BabyStep's New Music Friday #3

We're delighted to bring you another week of of our top picks released this Friday. It's been another week indoors, but an end is in sight, well sort of. Whilst more people begin to go back to work and school, there are other aspects of our life that feel painfully distant. The lack of discourse around the future of music venues going on in parliament is heartbreaking, with more venues and artists feeling the very real struggle of lockdown. Figures published by Media Insight Consulting show that the UK music industry contributed £4.5bn to the national economy in 2019 whilst supporting over 210,000 jobs. Despite such a valuable contribution, many feel that the government has not shown enough support, especially after it was revealed that there is no music representative in the Government's Cultural Task Force. We've done our best to get behind the cause and host Ready Meal Sounds UK Tour raising money for Save Our Venues and are delighted to have streamed to over 5,000 people last night. Be sure to check contribute to their fundraiser HERE if you can. Now without further ado here is New Music Friday.

I woke up to a message from Joe this morning that simply read 'Fucking hell so much music out today', this is a dilemma we hope Joe encounters often when curating this column. This weekend we encourage you to swerve the wetherspoons faithful ,stay in, and indulge in what has to be the most exciting new music Friday.

Disclosure, Aminé, slowthai - My High

Disclosure have shared a new track called ‘My High’ featuring Slowthai and Aminé. The dance duo announced their forthcoming third album ‘Energy’ in May, and released its Eric Thomas-sampling title track. The fast-paced ‘My High’ video, which was shot in both LA and Mexico and LA before lockdown, The video tells the story of an injured man being stretchered down a hospital corridor and then out onto the city streets. Both Slowthai and Aminé appear in the clip, while the patient endures various traumas throughout the night.

Glass Animals - Heat Waves (Official Video)

Glass Animals have released a brand-new single entitled ‘Heat Waves’, lifted from their forthcoming album, ‘Dreamland’.The premiere was paired with an accompanying music video, directed by Colin Read. The clip sees frontman Dave Bayley wandering the streets of London under quarantine, pulling a wagon loaded with music gear and making his way to an empty venue. Watch it below:

Jayda G-Are U Down (Remix)

‘Are U Down’ presents a new, slightly grittier and more sombre side to Jayda’s sound, something she attributes to her recent move from Berlin to London and her subsequent immersion into UK dance music culture. The lyrics and title, a reference to the feelings of uncertainty and excitement of exploring something new, could just as easily be applied to the circumstances many of us find ourselves in now.

Jensen Interceptor - Promise

Like that of the eponymous asphalt devourer he draws his name from, Jensen Interceptor has no time for obliging introductions and lame rides across techno dullsville. Well one to mash and smash, Mikey Melas' sound is entirely designed to sling a brick into the game's well-oiled mechanics by way of contribution. Strings of Fear is a glance into a damaged, yet ubiquitous beauty fetishism, when succumbing to the collective consciousness means walking a thin line between vanity, sanity and self-loathing. The four-tracker ties into a journey through fear, confusion, anger, desire and loathing, all fitted into one shot of adrenaline in a form of an EP.

Caribou - Never Come Back (Floating Points Remix)

Following the release of ‘Suddenly’ back in February, Caribou is sharing two new remixes of album tracks, with Floating Points offering his reworking of ‘Sister’ and ‘Never Come Back’. Speaking about it, Dan Snaith says, “At first Sam asked for the parts for ‘Sister’ - the most intimate and personal track off my album Suddenly - and reworked it using the voices of my mother and my sister that I sampled from an old cassette for my childhood - but having turned that into a hypnotic, meditative beautiful thing'.

Kanye West – Wash Us In The Blood feat. Travis Scott

“Wash Us in the Blood,” a single from his forthcoming album God’s Country, feels more like a tossed-off sketch than a meticulous portrait. Over a woozy, clippy production, West talks about mass incarceration, slavery, and genocide: “Genocide what it does/Slavery what it does/Rain down on us/Whole life sellin’ drugs.” Together, Kanye and Travis Scott ask for the Holy Spirit to come down, and, you guessed it, “wash us in the blood.”