of a foreboding urban jungle. This is the Weeknd pushing himself forward, foisting himself onto the back of sharp, attacking percussion - it's a man eager to prove that even after two stellar bodies of work, the third is still worth the time and investment. Outside continues the worly influences with its oriental wood-block chimes - its these sounds the push the Weeknd envelope, keep the innovation coming on a torrent-like river of slick ingenuity.

It's beautiful and powerful all at once, and where the Weeknd brand was previously all about the lush ambient soundscapes, while these still remain, they're now packing added force, additional power. It's a potent cocktail, and at its very best moments, Echoes of Silence easily matches the sense of wonder and awe we all felt on hearing House of Balloons for the first time.

This tape's lengthy epic, seven minute XO / The Host is the most in line with previous Weeknd material, a trippy synth-driven motorized skyscraper of a track. Where the 'long' Weeknd tracks of the past tended towards sprawling groove moments, dripping in the sweat and haze of sensuality, XO / The Host feels more vital and alive; a sparky, up-beat piece that grows and grows towards a guitar-laced climax. In its latter half, the track positively snarls with bassy feedback, all subdued and submerged like some vast threatening aquatic beast, just waiting to burst from below.

Initiation pumps the feedback into Arabesque rhythms and fuels it with an injection of snap-quick borderline rap. The vocals here are so affected with production effects they become disturbing inhuman, a demonic presence of inconceivable evil. Above all, Echoes of Silence feels like the most dark moment of the trilogy, the enter-stage-left of the piece's villain-antagonist. But if there's a villain here, it's one of the shadowy hitman-assassin kind, a daggers-at-night force who'd rip your guts out without a qualm.

And then comes Same Old Song like a wash of healing remedy, a composed counterpoint to the album's start - clean, medical and intelligent, it pushes the Weeknd brand to the future with its sci-fi city vibes and sleek on-rails pulse. As with everything else here, the sense of pacing is to a staggeringly prescient degree - creating music that doesn't just sound great, but that feels 'just right' is a rare skill, and it's one the Weeknd nails with almost effortless ease.

Piano ballad Next makes for a beautiful highlight to the mixtape's closing moments - for as much as The Weeknd tapes feel like one long extended piece, it's fitting to see tracks like this - which definitively exist as individual songs - also exist. It's on these songs, like Wicked Games from the first tape, that the initiative and creative flair of the Weeknd crystallises in its most complete, individual form. It's here that we see through the constructions of delivery and format, and glimpse the artist at the heart of it all.

What's most remarkable is that in such a short space of time, the Weeknd has created three album-length creations which all contain genuine merit and proper consistency from end to start. There's no odd one out here, no third wheel - every part of the trilogy has its place and position.

While one might argue that what the singer is doing here is just repeating his past successes, working to a formula, the truth is that taken together as one 27 track behemoth, the implication of the songs becomes even clearer. The talent speaks for itself and its a message of intent, a landmark achievement that rests on the confidence of some of the best crafted R&B of recent years.

You can download the Echoes of Silence mixtape for free from The Weeknd's official site here.

Marques Toliver - Studying For My Ph.D

Getting a mixtape right is a fine art - an exercise in selection and references. And it's a medium critical darling Marques Toliver takes to with aplomb - appropriately titled Studying For My Ph.D, the tape has a refined, educated feel to every track. At every moment it remains inherently a thing of pure class.

Opener Chaos is a fitting melange of assorted noise, washing across the senses in a seemingly random pattern. But somehow, amidst its eerie choral parts, it works. It feels aged, in the most beautiful sense - a kind of sepia toned bewonderment, the joy and rapture of gazing longingly at old photographs.

'I wanted to find beauty not in order and neatness' says Toliver of the piece - a bold statement, but one effortlessly proved true here. In its pic'n'mix appropriation of classic R&B and soul samples, the tape takes on the character not just of Toliver, but of a varying swathe of musical history. Its gloriously ambitious, but the real skill portrayed here is that it never feels strained or like an aching effort to be 'cool'.

For so much of the tape, Toliver is content just to let instrumentals play out - gorgeous string sections hum away in the background, or short stabs of brass and woodwind punctuate vocals - its a collage of artful delicacy.

Tracks like The Answer and Astrology sound like the de-tuned medium between two radio stations - not quite one thing or the other, but an impossible mid-state inbetween. The mixtape feeds from this lost space, flowering into something elusive and magical. And it's versatile too - half-way through it flicks from grainy classical influences and spoken-word bliss to minimalist electronica and beats.

If Toliver proves anything here, it's a true study in mixtape mastery.

MARQUES TOLIVER - STUDYING FOR MY PH.D by MarquesToliver

Get Fit 2012 - The pop compilation you need this Christmas!

