Free Music Friday // Stay Positive, Leipzig

Former Manchester band turned London based solo producer, Stay Positive drop another relentless dance track with enough atmosphere to make you feel the ravers sweat from under your headphones.

Click here to download Leipzig for free (via XLR8R).

Free Music Friday // The Chainsmokers Remix - Say Lou Lou, Julian

Say Lou Lou's golden pop nugget gets the big house rework treatment by The Chainsmokers, a New York duo who are quickly becoming the go-to guys for a slamming dance party remix of your best single. Alex and Drew knocked together an equation to explain their approach to reworking this track, FYI:

   Say Lou Lou(Julian) x The Chainsmokers                 Happiness

--------------------------------------------------------------------    x    ----------------------   = This Song

(Indie + Dance) x (Pop Music + Summer Time)               Sadness

Get it free through their soundcloud. Go here to hear the Say Lou Lou original.

Pusha T, Numbers On The Boards

Co-produced by his label boss Kanye West, Pusha T's Numbers On The Boards is a vicious, relentless roll of a beat, which hums in your conscience like some all-knowing, bad ass swarm of gangster bees, nodding their threatening little heads and giving you those eyes for almost three minutes. Pusha's vocal shows the talent and ease that Kanye keeps jumping up and down about and if you can't get hooked into this then you don't like hip hop. It's on constant repeat over here.

Numbers On The Boards is out now through G.O.O.D. Music.

Hot New Stuff // Smallpools, Dreaming

Don't believe the doom mongers and rain chasers, summer is here. And if your summer is going to be soundtracked by anything other than Daft Punk on repeat then get stuck into Smallpools, a fourpiece from Los Angeles who sit nicely between Passion Pit and Foster The People. This already sounds like an insagram'd bunch of good looking people in ray bans and hats on an LA beach in the sun having a sickeningly good time with beer. It's also free.

(via the smashing tastemakers over at Neon Gold)

Meg Myers, Heart Heart Head

Meg Myers' debut major label release sees her lose none of her quirky individuality. Heart Heart Head is an intriguing and intense slow burner, erupting into a bunny boiler fit of hysteria in which Myers manages to pull off an incredibly powerful delivery whilst scaring the shit out of you.

Heart Heart Head is out now through Atlantic Records (US).

Thumpers, Unkinder (A Tougher Love)

Stop the press; this is amazing. I wanted to see Thumpers at The Great Escape last week and thanks to this unbelievably good single from the London duo, I'm now sick with regret. A bombastic, synth/guitar/drum groove train with the excitement of a fizzy drink but the cool panache of classic Ray Bans. A favourite new band with one of the best songs of 2013. Fact.

Unkinder (A Tougher Love) will be a limited 12" release in June, keep an eye on the bands social media for more info.

The Great Escape 2013, Part Three - Saturday

This is the third and final part of Drums Eat Everything's highlights coverage from The Great Escape Festival 2013. Please leave your questions and tears until the end. Check out parts one and two for more great music and until next year; thank you Brighton.

Part One - Thursday

Part Two - Friday

Dan Croll

Dan Croll has been getting some nice coverage on Radio 1 over the last few weeks and months but how he's not all over the mainstream like a tramp on chips I just don't know; his alt-indie-pop songwriting craft has been earning some solid radio support in the US thanks to Sirius in particular. With an honest and endearing live show to a ram packed lunchtime showcase (in the darkest room you've (n)ever seen (oops, sorry, was that your foot?)) backing up his consistently brilliant songs, the campaign for Croll to go supersonic gets a big thumbs up here.

Glitches

Not a band i'd heard of before their unplugged-and-yet-still-electro set (no, I couldn't work out why it worked either), the London trio combine forward thinking textures with heavy bass and organic groves, topped by the Cold War Kids-esq passionately belted lead vocals which will stay with you. All day. Until you go see them play a full band set that night. Which is also fantastic. Great band.

CHVRCHES

With two of the catchiest electro-pop singles of the year already under their belt and a recent remix for MS MR keeping their love for thick, analogous juno sounds in our conscience, CHVRCHES definitely came into the festival as one of the most hotly anticipated acts. Their stage show was calm and considered, allowing the sweet and unasuming vocals to sit on top of some big driving retro atmosphere and to be honest, when you've got Recover and The Mother We Share in your set you can afford to be confident. Being lapped up by an expectant crowd = good job well done.

Eye Emma Jedi

The British-Norweigan indie rock band with one of the more creative names of the festival smashed through a high octane set which undoubtedly grew and got better as it went on, an interesting point considering pretty much every other act seemed to be front loading their sets. A band of very skilled musicians can often crash and burn as taste is sacrificed in favour of self gratification but in this case the songs flourished as the lead guitarists afro drew everyone in to their sweaty gaze. 

