Monsta, Mash and four more songs you may have missed

Here we go again: Six songs that didn't fit anywhere else on the blog this week, served up in one healthy portion. Feast your ears below.

1) Monsta - Messiah
Gospel + Dubstep = Gobstep.



2) Kelly Rowland - Dirty Laundry
This is one of the bravest songs in recent memory, in which Kelly lays bare several years of emotional abuse (and jealousy and rage and sadness) at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. Not an easy listen - but an essential one.





3) 3) Holy Ghost! - Dumb Disco Ideas
Eight minutes! Vocoders! Syndrum solos! More cowbell!



4) Lissie - Shameless
I saw Lissie play her comeback show at Dingwalls in Camden last week. She was on fire, all hair and spit, despite a few vocal troubles. "I may have to squeak myself through the set," she cringed. A couple of her new songs - Habit, Shroud and I Don't Want To Go To Work - sounded incredible. But we have to wait 'til September (SEPTEMBER!) to hear the album. What a colossal tease. In the meantime, here's the video for the first single, Shameless.





5) Lulu James - Sweetest Thing (live on Jools)
Watch it, love, you'll have someone's eye out with those shoulder pads.



6) Gerard i2 - Mash 'Em
He's from Northern Ireland and he's doing a song about potatoes!!

What's that? Really? What a shame.

So, apparently, Strabane-born Gerard "i2" McDaid isn't preparing a Shepherd's Pie when he says "I'll mash them all". Never mind - his song is still a tasty recipe: equal parts Cypress Hill shuffle and menacing string crescendos. Bake it at gas mark five for 30 minutes, and you get Plan B covered by Ian Paisley.

And that's your lot. See you on the other side of the weekend.

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Kelly Rowland groped by an elephant

Pictured above is an an emotional moment from the Kelly Rowland's new video Lay It On Me. For her new solo project record, the X-Factor judge has taken note of her success as a "featured artist" on innumerable club smashes, and souped up a rather plain R&B jam with premium brand rave synths. Result = 100% quite good.

Sadly, the video's not ready yet, but we have a behind-the-scenes preview courtesy of Rap-Up TV. Warning: You will hear the chorus repeated many, many times over the duration of the following video and it's insanely catchy. You may find yourself inadvertently singing this to strangers in the lift.

Luckily, the lyrics make no reference to the forbidden love that is shared by a woman and a pachyderm, so you won't be causing undue offence.

Kelly Rowland - On the set of "Lay It On Me"

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Welcome to the remixatron

Friday night is party night. Actually, Friday night is collapsing on the sofa with a bottle of wine night. But I always like to end the working week with a few remixes, which is some sort of hangover from listening to Radio One's Big Beat with Jeff Young in the late 80s.

Here's what I'm putting on tonight's playlist.

1) Beastie Boys - Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win (Major Lazer Remix)
With Switch and Diplo at the controls, this Beastie Boys album track gets a dancehall makeover that propels Santigold's contribution to the forefront. Which is exactly how it should be.




2) Kelly Rowland - Motivation (Remix)
Hands up who thought Kelly Rowland had given up on R&B? If she's not collaborating with David Guetta or Alex Gaudino on some abysmal Magaluf "anthem", she's practically invisible. So this track, which also features Busta Rhymes and Trey Songz, is a revelation. A slow, seductive soul jam - it's sexy in a way Rihanna could only ever hope to be.




3) Arcade Fire - We Used To Wait (acoustic version)
Technically not a remix, but who cares? It's brilliant.

Arcade Fire - We Used To Wait



4) Adele - Set Fire To The Rain (Thomas Gold Remix)
Remixing Adele is about as pointless as putting a coat on a dog. Nonetheless, this arms-aloft retwizzle is so cheesy it almost works. Hang around til 3'45" for the drop. Amazing!

Adele - Set Fire To The Rain (Thomas Gold Remix)



5) Alex Winston - Sister Wife (Ladyhawke Remix)
Ladyhawke has never done a remix before, so she must have been really impressed with Alex Winston to get involved. Or maybe she thought the song was broken and only a Ladyhawke remix could fix it. Or maybe she needed a bit of extra money to finish her second album. Either way, GET ON WITH IT LADYHAWKE.




