What I've Been Listening To This Week: 21/07/13

Arriving slightly later this week, in part due to my reason for choosing a lot of this music, what I've been listening to this week has been heavily hinged around the Electric Daisy Carnival extravaganza last weekend. Filling the Olympic Park with a vast array of speakers, floating inflatable faces and of course some massive luminous daisys, the gig saw the cream of the world's best DJ's descend on the east end for a fantastic event. While my review is coming soon, this list is a few of the best tracks I heard there and during my our build up!

Avicii - Wake Me Up
When I first heard this song, it both amused and surprised me in equal measure with it's 'Woody's round up meets electro' theme, dismissing it as a quirky experiment by the young Swede. It wasn't criticism in so much as I couldn't pinpoint a purpose for the song but following EDC and watching Avicii close his mainstage set it finally made sense. The deep, chocolatey vocals from Aloe Blacc and trancy riffs made for the perfect festival track, with the chilled segments emphasising just how danceable the song could be when it all kicks off. Amidst the flashing strobes and singing crowd, it just fits better than it ever can on a set of headphones.

Must Die! - Fever Dream
Free music is always a great prospect, especially when promoting a new EP and this little piece of dubstep from Never Say Die signed Must Die! is one of the best things I've got free recently. Building off a gentle piano and storming through a batch of wailing guitars straight out a montage of heroic charges, the song escalates into a neck snapping drop, twisting your expectations at every turn. So good it inspired me to get the whole EP (of which his macabre collaboration with Mantis is a particular highlight), the tune is a promising effort from a producer with great things to come.

Feed Me & Crystal Fighters - Love Is All I Got (Feed Me VIP)
Feed Me crops up again this week, but as explained in a previous post, VIP mixes are something of a favourite of mine, reimagining a song without the commercial trappings of the original. Dropped during his EDC set, Feed Me's Matilda remix of Love Is All I Got is a perfect example, taking the same vocals and chords and turning the piece from serene electropop into a snarling monster, spitting grimy synth lines and becoming a much more progressive beastie. A surprise for the crowd, and a very pleasant one at that.

Shy FX & T-Power - Shake Ur Body
Sometimes the best way to grab a listeners attention isn't the slowly, clever progressions though but to startle them with a peculiar experience, a phrase that should belong in a psychology manual but applies equally as well to this Shy FX tune. It's still a great Drum & Bass track, yet its framed not in bleeping synths but a jazzy piano riff and soulful vocals that draw on a certain nostalgia to keep you hooked. The bass lines are still fat and juicy but it's not hard to translate the track back to the heydays of swing music, albeit when sweating away in a tent full of people in brightly coloured trainers.

Daft Punk - Get Lucky (TC Bootleg)
Since being released, thanks to not just the inane catchiness of Daft Punk's homage to the glory days of funk and the begins of electronic music but a brilliant marketing campaign and huge hyping, Get Lucky is never too far from your ears. Luckily, innovative producer TC has been listening and using a host of production magic and some new parts, reworked the song into a ravey little number, sparkling with it's fresh new beats and melodies. Paying homage to the original without being a carbon copy, it makes you wonder what the whole of Random Access Memories would sound remixed in Drum & Bass. Pretty darn special is my bet!