What does a smattering of great pop cherry-picked from the 80s, 90s and 00s have in common? Aside from being uniformly good to dance to and belt out after one too many vodka shots, these tracks form the basis of new compilation album Get Fit 2012 – and we like it a lot!

For starters, a compilation which includes contemporary pop princesses The Saturdays and Girls Aloud alongside absolute 80s classics like I Think We’re Alone Now and Yazz’s The Only Way Is Up is always going to be totally awesome. It’s pop thrills and spills at their most fun, stripped-bare level. Forget your ‘serious’ Mercury nominated art-pop and tears-on-the-pillow Adele balladry, on Get Fit 2012 it’s all about up-tempo and the most indelible of catchy hooks.

Some of the inclusions are obvious; Bodyrockers’ I Like The Way is probably destined to feature on the tracklisting of every cardio and Get Fit album from now until the end of time while a ‘danced-up’ What A Feeling seems precision-built to burn off those carbs to.

And then there’s stuff like Sonique’s Feels So Good which everyone’s probably forgotten about, but which still sounds, yes... So Good. The ‘I remember this!’ moments continue in the form of Daniel Bedingfield, with garage-tinged anthem Gotta Get Thru This made everyone think he was passably cool, before he plunged headfirst into soppy ballad territory. Here though, it encapsulates everything that Get Fit 2012 is about – great commercial pop.

It also syncs brilliantly into Girls Aloud’s Jump – yes, it might be a cover, but for my money it still represents one of Girls Aloud’s most unashamedly fun moments. It’s everything a good night in (or out) should be about; letting loose and just kicking back with good company and good music. Oh, and it reminds me of Love Actually, which is mandatory viewing around this time of year.

The album comes with a fold-out poster booklet full of additional training tips – the album’s full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Taio Cruz – Dynamite -Radio Edit

2. Noisettes - Don't Upset TheRhythm (Go Baby Go) - Radio Edit

3. Bobby Brown - Two Can Play ThatGame - K Klassik Radio Mix

4. CeCe Peniston - Finally Album Version

5. Brothers In Rhythm - Such AGood Feeling - Radio Mix

6. Yazz, The Plastic Population -The Only Way Is Up

7. Sugababes - Hole In The Head - CleanRadio Edit

8. Bodyrockers - I Like The Way - RadioEdit

9. Pixie Lott Boys And Girls - AlbumVersion

10. The Hughes Corporation - WhatA Feeling - Radio Edit

11. Tiffany - I Think We're AloneNow - Album Version

12. The Saturdays - Just Can't GetEnough - Radio Mix

13. Sonique - It Feels So Good - RadioEdit

14. Daniel Bedingfield - Gotta GetThru This - Radio Edit

15. Girls Aloud Jump

16. Donna Summer - She Works HardFor The Money – Edited Single Version

17. Michael Sembello - Maniac

18. Lighthouse Family –Lifted

[Album Review] The Roots - Undun

Formed in 1987, The Roots are steeped in the lore of hip-hop's evolution across the decades, and in new album Undun - a concept record detailing the life of fictional character Redford Stephens - they manage to pack this history into just over half an hour's worth of eye-opening music.

Compared to the sample heavy mechanics of commercial chart rap, Undun is refreshingly minimalist - a far more outre, 'real' form. The backings of the LP are choppy, cut and paste creations tripping from cut and paste electronica to dubby bass, wallowing in echo.

The album's beginning moments are gently lulling, emphasising a softness that the vocal hooks slide into with effortless smoothness - everywhere is evidenced the richness, wealth and variety of the production. Combined with the engaged, timely lyrics, the concept of the record is breathed into reality on every track, whether it be the powerful piano chords of One Time or the sunny mid 90s California vibes of Kool On.

For those that are fans of the melodious nature of Drake or Kanye's hip-hop but fancy something more profoundly old-school, The Roots offer it aplenty. Every part of Undun is invested with eclecticism and as the album hits its stride mid-way, the beats positively burst from the speakers with their crispness.

The Other Side stands as a particular highlight, brandishing a big soulful hook and neat piano riffs. Indeed, the tinkling ivories are marked characteristic of the record as a whole, laying themselves across many of the tracks. I Remember also excels with a lush interspersion of female vocals and church-like choirs.

As The Roots 10th studio album, the experience of the collective is telling, as is the vast number of personnel involved here: forty-plus. Undun is a record of many things, an assortment of gathered pieces - again, all emphasised in its richness.

In the album's final moments it blasts through a destructive medley of orchestral 'movements' ranging from classical string refrains and avante garde piano - it's a beautifully moving finish to a record that offers contentment on so many levels.

