Nearly four years after the release of Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds, British polymath Vegyn has just revealed details about his upcoming new album, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions. Delving into the internal conflicts of humanity, the project was introduced by previously released singles “Halo Flip” and “Makeshift Tourniquet,” and features contributions from Ethan P. Flynn, Léa Sen, Lauren Auder, Matt Maltese, and his protégé John Glacier.

In conjunction with this announcement, Vegyn has also shared a new single titled “The Path Less Travelled,” a vaporous and trippy instrumental. Experience the grainy video directed by Joshua Gordon and pre-order The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions via Bandcamp below.

Originally hailing from Hackney, East London vocalist and writer John Glacier – because she’s icy – has announced the release of her debut album, SHILOH: Lost For Words, on Vegyn‘s imprint PLZ Make It Ruins. It’s actually the first album that Vegyn has executive produced since Frank Ocean’s Endless. Her low-key energy, rough and melancholy flow combined with Vegyn’s avant garde take on trap and hip-hop is going to push some new boundaries. She “constructs tracks in one session, leaving them untouched like raw nerves,” explains Vegyn. This can be heard on the space-y and filtered opening track “If Anything,” which acts as the first single. Listen and pre-order the album via Bandcamp below.

Left-field producer Vegyn has just announced the release of his new EP, Like A Good Old Friend, via his own imprint PLZ Make It Ruins. Following his 2019 ambient-infused debut album Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds, these new tracks will focus more on dance music, as heard on the first single “I See You Sometimes”. Starting with a melancholy, anesthetized pace, “I See You Sometimes” progressively gains in speed, as if to mark the transition between the two projects. The visionary artist teams up here with another London talent, Jeshi. Watch the Richard Philip Smith-directed visuals and pre-order the EP via Bandcamp below.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you must have noticed that lo-fi aesthetic is a thing again. It’s not only an alternative rock thing, though historically that’s been the go-to genre for lo-fi artists. There’s a lot of great lo-fi music being produced nowadays, so much that it’s almost impossible to keep track – you’ve got to be really good at what you’re doing for people to pay attention, and you’ve got to have a degree of uniqueness that makes you stand out from the other trillion Bandcamp artists. You can tick off both boxes with the Pennsylvanian (I’ve always wanted to use this as an adjective because it makes it way more exotic than it really is) artist ARTHUR, who is releasing his debut album “Woof Woof” on November 2nd. The song he’s chosen as his first single is “Ivy League”, a three-minute oddball pop song that is somewhere in between Dent May and Ariel Pink’s most accessible material.

Part of the appeal of “Ivy League” is its retro aesthetic, which is certainly reinforced by a VHS style video where ARTHUR is doing what I assume to be his best Morrissey impression. Boasting jangly guitars and a prominent bassline, the song hardly hides its reverence to the 80s. That being said, there is an element of unpredictability to “Ivy League”. The second half of the track does away with vocals and makes the insanely pretty instrumentation the centrepiece while somehow remaining as catchy as the first minute and a half. The whole thing is a piece of beauty, so do feel free to watch it again and again while we wait for the next “Woof Woof” news.

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Harriet Zoe Pittard is Zoee, a London-based singer with serious vocal chops. And her new single “Used” sounds like nothing out there. Propelled by her operatic singing, “Used” is one of those songs where absolutely everything screams out “earworm”. From the playful, simple synths that effectively hold the song together to the impossibly high-pitched background vocals, every little element here has been engineered to be stuck in your brain as soon as possible. And it works to perfection. “Used” is a classic off-kilter pop anthem, the kind that you once you hear it playing on the background, you immediately have to drop everything you’re doing to Shazam it.

About the track, Zoee detailed:

[su_quote]My song ‘Used’ came about after lots of late autumnal nights spent with my friend Rowan Martin writing songs in my bedroom [they produced the track together] and listening to the Malcolm McClaren album Fans. The album is one of my favorites, fusing opera with 1980s RnB in its own unique way. Listening to that album on repeat led to the initial stages of writing ‘Used’. The song then began to take on a life of its own, especially the concept for it. It feels like a song that doesn’t want to be boxed in or pinned down. Every time I sing the words ‘how long, how long, how long I’ve been used’ I find myself drawing on fresh memories or feelings. Ultimately the song is reflective, it’s an exploration of my own experiences of attachment and the feeling of being used up by a situation or a person, how you can lose yourself and end up feeling like an empty shell. But, it’s also intended to be cathartic – alongside that feeling of emptiness there is a regenerative, restorative energy that’s just as potent.[/su_quote]

It’s also classic pop in the very true meaning of the word: Zoee’s campy vocal delivery is straight out of the 70s playbook – she was aiming for Kate Bush but could only get to Dolly Parton, which makes the whole thing even better. That is half the reason why this song is so good – the other half being its direct, straight-to-the-point production. This song is all about the hooks, and it makes sure that it becomes impossible to miss them. “Used” has been released via PLZ Make It Ruins, a DIY label led by producer Joe Thornalley aka Vegyn (he is credited on Frank Ocean‘s 2016 album Endless). You can listen to “Used” on Bandcamp alongside its highly recommended ARTHUR remix, and you can also watch its official video below.