RIVRS - Falling

RIVRS are a London based duo and they're actually quite good. The only problem with that is that the universe neglected to share that information with me until last month which is all pretty not ideal but what can one do? Make up for lost time, really.

Charlotte and Fin, whom I have no choice but to be on first name terms with (Hi I'm Natalie, wassup?), have just released their debut EP, it's called Falling and I think it's probably worth chatting about. Falling is five tracks long so we're already off to a great start because five is without a doubt the optimal...? optimum...? correct number of songs for an EP. Essentially, this release is bookended by two excellent jams, title track 'Falling' and 'Something About You'. 'Falling' is the single, it has a video and it begins very Banks-like which is great, because everybody loves Banks but then it has this massive pop/RnB chorus almost Destiny's Child worthy post-chorus "I can't be without you" bit. As far as singles go, this is up there with the best of them.



Then final track 'Something About You' is full of electronic/production quirks that blogs akin to mine are really keen on. You know the stuff like Oceaan/Ben Khan do (#wherearetheynow) that blogs and general music tastemaker types really like? Well there's a load of that in this and it sounds great. What we've seen on these two songs is real pop potential for this two-piece, like, for real. Which brings me to the other three tracks on the EP... they're not as good, not as instantly vibable... vibeable? You don't like em as quickly as you like these too, but they definitely aren't bad.



Afterthought: So, 'Friend Lover' was also a single, it's got a video and all that, and this was the song that was released when Charli XCX was doing all that Vroom Vroom stuff or whatever that was about. And that's all well and good when you're Charli XCX but I personally didn't feel like that worked for RIVRS, and that's why I forgot all about them and then didn't even link them to these tracks now. Anyway, that all sounds really negative, but that's not the intention at all.

They're playing Kamio mid-next month, I'm going, that should be good. My fave D/C is opening so that should all be extra good.

Slackerpop Part Four: CVIRO / GXNXVS, Catch Fire

Slackin' all day every day.

CVIRO & GXNXVS - Problem

So CVIRO & GXNXVS released one of my absolute favourite tracks of 2015 (it's called 'Sober', you can listen to it here) and to be honest it's still one of the hottest jams ever. In light of this I think it's okay to be as skeptical about a new song from this collaboration dream team as I was. Luckily the duo's new song 'Problem' is nigh on as good as their last. The chorus sounds like some next early 00's hip hop track I can't put my finger on and CVIRO's vocals are still dreamy AF. But I still don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to say GXNXVS out loud; this is even post-emails with MDWS about the GXNXVS remix of one of his tracks. Literally none the wiser. Send help. Please.
EDIT: Something about this sounds like some next level Destinys Child x Dr Dre shit. Still can't work it out.

Catch Fire - Wild Things

Less pop, more punk, but then actually technically still pretty pop. In terms of UKPP bands I quite rate Catch Fire, I don't think they do a bad job at the whole being a band thing. Even more so it's cool when bands aren't afraid to step outside the genres they're often constrained by, so here we have Catch Fire covering Alessia Cara's 'Wild Things'. Essentially Catch Fire have kept the songs original structure and the lyrics and then totally re-vamped everything else and it sounds really great. Obviously there are reasons why so few bands do covers, you know, there's only so much that they're good for, but this makes me wish that more bands did them. When I rule the world I'll instil some kind of conscription where bands have to do a cover a year or something like that.

The Julibrary 2016

Writing is a chore. Well, writing forced things like this post was going to be is a chore.

So once again, I've abandoned my (late) end of month post in favour of some good old visuals instead. That peculiar visual above is an amalgamation of my favourite releases from last month.

I listened to an insane amount of stuff throughout July and sifted through hours of songs and albums and EPs and essentially compiled everything into a massive 300+ song playlist A.K.A. my Julibrary.

There are some full albums, there are some entire EPs, and then there are also just "the good bits" of some releases, with a whole load of singles plonked on the end.

I'm looking to do a something similar to this for August too, but we'll see how I get on because... this was a task.

The Julibrary embedded under only shows the first 200 tracks, I mean, I'm sure that's plenty for you to be getting on with, just a note that there are so many more if you give it an actual view on Spotify. (I have NO idea what this will look like on mobile. Pray for me.)