The video was directed by Tokyo-based artist and programmer Baku Hashimoto, who worked closely with Bell in an online-exclusive collaboration. The result feels completely digital too. Black-and-white footage of Olga chilling out in the Rockaways is manipulated through 3D matte painting into tableaux of what looks like distorted bits of a .jpeg file that had an unfortunate encounter with electronic shredder. Enter the bewildering world of the inside of a picture below.

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“TEMPO” is out now. Buy it on iTunes.

A seamless patchwork of textures, melodies and synths, “Ten Miles High” sees a bittersweet Róisín crooning ambiguous words of what could be death or ecstasy over an eclectic soundscape of twinkly, deep and industrial tones. Uncanny and proud to be, inadvertently luxurious, it possesses the curious charm of chic things misplaced in the right spot.

The video for the song was directed by Miss Murphy herself. Shot on location in a London looking like a building site for a sci-fi movie set, it’s a testament to Róisín’s ability to turn the common and mundane in hypercool gold like a hipster Queen Midas. Through her touch, the most basic mirror effect transforms grey urban views into gorgeously weird glass-and-steel landscapes. They’re the perfect background for Róisín to serve different kinds of city realness in the great tradition of “Paris Is Burning“, whose spirit is all over the video: executive, a businesswoman of the Eighties who doesn’t want romance without finance, and avant-garde construction worker. She’s like Margaret Thatcher and a trade union leader at the same time, but with better clothes and definitely more chill.

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4xe-qiKE00″]

“Take Her Up to Monto” is out July 8th via Play It Again Sam. Pre-order it here and get “Ten Miles High” and the equally fantastic “Mastermind“.

A silky knot in the super-busy web of “HiperAsia”, “Pizza” is metal on velvet, the take of a robot on the smoothest ’90s R&B. It’s the kind of music computer people of the future would come up with if they had a thing for Common‘s early albums.

The video for the track was directed by Alberto Blanco, who, like Pablo, examplifies Barcelona’s peculiar and irresistible brand of swag. As anticipated, it’s a highly cinematographic homage to “The Wire”, its criminals and men in combats. His huge fur coat makes it clear but in case it wasn’t, the criminal here is Pablo himself. He acts as the head of a cartel that smuggles the best of all drugs, delicious addicting pizzas. We can all agree hiring black women in lingerie as servers is problematic and unsanitary but in the words of our polestar Britney, it’s all really exciting, urban and cool.

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“HiperAsia” is out now via Everlasting Records, CANADA and Nacional Records (in the US). Buy it here.

It’s going to cater to the body, Olga Bell‘s new album. Its name is “TEMPO” and if you have paid attention, you should know already it’s impossible not to move along its first single “Randomness“. Now it’s time to leave the dance floor for the moody afterparty of the second cut “ATA”.

There is something strange about “ATA”. It is not the kind of alienating strangeness one finds in things hard to get. It’s a feeling more akin to slight disorientation following a surprise. A pulsating synth bass slithers on the semi-empty floor of the track, which is full of space and scattered with blips and clicks, and opens up into a soft harpsichord-like lead when it reaches the middle. This sonic narrative is not accidental. The song is a sort of electronic rendition of Frank O’Hara’s poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island“, in which the sun itself comforts the poet about the value of his art while death and powerlessness keep echoing in the background, and as the sun starts talking, everything turns brighter. Another influence was Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love“, one of those classics nobody knows the title of. But there is none of that slow-mo sweetness here. “ATA” is brooding, meditative and self-aware, an artist facing her own condition. As cerebral as its premise and lyrics are, it is with the body that it wants you to listen. So play it below and feel it in your stomach. Headphones highly recommended.

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“TEMPO” is out May 27th. Pre-order it here.

[su_dropcap style=”simple”]A[/su_dropcap]shkan Kooshanejad is a futurist but comes from one of the most ancient countries in the world. It’s not surprising: as old as it is, the culture of Iran has always had a strong sense for the modern and this young man, now based in London, is sure making something new. A tireless experimenter, Ash Koosha treats sound with the curiosity of a scientist. Fiercely electronic but shaped by years of Persian and Western classical music theory, his work comes from thought but ends up being intensely physical, always split between chaos and structure. These premises hold perfectly for his sophomore album, “I AKA I”.

“I AKA I” is a study of music as a chemical substance. It melts, it hardens in new shapes, it sublimates and then melts again. It all happens at a microscopic level as if Ash was working with molecules instead of notes. That’s sort of what he does actually: his “nano-compositions”, as he calls them, are made of small samples which get magnified, cut-up and re-packaged in a new entity, often without much deliberation. He’s an alchemist.

In “Mudafossil”, Persian suggestions and harsh, hard-hitting beats get combined in a dense digital embroidery of elastic rhythms and shape-shifting melodies. The video for the track was directed by Hirad Sab, who has worked with our girl Sevdaliza before, and Dalena Tran. It’s a disquieting display of computer-made flesh, metallic bodies with no skin distorted and recomposed like wax by an invisible force with a taste for CGI.

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“I AKA I” is out now via Ninja Tune. It’s good stuff. Buy it here.

[su_dropcap style=”simple”]E[/su_dropcap]verybody’s favourite Monster Energy superfans Prince Rama are unstoppable these days, and not just for all the stimulant drinks they’ve been guzzling. Their new album “Xtreme Now” is an explosive collection of high-speed hypertunes lifted from 2067, the year art and adrenaline will be as one. Here’s some footage of that, courtesy of the iconoclastic video for “Now Is The Of Emotion”.

“Now Is The Time of Emotion” is a wild, wild ride. If we had to extend the metaphor to feature a vehicle, we’d definitely choose mechanical horses that shoot lasers from their eyes. The song goes so fast it practically gallops. With its array of distortions, Devo-gone-robots vocals and ferocious electric guitars, it’s all muscle, fire, hooks and catchiness.

The video for the track was directed by the Larson sisters themselves. A resolute but superfun jab at the ridiculous exclusivity of the art world, it makes a case for the wisest thing one can do with art: desecrate it. An angry mob of people from Brooklyn turns a punitive expedition against iconic masterpieces into a rad party: children devour Picasso and Munch cakes, a shirtless hunk pisses paint on Duchamp’s pissoir and the David gets pied. I’m sorry, Michelangelo, you had it coming.

If Taraka and Nimai are reading this: please invite us next time you organize a gallery raid. We’ll bring some Magrittes.

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“Xtreme Now” is out NOW on Carpark Records. Go listen IMMEDIATELY! To start, here are two songs: “Bahia” and “Your Life In The End“.