Taken from Pepe Deluxé’s double-A single also featuring Sweet Baby Sun, Everyone Is blends Northern Soul and 90s dance energy to create a nostalgic vibe with a modern twist, like a swinging 60s cocktail party where the beat gets just a bit more banging than expected. Bart Hopkin’s instrumentation helps give the track its free-wheeling experimental edge, while Finnish-Swedish singer Charlotte Kerbs’ soulful vocals are the glacé cherry on top, taking it to all its highest peaks. I dare you not to love this song from the moment it starts, and if it doesn’t make you grin you are dead inside.
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Video of the Month
Sophie Kilburn – Body on the Inside
“Body on the Inside,” blends emotive classic rock with catchy pop to create a track that works superbly both on the surface and at a deeper level. Kilburn’s candid lyrics reflect on the influence of pornography on intimacy, urging listeners to reclaim control over their bodies. The video is a perfectly fitting accompaniment, retro lo-fi and wittily unsettling, like a page of Readers Wives that starts talking back. Stuffed with melodic hooks and brilliantly sharp lyrics, Body on the Inside is a fantastic earworm with a lot to say.
“It was important to me to depict that moment when you are having sex, but you are not in it together. Where the connection between you both is gone but the person you are with is so lost in their pleasure, they didn’t even think about yours. The caged wired dress was influenced by Scary Movie (bear with me) when Bobby sneaks into Cindy’s room to sleep with her but when he lifts her nightgown, she has a ‘no trespass’ sign pinned on a barbed wire underwear. The video is shot on film so it meant we couldn’t see how it looked until it was developed.”
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Pick of the Past
In this new feature, I will bring you an occasional treat from the box of obscure, forgotten or under-rated gems-of-the-past that still occupy my headspace.
Earthling – 1st Transmission
“Oh Gosh! Oh Gosh! I’m Juliette Binoche!”
Earthing emerged out of the mid-90s trip-hop scene, blending electronic beats, mesmerising melodies, and soulful vocals. Taken from their debut album, Radar, released in 1997, opening track 1st Transmission ping-pongs through pop-culture reference points, ranging from William Burroughs to Star Trek, with a surreal, spacey humour, moody atmosphere and laid back rhythm. Like Leeloo downloading the history of humanity direct to her brain in the 5th element, only with added psychedelics.
Radar earned a good amount of critical acclaim on release and though the band disbanded in the early 2000s, the album, and this track as one of my favourites on it, serves as a fantastic example of the genre whilst still sounding as fresh and fun today as it did then.
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Follow Earthling on Spotify
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