UMFANG – Where Is She

UMFANG shares Where Is She, taken from the forthcoming album Symbolic Use Of Light, which drops June 16 on Ninja Tune‘s Technicolour imprint.

Speaking to The FADER, who premiered the track online she explains that “the title refers to the feeling of being in a club and losing your friends for 15 minutes or maybe the whole night. I like that you can hide at the club and have your own experience if you want while still being among other humans”. The FADER described the track as “A Subtle, Focused Body Shuffle”.

Previously sharing her analogue-based rhythmic excursions via videogamemusic, 1080p, Phinery and Allergy Season, the New Yorker is a co-founder of Brooklyn’s colossal Discwoman crew and resident at Bossa Nova Civic Club’s Technofeminism monthly.

Kevin Morby – 1234

Kevin Morby will release his new record City Music on June 16 via Dead Oceans. The forthcoming album follows Kevin Morby’s excellent 2016 LP, Singing Saw.

His fourth album, City Music works as a counterpart to Morby’s acclaimed 2016 release Singing Saw, an autobiographical set that reflected the solitude and landscape in which it was recorded. Saw was imagined as “an old bookshelf with a young Bob and Joni staring back at me, blank and timeless. They live here, in this left side of my brain, smoking cigarettes and playing acoustic guitars while lying on an unmade bed.”

And now follows City Music, the yang to its yin, the heads to its tails. It is a collection crafted using the other side of its creator’s brain, the jumping off point perhaps best once again encapsulated by an image. “Here, Lou Reed and Patti Smith stare out at the listener,” explains Morby. “Stretched out on a living room floor they are somewhere in mid-70s Manhattan, also smoking cigarettes.” It finds Morby exploring similar themes of solitude, but this time framed by a window of an uptown apartment that looks down upon an international urban landscape “exposed like a giant bleeding wound.”

The War on Drugs – Holding On

The War on Drugs have announced their forthcoming new album A Deeper Understanding will be released on August 25 via Atlantic.

The news comes after the group recently released a brand new 11-minute long song, Thinking of a Place, for Record Store Day and announced a fall tour. It was the first original material from The War on Drugs since their incredible 2014 record, Lost In The Dream.

Adam Granduciel worked on A Deeper Understanding with engineer Shawn Everett and his bandmates: bassist Dave Hartley, keyboarding Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall and multi-instrumentalists Anthony LaMarca and Jon Natchez. The group emphasized in a statement that this new album is a “band record.”

To coincide with the announcement, the band have shared the pulsing, Springsteen-esque lead single, Holding On.

A Deeper Understanding is out August 25 on Atlantic. Pre-order here.

Arcade Fire – Everything Now

Arcade Fire release their forthcoming new album Everything Now, the follow-up to 2013’s Reflektor, on July 28 via Columbia Records.

Recorded in New Orleans, Montreal, and Paris, the record includes the new single Everything Now, which Arcade Fire sold as a 12” vinyl single at Primavera Sound. The track is produced by Arcade Fire, Steve Mackey (of Pulp), and Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk.

According to a press release, “The new album is Arcade Fire’s first release under its new partnership with the global media and e-commerce platform Everything Now in synergy with the Sony Corporation.”

Frontman Win Butler told BBC Radio 1’s MistaJam of the song: “There’s sort of an everything-nowness to life. I feel like almost every event and everything that happens surrounds you on all sides. It’s trying to capture some of the experiences of being alive now in all its flaws and all its glory.”

Directed by the Sacred Egg, watch the video the euphoric tile track Everything Now up above.

Nicolas Jaar – TRANSITION

Nicolas Jaar and Boiler Room have shared a new concert film, TRANSITION – a singular visual experience by the visionary Chilean-American artist and the world’s leading underground music channel.

Shot in Brooklyn at the now-defunct DIY venue Aviv in September 2016, the film takes a cue from Jaar’s semi fictitious network of interlocking radio stations as well as his latest studio album ‘Sirens’.

From its very first enigmatic scene to the unmissable ending, TRANSITION is an unscripted POV journey into one night in NY at a transitional time in America.

