The New Cue #413 September 13: Nilüfer Yanya, Floating Points, Nala Sinephro, MJ Lenderman, The Standing Stones, Underworld, Kaeto, London Grammar

"I gave Jimmy a really short recording of intense hurdy-gurdy shredding..."

Sep 13, 2024

Morning,

Here we are again, on a Friday, dropping into your mailbox. We’re going to be appearing more frequently in the future, with rebooted subscriber editions appearing on Wednesdays and Fridays. Mondays remain free for all lovers of music and words. We’ve lifted this morning’s paywall just for the hell of it.

Before we crack on with today’s show, a little tear-stained admin: our colleague and pal Chris ‘Catchers’ Catchpole is stepping back from New Cue duties for a while, concentrating instead on Catchpole Industries. We’ll see him again, though, as he’ll continue to contribute from time to time in the future. Important to note that we love Chris and will miss him more even than you will. Stepping in to help us with the recommending weight this week are our illustrious friends Dorian Lynskey and Laura Barton, who both offer up hour-long playlists of the new music they’ve been enjoying this summer: that’s available after the jump with other good stuff, including Nilüfer Yanya. Here’s this week’s Recommender playlist:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

This coming Monday we join Peter Perrett of The Only Ones for a heavy-duty head-to-head. Until then, enjoy the edition and your weekend.

Ted and Niall.

Release Valve: Nilüfer Yanya

Her excellent fourth album My Method Actor is out today. Here, the West Londoner takes a moment to talk us through her life in music…

The first record I loved was... Doolittle by the Pixies

The last record I loved was... Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos

The musician I grew up most wanting to be is... I think I really wanted to be a man playing guitar in a band.

The greatest gig I ever saw was... Every time I see Tirzah play it’s pretty great.

The greatest gig I ever played was... Webster Hall, NYC, May 2022

The story of my new album goes like this: I started writing the album a year and a half ago, didn’t have any idea what it was going to be about, had a good sense that it was going to sound a lot like the last album but just wanted it to be better / stronger somehow. An album with no tracks you wanted to skip.

I couldn’t have made the album without... Will Archer: collaborator/co-writer/ producer/new band mate/friend

The song on it everyone should listen to is: Binding

The one song everyone should listen to that isn’t on one of my albums is Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey. We play a cover of it too!

Recommender Pt.1

Ted Kessler

Been a gap in our recommending of a week or two, so let’s catch up with a couple of gems first…

MJ Lenderman’s fourth album Manning Fireworks hits a plaid-shirted, guitar-slinging, nasal-voiced sweet spot between Neil Young and Jason Molina, with lyrics as wryly funny as Cass McCombs or Stephen Malkmus (whose Pavement Lenderman strongly resembles too).

We tried to get Nala Sinephro to contribute something to a current New Cue, as she’s my favourite contemporary jazz composer, but the London-based multi-instrumentalist is not doing interviews, preferring the gentle brush of her ambient strokes to paint a portrait. Her new Continiuum album carries the spiritual journey of her debut Space 1.8 into a new dimension. Strongly recommended.

Cascade is the new album released today by Floating Points, whose Promises - which he crafted in 2021 alongside the London Symphony Orchestra and the late saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders - trod a similar path to Sinephro. Cascade finds its creator, Mancunian producer Sam Shepherd, in a very different space: alone behind a laptop creating intense, beat-driven ravescapes.

Sheffield-son, Ibiza-resident Mark Barrott has long been known for ambient landscapes, but his November-scheduled new album Everything Changes, Nothing Ends is his most emotionally charged. Informed by the death of his long-term partner, Sara, it’s previewed this week by the lovely Pandora (which could moonlight on Nala Sinephro’s record).

Did you dig the techno-pop hugeness of the KLF? Like the all-for-one merriment of The Pogues? Fan of the mellifluous folk-tones of Alasdair Roberts? Need more hurdy gurdy in your life? Then you will love The Standing Stones, an alliance of KLF’s Jimmy Cauty and the Pogues’ Jem Finer, who have enlisted Alasdair Roberts to sing a hurdy-gurdy 2024 rave version of ancient folk hymn Twa Brothers. It’s out today on 12 inch, which can be bought from L-13 here.

I had an email chat with them which you can read below…

I’m New Here: The Standing Stones

Please tell us about The Standing Stones. How did you come to be?
Jem Finer: The Standing Stones have existed for longer than we can recall; at some distant point we weren’t, and then we were and here we are. Another way of looking at it is that once upon a time I gave Jimmy a really short recording of intense hurdy-gurdy shredding which was in fact the Tardis like seed containing much of what has followed, and which he meticulously unpacked and made into a new musical universe.
And then somehow, mysteriously, we were led back to the Stone Age by the appearance of The Green Comet, coming past on its 50,000 year loop, and the work of standing stones - encoded with our music - became part of the equation.

