You'll find a cornucopia of tasty tunes to bounce off your eardrums. I update with new tunes, art and photography every week, depending on what I'm doing and listening to at the time, old and new. I'm based in London UK but I love to travel and discover new music along the way and share my musical journey on neoloop.
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Happy listening!
Neo
Email: neo@neoloop.comThe musicianship in this track is amazing, taken from Da Lata's recent LP Refab, which is a remix version of last years Fabiola album plus extra tracks. Da Lata create this house version of N.Y.J themselves, an upgrade on the original, and that is a killer tune anyway.
Refab special guests, musicians and remixers invited to partake include South London rapper Knytro, Indian Bollywood flautist Naveen Kumar, Croatian production duo Eddy & Dus, Brazil D & B producers Drumagick & Tranquilo Soundz, South African/Scottish house unit Prophets of the South and German beatmeister Pushin Wood.
Many of the original Da Lata family feature including vocalists Jandira Silva & Vanessa Freeman, Senegalese kora player Diabel Cissokho, former Smoke City co-collaborator Marc Brown, engineer and house music supremo Toni Economides and of course the Da Lata house band featuring Mike Patto, Ernie McKone, Finn Peters, Jason Yarde, Tristan Banks, Davide Giovannini and Carl Smith.
Fresh off Mark Ronson’s New York hip-hop scene of the '90s inspired album Uptown Special, this latest track Daffodils features Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. Adding to the forthcoming album's' first single, Uptown Funk, which topped the UK charts earlier this year, becoming Mark Ronson's first ever UK Number One.
This track has grittier funky guitar sound, a psychedelic buzzsaw riff ripping through the middle while Parkers vocal sticks calmly to the beat.
Uptown Special is due for release January 19 via Columbia Records. Written and produced with Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Drake, Alicia Keys)
In advance of their ninth studio album album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance—out January 2015. Scottish indie-popsters Belle and Sebastian have exploded back with the new single The Party Line.
An 80s dance-pop infused number with a funky disco groove that sure to keep you toeing the Party Line into the new year.
Montreal's Mac Demarco’s sun-soaked tropical guitar flourishes create short ditties that burst with colour and a lazy hazy feeling. My mate Jack raves about Mac’s music and I’ve been listening to Salad Days, Demarco’s sophomore LP, on and off since April. The perfect soundtrack to hot and sunny, chilled-out days laying in a hammock with a cold drink of choice. I’ve succumbed to it’s jangle-pop charm, with an illustrious psychedelic edge that comprises perfect easy listening.
Building-up a big following this year, Mac DeMarco isn’t even his real name he was born Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV. He started out with fuzz-pop band Makeout Videotape before releasing debut EP Rock and Roll Night Club back in 2012. The LP 2 then followed the same year. DeMarco recorded Salad Days in his apartment, in the Bedford–Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York, following an extensive tour in support of his debut releases.
This tune, Let Her Go, was apparently label Captured Tracks’ demands for an upbeat single that DeMarco was quite upset about. But it’s proved to be worthy inclusion however it came about and it's a definite highlight on the accomplished album. Salad days is an enjoyable record that’s well worth investigating and one we’ll come back to when the sun comes out.
HIGHLY RECOMMED
Like this try: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Real Estate, Alex Calder
The War On Drugs third LP Lost in a Dream was released to widespread critical acclaim back in March. Since then the album has featured in practically every top ten albums of the year lists, if not topping them.
The LP has been a slow burner for me since it’s release and like all great LPs it’s opened up and blossomed with new discoveries and a record that I keep coming back to. Red Eyes, the first single released at the end of last year, a driving beat that brings with it a heavy influence of 1980s rock was an instant hit and a quality stamp that ushered in the album that followed. Lost in a Dream flourushes with many reference points from classic rock, but this record has a contemporary edge that demands attention and repeated listening. The long tracks serve as epic journeys that create a monumental and memorable LP that will stand the test of time.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Like this try: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten
A Christmas Eve post has to include this, one my of my favourite Christmas songs.
Mele Kalikimaka is a Hawaiian-themed Christmas song written in 1949 by Robert Alex Anderson. The song takes its title from the Hawaiian phrase, "Mele Kalikimaka," meaning "Merry Christmas".
This is one of the earliest recordings of this song was by Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters in 1950 on Decca. There are loads of other versions but this one has a classic charm.
Out of the blue comes Black Messiah, D’Angelo’s much-anticipated third full length LP (co-credited to his backing group, The Vanguard) and it’s quite astonishing. As with Brown Sugar and Voodoo, Black Messiah is best heard in its entirety. Saying that, all these songs could stand alone. Ain’t That Easy, Sugar Daddy (both co-writen with Q-Tip and Kendra Foster), Really Love, Back To the Future (Part I), The Door would all make great singles.
After a good few listens the quality of Black Messiah just opens up and D’Angelo’s layered vocals together with organic beats and killa grooves creates a captivating and atmospheric soundscape. What’s most astonishing is how fresh and modern it sounds even when channeling obvious influences, Marvin Gaye, Sly And The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Funkadelic, Prince, The Crusaders it’s all in there.
A highly charged political message, "All we wanted was a chance to talk 'stead we only got outlined in chalk" - a lyric from the song "The Charade." co-writen with Questlove and Kendra Foster.
At the LP’s launch D’Angelo explains the title - ”For me, the title is about all of us. It's about the world. It's about an idea we can all aspire to. We Should all aspire to be a Black Messiah.... Its about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them."
All year we’ve been waiting for an album with an otherworldly experience like this, with no-shows from Kanye and Frank Ocean; D’Angelo fills the void with ease.
I pity all the people that have already compiled and published their albums of the year charts as this LP would surely feature in most top tens if not top of the whole list! It’s a landmark LP that will sit along side classic albums like Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On, Sly And The Family Stone: There’s A Riot Goin’ On, Bob Dylan: The Times They Are A-Changin’, Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, you get the picture.
Dripping with infectious funk throughout it’s really hard to single out any one track, the quality maintains an optimum setting from start to finish at just under an hour it’ a magnum opus!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
French legend Étienne Daho team’s up with Chic legend Nile Rodgers for some sultry french discotheque, the perfect combination that creates a stellar disco track.
L'étrangère appears on Étienne’s new album Les chansons de l'innocence retrouvée.