Daktyl – The Act of Hesitation (feat. Krrum)

Daktyl – the most recent signing to Counter Records, will release his new EP The Act of Hesitation on June 20. The title track, featuring the vocals of UK artist Krrum is available to stream & buy now.

Having cut his teeth remixing acts like Major Lazer, Halsey, Machinedrum and Japanese Wallpaper; the producer and multi-instrumentalist received early praise from the likes of Billboard, Rolling Stone (who listed him as one of their “Artists to Watch”) and Zane Lowe’s ‘Next Hype’ on Radio 1.

The Act Of Hesitation however represents a marked shift from the the bass-heavy, jungle-driven tracks for which he is best known. Facing a decision to move from his adopted home of London to the shores of Los Angeles, he found himself questioning not only whether to leave behind friends and family to pursue his career, but also where exactly he wanted that career to take him. “I was going in a direction I wasn’t completely happy with” he explains “and hesitating a lot about whether to continue down that path or try to start on the creative path I’ve wanted to be on for years.” Having decided to make the move, he reacquainted himself with his singer-songwriter background, returning to a fundamental approach to his music – the result is a sonically distinct yet satisfying divergence from his previous material.

Nothing encapsulates this more so than the title track, with Daktyl describing it as “the most personal song on the EP”, it features the vocals of UK artist Krrum – one of several contributors across the record who also include Dopecal, Micah Freeman, JJ Draper and Sweater Beats. Speaking of the track, Krrum added “It’s definitely one of our favourite collaborations so far. Daktyl had the name and instrumental for the track already, which we loved, and we used the title as inspiration for the lyrics. The instrumental has an old-school melancholy feel to it, which feels almost cinematic.”

Big Thief – Mary

Today, Brooklyn’s Big Thief share Mary, the stunning newest song drawn from their forthcoming album Capacity, due to be released on June 9 on Saddle Creek.

The song follows the previously shared video for the album’s first single Mythological Beauty, and the Emmylou Harris/Fleetwood Mac-esque Shark Smile.

The Brooklyn-based group return next month with their highly anticipated second album, Capacity. The trails that the band takes us down on Capacity are overgrown with a wilderness of souls. These are carnivorous stories, with pangs of sadness and joy. Singer and guitarist Adrianne Lenker shows us the gentle side of being ripped open, and then recounts the second act of pulling oneself back together to prepare for it all to happen again.

“There is a darker darkness and a lighter light on this album,” reveals Lenker. “The songs search for a deeper level of self-acceptance, to embrace the world within and without. I think Masterpiece began that process, as a first reaction from inside the pain, and Capacity continues that examination with a wider perspective.”

Capacity is out June 9 on Saddle Creek. Pre-order here.

Anna Of The North – Lovers

Anna Of The North will release their highly-anticipated debut album Lovers on September 8 via Different Recordings.

Today the band share the first single and album title-track Lovers, with its vast, gospel-inflected chorus and impassioned performance. Set during a break-up, Brady describes the song as “speaking of the emptiness of the unrealistic promises we make to each other at the start of relationships. Those promises that we can’t possibly keep like ‘I’ll always be there for you’ and ‘I’ll never leave’.’”

Anna continues; “The song describes that point when you feel alone and you’re reaching out but they’re not reaching back. Maybe you could get through to them if they just let you in, but the promises they made are broken.”

Lovers is an album deeply rooted in heartbreak, a subject that courses through the veins of all ten tracks – through the turmoil, the guilt and the tentative joy of finally letting yourself move on.

In three years since the release of their unforgettable debut single Sway, the Norwegian-Kiwi duo of Anna Lotterud and Brady Daniell-Smith have paved the way for their full-length debut following a run of singles which have notched up over 60 million streams, multiple No.1 spot’s on the Hype Machine charts and rotation on Radio 1, Triple J and Beats 1.

Now they offer up an emphatically assured debut LP, its clean, springy beats and shimmering synths underpinned by the rich, emotive clarity of Anna’s voice. Recorded in Oslo and mixed in Copenhagen and London by Luke Smith (Foals, Depeche Mode), Lovers is a coherent but endlessly varied beast.

Anna of the North’s debut album Lovers is due for release on September 8 via Different Recordings. Pre-order here.