Jesus Jones shares their new single "All Falls To Me" is the second track to be taken from the upcoming band's new album "Twilight" to be released in September 2026, the visuals are taken from the band's travels, on the world tour they did in 2023/2024. The tune start with a Flamenco intro and the goes into transition to a dancy sound pretty much as Jesus Jones trademark, in the video you can see Mike diving into the idea of Solipsism the tought that the onlu thing which truly exists is oneself.
Throughout the 1990s, disc jockey Roger Sanchez had been brought to a worldwide audience via his career as a remixer, but he wasn't satisfied. Like many DJs, he wanted to be an artist. And he wanted to be the best and if remixing had taught him one thing, it was how to make records." Sanchez conceived the idea of making an album when he found himself producing enough of his own material. He said of making First Contact: "I think for me what happened was that rather than initially saying 'Oh, I want to do an album', it got to the point that after years of just doing one off singles and remixes, I started producing a couple of my own tracks and I just felt I had a bit of a story to tell with my life."Although Sanchez had released several DJ mix albums and compilation albums in the 1990s and 2000s, including his then-recent Ministry of Sound mix Sessions Eleven: The R-Senal Sessions (2000), First Contact was the DJ's first studio album.
Sanchez said he wanted to create a "very personal" album that gave listeners "a little bit of background about where I'm from and where my mind is at, plus some of my own experiences so people could relate to it and vibe with it." Upon its completion in 2001, the album had drastically changed from its previous form a year and a half earlier: "I just thinned it out, focused it and concentrated it more. I'm very happy with the outcome." The DJ felt the final album "reflects and expands on the sounds that have shaped his life."
Sanchez constructed the album's tracks "like a house." He explained: "Everything has a foundation and the track is a construction. The skeleton frames, the beams are the bassline, and you build it up around that. I often start with the drums, although recently I've started to subvert that, to challenge myself more, and start with, say, a melody. I treat every track as a problem that I have to solve." Production of the song "Another Chance" was initially an issue as Sanchez felt it needed vocals, so he sampled the 1982 song "I Won't Hold You Back" by rock band Toto after he found the Toto IV album lying in the studio. Despite never taking 'blatant' samples, he made an exception for the Toto track as "lyrically it just made the track and hit something I'd gone through." Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger described the production of "Another Chance" as Sanchez "hearing something in the winsome intro of an old Toto hit, cutting it loose, and then letting this tiny scrap of song spin through seven minutes of house music."
The album composition described by Sanchez as "a reflection of my life", is a lush and soulful house and disco house album, mixing smooth garage styles into a harder sound influenced by "fresh new beats" emerging from the United Kingdom and Europe. The album explored different styles and influences, including garage, electro and Latin music. A brief skit opens the album, in which Sanchez is heard logging on to his computer, which invites him "to select a track". This was followed by "Computabank", influenced by 1980s electronica acts like Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk, and incorporating styles of electro and industrial music. Julie C of Resident Advisor said the song gives listeners a taste of the style of electronica music "now filtering through their air waves" that had been adopted by Daft Punk. The emotional second track "Another Chance" featured two hooks, namely the repeating vocal, sampled from Toto's "I Won't Hold You Back", and the double drum-hit "that kicks the track up a notch each time it comes."
"Contact" was a deep house track fusing throbbing bass sounds and flanged sampling work. The disco-styled diva house song "You Can't Change Me" was a collaboration with Armand van Helden and vocalist N'Dea Davenport. The lyrics were based on an argument Sanchez had with his ex-girlfriend: "She became my manager and it broke up pretty badly. My career, my music comes first, and I travel all over the world. This is how it is, so if you walk into my life you have to expect it. "The Partee" was a big beat and house track driven by a brassy Latin music groove that highlights Sanchez's Dominican roots. "Ventura" is a 'formless' track based upon a chunky groove, followed by the disco-styled "I Never Knew", which features strings and "lite-funk" vocals from the group Cooly's Hot Box. "Nothing 2 Prove" is a laid-back song featuring vocals from Sharleen Spiteri of the group Texas. The genesis for the song came after Sanchez remixed Texas' hit "In Our Lifetime". Angela Johnson sings on the "electro soul" closing song "Leavin'".
