Brothers Ben and Conor McCarthy, otherwise known as Roi Turbo, have been crafting their South African disco-funk since they were teenagers and sharing a bedroom they turned into a DIY studio. Now, with their second EP, Bazooka, they’ve added more funk, more grooves, and even vocal tracks to their mix.
The title track gleams and shines with instant catch-your-attention synth riffs and a beat that will have you strutting down the street. “Dystopia” adds some slight synthwave touches that are great, but it never stops being danceable, despite the track’s title leading you to believe it’s going to be morose or gothic.
“Super Hands” is a standout, somehow blending stuff that sounds like it’s from old Nintendo games with alien-disco, Italo disco, and acid-funk. “Bobo Spirit” is the bounciest track on the EP. It just bumps the entire time.
“Hot Like Fire” is their first vocal track. There aren’t a lot of vocals, mind you, but the McCarthy brothers use them to good effect to help the grooves stick in your head, shoulders, and hips.
It’s a fun record that’s ready for your summer playlists. Go grab it.
Sextile’s new album, yes, please. is a floor-filling, club-shaking banger that encourages us to embrace life and not let the bastards get us down. It’s a record that skewers misogyny, politics in general, the United States’ health care and education systems, and the music industry…all while giving you a rave freak-out.
After the early 2000s video game opening credits-like “Intro,” we’re let in on the not-so-secret information that “Women Respond to Bass,” with Melissa Scaduto and Brady Keehn instantly making you sweat within the first throbbing bass riff. This song will make you want to turn your lights on and off at rapid pace to simulate a strobe light if you don’t already have one within arm’s reach. Keehn takes over lead vocals on “Freak Eyes,” in which he sings about the pressure of making the album just as good, if not better, than the last, and to make it now (“I’m trying to get my shit together. People say I should be working faster.”). The warped sounds are probably reflective of how his brain felt at the time.
“Penny Rose” delves into what schools and education will become in the near-future thanks to AI and carefully chosen subject matter. Hip hop artists everywhere will want to steal the beats and bass on this. “Push Ups,” with guest vocals from Jehnny Beth, builds and builds until your workout becomes a mid-1990s aerobic VHS tape played in fast-forward. Speaking of fast-forward, wait until you hear the bass on “Kids,” which seems to be going faster than anything else on the album. It’s pure trance music that will lift you off the floor (and listen for the additional vocals by Izzy Glaudini of Automatic).
“99 Bongos” is a fun one, with the titular drums slapping down sick beats while synths never seem to stop rising around them and someone tells a tale of tripping on acid and taking a road trip they were lucky to survive. “S is For” has Scaduto spitting a sexy tongue-twister that is probably being played in S&M clubs even now. “Rearrange” calls out how many things have been changed for everyone, and not for the better for most of us. Scaduto’s vocals sound like they’re coming through a staticky radio tuned to a pirate channel. Its sister song, “Resist,” calls / yells for women to fight for their reproductive and health rights. The pulsating bass on it is fuel for action.
“Is this it? Is there something I’m missin’?” Keehn sings on “Kiss.” He’s wondering what the hell happened around here, how did he end up in the middle of it, and what does he do now? Apparently, you dance until you’re a sweaty mess because the last half of the track is a full-on industrial ripper.
If you’re wondering why so much of this album is about calls to action and to embrace life and, let’s face it, pleasure, part of it is because Scaduto spent a good chunk of time before this album was recorded in a New York nursing home after an accident that almost caused the loss of a leg. “Hospital” and “Soggy Newports” detail the experience, with “Hospital” being the wild synth-wave dance cut about her trying to figure out why health care is such a damn mess, and “Soggy Newports” being the low-key song about how health care can be so damn depressing (“Please get me out of here, because I’m going out of my head.”).
If you’re looking for a hot dance record, look no further. If you’re looking for a sexy record, look no further. If you’re looking for a boring record, look elsewhere.
Elle Barbara is an avant-garde singer-songwriter, recording artist, and performer based in Montreal, Quebec. Her music alternately combines elements of sophisti-pop, jazz, and glam, with an interest in library music and psychedelic soul. She has become an iconic and ubiquitous presence in Montreal, as comfortable at the DIY art show as she is performing with Madonna.
Rising from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s, Elle Barbara has seen her work soar to enduring albeit niche acclaim, in a part-time artistic career whose highlights include duets with Lætitia Sadier and Sean Nicholas Savage. In the later half of the 2010s, Elle Barbara’s efforts mostly centered around community organizing and solidarity work. She notably helped establish an anti-poverty grassroots collective whose mission was to grant discretionary funds to low-income trans feminine people, and did peer work to promote harm reduction methods and offer active listening and legal support to society’s most vulnerable. She mainly releases music as Elle Barbara’s Black Space, a concept group she formed to feel less culturally isolated in Montreal’s underground. She is also partly responsible for reviving Montreal’s ballroom scene.
Today, Elle is announcing her American debut, Word On The Street, which will be out June 27th on Celluloid Lunch, K Records / Perennial / K and Elle’s own House of Barbara. To mark the announce, Elle is sharing the single and video for her track “Hitler, Satan & Associates LLP.”
Word on Street was written, composed, arranged, and produced by Elle Barbara, in close collaboration with Renny Wilson, who recorded, engineered, and mixed the album over a challenging 8-year arc that saw Elle transition socially and medically while on welfare and frequently eating off as little as $11 CAD per week. In that sense, Word on the Street is a victory against class struggle and nepotism, and is a brazen testament to how a low-income, welfare-assisted, middle-aged, Black male-to-female transsexual beat the odds, using all resources to make the music of her mind while ignoring music industry conventions.
The albums is a genre-defying concept album that promises to become a cult classic and solidify Elle Barbara’s reputation as an uncompromising auteur, champion of queer eccentricity, all-around visionary, and working-class heroine.
Each track on the album conjures up unique pictures composed of seemingly incongruous images such as corrupt justice systems, aliens, industrial food production, religious fanaticism, and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.
As such, “Hitler, Satan and Associates LLP” makes an excellent introduction to the album, as Elle explains:
“Hitler, Satan & Associates LLP is a psychedelic avant-pop number with elements of free jazz. The lyrics are about as absurd as the economic times we live in.”
Looking for some fun house music? Well, the Danish duo of Liminal has you covered with the Keep Coming BackEP, which features three different mixes of the main track.
The bass alone on “Keep Coming Back to Me” will keep you coming back to it, not to mention the lush grooves of the whole thing. Ray Mang‘s remix of it ups the space disco feel of it to make it perfect for your next space age bachelor pad get-together.
“The Moon is Changing” is trippy house, almost trip-hop stuff, that you’ll want the next time you’re settling in for a make-out session. Ray Mang returns on the end of Side B for a re-edit of his own remix to make it more robotic and quirky.
It’s fun stuff. Throw it into your next house party mix.
Keep your mind open.
[If you keep coming back here, why not subscribe?]
JAWNY (aka Jacob Sullenger) returns with the new single “Control,” from a forthcoming release out later this year. “Control” follows JAWNY’s debut album, It’s Never Fair, Always True, on which he “showcased his sonic experimentation, hopeless romantic-tinged songwriting and indie pop ethos” (Alternative Press), and a series of singles across 2023-2024 including “Boy Scout,” “Running” and “MAGIC.”
Each release has added new wrinkles to his already ornate sound—which helped him grow from a maker of pristine pop songs to a thoughtful songwriter with his eyes on intricate stories and life’s big questions. All the while, he’s never lost touch with the technicolor melodies that fans fell in love with in the first place. He’s learned to write with real empathy and depth—the mark of a songwriter who remains more wise and gifted than his years suggest.
Born out of a period in which Sullenger spent time exploring interests beyond music (i.e. writing screenplays, painting, traveling), “Control” reflects his return to music with, as he puts it, “a renewed sense of purpose.” He elaborates: “After spending six years immersed in a world I created—both visually and sonically—it felt like time to move forward. Over the last year and a half, I stepped away from the stage, the public eye, and releasing music to explore what’s next for me. I needed that space to rediscover my creative direction, and I realized that meant stepping away from music for a while to gain a fresh perspective on where JAWNY should go.
‘Control’ is the perfect representation of this new chapter. The song embodies the idea that you can’t keep doing the same thing forever. I hope people connect with it as much as I do.”
Stream “Control” With over two billion streams globally, JAWNY has built his career by intuition, allowing his music to evolve naturally as he grows personally. Instead of chasing the high of past successes, he’s following his gut and tapping into a childlike wonder that’s wide-eyed and widescreen. Born in the Bay Area, and raised in Philadelphia, JAWNY first picked up a guitar at age 6 after watching his dad jam to the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. At 13, he began making beats with his brother, eventually landing placements with rappers on SoundCloud.
In his early 20s, he began writing his own songs, and started to gain buzz with his 2018 debut EP under the name Johnny Utah, landing placements on critically acclaimed shows like the HBO series, High Maintenance. JAWNY followed that up with a handful of buzzworthy singles, including “Honeypie,” garnering millions of streams. In 2020, JAWNY signed to Interscope Records and soon released a pair of vibrant, critically acclaimed projects,For Abby and The Story of Hugo, which further showcased his sharp storytelling and sonic experimentation. Upon releasing The Story of Hugo, JAWNY headlined a U.S. tour, selling out shows across the country. With career highs under his belt, JAWNY remained steadfastly in the moment, reaching a wider audience with the release of It’s Never Fair, Always True.
JAWNY’s songs continue to grow in scope and scale—elevating him from songwriter to indie-pop auteur with a kaleidoscopic vision and rich sense of narrative that informs everything he does.
Roi Turbo — the project of South African-born, London-based electronic duo of brothers Benjamin & Conor McCarthy — announce their new EP, Bazooka, out April 25th via Maison Arts, and present the new single “Bobo Spirit.” Additionally, the band announces they will be supporting Empire of the Sun on tour throughout North America in April and May.
On their second EP, Bazooka, Roi Turbo roar down many creative roads at once, celebrating the permanence of rhythmic pasts, the contrasts of analog and digital futures, and a familial bond which marries their shared idea of sonic ecstasy to a populist streak of giving listeners what they want.
In some ways, Conor and Benjamin have been moving toward this moment their whole lives. Growing up in Cape Town with music-loving parents, they abandoned drum lessons for self-taught strategies (Conor played along to Bloc Party records, Ben learned via YouTube). The brothers debated the pros and cons of band-driven sounds (Conor) versus electronic production (Ben), unknowingly laying the foundation for their future. Their musical curiosity led them to the psychedelic modulations of William Onyeabor, the ‘80s South African bubblegum and Nigerian disco scenes, and the danceable rock of Paul Epworth. By their early 20s, Conor and Ben began to understand how their separate skills mixed with shared values and perspectives, could blossom into a secret weapon.
In 2023, the brothers relocated to London. They recorded with only a fraction of their home gear in apartments whose neighbors reacted angrily to the loud sounds. This took the sound of Bazooka away from clamor and experimentation towards what could be done more quickly and inside machines. They found technical ways to recreate the big gated drums of ‘80s records they once laughed at, scaling back the cheesiness. They leaned into the vibe of pieces rather than getting stuck on perfecting mixes and takes, embracing a more streamlined process.
Today’s single “Bobo Spirit” brings acid house piano chords into a Balearic context of open air and sunsets— a world of heavyweight groove propulsion. Of the track, Roi Turbo say: “‘Bobo Spirit’ is a mid tempo groove that is driven by catchy guitar licks, bouncing piano chords, rolling digi bass, and sci-fi synth leads. We had the idea of making a song that infused psychedelic melodies with a spacey sci-fi like feel, in a way it’s a melting pot of all the sounds we were listening to at the time.”
At its core, Bazooka reflects the lifelong bond between Benjamin and Conor McCarthy—their shared influences, differing perspectives, and unified vision. Picking up where other great beat-driven siblings like Soulwax’s David and Stephen Dewaele left off, the McCarthys rock the block, and blend the distinctions. In the process, they create a classic disco-funk-house sound that skips between soundsystem eras of multiple continents, winding up with a contemporary edge all its own. With the tank full and the roads open, Roi Turbo is just getting started.
Roi Turbo Tour Dates Wed. April 23 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore % Thu. April 24 – Chicago, IL @ Radius % Sat. April 26 – St. Louis, MO @ Saint Louis Park % Mon. April 28 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre % Wed. April 30 – Seattle, WA @ WaMu Theater % Thu. May 1 – Eugene, OR @ Cuthbert Amphitheater % Sat. May 3 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre % Sun. May 4 -Sacramento, CA @ Channel 54 % Thu. May 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ Cercle Festival % Sat. May 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Just Like Heaven % Sun. May 11 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Pearl % Wed. May 14 – Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheatre % Thu. May 15 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom % Fri. May 16 – Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall % Sun. May 18 – Atlanta, GA @ Coca Cola Roxy % Tue. May 20 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore % Wed. May 21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Mirage % Fri. May 23 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem % Sat. May 24 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway % Thu. June 19 -Sun. June 22 – Rothbury, MI @ Electric Forest
Recently announcing new album Squeeze Me out 23rd May via City Slang, Sophia Kennedy shares new single ‘Hot Match’. Driven by a powerful motorik-beat, ‘Hot Match’ exudes an intimidating aura reminiscent of Kennedy’s “Orange Tic Tac” persona. In the current video, we get a glimpse through the keyhole of Kennedy’s workshop, where the smoke is already beginning to rise. A threatening scenario is not only in the offing, we are probably already in the middle of it.
Sophia says of new single, “Hot Match is my first rock’n’roll song. But instead of guitars, I used squealing car tyres, all carried by a stoic motorik beat. It shifts between an underlying sense of paranoia and absurd slapstick. You don’t have to understand it, you just have to feel it.“
More minimalist than her previous works, Squeeze Me brims with Kennedy’s gift for catchy melodies with a certain pop appeal and psychedelic hues: repetitive piano chords, shimmering synth bass lines, strangely flickering choirs, and even a scream set the sonic stage.
