New Music Mondays #5

Quick one this week - from the fantastic 2morrow's Victory. Some of you may have heard of these guys through their appearance at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards. They performed the show-stealing Gil Scott Heron tributes (check one of them below) at Koko. They have an EP out today called Odeon (iTunes exclusive I think). Their brand of spacey, organic hip hop is exactly my vibe - the EP and it's predecessors are well worth a listen. I don't know much about the group, except that they are from South London and like cycling. Check out their Tumblr page here, and listen to a couple of tracks below.

New Music Mondays # 4

Some of you (or more accurately - none of you) may have noticed there was no New Music Mondays post last week - that's because I was busy recording the first edition of my new Excursions Radio Show. You can take a listen here and look out for the next instalment very soon! A couple of great new releases out this week, one brand-new and one new-but-old (if you see what I mean!). First up is the new single 'Folded' from Part Time Heroes. One of the great things about working in music is seeing artists develop over time, and PTH fall into this category for me. I've known about the guys (duo Toby Vane & Ross Wakefield) for a few years now and have always enjoyed their music, but this release takes things up a notch or two. Lead track Folded is beautiful - all haunting strings and ethereal vocals, but it's 'Close' that really does it for me. The combination of the lush instrumentation with stuttering club beats (think Jamie xx with a jazz degree) and Colonel Red's soulful vocals takes the track somewhere quite unique. It's a track I can imagine leaking out of my headphones on a night bus home - just stunning. Also on the release are instrumental track 'Wood', which is reminiscent of some of Bonobo's recent work, as well as a couple of clubbier takes on the lead track from rising talents LPZ and Paper Tiger. You can buy the release here or take a listen below:

My second release of the week is the new Spiritual Jazz compilation on the ever-reliable Jazzman Records. As someone with an increasingly wide range of musical tastes coupled with every-decreasing free time to find new stuff, 'gatekeepers' like Jazzman, Soundway and Sofrito are invaluable. I love pretty much every track on this album, but but apart from Michael Garrick I hadn't heard of any of the artists on this album and would probably be unlikely to. It's a fantastic release, lovingly compiled and has opened up an area of music that can seem quite intimidating to a newcomer. Take a listen below and make sure you check out the rest of their releases here - I've not heard a dud one yet!