Oh, Honey! Didn’t you hear? The title track of Robyn’s new album, due 26 October on her own Konichiwa Records, has arrived. The club-leaning pop bop is sweet and sticky as hell, guaranteed to lodge itself happily in your brain until the rest of the record drops. “Club music taught me so much about myself,” Robyn told the New York Times this week, “about having patience or appreciating a different type of way of taking in life.” Take in life with Honey in your ears now, as it opens this week’s playlist.
Yaeji’s One More takes the baton and runs in slow motion from Robyn’s club and into a gloriously sunny videogame world. Lost in the sudden change of pace in her life and feeling betrayed by somebody she trusted, Yaeji wrote this song about “enduring and coming to terms with pain until you have the strength to forgive and move on”. As she transforms through her experiences, so does the music. Keep up too and you’ll be rewarded.
Onwards and upwards with the news that Norwegian elf princess Aurora blessed her queendom with a surprise album release today. The first instalment of an apparently two-part record, Infections Of A Different Kind — Step I, is full of magic and fronted by this stunning artwork. “It’s about the many, many different aspects of what it is to be human,” Aurora says of the album. “It covers the way we hurt and we love and the way we are so beautiful but also so awful.” Soft Universe is our highlight, and thus the one we’re giving you today.
Next in what is becoming a playlist of powerful women is St. Vincent, who has gifted us with Slow Slow Disco — an evolution of Fast Slow Disco, which, in turn, is the spawn of the slightly faster, string-laden Slow Disco. This particular incarnation is a beautiful piano ballad and probably the version most likely to make you cry, if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing. Phew.
There’s more, of course. Japanese band Tempalay have released an album, as has lovely relatable Lala Lala, and Russian angels Ic3peak too. Plus, new stuff from UMO, Tommy Genesis, The Chemical Brothers, Miss Kittin, Empress Of, The Prodigy and more. You’re bloody welcome.