Owen Myers shares this week's music highlights from Cassie remixes and The Knife's new video
SONG OF THE WEEK: The Knife - 'Full Of Fire'
"When you're full of fire, what's the object of your desire?" roars Karin Dreijer Andersson in 'Full of Fire', the searing new 9-minute new single from The Knife. A constantly-mutating dance odyssey that draws you in with its churning industrial clatter, it's a bracing and brilliant return from the Swedish duo ahead of the April 8 release of Shaking The Habitual. Today, the duo premiered the brilliant video directed feminist filmmaker Marit Östberg. In a statement on The Knife's website, Östberg describes how the video "started to grow as an embryo in the song's lines "Who looks after my story". Who takes care of our stories when the big history, written by straight rich white men, erases the complexity of human´s lives, desires and conditions?" A song hasn't felt this essential in a long time.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK 1: Chelsea Wolfe - 'Flatlands'
The beautiful new video to 'Flatlands' by Chelsea Wolfe is a lesson in How To Do Goth Properly. In an unnervingly silent house Wolfe frantically chips away at an apple skin with her fingernails and has a bath time breakdown, before meaningfully traversing a windswept beach. The LA-based singer's acoustic album Unknown Rooms was one of my favourites of last year, and this is a dark and affecting accompaniment to the song's gossamer acoustic instrumentation of strings and guitar. Wolfe seemingly composed a new monologue specifically for the occasion too, delivered as she stares into the coastline's raging waves: "Both of us dive in against each other, and the water takes over."
VIDEO OF THE WEEK 2: SSION - 'LUVVBAZAAR'
This actually came out a couple of weeks ago, but if you've already seen it, watch it again. Every video from Cody Critchloe is an eye-popping cacophony worth treasuring. Here, the Italo-pop of 'LUVVBAZAAR' gets the visual treatment, in a clip based around grainy monochrome clips from one of SSION's New York shows. With cameos from locally-based artists including Alexis Penney and TECNIKOLOR BANSHIE, it's a thrilling showcase of some of the city's most brilliant creatives - but my favourite bit is the interlude midway through the song, when Critchloe exits his own party for an urgent trip to a late-night convenience store to admire the produce and booty-shake in a refrigerator.
SOMEONE TO KEEP AN EYE ON: Syron - 'Here'
South Londoner Syron's debut single 'Breaking' was a pretty nice cut of melancholic garage-pop, but 'Here' is the sound of an artist upping her game. Syron turns up the brightness in this glitchy, modern midtempo with shining calypso flourishes, soulful vocals and rainbow synth skittering, which reminds me of the kind of banger-but-not-a-banger that Katy B's 'Witches Brew' was. It oozes class.
REMIX OF THE WEEK: Cassie - 'All Gold, All Girls Remix' (feat. Trina & Lola Monroe)
In another cut from Cassie's much-promised mixtape Rock-A-Bye Baby, she teams up with Trina and Lola Monroe to go in on Trinidad James’ 'All Gold Everything' on a better-than-the-original take on the opulent beat. It's Monroe who steals the show though, simmering her way through a World of Interiors-vibing verse as she wryly rhymes "Versace couture" with "décor" in a brag about her 24-carat lifestyle. According to The YBF, Cassie's forthcoming tape has collabs locked down with Jeremih, Rick Ross and Pusha T, so maybe it will be coming out at some point before 2027 after all.
WEIRDEST COVER OF THE WEEK: Courtney Love - '99 Problems'
"It either sucks, or it's genius!" declares Courtney before launching into a snarly take on Jay-Z's 2004 rap classic during a gig during Sundance. One thing's for sure: "This is not a hoe in the sense of havin' a pussy/But a pussy havin' no God Damn sense, try and push me" never sounded so threatening as when coming from her smeared lipstick mouth. It's so bizarre that I think it might actually be genius.