Formed back in 1998, the Strokes consisted of singer Julian Casablancas, guitarist Nick Valensi, bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Casablancas's stepfather and Moretti's and Fraiture's older brothers introduced the quartet to the music of reggae artist Bob Marley, protopunk group the Velvet Underground, and alternative rock band Jane's Addiction. Discussing the formative stages of the group, Moretti noted, "Our music was, like, [the Doors'], but trying to be classical. We all took music classes and tried writing songs, and when we put them together they were this crazy amalgam of insane ideas that we thought was really cool." In 1998, Albert Hammond Jr., whom Casablancas knew from his time at a Swiss boarding school, moved to New York City to attend film school and joined the Strokes as a second guitarist, his arrival provided the catalyst for the band's musical and emotional evolution.
After the deal with RCA, the Strokes started working with Gil Norton, who had produced recordings for alternative rock group Pixies. Although the two parties developed a rapport, the band were unhappy with the results of preliminary sessions which they thought sounded "too clean" and "too pretentious"; the three songs recorded with Norton were scrapped.
Before recording started, the Strokes and Raphael organized a listening session with the musical material Hammond and Casablancas had brought to show the tone and energy they liked. At the meeting, the band said they wanted to go in a different direction than contemporary music. Casablancas wanted Is This It to sound like "a band from the past that took a time trip into the future to make their record". The approach for the album became more studied than that of The Modern Age. The group wanted the majority of songs to sound like them playing live, while they requested a few others to be like "a weird, in-studio production with a drum machine, even though no drum machine was used". The songs of the latter type were done track-by-track and were crafted into non-standard rock arrangements. Raphael's background in industrial music played a large part in the album's conception.
During six weeks in the studio, the Strokes' gritty sound became the emphasis of the sessions. The band usually recorded songs only once, based on Casablancas's preference for "raw efficiency". RAT effects pedals and overdriving amplifiers were used at times, "taking sounds, disintegrating them and then bringing them back". The band wanted things to be only slightly stressed, with no heavy-handedness in terms of studio effects; only distortion and reverse echo were widely used. Throughout the process, Raphael improvised according to the reactions that he got from the group. At one point, he had to cope with the threat of eviction from his Transporterraum studio, but once the Strokes received backing from RCA, time and money were no longer pressing concerns. The label's A&R delegate initially did not like what had been recorded and felt that the album was not going to be professional enough. The producer and the band were given complete control only when Casablancas persuaded the delegate by playing him some of the new material on a boom box.
Inspired by the Velvet Underground's production and the direct approach of punk rock band Ramones, the miking scheme for the drum kit included only three microphones: one above it, one for the bass drum, and one in the corner of the studio. It was crafted to capture "a compressed, explosive sound". On Moretti's advice, the transfer from the two loud guitars and the rumble of the bass picked up by the drum-kit microphones was not eliminated. The guitars were recorded more simply; Hammond and Valensi both used Fender DeVille amps on opposite sides of the room, while Raphael positioned a mic on each. The sound was then fed directly into a preamp with no equalization. Valensi commented that guitar teacher and mentor Bowersock was invaluable because he was articulating things to the producer that the group could not. While the rest of the Strokes played to a click track, Casablancas sang through a small Peavey practice amp to retain a sense of low fidelity on the album. Raphael mixed as he went along to maintain control of the record until the final mastering stage; the producer aimed to show the Strokes a final product as soon as the band finished performing a track.
The composition of the record reflected on Casablancas's stuff about life and relationships of young people in New York City. Exemplifying this theme, "The Modern Age" is a rant about the oddness of modern life. "Barely Legal" concerns a girl who has just arrived at the age of consent. Discussing its risqué nature, Moretti has stated, "It should be taken the way you interpret it. The lyrics mean different things to different people." "Alone, Together" continues the sexual theme by dropping hints about cunnilingus, while the yelp at the start of "New York City Cops" was created as a pastiche of rock band Aerosmith. "Soma" takes influence from the fictional drug in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World. Here Casablancas is discussing drug use to fit in with the cool crowd.
