Browsing Tag funk
Efecto Pasillo feat. Huecco – Funketón [2020 Version]
Efecto Pasillo is a popular Spanish band, formed in 2007 on the Canary Island of Gran Canaria. Three years later (now 10 years ago), their first, self-titled album came out. The band have dedicated the whole of 2020 to the celebration of this milestone.
So far, Efecto Pasillo released four albums. Throughout this year, they’ve been releasing new versions of tracks off these albums, each with a guest artist. In the end, they’ll have released ten updated versions, and meanwhile, they’re working on three brand-new songs.
After collaborations with acts like Despistaos, David Otero and Georgina, the seventh jubilee single features Huecco. He is the creator of the rumbatón genre, which mixes rumba flamenco with reggaetón. To make things more complicated, Huecco collaborates with Efecto Pasillo on a reprise of their 2013 track Funketón. This results in an extremely catchy cocktail of funk and rumbatón.
I dare you to try and sit still to this one!
Recommended as well:
Efecto Pasillo feat. O’Funk’illo – Chacho [2020 Version]
Efecto Pasillo – Las Banderas
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Superbird – Operate
2019 was a hugely successful debut year for British funk-rock power-trio Superbird. They released no less than six singles, the very first (Cola Bottle Fizz) ending up as the theme tune for ITV’s ‘The Sara Cox Show’. This resulted in sold-out shows, and ultimately, they were crowned BBC Introducing’s ‘Band of the Year’.
Superbird just released their third single of 2020. Operate starts in soft mode, but builds up to an epic conclusion. A groovy track that sounds like a future live favourite. Unfortunately, live shows as we used to know them are not expected to resume any time soon. In a short Q&A, I asked drummer/vocalist Alex Ash about the consequences of the Corona pandemic for Superbird…
How did COVID-19 change your master plan?
Alex: “COVID forced us into full writing mode. We did our first writing session over Zoom and in a three hour session we wrote a whole new tune! This happened for the next four nights. Never before had we sat on so much material and were able to select which were the best. It has truly made such a difference and without a doubt taken our next release to another level.”
Nine tracks into your career, are you into the ‘album’ concept or will you just continue to release separate singles?
Alex: “We would love to do an album but with the way music is consumed now, we want to continue staying in people’s faces and have a lot more announcements. Recording an album would take us away from the hussle.”
What’s Operate about and/or what inspired it?
Alex: “Operate is a heartfelt, emotional rock-ballad of love and loss. The story depicts the tragic separation of two people, with the protagonist begging the question: can the person that broke your heart be the only one who can fix it?”
Recommended as well:
Think You Got Me
Super Superior
Year On String Along
Cola Bottle Fizz
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 41)
I started recommending great new music on a daily basis in January 2017. Today marks my 2000th post. It’s a pleasure to write them, and a privilege to see in the statistics you read and like them. Thanks so much for that!
As always on Monday mornings (CET), this is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters. It contains the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- Boo Seeka – Days Get Better (Wildcard this week)
- Pixey – Just Move (Wildcard last week)
- Red Rum Club – The Elevation
- Sacropolis – For You
- Semisonic – Basement Tapes
- Tessa Dixson – How High
- The Neighbourhood – Lost In Translation
Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: Dua Lipa (feat. DaBaby), The Posies, Tom Petty, and more.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Red Rum Club – The Elevation
For a great live act like Red Rum Club, not being able to play live is a horror scenario. Especially with a new album coming up, that was meant to be heavily promoted by a large chunk of gigs. Obviously, the Liverpudlian sextet are not the only ones with this problem.
Luckily, the tracks on Red Rum Club’s upcoming sophomore album The Hollow Of Humdrum are not only future live staples. They are also very well tailored for radio airplay and inclusion in streaming playlists. The long-player (out on 2 October) contains a wide variety of songs. They range from acoustic ballads to disco themed festival anthems. Expect theatrical brass lines, pop choruses, rumbling bass lines, western guitars and Latin percussion. A melting pot spelled f-u-n.
Following former Carte Blanche Music Wildcard Ballerino, the band now put album opener The Elevation in the spotlights. Another euphoric and shamelessly funky pop tune that begs you to pump up the volume.
Recommended as well:
Red Rum Club – Ballerino
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Stats – Naturalise Me
13 November, only a year and a half after their debut album Other People’s Lives, Stats put out opus #2. The London-based band’s sophomore record is titled Powys 1999. It was recorded in a residential studio close to where frontman Ed Seed grew up in Powys (Wales). On the album, Seed (vocals, guitar) is joined by Nicole Robson (vocals/keyboards), Stu Barter (vocals/bass), John Barrett (drums), Duncan Brown (guitar), Iso Waller-Bridge (vocals/keyboards) and Ant Whiting (keyboards).
Naturalise Me is the long-player’s first single. It’s a funky, danceable pop song with an industrial, Depeche Mode-like feel to it. The track finds Seed questioning his roots. “Growing up I felt like I didn’t fit in or belong where I was born and raised”, he says. “When it comes to the countryside we often talk about the natural – and by implication the unnatural – as if we are talking about the real, and by implication the fake. I felt somehow fake in Powys as a born incomer, un-local, neither Welsh nor English. But by looking at the landscape, I started to realise the construction and extraction behind it, and the myth of its naturalness.”
