TOP TRACKS OF THE MONTH: May 2014

Just over fifty favourites from the month of May in playlist form – listen to the Whyd list below or Soundcloud at the bottom of the page… would Spotify be worth doing?

Not that I like to have favourites but here’s a selection of a few gems from the fifty.

TEEN COMMANDMENTS – Facebook / Soundcloud

“Write a song, win a trip to Sweden” – That’s the promise of the Brooklyn Breweries annual song writing competition. Brett Moses and Nick LaGrasta gave it a bash and in Stockholm, The Teen Commandments were born. “Secret Lives of Voyeurs” is unashamed synth pop with keys and choruses not heard since the days of the double duran.

OPEN MIKE EAGLE – Twitter

Buckle up for repetitive mention injury, this blog has been banging on about Open Mike Eagle for years now and with tunes like “Very Much Money” we’ll be happy to do so for the foreseeable future.
“My friends are superheroes, None of us have very much money though
They can fly, run fast, read Portuguese… None of us have very much money though“.
Taken from the “Dark Comedy” album, Very Much Money is produced by Londoner Ultra Combo who provides lush ambient backing to Mike’s half sung wonderfully intricate lyrics.

SOONBE Vs. BIGGIE – Soundcloud / Website

After featuring Glaswegian Soonbe’s dark monster “Tanuki” last month the man himself added me to his email list but then had an unfortunate cut and paste accident with the next mail out. “Hello Okay Africa – I have a Biggie remix for you”. By the time he emailed to apologise I’d already listed to the track a good dozen times!

“Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion, I know my mother wished she got a fuckin’ abortion”

Biggie’s remorselessly bleak suicidal thoughts work amazingly well with Soonbe’s brooding electronic swirl and stuttering drums.

ILL MOVE SPORADIC – Bandcamp

The internets a very random place. Post punker’s The Sleaford Mods tweeted this insanely catchy singalong hiphop track by Ill Move Sporadic which somehow led me to spend about 2 hours listening to brilliant Scottish rap (a few of the more recent tracks are in the full fifty).
Ben and Cage81 are veterans of the UK HipHop scene and formed Ill Move Sporadic to bring a little “grit and dirt back into Hip Hop music in the UK”.

NOEMOTION

Nego Vagina Glow is a typically surreal No Emotion tune, twisting Nina Simone’s Four Women into an ode to the darker skin. “My Skin is black” croons Nina… “So is mine, baby” growls No Emotion.

KELIS

This ones smoother than the Cadburys Caramel bunny, giving a sort of Theo Parrish rewash to Kelis’s Labi Siffri cover.
Kelis duets with Sal Masekela on what was originally a simple guitar ballad becomes a gloriously summery jazz house delight in this Trinidad-Senolia Deep mix.

CLAY

Devised as an art project, the Clay EP and indeed all future Clay releases will only ever have one physical copy. Those that can’t own that one piece of art can count themselves lucky that the soulful sounds of Clay also exist in the digital world.
Read my friend and music obsessive Dominique Lutier’s indepth profile of Clay on the Convozine blog.

GOLD BEARS

YABBA FUNK

SOUNDCLOUD PLAYLIST