Snipe Likes: Everything Everything

Hot shit blogger’s favourite Everything Everything have released a new remix by Clock Opera, in which their hyper-tight guitar line is chopped up into a glitch-hop salad. Everything Everything’s razor-sharp pop sensibility survives being put through the remix blender; a jolly nice version, this.

The hotly anticipated album, “Man Alive”, is out on August 30th – there are signed copies for the first 100 pre-orders here.

Daily MPfree: K Anderson

“Shrug” is a pleasingly unhinged shuffle of a song from Australian ex-pat and animal impersonator K Anderson. Built out of a used double-bassline and garnished with keyboard squelches, it’s a taster from his first album, “The Overthinker”, out soon on Edna Sounds.

Daily MPfree: Snorri Helgason

Art Garfunkel-looking Icelandic singer Snorri Helgason has a very beautiful voice that I really wasn’t expecting, for some reason. “Ólán” is a track that’s previously seen the light of day on a compilation of Icelandic music called “Hitaveitan” that also featured Reykjavik scene stalwarts and upstarts like FM Belfast, Hjaltalin, Mugison, Retron and Sudden Weather Change. Snorri is apparently heading over to London for a while this year, so we’ll look forward to seeing (and hearing) a bit more of him around the doors.

Daily MPfree: Pagan Wanderer Lu

It’s not often you get a song that could be described as “an ode to procreation” – ironically, it’s not particularly sexy subject matter. But Pagan Wanderer Lu‘s “A Girl Named Aeroplane” is exactly that, a poetic song about conceiving and raising a child in a world beset by ideological rifts. It’s very pretty, both in concept and execution, like much of his new album “European Monsoon”, which came out last week.

Snipe Issue #2 MPfree Mixtape

With issue three pretty much in the bag, here’s a compilation of all the Daily MPfrees we ran in the last month. All the tracks are available for download, so you can grab the lot if you like. It starts off with some of the best new dance and electronica and ends on gothic pop, via some wide meandering through lo-fi, ambient and folk territory.

Daily MPfree: Of Montreal

Our MPfrees normally run Mon-Fri, but when something as momentous as a new Of Montreal track surfaces, hell. It’s time to bust up the crazy system. So here it is: “Coquet Coquete” is the first thing to be heard from the new album “False Priest”, which has been rumoured to be everything from a single epic psychedelic track to a 70’s-style R&B record. This doesn’t sound particularly like either; but if there’s one thing you can rely on Kevin Barnes for, it’s a good hard swerve in direction.

“False Priest” is released September 14th – pre-order now from Polyvinyl.

Snipe Machine

Hello all…

snipe.at/music is now a cog in the Hype Machine. You can follow us on there if you’re so inclined. This means tracks we blog about are eligible for the Hype Machine blog charts, people with Hype Machine accounts can have our selections sent into their watchlist, and the songs can be streamed, “loved”, tweeted, recommended to others etc.

Great stuff!

Snipe Likes: Darwin Deez

I’d been kind of ignoring this band. They tripped off some kind of hipster bullshit early-warning system before I’d ever heard ‘em, maybe because of the comedy hair and Vice-like grip on the blogsphere. But you shouldn’t judge an NYC hipster douche from his perm, as they say, and it turns out Darwin Deez makes beautifully formed indie-rock-solid tunes like the one above. The album is almost bizarrely listenable: I can’t keep my ears off it. Enjoy.

Daily MPfree: Zola Jesus

“I Can’t Stand” is a beautifully dark slice of gothic pop from Zola Jesus, aka Phoenix-based singer & songwriter Nika Roza Danilova. Reverb aplenty gives this song the sound of a great lost 1980’s number one single. After playing with Fever Ray, she’s just been announced as The XX’s USA tour support… but hopefully she’ll be back for some UK headline dates soon.

Daily MPfree: Valgeir Sigurðsson

Icelandic producer and composer Valgeir Sigurðsson is the man behind the ever-impressive Bedroom Community label. As a producer he came close to an Oscar for his work on Björk and Thom Yorke’s duet “I’ve Seen It All” (remember that clanking train rhythm?) as well as producing and arranging for a truly impressive array of artists such as Cocorosie and Nico Muhly. His newest album, “Draumalandið”, is his strongest solo effort so far; this is the opening track, and an album highlight.