New Sissy Nobby, Badu, and Magnetic Zeroes

This week's "Freshly Spilt Milk" playlist includes new bounce, a Kanye remake, a Beiber cover, and "Xtreme" music from Prince Rama.

This week's "Freshly Spilt Milk" playlist includes new bounce, a Kanye remake, a Beiber cover, and "Xtreme" music from Prince Rama.

1. “Feel” (Ninos Du Brasil remix) - The Soft Moon: The Soft Moon were scheduled to play New Orleans as Killing Joke’s opening act. When Killing Joke cancelled, the Oakland-based band played Gasa Gasa with all the angst that ’80s dance rock can muster. Live, it sounded a little quaint, but this remix bridges the urban primitive, industrial noise, and EDM to come up with something contemporary with a sense of dread that grows as the track goes on.  

2. “Weep Woop” - OpieWillBreakYourHeart: I love the fundamental silliness of this future bass track, from its title and the bleep bloop sounds that inspired it to the vocal, which is chopped and manipulated until the woman singing it sounds literally hysterical.

3. “Take Off” feat. Princess Nokia (Astronaut Laser Baile Mix) - Branko: Astronaut Laser’s remix strips Branko’s global club sound to Princess Nokia’s cool chick vocal and just enough percussion to keep the track moving. 

4. “DMS” - Sissy Nobby: Sissy Nobby is back with a new album, The Hate is Real!!. A lot of bounce echoes dancehall, and Nobby’s voice makes that connection very clear. The sonic rawness of the sound only intensifies its power. 

5. “Think Like They Book Say” - Saul Williams: A track from the spoken word artist, activist, actor and rapper’s new album, MartyrLoserKing, which dropped today.

6. “Say a Prayer for Me” - Rüfüs du Sol: A track from the Australian new album, Bloom, on Odesza’s Foreign Family Collective label.

7. “Valley Amnesia” - Benny Boeldt: Baltimore’s Benny Boeldt—also known as “Adventure”—goes for old school techno with the hyperactive, skittering snare under a Moog-sounding melody that doesn’t grab you as much as remind you where you are in the song. The track is from 8 Cups of Coffee, which which is on sale now.

8. “Trill Friends” (Badu Whodunit rough mix) - Erykah Badu: Another great track from Erykah Badu, who’s clearly in a creative place right now. “Trill Friends” is her riff on Kanye’s “Real Friends,” and it began as a studio goof. When she sings, “Homeboys and some of them we wish we never knew at all / Homegirls said, some of them we wish we never knew at all,” you feel like she knows what she’s talking about, but the problem people aren’t going to sink her.

9. “Sorry” - Elderbrook: British soul singer Elderbrook covers Justin Bieber here, and it’s not clear that he’s meaningfully more apologetic than Bieber, but he does acknowledge the other person’s right to feelings. 

10. “I Sing Myself 2 Sleep” - off.white: You can hear the love of Flying Lotus in off.white’s tracks, but the airy, Japanese ambient vibe is gently compelling.

11. “The Escape from the Evil Queen” feat. Fro-Yo Ma - J’Von: More Flying Lotus influence, more ‘70s soul vibe. If not for the title that puts Super Mario Brothers in my mind, the chorus and the repeated “running away from you” would sound simply like a snapshot from a complicated relationship.

12. “Louder” - ARMNHMR: This trap track from the L.A. production duo ARMNHMR builds and diffuses the tension every 30 or so seconds, which makes it fun if a little ADD and perhaps a little automatic.

13. “Now is the Time of Emotion” - Prince Rama: Direct from the press release for the song and Extreme Now, due out March 4. 

A pummeling, voluntary thrust into the heart of darkness at the speed of light; a face-first bungee jump off the mortal coil into the gaping canyon of forever; a fistful of snow hurled at death's grin from high on a ski-lift doomed to eternally climb the summit-less mountain; a motorcycle falls from a tear in Hell; a tesseract constructed out of a half pipe slows down time as life flashes before your eyes in vivid colors; a pastless, futureless XTREME NOW unwinds before you, interrupted only by the consumption of a mysterious glowing green liquid oozing from a shiny aluminum can marked "ENERGY..."

Xtreme Now is the most extreme album Prince Rama has ever made. Writing for Xtreme Now began while the Larson sisters were living on a black metal utopian commune on Vȫrmsi, a remote island off the coast of Estonia during the summer of 2012. There, Taraka had a near death experience inside an ancient Viking ruin which sparked a recurring sense of time-schizophrenia, or the physical sensation of existing in multiple time periods simultaneously. In this case, she experienced a joint-existence in both the medieval ages and the year 2067. In one of her prophetic visions she describes, "In the year 2067, I witnessed an aesthetic landscape where art museums are sponsored by energy drink beverages and beauty is determined by speed. I saw a vision of ancient tapestries stretched across half-pipes and people base-jumping off planes with the Mona Lisa smiling up from their parachutes. I saw art merge with extreme sports to form a new aesthetic language of 'Speed Art.' I realized that time travel was possible via the gateway of extreme sports, and I wanted to make music that would provide the score."

Perceiving a great void in the world of extreme sports for music that could match the metaphysical intensity of these death-defying feats, Prince Rama set forth to make Xtreme Now, the first real foray by any musician to create a new "extreme sports genre." For inspiration, the sisters looked to their own flirtations with death and time-dilation, along with countless hours of obsessively watching extreme sports videos and consuming dangerous quantities of Monster Energy drink.

Prince Rama will play Siberia March 13. 

14. “Don’t Ask me to Change” - The Wild Feathers: Nashville’s Wild Feathers draws from classic Americana pop roots as “Don’t Ask Me to Change” illustrates with its jangling guitar sound. The song reaches into the pop mainstream with its expansive chorus that would be equally at home in a U2 song. “Don’t Ask Me to Change” comes from the upcoming Lonely is a Lifetime, due out March 11. The band will play One Eyed Jacks March 23.  

15. “No Love Like Yours” - Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes: The cover art for Person A, the upcoming album from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, features a red line drawn through “Edward Sharpe and.” Maybe that’s just a graphic thing, or maybe it’s an indication that the band may be adjusting it’s lengthy, slightly misleading name (there is no Edward Sharpe). Since bandleader Alex Ebert now lives in New Orleans, Person A was recorded here in one room, he says, and the track demonstrates how far the band members have come as musicians in their time together. The album is due out April 15.