This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
CMU Approved CMU Playlists
Playlist: CMU Re-Approved
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 10 January 2013
The world of new music can be an exhausting, confusing and overwhelming one. Hence we thought we’d kick off 2013’s run of playlists by looking back at ten tracks that have appeared in the CMU Approved column over the last few months. As with the first CMU Re-Approved playlist, they may be tracks you missed in the rush, or ones that simply deserve revisiting now that the dust thrown up by their original appearance has settled.
CMU’S RE-APPROVED TEN
Subscribe to this playlist on Spotify, and then read on to find out more about our choices.
01 Solange – Losing You
“Whilst her first two LPs felt wanting and unauthentic, ‘Losing You’ is a studied mood-board of ideas and beautiful cultural allusions, and a damn good track too”.
02 Trust – Dressed For Space
“It’s all shapely, treacly, dark-hued synth-pop, if liable to cloy at times like a mass of sonic molasses. Saying that, the artificial thrust of Maya Postepski’s percussion and, most of all, the charisma innate in Robert Alfons’ feral drawl are well worth the extra calories”.
03 Faye – Breathe Out
“The sort of song that would win a more conventional popstar favour amongst both their mainstream audience and those who generally consider themselves above such things”
04 Scarlet Soho – Solo KO
“Driven by crisp drums and slow, bassy synth that swells and retracts like breathing, strings are used to wonderful effect. Add to this a great chorus and a middle eight that bursts open, revealing the emotional heart of the song”.
05 Albert feat Anna Lena – Lucky
“‘Lucky’ is slow and warm, despite Lena’s downbeat lyrics documenting the end of an affair. Wrapped in layers of synths and pulses of percussion, it stretches out with just its fingertips still touching Albert’s earlier garage influences”.
06 Petite Noir – Disappear
“Yannick Ilunga’s solo work is similar in many ways to his other project, electro duo Popskarr’s anguished pop, but with a far more stripped down, otherworldly feel”.
07 Nadine Shah – Aching Bones
“The title track of Nadine Shah’s ‘Aching Bones’ EP grabs your attention from the start with the tense, percussive clang of a muted cymbal. It’s a dark, slow-marching track that presents unrequited love as something sinister, perhaps even dangerous”.
08 Vessels – The Sky Was Pink
“There’s always been a strong dance music influence in Vessels’ music, so it’s perhaps appropriate that their latest single is a cover of a techno track. Not just that, but a cover of a remix of a techno track”.
09 El Perro Del Mar – Walk On By
“Having discarded the itty-bitty 60s schtick of her eponymous 2006 debut, Swedish soloist El Perro Del Mar – aka Sarah Assbring – is now in the throws of a contemporary pop phase”.
10 Mac DeMarco – My Kind Of Woman
“While the campaign for ‘Night Club’, a ‘mini-LP’ folly of twelve tracks, came with a curious set of promo photos DeMarco has since said were designed to mystify the jaded music press, ‘2′ is being marketed as DeMarco’s first sincere pass at a studio record”.
