FUTUREPROOF PICKS 23-04-26

Hello world,

Check out this week’s FP Picks update for a host of fresh bangers from holybones, pyncher, Rosellas & lots 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 Bruner – Can’t Keep Wanting You

Illinois born, Nashville based, flamboyant singer-songwriter James Bruner shares the electrifying new single Can’t Keep Wanting You – a track about how desire can mess with our heads and the first taster from an album due for release later this year. Produced by Nashville’s Shane Weisman and initially inspired by the raw edge and swagger of Lenny Kravitz, the track (and the album as a whole) is the result of James and Shane passing a Fender Stratocaster back and forth between them in the studio. James states: “This feels like I’m stepping into a new era, or a clean slate of fresh rock and roll. I’ve spent years writing and recording songs because that’s who I am. I can’t turn that part of myself off. I think all the experimenting, trial and error and fine tuning of what I love about rock music has led me to this upcoming collection of songs and I’m very excited to show them to the world”.

Simon Bromide – Jean-Luc Godard Directs

South London’s alternative singer-songwriter Simon Bromide shares Jean-Luc Godard Directs (Nowhere to Go) – the second single from upcoming album Forest Mountain Forest. The track was produced by Brian O’Shaughnessy (Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Denim) & features several contrasting experiences woven into a narrative based on Mikhail Bulgacov’s The Master and Margarita – a book that inspired Mick Jagger’s song Sympathy for The Devil & asks the question “What would your good be doing if there were no evil, & what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” Simon explains “I was also fascinated by Jean-Luc Godard’s footage of the Stones working up the song in the studio in his film ‘One Plus One’, so that’s in there as well. There’s a lot going on… & I guess that’s another fun thing about writing ‘pop songs’ – you can tie lots of random ideas together in a relatively short space of time without having to explain anything!!”

Pleasure Systems – When We Find It

Pleasure Systems (aka Clarke Sondermann) takes a leap of faith with queer history meditation When We Find It, taken from upcoming album Leave It in the Sand and it’s a lush and twinkling paean to his new home in Fire Island Pines. Produced in collaboration with Ivan Berko (Fcukers), it’s a glistening expansion of the sonic world of Pleasure Systems, laced with shivering strings, euphoric synths, and a newfound clarity and precision in his vocals that preserves the intimacy of his debut while imbuing it with life. Grief, anxiety, and paralysis still swirl in the air above Leave it in the Sand. But new love, friendship, and a connection with the natural world prove to be pretty tempting siren calls.

Dermot Henry – My Favourite Book Is One I’ve Read A Bunch

Wiltshire-born alt-folk newcomer Dermot Henry has shared details of his debut EP Aiming Torches At The Sun and shares lead single My Favourite Book Is One I’ve Read A Bunch and a B-side Little Rib. The former, says Henry, was written “whilst apart from everyone I love. I spent a lot of time away from home last year. This is one of the only true love songs I have written, although it is more like a song of reassurance; love, when not able to manifest itself in physical attraction or time spent together, must be trusted to be lying still with intention.” The EP was recorded with Dom Monks (Big Thief, Michael Kiwanuka, Laura Marling). Henry has been steadily building a live reputation, too: he supported Jacob Alon at London’s Roundhouse, followed by a sold-out debut headline show at Folklore in Hoxton. We look forward to catching him at The Great Escape in May.

Harmony Tividad – I’m Still Learning How To Leave You

Previously one half of Girlpool, Los-Angeles based Harmony Tividad has shared a new single, taken from the upcoming album Lifetime and states: “I’m Still Learning How To Leave You is about the continued strength to surrender responsibility over a person you no longer have the strength to take care of. The pain of how strong the urge continues to be even when you are worlds apart.” The album explores themes of personal change and continuity, focusing on what Tividad describes as “the constants of life” alongside its “inevitably transitional nature.” It centers on “the constant pursuit of freedom and a life on one’s own terms,” even as those terms evolve.

holybones – SLUGBOY (ft. Baxter Dury)

Baxter Dury has said the track is ‘unsettling and sleazy just how it should be’, after working with holybones on the band’s new single SLUGBOY. “We’ve been fans of Bax’s for a long long time, so it was great to get in the studio and write SLUGBOY with him,” London-based anonymous electronic collective holybones state. The track merges the London collective’s frayed nocturnal sound with Dury’s crafty, abrasive lyricism. Over a feverish electronic beat, people are whispering. Then a familiar voice enters, deep and hypnotic. ​holybones offer deliciously textured electronics that conjure an immersive, enigmatic atmosphere, pulling you under so as to prolong the fever dream.

pyncher – One Day

Having played with English Teacher, Geese and Dove Ellis, Manchester quartet pyncher are one of the UK’s most electrifying new acts, engaging through high-energy, genre-blurring presentation. Vocalist Sam Blakeley explains: “The song is about people growing apart. And how you can’t really do much to stop it happening. There’s longing in the lines but also acceptance. We all change and grow and I think this song is me getting my head around that.” Recorded at The Nave in Leeds with producer Alex Greaves, a happy accident during the recording sessions saw guitarist Harvey O’Toole discover a broken pedal, which ended up providing the distinctive sound behind the track’s guitar solo.

Alex Amor – Meet On The Moon

Scottish singer-songwriter Alex Amor has shared a captivating new single and states: “I wrote Meet On The Moon a few years ago, at a time when I was aching to create something different, to step into a new sonic world entirely. I went back to Glasgow for a month, put fate in my own hands, and started producing myself. It felt like reclaiming something. The song is about a friend who completely embodied the mystical, magical woman archetype I sing about in the lyrics. A few months before I wrote it, she passed away. I found myself thinking about her magnetism – the magnitude of her spirit, the force of her nature – and how, in some strange way, Earth felt too small to contain her. It’s an homage to the divine feminine, which the moon – in her glowing, milky fullness – has always symbolised. Women are cyclically tied to the lunar rhythm, and that beautiful, elusive pull of the moon became the heartbeat of the song’s ephemeral sound.”

THEATRE – The Fall

Limerick newcomers THEATRE have shared their anthemic new single The Fall, with a massive chorus and haunting vocals, culminating in a thrilling crescendo. They state: “The Fall tells the story of a broken friendship, a changeling like person, and the torment that comes with loving someone as toxic as that. Writing the song was the light at the end of the tunnel of a very dark time. Not only was it the first song that people took notice of and that propelled us into gigging full time, it also was the first song that had a fully fleshed theme and story, and it was the first time we realised that a song could metamorphose a negative experience into art.”