This has been floating around for a couple of weeks now, but it's absolutely worth flagging up. Yasmin (DJ, model, minor league chart star) has teamed up with Shy FX (the godfather of drum'n'bass) to concoct a pounding, reggae-tinged club smash. You can almost guarantee it ripped open a few subwoofers at the Notting Hill Carnival this week, thanks to a rumbling, subterrestrial bassline and liberal sprinklings of the legendary Amen Break.
I particularly love Yasmin's understated vocals. Most singers would attack a lyric like "I just want to light up the world" with the force of Hurricane Irene. Yasmin takes the opposite approach, her sweet delivery soaring above the clattering percussion like a summer breeze.
There's not much in the way of exciting new music today, so here are a clutch of remixes that have been rocking my iPod in the last seven days:
1) Beyoncé - Girls (Captain Cuts Remix)
It's an obvious idea - cutting up two songs with the same name and stitching them back together - but it needs a skillful seamstress to make it work. On this occasion, the needlework is perfect. Captain Cuts teasingly undercuts Beyoncé's girl power anthem with a ridonkulous playground rhyme from the Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill album.
Best of all, you can obtain a free & legal download of the mix on Neon Gold's blog.
2) Young The Giant - My Body (Two Door Cinema Club Remix)
Young The Giant's performance of this song was bizarrely excised from the MTV VMA show when it aired in the UK. In truth, it wasn't a terrible decision. Unlike, say, the decision to cut all of Adele's acceptance speeches...
For the uninitiated, Young The Giant are what's laughingly termed "indie rock" in America and My Body is a song they gave to MTV's Teen Wolf TV series. The original mix is stodgy, joyless gristle, so Two Door Cinema Club's joyful remix is something of a miracle.
3) Marina and the Diamonds - Radioactive (Starsmith remix)
Marina's comeback hasn't exactly met with rave reviews, but I've had the chorus stuck in my head for days now. It might be something to do with this glamorous house retwizzle which (whisper it) might just be better than the original.
4) Lady Gaga - You & I (Metronomy remix)
There's a real sense that the Born This Way album has finally found its feet with the release of You & I. The Haus Of Gaga finally managed not to balls up a video with shonky editing or clumsy imagery. The appearance of Gaga as "Jo Calderone" at the VMAs overshadowed every other artist, bar the gestating ones. And the remixes that have been trickling out have all been surprising, revealing and artistic. Here, Metronomy take a similar approach to Wild Beasts, pushing the song into a minor key and framing Gaga's vocals with an unsettling electronic soundscape. Properly good.
Penguin Prison is the nom de plume of New York's Chris Glover. He's popped up on these pages several times thanks to his remix work for Marina, Passion Pit, Goldfrapp and, er, Jamiroquai.
The name comes from a "joke rap song" he recorded about George W Bush back in his pre-fame days. "We were freestyling," he told NY arts blog According to G, "and my friend Bob just said this line out of nowhere, 'he’s a penguin vision, he went to the penguin prison and assumed a penguin position.'"
Sadly, that particular song has been consigned to the dustbin and Chris has gone solo. He stomps the same ground as 80s alt-pop giants Talking Heads, but ditches the icy intellectual distance. Better still, he keeps one foot firmly planted in naff-ville. Several songs threaten to go completely Heaven 17. Which is amazing, obviously.
Chris has just uploaded live favourite Don't Fuck With My Money to SoundCloud. It's premium pop, from the OTT falsetto right down to the gratuitous orchestra hits.
I have worn out the debut EP from Ronika (a couple of 1s and 0s are missing from the MP3). So the release of her new single, In The City, is perfectly timed.
Fans of Wiyoo and Forget Yourself will know what to expect - effortlessly cool retropop, with shades of Larry Levan, Tom Tom Club and Gwen Guthrie. Or, in Ronika's own words, "magnificent, over-cooked, doomed-joy sounds posing like a Grecian god in the neon glare of mundanity." But of course.
Like many of today's pop stars, Ronika is available on Twitter (@ohronikagirl). Amidst the inevitable retweets of obsequious compliments are some deliciously surreal witticisms.
:: "I may not have a big heart but at least i have a big nose." (24 August) :: "Beyonce was unbelievable. Unbelonceyable." (27 June) :: "i think my house is built on an ancient kebab burial site. i smell meat." (7 Feb) :: "would like it if everyone treated ice-cream vans with the same respect as ambulances. move to the side of the road, their work is important." (2 May) :: "i have drawn a lion on my little toe. and am having a toe jam." (27 June)
Ladies and gentleman, we have a new favourite pop star.
Now all I need to know is whether Ronika pronounced like "Veronica" or "Wrong sneaker". Answers on a bandage.
I don't know what terrible secrets she's hiding, but Beyoncé is being waterboarded in the new video for 1+1.
I jest of course. The water is a signifier of wanton lust, for Beyoncé's most lascivious single since Naughty Girl. Throughout the ballad, Ms Knowles repeatedly demands "make love to me" ("okay then", the world). Musically, 1+1 is unbelievably naff, crammed with overemoted power chords and grandstanding guitar solos, but somehow it all works. Here are some other key scenes from the video.
1) The knee-trembling striptease
2) The astonishing dual hair toss
3) The sweaty after-glow of filthy rumpo a bi-weekly spin class
Thanks for your patience while I've been off in Africa for a month... It was an incredible trip. Heartbreaking and breathtaking. Beautiful and desolate. As you can see above, the school we visited in the remote village of Kongwa was bursting with exuberance despite the shortcomings in food and finance and elementary learning materials. Hopefully we'll be back before long.
So, what have I missed? A quick scan of my favourite internet websites suggests the music industry didn't take August off for once... Here's the best stuff I've seen so far.
1) LADY FINALLY LAYS THOSE PENIS RUMOURS TO REST
The gender-bending video for Yoü & I is what experts would term a "return to form" for pop's premier pixel pervert. A country and western version of Frankenstein's Bride, it continues Gaga's theme of beauty and decay. As well as dressing as a slack-jawed yokel, she poses in a fabulous hat, transforms into a mermaid in a bathtub and a sets up a terriffic reverse dolly shot at 3'30". Well done.
2) THE RETURN OF THE AMPERSANDS
Florence and Marina and the Machine and the Diamonds are back to trouble your eardrums. Hooray!
Marina has added new layers of confusing nomenclature by channelling her new songs through Electra Heart. Her bleach blonde heroine is not an alter ego but a character in a modern Greek tragedy, as she explained to Popjustice. The new single is called Radioactive, which is an excellent song masquerading as a moronic radio hit. And that's the really clever bit.
Marina released another Electra Heart video last week, called Fear And Loathing. It acts as a scene-setter for the single and is, I suspect, the better song.
Florence Welch, meanwhile, unveiled the first track from the follow-up to her multi-million-seller Lungs on Tuesday. It's something of a slow burner, but the final minute is the best psychedelic rock wig-out you'll hear this side of Christmas. The video also reveals Florence's hitherto unacknowledged debt to Miranda Hart's choreography.
Gary Lightbody shows off his comedy chops in the video for Called Out In The Dark - which also stars Jack "Pirates Of The Caribbean" Davenport. The escalation of the storyline is beautifully done, and the song's not bad either.
6) NICOLA ROBERTS DANCES IN THE STREET Beat Of My Drum didn't quite set the charts on fire. In fact, it barely produced enough heat to warm a crumpet. That didn't stop it being brilliant, though. Nicola's follow-up, Lucky Day, is more obviously radio friendly but a much weaker song. Radio 1 have passed on it, and mrsdiscopop described it as "Kylie crossed with Cilla Black". Oh dear.
