#175 – Rye Rye Plays A Special Engagement

I f*cking love Rye Rye. She is awesome… a mix of dirty rap, sex, feminity, B-more and she’s got a sense of humour about everything she does. On top of this her songs are always awesome. The list of people she’s worked with reads pretty well too, with MIA, Diplo and Sinden among some of the big names.

She recently (this week) played one of Noisey’s Special Engagements in Seattle which was livestreamed across the internet. In case you weren’t lucky enough to catch it, they kind people at Noisey have put up a video from the gig, which you can watch by clicking on the picture above.

#174 – Secret Diaries Mix For Stock-71

The man who’s the brains behind Sheffield/London based Secret Diaries was recently asked to make a mix for Stock-71, the French music website. Unfortunately he’s not all that good at following instructions… Luckily this means he made two mixes, instead of the one they asked for. He’s split them into ‘Day’ and ‘Night’, with the songs he’s selected fitting the moods appropriately.

#173 – Look Around The Corner

I’ve been sitting on this for a week now, enjoying it all to myself. And I really have been enjoying it. Quantic is a name that ought to be used as an adjective: “That track is so Quantic”, “I just had the most Quantic meal” and “I met this girl last night and we totally bumped Quantics”. Okay, so that last one wasn’t an adjective, but who cares. My point is he’s been consistently great for over a decade now and reassuringly this new album seems like it’s going to stand up next to his previous ones (of which there are many).

#172 – Chilling

It’s two slices of Groove Armarda for you today, although they’re both remixes. The first is by my favourite camp disco producers The Twelves. This is a more sedate slice from them, but it’s got all the ingredients that make a fantastic Twelves production. It’s still funky, dance-worthy but if it’s on a little quieter then this would go down a treat for a chill.

Groove Armarda – Drop The Tough (The Twelves Remix)

#171 – Songs From Our Mailbag

We get loads of music to listen to every week (which we like) and a good chunk of it is really good (which we really like). Unfortunately it’s impossible to put everything we like up, but we’ll have a crack. Here are five songs from signed and unsigned acts that have ended up in the Safety, Fun & Learning inbox this week.

#170 – A Couple Of Covers

Bands doing covers is a risky game. There’s every chance – nay, likelihood – that they’ll make something that either sounds too similar, too twee or just naff. Luckily here we have two bands who have done it right. First up is a cover of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Revere featuring Toumani Diabaté. The original song is melancholic enough, but these guys have turned into something almost haunting. The simple, acoustic instrumentation allows the vocals to really come to the fore in a way that they don’t in the original. And the Cello, oh the Cello! It’s spine-tinglingly good when it comes in. Malian musician Toumani Diabaté plays the kora, which adds a sounds that cuts through the track, complimenting the harp superbly. That’s the video at the top of the page, and below you can listen to the original.

#169 – Mystery Jets Announce New Album ‘Radlands’

So the time has come to announce another big album release for 2012. It’s only been 18 months since Serotonin came out, but they’ve been to Austin, TX and recorded a whole bunch of new songs that they want to share. In the video above they’re all on their best behaviour, describing how great it was to be out there and the likes. I don’t doubt it for one minute and I’m a little jealous, if I’m being perfectly honest.

Anyway, the release date is 30th April and leading up to that they’ve got a whole bunch of intimate live shows. When I say intimate I mean around 500 people. Grab your tickets quickly as they will sell out in no time. All the dates are below and you can get your tickets here.

#168 – Anchorsong

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Jazz Café for HMV’s next big thing, whilst the show was undoubtedly stolen by Belleruche (hardly surprising what with them being and the headlining act), a special mention needs to be made to Anchorsong. Anchorsong (aka Masaaki Yoshida) is a Japanese artist and producer who uses a sampler, a keyboard and some sort of black magic to create incredible electronic music.  It’s rare enough to find this kind of music that I’ll listen to – let alone really like – but this really hits the spot.

#167 – Something Old, Somethings New

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So basically I was on youtube earlier and “re-found” this video, it was posted about a year and a half ago and is pushing 18million views. Most of what makes this video is the seemingly impossible stunts being effortlessly performed by Danny Macaskill, but after I’d got past the awe and jealousy I realised that the music not only fits the video incredibly (a lot of that has to do with good editing I’m sure) but is also really good.

#166 – Toy Play For Noisey

It’s funny how things work out. I went and saw Big Deal play in London back in November and made some notes so that I could do a quick write-up. That never happened, but I’ve still got them tucked away somewhere. Anyway, when I got an email telling me Toy – who were the second support that night – had done a video on Noisey.com I figured they were worth looking at again. Especially now that I’ve heard they’re being tipped for big things this year.

My main memory is the song ‘Left Myself Behind’ and their image (read: hair). They’ve got a real 70’s, Krautrock sound, experimenting with trippy sounding guitars and cool synths in the background.