Recommended as well:
Stats – The Family Business
Stats – Lose It
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 36)
This is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, containing the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- Sebu with Eraserfase – The Worst That Could Happen To Us (Wildcard this week)
- Archie X – Loud Boy (Wildcard last week)
- Alex The Astronaut – Caught In The Middle
- Altered By Mom – You Can Do What You Want With My Heart, Babe
- Dancer – Dreamer
- Ellur – Alive
- London Grammar – Baby It’s You
Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: Billie Joe Armstrong, Dua Lipa, Sheryl Crow, The Smashing Pumpkins, and more.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 35)
This is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, containing the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- Archie X – Loud Boy (Wildcard this week)
- Town Of Cats – Lemons (Wildcard last week)
- Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler – Sabotage (Looks So Easy)
- E^ST – I Wanna Be Here
- Ellie Dixon – Space Out!
- Mell & Vintage Future – Brand New Day
- The Flowers – You Don’t Say!
Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: American Autors, Bright Eyes, Roosevelt, and more.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Wildcard (week 34):
Archie X – Loud Boy
Debut singles seldomly come any stronger than this. Archie X are a Belgian duo, and their first track is totally exciting. Parts funk and parts jazz, but 100% pop at the same time. Excuse me if I raise the bar too high, but Billie Eilish is a fair reference in my ears.
Last year, Charline D’Hoore took part in Belgian TV talent show The Voice Of Flanders, where she impressed the jury with her version of F.U. by Little Mix. Apart from playing the guitar (like she did in her audition), she also plays the piano and saxophone. Tom Lodewyckx, a musician in bands that accompany talents during TV talent shows, is her musical partner.
Loud Boy is their very first single and a very promising one. I love the kind of confident bass lines it starts with. After a short into, together with Charline’s voice, a simple but effective beat kinks in. What follows, is a rollercoaster of vocal layers, voice effects, changes in tempo, creepy whispering, a jazzy interlude and more.
D’Hoore’s impressive delivery and Lodewyckx’ tight production make for a song with international hit potential. Immediately picked up by Warner Music, it’s up to them to transform this promise into reality (no pressure 😉 ).
For starters, Loud Boy by Archie X is this week’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcard, which means it’ll feature prominently at the top of this blog for a whole week.
In the Wildcards 2020 playlist you’ll find all of this year’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcards so far.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Werner’s Weekly (week 34)
This is Werner’s Weekly, your compass to the music that matters, containing the two most recent Carte Blanche Music Wildcards, and the best of the other new releases in alphabetical order:
- Town Of Cats – Lemons (Wildcard this week)
- Altered By Mom – Walking With The Enemy (Wildcard last week)
- Altered By Mom – Better On The Page
- Amy Allen – Difficult
- Fritz – Arrow
- Liela Moss – Turn Your Back Around
- Päter – Sleep
Click the links for more info and listen to each of the tracks via the Werner’s Weekly player below.
For more great new music, follow the constantly updated Carte Blanche Music playlist. Also added last week: The Cribs, eels, Tame Impala, Weezer, and more.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
Wildcard (week 33):
Town Of Cats – Lemons
There are pop songs, rock tracks, dance tunes, etc. And then there are the ditties that are impossible to categorize. These are ‘genre defying’, as they say. Musical melting pots, as it were. This is one in the latter category.
But how about a short introduction to start with? Town Of Cats are from Brighton, a town that is slowly taking over from London as the musical capital of Great-Britain. Other Carte Blanche Music favourites from Brighton are Black Honey, The Magic Gang, Lime, MarthaGunn and Yonaka. As well as Fatboy Slim, The Kooks and Royal Blood, of course.
The last few years, Town Of Cats built themselves a solid reputation by ripping up festivals around their home town with their explosive cocktail of styles. Hip hop, jazz, punk, afro-beat, (prog) rock, funk … it’s all there, and more. The best reference I can think of, is a cross between Dog Eat Dog and Fishbone. Remember them? They were fantastic as well!
Lemons is Town Of Cats’ new single. With its lively rhythms, blasts of brass and guitar, a good old-fashioned sax solo, and sing-along vocals, it bursts with energy. Not the music you’re likely to hear on the radio (which is plain stupid, if you’d ask me), but you can easily imagine this band to grow into one of the huge future live bands. Can’t wait for the festival season to re-open. But way ahead of that, on 28 August, Town Of Cats release their sophomore album The Elephant’s Room.
This whole week, Carte Blanche Music combines the sweet and the sour, as Lemons is the new Wildcard. They don’t come any wilder than this!
In the Wildcards 2020 playlist you’ll find all of this year’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcards so far.
Music industry watcher and journalist. Worked at a CD club, a record store chain and was editor in chief of an entertainment trade magazine. Has been in the radio business since 1987, producing and presenting shows. Was music director of several stations. Also, he developed the European Border Breakers Chart, Music Moves Europe Talent Chart and ESNS Chart.
