Forget ice baths, this week's track of the week is goosebump inducing goth-club floor-filler that will have you in a cold sweat, distracted from the heatwaves made worse by generative-AI-slop and too busy dancing to scroll endless clips of billionaire Taylor Swift doing a QVC presentation for her new album.
TRACK OF THE WEEK
Surrender by Claudia Kane
After last week's musings on music discovery in this newsletter and also some new music mutterings on LinkedIn (yeah, I am cool!), I set myself a challenge to dedicate a few hours browsing around the internet in search of something new.
After about 6 hours, what I eventually discovered was well worth the wait.
I set myself a few rules:
- It shouldn't be something on a label I already trust.
- Nor something fresh from an artist I already love.
- It should be new to me
- Ideally have been released in the last 48 hours
- Crucially, it must be something I feel is worth recommending to all of you (even if I don't truly know what all your tastes are, obvs)
Hours 1-2: I realised how hard it is to browse YouTube or to get YouTube Music to recommend stuff that isn't by acts I already listen to. Or artists who sound like major label photocopies of things I like. You have to wade through a lot of tracks by artists you've listened to a lot lately that are less than 6-10 years old.
Clearly, I was doing it wrong.
Hours 3-5: After two hours, I decided that the machines with all their planet-pummelling power had failed me, so I tried some recommended radio shows some of the DiS community suggested. These human made shows were good but could be incredibly niche (didn't make it through a lot of 12 minute trance tracks...) and I struggled to find any shows that matched my taste or mood. I was hearing lots of good but not truly extraordinary things on various stations.
Hour 6: Back to the internet I went... I had a disappointing hour browsing some unfamiliar names on festival line ups, and then I decided to go back to my old faithful from 10-15 years ago... The Hype Machine, which aggregates recommendations from music blogs.
Most of what was on the hypem homepage was fine and then, just as I was about to give up, a menacing sound started thrummmming from my speakers. A pulsating synth, a banging drum machine, and a whispery vocal.
Clicking through to post-punk.com I was met with some fantastic writing that left me feeling even more excited.
Here's a bit of what they said:
Kane’s multidisciplinary world-building threads her music directly into the pulse of London’s underground queer nightlife. Her voice can shrink to a breath or expand into a command, shifting effortlessly between close-quarters confession and something near ritual invocation. Surrender feels like a still from an unmade film; a secret lit from within. The club becomes a confessional booth; the lens, a mirror. And the song becomes that rare thing: the truth you didn’t know you were ready to tell.
Then there was the incredible music video that has a cinematic intensity - as if Fight Club's Marla Singer was cast as the new Luther - perfectly befitting of this tune that has 'I Feel Love' and 'Blue Monday' cruising through its purple tubes.
This goth-club banger, with an ominous energy, written and produced by Claudia Kane, is out now on Villainess Records. It's available on Bandcamp and suitable for your playlists featuring darkwave faves: Austra, Cold Cave, TR/ST and songs from The Matrix OST.
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