The music on the other hand has been described as a garage rock revival, indie rock, and post-punk revival album. All songs on the album were mixed using 11 or fewer audio tracks. According to Valensi, the album contains "no gimmicks, no tricks" to try to get the listener to like the compositions. It opens with the title track, which features a simple, metronomic drum line, a recurring feature in the rest of the record. Containing one of the slowest tempos, "Is This It" is the Strokes' attempt at a ballad. "The Modern Age" follows and includes a guitar riff accompanied by a complementary drum line. Its staccato verse is followed by an upbeat, singalong chorus and a guitar solo. Discussing the album's simplicity and measured approach, Valensi has commented, "We don't put in a guitar solo just to have one." "Soma" incorporates jerky rhythms and starts and ends with the same guitar and drum chimes, while "Barely Legal" contains some of the album's softer guitar melodies inspired by Britpop as well as drumming patterns that evoke the sound of primitive 1980s drum machines. The fifth track on the record, "Someday", is infused with rockabilly elements and interlocking guitar lines, the latter a recurring element of Is This It. "Alone, Together" is driven by a staccato rhythm, and climaxes first with a guitar solo, then a repeat of the central guitar hook. "Last Nite" is also a guitar-driven song, but leans towards pop music influences. At its core, there are reggae-inspired rhythm guitar lines played by Hammond, and studio noise effects. The rhythm section plays simple interlocking notes and beats. Like "Soma", "Hard to Explain" contains processed drum tracks using dynamic range compression and equalization studio techniques to make them sound like a drum machine.
The album had two cover art, the international cover art of Is This It is by Colin Lane and features a photograph of a woman's rear and hip, with a leather-gloved hand suggestively resting on it. The model was Lane's then-girlfriend, who explained that the photoshoot was spontaneous and happened after she came out of the shower naked. Lane recalled that a stylist had left the glove in his apartment and noted, "We did about 10 shots. There was no real inspiration, I was just trying to take a sexy picture." The result was included in the book The Greatest Album Covers of All Time, in which Grant Scott, one of the editors, noted influences from the works of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin.
For the American market and the October 2001 release, the cover art of Is This It was changed to a psychedelic photograph of subatomic particle tracks in a bubble chamber. The image first appeared on new age artist Bruce Becvar's 1988 album The Nature of Things.
Bloc Party has premiered a new song called "Now We Can't Be Friends," a track off the band's upcoming album, Anatomy of a Brief Romance. The single marks the third song to be released off Anatomy of a Brief Romance, following "Coming on Strong" and "Love Bomb." the new album it's due out September 11.
During the first half of 1986, the band took a break from touring to recover energy. They wanted to make a change from the sound of their previous album, with Mills saying "We wanted to get away from the sort of murky feelings and sounds that we got out of Joe Boyd, producer on Fables of the Reconstruction] in London". They wanted a "really hard-driving record, but we also like to throw in a lot of things: pianos and organs and accordions and banjos and what-not" and considered working with Gehman as they liked the acoustic sound of his work with John Mellencamp. They initially met for a number of demo sessions at John Keane's Studio in Athens, Georgia, in January & March 1986 (These recordings would later be released as the "Athens Demos" on the 25th-anniversary re-release of the album). After being initially skeptical, they embraced the new recording process with Gehman
Recorded at Mellencamp's Belmont Mall Recording Studio in Belmont, Indiana, in April and May 1986. The recording studio was larger and had newer technology than they were used to, and they enjoyed the area, attending many concerts in nearby Bloomington while there. The band were also happy with the production of the record and the extra clarity of the vocals
The album's title was inspired by a line spoken by Inspector Clouseau in the 1964 film "A Shot in the Dark." The cover art features an image of drummer Bill Berry and a bison below, alluding to the album's environmental theme and referencing Buffalo Bill. By then, the band's fame was already transcending the boundaries of college rock, so a new recording was needed to propel them into a more mainstream sound, and indeed, the gamble paid off, as the production allowed the album to reach gold status, peaking at No. 21 and becoming, at the time, the band's best-selling and most successful album.
Two singles were released from the album: the powerful and ecologically charged "Fall On Me," a favorite of Stipe and myself, and "Superman," sung by Mike Mills. But other tracks also appeared, which curiously became unofficial singles: the equally powerful and socially and ecologically charged "Cuyahoga," about the highly polluted river that flows into Lake Erie, referencing the times the river caught fire due to the high levels of pollution; and "Flowers of Guatemala," which, it is said, alluded to the genocide in that country during the armed conflict.
Beth Orton shares "Cigarette Curls" a wonderful, time stood still and beautifully put together not a sound out of place. Beth Orton reflects here on a past relationship that ended abruptly, leaving the singer feeling lost and alone. The metaphor of 'cigarette curls' symbolizes memories that linger like smoke, while the repetition of being 'afraid' highlights the fear and regret of not following one', the single is taken from her forthcoming album "The Ground Above" video directed by Joseph Lynn & Imogen Knight
