Songs you may have missed... Bumper edition

Hello, I have woken from my slumber and discovered a sackful (technical term) of brand new music waiting for me. Here's what you (I) missed during the last three weeks of inactivity.

1) Little Mix - Hair
In which we discover that Little Mix wear slinky lingerie and full make-up for a girls' night in. Of course they do.




2) Roisin Murphy - Mastermind
When she said there was a ton of material left over from last year's Hairless Toys, it turns out she wasn't lying. This is the first single from a new album called, intriguingly, Take Her Up To Monto.





3) Taylor Swift - New Romantics
Accompanied by a video that is the dictionary definition of "will this do?"




4) Carly Rae Jepsen - Boy Problems
Nice mullet.




5) Grimes - A full gig by Grimes
This is amazing. A complete half-hour live set, direct from the BBC's Maida Vale studios.




6) DNCE - Cake By The Ocean
I'm sure you're aware of this one by now - but the video version is much more sweary.




7) Honne and Izzy Bizu - Someone That Loves You
Dreamy electro-soul, with an undercurrent of unrequited lust. This is sublime.




8) Slowolf ft Kimbra - White Feathers
Danish producer Slowolf is a drummer - and it really shows on this jittery, polyrhythmic potboiler. Kimbra provides an impassioned vocal, and it's all recorded live in a scrapyard for some reason.




9) Michael Kiwanuka - Black Man In A White World
The BBC's Sound of 2012 is back, still sounding like the sound of 1971. I still maintain he's found a vault of unreleased Bill Withers tracks and is pretending they're his own material.




10) Will.i.am ft Pia Mia - Girls & Boys
If you put 1,000,000 will.i.am's in front of 1,000,000 laptops, one of them will eventually write an above average pop song. And here it is.




11) Broods - Free
New Zealand brother-sister duo Broods have upped the ante with this, the first single from their second album. Free is strident, powerful and ever-so-slightly abrasive - the sort of thing that would have been perfect on The Hunger Games soundtrack.




12) Blossoms - Getaway
Blossoms are the indie band most likely to cross over in 2016, and for good reason. Never shy of a melody, and fortuitously telegenic, they're a music programmer's dream. Getaway is their catchiest single yet, and it comes with a video that appears to be a lost episode of 1980s spookfest Dramarama.



13) Rihanna - Kiss It Better
The director says this is inspired by "surrealism and dadaism" - which is funny, because I don't remember either of those previously being associated with soft porn.



14) El El - Animal
This slice of summery, feel-good indiepop reminds me of MGMT (when they were good) Phoenix (when they were good) and Empire of the Sun (when they were good). So check out this eight-piece Nashville band before they go completely off the boil.

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Could this be the hip-hop album of the year??

I'd certainly like a peek at Jeymes Samuel's contacts book. As a producer, he's worked with The Gorillaz, Ben Hudson and KT Tunstall. As a film-maker, he's cast Ian Brown and Mos Def in his upcoming project Buskers - The Movie. And, while he's finishing that off, he's put together an album with Tori Amos, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Roisin Murphy. The best celebrity number in my phone is Patrick Moore...

Samuel's musical project is called The Bullits and, as the name might suggest, it's inspired by classic movies and TV shows. They've done a tribute to Danny DeVito's 70s sitcom Taxi (amazing), while Roisin has re-imagined the theme tune to Roger Moore's pre-Bond spy show The Persuaders.


The Bullits feat Roisin Murphy - The Persuaders


As you can see, the feel is cinematic hip-hop. Gorgeous string samples with lashings of melodrama - the perfect backdrop for some down and dirty rap... Exactly the sort of thing Handsome Boy Modelling School have excelled at in the past, in fact.

The album will apparently be a concept record, starting Lucy Liu as Amelia Sparks, "a woman who's on death row, and she's being interviewed before she gets killed."

"I'm on the entire album," Liu told a US chat show, "it's like spoken word narrative. She's done the entire interview and basically he [Jeymes] cuts in and out of it. He's basically a genius."

There's only one track with Liu's vocals online right now - but it's a corker. If you locked Andre 3000 in a room with John Barry, Burt Bacharach, Marlene Dietrich and fed them litres and litres of fizzy pop, this is what the result would be.


The Bullits feat Jay Electronica & Lucy Liu - Close Your Eyes


I genuinely can't wait to see how this one pans out.

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New Roisin Murphy: Momma's Place

3, 2, 1... I'm back in the room.

Let's kick things off with a new track from Ms Roisin Murphy, whose Overpowered album was one of the best dance floor filllers of the noughties. Her new single, Momma's Place, has been knocking around for a week or so, but I'd avoided listening to it because Orally Fixated - a previous "taste-maker" single from her new album - was completely liberated from such songwriting conventions such as tune or chorus.

Momma's Place is much better, though. Like much of Murphy's post-Moloko output, I suspect it'll only appeal to those of us who used to collect DMC Mastermix 12" records in the 1980s (ask your dad).

