New Music Friday is intense. Hundreds of songs drop from artists around the world, and you're supposed to somehow find the best ones. It's fun work, but it's time-consuming -- so we at Billboard Dance want to give you a hand. Each week, we sift through the streams and dig in the digital crates to present the absolute must-hears from the wide breadth of jams.
Friday! Again! As we ease into the weekend we have a fresh batch of clubs tracks to soundtrack our commute home, or maybe just our commute from the desk to the couch.
In any case, there's a lot of great new music out this week, with the first release from LA party crew Space Yacht's new label, a Galcher Lustwerk edit of Park Hye Jin "Can You," Desert Dwellers' tribal house-heavy collection Breath Re-Imagined Vol. 3, a collab from Patrick Topping and his wife Hayley, a shimmery Treasure Fingers remix of Pat Lok's "Salvation," a new album from the legends Autechre and all of the hot trax below. Let's dig in.
Django Django, "Spirals" (MGMT Remix)
Django Django's "Spirals" gets a heady edit from the guys of MGMT, who add layers of spatial synth and galloping drums, turning the already excellent original into an eight-minute electronic prog rock opus that sounds like like Depeche Mode on mushrooms. (Make sure to listen all the way through to catch the song's second -- and third -- movements.) Made with six handmade spinning fantascopes rotating on moving turntables, the song's equally psychedelic video is meant to symbolize how the bonds we share as humans are stronger than the divisions. Amen.
GRiZ + Jauz, "No Doubt"
The test of a truly dank bass track is if it causes you to instinctively make your stankiest stank face upon listening, and by that standard this new bomb from Griz and Jauz passes the test with flying stankiness. Coming from Griz's Bangers[6] EP, the producer got to work on the track after he saw Jauz tweeting about the Jakes and Joker’s track ominously hyphy “3K Lane.”
Within a few hours, Griz had passed the start of a similarly heavy track to Jauz, and the guys finished the G-funk-dripping banger over the next few weeks. It "was really fun to go back to that initial inspiration for making bass music," Griz says in a statement. "Something grimy, swaggy, gutter." Bangers[6] is out now via Deadbeats.
Duck Sauce, "Mesmerize"
There is legitimately nothing we can think of about Duck Sauce that isn't entirely delightful. And so it goes with their new single "Hypnotize," a slick and straight '80s high-NRG body mover that we can imagine singing to with our eyes closed in a dark club or in our shower. Possibly even more excellent is the corresponding video, an absurdist web 1.0 simulation featuring the duo's A-Trak and Armand van Helden, along with Bruce Willis, Daniel Craig, Angelina Jolie and other stars. It makes sense when you watch it. (Seriously, just watch it.)
Whethan Feat. RL Grimes, "Outta Here"
By the age of 21 we had accomplished a few things. We had gotten into college for example, and had also graduated high school and earned a driver's license. We had not, however, released our highly anticipated debut album, as 21-year-old producer Whethan is doing today. The Australian artist broke out on Future Classic when he was just 16, and five years later has dropped an LP reflecting his maturing skills, his eclectic taste and his influences -- many of whom make appearances on Fantasy.
Amidst cameos from STRFKR, Grouplove, The Knocks and Oliver Tree comes the finale track "Outta Here" with RL Grime. Together the duo launch into deep space on walls of synth and airy trap beats that lift you up rather than hitting you over the head. (The track also evokes a little bit of Grime's 2014 all-time jam "Core.") "There was an underlying theme of alternative meets psychedelic dance music," Whethan says of Fantasy in a statement, "and I wanted to be able to blast every song at my shows or have it feel like you’re at a show when listening at home or in the car." In a moment when none of us can go to musical events that aren't actually happening at home or in the car, his mission is effectively accomplished.
Major Lazer & Paloma Mami, "QueLoQue"
With just seven days before the release of the mew Major Lazer album, Music Is the Weapon, anticipation has reached a new peak with the release of the album's fourth and final single, "QueLoQue." A steamy collab with Chilean-American singer Paloma Mami, the song is an urbano track with inflections of merengue, and you can hear it live when Diplo, Ape Drums, Walshy Fire and Mami perform it as part of the band’s set at this Saturday's virtual Save Our Stages Festival to benefit the National Independent Venue Association.
Arty, "Say My Name"
Remember hanging out in groups? Like, really big groups? And the thrill of pushing through a packed crowd, exchanging smiles with strangers and that sort of warm and delicious stench of dancing amongst 10,000 fellow music loving humans? That was all pretty great stuff.
While currently unavailable due to COVID, that mass dance party feeling is heavily evoked via the final track on Arty's From Russia With Love 3 EP, the third and final installment of the series out today via Armada Music. The Russian producer born Artem Stolyarov says that for him and his collaborators, making the EP was an exercise in "reminiscing about the music that took the dance music scene by force between 2010 and 2012" and that wide-eyed 'n' gobsmacked mainstage EDM feeling of awe this era is certainly present on the soaring and trance-inspired anthem "Say My Name."
