NEW TRACK: Fears – ‘4th of the 1st’

A poignant reflection on emotional resilience and self-soothing, Dublin-born, London-based interdisciplinary artist Constance Keane aka Fears has shared her latest single, ‘4th of the 1st’. Taken from her newly announced second album, affinity, which is set for release on 22nd March via TULLE, the track is a delicate blend of soft vocals and hypnotic synth loops that delicately dismantle the duplicitous and intrusive thoughts that follow in the aftermath of a complicated breakup.

On her debut album OícheFears balanced her intense ruminations on trauma alongside dainty synth loops and tentative beats to shine a light on a personal metamorphosis. On her upcoming album, affinity, she continues to create emotive, elegant and enlightening soundscapes, but this time she spotlights the ability to find peace in the often chaotic settings around her. Written and recorded between London, New York, and Dublin, across 10 tracks she shares stories of human connection in its strongest and most fragile forms, something which her new single ‘4th of the 1st’ beautifully highlights.

Fears gives more context to ‘4th of the 1st’, which is inspired by a phone call she had on the same date back in 2022: “It’s about checking in with yourself and reassuring yourself after an experience with someone who denies what you know to be true of your time together,” she explains. “I think it’s unfortunately a pretty common thing to have someone tell you how much they’re into you and then decide that they actually never said that when they’ve changed their mind. I’ve experienced it a few times anyway, so I wanted to write a song for myself to say ‘no you DID actually say that, I didn’t make it up’.”

The single is accompanied by a video, directed and edited by Fears and filmed by Colleen Lee. The visuals aim to subtly highlight the “trust and bond that can be found in sisterhood,” and poetically depicts how women proactively signal to other women information that could help to keep them safe.

Watch the video for ‘4th of the 1st’ below.

Pre-order Fears upcoming album, affinity, here

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Photo Credit: Niamh Barry

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

NEW TRACK: Chelsea Wolfe – ‘Everything Turns Blue’

A shadowy rumination on the convoluted process of healing from an unhealthy relationship, Chelsea Wolfe has shared her latest single ‘Everything Turns Blue’. Taken from her upcoming seventh album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, which is set for release via Loma Vista on 9th February 2024, the track is a hypnotic blend of compelling vocals, brooding keys and brittle beats which reflect the aching sincerity of true self-liberation.

Following on from her previous singles ‘Dusk’, ‘Whispers In The Echo Chamber‘ and ‘Tunnel Lights, Wolfe’s new track continues her narrative of recovery, rediscovering self autonomy, and redefining what resilience both looks and sounds like. ‘Everything Turns Blue’ is about “finding yourself again after a long era of being part of something toxic,” she explains. “Making a split with someone after 10 years, 20 years, 30 years — there’s going to be some high highs and low lows as you begin to process it all.” Wolfe captures these emotional fluctuations succinctly in her lyrics. “What do I have to do to heal you out of me?” she questions throughout the track, before ultimately emerging from the shadows feeling stronger and more self assured.

Wolfe describes her upcoming album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She as “a rebirth”, breaking the physical and emotional chains that once prohibited this cathartic process. “It’s a story of freeing yourself from situations and patterns that are holding you back in order to become self-empowered,” she explains in more detail. It’s “an invitation to step into your authenticity,” and as she poetically concludes: “like the dark moon, that void space can feel unpredictable and looming, but it also holds so much potential, mystery, and excitement.”

Watch the video for ‘Everything Turns Blue’ below.

Pre-order Chelsea Wolfe’s new album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She here

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Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

NEW TRACK: Kim Gordon – ‘BYE BYE’

An eclectic combination of dense beats, brooding basslines, grinding reverb and spoken word, renowned musician and visual artist Kim Gordon has shared her new single, ‘BYE BYE’. The track serves as an introduction to her newly announced second solo record, The Collective, which is set for release on 8th March via Matador Records.

Following on from her 2019 debut solo album No Home Record, on The Collective, Gordon has retained her idiosyncratic style, remaining as curious, eclectic and ambiguous across each of the eleven tracks. Recorded in Los Angeles, Gordon continued to collaborate with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor) on the new record, with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. Together, they have captured a rumbling, intoxicating sense of unease which is translated both sonically and visually – something which permeates new cut ‘BYE BYE’.

Accompanied by a video directed by photographer and filmmaker Clara Balzary, and starring Gordon’s daughter Coco Gordon Moore, ‘BYE BYE’ is an exciting preview of what’s to come from a musician who immerses herself wholly into all of her creations. The track and album also accompanied by words from English artist Josephine Pryde, who offers poetic context to Gordon’s debut and upcoming solo record:

“There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.

Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here… Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears. We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed…

…I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. “I Don’t Miss My Mind.” The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title “BYE BYE.” The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers. She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?”

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Photo Credit: Danielle Neu

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

NEW TRACK: Vanity Fairy – ‘Jungle Jim’

An eccentric psych-tinged soundscape that shimmers with a palpable sense of longing, self-professed “high priestess” of underground disco-pop Vanity Fairy has shared her latest single, ‘Jungle Jim’. A potent blend of soft vocals, dreamy synths and sultry beats, the track seduces listeners with its faux-calme quality, luring them into Vanity Fairy’s delightfully ambiguous aural mirage.

Following on from her recent release ‘Love of My Life’, Vanity Fairy’s latest cut is as enigmatic and elusive as the thoughts that formed it. “‘Jungle Jim’ was one of those songs that just came out more or less in one whole piece, or at least the vocal did,” she explains. “I like that it happened that way, because the instrumental (most of which my brother and co-writer/producer Sam E. Yamaha came to me with) feels very instinctual to me – very dream-like and languorous… and also very jungle-y, at least to my ears. It sounds so calm and dreamy, but there’s something really uneasy and unsettling happening in the music underneath everything. Not that the song’s about that, it’s just really the mood of the song to me…

The noises and few fragments of intelligible words I sang in the first take I wanted to keep, so my brother and I set about trying to remain as faithful as possible to those original sounds with the words we used. So the lyrics have an unconscious quality, and a kind of retroactively imposed automatism – if that’s not a contradiction (which I think it is). I like how fractured and fragile the language ends up being. And I like how un-authored it feels. Like I went into the song and disappeared.”

Ahead of a string of UK tour dates supporting Pip Blom in February, Vanity Fairy will be be performing at the DIY Magazine ‘Hello 24’ showcase at The Old Blue Last in East London tomorrow (16th Jan). Full dates are listed below

Listen to ‘Jungle Jim’ here:

Vanity Fairy UK Tour Dates 2024
16 JAN // London – DIY Hello 2024, The Old Blue Last
27 JAN // London, The Windmill
3 FEB // Folkestone, Quarterhouse, supporting PVA
4 FEB // Reading – Sub 89, supporting Pip Blom
5 FEB // Birmingham – Castle and Falcon, supporting Pip Blom
6 FEB // Liverpool – Academy 2, supporting Pip Blom
7 FEB // Brighton – Folklore Rooms, supporting Mickey Callisto
21 FEB // London, Heaven, supporting Pip Blom
30 MAR // London, The Cavendish Arms, Indie Pop Weekender
13 APRIL, Bristol, Outer Town Festival
11 MAY // Wrexham, FOCUS Wales

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Photo credit: Meadow Florence

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut