The Playlist: Lushlife / Foals / Haim / Earl Sweatshirt / Rudimental (ft Angel Haze) / Soley

Lushlife - Magnolia

LUSHLIFE "MAGNOLIA" [DIR. LAMAR+NIK] from LAMAR+NIK on Vimeo.

Foals - My Number



Haim - Don't Save Me



Earl Sweatshirt - Chum



Rudimental - Hell Could Freeze Feat. Angel Haze



Sóley - I'll Drown Moritz Guhling's Tränen Remix

Los Angeles By R.E.M & James Franco

The world's greatest multi-tasker James Franco has recently popped up directing R.E.M's latest music video for their song Blue. Full of LA and Hollywood's glam trash, the inclusion of Terry Richardson's photoshoot of Linsay Lohan feels perfect. Vintage shots of neon lights, nighttime streets and photoshoots feel as if they mirror everything LA is about, or at least to be perceived to be about. Even if it is not the most flattering, it's a great tribute to the city.

Solange Knowles: Losing You.

This past week I've become a bit obsessed with Solange Knowles. Yeah, Knowles is in Beyonce, Queen of everything Knowles. Solange is her slightly quirkier, just as beautiful, just as talented, younger sister. With some bizarre moves and a completely different sound, Solange looks like she might one day creep on the throne. Love the video too:

All Frank Ocean Everything.

Frank Ocean - Pyramids - SNL 9-15-12 by IdolxMuzic

There has been no one faster rising in the past year or so than Frank Ocean. From the most hyped hip-hop group of recent years, Odd Future, Frank Ocean has created his own and deserved presence. This presence has seen a critically acclaimed mixtape, followed by an equally acclaimed debut album and collaborations with Jay Z and Kanye West. He notably also was perhaps the first R&B/hip-hop to come out as bi-sexual, a massive step for the industry. His rise seems to have hit new heights the past 24 hours as he was given the honor of the opening show of Saturday Night Live's latest season, performing with John Mayer, smashing it. And then releasing his latest, in a string of amazing videos, for Pyramids.


Frank Ocean - Thinkin Bout You - SNL 9-15-12 by IdolxMuzic

See his performance on SNL of Pyramids (top) and Thinkin' About You (above). And then below is the video for Pyramids, which see a rather trippy Frank ride across the desert and into a strip club, full of some very bootilicious, yet slightly creepy girls.

frank ocean [pyramids] from christopher francis ocean on Vimeo.

Alt-J: Fitzpleasure.

ALT-J "Fitzpleasure" from COSA on Vimeo.

Scenes of gothic and relgiious undertones that wouldn't look out of place in a Kanye (or some other supposed Illumanti-related) video, form much of Alt-J's Fitzpleasure. It's create to see that the band's artistic visual spreads from their songs - forming one of my favourite bands of the year - to their videos. (Directed by Guillaume Caignard)

Azealia Banks: 1991

Azealia Banks continues to tread the ever so thin line between confidence and douchbaggery. But while she tip toes the tightrope, she has managed to create an brilliant new videos. As she fully channels 90s pop videos, plays around with magnifying glasses and weird chairs, there's no doubt that Azealia does what she does best, struts, pouts and spits.

Grimes: Genesis.

I don't think there's really anything you can say about this. Other than, strangely, it's just what I expected.

Talib Kweli, Curren$y and Kendrick Lamar: Push Thru

With a lot of hip-hop getting dark and dirty these days (see A$AP Rocky, OF, Kanye) it's real nice to get a breath of fresh air. This track feels really nice and airy, despite some pretty mean vocals from the master Talib Kweli, Curren$y and the up and coming master Kendrick Lamar.



The track is matched by some really clean and crisp visuals as each rapper takes you around their hometown New York, Louisiana and LA respectively.

Sigur Rós: Varúd.

For those that have been following the Sigur Ros Valtari Mystery Film Experiment, it's been varied and bizarre to say the least. From seeing Shia LaBeouf naked whilst playing with butterflies in an underwater world to an educational video on how to perform the heimlich manoeuvre, it's an odd collection. But I imagine this is exactly what Sigur Ros wanted when they decided to allocate small budgets to various film directors to interpret their album Valtari.

Sigur Rós: Varúð from Sigur Rós Valtari Mystery Films on Vimeo.

The latest video, for my favourite song off the album Varúd, is perhaps my favourite video so far too. It's far more straight forward and less surreal than the others, as you follow a girl with gold hair casually skipping through the streets of New York. It has a mixture of normality, oddness and magic that I think director Ryan McGinley pulls off so well.

Dan Harris - A Dedication.

Having received some bad news today, it really felt right to me that Washed Out brought out a video to A Dedication.



A beautiful video for a beautiful song. Make sure you appreciated what you've got.

RIP Dan.

Danny Brown: Grown Up.