6) Ronika - Wiyoo (Ronika 'own you' Remix)
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't listened to Ronika's Wiyoo EP every day this week. This remix isn't as good as the original, but it has bits of the original in it, and as such is brilliant on toast.



Hope you enjoy... Have a great weekend!

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Soul-sapping Kelly Rowland email

Ping! An email has just popped into my inbox (this is hardly an irregular occurence, but I'm trying to add some action to this introduction). The sender wants to inform me of a technological breakthrough that will ruin live music for the rest of time.

The fact that Kelly Rowland is involved somehow seems inevitable.



I don't know about you, but when an artist puts on a terrible show, I want to be able to throw a bottle of my own urine at them. It is no fun if the bottle just passes through a 3D hologram and lands, plonk, at the back of the stage.

I realise that this new technology will be of great benefit to people like Michael Jackson who want to put on concerts (a) from the comfort of their house and (b) without being soaked in piss - but surely it raises the prospect of gigs being little more than fancy-pants TV shows. How would we even know they are live anyway? Most artists script their interactions with the audience as it is...

And what happens when the signal breaks down? Does Kelly Rowland flicker in and out of vision like on a Star Trek Holodeck? Does she turn into static like a detuned television? Or could the broadcast accidentally get switched to porn, like at the Superbowl? (This is my preferred option, by the way).

Of course, the holographic technology has already been used during CNN's election coverage for a really stilted and weird conversation with Will.i.am. If this is as good as it gets, I'll stick to Youtube.

Kelly Rowland - When Love Takes Over (live)

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Here I go again

Hello!

Just returned from Cannes, which was utterly amazing. I saw Indy 4 (brilliant), partied with taTu (surreal) and walked past Harvey Weinstein without realising (doink).

The highlights were probably my interview with Dustin Hoffman - there's an excerpt on the BBC website - and chatting to Kelly Rowland on the BBC balcony.



Brilliantly, after two weeks of meeting and greeting some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, I was still so excited to see Benicio Del Toro on my flight home that I immediately phoned mrsdiscopop to tell her.

So, now that I'm back, let's get this whole blog thing going again...

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The Kelly Rowland experience

A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure of interviewing former Destiny's Child songorator Kelly Rowland for my proper job.

Afterwards, I was quite disparaging about the whole experience. Kelly managed to talk for an entire half an hour without one interesting snippet of information falling out of her mouth hole, I told my colleagues.

Yes, she was friendly, polite, engaged; but she was also duller than a broken torch in a black hole on national battery shortage day. With your eyes closed.

So I was quite surprised to listen back to the interview earlier this week and find I was completely wrong. Ms Rowland was singing, joking, and surprisingly frank about one of her new songs, "Still In Love With My Ex". I, on the other hand, was all over the place - constantly letting the conversation falter while I tried to think up my next question. It was like amateur hour at journalism summer camp.

By the grace of God, the interview was salvagable and it'll go up on the Beeb's website in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here are a couple of 'DVD extras' that didn't make the final cut.

Q: Do you still live in Houston?
A: No, I live in Miami now. The water is beautiful – but it’s the only thing that keeps me in Miami. I really miss being at home.

Q: Is there anywhere else you'd like to live?
A: The first time I came over to London I said I wanted to buy a place over here – but my best friend would kill me and my phone bill would be astronomical. While I’m here I have crazy bills from my cell phone. It’s insane.

Q: You've acted in a couple of films like Freddy vs Jason, have you put that on hold for music now?
A: No, it's something I’d like to pursue. Romantic comedies really interest me. TV work does too. I love ugly Betty and I love Gray’s Anatomy... but I'm a bit behind on it. There’s something about that show and I have to know what that is.

Q: You've worked with a lot of the old Destiny's Child producers on your album. Is it easier to be in the studio with people you know?
A: For me, it’s comfortable. I've gone into the studio with producers I don’t know and I don’t know what their vibe is so I will leave. I feel like it messes up the creative environment.

Q: What's one of your best memories of Destiny's Child?
A: The last DC show was in Dublin and we kept chanting "ole, ole, ole". Beyonce would not stop singing it – she wouldn’t get off the stage! I was shouting "B!" and she was still out there giving it "ole, ole, ole". And finally she got us all back on stage, holding hands and shaking in circles – we had a good time. It was great.

Here is Kelly's new video, Like This, which - having listened to it seventeen times in a row - is now filed under the category "alright, I s'pose".

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