Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update .. loads of great new music as always inc trx from Flyte, Kid Kapichi, Jodie Langford & many more. If you like what you hear please follow and share this playlist, it helps us keep doing our thing by getting the algorithms on our side. Also please support the artists featured in any way you can!
Until next week
Helen (Futureproof) x
james K – Doom Bikini
New York artist james K announced new album Friend last month with the release of the high-energy single Play. Another track from the album has now been shared – a midtempo electronic pop track called Doom Bikini that boasts a trip-hop-esque beat. There’s even a “doom bikini towel friend” for sale! james K describes the track as “a sun-greased slinky ballad about being hard and soft on myself,” one that she didn’t quite know what to do with at first. Originally built on “boring ‘shoegazey’ guitars,” the song eventually found its form through layers of doo-wop-inspired vocal loops, surfy textures, “gwen-lite” vocal flourishes, and a sweet swirl of G-funk.
Flyte – Alabaster (ft. Aimee Mann)
London indie duo Flyte have teamed up with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Aimee Mann on their new single Alabaster, taken from the upcoming album Between You and Me. “We began writing Alabaster with Miya Folick in Los Angeles about a fantasy affair in the midst of an apocalypse. We finished it on the road and back home in London. It’s easy to feel like we’re in the midst of the end times already, so it was effective inspiration and encouraged the raging fuzz guitar sound to lead the way musically. We wanted it to sound like the song was burning down,” Flyte’s Will Taylor says. The track comes laden with a weighty rock element and an undercurrent of smoky drama and the band’s typically feather-light acoustics are anchored by simmering fuzz guitar and prominent basslines as Mann offers a wounded counterpoint to Nick Hill and Will Taylor’s airy vocal harmonies.
Sons of Sevilla – Street Light Moon
Featherstone duo Sons of Sevilla have shared their country-tinged, indie-rock track Street Light Moon – a jangly offering with a woozy side that adds to the song’s charm. The track is filled with gentle acoustic rhythms that are joined by gentle, longing vocals, a catchy chorus and twangy, harpsichord keys. The band state: “The title comes from an old streetlight that was glowing in the rain through the window of my living room in our hometown of Featherstone. It was mistaken for a full moon after one too many. I made a note of the song title and when Reuben played me the start of a new tune he’d been writing, this title just fit perfectly as strangely the opening line was already ‘you’re outside the window’. The song was written in the sun on an old fishing trawler called Albany in Gibraltar, which I definitely think influenced the sound.”
KennyHoopla – orphan//
KennyHoopla has shared the EP conditions of an orphan//, his attempt at a 2000s dance-punk sound. Paramore’s Zac Farro produced the project with some assistance from the legend Mike Elizondo. Of the title, Kenny says, “A lot of the time, I just feel very alone, like an orphan. I’m just trying to find a home, literally and metaphorically — as a person, and as someone in the music industry. I’m trying to see where I fit in, given the circumstances of life that everyone has to go through.” Kenny reveals that the track orphan// is about “trying to sift through the process of grief for someone else. The right answer is that there is no right answer. Pain is fluid.”
Glass Animals – Vampire Bat
Electro-pop outfit Glass Animals have shared their hypnotic new single Vampire Bat, a sultry groove laced with attitude, temptation, and desire – and the fifth installment in their experimentation – and collaboration-fueled Fresh Fruit Series, this time teaming up with SZA producer Rob Bisel. The track finds Glass Animals exploring the duality of what it means to be a rockstar and the tension that comes with being in the limelight of fame. There is a certain balance or a “seesaw” that artists face, driven by a strong desire for success, earned through a strong work ethic. A fruity, groovy toe-tapper for sure. This release also marks the five-year anniversary of Glass Animals’ breakthrough album Dreamland.
Sorry – Echoes
London outfit Sorry have shared whimsical new “love song” Echoes, taken from their upcoming third album Cosplay which they describe as “our much anticipated golden globes winning post Brit bop funky stinky baddy jazz album.” Their new single is a quirky ode to pledging someone your love. “Try to light a spark for the naked angel in my heart/Cross my heart and pray/I hope you find it one day/Honey, what did you say?/I said, ‘I love you’,” sings Asha Lorenz. Speaking of the track, Asha simply says: “Meet me at the butterfly sanctuary. Echo.” A press release notes the track was “inspired by a poem about the story of a boy shouting echo into a tunnel waiting for his reply” before blossoming into being “about losing yourself in love and ‘echo’ becoming a third person in the middle.”
Nightbus – Ascension
Manchester duo Nightbus channel inner noughties for their hypnotic new single Ascension, taken from the upcoming debut album Passenger. They close the gap between what they determine as real and fake, what is fiction and what is not with a psychedelic yet potent use of bass drums blending into mesmerising vocals. Using heavy distortion and an ambient undertone, the duo use this blurred line to represent their turmoils within life, with the seeping and weeping vocals showing an energetic and danceable theme on the outside, masking and covering the pain in which the ballad reaps. The track combines elements of synth pop, dream pop and shoegaze in a way that tracks from The Cure and New Order did in the early 90s.
Kid Kapichi – Stainless Steel
Hastings band Kid Kapichi‘s first release since two members departed explores mental health through a stripped-back, slower sound. Frontman Jack Wilson explains the deeply personal nature of the track: “I wrote the lyrics during a particularly difficult few months last year. I realised that I’m not invincible or immune from my own mental health issues, hence ‘I’m not made of stainless steel…’ It came about during one of the darkest periods of my life, and a lot of the songs written around that time feel like a blur or like they were written by someone else.” He adds: “Stainless Steel also felt like a new direction for us; slowing things down and stripping things back after years of sensing that ‘more is more’. It finally felt like less could be…” Thought-provoking, clever lyrics – love it!
Jodie Langford – S.T.B.Y.
Jodie Langford continues to electrify stages across the UK with her unique blend of electro party punk and now shares S.T.B.Y. taken from her upcoming debut album Softly Spoken via Warren Records. With production duties supplied by Jodie’s musical sidekick & Hull’s ‘King of Electro” Endoflevelbaddie, the track, with its dark atmospheric beats & futuristic electro-industrial hooks, is lyrically inspired by the Manchester bard John Cooper Clarke’s poem ‘Twat’ – a tongue in cheek ode to all that annoys & frustrates… Jodie explains: “I’m a big fan of John Cooper Clarke & I think his poem TWAT is ace & S.T.B.Y (sucks to be you) is inspired by that. I don’t really have any enemies or anybody that I hate, so this track isn’t about anyone in particular – but I just found it fun to play around with metaphors & similes. It’s also a great release for me to just yell for a bit & pretend that I’m fuming.” Another banger from Hull’s much-loved spoken word artist.
Floodlights – JOY
Third album Underneath from Floodlights considers vulnerabilities, hopes, fear and passion. On powerful indie-rock anthem JOY, you can hear that gloriously rich guitar tone and rhythmically the band have never sounded as in harmony as they display on this track. It describes the infinite twists of a mountain road and resonates with an album written on tour in the UK and Europe in which the journey was likely to feel endless. Or maybe it’s the sound to accompany life when you are staring into the void at our cookie cutter UK motorways from the tour van. This Australian band are hard-working and so dedicated to their craft that they’ve become successful on international stages.
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