I can't quite work out if I like Danny Brown yet, I've got a feeling he's a grower. But what I know I do like is his new song and video Grown Up. Despite not having especially unqiue lyrics, it's got a lovely beat and a great video to go with it. Mini-DB is incredible. He nails pretty much every line and manages to pull off being cute and badass all at the same time.

Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros: Man On Fire

Really enjoyed the simple and warm nature of this video for Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros. The visuals were directed by actor and filmmaker Brady Corbet, who recently starred in Lars von Trier's film Melancholia. In an almost documentary, observational style, Corbet captures different types of dancers from all across New York simply doing what they love.

Kanye West & Jay-Z: No Church In The Wild.

Almost anything that comes from the hands, mouths and minds of Kanye and Jay-Z needs to be recognised and I was lucky enough to experience this first hand last week. I finally got to see the two of them live at London's O2, and wow. Just WOW. It was an incredible night, such energy, such experience, such skill. It was truly one of the best gigs I've ever been too, and my respect for the two grew even higher.



A few of the images from their latest video, No Church In The Wild (featuring Frank Ocean) were displayed on huge screens as Ye and Hov stood and stared accompanied by "What a wonderful world" in the background. Epic stuff. However saying that, I feel that this is the weakest from WTT yet. That's not to say it's bad, these boys set the bar high - it doesn't get much higher - it just doesn't quite work with the song or as a video for me, and that's a shame. Nevertheless it is still a good video and director Romain Gavras did a good job. But that's just it, it's good, when we all expect greatness.

The Maccabees: Went Away.

Another music video, and another stunner from The Maccabees.

Swiss Lips: Danz.

Another talented friend of mine. But that is by no means an excuse to put Swiss Lips' latest video on the blog. The indie-pop band from Manchester are really gaining some momentum, starting to feature everywhere from The Guardian to NME, and rightly so. They've got an infectious sound, and my infectious I'm thinking more along the lines of a child's smile, than an STD.



It's also definitely worth checking out their U Got The Power video, it's brill.

Grimes: Nightmusic

Yep, more Grimes, but in no way is it undeserving.



A huge contrast from the homemade, carefree Oblivion video, Nightmusic gives us a deeper view into what goes on inside Grimes' head. And unsurprisingly, it's a bit weird. Set in a forest that looks very much the one I grew up next to (I very much doubt it is), it's full of ghost-like naked folk, strange happenings and fits the track perfectly.

Plan B: Ill Manors.

Intelligent. Talents. Influential. Relevant. Driven. Aware. There are few people that manage to have all of these virtues in their weaponary, but one man that really epitomises all of these is Ben Drew, aka Plan B. I've written before about Plan B when he did a TED talk. Yes, a rapper from East London, with a number one album and Ivor Novello awards to boot, doing a TED talk, and a very good one at that. From all of the words I threw up at the beginning, the most important one is relevant. Genuinely relevant to the youth of today, that can't be bought and that can't be under-estimated.



There is a reason to all this Plan-B adoration, he has just made a film to coincide with his latest album, Ill Manors. The rapper has described the film as "the hip-hop musical version of Crash", adding: "But I don't want to call it a musical, because none of the actors start singing or dancing or anything. It's quite serious. It's just part of the films are narrated by music. If you can imagine my first record but with visuals… parts are just like a normal film, others are told by kind of music video storytelling." (NME)



The film like brutal and heavy-going, but you can see that there is a reason behind the violence, sex and drugs. Plan B endeavours to look at the motivations and reasons behing the actions, every action has a reaction. And that was very much the topic of his TED talk, not to condemn the youth for their actions, but to understand what led to them and how we can prevent that. I've got a feeling that this film and album could be a really important for Plan B and British youth culture. It's a protest, it's a experiment, it's a explanation and just as importantly, it looks like it's genuinely good. But most of all, it's relevant.

Kanye West: Lost In The World.

Remember when Kanye West released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Yeah, long time ago. For me, it was without doubt one of the best albums I've ever heard. Big words. Well, he has finally got around to releasing some visuals for one of the more surprising tracks on the album, Lost In The World, in which he teams up with Bon Iver.



Kanye got Ruth Hogban in to direct the video, which as most Kanye West videos now do, make very little sense but instead are to be interrupted as an art form. As in a few other videos, Kanye doesn't make eye contact with the camera as he is seen strutting his stuff from a birds-eye view. Together with some girl dancing very aggressively in over-sized t-shirts, it makes quite a video.

Jessie Ware: 110%

A lot of talk about Jessie Ware, especially around her new single 110%. It's a beautiful piece of music, shifting around whilst refusing to sit in one genre. It's got a really fresh and crisp sound to it, just a shame the weather doesn't match it right now. Oh, and there's a lovely video to go along with it too:

Nas: The Don.

Nas. The Don. Nuff said.