SOHN - Conrad

There's always an air of concern when it comes to music in January. It's often a dry desert-like place with tumbleweed everywhere you look. Oh, but not for 2017 lads, no, no, for we can look forward to a brand new SOHN album, HELLO WORLD! Sohn, real name Christopher Taylor, released his debut album Tremors back in 2014 and despite loving single 'Artifice' prior to it's release, the album as a whole took me a little while to get into. However, it wasn't long before Tremors cemented itself as one of my favourite records of that year. (Although bafflingly I didn't think it good enough to include in my albums of the year... not sure what went on there.)

The new single from SOHN's forthcoming (OMG the release date is literally 13th January!!) is called 'Conrad' and you truly don't realise how much you've missed hearing new music from SOHN until pressing play on this track. [I'm listening back to Tremors as I write this and oh my actual God it's so very excellent.] Obviously, as stated numerous times, I've been super slack throughout the entirety of 2016 and apparently I missed 'Signal' which SOHN released back at the start of September and that has really upset me. It's good, but it's not 'Conrad'. 'Conrad' opens with a vocal, it's ballsy but it's absolute genius. What follows is an onslaught of amazing pop and sleek as fuck production. I'm not sure I can really do it justice in words.

Jakil - Unforgiveable

I first posted Jakil about two years ago. It was a song called 'Istanbul'. I really liked it, I still do. At the time I said that I didn't think Jakil sounded like The 1975 despite other blog types saying they did. Fast forward to Summer 2016 and I state "Imagine The 1975’s sugary indie-popness but without Matty Healy’s annoying face and pompous personality and that’s kind of what Jakil are like." Hey, what's up, hello, welcome to the blog of contradictions where nothing here makes any sense!

Jakil's latest single is called 'Unforgivable'. The second line features the word "nasty". You know everybody has a few words that really make them squirm, like, just make you super uncomfortable? Well "nasty" is one of mine, but it's all in the delivery. Jakil's delivery? Well, it's quite good. You'll recall (or you won't) my words on Youth Club AKA the UK's catchiest band ever, well Jakil are kind of like their more subtle... subtler(?) counterpart. 'Unforgivable is just as groove laden and definitely packed with hooks, just with a bit more of an overall chilled vibe. The video for this song is really cool too, one of those videos that makes you wish you had cool friends to go to cool places and hang out with, you know?

Kudu Blue - NGFM

Kudu Blue are a band who are very good at what they do. The end.

Just kidding. You all (haha who? no one reads this!) remember Brighton based Kudu Blue, don't you? Good. And if you don't, you should. 'NGFM', which actually stands for 'Not Good For Me', is the five-piece's latest single and obviously it's just the next instalment in their pop/electronic crossover series. That's some terrible phrasing. That makes it sound like this isn't what they do normally. It is, and they do it really well. God, who lets me write this stuff? You really shouldn't. Maybe I start making posts a lot shorter and thus put a cap on my rambling.

'NGFM' is good and includes two sound effects you might not have heard in any other song in 2016: A dog barking, and glass shattering. What I want to know is whether that's a real dog or not and whether real glass was broken in the making of this song. Maybe I should have found out prior to writing and that could have been the groundbreaking journalism that everybody's been waiting for from WIIHAMB. Once again Clementine's vocals steal the show, especially during the pre-chorus and chorus itself. She seems to be demonstrating more and more versatility with each song Kudu Blue release. They also played their first London headline show a couple of weeks ago and it was all very good. If you haven't seen Kudu Blue yet (which is fairly likely) I'd highly recommend putting it at the top of your To Do List for 2017.