Friday! Your favourite day of the week when you can finally down tools and go out and dance! Gigantic is back again with #NewMusicFriday – your round up of the best new music plus a playlist for you to get down to on your days off.
Not only that, we also have tickets on sale for all the best acts dropping their tunes this week. Keep browsing to discover more and to get the tickets you need.
Singles
Homeshake – ‘Like Mariah’
Homeshake is Peter Sagar very idiosyncratic take on R&B, adopting a lo-fi direction which strips his sound right down to just bass, keys and minimal use of a drum machine on his new single ‘Like Mariah’. The result is a dreamlike ambient sound which allows his vocals to shine through and create a direct connection with the listener as he wishes he could be more like his idealised vision of Mariah.
‘Like Mariah’ is taken from Sagar’s forthcoming album ‘Helium’ which saw him record and produce alone in his Montreal apartment early this year and is released by Sinderlyn on Friday 15th of February 2019. The following month sees him come on over to the UK to showcase the new material with gigs at Manchester Academy 2 plus O2 Forum in London.
Homeshake tickets are currently available.
PIROSHKA – ‘Everlastingly Yours’
Combing former members of superb shoegaze band Lush and post punk purveyors Elastica, PIROSHKA are the new supergroup you need to know. Formed by Lush singer Miki Berenyi, PIROSHKA also includes Justin Welch (Elastica), KJ McKillop (Moose) and Michael Conroy (Modern English) and have just released their single ‘Everlastingly Yours’ which is taken from forthcoming debut album ‘Brickbat’; “named after the word for a missile, which nails the record’s heavyweight lyrics if not the music’s gorgeous, bittersweet and euphoric pop.”
‘Everlastingly Yours’ glimmers with 90’s indie pop as you would expect, with iridescent keys met with the odd power chord here and there and off-the-cuff vocals about destructive love (“Shatter his bones with a smile”) completing a heart melting song that we are playing on repeat.
PIROSHKA tickets are currently available.
EP
H.E.R. – ‘I Used To Know Her – Part 2‘
Following on from dropping ‘I Used To Know Her: The Prelude’ three months ago, cutting edge R&B artist H.E.R. (AKA Gabi Wilson) makes a lightning fast repeat release of their second instalment ‘I Used To Know Her – Part 2‘.
Wilson adopted the stage name H.E.R. in a bid to become an everywoman, feeling like a pseudonym freed her to expose her deepest inner thoughts to a world that is often hostile to sensitive female creativity;
“The mystery is a metaphor for who I am, or who I was at the time of creating the project… I feel like oftentimes we don’t like to be open as people about our emotions or things that we are going through. At the time [of recording], I was very closed off except for when I was writing or when I was in the studio...”
“I am a voice for women who feel like they’re alone in these situations. This project came from an emotion, and that’s what I want it to be about – not what I look like or who I’m with, but the raw emotion and support for women”
Wilson has succeeded in creating eight tracks which allow her to reveal her introspective worries, softly exposing her anxieties to a neat little guitar riff on ‘Can’t Help Me’, further feeling alienated as she announces that ‘I’m Not OK’ on a sparsely minimalist track, yet still summoning the strength to to keep taking on the world in the rousing song ‘Hard Place’.
H.E.R. tickets are currently available.
Albums
Drug Church – ‘Cheer’
Oh my god – you need this record! ‘Cheer’ is the third album by New York hardcore punk band Drug Church and it packs a hell of a punch by condensing ten tracks that range from head bashing grunge to catchy pop punk into just about 28 minutes!
Riotously spontaneous, their latest LP continues singer Patrick Kindlon’s method of writing lyrics just prior to recording despite this being the biggest studio budget they have ever been allocated;
“This does not speak highly of me at all, but I still wrote everything in the studio. Because even though we had so much time, just nothing happens for me until I feel real stressed out.”
‘Cheer’ includes the single ‘Avoidarama’ which details social anxiety with stomping riffs and massive hooks accompanied with a video directed by Ian Shelton. Plus ‘Unlicensed Hall Monitor’ which contrasts the crazy world of the outrageous media, fanatical fundamentalist religion and worldwide politics with their frenetic live performances.
Do not miss your chance to join the Drug Church on their early 2019 tour which kicks off at the end of January. Tickets on sale right now!
Drug Church tickets are currently available.
Muse – ‘Simulation Theory’
Your favourite conspiracy theory obsessed space rock power trio from Teignmouth are back! And this time they have been delving through their old 80’s VHS collection for a bit of inspiration. ‘Simulation Theory’ is the eighth studio album from Muse which sees them return to an electronica driven style in a similar manner to their 2012 album ‘The 2nd Law’, though directed more towards the more bombastic synthpop from thirty years ago rather than their previous take on EDM.
‘Simulation Theory’ has been promoted by a series of mini movies that even Spielberg would be proud of; first kicking off with by choreographing an immense fight scene in a dystopian cyberpunk dark future in ‘Dig Down’, fending off vampires for ‘Thought Contagion’ before breaking into a Thriller-esque dance, slipping through time and space along a desert road in search of ‘Something Human’ and tapping into ‘The Dark Side’ of a NES game nightmare. Even today they have released more incredible videos depicting Terry Crews trying to solve the mystery of the ‘Algorithm’, the lyrics laid bare for ‘Propaganda’ and a body-popping goblin terrorising a high school in ‘Break It To Me’.
Muse’s singer Matt Bellamy explains that their latest LP takes a hard look at how debate around the world is succumbing to polarised hatred, taking influence from the films of their youth as they see the world turning into a real-life video nasty;
“When you switch on the news, you see people arguing all the time, and it’s a turn-off. People are retreating from engaging because it’s unpleasant. One of the political statements on the album is the fact that wanting to disengage with debate is becoming more attractive than engaging with debate…"
"It’s the feeling of reacting to the political landscape and realising I don’t really want to know about the world any more. It’s about wanting to escape. It’s a desire to find the fun and the point in my own brain when I was a child, and things just seemed wonderful and easy.”