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Current Earworms

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A thread in which to name the tunes you’ve got on heavy rotation at the moment.

I’m splitting my time between Bobby Shmurda’s 2014 classic “Hot Nigga” and “Come Down To Us” by Burial.

Hot Nigga was very much the sound of the Summer three years ago. It made my end of year “Best of” playlist, because it’s got an absolutely sick beat, and I quite like the guy near the start who solemnly intones “Shmurda she wrote”, like it’s some sort of unassailable fact of life we’re all just going to have to get used to.

What I hadn’t realised was that it also has one of the best “here I am with all my mates in the street making gang signs and generally acting the goat” videos of recent years, that Shmurda had developed a dancing style that was subsequently copied by everyone from Beyonce to Swizz Beats, or that he’d been jailed for a pick and mix assortment of crimes (most of which he’d explicitly extolled in “Hot Nigga” – the head of the unit who nicked him described it as “almost like a real-life document of what they were doing on the street”) in late 2014. Despite all that, it is an absolute banger, and it’s right back in my headspace.

Burial’s “Come Down To Us”, meanwhile, I pretty much missed on release. It was the third track on 2013’s “Rival Dealer” EP, and it’s extraordinarily un-Burial in tone: almost euphoric, and weirdly 80s sounding (I detect a Scritti Politti influence towards the end). I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but the entire EP is built around an anti-bullying theme, and “Come Down To Us” heavily samples a speech by filmmaker Lana Wachowski at the 2012 Human Rights Campaign gala. It’s very good, and very blissed out, and sounds lovely on the way home with the sun coming down over any body of water. Video in the comments.

Over to you – what you listening to lots of at the minute?

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Comments

    • The field of hiphop videos where the lead rapper does his thing while his homies look menacing behind him is one sadly underexplored on the Afterword. My own favourite is ‘Practice Looking Hard’ by E-40, which is magnificent, especially 3:06 to 3:09

  5. My most played album this week is the new one from Solstafir. Basically Sigur Ros getting drunk, pulling out their old Fields Of The Nephilim albums and deciding to go metal.

  6. This ain’t an earworm – it’s a whole head full of maggots! I only recently became acquainted with the majesty of its full twelve inches and it has stuck

    (Boney M – Rasputin 12 inch mix)

  7. Also, you know that old saw about how punky organ fuelled songs by Dutch white reggae bands with terrible beards about how great it is to get drunk and how bad it is to have a job are always awful? It’s not always right.

    I bloody love this, even though every music snob bone in my body cries out against it.

  8. I’m in the middle of a her-uge On-U Sound binge at the moment, and it’s a great binge to be on, ‘cos you get thrown around between reggae, dub, breaks, electro, industrial, post-punk, funk, you name it. If you throw in Sherwood’s other productions as well, you get the likes of The Fall, PWEI, Ministry and Skinny Puppy for your trouble. Feel like I might be here a while.

    Anyway, out of everything, the albums I keep returning to are Mark Stewart’s ‘As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade’, partly out of perversity because it’s a notoriously ‘difficult’ album, and partly because I’m always freshly delighted that I genuinely love it; ‘Starship Africa’ by Creation Rebel, which will be familiar to all lovers of dub as one of the most trippy, out-there dub albums ever made, and this one, ‘War Of Words’ by Singers and Players, the only one of the three which is new to me.

    ‘War Of Words’ is one those short-but-perfectly-formed albums, made in the middle of Sherwood’s reggae phase. It’s got two obvious standout tracks in the form of a lengthy, discomixed ‘Quante Jublia’, which features Prince Far-I in full end-of-the-world mode, and ’91 Vibration’, a superb experimental dub track that wouldn’t sound out of place on ‘Starship Africa’.

    But the one I’m picking is this: ‘Devious Woman’. It’s not the most creative track on the album by a long chalk, but it really hits the spot. It opens the album so the first thing you hear is Bim Sherman’s gorgeous vocal, followed by Keith Levene’s restrained but distinctive guitar slashes, and of course a lovely bass sound. The whole thing feels like being picked up and cuddled.

  10. This current Swedish summer radio hit…some days I like it, some days I can’t stand it, but every day I keep singing the chorus in my head…and I haven’t even listened to the radio in almost four weeks now, but it’s still trapped in my ear! Gaaah!
    Kaliffa – “Helt Seriöst”:

  13. TBH, silence is what’s on heavy rotation right now.
    I’m on a reading jag currently and most music is a distraction.

    Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” is in my head just now, because I’ve just (about 30 minutes ago) been watching the “Songwriters Circle” of him, John Cale and Chrissie Hynde. As mentioned in the “Songwriters Circle” thread recently started. One of the better songs in his extremely good catalogue.

  14. Back from a weekend immersed in the new hip sounds of 67, unsurprisingly it is the thrill of electric morris. Be grateful I am stuck to phoneblogging whilst my mac gets mended, otherwise it would be the majesty of Lads a’Bunchum!!

  16. Can’t sort out YouTube on my phone. But dare yourself to listen to Nick Heywards new album “Woodland Echoes” and especially the ultra infectious country hoe down that is “Mountaintop”

  17. Not only the music sticks like Werthers, but the lyrics do too:

    “You tell your friends not to call at weekends, now you wear that far-off look …”

    From Orange, my most bestest Al Stewart album. Yay!

  19. This is my favourite thing at minute, really looking forward to the album that’s due in a week or two.

    She’s playing Glasgow on a Friday in October, but I’m already committed to other gigs on the following Saturday / Monday and not sure I have enough stamina or brownie points for three gigs in four nights.

    (“Aryan Nation” – EMA)

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