Friday catch up!

Things have been rather busy of late and it's caused us to miss a couple of things.

Firstly, Theophilus London's new mixtape, I Want You, has finally been released and that's the artwork below. You can download it for free from here, and a very good listen it is too.

FACT: The cat in the picture belongs to TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek.

Interestingly, we're kind of linked to a minor beef that is taking place between Theophilus and The Guardian's Paul Lester. We won't explain it, best just to pop over and give it a read. WARNING: It's like Biggie vs. Tupac all over again.

Also, Kele from Bloc Party is on a bit of a break from the band and has decided to launch a solo career (as has Brandon Flowers from The Killers, in what must be one of the most expected moves in music history). This is Kele's first single, taken from the album The Boxer, and it's a beat-heavy, 'Wearing My Rolex'-cribbing dance behemoth:



Finally, Hurts are back with their first single proper, 'Better Than Love'. It also has a video, which resembles some kind of sequel to Tipping The Velvet, but a little more lesbian.

Baby horses

A few weeks ago a new track by Foals materialised and very lovely it was too. Now they've made a video for the first single from their second album, Total Life Forever, and it finds the Oxford quintet in Bloc Party territory. Luckily, it's Bloc Party circa Silent Alarm so it's melodic and shimmering, which is good because if they'd sought inspiration from them any later we'd have a single called 'I've Read Some Books About Things And Now I'm Seriously Angry And Confused'. Instead, it's called 'This Orient' and can be heard and viewed below:



They're still mildly insufferable aren't they? But it's better to be pretentious than boring, right? RIGHT.

Bloc rockin' beats

Having watched most of Glastonbury and T In The Park from the relative comfort of a dusty flat in West London, we decided two things; 1). Flags are fucking annoying and 2). Bloc Party are much better live then they are on record. We mentioned new single 'One More Chance' a few weeks ago. Amazingly, the band have decided to film and release a short montage of images to accompany the song, we think in order to raise awareness of the single in the hope of it selling a few more copies. Pretty radical all told:



We read elsewhere that this video in some way reflected the band's new-found humour. To be honest, it's no Horne & Cordon. There's a fairly obvious David Lynch quality to it all and the guy at the beginning has some brilliant facial hair, but other then that we found very little to laugh about. Great song though. Look what can be achieved when you write a song with a chorus, a hook and a melody.

The Inbetweeners

Bloc Party are getting pretty good at these in-between album singles, what with previous efforts 'Two More Years' and 'Flux' being amongst the best stuff they've done. Following the muddled Intimacy album that tried to please everyone all at once - the Hail To The Thief of their oeuvre as no-one calls it - comes this new single entitled 'One More Chance'.



Produced by regular cohort Jackknife Lee and mixed by one of the blokes out of Cassius, 'One More Chance' ditches the beats in favour of some early '90s rave pianos and a more relaxed approach. It's all rather uplifting, a genuine toe-tapper if you will.



Well done Kele & co.