It’s a multilayered, confident statement, created in the midst of external and internal crises. Rather than ignoring the world outside, this record creates its own – a world that feels both familiar and like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Sophia embraces her talent for catchy melodies with pop appeal and psychedelic flourishes on Squeeze Me. Strength and vulnerability, humour and melancholy, fatalism and resilience, the album upends everything we thought we knew about Sophia Kennedy, but with a more focused and “pop-leaning” sound – it’s her most cohesive album yet.
Squeeze Me is out 23rd May via City Slang Records Pre-save / Pre-order
Tour Dates
May 30th DE – Neustrelitz – Immergut Festival October 8th DE- Cologne- Bumann & Sohn October 9th DE-Offenbach – Hafen 2 October 10th DE-Stuttgart – Merlin October 11th CH-St. Gallen – Palace October 13th DE-Munich – Kranhalle October 14th AT-Vienna – Flucc October 15th DE-Dresden – Tonne October 16th DE-Leipzig – Conne Island October 19th DE-Berlin – Lido October 25th DE-Hamburg – Knust
Los Angeles duo Sextile are celebrated for a stylish, albeit unflinching electronic punk sound. Today, the band shares the new single “S is For,” which arrives ahead of the album, yes, please., out May 2, 2025 on Sacred Bones. The track is a defiant clap back at feminist connotations, with singer Melissa Scaduto leaning into lyrical repetition “Sex / S*** / Swell / Stiff / Slag / Snap / Shut,” she repeats, her talk-singing outlined by bloopy synthesizers and techno drums. Like the best Sextile songs, “S is For” marries danceability and heartfelt spunk. The video accompanying the track follows Sextile on their exhilarating recent tour with Molchat Doma.
On the track, Mel Scaduto of Sextile shares:“It’s not super relevant to Sextile but with my other project ‘S. Product’ I was always asked what the S is for – it’s always really been a Scaduto product to me. But this song is sassy way to explain how many things the S could be.”
“The video originally had a completely different concept and was scheduled to be shot a week before leaving on a 7 week tour. However due to the heartbreaking and tragic LA fires the video shoot was cancelled of course and we had no other choice but to shoot the video while on the road. The video is a collage of performances, audiences and backstage moments across several different shows during our US tour with Molchat Doma.”
LIVE DATES
May 23 – London, UK @ Wide Awake Festival
May 24 – Bristol, UK @ Dot to Dot Festival
May 25 – Nottingham, UK @ Dot to Dot Festival
May 27 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
May 28 – Manchester, UK @ White Hotel
May 29 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East Instore
May 20 – Brighton, UK @ Dust
May 31 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
June 01 – Margate, UK @ Where Else?
June 03 – Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix
June 04 – Paris, FR @ Trabendo
June 05 – Le Havre, FR @ Le Tetris
June 06 – Saint Point, FR @ Les Mouillotins Festival
Cie‘s newest EP, Adventures II, contains four rock solid tracks of booming, bumping deep house that you’ll want to throw on at your next party or anytime you need to feel like a bad-azz mofo.
The opening, swirling, pulsing, grooving bass of “Reichenstein” grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go for the next six minutes and fifteen seconds. “Der Turm” (“The Tower”) has cool tribal beats that put a neat spin on this house track. It’s a well-crafted blend of house, jungle, and a bit of synthwave. Nicely done, Mr. Cie.
Side B of the album contains two versions of “Stenzelberg” — the original and a remix by Mar io. The original’s funky bass groove is enough to sell you on the entire EP, and the rest of it is a flat-out house banger (Do I sound ancient using that term?). The remix is almost a minute longer and swaps out the house funk for more jungle flavor and darkness along the edges.
This is one of the best house music EPs I’ve heard so far this year. Go snag it.
Pascal Hetzel‘s 2022 album, ASLM, gets an update three years down the road and becomes ASLM Remixes – featuring a lot of sharp talent and enough beats to power your next workout or dark afterparty.
Starting with JakoJako‘s remix of “RBBRMN” (“Rubberman?”), the album drops snappy electric percussion and throbbing sub-bass that gets into the back of your brain. GAEL‘s remix of “TWST” (“Twist?”) pulses like the heart of a final girl in a slasher film.
Up next is Kaiser‘s remix of “SLT” (“Salt?” “Slit?”), which you’ll want for your next HIIT workout because the bass on this makes you feel like you could either dance all night long or kickbox a dozen opponents. It’s followed by another remix of the same track, but this one by Projekt Gestalten. Their version adds an underlying sense of menace, almost like you’re dancing in a club with hornet nests hanging from the ceiling that might drop at any moment if the beats get too heavy.
The record ends with Luis Flores‘ remix of “PPPR” (“Pepper,” right?) throws you into some sort of futuristic, slightly dystopian sci-fi movie battle sequence with its buzzsaw synths, mechanical beats, and orbiting war machine bass. Good stuff, really.