Undun is available to download on iTunes now.

[Album Review] Rebecca Ferguson - Heaven

With last year’s X Factor ‘winner’ Matt ‘credible’ Cardle drowning in a seemingly never-ending sea of his own unfortunate press statements, it falls to the release of Rebecca Ferguson’s album to make a genuine case for why the ITV show is a force for musical good. Cher Lloyd’s debut has already impressed, a surprise pop gem that perfectly captured both her attitude – can Rebecca prove she too has the mettle to stick it out on her own two feet too?

On the X Factor, it was clear that Rebecca was the ‘talent’ – week after week she blew the audience away with inspired, powerful cover versions. And if there’s one overriding theme to Heaven, it’s that it stands as a genuine statement of that talent. Her vocals are flawless, the production of the tracks equally faultless; infused with a timeless gloss of class. Heaven is by no means year-defining, the 5/5 record The Telegraph would lead you to believe it is; but it is undeniably stately, regal – an album that manages to shake off the X Factor tag in its confidence and buffed-up sheen.

In a year of vocally superior empowered female artists, Adele has trailed the banner, managing to break out from the samey cling that affects so many retro-pop records. Rebecca, it has to be said, doesn’t quite manage this – Heaven is a samey-sounding album, but her saving grace is that she does what she does here exceedingly well. Heaven treads a predictable path from track to track, but it treads it with unrivalled elegance.

Glitter & Gold struts with the same timely bounce as Aloe Blacc anthem I Need A Dollar while Mr. Bright Eyes recalls the halcyon days of mid America and white picket-fenced houses. It is here that Rebecca’s vocals are at their heavenly best – and looking to Adele, Shoulder To Shoulder is the album’s real Hometown Glory moment, full of a haunting procession of string laced piano chords.

The lasting impression of Heaven is as an album that ‘serious music’ fans can stroke their beards to and go ‘oh she’s rather good isn’t she’. Of course, it’s important to remember that underneath all the grandstanding of the album, there’s still a fun-loving Scouse girl – if there was ever an artist to bridge young and old in union and mutual appreciation of something, it’s Rebecca.

The album’s not without its groovy moments too – Run Free in particular rocking to a cool Stevie Wonder vibe. Then there’s Diamond To Stone, a bit of a ‘lurve’ on the dancefloor of a 70s disco come close of the night moment. Fighting Suspicions is equally sensual, taking things further back in time to smoky 30s jazz joints; ultimately building to almost Bond theme levels of scale.

It’s in Too Good To Lose that Heaven finds its pinnacle. The album’s most up-tempo number, it’s a Cee Lo Green-esque concoction smattered with a dash of drum machine and synths. Now, if the whole album was as good as this, then it really would be a 5/5. A tantalising glimpse at just how brilliantly amazing Rebecca can be when she wants to be.

Lady Gaga - Born This Way: The Remix

For a remix album, Lady Gaga's re-envisioned version of Born This Way does a remarkable job of standing on its own two feet. Part of this is down to the fact the majority of the mixes contained here are cut-down radio edits, sticking to the original formats of the songs in the vast majority of cases. But it's also down to the fact a good half of the mixes come from established bands rather than your usual club remixers.

Highlights include the apocalyptically evil sounding Hurts mix of Judas which sounds like Depeche Mode getting their hands on the track - it's a shame the album didn't come out a few weeks earlier, this version would have been perfect for Halloween, as would Goldfrapp's take on the single.

Again, the overtones of 80s synthpop is strong - in this instance the track's vocals are tortuously tweaked out of all proportion; slowed down and lowered into a bassy masculine drawl. It's properly scary and while it's debatable whether this take is wholly good or not, it makes for a fascinating exercise in just how far you can push a track.

The 80s influences continue in the Twin Shadow mix of Born This Way, making it sound even more like vintage Madonna than it already did, by way of a neat little guitar riff and plenty of slap bass. With the pop sensibilities satisfied, the Sultan & Ned Shepard mix of Edge of Glory mashes the track with the Sweet Child of Mine hook - it's, as you'd expect, amazing.

For the most part, the album positions itself in a dirty, low-slung pit of excess and dark glamour. Whether it's the full throttle, relentless Foster The People mix or the sinister Eastern refrains of The Horrors version of Bloody Mary, Lady Gaga has never sounded as mysteriously cult-ish as this.

While the ace Wild Beasts mix of The Edge of Glory provides a brief down-tempo respite, it's not long before the album launches itself back into the party (albeit a grimly decadent party) with the bonkers Guena LG mix of Schiebe - it's like something the Pet Shop Boys would have come up with in the mid 90s.

