mixtape maestro

Among the handful of goodies we’ve heard from Elle Varner so far, the promising R&B newcomer has proven to be quite adept at putting the giddy highs of romance into words, whether it’s documenting feverish, early stage crushing on “Only Wanna Give It To You” and “Refill” or going far maturer with the nether-regions throbbing that dominated “Sound Proof Room”.

But what of themes dealing with the lesser pleasant aspect of relationships? On “Go”, a standout cut from Varner’s excellent new mixtape Conversational Lush, the singer-songwriter effortlessly shows that she can be just as poetically engrossing when exploring the pain spiked by a union’s impending conclusion.

Opening at the beginning of one of those soul-crushing “We gotta talk” break-up conversations, “Go” captures Elle cycling through the internal devastation of what’s to come with stunning lyrical illustration, her smoky rasp fringed with innards-piercing heartache as she exposes the many chaotic thoughts racing through her head.

“This is the part where you give in/ Tell me you can’t live without me/ Change that face that your makin’/ I’m so scared, I cant breathe” she sings, attempting to keep a composure on the outside while inside desiring to get all melodramatic in the moment and “lay on the floor/ And cry a river or two/ Until you promise to stay”. All she feels comfortable spitting out to him openly is a bunch of one-worded pleas on the chorus (“Stay…wait…don’t…wait…no…don’t”), but the way she elongates each with the agonized desperation of a thousand sorrows just can’t conceal the tragedy of it all, her appeals slicing with ease through her attempt at an external cool and leaving you wishing you were standing right beside her to give her the sturdy friendly support she’s so in dire need of.

Toss in the mid-tempo slow jam’s sudden dips into drum n’ bass frenzy–an effective descriptor for her heart’s rapid-fire beating during this emotional low–and what you end up with is another fine slab of modern soul excellence powered by one of the genre’s brightest new names.

Below, preview “Go” and a couple other personal Conversational Lush favorites (the amusing, “worst day ever” opener “WTF”, and the Bei Maejor-aided “Feel Like A Woman”, which features a lovely reggae-kissed chorus that gives us Lauryn Hill-esque chills), then snatch up the tape in its entirety here.

“Go”:

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“WTF”:

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“Feel Like A Woman” featuring Bei Maejor:

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Arctic Monkeys‘ previous trips to BBC’s Live Lounge saw them covering Girls Aloud’s “Love Machine” and Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” with fantastic results, so simply the idea of them going back to the female pop well for their latest LL remake pick dubs it an instant must-hear, especially if that cover choice happens to be Katy B’s “Katy On A Mission”, one of 2011′s baddest club offerings.

As exciting as it would be to hear Alex Turner & Co. get their dubstep on though, how they end up tackling “Mission” turns out to be so much better.

Completely scrubbing away the original’s sleek wobbly glide, the boys recast the arrangement with an intoxicating blend of Spaghetti Western mystique, 60′s garage and their classic Monkeys indie rock bop, adding an extra bit of seductive intrigue to “Mission”‘s sublime disappear-into-the-music sketch and lifting an already fabulous record to a whole new level of awesomeness.

A thousand times yes!! (via)

Rocking multi-instrumentalist chops, a distinctive look that quickly alerts the senses to her being something special, and a tender R&B/ jazz/ pop/ folk-hybrid singer-songwriter confessional sound that’s as relaxing as a sip of chamomile tea, it’s really no wonder how 22-year-old, London-born newcomer Lianne La Havas has managed to fully captivate nearly any and everyone who has caught one of her live performances or somehow became aware of either one, or both, of her fantastic two 2011 EP’s (freebie Live in L.A. and Lost & Found).

On the heels of becoming a BBC Sound of 2012 nominee and earning a spot as opening act for Bon Iver, Havas is set to make some major noise this year, and while we have to wait a bit longer to get a full-length debut, she’s made the wait slightly more bearable with the release of another mini-album, Forget.

Here’s the video for the catchy title track/ lead single, a snazzy update to a song first heard in acoustic form on L.A. with La Havas tucking her baby’s bottom soft vocals in a subtly knocking brew of scratchy electric guitar & dreamy Spanish guitar-accented funk/ soul–all in the name of kicking a jerk boyfriend and his now-ineffective love songs to the curb: “Remember way back when you played me and I lost that hand?/ So please don’t try to serenade me/ I am a one man band”. Tell ‘em Lianne.

Here’s the acoustic version:

Three years after proving he was more than just a “male Kate Nash” with his sonically ambitious, world-pop genre-hop fest sophomore set Everything Is New (which featured the still great ’09 highlights “Tonight’s Today” and “Pull My Heart Away”), Jack Peñate creeps back from the edge of memory with new single/ video “No One Lied”, a beautifully understated, reverb-drenched ballad that finds the London-born singer-songwriter still spending his days ruminating over the “big” things.

