Listening Post #30

1. Jorja Smith & Preditah - On My Mind

UK Garage is having a major renaissance right now. Maybe it’s festival season, the lasting sprit of Carnival, and old school heavy hitters like Craig David having laid the foundations for the comeback. On My Mind mixes exceedingly large UKG vibes with the newest home grown talent. Jorja Smith’s glorious vocals and emotion blends with Preditah’s production perfectly. As strange as the collaboration sounds on paper, it is almost certainly the best song to come out of the UK this summer.

2. Rich Chigga - Glow Like Dat

The only way I can describe Glow Like Dat is as extremely solid. It starts off at a good level and maintains it for three and a half minutes, not ever really losing anything along the way. Despite the controversy surrounding him early in his career, the past few releases have gone from strength to strength, reissuing trap with a clear cut of self-awareness and the kind of cockiness that can only come from the internet. If we needed more proof that everything the 88rising team puts out is pure magic, this would be it.

3. Four Tet - SW9 9SL

Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, aka the king of experimental genre-smashing electronica, is back at it. He’s been dropping little musical gifts onto streaming platforms for the past few weeks, first with Two Thousand and Seventeen, and another track called Planet. Between the trickle of releases and the tweet he put out last week, simply, “The new album is done,” I think it’s a good time for blissful dance music fans everywhere. The last breadcrumb in the trail is the most intriguing - SW9 9SL is the postcode for the O2 Academy Brixton. What does it all mean?

4. Miguel feat. Travis Scott - Sky Walker

I honestly don’t know what I love more: Sky Walker or the video for Sky Walker. Both are infused with the cool, laid back sensuality that seems to come as naturally to Miguel as breathing. The trap and hip hop elements are new, though, and make the single far more mainstream than Miguel’s usual style. I can take or leave Travis Scott in this, if I’m honest, and it’s definitely not my favourite Miguel track, but how could it be? It follows 2015’s single Coffee, potentially the rudest, most explicit R&B song known to man. Miguel deserves commercial success, and this may just be the song to get it for him.

5. Brand New - Lit Me Up

Most of the time I find it pretty easy to leave my emo soul back in the 2000s where she belongs. But sometimes, you wake up and find that Brand New have released an album whilst you were asleep, and everything changes. After announcing that they would break up in 2018, Science Fiction seems to be a last hurrah. Can’t Get It Out is dark, moody, and just off kilter enough to make you feel uncomfortable. Whether you’re buying into the Brand New conspiracy theories or not, mark this song – and the whole album, actually – as autumnal listening at its finest.