Where does Alasdair Roberts fit into the picture?
JF: He fits in beautifully I think, right in the middle. I love his voice and I was lucky enough to be asked to play with him as an opening act for a performance of the Wicker Man soundtrack. He played synth drones and sang, and I played the hurdy-gurdy.
Jimmy was in the audience and found himself, about 13 minutes into our very long rendition of a not so long song, waiting for the 808 to kick in, which it never did.

Why did you choose to record Twa Brothers – what is the significance?
JF: It’s the song Alasdair and I were performing, and it seemed like a good idea, after a reasonable pause to finally introduce it, the song, to Jimmy’s extraordinary studio magic. And 808.

How did you surmount geographical obstacles in recording?
JF: Fortunately, the internet has evolved to a such a degree that these things are very simple. We transfer files amazing distances at astonishing speed.

What does the future hold for The Standing Stones?
JF: That we do not know.
But soon, all being well, there will be a new stone standing in the north of this country, The Gurdy Stone's entangled sibling, The Hurdy Stone.

Please could you each choose an album or song to recommend we listen to that may blow our minds?
JF: Sure. I’d recommend an album called May by Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew
MAY | Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew
Every May 1st for the last 4 years they’ve released an album, May volume 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. I don’t really have a favourite but Volume 3 is pretty close -

May is compiled from them all, with the addition of some new material, and exists as a beautifully packaged double album with wonderful artwork by Benedict. I’m a big fan and he has changed my life for the better, a couple of times at least, most recently by inviting me to take my hurdy-gurdy off the shelf and make an album for his label, Thanet Tape Centre. That, somehow, led to this.

Jimmy Cauty:
Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

The Comet is Coming (2022)

If the Standing Stones could work towards building a sound like this then that would be a worthwhile endeavour, even though we know it will sound quite different.

Guest Playlist: Dorian Lynskey

The host of Origin Story and the author of Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World curates his favourite recent songs just for your weekend.

Recommender Pt.2

Niall Doherty

The new single by Underworld is a beatless wonder. The opener to the techno pioneers’ forthcoming new album Strawberry Hotel, Black Poppies makes much of minimal components, a layered Karl Hyde vocal accompanied by spatial synths and not much else. Underworld don’t need much else.

Each excellent release by Scottish, London-based singer-songwriter Kaeto has helped me to get over the fact I read that she went to Clown School. I’ve never met anyone who went to Clown School and I need to know more about Clown School, but I would like to listen to her music without thinking about Clown School. I can report that the stark minimalist pop brilliance of new single Distance is helping me to put her Clown School past behind me.

Some of the best moments on the new record by electro-pop trio London Grammar are similarly spartan, especially the soulful vocals and dexterous breakbeats of opener House and brilliantly titled, absolutely fuming ballad Fakest Bitch. The record is titled The Greatest Love and it’s out today.

South London quintet Moreish Idols’ new single Pale Blue Dot has the accolade of being the 50^th release for Speedy Wunderground’s Singles Series. The half-century is celebrated with a good’un, all intricate grooves, hushed vocals and tangled acoustic guitars. It sounds a bit like Doves dousing Radiohead’s In Rainbows in their shruggy, ‘what’s the point of it all?’ brilliance.

The forthcoming new record by US singer-songwriter JD McPherson is called Nite Owls and there’s a suitably twilight edginess to his recent single Don’t Travel Through The Night Alone, the whole thing revolving around a chillingly stirring vocal reminiscent of the late chillingly stirring supremo Mark Lanegan.

Sydney duo Royel Otis, who autocorrect so badly wants me to call Royal Otis that it made me do it in a previous Recommender, put out a brilliant new song last week. Til The Morning will feature on a deluxe edition of their record Pratts & Pain, adding its minor-chord splendour to an already first-class debut.

Michael Kiwanuka announced details of his new album this week. Titled Small Changes, it was heralded with two new songs, Lowdown (part i) and Lowdown (part ii), both lovely, one a soporific, end of the night soul contemplative and the other a woozy Pink Floyd-y instrumental.

Guest Playlist 2: Laura Barton

The writer, broadcaster, music columnist for Prospect magazine and all-round legend of rock delivers ninety minutes of what she’s been listening to this summer. She says:
”Please enjoy my musical companions from across this hectic Summer. They have carried me from general election to house move, via running the spoken word at Green Man festival and manning the Silent Disco at End of the Road. They’re all pretty new, except Strawberry Switchblade - included here because I have been enjoying their TikTok revival, and also because I always imagined I would dress like them when I grew up (disappointingly, I do not).”

And Finally…

Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil on his most hated foodstuff:

“Anything eggy. I hate eggs. As soon as I smell egg anywhere, I’m out
of there man. It does something to me.”