The solid fifth album from people's diva, Keyshia Cole, Woman to Woman, is out this week and this song is its second single. She's singing her ass off, selling the cliché with the urgency of someone who has collection agencies on the other line. In another era, this would be a huge crossover smash — if not Cole's…
Jessie Ware has released a trio of remixes of Devotion's downtempo, virtually chanted "No To Love." All are excellent, giving the song a needed kick in the ass, but my favorite is this slapsticky and frenetic rerub from New Jersey house vet Todd Edwards. Who says no to this?
This recent salute to disco-inflected yacht rock via DFA's Surahn has the contrived retroism of Instagram. Thus its fuzzy, washed-out video is perfect. It also sounds like the kind of music that I imagine the male line drawing from the original Joy of Sex would play, so the cover art for Surahn's upcoming EP is…
Ne-Yo's fifth album, R.E.D., was released last Tuesday and sold about 66,000 copies its first week in stores. That's about 40 percent less than his last album, Libra Scale, did its first week out, and that album was considered a disappointment. While it breaks no new ground, it's a shame that R.E.D. will probably go…
...In which Little Dragon's 2007 piano ballad "Twice" gets an atmospheric R&B makeover from Ohio's Freeze-Tag. This is a security blanket of a remake. Comforting.
The music of Norway's disco-and-then-some producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is often designed to make people move, which falls in line with his own refusal to stay in one place for too long. In addition to sleek, spacey disco, he's dabbled in folky territory, he's done Kraut-y stuff and earlier this year he released an…
Brooklyn's Midnight Magic is a nine-piece contemporary disco band, complete with a horn section and a theatrical frontwoman, Tiffany Roth, whose combination of chops and camp resembles an off off off Broadway Bette Midler. Their debut album, Walking The Midnight Streets, is out today (via a PledgeMusic donation) and…
This is an understatement in terms of what's happening outside and it's a love song, anyway, but I don't know — it seems pretty appropriate regardless.
I had no idea that the person that I dismissed immediately upon hearing the sundresscore "Put Your Records On" was capable of soul so gut-wrenching. This reminds me of Isaac Hayes without all the sonic humidity or maybe Portishead invoking Isaac Hayes. Whatever, it's an absolute highlight of the vintage soul-obsessed …
M83 have released the video for "Steve McQueen," off their year-old Hurry Up, We're Dreaming album. The fan-directed video is the winner of a contest the band held. That's some smooth movement from the inanimate toys that glide around video — impressive for a non-professional clip.
Frequent Jean Grae and Pharoahe Monch collaborator Mela Machinko has devised the most reverent Jay-Z tribute since Destiny's Child's "Cater 2 U." Her Hov Said It Best project "uses Jay-Z lyrics, concepts and even ad libs and cadences to craft entirely new songs that tell my stories. On the project, Hov Said It Best is…
Over Eminem's "Cleaning Out My Closet" beat, the 21-year-old Angel Haze tells us, "This might get a little personal, or a lot actually..." She then proceeds to recount years of sexual abuse in detail like I've never heard in a hip-hop song. She talks explicitly about being raped at 7 and then goes on and on ("See, it…
This has been floating around for a while, the Sudanese-born musician Ahmed Gallab (Sinkane) just played a slew of CMJ shows, his impossibly terrific debut Mars is out tomorrow on DFA and this particular track is the best theme for a '70s blaxploitation movie that never was that I've ever heard.
In veteran synth-pop act Saint Etienne's icy spin on El Perro Del Mar's "Walk on By," there are two explicit references: the track interpolates a refrain of Massive Attack's perfect 1991 single "Unfinished Sympathy" and there are snatches of Dorian Corey's era-defining speech that concludes Paris Is Burning ("If you…
Remember how "Trapped in the Closet" ended five years ago? Me neither. I barely remember what happened at all, but whatever, it's back — on Nov. 23, IFC will broadcast a bunch of new chapters. R. Kelly has released the first of the new batch, Chapter 23, in advance. I know that the series quickly unraveled into…
The concept of Matmos' The Ganzfeld EP, on which "Very Large Green Triangles" appears, is complicated. This is from its press release:
Gawker fav Twin Shadow goes at this remix of New York band MS MR's "Hurricane" like Nicki Minaj attacks a guest verse, cramming as much entertainment value into his limited space as possible. Within the endlessly shifting track, there's still plenty of space, too. Amazing. All Twin Shadow everything from now on,…
The debut single from neo-disco supergroup Shock (featuring members of Windsurf, Sorcerer, and Rubies) is kinda deliberate and kinda nasty, like the hooker sister of porn star Andrea True's "More, More, More." This is perfect sleaze.
This Prince/Roger Troutman salute from two people who are steadily leaving the shadows of their former group associations has been circulating for about a week, but it's finally commercially available. Everyone is doing their job really well on it!
This blissed- and dubbed-out take on VanShe's "Jamaica" by 57-year-old dub veteran Mad Professor is reminiscent of Larry Levan's similarly dubby work with Gwen Guthrie (see "Seventh Heaven"), if not exactly in sound then certainly in effect. Gorgeous either way.