“Heaven is a place/ No one lied/ It’s rushing through your veins/ Flooding your eyes/ It’s hidden in your brain/ The sweetest surprise,” he sings/ alerts between the stark accompaniment of somber electric guitar lines, that teasing smidgen of blue-eyed soul grain in his voice still detectable with the occasional mini-vocal run and some gorgeously lingering falsetto “ooh”‘s.

Might “Lied”, a stunning exercise of the type of universally beloved pop-craft that award show committees go nuts for, mark the beginnings of a new Peñate makeover with him completely leaving the beguiling Afro-beat, Tropicalia and subtle hip hop textures of Everything behind?

We kinda hope not, though we just as well wouldn’t be mad if his forthcoming album included more timeless-leaning nuggets of stripped-back intimacy such as this either.

“Summertime, all the time” goes the mantra of previously MM-hyped producer Viceroy, which, in this currently cruel winter season when being outside for only a few minutes makes you feel like your nose and fingertips will fall off and shatter across the pavement in crumbles of ice, registers as a state of mind we can totally get behind.

It helps that the San Francisco-based beatsmith makes it oh-so-easy by cooking up remix after remix that when being pumped into your ear-holes makes you feel like you’re tanning away on the beach under the sun’s hellfire heat rays with a tasty, umbrella-accented frozen daiquiri by your side and beautiful bodies living the good life all around you.

His latest contribution to this fantasy takes Notorious B.I.G.’s already summer-friendly ode to the West, 1997′s Life After Death-housed “Going Back To Cali”, and makes it a thousand times more sunny, stripping away the original’s tough, Zapp-sampled G-funk bounce for a steel drum-peppered, 80′s-era Caribbean-pop makeover so breezy and feel-good, it makes Biggie’s promise to “annihilate thee” sound like the cuddliest threat ever.

ScHoolboy Q‘s Habits & Contradictions-housed, A$AP Rocky-collabo “Hands on the Wheel” rides on one of the fiercest sample-based productions we’ve heard so far this year.

Taking the relatively unknown Lissie’s slightly-better-than-the-original live cover of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” and reducing it to a compellingly chopped loop that hones in on key lines “Crush a bit, little bit, roll it up, take a hit/ Feelin’ lit, feelin’ light, 2 am summer night”, Lis’ fiery “Hands on the wheel” howls, and her rendition’s thunderous rock lumber, then underlining all that with an itchy percussion track of a Southern rap aesthetic, the beat, helmed by D.C. team Best Kept Secret, is one of those instantly grabbing constructions that on first listen, you just know has left numerous other rappers’ fuming with jealousy over not being called upon to lace it first.

“Wheel”‘s appeal isn’t just born out of that monster of a back-track though, as pairing up Q and Rocky, two undie rap heroes both coming off strong 2011′s and seemingly on the verge of making even bigger noise in 2012, conjures up a spectacular moment all of its own.

Sure, what they’re offering here lyrically is thematically thin (“Weed and brews, weed and brews/ Life for me is just weed and brews..” repeats the hook), but having them side-by-side boasting of their shared love for getting faded feels like a major event nonetheless, their presenting of an on-the-cheap(-ish) hip hop star life that one can actually partake in, rather than aspire for or simply gawk at, leaving us ready for them to cook up a Watch The Throne-like duo project the 99% could truly appreciate.

(iTunes) (Amazon)

As a bonus, check out two highlights from Schoolboy Q’s pre-Habits, pre-Setbacks days: his smoove Tribe Called Quest update “Bonita” and a Mistah F.A.B. & Tyga-featured riff off of Sleepy Brown’s “Can’t Wait”, both from 2009′s Gangsta & Soul mixtape.

“Bonita” (DL):

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“Can’t Wait” (feat. Mistah F.A.B. & Tyga) (DL):

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While the main selling point of ZZ Ward‘s Eleven Roses mixtape lies in the somewhat genius attention-nabbing tactic of marrying the Pennsylvania-born/ Oregon-raised singer-songwriter newcomer’s massive bluesy pipes with familiar hip hop beats (resulting in pleasant surprises like “Better Off Dead”, soulful eeriness ["I got these voices in my head/ Strap up that straight-jacket on me"] attached to the demented creak of Tyler, The Creator’s “Yonkers”), if there’s any single track on the mini-set to hint of Ward potentially conquering airwaves in 2012, “most recommended” honors would have to fall on the rap-reference-free offering “Last Love Song”.