The chorus shows how a funny Oirish accent can make seemingly unconnected words rhyme: "Don't you go and pull a fast one, I used to be an awful rascal, you think you invented being bad. I used to be a ruffian, had to become a tough one, you think you invented being bad" (try this yourself - Liverpudlian also works).

The whole shebang is powered along by that marvellous chunky Detroit House bass, and a synth riff ripped straight from Domino Dancing. Olé Olé, indeed. Welcome back Roisin.

Roisin Murphy - Momma's Place

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New video: Roisin Murphy

For no discernable reason, I have reviewed this in the format of a 1980s Bollywood movie (bear with it until the subtitles):



Terrible internet gimmicks aside, the decision to base the video for Movie Star on a John Waters movie has got to be a wilful act of sabotage. True, the first three singles off Murphy's exceptional Overpowered album have performed below expectations - but this, the most commercial and accessible record of her entire solo career, must have had a shot at a decent chart placing.

I suppose the clip appeals to the fashionistas and Murphy's core gay/club audience, but in my opinion it's a completely wasted opportunity. Shame :(

Roisin Murphy - Movie Star (uncensored version)

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Roisin writes

Due to utter indifference on the part of everyone in the entire world, Roisin Murphy's latest single, You Know Me Better failed to make the top 40 the other week. This is a shame because:

i) It is amazing
ii) It is amazing
iii) The Kooks are in the top 10

Roisin has written a lengthy message about this debacle on her website. Here is what she says.

Hey guys, Just wanted to drop you a line to say I will never let you down. Have so much buzzing around my head right now, I know things might have been better for the single, all down to radio in my own country I’m afraid and that effects everything. Yet still, I feel strangely inspired. Gonna start writing immanently and I really feel I will do my best work yet. Look I’ve never been easy to categorise and category makes this industry go round. But I am seeping in bit by bit, I have some exciting things goin on in the background that I can’t share right now but believe me I aint out of the game yet. Keep up your support, as it means so much and try to be positive. I never had friends in high places, but I have you, and you have me. Until the end.

Shame she couldn't have run it through spell-check, eh readers?

Anyway, the news that she's recording new material is great. Roisin's album, Overpowered, is one of last year's sadly overlooked gems. Its genius stems from the way it extracts the DNA of every dance genre in history, from handbag house to acid electro, and creates a Dolly The Sheep of europop.

This towering stregnth, however, is probably at the root of Roisin's commercial doldrums. As mrsdiscopop commented in the car the other day: "This is Roisin Murphy? I thought it was something you'd downloaded from 1988."

If your tribute to the music you love is so accurate as to be indistinguishable from the original, then how do you let people know it's new?

Answers on a postcard, etc...

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Things to see and do

A collection of internetular diversions for a Friday afternoon...

:: The Photoshop Disasters blog wonders why Batman is staring so intently at that window frame.
[Photoshop Disasters]

:: A Walrus dances like Michael Jackson
[Boreme.com]

:: Roisin Murphy says fuck and twat (plus some stuff about music).
[The Times]

:: A rather scary new piece of music software allows you to isolate a single note in the middle of a song and change it, raising the tantalising prospect of being able to turn an Aphex Twin album into something listenable.
[Celemony]

:: Pulp's Common People turned into an Archie comic strip.
[Chris's Invincible Super-Blog]

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The many wigs of Roisin Murphy

In her latest video, dance diva Roisin Murphy dons an Elton-tastic nine (nine!) nutty hairdos. But which is best? Only you can decide...


    The Clown      |   The Hippie    |   Vera Duckworth


Air Hostess   |   Ellis-Bextor   | Rita Hayworth


Peeping Tom |   The Tornado   | Winona Ryder



Oh yes, and here is the video "in full".

Roisin Murphy - You Know Me Better

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Roisin Murphy begs for pennies!

Ultra-fabulous pop star Roisin Murphy (her out of Moloko) has been achieving moderate success with her second solo album, Overpowered.

The title track failed to get into the Top 40 because of some chart eligibility snafu, but the follow-up, Let Me Know, reached number 28 and the album climbed as high as number 20.

It's a truly great CD, which delves deep into the record box of dance and draws inspiration from Chicago House, Miami Bass, Northern Soul and every classic British dance record of all time.

Better still, you can whistle every melody in the shower.

So what's she doing busking for grubby coppers in Covent Garden? Partly, she's accepted a challenge from arty-farty BBC pretensionfest The Culture Show. More importantly, she is expanding on her promotional campaign's theme of wearing outlandish outfits in everyday places.

For example...




Here she is doing forthcoming single You Know Me Better, acoustic-style on the streets of London town.

Roisin Murphy - You Know Me Better


And, in case you haven't heard it yet, here's the video for Let Me Know.

Roisin Murphy - Let Me Know

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