The Great Escape 2013, Part Two - Friday

Day two of some of the highlights from The Great Escape Festival in Brighton last weekend.

Part One - Thursday

Part Three - Saturday

Let's not mess about, here's Friday:

Anushka

Brighton duo Anushka were dropping beats to an incredibly packed basement club upon my chance arrival and very quickly I became engulfed by the love-in. Sounding like a still fresh Katy B but with more street cred and a penchant for smokey dance music, they tore through some big sounds with pitch perfect vocals and enough substance to match the style. Pick up their EP Yes Guess here.

Roosevelt

The German chill-house producer created a pretty big simultaneous head nodding session with some soaring vocals, live-looping and percussion (we now know he hits cymbals with tambourines). Single Sea was the stand out live track, buy it here.

San Zhi

Sounding sleek yet stripped and ethereal, R&Breeze™ pop group San Zhi slyly come over as some kind of sexy hybrid of The XX and Polica, with AlunaGeorge on diet coke coming down in the corner. That's not to say there's no sugary fizz in this band, far from it. But they are so effortlessly understated in delivering their beautifully rich tunes that you can't help but unknowingly fall under their spell. Get their EP here.



Josef Salvat

Australia-via-London singer songwriter Josef Salvat drew a lot of sympathy from me for his hotly anticipated performance in a quite imaculate sounding church. He tried and tried and tried to put on a show to a vibe-free room full of arms-folded music industry bods, who were all keen to run the rule over what's been sold as one of pop music next leading men. He nailed the quirky awkward-confidence showman thing and his bass playing, beat triggering, spectacular beard wearing side kick was probably just as watchable. He really needed to have a full band though.



Drenge

The riffs of White Stripes, the power of QOSTA and the ruckus energy of early Arctic Monkeys, Sheffield's brotherly duo Drenge absolutely owned a packed, sweaty room above a pub and made far more noise than a bassist free band has any right to. Very exciting indeed and one of the bands many people were talking about over the weekend.

The Great Escape 2013, Part One - Thursday

So last week and weekend I went to one of the finest new music festivals in the world in Brighton on the South coast of England. I wasn't sure how to write it up; all in one big thing, one shorter post for every band I saw, extra posts for good stuff I didn't manage to see etc. The verdict is this event will be chronologically logged by day (very efficient) with some bonus/spill over posts for all of the great stuff I discovered but wasn't able to see. 

Part Two - Friday

Part Three - Saturday

First up, Thursday:

Jake Hart

Jake Hart is already one of these hungry drums favourite new prospects and he and his band played a breezy afternoon set in the gloriously non-English sunshine from the side of a shiny van to a packed square in the town centre. Awake was as effortlessly cool and beautiful live as it is on record and Hart & co's live remix/cover of Lana Del Rey's Born To Die was an unexpected diamond.

Darkstar

If you want to feel like a car is reversing over your chest, throat, face, legs, well every inch of your body really, each and every time your favourite experimental alt-electronic band hits a kick drum then this was the show you needed to be at. The bass extravagance did come at a price though; super sweet vocals were at times drowned out and a lot of top end intricacy was  painted over by the subs. A great band though with one of the best albums of the year so far.

Crystal Fighters

Anthemic, positive summer vibes exuded from Basque-Brit band Crystal Fighters in a packed hall-turned-venue called The Warren. Very sweaty, very engaging and very happy, the band shuffled and calypso'd their tropical selves through a spell binding set which had everyone smiling and dancing giddily. Very impressive, as is their debut album 'Cave Rave' which you can preview and pre-order through the soundcloud player below.

On an On

I walked in on these guys purely by chance and was very pleasantly impressed by their soaring melodies, laid back grooves and love of spacious textures. A star gazing light explosion soundtrack at its late night best from a band to watch. Their debut album available now (here).



No Ceremony///

If there's a band more suited for an atmospheric, late night underground indie club rave than Manchester's No Ceremony/// then I haven't found them. It's a pretty rare thing that big pumping club beats can combine so easily with ambient vibes, solid songs and a mesmerising performance. All in one hit. Smashed it.

Baauer remix - Disclosure ft Eliza Doolittle, You & Me

Baauer gets big and nasty with Disclosure's latest chart conquering single You & Me. Typically catastrophic beats from one of the biggest names in bass music, he somehow manages to makes a stop-start beat groove and flow while Eliza Doolittle's sweet vocals get pitch shifted and mashed thrown all over the place in the breakdown. Just don't make any silly videos to this, for gods sake.