A vocals-and-songwriting showcase that’ll likely draw plenty of comparisons to the recent globe-dominating output of Adele (which is nowhere near a bad thing), acoustic ballad “Love” is destined to inspire soggy eyes in anyone who has ever had to go through the post-break-up blues, with Ward, supported by nothing but lonely guitar plucking, setting her powerful wails to tearjerker mode as she somberly cycles through a future that’s no longer in the cards: “I won’t wake up and pick out your tie/ (Oh no) You won’t come home and kiss me at night/ (Oh no) We won’t lie in this king bed for two/ Say goodbye to us saying ‘I do”s”.

Our favorite moment: the waterworks-triggering peak of emotion hit with every belt out of the devastating chorus line “This is the last love song I’ll ever write for you”.

“Last Love Song (Acoustic)” (DL):

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STS continued his increasingly impressive hi-jack tour through other artists’ material (aka his GOLD Rush series) with yesterday’s video premiere of the woefully brief, MPIII-produced Drake/ Beyonce flip “We Threw A Party”, but excuse us while we rewind the clock back to highlight last week’s clever entry “Cut Me Off”, not only the best belated riff off of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” that we’ve heard so far, but one that should easily elevate STS to the shortlist of XXL’s 2012 Freshman class.

Recycling the high tenor hook heartache from the Gotye original, “Cut Me Off” finds Sugar Tongue Slim hilariously recounting the time he relentlessly pursued after a chick for a shot at romance that really seemed doomed from the start, not only due to the couple’s many differences (“I’m as loud as lavender/ She love earth tones/…She put my number in a Blackberry/ I use an iPhone”) but homegirl’s blatant early disinterest in him–his initial calls to her resulting in dial tones and the ultimate tele-diss: she changed her number.

As it turns out, he should have paid attention to all those warning signs because once the two eventually do hook up, their “happily ever after” is, as predicted, short-lived, with STS left not only suddenly dumped without notice, but also toaster-less and stuck with a beloved belonging freshly defaced with a to-the-point “Deuces” note (“[She] wrote ‘Fuck You’ all over my Roots poster”).

This just works on so many levels–the solid use of the sample, the humor, the brilliant story-telling format (from Slim’s conversational delivery to the amusing reactionary interjections from the guys/ audience hearing the story)–and while we eagerly anticipate what future entertaining flips STS has in store for the rest of the GOLD Rush cycle, we really wouldn’t mind if his next mixtape project revolved around an entire collections of witty girlfriend tales such as this one.

Here’s the video (download the track for free here):

And here’s the clip for “We Threw A Party”, which we hope will include a couple more verses once GOLD Rush is released in full this February:

First off, don’t act like Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” isn’t one of the baddest cuts ever.

The ominous production. The chilly ire simmering behind Phil’s lyrical ache (“Well if you told me you were drowning/ I would not lend a hand…”). The spine-tingling, and deathlessly-mutated “urban legend” that spiraled from it. THOSE DRUMS (and the eternity of tension-filled build-up time it takes to get to that classic explosion of WHAMP-WHAMP WHAMP-WHAMP WHAMP-WHAMP WHAMP-WHAMP WHAMP! WHAMP!).

The track, from Collins’ 1981 international blockbuster Face Value, is just all shades of right, one of those all-time pop favorites that still manages to excite (and haunt) all these years, countless “oldies” radio re-spins, and butchered karaoke “takes” later.

All of this has been put into print to lead us to this: a pretty nice “Tonight” remix from Melbourne producer Cosmo Black that injects a little modern-day indie/ club pep behind Phil’s dark stewing.

You’re welcome.

Cosmo Black’s debut EP is slated to arrive later this year.

With its relaxed vocal work and soothing acoustic instrumental frame, “This Is The Beginning”, by German/ Swiss indie folk act BOY (in actuality, female duo Valeska Steiner & Sonja Glass), comes across like the cool chill of the early days of autumn bottled up and unleashed in musical form, which is an overly colorful (though, in our opinion, completely spot-on) way to describe the pleasant aural escape it provides when heard amid the current cruel days of winter.

There’s more to “Beginning” beyond its well-appreciated calming vibe though, its plucks-and-harmonies-laced gentility supporting a beautiful lyric that eases the fears of having to start over from scratch in life.

“Hum a new song as you walk down the streets/ Soon you’ll be full with friends and memories” offers one nugget, followed by a chorus that promises “This is the beginning of anything you want”, perfect pieces of encouragement to have ringing in the back of the brain whether one’s scenario involves moving to a new town, heading off to college for the first time, or re-entering the single life following a break-up.

BOY’s debut LP is set to be released in the UK later this year.