Perhaps the best thing about the record though is the way it ruthlessly cuts away the fatty excesses of Americana that bloated the original LP so badly - in this form, Born This Way feels leaner, meaner, sharper.

Born This Way: The Remix is available to download on iTunes now.

[Album Review] The Saturdays - On Your Radar

Every band worth their salt has that ‘magic moment’ when they hit their stride. When everything goes right for them. On Your Radar – the Saturdays’ forth (or third, depending on your point of view) album is their magic moment. Notorious, All Fired Up and My Heart Takes Over represent the strongest trilogy of pop singles you’ll hear this year and if that wasn’t enough, the album features a couple of straight-up all-out dancefloor stormers easily just as good.

Get Ready Get Set and Move On U – this duo of club-rocking energy and alco-pop drenched goodtimes are The Saturdays operating at their very best. Move On U in particular is the kind of sci-fi electro banger that pop fanatics’ wildest dreams are made of; accelerating to a frenetic Euro-influenced chorus, it’s the sound of the mythic everlasting night out. Add in the fist-pumping feistyness of Get Ready Get Set and you’re onto a winner. Faster rounds off the hyper-uptempo tracks with a neon-illuminated trancey chorus.

I’ve long been the first to say that I’d love the girls to do another Forever Is Over-esque track; to really get the guitars out again. The Way You Watch Me does so, but channels it in a far more light-hearted, New Wave-tinged way. In the process it actually ends up with the Sats sounding the most like Girls Aloud they ever have (with the exception of the rap interlude). In a post ‘Higher feat. Flo-Rida’ world, it was only to be expected that another Sats + rapper combo would crop up soon. To be honest, Travie McCoy makes a pretty passable effort and it helps add another dimension to the album. These pop/urban blends are the inescapable sound of ‘now’ at the moment, and it’s only fair that The Saturdays grab a piece of a pie.

Do What You Want With Me goes for a massive-sounding explosion of EpicDubstep – taking the skyscraper choruses of past Sats successes like Here Standing and lashes these into the mix with screwdriver synths. Along with For Myself and Promise Me (the dub-step is out again on this one), these songs form the meat of the album – by no means highlights, but prime examples of the now well established ‘classic Sats sound’ the group begun to create on Wordshaker. Four albums in and the group have undoubtedly found their feet, their place in the pop market; the confidence and solidity that affords them shows in tracks like these.

The Saturdays have never sounded as streamlined as they do here. The tracks are bigger, bolder and precision packed with hooks so big they’re positively bursting. Chanty vocals are a logical companion to the band’s forthcoming arena tour – a larger sound for larger venues. Despite this progression, it’s nice to know the girls haven’t forgotten their origins either – slower tracks like Wish I Didn’t Know are pure Chasing Lights-era, a return to the glossy, clean, charming-mannered sounds of that record’s brilliant title track.

Last Call deserves a shout out too – it’s by far the best ‘proper’ ballad the band have put their name to. The melody is spot-on and you can bet a tenner on the fact that if this was on the Adele album it would have been Number One for weeks. As it stands, it’s a shimmering, gorgeous bit of pop at its most heartbreaking. I’ll definitely be in tears when the girls perform this one on tour, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

Kutosis - Fanatical Love

Cardiff three piece Kutosis certainly know how to be direct and to the point. Their energetic debut is a thrilling, pacey throwback to when the indie scene was really going places. Harsh, metallic - the opening tracks are punky, energetic numbers that pack a satisfyingly punchy weight to both the bass and guitars

The album is the result of only two weeks in the studio and it's on tracks like Shadows that this tells most - there's urgency, a palpable excitement even in the songs that seem born of raw pain and anguished emotions.

Six years ago, you'd have a good score of bands like Kutosis fighting tooth and claw for their big break. The market was stagnating fast in a chokehold of sound-alike groups, but now, with the space to breath, there's a new life to these sounds, hinting that it might even be time for a resurgence? If so, Kutosis would make an admirable runner to lead the charge.

Fanatical Love falls roughly into two halves - the first is an angular, rough and ready blend of uptempo stuff - think The Pigeon Detectives mixed with the weird lyrics and yelpy vocals of the Klaxons; Skin is a particular highlight.

The second half of the record sees the band making a more explorative move, by Battle Lake they have hit their stride, investing the tracks with real scale and ambition. The songs become darker, more sombre - at its best moments the latter half of Fanatical Love seems possessed of the spirit of some shadowy place between Joy Division and Placebo.

Kutosis are the sound of manic fisticuffs round the back of a pub - often the vocals drop away completely, the band content to let the violent riffing of their guitars to do the talking. This is a rough band, but one that's highly polished in their roughness - it's an attractive mix.

Fanatical Love is released on the 14th November.